A Notable Force Suprssed

In 1994 I visited Sumatra with my stepfather.  We wanted to see birds and we wanted to see orangutans.  But I never went to Java.  And all these years on I’ve developed opinions about what Indonesia is like well knowing I’d never seen the nation’s cultural core.  It’s interesting being in a city that brags about its traffic, when you come from a place with notoriously bad traffic.  I’ll acknowledge, your traffic is very bad. But it’s for the same reason that Beijing or Shanghai’s have been worse at times, when the subway was being built. 

I was in Indonesia on business and I met lots of business people.  I naively told the immigration official as much, immediately regretted it. I would probably have to go get in line somewhere and buy a visa or explain why I didn’t have a business invitation letter, but then remembered what my friend who’d just entered had said and texted to remind me of brevity:  “I’m only here for one day.  Then I’m out.  One day.  Yeah.  Right.  One day.  One day, then I go.”  The official beside mine spoke to him in Bahasa.  I know no Bahasa.  But translation wasn’t needed: “Just give him the transit visa.  It’s not worth it.”  Right.  Well noted.

Indonesia has a troubled relationship with its Chinese minority.  Not unlike many other countries in the region, the Chinese minority controls the business interests.  I am here on business and had lunches and dinners and coffees with various people.  A remarkable number of people I met were ethnically Chinese.  And it was explained to me, more than once:  “we are the lost generation.  We needed to sublimate our Chinese identity, because it was dangerous to identify with the PRC.”

Zhou En Lai, if memory serves, had overtly referred to the Chinese in Indonesia as a “Fifth Column” and once Sukarno was overthrown any such nonaligned niceties were done away with, Suharto pivoted to the U.S. and Chinese were suspect as a national insurgent movement.  Chinese were, once again, the victims of their own success.

Later I had a room to present to.  It became clear that most of the room was ethnically Chinese.  I was introduced as someone living in Beijing.  They were intrigued that I could speak Chinese.  And, as I tried to engage the room, using Mandarin, it was clear, that no one there spoke a bit of Chinese. 

It struck me as a notable force suppressed.  So many people had Chinese cultural affinity and understood a mature network of business relations.  But any overt embrace of Chinese civilization was still held in check.  I inquired and many people were now encouraging their kids to learn Mandarin.  Will this then wax uninterrupted: “I’m Chinese and I’m proud”?

It strikes me with some distance that it’s unfortunate that I didn’t have more time to speak with more ethically Javanese people.  Presumably their take is rather different.  Chinese have this ineffable connectivity, this social genius that promotes its own and filters out unwittingly.  What to make of this undeniably capable diaspora?  Will they build or disrupt?  Nationalism and ethnocentricity can be body politic in Indonesia.