Cynthia Wee-Hoefer talks to our guest Peter Lee, author, scholar, curator and most recently host of a four-part television documentary series “Mark of the Empire” of the ancient civilisations of Southeast Asia broadcasted by Channel News Asia.

Peter has curated major exhibitions on the Peranakan culture and material objects at the Peranakan Museum, Asian Civilisation Museum and other museums in Japan.

Perhaps his best-known work is the Sarong Kebaya, an exhibition on the embroidered blouse paired with the batik sarong that opened 10 years ago. This was followed in 2015 by an excellent book Sarong Kebaya – Peranakan Fashion in an Interconnected World 1500-1950.

Most notable about the Sarong Kebaya exhibition is the sizeable donation of the costumes by Peter’s late parents Lee Kip Lee and Elizabeth Lee to the Peranakan Museum.

The truth is that Peter is the one who single-handedly (albeit with the encouragement, advise and help by a long list of friends, academics, collectors, and museum curators) searched the length of the Southeast Asian coastal towns and villages for the hidden treasures that we are fortunate to have as our national heritage.

In this conversation with Peter, we will hear the adventures and delight of batik-and-kebaya hunting in the far-flung corners of the Indonesian archipelago and into the venerable libraries of institutions in the Netherlands.