Pei Pa Zai : the forgotten singing girls of old Singapore

• Main Author: Leong, Jia Min
• Other Authors: Ivy Yeh
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::History
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76670
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper focuses on a group of Chinese women called the pei pa zais (the term is Romanized according to the Cantonese pronunciation 琵琶仔 pí pá zǎi) who existed in Singapore from the 1850s to the late 1960s. These women worked in the nightlife and their occupation required them to entertain Chinese businessmen and elites through singing and accompanying men at bangquets or dinners. Pei pa zais were closely associated with prostitutes (or how the Chinese community defined them). By the 1920s, these women had increasingly been considered as high-class prostitutes. Despite their prominence among the Chinese community, the pei pa tsais remains largely unknown in academic studies of prostitution in Singapore. As such, the aim of this essay seeks to address who the pei pa zais were; how and why(??) they were associated with prostitution; and hypothesize the reason behind their silent disappearance in the discussion revolving around the history of prostitution in Singapore. The paper proposes that the reasons why the peipa zais were sidelined by historians were the result of changing perceptions, and hence their legitimacy was questioned, which was caused by the implementation of colonial policies in the 1920s and the political and social change cause by the modernization of Singapore in the 1950s-1970s.