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KEEPING HOUSE
MARK PARREN TAYLOR VISITS THREE ASIAN HOMES-TURNED-MUSEUMS WHICH OFFER A REWARDING INSIGHT INTO THE LIVES OF THE FAMILIES WHO ONCE DWELT IN THEM
AS A YOUNGSTER, I FOUND MUSEUMS TO BE AN unbearable ordeal. So much so, I would come up with any tall story to escape an afternoon roaming their long marble-floored corridors of glass cases and mannequins dressed in period costume. Nowadays I find something rather comforting – even exciting – about the self-same things.
As I travel through the calm conformity of airports, hotels and shopping malls, it’s rather refreshing to find house museums throughout the region that show the diversity of local cultures and histories. They open doors into the homes of real people from another time when the world was a very different place.
In Hong Kong, for instance, Sam Tung Uk was the walled dwelling of an extended Hakka family who lived off the land and in each other’s pockets for more than two centuries. Down in Bangkok, the MR Kukrit Heritage Home is both a charming teak house and an insight into how one of Thailand’s leading figures used the residence for both work and relaxation. But first to Macau, where the Casa Macanese villa reveals the 1930s home life of one of the oldest – and most distinctive – Eurasian communities.
OFFICE AND OASIS
Name: MR Kukrit Heritage Home
Where: Bangkok
In preparing for my visit with ML Rongrit, I discovered several photographs of his late father, MR Kukrit Pramoj, a leading light in Thailand during the second half of the 20th century as a political figure, writer and performer. The pictures of MR Kukrit revealed not a formidable-looking polymath, but a man with a ready smile. When his son was introduced to me, the similarity was simply astounding.
ML Rongrit – “ML” stands for Mom Luang, a noble, royal-related title that indicates he is the child of an “MR”, or Mom Rajawongse – is a tall, solid figure who speaks exceptionally good English. His father was educated at Oxford and put his fine voice to good use for George Englund’s 1963 film The Ugly American in which he plays the prime minister of a fictional Asian state, alongside Marlon Brando. He was cultural advisor on the set, yet quickly became the director’s choice for the pivotal role. In accepting, MR Kukrit told Englund, “I think you’re right that I could play it better than anyone.” I wonder whether he exhibited the same bravado when, a decade later, he found himself sworn in as the 13th prime minister of Thailand during the turbulent mid-1970s.
In 1960, though, on a quiet backstreet near the centre of Bangkok, MR Kukrit set about making his home – eventually forming the current structure from five antique teak houses. The verandah at the rear overlooks the majority of the five-rai (two-acre) site, lovingly landscaped with an orchard, a ramshackle bridge crossing a brook, and a flower-crowded pond, into the open-air reception. As we stroll around the property, Rongrit speaks of the house and his father, and the two merge into a sequence of extraordinary snapshots: “They tried to burn it to the ground, then shots were fired … Father tried to avert revolution in this quiet room…”
As well as ML Rongrit’s vivid recollections, there are revealing framed photographs throughout the heritage home: the owner with his dogs; autographed portraits of European royals; and poignant snaps of MR Kukrit and his family – including his nephews, the current King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his late elder brother, King Ananda Mahidol, as boys.
ROOM WITH A VIEW
Name: Casa Macanese
Where: Macau
Framed photos stand on sideboards and tables throughout the Casa Macanese, as do Qing porcelain bowls and Jesus statuettes. This was the home of a middle-class Macanese family – that is, people with both Chinese and Portuguese heritage – and is one of five historic villas that comprise the Taipa Houses Museum.
The row of noble, dusky green villas stands on an esplanade that once overlooked the stretch of water separating Macau’s islands. Today, reclamation has joined Taipa and Coloane. Where before there were fish now there are chips, for this flat expanse is quickly becoming a strip of top-notch casinos.
I sit on a bench by the museum with Ana Maria, an elderly Macanese lady who lives in a small cottage on a patio in Coloane village just across the reclamation, and we watch the playful neon far beyond an ornamental lake. “You think this is busy, with the new land and the casinos and the crowds?” she asks. “This has always been busy! When I was a girl, all this,” she waves her ruby-ringed fingers over the sparkling vista before us, “was a haven for junks and steamers. We’d take to the water several times a day: for business, supplies, luncheon at one of the clubs; at the weekends the sampans would do good business as people in all their finery headed to the opera or to promenade.”
The Casa Macanese’s interior demonstrates how well-appointed such a spot – remote to European minds, but beautiful to their eyes – could be. It has a simple elegance, showing that a mix of cultures does not necessarily result in clutter. Silk fabrics bring a splash of colour to big-armed art deco sofas, and vibrant Chinese ceramics sit on simple sideboards covered with Portuguese lace cloths. In the “public rooms”, black-and-white photos show the family in their Sunday best or enjoying an alfresco meal with friends. Climb the stairs and you’ll find paintings of Jesus and Mary hanging solemnly over brass beds.
If the latest in contemporary design from Europe and China reached this home, so too did the necessities of contemporary technology: there are telephones and gramophones, ceiling fans and bar heaters, electric lamps and a well-kitted kitchen. The life of a Macanese family – or their neighbour, a government official from Lisbon – was far from arduous in the 1930s.
ONE HOUSE, MANY HOMES
Name: Sam Tung Uk
Where: Hong Kong
Plagued by the day-to-day headaches of marauding bandits and an inter-village war, in 1786 a Hakka clan led by Chan Yam-Shing built itself a “big house” – a secure, defendable walled village. They chose a good location: the land was arable, and transport and seafood were available. Today, Sam Tung Uk, as the village is known, is hemmed in by the high-rise apartments and shopping malls of Tsuen Wan. But in those days it was known as Pirate Bay, or Tsak Wan, and was open countryside punctuated with dozens of fortified communities ever prepared for pirates who frequently made crushing sorties inland.
The Chan clan stayed here for almost 200 years. As their numbers grew and needs changed, so the structure of the house evolved. Initially there were four dwellings, but a century later the walls had expanded to hold four times as many. At one point the five lanes within the compound were busy thoroughfares as 80 or more residents went about their daily business: mandarin peel was dried on string tied to roof-beams and women winnowed grain as old folk played mahjong.
But the clan gradually moved away, and the cohesion that once made the extended family as strong as the walls started to disintegrate. Images of the house during the decade before the final Chan left in 1980 show a forlorn structure of makeshift tin roofs, unkempt grounds and a hotchpotch of doors knocked through the once strong walls.
In 1987, Sam Tung Uk reopened its large wooden doors as a museum. Despite some locals’ complaints that it was over-restored, Sam Tung Uk soon won a deserved Heritage Award.
In these days of affordable air travel and the all-knowing web, when the world seems to be ever shrinking, the house museums of Asia are a refreshing reminder that we all have a unique history and heritage.
ADDRESS BOOK:
Taipa Houses Museum Avenida da Praia, Taipa, Macau, tel +853 2882-7103, http://housesmuseum.iacm.gov.mo; Open: Tuesday– Sunday, 10am–6pm; Admission: Adult MOP5 (US$0.60), Student MOP2 (US$0.25), Child/Senior, free entry on Tuesdays
MR Kukrit Heritage Home 19 Soi Phrapinit, South Sathorn Road, Bangkok, tel +66 (0)2 286-8185, www.kukritshousefund.com; Open: weekends and official holidays, 10am–5pm; Admission: Adult B50 (US$1.50), Student/Child 20 baht (US$0.60)
Sam Tung Uk Museum 2 Kwu Uk Lane, Tusen Wan, Hong Kong, tel +852 2411-2001, www.heritagemuseum.gov.hk; Open: Wednesday– Monday, 9am–5pm; Admission: Free
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