And that’s what Central Java’s capital Semarang served us up during our recent trip. My friend Miss TamTam found out that we both had always wanted to see Lunar New Year celebrations in Semarang, so we worked out our schedules to make it happen.

Lying on the northern coast of Java, Semarang port has been bustling with regional trade for centuries and hence became one of the oldest settlements of Chinese immigrants on Java, shown by the city’s culinary pride loenpia (spring rolls) and the quaint Confucian temple Tay Kak Sie. Built in 1746, the temple still stands elegantly to this day deep in Semarang’s Chinatown.

The Chinese figure most associated with Semarang is perhaps Zheng He, often spelled Cheng Ho, a palace eunuch who rose to become admiral in the Ming Dynasty and commanded sea voyages in much of Asia in the early 15th Century. His multiple arrivals in Sumatra and Java are well recorded, as well as his instructions to construct buildings attributed to Islam. A Hui native, one of China’s five main native groups, Zheng He was very likely born Muslim, or at least “strategically” converted to Islam, which was flourishing during his career.

With that demography, it is no wonder that Zheng He remains well respected in this part of Southeast Asia, with the grand temple Sam Poo Kong in Semarang serving as perhaps his most resplendent memorial.

Semarang residents and tourists flocked to Sam Poo Kong since the early hours of Lunar New Year to secure the best spots for the ecstatic performances of the merry band of barongsai (dragon and lion dance). While quite a handful of Tionghoa (ethnic Chinese) folks performed prayers in the housed altars separated by a moat, most of the visitors who filled the central atrium and grand hall were not of Chinese heritage.

Men, women and children clapped, laughed and jostled to snap the best pictures of the performances, which had to be delayed and paused as the announcer desperately tried to insert a semblance of control. Nobody threw a fiery sermon on how the Chinese were greedy aliens that never could be trusted, like the ones who unapologetically shouted about during recent street rallies in Jakarta. No government official accused Imlek (Lunar New Year) celebrations had swayed Muslims from performing daytime prayers, like the Bogor officials who treated their adult residents like babies who couldn’t manage their own time.

The street rally I saw was a parade on Semarang’s main avenues, an annual tradition sponsored by the local department store, which was joined in hordes by cultural groups and school marching bands—many of whom were young ladies in hijab. Hijab-wearing women were also easily found in Pasar Semawis, the Lunar New Year night market in Chinatown—peddling batik and food, dining with their elderly Chinese boss lady like the Solo girls I shared the roadside table with, laughing along as a Tionghoa standup comic delivered racy jokes in the local dialect, or nonchalantly getting a temporary tattoo of a dragon motif while her husband patiently waited.

When Miss TamTam and I trekked to the Buddhist temple Avalokitesvara Vihara, we met tourist girls in hijab removing their footwear before tiptoeing into the inner temple — an act of respect Muslims observe for our own place of worship.

There had been a noise rising from Semarang in the weeks leading to Imlek regarding a certain pork-eating festival, voiced out by the usual culprit of Islamic hard-liners. The matter was resolved rather quickly as the committee agreed to rename the festival into a non-descript “Semarang Culinary Festival.”

I arrived too late to witness the festival, but I couldn’t help but notice how banal it was for the rabble-rousing hard-liners to backtrack once the festival name was amended. It’s all about shows and symbols, instead of essence and knowledge. I quietly asked around about the incident and most locals shrugged it off as yet another group of unemployed youths who got caught up in religious fervor.

Maybe Semarang could shrug it off, but Jakarta, with countless incidents already and the hard-liners hell-bent on turning the ongoing gubernatorial election as a springboard of nationalism-veiled jihadism, is nowhere near that state. Getting more impossible as a couple of mosques announced they wouldn’t perform funeral rites, a fardhu kifayah (mandatory for the society) mind you, for deceased residents who’d been known to support candidates of a different religion.

Maybe Semarang wouldn’t remain this calm should Tionghoa candidates run in the next mayoral or gubernatorial election. Will Semarang be the next Singkawang or other particular parts of West Kalimantan, another Tionghoa enclave in Indonesia, where Tionghoa candidates have been peacefully elected for legislative and executive positions?

Nobody knows. But until that happens, you and I can humor ourselves that, as displayed grandly and joyously during Lunar New Year, the race and religion card doesn’t seem to poison the soft-spoken people of seamlessly unified Semarang.

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Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.

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