Last weekend during my visit to the Singaporean Chinatown as I perused a few shops and vendor desks I had my first close encounter with
these beauties .
First impact: beautiful palette of turquoise, bright pink-reds, greens and yellows with exuberant patterns. The ones I spotted featured mostly floral decoration - a couple of them had seemingly Fenghuang (Chinese phoenix) motifs -. It's a rather busy style, lively yet harmonious, both bold and delicate.
I definitely wish to see more next time. With some more time to take pictures.
It's a different kind of beauty from raku and kintsugi. It seems to me to mirror the different elements of local culture - Peranakan literally means
'locally born' from an hybrid environment and ancestry unique to this area of the planet.
The Singapore Chinatown district itself is a fascinating area, where among the expected elements - ah, beloved lanterns - and the big Buddha Tooth Relic temple - an island of
incense, silence, golden splendor with a
patch of tropical garden on top and the big Vairocana Buddha prayer wheel in the middle - you can also spot a mosque, a Hindu temple among the brigthly-coloured typical shop-houses, and the contemporary financial district skyscrapers looming at the edges.
In terms of people and food as well the impression I got here was - as much as Singapore as a whole and in other occasions since I've come here - of a happy blend. It takes bits from all over SE Asia and the Western world and makes it work. With one perk if you're into wheat and barley juice: in this part of the city apparently you can enjoy cold beer by the bucket - ice bucket. Big ones -.
Personally I ended up trying the durian snow ice rather than drinking. Now, durian is famous for being a love-or-hate food. I think I'm falling in the
'it's an acquired taste and it's growing on me by the second' camp.
Think of truffle mushrooms, smells quite similar too at first. On the tongue it morphs into a very sweet borderline caramelized onion flavour, then nutty, then richly fruity. Snow ice is what it says on the tin: it's like eating very fluffy snow. The cloud version of a sorbet in terms of texture. But it's shaped like a - huge - mountain. It's so different yet familiar, again such a happy blend of diversity. I like to think I tasted a bit of Singapore in a scoop.
