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OPPO and Discovery Channel explore how Peranakan culture is lived and redefined today
Entering its third season, Culture in a Shot, a collaboration between OPPO and Discovery Channel to document the precious heritage around the world, returns in 2026 with a new theme — Meet Culture Anew, Make Your Moment. This year, we shift our focus to the rituals and gestures we often overlook — stepping closer, not just to observe, but to take part in shaping what comes next.
Our journey begins in Singapore, with Chef Malcolm Lee, the visionary behind the world’s first Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant. Through his work, tradition is neither preserved nor left behind — it is continuously reinterpreted and shared anew.
Capturing this evolving dialogue between past and present, the OPPO Find N6 moves beyond documentation to become a creative tool in its own right. Through its Hasselblad Master Camera System, it preserves the vivid textures of each dish, while its foldable design and expansive screen open up new ways of working — blending AI-powered productivity with visual storytelling. In doing so, it not only records culture as it unfolds, but helps shape how culture is defined today.
Peranakan Culture, Carried Forward
In Singapore, Peranakan culture is expressed through food, craft, language, and everyday traditions. Peranakan, meaning “local born” in Malay, refers to the descendants of Chinese immigrants and local Malays who settled in the Malay Archipelago from the 15th century. Over time, a distinct culture emerged, shaped by a blending of influences and carried through generations.
Rows of Peranakan shophouses in Singapore, recognised for their colour, pattern, and decorative detail.
Peranakan culture lives in the details — in the careful preparation of ingredients, the intricacy of beadwork, and the words spoken at home.
Food sits at its centre. Peranakan cooking is built through time and practice, with recipes that are rarely fixed, but learnt through repetition — by watching, tasting, and adjusting. A sambal is not just a list of ingredients, but a method shaped by memory and instinct.
Candlenut’s Buah Keluak Fried Rice, a dish combines iconic Peranakan ingredients with Chinese-style cooking.
Through the lens of the OPPO Find N6, these details come into focus. Its 200MP Hasselblad Ultra-Clear Camera captures the intricacy of hand-stitched beadwork and the textures of raw ingredients in a local market.
In doing so, it preserves the small gestures of everyday practice — moments that might otherwise go unnoticed, but continue to carry culture forward.
Chef Malcolm Lee — Reimagining Peranakan Cuisine
In Singapore, Peranakan culture is carried forward through pioneers by Chef Malcolm Lee.
As the Chef-Owner of Candlenut and Pangium, both Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurants, his work is rooted in the cuisine he grew up with. He started Candlenut with his mother, shaped by the home kitchen where he first learned Peranakan cooking.
Chef Malcolm Lee at Candlenut, Singapore — the world’s first Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant.
“Candlenut represents what I grew up with,” he shares. “My mother’s curry, passed down from my grandmother to my mum and then to me, holds more than flavour. It carries memories, and the moments we shared around the table.”
Chef Lee prepares his family’s signature Peranakan curry, where spices and aromatics are built up over time.
Dishes like Chef’s Mum’s Chicken Curry reflect how Lee has brought familiar recipes from his childhood into Candlenut’s menu.
“Food has always been at the centre of everything for me,” says Chef Lee. “I believe it should be soulful, it should carry a story.”
Many of those stories are personal. Dishes named after family members anchor the menu in memory. One of them is Aunt Caroline’s Babi Buah Keluak. Slow-cooked pork soft bone is simmered in a deep, inky black nut gravy — rich and intense, built over time. The dish is both a tribute and a continuation, carrying forward a recipe shaped within the family.
Buah keluak, a key ingredient in Peranakan cuisine, is reimagined in exciting new ways at Candlenut.
“Peranakan food isn’t just about recipes,” he explains. “It’s about memory and connection.”
Carrying that forward also means knowing when to shift. “If Peranakan cuisine is to continue, it can’t stand still,” he says. “It has to evolve, to stay relevant without losing its soul.”
Chef Lee reworks iconic ingredients like buah keluak in surprising ways — in sambal paired with Wagyu beef, in oxtail soup inspired by rawon (an Indonesian beef soup), and even in dessert as buah keluak ice cream.
Multiple AI Tools of the OPPO Find N6 helps with brainstorming and creativity.
While researching complex flavour profiles or developing new culinary ideas, Chef Lee’s creative process moves fluidly between instinct and structure. With the AI Chart, scattered notes and moments of inspiration are quickly shaped into clear, visual mind maps. Whether mapping the flavours of a new spice blend or organising a storyboard for his team, the tool brings clarity to creativity — turning raw ideas into something precise and actionable. It becomes a way of meeting culture anew, where the artistry of the past is thoughtfully carried forward and shaped for the moments ahead.
Chef Malcolm Lee in the kitchen, testing and reworking familiar Peranakan recipes.
Carrying Culture Forward
Chef Malcolm Lee’s story reflects the spirit of this year’s theme — Meet Culture Anew, Make Your Moment. At Candlenut, that means returning to what was inherited, and deciding what it becomes next.
“We’re still discovering, still evolving, still creating,” Chef Lee reflects. “Maybe that’s what it means to meet culture anew — to choose your direction, and to make your moment.”
Capturing the details of Peranakan dishes with OPPO’s 200MP Hasselblad Ultra-Clear Camera.
Across Culture in a Shot, OPPO and Discovery bring these stories into focus — capturing the details, textures, and gestures that might otherwise go unnoticed, and inviting more people to see culture anew, and shape what it becomes next.
