The history of Nyonya's food | 菜肴的历史背景

We are a group of Malaysian Born Chinese and we love Malaysian food very much. We could hardly find a nice and tasty Malaysian / Asian food in Adelaide, Australia. With a good chef with us, we would like to introduce something special, delicious and gorgeous cuisines called the Traditional Nyonya's food.

What does Nyonya mean?
Baba-Nyonya is another sub-ethnic group which exists in Malaya from assimilation process between the 15th century Indonesian Malay and the Chinese princess from China. They established their own cultures, rituals, norms, traditional costumes, delicious food, language and etc. Baba means the male descendants while Nyonya means the female descendants. They live mainly in Malacca which is the smallest state in Malaysia. There are lots of Baba-Nyonya's cultural heritages in Malacca and mostly are being placed in the Museum for public visit and watch. The older generations of the Baba-Nyonya descendants, they could only speak and understand Malay but not Mandarin although their ancestor are from China. They also have their own language which is the combination of the Malay language and Hokkien dialect.


我们是一群来自马来西亚的华人，而且我们非常喜欢吃马来西亚的美食。在阿德莱德要找一间好吃又有浓厚马来风味的餐馆还挺难的啊。我们想向各位介绍我们当地很好吃的一些美食，名为 “娘惹菜”。

娘惹是什么意思呢？
爸爸和娘惹是我们马来西亚的少数民族。他们的祖先是来自印尼的马来人和中国的华人。据说当年中国皇帝为了维持两国之间的友谊，就把一位中国公主赐给马来亚的苏丹为妻，也就是马来亚当时候的最高领导者的妻子。爸爸和娘惹的文化就从这一段时间开始了。他们演变成一群新的种族。有着自己独特的文化，信仰，语言，服装，美食，等等。娘惹烧菜是非一般味道的因为他们所采用的材料是独特的。所以味道非常特别也很好吃。爸爸和娘惹大部分都住在马六甲。所以，在马六甲您可以接触很多有关爸爸和娘惹的文化历史的他们的祖先所遗传下来的东西例如衣服，杯子，碗碟，等等。他们的语言包含了马来语和福建话。