Chinese Indonesian

Before the revolution we were slaves, and now we are the slaves of former slaves - Lu Xun

If somebody asked me, "what is it about yourself which influence they way you think, act and reason?". Being Christian(nominally) and Chinese(vaginally, which means that I was born from a Chinese mom with the sperm donated from Chinese Dad, not that I join the long march in 1934, schooled in Confucian academy or able to recite Chinese poem at will ) would be my answer. There are no way of escaping those two set of mind in all aspect of my life's. However, I think there are some elements in either being Chinese or Christian that are useless, pointless and senseless. What tick me off is that sometime people follow these customs (actions/habits of being Chinese or Christian) only for the sake of following them without any purpose or reason underlying those actions. It can be frustrating sometimes.

I personally think that Chinese overseas is one of the most racist people in the world. Well we don't burn mosque, kill indigenous people or live separately from local Indonesian(............actually we do for the last part), not that we don't want to, but because we don't have enough Chinese people in Indonesia I suppose. Our brand of racism is passive racism (the kind of racism that were exhibited by the ordinary German when NAZI detains, tortures and expels the Jewish people). My grandma and dad is an enthusiast Chinese nationalist (like most of middle aged Chinese Indonesian). Well, my grandma is a staunch communist sympathizer. I think they watch CCTV (中国中央电视台) more than they watch local Indonesian news. By the way, I love my family very much, it just that my way of seeing who I am and their way of seeing who they are diverges more and more. I don't even know anymore what does it take to become a Chinese. A large portion of Chinese Indonesian ( especially from Medan, I detest Medan-nesse, they are the most vain, shallow and pretentious group of people alive that I know, by the way I was born there) think that if they do these :

1. Speak mandarin fluently, without any hint of knowledge about Chinese history
2. Listen to popular Chinese Music without understanding what the song is all about
3. Watch Chinese TV series or movies, and believing that Yoko is a historical character ,Judge Bao is a judge wiser than Salomon and Hong Kong Triad is a bunch of honorable and loyal people.
4. Befriend Chinese Malaysian and Singaporeans rather than the other ordinary non-mandarin speaking chinese Indonesian friend (when you study abroad)
5. Go to Beijing for a quick Mandarin course (because your parent believe that China is where the future is, no longer western country) when you finish university and find yourself jobless. In the end you become a jobless bump who can speak broken Chinese.
6. Exploiting Chinese peasants to have a prosperous business in China
7. Celebrating Chinese New Year excessively
8. Eat in Muara Karang and claiming that the best kuey tiaw in the world can be found there
9. Gamble a lot. Casino, soccer bet, lottery...all scheme to quickly get rich while refusing to do any honest but hard working job
10. Wearing gold necklace and a lot of gold rings to exhibit your oppulance
11. Speaking loudly and intrusively in Hokkianesse or any other Chinese dialect (mainly Hokkiannese) at public place
12. Treat Indonesian maid inhumanly
13. Money-oriented
14. When asked, where do you come from? you answer I am "CHINESE-Indonesian" Rather than Indonesian
15. When selecting your mobile phone number, you look for the one with a lot of number '8'
16. You fight to the death to get married on 8-8-2008 because married on that date can somehow brings you a lot of luck in your marriage life even though you are a jerk wad.
17. Your parents refuse your decision to marry your long time girlfriend because your Chinese zodiac clashes(chiong!!) with her.
18. Your house is inhibited by more Chinese Gods and their prayer sanctuary than your family.
19. Reading, quoting and discussing The Romance of Three Kingdom a lot, and treat it as historical material rather a historical novel with most of the materials invented.
20. When you go to IKEA, you're not trying to find a furniture that is practical and efficient to suit your small house, but you want to find a furniture that can channel a positive 'chi' to multiply your business or improve your marriage based on your muddled knowledge of feng shuism. No method can help you maintain a healthy marriage as good as a bed that is furthest away from the front door, preferably diagonally opposite the entrance also. On a subliminal level, this gives you the extra feeling of protection, stability and security. The worst possible scenario is to have your bedroom facing or close to the front door.
21. You feel happy when you find a stranger with same Chinese surname, which imply that your ancestor come from the same region in China hundred years ago. When that "family member - stranger" ask to borrow your money,you suddenly become very hard to be contacted.
22. You refuse to do anymore shopping in Care Four because that company provide donation to support Tibet independence

then they are certified Chinese. My God, and we said we are the people who invented paper and gun powder. Obviously I exaggerate some of the items in the list, but in a larger picture it is what Indonesian Chinese is all about. Appearance...appearance and appearance. Meanwhile, what I think that can constitute of being a real Chinese are

1. Joining HRIC (中國人權) and actively promote Human Right in China, those people in China are all our brothers. If we care about being Chinese, i guess caring for other Chinese is no less significant. "It is inhuman for anyone to sacrifice his own brother to the wolf for him to escape safely" - Zhou Enlai. This does not mean that you believe all the western media told us.
2. Living through the Chinese Famine, white terror by the Guo Mindang, Cultural Revolution, political and social oppression in your daily life, forced abortion when you have more than two children, seeing your children get killed in the Tienanmen Square Massacre. Then you can called yourself Chinese.
2. Do not make excuse for all the stupid things that the government of People Republic of China had done and continue to do. Tienanmen Square massacre, The debacle of great leap forward which kill 15 million Chinese, AIDS epidemic (caused by greedy Chinese people who pay others for blood to be sold but keep on using the same syringe to gain more profit) in rural China that is hidden by the government, social and political repression that is still happening today.
3. Learn more about the history of China good or bad, not just from what your parents had told you, but find it for your self. Library is free. Try China Wakes - Nicholas Kristof or The Search for Modern China - Jonathan Spence for introduction. It's an exhiliarting journey.
4. Stop exaggerating how great China is now, if it is that great, why don't you move back to China

"Culture is the effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential situations that confront all human beings in the passage of their lives." - Daniel Yankelovich

5. When Chinese culture/habit is no longer relevant, don't keep on doing it for the sake of being Chinese. Foot binding, Chinese superstitions, Infatuation with number, these are some of Chinese culture which are just plain silly. It may be a coherent set of answer when they were introduced long time ago, but I think it's time to move on. I see a lot of Chinese couple, who married on a "good" day(picked carefully by a group of Chinese fortune teller, grandmother from both side), using a special marriage oil lamp on their first 3 night, their bedroom arranged in such a way to bring a good fengshui, the male-side presented a wondrous betrothal gift and dowry, but in the end, they qua rel and fight a lot like any normal couple. When they decide to divorce, usually one of the parent stupidly say that "their marriage is bad from the start because their Chinese zodiacs do not match or if the girl/guy come from different type of Chinese (Khuntien, Hakka, Hokkianesse, Cantonese), the parents will blame this too". They will create all kind of blame you can think of, and forget the main problem, the couple themselves do not work hard enough on their marriage.
6. Be more appreciative to our adopted country, I can honestly said that China has not given me anything compared to Indonesia. Why don't we give something back to Indonesia (*the writer has migrated to Australia*) rather than critizing and complaining.
7. Lastly, whoever you are, Chinese, Australian, Indonesian, in the end it does not really matter. Associating our self with any particular group of society is just a way to ignore the feeling of loneliness and desolation about the world. We think that it may be easier if we align our self to a particular group of people to inject some significance into our search of identity.

“The first thing I remember about the world...is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which is at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.” - Malcolm Muggeridge

But we are never meant to be created for this world. Our soul is too big to be confined or defined. There is a spark inside each of us that long for each other. Imagine how many technology or human invention that is useless if we learn to trust and love each other more. Things like firewall, lock, alarm, tazer, security gate, anti-virus, gun, nuclear weapon. All of these are originally invented to ensure our safety and freedom. In the end it secludes and imprisons us. Same with color. God created color to brighten our life, to enrich our vision. But we human, in our selfishness use color as reason to oppress each other. We see color not as variety but division.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - Abraham Lincoln