Benefited from the economic boom during the early colonial times in the nineteenth
century, most of the Peranakan families were wealthy and English educated. The
Peranakans’ adaptation to local custom and embracing English culture is also a means
to advance and facilitate their roles as traders and middlemen economically in the
region. By the middle of the nineteenth and early twenty-first century, they formed the
Straits-Chinese elites. The likes to import European furnishings and other domestic
objects in the Peranakan household was not only a status quo to display their wealth,
but also an assertion of their Peranakan identity