In fact Peranakan identity is so out-there that even home design guru Martha Stewart recently tried nonya cooking.

BBC: Nonya kueh: Wolfing down Singapore's wobbliest cake

Although there is a picture of some nonya kueh wobbling about, in her video, she does not eat one.

BBC: Nonya kueh: Wolfing down Singapore's wobbliest cake

Both a lovely example of what happens when colonial and Chinese architectural styles blend, the mansion is also a monument to the entrepreneurial skill and posturing that, to this day, animates the local " Baba Nonya" community, descendants of those Chinese merchants who settled in the great Malay and Indonesian archipelagos.

BBC: Penang: Malaysia in miniature