Dear Nyonyas and Babas
Annual General Meeting, 12 June 2022
It was very encouraging to hear Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong telling us on 24 March that Singapore’s public health situation has improved. We are also acutely aware that the good news come with the caveat that we must be prepared to step back if COVID-19 resurges.
The General Committee (GC) has, on further deliberation, therefore decided to press on with our earlier decision to have a virtual (online) AGM for the 2022-24 term on Sunday 12 June 2022 at 2pm.
This is to fully ensure our annual meeting will safeguard the wellbeing of our participating members. Equally important, we do not want to have to manage any Safe Management Measures (SMM) uncertainties.
Please look out for our AGM pack which should be making its way to you sometime in mid-April.
This year is an election year and I am pleased to inform that we have formed a team of both experienced and younger members to take the association to what we have set out to do – to inspire the community and our young to reimagine and reinvent our culture.
Term of 2020-22
We faced formidable challenges over the past two years because of COVID-19. But we have emerged stronger and closer as a team. And certainly wiser.
Fortunately, we have been able to adapt successfully to the very inhospitable environment with the support of TPAS members, partners, volunteers and friends.
- We successfully held our first-ever virtual Peranakan Dinner in September 2021. Despite last- minute changes due to fluid SMMs, 240 guests enjoyed the tok panjang dinner delivered to their respective home venues. It helped us to raise funds for the convention that followed, as well as anticipated running costs in the years to come.
- On 20 November 2021, we pioneered a hybrid 33rd Baba Nyonya International Convention which comprised a play followed by a symposium. All told, nearly 700 guests from around the world participated – a new attendance record for this regional annual event. The majority of our guests joined the convention through livestream.
- Our hybrid 2nd Baba Nyonya Literary Festival was held earlier this month, on 19 and 20 March. For the first time we included partners in Melaka. It is our pilot to assess the feasibility of regionalising the festival as technology today enables it. We had in total 140 guests, which still makes us the smallest literary festival in the world (we think).
- From a hesitant start in the later part of 2020 we have since conducted a total of 9 webinars with the help of subject experts, as we could not meet physically. We averaged 110 participants for each session.
- Importantly, in 2021 the association had added its own YouTube channel to its two other digital platforms – Facebook and website. We notice that more viewers have started watching our recorded events after they are posted on our YouTube channel.
- Unfortunately, our association’s choir, The Peranakan Voices, has been unable to practise since the start of COVID-19 due to SMM. But we are hopeful to gather again one day.
- The association’s finances continue to look healthy and should be able to see us through another two years of programmes and activities. We have in fact started looking at more in-person events starting in the second half of this year, provided we are able to satisfy SMM guidelines then. A key initiative is collaborating with The Peranakan Museum when it reopens next year.
- Our Life members stood at 2,131 as at 31 December 2021. We also have 20 Junior members. These make us one of Singapore’s largest cultural and heritage associations.
2nd Baba Nyonya Literary Festival
This year’s hybrid literary festival, the second after the 2019 inaugural festival, was the last “big” event to close the current GC’s term.
Some 140 participants enjoyed the readings and forums that embraced Peranakan and Malay cooking and food anthropology, Peranakan identity and language, historical fiction and through to poetry and pantun.
For the first time too, the festival in Singapore was livestreamed to the Melaka premises of The Bendahari, a cultural hub and a festival partner, which made it the association’s first-ever cross-border event
The two days of the festival were very well received. Unfortunately, on the first day, a system error in a third party’s live-streaming platform disrupted the broadcast of the live event by one-and-a-half hours. We are sorry for it. Fortunately, the attendees appreciated that this was beyond our control.
That same day, we did not hesitate to instruct Peatix to give a full refund of the price of the online tickets to our attendees. Peatix did so the day after and the refunds should be reflected in the statements of credit cards used to purchase the tickets within the next few weeks.
We also plan to post recordings of the festival on our YouTube channel soon.
I quote the festival’s champion and organiser, Nyonya Ngiam May Ling: “At the 33rd Baba Nyonya International Convention in November last year, historian and author Baba Kwa Chong Guan had asked: ‘Can the Baba Nyonya Literary Festival going into its second session in March next year inspire a new genre of Peranakan drama and literature?’ Like Mr Kwa, we hope that this festival will spawn creative writing groups and aspiring writers who write Peranakan-themed texts will emerge from them.”
The GC shares Chong Guan’s and May Ling’s sentiments. Our hope is that literature will be held as a torch to shine its everlasting light on our culture and identity.
Conclusion
I thank, from the bottom of my heart, my fellow team members and their families for their commitment to the Association. I would also like to thank you, our members and friends, our volunteers and partners, for your faith in us and your encouragement during a very trying period. Please continue to support The Peranakan Association Singapore as we aspire to inspire young Peranakans to evolve the culture.
Blessings
Colin Chee
President
Reimagine & Reinvent
31 March 2022