Malaysian Foodways: Confluence and Separation

Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of “hybridity” as applied to nonya cuisine, the long-established fusion cuisine between Fujian Chinese and Bumiputra (Malay) cuisines in Malaysia. “Hybridity” is shown to be an inappropriate concept, because nonya cooking is simply one aspect of the millennia-old interaction within East and Southeast Asia's single, if highly diverse, food region.

KEYWORDS:

• anthropology of food
• Malaysia
• hybridity
• Nonya cuisine
• nutritional anthropology

Notes

¹I am unsure that this detailed note is necessary to the readership of EFN. The second part on the use of ‘Malay’ seems more relevant. “Hokkien” (or “Hokkian”) is the local language of southern Fujian province; the name is in fact the Hokkien pronunciation of the word that in Putonghua (“Mandarin”) is read “Fujian.” Hokkien is a quite different language from Putonghua. Contra the usual (but mistaken) southeast Asian English usage, Hokkien is not a dialect, but a separate language. “Amoy” is an old rendering of E mui, the usual Hokkien pronunciation of Xiamen. Mi is the Hokkien equivalent of Putonghua mian. The vast majority of migrants from China to Malaysia were Hokkien; many were speakers of other languages, notably Cantonese and Hakka. All the language groups had their own distinctive foodways. “Malay” is used in this article as it was used in 1970–71, for the Austronesian-speaking population of the Malay Peninsula. The term “Bumiputra” has come into some political use for this group since that time. The term “Malay” and other ethnic terms are used here as they were during the research period, for temporal consistency.