History comes late to me, and Chinese-Indonesian popped up in my head. I wanted to write about the economic storm in 1930: how did people respond to economic turbulence, especially the Chinese owning big and small-middle businesses. It was an intuition. I was too ignorant. Social history is not my fort but I adore testaments. So, memoirs should be great sources, I thought again. Worldcat then helps me to find dozen of titles, first-person memoirs, and memories left in written words. Then I arrived at Tjamboek Berdoeri. Ah, a giant intellectual once searched him for decades – thanks to him I knew the thorny whip as Kwee Thiam Tjing. So I looked at Thiam Tjing’s writings too. This guy was hilarious but maybe there is something more. I looked. And looked. Scanning newspapers, reading his words. I delve deeper. And now I’m lost in the middle of a cobweb that I have avoided for almost all my life: the story of Chinese Indonesians.
A classmate said to me once, “Thank god your mother is tenglang. If she’s not, my mother would not allow me to come to your place.” I stayed silent. My mother is not Chinese. She is a Javanese from Sidoarjo, East Java. But people think she looks like one because of her light skin. (She did not look like a “Javanese”). Or maybe because my father is Chinese, so people assume she is too. I never bother to explain to people about my mom. I leave their curiosity hanging.
There are a lot of rules. If you see someone older (but not too old) and they’re Chinese call them “koh” or “cik” but if they’re not Chinese call them “mas” or “mbak”; if you’re not sure, call them “kak.” In elementary school, it looked easier: most of my schoolmates and seniors are Chinese. In junior and high school, it got harder. Once I went to university, I barely used cik/koh outside the church.
I still remember many remarks about my physical appearance. “Really? You don’t look like Chinese.” “You look sooo Chinese.” But I never really bother to take it seriously. I feel safe when I’m not declaring “I’m Chinese,” I feel safe when I’m declaring “I’m Chinese.” Ethnic card is useful for me everytime I need comfort in social relations.
I never really know why I particularly avoided the history of Chinese Indonesians. I felt reluctant. My father’s stories about his hard childhood in Madura, Jember, and around are enough for me to see how hard it is strolling around cities, scavanging chances, scrapping for life. His father, my engkong, used to love judi ceki, and my dad would help my grandma taking care of his little sisters and brothers. My father is lucky. His family is lucky. His love of math and Christian God allows him to survive. Pentecostal church was his second home, a place where he met my mom. At first, their marriage stumbled because some members of the family still think that Chinese-Javanese marriage was improper. But they insisted.
I only heard their stories and memories, that when they had me they lived in a renting house in Gang Dolly Surabaya because they were lack of money. There was a time when they also lived in my maternal grandparent’s house so they could save their small income. Working at church did not bring much. It was a service to God. Sacrifice was necessary. But then they moved to Semarang. Another Pentecostal church called my father. Sing Ling Kauw Hwee – a Holy Spirit community as people used to call it in the 1940s before it later changed to Gereja Isa Almasih in 1955. Their life got better. We are lucky.
I thought being a Chinese descendent is already enough to understand what does it mean being a low-class minority with all of its problems and conflicts. The burden of history has been weighed on our existence. I was wrong.
I’m trying to redeem my ignorance: reading as much as possible, studying it, writing about it. I see historians of Chinese-Indonesians, academic and popular, have done a lot of things in the development of scholarship – more than half-century of scholarship, covering hundreds of years of history. Heroic narratives, literary and linguistic richness, politics. The body of knowledge is rich. But the storm comes for me. A sense of bitterness lingers, creating a big question I’m not sure how to articulate. The history of Chinese-Indonesians overwhelms me, a kid who once didn’t bother about manifesting descendent/lineage/blood/heritage.
They say knowing history makes you wiser. It makes me blue.
History, where is thy greatness?
Nik Setiadarma 