In January 2001, I, along with many ethnic Chinese and non-ethnic Chinese Indonesians, were relieved when the late Gus Dur, then president, announced the lifting of the ban on Chinese New Year celebrations in the country.
A ban on any cultural expression never yields the outcome desired by those in power. In fact, it reveals a deep insecurity on their part. Of course it does not make the targeted culture feel secure either, but that is another issue.
When friends and acquaintances from Melbourne's Indonesian community began to wish me Happy Chinese New Year however, I realized that I did not know how to respond properly. Do I say, "Thank you, same to you", or "Thank you, and may your wishes be granted", or conforming to the prevalent cultural profile, "Thank you, and may the god of prosperity pick you out to shower his best gold dust upon for the whole year"?
The truth is, I stop celebrating Chinese New Year long before it was banned in Indonesia. This made me ponder my sense of identity, because in my day-to-day life my Chinese ethnicity is rarely an issue.
I live in Melbourne, a multicultural, cosmopolitan city, where if I wanted to, as soon as I arrived 40 years ago, I could have jumped high and yelled - I was young then, and it would have been quite becoming - "Oh what a feeling, I'm ethnic Chinese and I can celebrate Chinese New Year!"
But I did not. Recollections of Chinese New Year always bring me to my childhood and early adolescence. I remember as a child looking with awe over the brick fence, held steady by someone whose identity has now become a blur, at our next door neighbor's front yard.
There, surrounded by an enraptured audience, a lion dance competed with the formidable drum band, both performing magnificent feats, and with my heart beating against my rib cage in utter excitement, I watched the lion dancers standing three-person-high to reach the ang pao, no doubt containing a hefty amount, waved between a thumb and two fingers presumably belonging to our neighbor, over the balcony. It was good fun, but sadly, it was never in our own front yard.
Was I brought up in an ethnic Chinese ambience? I must have been, to a certain degree. However if my upbringing was in any way ethnic Chinese, it was not very self-conscious in nature.
My family subscribed to Keng Po and Sin Po, and later, to Indonesian Observer, Sinar Harapan, Kompas, Tempo, Indonesia Raya, even Berita Yudha (which I noticed was not very common in other ethnic Chinese households).
With his friends who came to visit from time to time, my father (at the time mothers were only expected to provide refreshments) generally discussed politics. I imagine that these friends must have had a similar domestic set-up to ours. And they spoke a mixture of Indonesian, Dutch and English, with some indigenized Hokkien words thrown in from time to time.
Since I came to live in Australia therefore, when I have thought of my "otherness", I have thought of Indonesia, not China. But being Indonesian and being ethnic Chinese are not exclusive of each other. It is when I am put on the spot to place myself in an entirely Chinese context that I feel cornered.
Last year at a dinner party where there were ethnic Chinese guests from Singapore and Malaysia, a Malaysian guest asked me what my dialect was. I did not answer immediately, because I was considering whether it was the dialect(s) of my Chinese ancestors, or those of my indigenous Indonesian forefathers.
The enquirer, thinking he would make himself clearer, said, "What is your mother tongue?" That delayed the answer even further. A Singaporean friend, who was aware I was from Jakarta, and had a pathetically small vocabulary in Mandarin, suggested, "Javanese?" assuming no doubt, that all inhabitants of the island spoke Javanese, to which I said, "Yes, that's near enough."
My Malaysian enquirer was surprised. "You mean, you don't speak any Chinese dialect?" I humbly confessed I did not, explaining that I had never lived in China, to which he retorted that his family had lived for three generations in Malaysia and they still maintained their culture and spoke their dialect.
"I think it is a matter of one's sense of identity," I finally said. Needless to say that did not endear me to him.
A sense of identity is a strange thing. I would like to share the story of an ethnic Chinese friend, who had been brought up nationalistically Indonesian, who in early 1970s sold everything he had and with his wife and children migrated to another country, where he and his wife had found suitable employment.
What prompted this drastic action was an incident where a traffic altercation with a military person led to him being bashed and verbally abused, where his Chinese ethnicity was repeatedly mentioned in a derogatory way. All this happened while his wife and children watched in horror.
When they left Indonesia, my friend was resolved never to return.
Has he stuck to his resolution? Of course not. He and his family regularly return to Indonesia after several years away, and follow events relating to Indonesia from where they live. Do they follow events in China? Who doesn't nowadays, China being the emerging giant economy everybody has to watch?
Observing my friend, I realized that he did not lose his sense of an Indonesian identity when he was so publicly and personally humiliated. He was hugely and deeply hurt. It was a sense of betrayal that made him leave. Happy Chinese New Year! May the celebrations be fun and bring joy and luck!
The writer is a journalist and adjunct research associate at the School of Social and Political Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
