Name: How A 500-Year-Old Rainbow Sweet Is Preserving One Of Asia's Forgotten Cultures | Still Standing
Uploaded: 2025-08-26T03:09:00.000Z
Duration: 10 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Peeling this gelatinous kueh lapis layer by layer is the correct way to eat it.

Adverbs of manner

If you chew it without peeling, it means that you are actually shortening your lifespan.

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For almost 80 years, Edmond Wong's family has been making these bite-sized treats in Singapore.

Crafting them is part of a culture that goes back about 500 years.

Nonya kueh is historically significant to the Peranakan people, a cultural group prominent between the 15th and early 20th centuries that's working to be remembered today.

Their varied and colorful snacks are a staple of Southeast Asian cuisine.

But as the popularity of nonya kueh increases, some shopkeepers like Edmond fear its Peranakan roots will be forgotten.

For our business, we see us being not just only a food business, but a heritage business.

People may enjoy to eat them, but they may not know the meaning behind it, and they may lose touch with the heritage.

We went to Singapore to see how Peranakan culture and the art of making nonya kueh is still standing.

Kueh is a broad term for bite-sized snacks or desserts commonly found in Southeast Asia, including cakes, dumplings, and pastries.

Kueh are prepared differently by multiple cultures in the region.

The ones made by Singapore's Peranakan community are called nonya kueh.

The neighborhood of Joo Chiat has long been a center of Peranakan culture.

It's where the shop Kim Joo Kueh Cheong has been located since 1945.

This business started off from my grandma.

She started selling rice dumplings under a banyan tree, and that's how we started.

Edmond still uses her recipes to make all the shop's kueh.

Today, the team is making a batch of one of their most popular items, kueh lapis.

It's a nine-layer steamed cake made with a base of tapioca flour, coconut milk, and sugar.

In Chinese, we also call it jiu cheng gao, which means nine-layer kuehs.

When our forefathers came here, they couldn't use ingredients from China, so they used local ingredients like coconut, coconut shred, palm sugar, and then we create something that looks Chinese, but it's not Chinese.

Workers mix the ingredients into a paste and strain it.

Kueh lapis is known for its colorful layers.

In the past, makers would use plants for natural coloring, like butterfly pea flowers for blue shades or pandan leaves for green.

But today, Edmond uses store-bought dyes to get each layer to the perfect shade of red or green.

Then workers repeat the process of pouring and steaming eight times.

Pour in a layer too early, and the colors could mix together, ruining the entire batch.

So workers carefully steam each layer for exactly five minutes at 100 degrees Celsius.

Because it's made without preservatives, the shop only makes about 320 kueh lapis a day.

We try not to sell too much because all these items cannot be kept long.

It's best eaten on the day when it's being produced and best eaten fresh.

There's also a specific way to eat kueh lapis.

The different colors of the kueh represent different phases of our lives.

If you chew it without peeling, it means that you are actually shortening your lifespan because you're missing out so much of your life.

I've been eating kueh since four years ago.

At first, I would just take it manually and just put it in my mouth.

But after the staff here told me that I'm supposed to peel one by one and taste the flavor, that's when I realized that I have been eating kueh lapis wrongly ever since four years ago.

My grandma, before she passed on, she would say that if your life like the kueh lapis, even if you're met with difficult times, continue to peel through that layer, you'll eventually see a bright color.

Researchers believe kueh originated in southern Fujian, China and were first introduced to Southeast Asia by Chinese traders who migrated to Malaysia during the 15th century.

These traders married local Malay women and their descendants, known as Straits Chinese or Peranakan, preserved their traditions, including making non-yuk kueh for celebrations like Chinese New Year.

When the British established a port in Singapore in 1819, many Peranakans migrated there for trade opportunities.

Their fluency in Chinese, Malay, and English helped them become middlemen between British and locals during the colonial era.

By the early 20th century, they were among Southeast Asia's most influential people, contributing their own distinct art, fashion, architecture, and food throughout the region.

But Japan's occupation of Singapore during World War II devastated the community.

Many Peranakans, including Edmund's grandmother, lost their fortunes and had to sell their belongings to survive.

During the time of war, she had to try and make a living for herself.

And the only skill set she had back then were the culinary skills passed down to her from her maternal grandmother.

The decades following World War II also marked a shift to modernization in Singapore.

Many Peranakans left their traditions behind.

By the 1970s, the community was on the verge of extinction.

For Edmund's grandmother and other Peranakans, selling their non-yuk kueh was a way to make a living while keeping their culture alive.

And Edmund is working to do the same in her honor.

These rice dumplings, or kueh cheong, have been prepared the same way since the shop opened.

Workers start by filling pandan leaves with rice and meat and wrapping them into a pyramid shape.

Then the dumplings are tied with a small rope and boiled for one and a half hours.

These days, kueh cheong is the shop's best seller.

Over several decades, non-yuk kueh has gone from a Peranakan delicacy to a staple for all Southeast Asians throughout Singapore.

We are a brand that's been around since 1945.

So basically, you will see us as a brand that grew with Singapore.

We are really fortunate that throughout the generations, we have a lot of Singaporeans and foreigners supporting us.

But because kueh has become more popular, some see it as a Singaporean delicacy instead of a Peranakan one.

And Edmund worries its Peranakan roots could be forgotten over time.

All these Peranakan stories, it tells us how to live our lives.

One of these days, if the stories are not being shared, then my fear is, yes, people may enjoy to eat them, but they may not know the meaning behind it and they may lose touch with the heritage.

That's why he believes it's so important to share Peranakan history with others while he can.

Kim Chu Kueh Cheong partnered with the Singaporean government to convert a portion of its restaurant into a boutique shop and museum.

Visitors can attend guided tours to learn about the different aspects of Peranakan heritage.

The collection includes family heirlooms, art and traditional clothing.

A lot of these items were either from my grandmother or of which late, you know, a lot of families who do not wish to keep them anymore, we actually do purchase directly from them if they no longer want to keep them.

We teach them about the history, about why we eat certain things a certain way, and it's really important.

More than the food, you know, we want to be custodians.

We want to promote the Peranakan heritage.

Edmond isn't the only one working to preserve this unique culture.

Since the 1980s, preservationists and the Singaporean government have worked to promote Peranakan culture.

Today, Singapore is home to multiple government-backed Peranakan museums and exhibits like the one at Kim Chu Kueh Cheong, as well as programs meant to preserve Peranakan architecture.

The Peranakan community, or the culture, is not about the marriage of races.

It is largely about the marriage of cultures.

And if we can embrace this concept and help more of us understand it, basically all of us in Singapore, even in Southeast Asia, can embrace and share this culture also.

Ever since I found out much about my heritage, it gives me identity.

I will always remember that this is my home, and I always have to come back here.

His hope is that the next generation will get to understand the history behind the kueh they know and love.

Passing down his grandmother's legacy is the best way to do that.

In the same way stories being passed down to her, she also passed down to us, to this generation, and we hope that we can continue to share this story with many more generations to come.