Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia: The Eclectic Architecture of Sojourners and Settlers

  The migration of Chinese from southeastern China to the Nanyang—the peninsular and insular region known today as Southeast Asia—is a significant component of the world’s major cultural diasporas.  After many of these migrants and their descendants became successful, they built architecturally eclectic homes—shophouses, bungalows, villas, and mansions—that combined Chinese, European, and local influences. It is the story of these hybrid architectural forms, built under different social and geographical environments than had been known at home in China and thus the products of cultural fusion, that is the focus of this book.  While most of these old buildings have disappeared, scattered throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, there still remain; fine examples worth studying, documenting, and explaining.

  Over a three-year period from 2007 to 2009, Ronald G. Knapp and A. Chester Ong made; five; field excursions to Asia in search of the old homes of Chinese sojourners and settlers. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia, a fascinating account of architectural multiculturalism in the pre-modern world, presents the results of their research.  An introductory essay portrays the historical circumstances that gave rise to Chinese houses overseas, and includes historic images, color photographs, paintings, and line drawings.

   At the core of the book are stunning color photographs of nearly forty residences built from the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century. For each residence, background information about the individual and his family who built and then lived there is given. These tales reveal the entrepreneurial spirit  of  the  immigrants  as  well  as  the  social  and economic  circumstances  in  which  they  lived.  Images and drawings from southeastern China help clarify similarities and differences, and, in several cases, related family residences in China are also presented. Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia complements Knapp and Ong’s 2005 award-winning Chinese Houses: The Architectural Heritage of a Nation, which highlighted more than twenty of China’s most significant historic residences.