Red Nanyang: Chinese-Language Literature of Indonesia, 1945-1965

=== [PDF page 1] === Red Nanyang Chinese-Language Literature of Indonesia, 1945-1965 David Borgonjon Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2025 === [PDF page 2] === © 2025 David Xu Borgonjon Licensed Under CC-BY-NC 4.0 Red Nanyang: Chinese-Language Literature of Indonesia, 1945-1965 === [PDF page 3] === Abstract Red Nanyang: Chinese-Language Literature of Indonesia, 1945-1965 David Borgonjon This dissertation is the first full-length study of Chinese-language literature of Indonesia (yinhua literature) from 1945 to 1965. I demonstrate the existence of a flourishing print culture that became turned increasingly to the left during the anticolonial interregnum between the censorship of Dutch colonialism and the language ban of the New Order. I argue that this literature was deeply embedded within the framework of Sino-Indonesian friendship in ways which both enabled and constrained it. My approach emphasizes the complex interplay of the international and the interethnic, and the strong pull that the ideal of communication across linguistic and social barriers exerted on this literature. Making extensive use of archives, rare books, and periodical sources from multiple languages and countries, I show how internationalist anticolonialism facilitated the transition from colonial subjecthood to postcolonial citizenship. Complicating the assumption that the Chinese-literate left was primarily interested in events in the “homeland,” I show how progressive culture pushed yinhua intellectuals to reorient their focus to Indonesian social life. The first section surveys the historical development of yinhua literature and its substrate print culture, emphasizing the formative role of the linguistic context. The second section reexamines the writing of communist writer Baren 巴人 and his peers in relation to the Indonesian revolution and Afro-Asian translation. The third section delves into Guided Democracy literature through the exploration of two fraught social relations: capital/labor and teacher/student. A number of appendices provide information about Chineselanguage print materials related to Indonesia. === [PDF page 4] === Table of Contents Introduction 1 Arriving in Indonesia 1 Yinhua Literature 6 The Discourse of Friendship 9 The United Front 12 Chinese-Indonesian Studies 15 Yinhua, Totok, Sinophone 18 Bandung’s Two Faces 21 Language and Print 24 Chapter Overview 29 Notes 32 Chapter 1: Rise and Fall of a Print Culture 44 A Walk Through Glodok 44 Late Colonial Currents 51 The Postwar Confluence 61 Independence’s Challenges 73 Reorientation to the Local/Left 81 Banning Chinese 87 A Deictic Shift 95 Notes 102 Chapter 2: What Was Yinhua Literature? 116 === [PDF page 5] === Development of Yinhua Literature 117 Origins or Exceptions? 117 Jakarta Spring 122 Bandung Summer 127 A Forgotten Renaissance 135 Characteristics of Yinhua Literature 141 The Language Situation 141 Newspaper Odes 144 Mediating the Homeland 149 “Like Kith and Kin” 153 Beyond Fraternity 161 Notes 167 Chapter 3: Notes on A Revolution 177 The Land Below the Winds 177 From Antifascism to Democracy 188 The Chinese City 194 The Indonesian Country 202 The Missing Militant 206 A Divided Reality 213 To Walk Out of the Family 226 “A Factory for Humans” 232 Fragments of a Revolution 239 Notes 245 Chapter 4: Indonesian Lessons 264 A School in Exile 265 Sino-Malay Disavowed 270 Two Kinds of Indonesian 273 “They Don’t Read Our Books” 280 An Anthology in Disguise 283 Adapting the Malay Pantun 285 === [PDF page 6] === Reinterpreting the Pujangga Baru 290 A World in Translation 297 Publishing Afro-Asian Literature 298 Rehabilitating Humanism 304 Notes 312 Chapter 5: National Contributions 324 Debating Capital 325 Feudal Treasure 325 A National Bourgeoisie? 328 Colonial Vestiges vs. Domestic Capital 330 The Conditions of Citizenship 339 Depicting Labor 344 Forms of Testimony 344 The Voice of Labor 351 From Mining to Marronage 357 The Anticolonial Inheritance 363 Defending Land 371 The Missing Peasantry 371 Eulogizing Go Sek Liu 376 Buyung Saleh Remembers 381 Rethinking Race and Class 383 Notes 387 Chapter 6: The Age of Fervor 407 Songs of Youth 410 A New Culture 418 Political Orientations 428 Judgments of Character 440 “Foreign Friend” 446 The Last Class 453 Notes 466 iii === [PDF page 7] === Epilogue 480 Beyond 1965 485 Notes 490 Glossary 491 Key Terms 491 Organizations 495 Persons 500 Publications 507 Biographical Notes 513 Works Cited 528 Appendix A: Indonesian Literature in the PRC 558 Appendix B: Sadar Cultural Foundation 561 Appendix C: Zamrud Cultural Foundation 571 Appendix D: Books of Yinhua Literature pre-1965 583 Appendix E: Yinhua Newspapers 589 Newspapers pre-1945 589 Newspapers 1945-1960 596 Newspapers 1960-1966 601 Appendix F: Advice for Researchers 605 === [PDF page 8] === List of Tables Table 1. Selected Literary Supplements 128 Table 2. Comparison of Malayan and Indonesian Notes 216 Table 3. Endings of the Malayan Notes 218 Table 4. Endings of the Indonesian Notes 219 Table 5. Versions of “Struggle” by Suman HS 294 Table 6. “Afro-Asian Literature Series,” People’s Literature Publishing House 299 Table 7. Comparison of Right and Left Positions at 1957 Baperki Symposium 340 Table 8. Indonesian Literature in the PRC, 1956-1965 558 Table 9. Sadar Publications: Illustrated Stories 561 Table 10. Sadar Publications: Literature and Folklore 564 Table 11. Sadar Publications: Politics 566 Table 12. Sadar Publications: Reference, Language, Education 567 Table 13. Sadar Publications: Music 569 Table 14. Sadar Publications by Language 570 Table 15. Zamrud Publications 1961-1965 571 Table 16. Zamrud Publications by Genre 582 Table 17. Other Books of Yinhua Literature pre-1965 584 Table 18. Yinhua Newspapers, 1945-1960 590 Table 19. Yinhua Newspapers, 1945-1960 597 === [PDF page 9] === List of Figures Figure 1. Glodok’s language institutions. 50 Figure 2. Masthead of Ik Po. 58 Figure 3. Sin Po’s publishing empire. 59 Figure 4. Xie Huaidan and Chang Hsi Shek in Asahan. 60 Figure 5. “A Chinese printing press in Sukabumi burnt down.” 70 Figure 6. Illustrations in Seabird from Surabaya. 71 Figure 7. Reproduction of a student mimeograph from Palembang. 72 Figure 8. Chiao Hsing Weekly protests the periodical ban. 80 Figure 9. The front page of Xin Xin Bao c. 1942. 92 Figure 10. The front page of Xin Bao, 1953. 93 Figure 11. The front page of Zhongcheng Bao, 1964. 94 Figure 12. The masthead of Little Xin Bao, late 1930s. 121 Figure 13. Bookstores on Pancoran Street in the 1950s. 126 Figure 14. Diagram of Yinhua Literary Arts, 1957. 133 Figure 15. Diagram of Yinhua Literary Arts, Indonesian Literature Edition, 1959. 134 Figure 16. Publications by Zamrud Cultural Foundation. 139 Figure 17. Comics published by Sadar Cultural Foundation. 140 Figure 18. Liao Bimei,“To the Executioner.” 147 Figure 19. Sin Po’s Chinese-typesetting room. 148 Figure 20. Dreams and fantasies in Young Aviator. 159 Figure 21. Experiments in writing in Young Aviator. 160 Figure 22. Baren and Liu Yan’s itinerary in Southeast Asia. 184 Figure 23. Liu Yan and Baren in 1947. 193 Figure 24. Manuscript of Baren, "Mount Salah." 201 Figure 16. International Women’s Day Pamphlet, 1947. 222 Figure 26. Activists in Siantar take the stage. 223 Figure 27. Meetings of the Women’s Association. 224 Figure 28. A clothing drive, Medan, 1947. 225 Figure 29. Soldiers in New Woman. 231 Figure 30. Farewell to Liu Yan. 244 === [PDF page 10] === Figure 31. Two models of language ideology. 279 Figure 32. Baren, “Afro-Asian Literature.” 303 Figure 33. Cinematic illustrations in Gratitude and Enmity on Tin Island. 361 Figure 34. Gestures of friendship at the conclusion of Tin Island. 362 Figure 35. Cover of the Indonesian translation of Song of Youth. 417 Figure 36. Favorite authors among high school seniors. 438 Figure 37. Correlation between gender and political orientation. 439 Figure 38. Typescript of Pramoedya’s History of Modern Indonesia. 464 Figure 39. The cover of the bilingual edition of Soldier’s Wife by Rukiah. 465 Figure 40. Scrapbooks from the Yinhua Writers Association library. 482 Figure 41. A “wrapped” edition of The Bastard by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. 483 Figure 42. Original cover of the translation of The Bastard. 484 Figure 43. A facsimile of Huang Dongping’s poetry manuscript. 489 vii === [PDF page 11] === Note on Language It is difficult to remain consistent when working with multiple languages at a historical moment where they are still in the process of standardization. In general, I default to pinyin and simplified script for Chinese references unless there is an established alternate usage. I have generally applied the “perfected” (EYD) orthography for Indonesian references, except for titles and personal names. Extensive glossaries are provided at the end. viii === [PDF page 12] === Acknowledgments None of this would be possible without access to libraries and archives, which was facilitated by: in the US, the librarians in Columbia, especially at Lehman Library. RECAP, Inter Library Loan and Borrow Direct, as well as at Cornell; in China, Ma Guanglu and the staff of Xiamen University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies; Luo Jie, Xie Kankan and Xu Guanmian in Beijing University, as well as Elena for her help with accessing the National Library of China; and in the Netherlands, Tom Hoogervorst and Maaike Derksen. Many people generously permitted me to examine and photograph their collections, including Koh Nguang How in Singapore; Tan Suherman, Bilven, Redi Murti, Lin Wanli and Azmi Abubakar in Indonesia. I am also grateful to all of my teachers and colleagues. My advisor Lydia Liu has been helpful even or especially when I was unsure of my direction; Qian Ying has always encouraged me to follow my interests, Jolanda Pandin introduced me to the Indonesian language and supported my grant applications; Josh Stenberg offered me detailed advice at several points, and Karen Strassler has been generous and thoughtful to someone who approached Indonesian studies as a disoriented amateur. Brent Hayes Edwards read a very long dissertation far outside his field and gave me excellent feedback. Over the years, I have benefited from supportive conversations with Lim Cheng Tju, Myra Sidharta, Melani Budianta, Dede Oetomo, Arief Djati, Yerry Wirawan, Evi Sutrisno, Romo Baskara, Guo Quan Seng, Taomo Zhou, Koko Lubis, Thiti Jamkajornkeiat, Brigitta Isabella, Kankan Xie, Siauw Tiong Djin, Mahmood Mamdani, Liren Zheng and Sipei Lu. Radhiya and Marisol also helped me with last-minute research. The faculty of the Chinese Studies Program (Nurni Wahyu Wuryandari, Dona Sulanti, Hermina Sutami and others) and Eva Latifah in the International Office of University of Indonesia kindly facilitated my affiliation. I am also thankful to Nic Wong, Anitha Silva, Prinka Saraswati, and Zoe Jiang for inviting me to present.The staff of EALAC, including Laura, Tammy, Janelle and Kevin, and of GSAS, including Sandra Peters and Emma Johnson, helped me navigate sometimes confusing processes. I was lucky to receive support from the Fulbright-Hays Program, the American Institute for Indonesian Studies, and the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund. === [PDF page 13] === The people who shared their stories with me have me in their debt: Leo Suryadinata, C.C. Chin, Lin Wanli and Tsao Tali. I am especially grateful for the multiple interviews that Li Zhuohui and Lin Shi Fang granted me. The members of the Yinhua Writers Association were hospitable, including He Huashi, Zheng Ping, Tony Cahyana, Cai Sujuan, Yuan Ni and others whose names I did not record. Attending the Ureca alumni reunion was a dream come true, and I appreciate the conversations with Nancy Widjaja, Oei Jamjiu, Elise and Hartanti, the Siauws, Pak Bambang, and (once more) others whose names I didn’t record. As for friends. Siwei, Robin, Jilene, Lezhi, and Jiahui: it would have been a much lonelier process without your example and company. Aiyanna, Laurie, Minh, Yudi, Riga, Connie, Tiffany, Taehee and J: your constant friendship is not something I take for granted. Yves, Dom, Simi, Domi, Michelle, Galuh, and Zoë: you were there for me at important moments and I appreciate you. Coco, Inga, Paola, Palden, Yueming, Minsoo, Stew, Fernando, Simon, Victor: it is always a joy to be around you. Lastly, I will forever be grateful to the many unnamed organizers who have taught me more than I ever learned in a classroom or book, including some difficult lessons. Now family. My family in Belgium, including Memo and Pepo, as well as all my aunts, uncles, cousins and now my niece, have always given me safe haven. My family in China, including my grandfather, may he rest in peace, my cousins and my aunts, especially my aunts Xin and Huang, helped make me who I am. To my father: you have always believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my interests. To my mother: thank you for always being there to support me. To my sister: how lucky am I to be born into a family with you? I love you all. Thank you to my best friends Anayvelyse, JS and Sarah. Thank you Adrienne, my love. === [PDF page 14] === glory to the martyrs === [PDF page 15] === Introduction Arriving in Indonesia Fifteen years after he first set foot in Southeast Asia, the communist writer Baren 巴人 reminisced on the task that faced him and his antifascist comrades after their flight from Singapore on the eve of the Japanese invasion: The hope of returning [to China] was gone, and we had to make long-term plans. For this we needed to do two things. Firstly, find a way to ensure our economic survival, and conceal ourselves. Secondly, learn Indonesian, not only to help with concealment, but also to prepare for the coming Indonesian revolution. I thought that only having done both these things, could we participate in a limited way in the local anti-fascist struggle. To "hide" within the struggle of the masses, this is the duty of the revolutionary [“隐蔽” 在群众的斗争中，这是作为一个革命者的任务].1 These two tasks, of securing survival and learning Indonesian, are really one: immersion within the anticolonial currents gathering in this part of the world. This essay, “Pelabuhan,” (浮罗巴烟; 1958) was one of a suite of texts generally referred to as the Notes from the Land Below the Winds (风下之国散记). I discuss these in detail in a later chapter, but for now, this text is our departure point for a reflection on the nature of Chinese-language literature in Indonesia. In the first part, the narration weaves between Baren’s arrival in a small river port on the mouth of the Siak river, just called “Harbor” or “Pelabuhan,”2 and the traces of the celebrated writer Yu Dafu 郁达夫. The older writer, with whom Baren had collaborated on the last-ditch mobilization against fascism in Singapore, had preceded him in the flight into Sumatra. Stories filter back about Yu’s botched attempt to disguise himself as a petty trader, even though he “still couldn't speak any Indonesian, and only knew a few numbers like satu (one), dua (two), and tiga (three)."3 Eventually, they would all rendezvous in the town of Payakumbuh in West Sumatra, where Yu would play the part of a distillery owner, with the other antifascist exiles as his employees. At the end of the war, he was disappeared for his knowledge of war crimes, spawning a cottage industry of speculation and scholarship.4 Elsewhere, Baren eulogized Yu like so: It’s not that we shouldn’t, but that we needn’t walk [his path]. All wrong turns are markers for the right way. We have our own right way […] So let’s leap right over his path! We don’t need to mourn Dafu.5 === [PDF page 16] === Indeed, it is tempting to overinterpret Yu’s fate as a kind of allegory about the fate of May Fourth literature in Southeast Asia, and others have done just that.6 We are engaged here, however, in narrating a beginning rather than an ending. In the second part of the essay, the narration slows from summary to scene. The narrator settles down for the night in the home of a patriotic Chinese merchant, where they encounter an Indonesian youth, a cloth peddler also staying the night—"so thin, so brown-black [那样精瘦， 那样棕黑]. Two deep black eyes, emitting emerald light, watching you, scalding my heart like a flame.”7 They converse, with the help of a Chinese youth that I will refer to as the interpreter, a relative of a friend escorting the narrator on the westward journey. He professes envious admiration of the rich Chinese who "know how to do business," and bemoans his poor compatriots who are "foolish," telling stories about how merchants exploit illiterate peasants by ensnaring them in debt, often falsifying accounts, then foreclosing on their land or buying up produce below costs. The dramatic irony here is that this praise is, to a communist, damning indeed. The narrator silences his own anticolonial, anticapitalist convictions, in order to maintain his own disguise as a petty trader. That night, he is unable to sleep due to an "indescribable feeling of discomfort [难言的不舒服的心情].”8 Let us now hone in on the narration of this encounter that is not quite a dialogue. What is the nature of the discomfort it leaves behind? What is it that prevents free intercourse between the narrator and this youth, or in Baren’s own words, “what is the thing that has severed our human affection [是什么东西把我们的人类的友爱隔离开了呢]?”9 The immediate answers are the language barrier and political repression. Yet as significant as these are, they can and will be overcome: the Japanese occupation will end in 1945, and over the next two decades leftist intellectuals would dedicate considerable energy to translation and language education. The real divide is social, that legacy of colonialism, a regional variant of what W.E.B. Du Bois termed the “color line.”10 At this time, a man like Baren in insular Southeast Asia would likely be greeted by Malay speakers with the conventional expression, “Mau ke mana, taukeh? (Where to, taukeh? 去哪里， === [PDF page 17] === 头家?)” He noted with some unease that the term taukeh (also romanized towkay, or toujia), a loanword that originally referred to wealthy merchants, had become generalized to refer respectfully to any Chinese man.11 This situation exemplifies what Althusser called "interpellation," wherein the individual is transformed into a subject through being “hailed,” for example, by the police saying, "hey, you!”12 The narrator must assent to this hailing by the racial ideology of colonialism, in which to be Chinese is to be bourgeois, and to be otherwise is to risk exposure and execution. The absent figure of the Chinese merchant, both real and imagined, determines the encounter—the entrepreneurial youth aspires to be like one but cannot, while the communist refugee must pass as one but does not want to. For the narrator, he represents an escape route, a means of survival, at the cost of the foreclosure of solidarity. This figure is really a relation, of course, whose other term is the Indonesian peasant: the narrator then relays the youth’s despair about his countrymen’s ignorance, who "don't know how to count, using their fingers for numbers under ten; for numbers above ten, they have to arrange matchsticks."13 Here is the persistent trope of native ignorance and its complement, foreign cunning—or more precisely, of innumeracy and numeracy14—whose colonial genealogy has been traced by Syed Hussein Alatas.15 The objection to this discourse is also a (soon-to-be) familiar one. After the description of the exploitative actions of Chinese merchants in the Sumatran interior, the narrator pours forth his objections. Not to the youth, but to the reader: As I listened, my heart grew heavy. I knew that the Chinese who open shops in the countryside were mostly exiled laborers. Under the policies of colonialism, they also are exploited and oppressed. Who can find another way of life, caught in the economic net of capitalism? Could he see this truth or not? He continued, saying that now the Dutch have been chased off, the Japanese have come. For a time, the Japanese incited Indonesians to loot Chinese shops. But now, the Japanese want to calm the market, and do business, so they rely on you Chinese again!—From this we can see that Chinese merchants are also subject to the laws of imperialism's economic robbery. And in any case, in Indonesia, they are mostly Chinese workers!16 A confusion of voices, stances, and tones is condensed into this one passage. This passage begins and ends with a direct address to the reader (“As I listened…”), before shifting to reported speech (“He continued…”) and then to free indirect discourse: “…so they rely on you Chinese === [PDF page 18] === again!” Here, the “you Chinese (你们华侨)” is diegetically addressed to the narrator, but because it is not marked as reported speech, it also extends the accusation to the reader. The narrator’s refutation is not set in quotation marks, but rather interrupts the youth’s accusations, where the long dash both distinguishes and blends the two voices: “… so they rely on you Chinese again!—From this we can see… [还得靠你们华侨呵！——这就可见].” This invocation of the working-class majority recurs with the regularity of an axiom in Chinese leftist discourse in this period. True in the general sense that very few were actually wealthy, though not in the stricter sense of the predominance of wage labor, this argument also avoids confronting the racialized structure of the colonial economy, which does/would not disappear with political independence. This rebuttal, no matter how earnest it is, is made suspect by the narrative situation itself. Forced by the pressing poverty of the Indonesian countryside to seek alternate livelihood, the youth works for, and is exploited by, the merchant. Meanwhile, the narrator is an honored guest, supported by a coethnic who wishes to express his patriotism, likely with funds that ultimately derive from the commercial exploitation of the Indonesian peasantry. All this is legible within the text, hence its ambivalence. This rebuttal cannot be uttered, and so is expressed as internal monologue. We as readers must substitute for the youth in the text. That vast difference between what the narrator wants to say and what he can say is driven home when this monologue is interrupted by the question, "Are you in business as well?" It is the interpreter now who rushes to respond, fretting the narrator will blow their cover: "Yes… Just like you, we're here to buy some cloth to peddle." The narrator assents: “‘Mhm [唔唔],’ I could only make a wordless response.”17 This mumble is the only thing the narrator actually utters in the entire text. Using the notion of a “structure of address,” we can elaborate the dynamics of this discursive situation even further.18 The closing passages of “Pelabuhan” resemble the literary device known as an apostrophe, in which a speaker addresses someone or something that cannot respond, and we can provisionally term it “apostrophic discourse.” While the addressee is typically an absent person, a personified abstraction or an inanimate object—the skull of Yorick === [PDF page 19] === in Hamlet is a famous example—in this case the apostrophic situation is produced by a multilayered linguistic, political, and social divide. It is not, of course, that the message cannot be expressed at all, but only that it cannot be delivered to its intended destination. Compare this form of address to free indirect discourse, in which reported speech or thought blends into the narrator's direct speech, credited by many literary theorists with producing the interiority effect of the realist novel.19 Free indirect discourse blurs two levels of narration which are typically distinguished: the actual narrator of the text, and the represented character within it. What I am calling apostrophic discourse instead involves a differentiation of two addressees which normally coincide: the actual reader of the text, and the intended recipient of the message within the text. In other words, we are dealing with the “you” rather than the “I” side of discourse. (Note that although apostrophic discourse often does use the grammatical second person, it doesn’t need to, as in the penultimate line of “Pelabuhan”: "I hope he has a joyful dream, a dream of liberation!"20) The structure of address here is, then, triangular. Following narratological usage, we can label these three positions: narrator, reader, and addressee.21 As the other Notes from the Land Below the Winds (discussed in Chapter 3) make clear, the implied readership here is the progressive Chinese youth of Southeast Asia.22 That means that this metatextual triangle is modeled textually in the conversation between the narrator, the interpreter, and the youth, with the second term mediating between the other two. The rhetorical effect is twofold. The immediate effect is to elicit discomfort through the emphasis on complicity, through the focalization of the antagonism between the Chinese merchant that the reader is ethnically identified with and the Indonesian masses with whom the reader solidaristically identifies.23 Yet there is also a latent effect, since the text also provides an opportunity to relieve this discomfort: the reader must deliver the message to the addressee. The reader here doesn't just receive the message intended for the addressee, but is entrusted with it, a steward, a courier, a forwarding address. In other words, Baren's essays are calibrated to produce within readers a desire to communicate. To realize this desire, to complete the delivery of the message, requires exiting === [PDF page 20] === Chinese literature and entering Indonesian history. It should come as no surprise that this rhetorical effect was not so different from the progressive strategy that Baren helped shape during his years in North Sumatra, which prioritized the building of interethnic solidarity with Indonesians through the cultivation of young cadre. We can see that “Pelabuhan” looks forward to a utopian moment when the narrator and the addressee can converse directly and sincerely across ethnolinguistic difference, having dismantled “that thing that has severed our human affection.”24 (Put differently, it is the moment when the readership of “Pelabuhan” is Indonesian.) At that moment, apostrophic discourse collapses into direct discourse. The triangle becomes a line. In this sense, the discursive situation described here is not just apostrophic, but also proleptic—it projects forward to a time when the distance that it mediates disappears, and hence its own conditions of existence. The conversation in that post-revolutionary future will revolve not around the economic intercourse that characterized the colonial relation (Yu Dafu’s satu, dua, tiga), but around cultural exchange and political education. From the perspective of 1958, the catastrophe of 1965 could not have been expected, and indeed, there was reason to be optimistic in comparison to 1941. The original postscript to this essay makes explicit note of Jakarta’s successful campaign against a CIAbacked insurgency: “recorded [追记] on the day I received news of the Indonesian Army’s recapture of Payakumbuh.”25 Yinhua Literature Baren’s essay is one staging of the encounter between the left-wing Chinese writing and the racialized realities of Southeast Asia. It surfaces many of the issues that, in retrospect, can be seen as central for the body of writing that I call yinhua 印华 literature during the Cold War. I define yinhua literature as literature (a) in Chinese (b) of Indonesia—or in Chinese, yinni huawen wenxue 印尼华文文学.26 This dissertation is the first dedicated full-length study of this literature during its golden age from the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945 to the right-wing military coup of 1965, when the public use of the Chinese language was effectively banned. In === [PDF page 21] === these two decades, hundreds of thousands of people attended school and read newspapers in the language, and not a few of them also tried their hand at writing stories, poems, essays and criticism. Then and now, one of this print culture’s most distinctive features was its left-leaning bent, and I pay special attention to this: indeed, one of my core contentions is that the development of a localized minority identity was intertwined with the espousal of a socialist and anticolonial internationalism. My goal is not only to recover some of the depth and breadth of this forgotten literature, but also to supply a political and aesthetic framework through which to appreciate it. At the same time, I also hope to contribute to the reconstruction of the historical geography that I refer to as the “Red Nanyang.” The term “Nanyang” (南洋, lit. “South Seas”) entered common usage in the early 20th century as a geonym for the archipelago of Chinese settlement in Southeast Asia centered on Singapore. While it often evokes discourses of exoticism and primitivism, my intent is to instead draw attention to it as a constitutively transnational site of radical politics. The origins of yinhua literature lie in the wave of institution-building accompanying the cultural nationalist movement of the early 20th century, when reformers founded schools and newspapers to encourage fluency in the “national language (国语)” that was in the early stages of standardization.27 By the 1930s a modest literary culture had developed within the supplements of newspapers such as Xin Bao 新报 (“New Newspaper”). Some exceptional writers such as Zheng Tufei 郑吐飞 and Heiying 黑婴 even wrote stories that were published in China while they were studying there. Yet the growth of a local scene was hamstrung by a notoriously strict regime of colonial censorship which construed all forms of nationalism as extremism and tried to limit international intellectual exchange.28 This regime was dismantled, along with the rest of Dutch rule, by the Pacific War. The postwar weakness of the colonial order permitted the revolutionary networks of “underground Asia” to take their struggle out into the open, most notably in the Indonesian independence struggle.29 Buoyed by antifascist credentials, the left—including Communist Party of China (CPC) intellectuals such as Baren 巴人 and Hu Yuzhi 胡愈之—established footholds in === [PDF page 22] === communal institutions and sometimes started new ones, such as the newspaper Seng Hwo Pao (生活报), later the quasi-official voice the PRC. The alliance between a radical underground pursuing a united front strategy and a patriotic mainstream politicized by the war formed the basis for the progressive culture of the next decades, one which granted literature a central role in political education and self-transformation. The polarizing competition between partisans of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Nationalist Party of China (Guomindang; GMD) was not conducive to creative expression, however, and the handful of literary journals founded in postwar Jakarta mostly did not survive past 1949. It was only after the Afro-Asian Conference of 1955 that, with the opening of a spate of literary supplements in major newspapers, artistic conditions improved. Poets such as Li Qing 犁 青 and Shaping 莎萍 sought to integrate the conventions of the socialist ode with local subject matter, while fiction reached a new level with the publication of the screen-novel Love and Hate on Tin Island (锡岛恩仇记) by Li Xu 李旭 and Li Ren 立人. Of special importance here is the appearance of the magazine Chiao Hsing Weekly (觉醒周刊), officially affiliated to the predominantly-Chinese mass organization Baperki and secretly linked to the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), which promoted an increasingly popular form of left-wing localism—culturally this program was expressed in the introduction into Chinese of progressive Indonesian literature by translators such as Chen Zhanhu 陈展湖 (aka Shannu 善努). The transition from parliamentary to guided democracy under military law at the end of the decade was rocked with crises, including the mass eviction of rural Chinese known as the PP10 crisis and a series of publishing bans and school closures. Despite these challenges, the overall leftward shift in Indonesian politics at this time ultimately helped to consolidate leftist hegemony within yinhua print culture—which is part of the reason it was dismantled so completely during the subsequent anticommunist crackdown. In fact, yinhua literature was in the middle of an unprecedented renaissance in 1965 that has largely escaped scholarly attention, with new organizations such as the Zamrud Cultural Foundation publishing dozens of original books a year and cultivating a new generation, including the critic Huang Yurong 黄裕荣 and the short === [PDF page 23] === story writer Xu Qiongling 许琼玲. Thus, although yinhua literature certainly never achieved the breadth and depth of its neighbor in what was then British Malaya, a paucity of scholarship should not be taken as evidence of the absence of a meaningful literary tradition, but rather as a symptom of the intensity of its suppression after 1965. Literary activity did not cease after this point, of course, but hereafter it was either tightly restricted or forced underground, until the revival of the late 20th century, which I leave for other scholars to narrate. The Discourse of Friendship It is a useful simplification to think of this cultural production in terms of the encounter of Chinese literature with Indonesian history, keeping in mind that both of these terms are contested and overlapping. We are then led to pose questions such as: How could the imperative to “go down to the masses,” so common within the revolutionary literature of the Yan'an tradition, be put into practice for an ethnolinguistic minority? To what extent could the tropes and genres developed in China be adapted to local realities without distorting them? How should linguistic difference, including both Chinese and non-Chinese languages, be represented—and could Indonesian writers also serve as a literary model? What was the relevance of categories such as “socialist realism” and “revolutionary romanticism” for a country acknowledged to be at a different stage of the struggle for socialism? How could the imperative to represent proletarian perspectives be reconciled with a social composition that predominantly non-proletarian? Was the intended readership of this literature limited to the minority, or should it seek a larger one in China, despite the distance, or in Indonesia, presumably in translation? The predominant genres in this period were the free verse poem and the (very) short story. The brevity of these forms reflected not just the primary venue for writers, single-page newspaper supplements, but also the amateur background of most writers. Although yinhua writers were avid consumers of international and especially socialist literature, the level of literary theory and criticism was generally rudimentary until 1962, when critics such as Huang Yurong began to actively foster public debate. It is generally assumed that the consumption of === [PDF page 24] === PRC culture fostered strong diasporic attachments, and it certainly played a role in the “return” migration of many students in the early 1950s. However, I show that socialist literature, especially later on, also encouraged and enabled forms of localization. This is visible in, for example, the way that the injunction to realism demanded of writers that they observe and analyze their own social realities in new ways. We also observe the increasing prevalence of Indonesian subjects within the conventional genre of the revolutionary ode: October 1 is replaced by August 17, Taiwan by West Irian, and Mao by Sukarno. This shift can also be interpreted in terms of yinhua literature’s convergence with the progressive Indonesian writing associated with the People’s Institute for Culture (Lekra), which was also influenced by Chinese literary theory. These examples further demonstrate the misleading nature of the binary of “China-oriented” and “local-oriented” that I am seeking to overturn. I propose to examine this literature through the interpretive framework of “Sino- Indonesian friendship.” I argue that this discourse, or rather, this project, has a powerful shaping influence on this literature. (Notably, whether this phrase refers to “friendship between Chinese and Indonesian” or “friendship between China and Indonesia” is ambiguous, reflecting the real interlocking of interethnic and international relations.) While this phrase has the ring of an empty slogan today, in the decade before and after the Bandung Conference, it was a real if contradictory project, a goal not a given, one that cannot be said to have failed so much as suffered defeat. Most of the writers, translators, editors and critics examined here saw themselves as directly contributing to this project. We can posit at least two related assumptions that this framework entails, keeping in mind that they were contradictory and that writers were able to subvert them. (1) Chinese and Indonesian individuals are interpreted in terms of the collectivities they belong to; and (2) Chinese-Indonesian friendship should be represented, and conversely enmity should not be. The first assumption is in some sense characteristic of most minority literatures. It involves the compulsory insertion of every character within an identity grid. Thus, it is usually known whether a character in yinhua fiction is Chinese or Indonesian—any ambiguities become 10 === [PDF page 25] === central to the narrative tension. Furthermore, these characters and their relations cannot but be read in relation to the identities they represent/possess, and this secondary, figurative reading may even overpower the primary, literal reading. Thus, a particular interaction between a Chinese and an Indonesian character almost always demands to be interpreted in terms of the general relationship between Chinese and Indonesians, and/or between China and Indonesia. (The relationship between these two dimensions, the interethnic and the international, introduces a further complication.) Crucially, such an interpretive frame is not imposed by the author but by the social context. It is the reflection of the kind of interpretive practice that turns a traffic accident involving a businessman and a military officer into a race riot, as happened in the “Han- Harjono affair" of 1956.30 These metonymies, if we can call them that, determine the process of reading, and authors may manipulate them in complex ways: disguises, mistaken identities, mixed-race characters, inversions of stereotypes, and revelations of true parentage are just some of the devices that might be employed. Furthermore, the frame extends beyond characters to the (implied) author and (implied) reader as well, as my discussion of the structure of address in “Pelabuhan” shows. The second assumption concerns the regulating power of the call to solidarity, which can be alternately pleading and demanding, inspiring and unconvincing. We see this first and foremost in the tactful avoidance of representations of Sino-Indonesian antagonism, which made a direct engagement with the colonial legacies of racialized inequality and communal segregation difficult. Because every Chinese/Indonesian is a representative of all Chinese/Indonesians, representations of individual altercations cannot but be inflated into allegories of structural antagonism. Like all repressions, though, this antagonism doesn’t disappear, leaving traces in the repetitive declarations of friendship, the invention of substitute antagonists, the unconvincing idealization of protagonists, and narrative detours, to name a few. It is not just antagonism that must be suppressed, however, but also its amorous opposite. Thus, the required representation of friendship must be unambiguous, and may even be passionate, yet it oversteps this limit at great risk. This literature, then, draws from the intensity of love and desire while also disavowing it, 11 === [PDF page 26] === sometimes representing it but never consummating it. While this tension sometimes manifests in homosocial relationships that verge on queer, it appears most frequently in the handling of relationships between men and women. “Friendship” then specifies a relatively narrow band of proper relations which should not be overstepped in either direction. The United Front The word “left” and its variants are vague, and here they are usefully so. The left as I refer to it here, in its Cold War usage, encompassed multiple tendencies from anticolonial nationalism to orthodox communism, even as it excludes anti-communist left tendencies such as social democrats and anarchists. It is, as Michael Denning writes in his study of popular front literature in the USA, a “historical bloc.”31 What this print culture shared was less a political program than by a “common sense” that included: a belief in the promise of socialist development, and the leading economic role of the state, with a corresponding rejection of unfettered capitalism; a deep anticolonial commitment, which entailed support for national liberation movements and the socialist bloc in opposition to US-led imperialism; a strong egalitarian bent, expressed in support for equality of the sexes, the rights of young people, and the an antipathy to open racism (including Chinese chauvinism); confidence in the power of rationality, expressed in an embrace of science and the rejection of superstition, and sometimes religion in general; and faith in the ennobling powers of education and culture, especially literature. All this coexisted with but was not at all reducible to support for the People’s Republic of China and an attachment to communal institutions. Several contradictions between theory and practice must be noted: the dominance of men within the upper leadership of all institutions despite the commitment to sexual equality; a complacency about Chinese-Indonesian economic inequality despite stated anti-racism; and, relatedly, a minimization of class struggle within the community despite a theoretical commitment to revolutionary change. The short-lived hegemony of the diasporic left in yinhua print culture was enabled by unique historical conditions. The most important was the existence of a left-leaning, non- 12 === [PDF page 27] === communist government with friendly relations with the PRC.32 Comparison to other Chinese communities in other parts of Southeast Asia is suggestive: in Malaya and Thailand, the left was significant but always in the role of the underground opposition, while in the Philippines, the right established supremacy so rapidly that the sinophone left never even got a foothold.33 On the other hand, the socialist governments of Vietnam and Cambodia, once they had consolidated power, moved quickly to shut down the local Chinese-language press and community organizations.34 (If we must search for an analogy, perhaps Myanmar, which also had a leftleaning government with a revolutionary inheritance, would be closest.35) These friendly international relations were linked to a "moderate" foreign policy of the PRC at this time: by discouraging involvement in local politics and encouraging adoption of local citizenship, it probably moderated both the popular and elite appeal of antisinicism. Finally, the existence of the Indonesian left as a viable partner was only possible due to the equally "moderate" attitude of the PKI. While it was ruthless in its criticism of the feudal and imperialist classes, its belief in the necessity of a national bourgeoisie that was inclusive of immigrants at the current stage of Indonesian development made it a suitable partner for the immigrant left.36 The breadth and fragility of the diasporic left were related: they were both reflections of the United Front, which was not just a political strategy but a social practice, almost a worldview. Strictly speaking, the United Front refers to a strategy of cross-class collaboration in opposition to a greater threat such as fascism or imperialism. It is, vulgarly speaking, a “rightwing” approach (of the left), since it subordinates, or rather, defers, social conflict until after some desired political resolution. This deferral is one of the reasons ethnic Chinese capitalists to commit were able to commit so enthusiastically to PRC, since class struggle was simply not on the cards for them. It papered over the cracks between committed revolutionaries and simple patriots. It moderated the distinctions between creole (local-born), immigrant (locally resident), and what we might call “expatriates.” And it goes without saying that the United Front as a general political philosophy was also the default mode of imagining interethnic, interracial and international solidarity. In some sense, the discourse of friendship derived its structural 13 === [PDF page 28] === importance from the United Front as a general political philosophy, filling in those everpresent gaps in material which could threaten to derail the shared project. My emphasis on political ideology here is meant as a corrective to an ethnicizing account that seems to me to sometimes posit its assumptions as conclusions. It is also, I believe, merited: in the intensely polarized environment of Cold War Indonesia, people were often likelier to socialize across ethnic and linguistic lines than across political lines. I am also motivated by a partisan belief that “the time has not yet come for objectivity on this page of our history.”37 In this vein I am inspired by the work of scholars who are seeking to restore to the history of communist movements in Southeast Asia something of its fullness and potentiality,38 and grateful to those veteran revolutionaries who committed their memories to writing while they could.39 Objectivity, too, is on my side here: as stated by Leo Suryadinata, an aspiring writer in Jakarta before he became an authority on Chinese-Indonesian history, the leftist writers were both better and more numerous.40 This focus accurately reflects a polarized society in which political orientation was often more important a marker of identity than ethnicity, language, or nationality; it permits us to unfold the alliances between the yinhua left and its allies, whether that’s peranakan leftist activists, represented by Baperki, or leftist Indonesian culture workers, represented by Lekra. The strength of this multiethnic and multilingual left is, furthermore, what makes Indonesia such a compelling case study. Although diasporic communism was also strong in places such as Thailand and Malaya, it was persecuted rather than condoned by the state—Indonesia, in contrast, was one of the few places in the region where it was legal and legitimate to be a communist, and this is what makes it a uniquely valuable case study. Hopefully future research will expand on the cultural counteroffensive of pro-GMD intellectuals,41 or the even more neglected history of noncommunist left which opposed both Beijing and Taiwan.42 Such research might also shed light on the trajectory of other literary modes such as classical verse or modernist style that are neglected here. Relatedly, the genealogy of Indonesian antisinicism(s) cannot be treated in depth in this 14 === [PDF page 29] === study, despite its importance and the relative paucity of research on it as an intellectual tradition with an institutional basis.43 My focus on the left is also the reason for the centrality I accord to Baren, the communist writer who organized in the antifascist underground and later the democracy movement in North Sumatra from 1942 to 1947, and returned to Indonesia from 1950 to 1952 as the first ambassador. Following the conventions of mahua literary history, I describe Baren and his peers as “southbound” (南下/南来) writers and intellectuals, which acknowledges their recent arrival in Southeast Asia, both central and marginal to an emergent sub-national literature.44 Two full chapters are devoted primarily to him, and he is both a subject of this study and one of its interlocutors—it seems to me that in some ways his Indonesian works foresaw many of the recurrent problems that later writers would face in the attempt to imagine Sino-Indonesian friendship, and often in a sharper resolution, and even where his formal solutions falter, or his political diagnoses err, they do so in ways that are highly informative. Although his significance in Indonesian history as an activist, propagandist and diplomat is clear, to the extent that there is a canon of yinhua literature, his place in it as a writer is ambiguous. After his recall in 1952 for “violating diplomatic protocol” one finds in the yinhua press a kind of conspiracy of silence.45 Indeed, it was only with the publication of Liu Hong’s China and the Shaping of Indonesia, that he began to receive serious scholarly attention outside of China. I hope that one of my contributions has been to illuminate the links between his political and cultural activities, and perhaps to make a case for his inclusion within the unstable canon of Chinese diasporic literature. Chinese-Indonesian Studies While scholars have occasionally made good use of yinhua literature (or cultural production more generally), and even noted its historical and ideological importance in the Chinese-speaking community,46 only a handful of works have been written from a humanist perspective that makes use of techniques of close reading or addresses problems of literary form. 15 === [PDF page 30] === The only book-length study in English to examine yinhua literature’s formal aspects is Josh Stenberg’s Minority Stages, which is primarily focused on genres and practices of performance.47 Scholarship in Chinese is more extensive, but not much. In the 2000s, Yang Yi completed the first full-length academic treatment of the subject, establishing a basic periodization and enumerating the major figures; around the same time a number of theses and encyclopedia entries were also written on the subject.48 Not long after, Wang Lieyao and Yan Min’s The Prisoner’s Dance (2007), focusing primarily on post-1965 literature, identified many recurrent themes of yinhua literature, including linguistic anxiety,.49 In terms of overall breadth, there is also the excellent overview of yinhua literature in Ma Feng’s lamentably hard-to-find postdoctoral thesis in Chinese, Identity in Indonesian-Chinese Fiction (2018). Based on an exhaustive survey of secondary scholarship and published yinhua literature, examines themes of “cultural, ethnic and national” identity, it also emphasizes post-1965 fiction.50 Most of this small literature is based on reading the minority of yinhua works that were published as books abroad, and on the memoirs of writers such as Lin Wanli, Li Qing, Shaping, Zou Fangjin and Chen Shaoxin.51 My dissertation then is the first to make extensive use of the literary supplements and journals themselves, in combination with books published in Indonesia prior to 1965. My work, then, fills in a vital gap in Chinese-Indonesian studies, a tradition that it may be useful to review briefly.52 While the earliest researchers in this tradition are likely the colonial sinologists and peranakan journalists, the institutional origin of Anglophone scholarship today is in the postwar discipline of area studies, which took a keen interest in both Southeast Asia and the Chinese diaspora. The first English-language work emphasized questions of acculturation and assimilation, assuming that localization would inoculate the diaspora from the communist virus—I examine some of its legacy below in my discussion of the word “totok.”53 Some of these lines of inquiry were pursued further in Indonesia, with an emphasis on the peranakan community of Java.54 Conversely, in the PRC, scholarship was oriented towards guiding state policy, or even for use in propaganda.55 After Opening and Reform, Indonesian returnee scholars, 16 === [PDF page 31] === drawing on their extensive library holdings, easy access to interview subjects, and translations of US scholarship, published authoritative reference histories.56 It was only after the Cold War that Anglophone scholars begin to write from a more nuanced, “internal” perspective, making polyphonic use of Chinese-language sources. It is this body of scholarship that my work contributes to most directly. Twang Peck Yang’s underappreciated The Chinese Business Elite in Indonesia and the Transition to Independence, 1940-1950, which traced the rise of a new stratum of merchants during the revolution in detail, represented an ambitious attempt to think through the intricate historical relations of race and class.57 Tsai Yen-ling, drawing on Filomeno Aguilar’s critical work on citizenship, explored the discursive and material processes of “racial formation,” through a case study of the material and discursive life of property confiscated from Chinese-medium schools.58 The work of these two underappreciated scholars moved beyond stereotyping and generalizations to offer fresh perspectives on the articulation of race and class which is central to the “Chinese question.” The rewards of suspending these top-down categories was demonstrated in Hui Yew-foong’s historical anthropology of West Kalimantan Chinese subjectivity, Strangers at Home. Around the same time, scholars also began revising the history of Sino-Indonesian relations, first in Liu Hong’s groundbreaking book on the potency of the “China metaphor” during the Sukarno era, which drew attention to a shared anticolonial imaginary that had been erased. 59 This was followed by Taomo Zhou’s recent Migration in the Time of Revolution, which illuminated the contest for influence between the PRC and ROC, while also showing how diasporic agency interacted with diplomatic relations. My most important source has been the Chinese-language periodicals and newspapers that survive an archipelago of university libraries and personal collections across the world. This dispersion is a part of the history narrated here: US universities gathered them for intelligence, diasporic returnees carried them to China in trunks, and the Indonesian state mostly neglected them as alien. At times the search for old pieces of paper has felt nearly ethnographic, especially where it has led me to those rare private libraries in the suburbs of Jakarta, Surabaya or Bandung 17 === [PDF page 32] === where some unburnt books still survived. I have also drawn from the considerable body of “memory literature” that has emerged since the end of the Cold War, including memoirs, biographies, material from reunions, republications of documents, and non-professional scholarship, requires special discussion—the work of Li Zhuohui in Jakarta60 and of the Life Cultural Foundation (生活文化基金会) merits special mention.61 Where possible, I have also conducted interviews with survivors of that yinhua print culture, and these did not just illuminate certain key details for me, but also impressed on me the real intensity of feelings that had been buried for decades. Occasionally, I have also found documents or their traces within the official archives of the Dutch and Indonesian state, usually as evidence. Yinhua, Totok, Sinophone The term yinhua abbreviates the Mandarin for “Indonesian-Chinese,” and can be expanded many ways, reflecting a history that co-implicates race, nationality and language.: the crucial term hua, “Chinese,” could refer to script (华文), language (华语), nationality (华侨), ethnicity (华人), descent (华裔)… though, importantly, not the country China (中国) itself. Its decisive advantage is endonymy: it has been used since at least the late 1940s as a self-descriptor in Chinese writing in Indonesia.62 The modifier “of Indonesia” is more flexible than strict criteria such as place of publication or citizenship of author, as is demanded for an era when contemporary ideas of nationality were still in flux. Note that this usage includes texts by writers who are not considered Chinese-Indonesian (such as Baren), insofar as they reflect an engagement with Indonesia.63 In preserving this term untranslated, I eschew two alternatives that each carry their own disciplinary burdens: totok, from Indonesian history, and “Sinophone,” from Chinese literature. The term totok, and its complement peranakan, at one level simply refer to “new immigrants” and “locally-born,” entered widespread academic usage after G.W. Skinner elevated the totok-peranakan distinction from a descriptive to an analytic tool.64 While people may have used peranakan (and its synonym baba) to describe themselves, and there is no doubt that a 18 === [PDF page 33] === distinctive creole community developed in colonial Java, the converse is less true.65 Definitions typically resort to the heuristic of “orientation,” and use totok to refer to those “primarily oriented towards their country of origin, in this case, China.”66 This identity is “not merely an accident of birth in China or Indonesia, but related to a complex of cultural factors including language, descent, education, and so on."67 While historians have outgrown many of the Cold War assumptions of US area studies, this heuristic lives on as a practical means to categorize midcentury Chinese-Indonesians, including (with some reservations) in the work of eminent historians such as Guo-Quan Seng and Taomo Zhou.68 This points to a real social distinction, one that more or less corresponds to other oppositions such as xinke (新客) vs. qiaosheng (侨生), or between huaqiao and huaren. The issue is not its existence but the manner in which it is applied as an explanatory device. My issue here is with the underlying figure of a continuum of Chineseness, which remains intact despite Siew-Min Sai’s criticism of what she has called “spectrum-think.”69 According to Sai: In Chinese Indonesian studies, the paired terms "locally oriented" and "China-oriented" suppress and entrench at the same time a bifurcated nation-state framework that treats the study of Chinese communities in Indonesia… as an "academic loyalty test."70 Without denying the significance of these social distinctions, it is still apposite to point to the disciplinary history behind their elevation to analytic importance. Bluntly, the academic popularization of these terms derive from an attempt to answer the question: “What kind of person becomes communist anyway (and how do we prevent it)?” The most influential scholars of Chinese diaspora in this era, including G.W. Skinner and Wang Gung-wu, sought to understand the correlation between degrees of Chineseness and communism.71 Yet at times their work slid from correlation to causation, and ultimately facilitated the reduction of politics to culture, beliefs to identity, and in this instance, communism to Chineseness. Without denying the connection between speaking Chinese and reading Lenin, or the divide between later and earlier arrivals, or the insights of the “Cornell School,” we must acknowledge that Chinese identity became an object of academic interest while the US was fighting wars of containment on the 19 === [PDF page 34] === territory of the diaspora in Southeast Asia. In some sense, by resurfacing this occluded political content more directly, I think we will be able to grapple with it more honestly. Recently, Sinophone Studies has encouraged a revived interest in literature written in Chinese outside China, with its call to decenter China and Chineseness by turning to the “margins of China and Chineseness.”72 What exactly this entails, and debates have sometimes been acrid.73 While some have argued for excluding the Han majority of the PRC, others have advocated for including all Chinese-language cultural production that demonstrates hybridity and fluidity.74 The case of yinhua literature shows how studying the Chinese diaspora and decentering of China are not necessarily compatible commitments, and may even be contradictory: the PRC occupied a prominent place, both materially and symbolically, in yinhua literature, that any responsible reading practice must account for. As Josh Stenberg notes, what he terms “long-distance cultural nationalism” is actually more prevalent than the hybrid or localized modes that Sinophone studies privileges.75 The point however is not to “recenter” China, but to understand that the overreliance on the figure of center versus margin has displaced the opposition between left and right. Is it not possible that the PRC’s appearance in yinhua literature, and in Cold War Asia more generally, expresses not an attachment to China but the appeal of a “people’s republic”? Here, I agree with Flair Donglai Shi’s critique of the reductive identification of the (Han population of the) PRC with the “center” (the PRC did not even receive international recognition until 1971!), as well as the lack of self-reflection on the very non-marginal position of Anglophone academia.76 Although Indonesia has always contained one of the largest Chinese populations in Southeast Asia,77 it occupies a strange position within Sinophone studies. Virtually no Indonesians or Indonesianists participate in these debates, and no yinhua cultural production is cited, 78 yet the “figure” of Indonesia appears often, especially as a cypher for outbreaks of anti- Chinese violence that are more often referenced than examined. A notable exception is Ien Ang, an Australian scholar of Chinese-Indonesian descent raised in the Netherlands, whose ambivalent reflections on her emigration from Indonesia and her interpellation as Chinese have been a 20 === [PDF page 35] === touchstone for early formulations of Sinophone studies.79 It is ironically telling of Indonesia’s place in Sinophone (lit. “Chinese-speaking”) studies that one of her most-cited essays is entitled “On Not Speaking Chinese.” Similarly, even as Brian Bernards omits Indonesian writers from his wide-ranging Writing the South Seas, he also dedicates a chapter to the disavowals and misrecognitions of Indonesia within Singaporean/Malaysian literature.80 Indonesia is the setting of the best-known work of all three of the most celebrated Taiwan-based mahua writers, Ng Kim Chew, Chang Kuei-hsing, and Li Yongping.81 Always object, never subject. This can only partially be explained by the suppression of yinhua cultural production from 1965, and its consequent weakness even after the revival of the 1990s. Indeed, it is a weakness that is shared by research from mainland China which, revising earlier accounts of the dissemination of Chinese literature into Southeast Asia, has sought to critique the representation of Southeast Asia(ns) within Chinese literature, often drawing explicitly on postcolonial theory.82 That is, because Indonesia is seen as one site among many locales in Southeast Asia (where the paradigmatic site is Malaya), its historical specificity is underappreciated. The issue here is not just one of epistemic justice, though that’s also important. Rather, in neglecting this history, a vital dimension of modern Southeast Asia is missed, which we can refer to as the Indonesian Revolution. Bandung’s Two Faces The formative period for the emergence of modern Chinese-language literature outside of China is the Cold War. Studying this period involves delaminating many layers of forgetting, erasure, and distortion under the combined influence of Western counterinsurgency, Chinese chauvinism, and Southeast Asian assimilationism.83 My research joins a growing body of work including Jeremy Taylor and Lanjun Xu’s edited collection, Chineseness and the Cold War, which persuasively makes use of the idea of the “cultural Cold War”; Wai-siam Hee’s Remapping the Sinophone, which establishes an alternative genealogy for “the Sinophone” through the recovery of a forgotten body of Malayan filmmaking; and Jin Jin’s The Cold War 21 === [PDF page 36] === and Sinophone Studies, which studies writers from across the left-right divide without erasing it. Much of the recent research focuses on mahua (Malayan-Chinese) literature on account of its size and sophistication,84 and show how characteristics of Sinophone Malaysian literature in Taiwan like modernist style and political cynicism, which influenced many of Sinophone studies’ earliest formulations, are relatively recent developments.85 Indeed, these characteristics are best understood as reactions against the realist, revolutionary mainstream of the pre-1965 generation of mahua literature.86 It has also become clear now that the discourse of localism is communist in origin: both the ethnonym “mahua” and the literary concept of “mahua specificity (马华独特 性)” were developed and promoted by the Communist Party of Malaya.87 The understudied Indonesian case confirms many of these initial findings, but also permits new comparison to be drawn along the lines not of Chineseness but of anticolonialism. In recent years, the study of what Rossen Djagalov has termed the “Third World Republic of Letters” has experienced a small boom.88 The Afro-Asian Conference of 1955 is one of the cardinal points of this research, and historians have done much in recent years to demythologize Bandung.89 The PRC’s leading role in this network, including in the Afro-Asian Writer’s Bureau, has shattered liberal stereotypes about the socialist period as one of cultural isolation.90 A number of excellent studies on cultural exchange between the PRC and other parts of the world, including India, Cuba, the Arab world, and the African continent, have been published.91 (And of course, Indonesia.92) Yet this format of research runs the risk of conceptually reproducing the kinds of bilateral interstate relations that it studies, or to put it another way, of getting trapped in conferences and delegations.93 It seems to me that it is here that the study of transnational communities can enrich our understanding of the deep social roots of the Afro-Asian literary project. Yinhua literature’s physical location within one of the main sponsors of the movement, and its linguistic links to another, makes it an especially instructive case study. Despite the anticolonial commitments and transnational methods of Sinophone studies, however, there has been little overlap with the study of Third World literature, South-South exchange, and the Afro- 22 === [PDF page 37] === Asian project. (What exceptions there are focus on anticommunist or Anglophone writers.94) The sinophone community provided housing, interpreters and translators, security detail, and transportation to the PRC delegation.95 Yinhua writers panegyrized the conference as a miracle of communication, where delegates of diverse religions, nationalities, and colors could “speak the same message in one voice from different mouths [异口同声说一样话].”96 They dedicated poems to Djamila Bouhired and Ho Chi Minh,97 made pilgrimages to the site of the conference, the Gedung Merdeka (“Independence Building”),98 covered post-Bandung gatherings like the Afro-Asian Film Festival with enthusiasm, 99 and even published their own anthologies of Afro- Asian literature in translation.100 The yinhua case also highlights a different dimension of Bandung vis-à-vis modern nationality law. Despite its symbolic significance, the conference had only one immediate and concrete achievement: the signing of the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty.101 This was featured prominently the conference publication, the Bandung Bulletin, as a demonstration of the Five Principles of Coexistence in action.102 In essence, this treaty stated that dual nationals—in this case, primarily Indonesia-born ethnic Chinese—should choose to retain one nationality and abandon the other within two years. The tortuousness of its implementation,103 and the diplomatic goals which it only partially achieved,104 both matter less than the regional transformation in the concept of nationality that it signaled. Abandoning the rigid jus sanguinis principle of the previous regimes for a more territorially-based interpretation, the PRC actively encouraged adoption of local nationality and integration into local society.105 Furthermore, this treaty led directly to the present nationality laws of both Indonesia and the PRC, and arguably most of Southeast Asia.106 It enthroned the principle of single nationality,107 accelerating the division of the transnational populations that had developed in the colonial era into discrete and mutually exclusive nationalities. In the yinhua as in the mahua case, then, the terms of localization, or to put it another way, of the problematization of Chineseness, were set by the dynamics of mid-century anticolonialism.108 We can further propose that the two faces of the conference—the establishment of international solidarity and the division of transnational 23 === [PDF page 38] === populations—are one moment within the consolidation of the postwar world order as an order of nation-states. Language and Print The belt of Chinese settlement in Indonesia, which runs in an arc whose center in Singapore along the seaboards of Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan, is an example of what Orsini, Laachir and Marzagora, in their critique of prevailing approaches to world literature, term a “significant geography,” which permits a more “groundup and located approach” to world literature.109 Like the rest of the archipelago, the cities of this arc were thoroughly multilingual110— in Medan, for example, there lived communities of speakers of Javanese, Acehnese, Karo, Simalungun, Tamil, Japanese, Gayo, Minangkabau, Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay, English, Mandarin, Dutch, German, could all be heard… From this mosaic Indonesian emerged as the official language of unity, from roots in the Malay of Dutch administration, the Malay of the courts of the Malacca Straits, and the Malay of the urban Chinatowns.111 Although most Chinese in Java spoke a Hokkien-inflected Malay, in the early 20th century cultural reformers began to promote Chinese as a “national language (国语)” through the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan 中华会馆 schools.112 A spike in immigration in the 1920s and 1930s—which included a small but significant cohort of leftist educators—and “resinifying” policies during the Japanese occupation meant that on the eve of independence a majority of Chinese children attended Chinese-medium schools.113 This generation of locally-born, Chineseeducated youth (sometimes referred to as “totokized” peranakans) formed the social basis of yinhua print culture. So how many readers of Chinese were there in independent Indonesia? It is not particularly easy to estimate the size of the Chinese-language community, let alone to disaggregate by topolect or literacy. Estimates of the Chinese population of Indonesia around 1960 are estimated at around 2-2.5 million,114 of whom approximately half were Chinese nationals and half were Indonesian nationals.115 The 1920 census, which collected information 24 === [PDF page 39] === on home language, recorded that of the half of ethnic Chinese who resided in Java and Madura, approximately 30% of ethnic Chinese in Java and Madura; the figure for the other half in the Outer Islands, approximately 90%.116 Extrapolating these numbers to the postwar era would require accounting for the countervailing processes of language shift towards Indonesian and the rise in attendance in Chinese-medium schools.117 In the mid-1950s, there were over a quarter of a million students in these schools.118 A lower bound for the Chinese-literate population can be set at 110k, the total circulation of the Chinese-language daily newspapers in 1955, and was surely considerably higher given that each newspaper would have reached multiple readers.119 Given these numbers, a total readership in the area of half a million does not seem far-fetched—small in comparison to the populations of either China or Indonesia, but also not insignificant. Despite sharing the same multilingual environment, the kind of language used in the yinhua press was opposite in style to that used in the Sino-Malay press—while the latter has been celebrated for its inventiveness and self-conscious hybridity,120 the former sought to match the evolving national standard in China as closely as possible. This did not reflect a difference in the “purity” of speaking habits—even highly-educated speakers of Mandarin “mixed” features of other languages into their speech often121—but rather in the relationship of speech and text. As is well-known, Ideographic/logographic writing systems like Chinese characters have a less direct correspondence between sound and script than glottographic ones such as the Latin alphabet; this contributes to functional diglossia in much of China, where topolects are associated with informality and speech and Mandarin with formality and writing. The point is that this alreadywide gap is even larger in sinophone/sinographic insular Southeast Asia, where the predominant topolects are Southeastern Chinese heavily influenced by Austronesian languages.122 This distance from everyday speech is a constant presence within yinhua print culture, exerting an influence that is visible not just in the obvious cases of representations of topolect speech or use of Malay loanwords, but also in a kind of persistent and anxious self-reflexiveness about writing. As Stenberg notes, “when a community is linguistically fragile, it seems that the point of writing in Chinese is the act of writing itself.”123 25 === [PDF page 40] === I place emphasis in my analysis on the structuring effects of linguistic minoritarianism, which is related to but analytically distinct from ethnic minoritarianism. Because Chinese is a minority language, its use—unlike the unmarked, majority language of Indonesian—is already indexically meaningful, even before we reach the content of the utterance. It inflects the basic deictic categories of grammatical person, the “I” and the “you” of the text, as respectively writers and readers of a minority language.124 This adds an extra layer of complexity to the process of situating oneself that begins every act of reading, of figuring out who is speaking to whom. It discourages certain situations (it is rare for fictional narrators to be illiterate or Indonesian, for example), and encourages others (the structure of address often evokes the classroom). Yinhua texts must always be interpreted in relation to their social context, since the same message in Chinese and Indonesian could have opposite rhetorical effects. To give an example: what is the point of a protest against discrimination by the government [of Indonesia] written in Chinese, and untranslated? Unlike a protest written in Indonesian, the government is unlikely to read it a priori (unless it is subversive enough to attract the attention of surveillance sinologists); however, ethnic Chinese are, and so its primary effect is to model a stance or attitude of resistance. When this stance is interpreted as insubordinate, which leads to further protest, and… indeed, this vicious cycle of escalation appears in the media uproar over the PP10 crisis in Chapter 5, and arguably also in the aftermath of the 1965 countercoup as well. This dimension of yinhua literature involves what linguists call “pragmatics,” or the way that context contributes to meaning.125 I dwell on it because, to put it bluntly, I think it permits us a way to reopen the interpretation of texts that might otherwise seem derivative when evaluated solely by their content. As we saw in the discussion of “Pelabuhan,” for example, the pragmatics of address unlocked a complex reading of the simultaneous necessity and difficulty of dialogue. In Chapter 2, I propose the working concept of “allophone literature” to elaborate more fully on the literary implications of linguistic minoritarianism. Although yinhua print culture adhered to a newly-dominant view of languages as discrete, autochthonous, and standardized—as did Indonesian language reformers such as Sutan 26 === [PDF page 41] === Takdir Alisjahbana—this rejection of hybridity was not of multilingualism. Quite the opposite: while few were equally comfortable writing in Indonesian, many read avidly, especially after courses in it were made mandatory in secondary schools in the 1950s. I suspect that for many young writers, translating Pramoedya, Utuy, or Rukiah into Chinese, and even publishing them in the literary supplements, may have been formative. From the mid-1950s onwards, translations of progressive Indonesian poems and short stories, as well as reporting on Lekra conferences, performances and exhibitions, featured regularly in most yinhua periodicals. This cultural coverage was built atop the capacities of multilingual journalists who had to promptly and accurately translate speeches, press releases, and articles almost every single day. In addition, PRC cultural diplomacy made a conscious effort to translate Indonesian writers—especially PKI leaders and Lekra authors—into Chinese.126 (This in addition to its considerable publication program of texts translated from Chinese into Indonesian.127) This upswell in translations meant that some works appeared in parallel editions in Beijing and Jakarta, with local translations sometimes using a more Southeast Asian lexicon.128 The Sadar Cultural Foundation even lobbied the International Bookstore (国际书店) to withdraw some of these competitors from the Indonesian market.129 Published translation is only the most visible multilingual aspect of this transnational print culture—it rests atop a foundation of common practices of interpretation and codeswitching in everyday life. We saw this in “Pelabuhan,” which showed how immigrant leftists, especially “Northerners” from outside the emigration belt of Southeast China, relied heavily on young interpreters, often inverting the student-teacher relationship. One of my assertions is that the interpretation of literature in non-dominant languages requires attention to the language situation. The concept of print culture has appeared to me as an elegant way to draw these two levels of text and context together. Not coincidentally, it also reflects well the fact that for most of its history, yinhua literature was mostly published in newspaper supplements, and rarely achieved the relative autonomy that the standalone book represents. The attention to materiality and paratextuality that scholars of print, publishing, and periodicals exhibit is a productive way to engage such a literature.130 27 === [PDF page 42] === Notably, theorization of print media, and media in general, has played an outsize role in Indonesian studies in the West.131 One of the better-known products of this emphasis is Benedict Anderson’s proposition that the vernacular press, or “print capitalism,” conditions the emergence of nationalism, which emerged in part from his reflections on the colonial-era Indonesian press.132 More recent scholarship has complicated our understanding of the relationship of the press to the emergence of modern political consciousness, sometimes by highlighting the central and ambiguous role of Chinese media entrepreneurs within this history.133 Recently, the communist press of both colonial and postcolonial Indonesia has also received welcome attention, and I view my work here as a contribution to that literature.134 Studies of the post-1965 New Order, which experienced a boom in popular culture despite (or because of) its political repression, have highlighted the increasing importance of the market and the rise of a middle class culture of consumption.135 The vibrant print culture of the intervening period, despite important studies of the increasing politicization of a commercially precarious press by Oey Hong Lee and Daniel Dhakidae, has received less attention.136 The social, technological, and cultural aspects of print in modern China have also received increasing attention in recent years.137 Christopher Reed, for example, has drawn attention to “print communism” as an integral part of 20th century Chinese history.138 Left-wing yinhua print culture was not simply a fusion of Indonesian and Chinese print traditions, however, but rather one of the constituent parts a regional print culture.139 The Cold War divided and nationalized this print culture: thus, even though the transnational sinophone left was more well-organized in the Philippines, Thailand and Malaya, it was only in non-aligned Indonesia that the traces of the “Red Nanyang” could survive above ground (until it couldn’t). As such, the focus on the period from 1945 to 1965, and the islands of Java and Sumatra, also permits a reappraisal as through a prism of the preceding period and the surrounding region. My thinking here is shaped by Rachel Leow’s observations in her study of the anarchist-inspired Kuala Lumpur-based periodical Yik Khuan Poh (益群报) about the differentiated and layered audiences that constitute the “colonial public sphere.”140 Extending Leow’s work into the 28 === [PDF page 43] === postcolonial, and thinking alongside historians such as Guo-Quan Seng and Yingxin Show,141 I hope to show how the Red Nanyang was constituted in part by print networks. Inspired by the extensive literature on Indian Ocean print culture,142 and joining a growing body of scholarship on revolutionary print, anticolonial, and socialist print culture,143 I argue that the characteristics patterns of writing, editing, printing, reading, and criticizing at play here were a crucial part of the “reddening” of the region. While in my approach to this print culture, I have tried to keep in mind the relationship between different kinds of mediation, there is much to do in terms of other, intersecting media regimes. The history of the PRC’s Indonesian-language radio broadcasting,144 for example, or the role of dance in Sino-Indonesian cultural diplomacy,145 would benefit from the use of multilingual archives. The prominence of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs within cinema distribution and exhibition in the 1950s is well-established, but the exact networks have yet to be established.146 Similarly, it would be interesting to link Karen Strassler’s work on the development of amateur and studio photography in Java to transformations in the multilingual print culture of mid-century Indonesia.147 Finally, the unmistakable centrality of athletic culture to Chinese-Indonesian history deserves far more scrutiny.148 Study of these media would open up space for rich theoretical reflection on key questions related to sound (the “-phone” in Sinophone) and embodiment (with its close links to problems of racialization), and complicate or perhaps contradict my conclusions. Chapter Overview What follows is divided into roughly three sections. In the first two chapters, I provide an overview of yinhua print culture. Chapter 1 outlines the development of a highly-politicized Chinese-language print culture from the lifting of colonial/fascist censorship in 1945 to the imposition of a ban on Chinese-language publishing in 1965, with a focus on the press and especially the leading newspaper of the day, the Xin Bao 新报, later renamed Zhongcheng Bao 忠诚报. I interpret this history in terms of an interrelated shift towards the left and towards the 29 === [PDF page 44] === local, and conclude by highlighting the mediating function of internationalism in the transition between two nationalisms. In Chapter 2, I examine the literature that grew atop the substrate of this print culture, retracing the chronological development of this literature, with a focus on introducing major writers and institutions. From there, I elaborate on the concept of “allophone literature” and show how the situation of linguistic minority helps to make sense of yinhua literature’s preoccupation with problems of mediation, with an emphasis on the 1950s. Chapters 3 and 4 shift the focus earlier to the revolutionary years of the independence struggle and hone in on several texts that Baren composed based on his experience of exile in the 1940s in North Sumatra. Chapter 3 is an in-depth examination of an incomplete suite of texts known as the Notes from the Land Below the Winds, which I situate in relation to his participation in the Indonesian revolution, which I show was more active than previously believed. I conclude with a critical reflection on the omission of the local women’s movement, led by his partner Liu Yan, within his writing. Chapter 4 reinterprets one of Baren’s best-known works, the play Temple of Five Ancestors, as a kind of anthology of translated verse. I show that Chinese leftists greatly valued Indonesian language and literature, and situate this appreciation in a shift in language ideology. I propose that some of the roots of the Afro-Asian literary project of the 1950s can be found within the Asian revolutions of the late 1940s. The final two chapters are thematic treatments of the period of “Guided Democracy” between the Bandung Conference and the New Order, from the late 1950s to the 1965. Chapter 5 broaches the question of the interrelation of class and race by revisiting the PP10 crisis, the mass eviction of rural Chinese from 1959 to 1960, as a media event of the first order, focusing on the tin islands of Bangka and Belitung. I analyze the surge in interest in the history of Chinese contract labor, as narrated in texts like the screen-novel Enmity and Gratitude in Tin Island, as a response to the contradictory process of economic decolonization, and also attempt a literary history of the Tanjung Morawa Incident from the perspective of the literature of Lekra. Finally, Chapter 6 examines how the reading and writing habits of high school girls became a matter of communal and geopolitical concern. I first discuss the youth culture cultivated within the 30 === [PDF page 45] === Chinese-medium schools, including through a rereading of G.W. Skinner’s 1957 sociological survey of Jakarta high schoolers. I conclude by connecting the contestations over age and gender to literary-theoretical debates over fictive character, especially in the fiction of Xu Qiongling, and with a discussion of the convergence of Chinese-language schooling with the Indonesian cultural left. A glossary of organizations, individuals, and periodicals is also included at the end, as well as a number of appendices—compiling information on Indonesian literature in the PRC, books of yinhua literature (including comprehensive lists of Sadar and Zamrud publications), a detailed list of yinhua newspapers before 1965, and some general advice for researchers—that are meant to facilitate future work in the field. 31 === [PDF page 46] === Notes Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 139. “Pelabuhan” is my own guess for what Baren was intending to transcribe with Fuluobayan (浮 罗巴烟). Baren has likely confused the conventional transcription for Pulobrayan, an area of Medan, with the word for “harbor.” The place in question is almost certainly Teluk Batil (Shen Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 142. See Masao Suzuki, Sumendala de Yu Dafu, for the authoritative reconstruction of Yu’s execution. Baren, “Yi Dafu,” 490. See Alison M. Groppe in “The Dis/Reappearances of Yu Dafu,” who reviews Ng Kim Chew 黄 锦树’s “parodies” of Yu Dafu’s Sumatran experience across multiple stories, which he conscripts for his metaliterary reflections on Malaysian-Chinese literature. Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 143. 10 Du Bois used the term to describe the line between white people and all people of color—my usage of course is “intra-Asian.” Here, it describes the “brown-yellow” line. Du Bois would not have used it in this sense, since his faith in the unity of people of color vis-à-vis white people was strong enough to lead him to sympathize with Japanese imperialism (Gao, Arise Africa, Roar China!, Chapter 1). 11 Baren reflected on this greeting several times. See “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 350, 363; and “Yige toujia,” 21. 12 Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” section entitled “Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects.” 13 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 143-44. 14 See Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery, on the myth of innumeracy and the legitimization of transatlantic enslavement. 15 Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native, 11-12. Alatas’ work provides a genealogy of Chinese industriousness/cunning in the insular Southeast Asian world. Baren referred to a version of this numeracy trope elsewhere too (“Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 391). This racialized trope appears elsewhere in Chinese-Indonesian literature, too, notably in Thio Tjin Boen’s early novel Tjerita Oeij Se [Story of Oey Se]. 16 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. 32 === [PDF page 47] === 17 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. I encountered the term “structure of address” from John Frow: “a set of assumptions about 18 who (that is, what kind of person) is speaking, and with what authority and credibility, co 19 The literature on free indirect discourse is vast. I found useful the discussions in “Voice” in Frow, Character and Person, and Bray, “Speech and Thought Presentation.” 20 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. The concluding benediction recurs in several other Notes from the Land Below the Winds set in Indonesia. See Chapter 3. 21 See Schmid, “Narratee.” There are further functional distinctions that can be made, such as between the narrator and the implied author, but these are less relevant. Note that linguistic usage differs slightly from narratological usage: for linguists, who tend to imagine a speech situation, the addressee often coincides with the reader/listener. 22 An implied reader is “the author’s image of the recipient that is fixed and objectified in the text by specific indexical signs” (Schmid, “Implied Reader”). 23 In other words, the United Front imaginary of the 1930s, which harmonized nationalist and communist sympathies and dominates War of Resistance Literature, becomes untenable. 24 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. 25 Baren, “Fuluobayan 浮罗巴烟 [Pelabuhan],” p. 15 (1958). This postscript was not included in later republications of the essay. Traveler was the first journal focused on travel literature in socialist China. 26 I agree with Yan Min, who proposes the term huawen wenxue 华文文学 over alternatives such as hanyu wenxue 汉语文学, shijie huayu wenxue 世界华语文学, and huayu yuxi wenxue 华语语 系文学 (Huawen wenxue, Chapter 1). 27 See Sai, “Representing the Past,” and “Mandarin Lessons” on the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan education movement. 28 See Yamamoto, Censorship in Colonial Indonesia. 29 See Harper, Forgotten Wars, for an overview of the revolutionary tumult of this period. The term comes from a more recent work by Harper, Underground Asia. 30 Willmott, National Status, “Political Parties and the Minority Question.” Denning, The Cultural Front, Introduction. If the base of the Popular Front in the 1930s USA 31 was the CIO unions, the base of the yinhua United Front was the Chinese-language schools. 32 Mozingo, Chinese Policy towards Indonesia, is the classic account of Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relations. 33 === [PDF page 48] === 33 See Wongsurawat, The Crown and the Capitalist, for Thailand; Kung, Diasporic Cold Warriors, for the Philippines. The relevant literature on Malaya (later, Malaysia and Singapore) is considerable, and has experienced a historiographical reconsideration of the significance of the Communist Party of Malaya and the broader Chinese left. See for example Belogurova, Nanyang Revolution, Cheah, Red Star Over Malaya, and Hong and Huang ed., The scripting of a national history. 34 See, for example, Ungar, “The Struggle over the Chinese Community in Vietnam,” on Vietnam, and Galway, Emergence of Global Maoism, on Cambodia. 35 Li, Chinese in Colonial Burma, especially the chapter, “Making No Political ‘Noise.’” 36 On the PKI’s positions on the national bourgeoisie, see Mortimer, Indonesian Communism, 137-163. 37 Brossat and Klingberg, Revolutionary Yiddishland, Introduction. 38 These include Lysa Hong, who has striven to revise the anticommunist historiography of Singapore through her research on leftist students and MCP cadre; and Rhoma Dwi Yuliantri, whose editorial work with Muhidin Dahlan on the communist-affiliated press has sought to rescue them from anticommunist distortion. 39 These include Lin Shi Fang and Zhang Dayong. Both remained communist, in Zhang’s case until his death. Zhang’s memoirs were first published on the anti-revisionist webforum Utopia (乌有之乡). 40 Suryadinata, Xian jieduan de yinni huaren zuqun, Chapter 6. Note, though, that in many areas, especially in the early 1950s, the pro-GMD community may have formed a numerical majority. 41 Taomo Zhou has demonstrated that pro-GMD intellectuals were very politically active in the early 1950s, but further research is required on the role literature and culture played, if any, in their work (Migration in the Time of Revolution, Chapters 1 and 3). Such research could begin from the literary supplement of the main pro-GMD newspaper, Thien Sung Yit Poh 天声日报. Key figures include Mah Soo-lay 马树礼, Zhang Ziming 张自铭, Xu Juqing 徐琚清, Qiu Zhengou 丘正欧, and Zheng Xuejia 郑学稼. This research would have to account for the continuing utility of the genres of classical poetry for conservative intellectuals. 42 The most notable representative here is perhaps the (former?) anarchist intellectual Liang Piyun 梁披云, who edited a newspaper well-known for literary quality, Api Revolusi (火炬报) On Liang, see Rocks, “Beyond the Bounds of Revolution,” 166-173. His close associates include the painter Zhou Bichu 周碧初 and Zhou Yingnan 周颖南. 43 The chronology of anti-Chinese incidents have been studied fairly closely, but they are generally attributed in both the English and Chinese-language literature to an amorphous popular sentiment. It was, however, also an elite phenomenon, and had specific intellectuals and institutions. Kwartanada, “Making of the Chinese Problem,” identifies some of the key figures. Other starting points could include: the radicalization of peranakan assimilationists such as K. Sindhunatha and the significance of Christianity/Catholicism to them; the intellectual debt of Indonesian officials such as R.A. Soeprapto to Dutch colonial theory and practice, especially through the Batavia Law School; and military ideology, especially in relation to the PP10 crisis 34 === [PDF page 49] === of 1959-60, and the role of Colonel Kosasih therein; and the links between the “Assaatist” movement and Masyumi, although well-known, deserve to be elaborated in detail. 44 The term was popularized by Lin Wanjing in his book Chinese Authors in Singapore and their Influence, 1927-1948. 45 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 58-59. 46 Baren’s essays play a prominent role in Taomo Zhou’s discussion of the genesis of CPC’s cultural-diplomatic strategy, for example (Migration in a Time of Revolution, Chapter 2), Pramoedya’s views on Chinese literature play a pivotal role in Liu Hong’s argument in China and the Shaping of Indonesia, and Hui Yew-foong describes how literary societies were one of the main forms of organization of West Kalimantan left-wing youth (Strangers at Home, Chapter 3). These examples reflect the cenrality of cultural work within both Sino-Indonesian relations and community life. 47 Stenberg, Minority Stages. I refer to his analysis of Temple of Five Ancestors in Chapter 4. In addition, Stenberg has written a number of articles on mid-century yinhua authors such as Heiying and Baren, and on post-1965 texts by authors such as Yuan Ni 袁霓 and Shaping 莎萍. I mention some of his reflections on post-Reformasi literature below in the section on Sinophone studies. 48 Yang Yi, Cong Xinhua wentan lun ji Yinhua wenxue; this book also includes a substantial disquisition on Huang Dongping’s later work. This was refined for her contribution to a 2010 overview on Southeast Asian Chinese-language modern literature as “Yindunixiya huawen xinwenxue.” There are some small errors about publications in her narrative, which may derive from errors of recall; it seems that Li Qing’s writings are one of her main sources. Relevant MA theses are listed in Ma Feng, Yinhua xiaoshuo, 219-220. The entry on yinhua literature in the Encyclopedia of Overseas Chinese by Pan Yatun and Wang Yisheng is still a good introduction. 49 Wang Lieyao and Yan Min, Kunzhe shi wu. 50 Ma Feng, Yinhua xiaoshuo, Abstract. I only was able to obtain a photocopied version of Ma Feng’s work towards the end of my research. See also his Ph.D. dissertation, a comparison of Southeast Asian Chinese fiction by women writers (Nü zuojia xiaoshuo bijiao yanjiu). 51 Zou Fangjin, “Zhanhou yinhua wenxue”; Li Qing, “Jianku chengzhang zhong de yindunixiya huawen wenxue”; Chen Shaoxin, “Shitan yinhua wenxue”; Lin Wanli, Yinni huawen wenxue huibian (unpublished). Note also the role of Dongrui 东瑞 in Hong Kong and Hanchuan 韩川 in Singapore in promoting post-1970s yinhua literature to Chinese-language readership. 52 Heidhues, “Studying the Chinese in Indonesia: A Long Half-Century” surveys the state of the (sub-)field up to the mid-2010s. 53 This includes the work of Don Willmott, Lea Williams, and above all G.W. Skinner. Much of the groundwork for Chinese-Indonesian history was subsequently filled out by Mary Somers Heidhues, Leo Suryadinata, and Charles Coppel, who questioned but did not entirely dismantle these Cold War assumptions. 35 === [PDF page 50] === 54 Mely G. Tan’s The Chinese of Sukabumi and Onghokham’s articles were especially significant (see The Thugs, the Curtain Thief, and the Sugar Lord). Both Tan and Onghokham worked with Skinner. 55 For example, in 1960 the Southeast Asian Studies Research Center of Sun Yat Sen University’s History Department (中山大学历史系东南亚研究室) compiled a Draft History of Overseas Chinese in Indonesia (印度尼西亚华侨史初稿) which was explicitly meant to “accommodate the struggle against Chinese exclusion,” i.e., the rural evictions of the PP10 crisis (10). 56 See Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang’s two-volume History of Indonesian Chinese, as well as the massive Encyclopedia of Overseas China. The bias against Taiwan is discernible but not overwhelming. 57 There had been earlier attempts to articulate race and class, notably Wertheim’s “Trading Minorities” and Robison’s compelling Rise of Capital, but these tended towards generalization. A literature review on this question is to be found in Twang, Chinese Business Elite, Introduction. Tsai, “Materializing Racial Formation” and “Spaces of Exclusion.” See also, Aguilar, “Orang 58 Chinese,” and “Instrumental Citizenship.” 59 Liu Hong, China and the Shaping of Indonesia. Liu’s book complicated earlier work by Mozingo, Chinese Policy Towards Indonesia, and Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese. It also drew attention to Baren for the first time as a major figure. 60 There are quite literally too many to list, but several of the most useful are published as part of the series Lives of Struggle of the Yinhua Writer Elite (Yinhua xiezuo jingying fendou fengyu rensheng). 61 The main force behind the foundation is Liang Junxiang 梁俊祥, an Indonesian leftist returnee. Its most relevant publications are the Commemorative Series on Indonesia’s Seng Hwo Pao (Yinni shenghuobao jinian congshu) and Historical Materials on Overseas Chinese Anti- Japanese Resistance in Southeast Asia (Dongnanya Huaqiao kangri shiliao congshu). A series on the Federation of Chinese Organizations (aka the Qiaozong 侨总) is currently in the works that will likely 62 This is not to say that its usage is unchanging. For example, in 1958 a club called the Yinhua Literature Society translated its name as the “Balai Kesusasteraan Indonesia-Tionghoa,” (“Chinese-Indonesian”; see Sumatera Bin Po, 1958-07-14, p. 3) while the Yinhua Writers Association founded in the 1990s translates its name as “Perhimpunan Penulis Tionghoa Indonesia” (“Indonesian Chinese”). 63 There is an analogous debate on whether or not to include “Southbound” (南来 or 南下) writers—a term that refers to 20th century writers who were born in China but spent time in Malaya and often had a significant impact, such as Yu Dafu, Xu Jie 许杰, and Lin Yutang 林语 堂—within the mahua canon. See Jin Jin, Mahua wenxue, Part 1. 64 For an overview, see Heidhues, “Studying the Chinese in Indonesia,” 601-602. The distinction and its stakes are elaborated in Skinner, “Java’s Chinese Minority,” which is essentially a criticism of his colleagues for insufficient attention to this distinction. Lea Williams preferred the term singkeh 新客 to totok, which at least had the advantage of endonymy. Note that like the word “creole,” the terms peranakan and totok also have a racial history, referring to “mixed” and 36 === [PDF page 51] === “pure.” Because early Chinese settlers were primarily male, “mixed” and “local-born” were at one point effectively synonymous. 65 This is indexed by the fact that totok is a word from Indonesian/Malay rather than Chinese, which is presumably the preferred totok language. For a totok to describe themselves as totok is somewhat analogous to Asian-Americans describing themselves as “fobs”—not just somewhat demeaning, but contradictory insofar as it indexes assimilation vis-à-vis linguistic fluency. 66 Skinner, “The Chinese Minority,” 106. Note that in an unpublished manuscript Skinner writes that "the sine qua non of Totokness is the retention of Chinese as the language of daily use” (“Communism and Chinese Culture,” Introduction). 67 Heidhues, “Studying the Chinese in Indonesia,” 602. 68 Seng Guo-Quan, for example, preserves the distinction but prefers the more “analytically impartial” terms “creole” and “immigrant” to describe this “cultural-linguistic divide” (Strangers in the Family, 11). Taomo Zhou on the other hand uses “these two categories to indicate overall tendencies, while recognizing that it would be unwise to draw a dichotomy between them,” and focuses her book “on the diaspora who were China-oriented, the majority of whom can be considered as totoks” (Migration in the Time of Revolution, 6). 69 This phrase derives from Sai, “Becoming Chinese,” 613. 70 Sai, “The Nanyang Diasporic Imaginary,” 45. The phrase “academic loyalty test” derives from Zheng Liren. 71 In the late 1960s, Wang Gung-wu proposed a typology of Chinese in Southeast Asia into three types according to the strength of their “Chineseness” and “orientation towards a Chinese nationalist identity” (Hee, Remapping the Sinophone, 23, based on Wang, “Chinese in Malaya,” 10-14). Note that Wang does not use the term “orientation.” Compare Baren’s tripartite division, into (1) reactionary (2) democratic and (3) apolitical groups, which corresponded largely to the taukehs, the masses, and petty traders (Radjab, Catatan dari Sumatera, 65-68, cited in Zhou Nanjing, “Yindunixiya huaren de xianzhuang yu qiantu,” 827-828). Here the grid is structured on class position and political progressiveness rather than Chineseness and orientation. 72 Visuality and Identity, 4. Shih’s proposition is developed in this book and is developed further in the co-edited volumes Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader and Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines. 73 See Jin Jin, Huayu yuxi wenxue, Introduction, for a concise overview of the debates. Jin, a PRC-based scholar of Southeast Asian literature in Chinese, employs the term but also has critical reservations. 74 “Sinophone States of Exception,” 206. These positions are associated with Shu-mei Shih and David Der-wei Wang respectively. Wang has proposed several analytics that could be useful for such an expanded scope, including “postloyalism (后遗民; based on a play on three senses of the word yimin; see Hou yimin xiezuo)” and the “Sinophone/Xenophone (华夷风; see “Sinophone States of Exception).” Recently, Wang has also taken an “elemental turn” in “Of Wind, Soil and Water.” 37 === [PDF page 52] === 75 Stenberg, “Diverse Fragility,” 59. 76 Shi, “Reconsidering the Sinophone,” 319, 312. Note that Shu-mei Shih has since addressed the question of theorizing from Taiwan in Sinophone Studies: Across the Disciplines. 77 Kuhn, Chinese Among Others, Introduction. Kuhn states that, around 1990, over half of the people who claim Chinese ancestry or are classed by others as Chinese living outside the PRC and Taiwan were in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. 78 Nota bene: Josh Stenberg has written several articles in conversation with Sinophone studies, though he expresses reservations about the term, which I mentioned earlier. 79 For example, Ien Ang is cited prominently in Shih’s “The Concept of the Sinophone” and the introduction to Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. “if I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics” (“Can One Say No To Chineseness?” 73). See also Ang’s meditations in “Indonesia on my Mind,” in On Not Speaking Chinese, Chapter 3, on the contradictions of the diasporic response to the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia of May 1998. It is interesting to me that Ang is not the only influential scholar of the Chinese diaspora born in Indonesia: Zhou Nanjing, editor of the landmark Encyclopedia of Overseas Chinese, and Wang Gungwu, occasionally referred to as the doyen of Overseas Chinese Studies, were both born in Java. 80 Bernards, Writing the South Seas, Chapter 5. 81 Ng wrote several stories about Yu Dafu’s disappearance in Sumatra, including “Death in the South,” “Supplement,” and “The Disappearance of M” (Groppe, “The Dis/Reappearances of Yu Dafu”). Several of these works have been translated by Carlos Rojas. Li Yongping’s At the River’s End follows a journey up the Kapuas River (see Groppe, Sinophone Malaysian Literature, Chapter 6). Chang Kuei-hsing’s Elephant Herd is set across the Sarawakian border in West Kalimantan (see Liew, “Sinophone Geopolitic”). 82 See, for example, Yan Min, Nanyang xushi, which argues that the Southeast Asian experience has been central to the development of modern Chinese literature, and also discusses Baren’s Indonesian texts; and Xia Jing, Zhongguo xiandai zuojia de nanyang shuxie yanjiu, which emphasizes the primitivist ideology that suffuses these representations. A prescient study from the 1980s is Huang Aoyun’s Chinese Writers and the South Seas, which first identified many of the “Southeast Asian texts” of canonical Chinese authors such as Yu Dafu, Xu Dishan 许地山, Ai Wu 艾芜, Qin Mu 秦牧, and Ling Shuhua 凌书华, as well as Baren. For a review of recent studies in this vein, see Yan Min, Nanyang xushi, 22-25. Note that Yan Min’s graduate research focused on post-1965 yinhua literature—see, for example, “Shiyi xiangcun yu dushi kunzhe,” on the romanticized representation of the non-Chinese countryside in yinhua literature. 83 Flair Donglai Shi also calls for Sinophone studies to examine this period more closely in “Reconsidering Sinophone Studies” (317-320). 84 I.e. excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Mahua literature can refers to both the literature in Chinese of Malaysia (after 1965) or of Malaya (before 1965). Pre-1965, it includes Singapore as well, but strictly speaking excludes North Borneo. 38 === [PDF page 53] === 85 These authors include Ng Kim Chew, Li Yongping and Chang Kuei-hsing, all of whom have been translated into English. 86 See Jin Jin, Mahua Wenxue. 87 Hee, Remapping the Sinophone, 58. See also Show, “Lunzhan, xianshi yu Mahua geming wenxue,” which focuses on the work of Jin Zhimang 金芝芒. The “Mahua Specificity Debate” of 1947-48 has been pointed to as a precedent for Sinophone studies (Tsu and Wang, Introduction, Global Chinese Literature, 2). It is not sufficiently appreciated that it was not just about literature, but also a kind of disguised political quarrel between fraternal parties, in this case the CPM and CPC (Eu Chooi Yip, Oral History, Reel 10; also, Show, “Gendering Chinese Diaspora”). 88 Djagalov, From Internationalism to Postcolonialism, 219. 89 Lee ed., Making a World After Empire, has had an outsize influence; Foulcher and Roberts’ Indonesian Notebook is an exemplary demythologizing approach to Richard Wright’s attendance at the conference; and Stolte and Lewis ed., Lives of Cold-War Afro-Asianism for a more recent collection. 90 Vanhove, World Literature After Empire, Chapter 1. Note that after the Sino-Soviet Split, this organization fractured and the Chinese-aligned one did not survive the Cultural Revolution. 91 On India, see Gvili, Imagining India, Chapter 4, and Mangalagiri, States of Disconnect, Chapter 5; on Cuba, see Wang, “New Storm”; on the Arab world, see the forthcoming dissertation by Joanna Suwen Lee-Brown; on Africa, see Yoon, “Cold War Africa and China” and China and African Literature, Chapter 1. 92 See Liu, Shaping of Indonesia, Chapter 8, on Indonesian writers visiting the PRC; and Zhou, “Global Reporting,” on the Afro-Asian Journalists Association headquartered in Beijing, in which Indonesian journalists figured prominently. 93 Carolien Stolte is one of the scholars that has emphasized the “popular” dimension of the various Third World conferences (see “People’s Bandung” and “Delhi versus Bandung”). 94 Watson’s Cold War Reckonings, Chapter 1 examines the history of PEN International as a “free world” counterpart to the Afro-Asian Writers Bureau; Ng, “Soft-boiled, Anti-communist Romance” examines the Hong Kong writer Liu Yichang 刘以鬯’s links to US cultural warfare; and Lin, “Alternative Chineseness,” on Taiwanese anticommunist novels set in Southeast Asia. Lee, “Neutralizing English,” examines Han Suyin’s English-language writing in relation to Third World Literature. Shih, “Race and Relation” examines Bandung in passing but does not link it to diasporic literature. 95 These arrangements are discussed in detail in Zhu Yi, Wanlong jiaoxiangqu. 96 “Jiaoyin 脚印 [Footsteps],” in Shaping, Dengdai, 32. 97 Liao Bimei 廖苾梅, “Gei huizishou 给刽子手 [To the Executioner],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 9, 1958-03-01, p. 14; Li Qing, “Wenba! bobo 吻吧! 伯伯 [Kiss! Uncle],” Li Qing wenji, vol. 1, 192. 39 === [PDF page 54] === 98 “Jiaoyin 脚印 [Footsteps],” in Shaping, Shaping shiwen xuan, 32-33; Li Qing, “Duli dasha he danman shali bieshu 独立大厦和淡满沙里别墅 [Gedung Merdeka and Villa Taman Sari]” Li Qing wenji, vol. 1, 189-190. 99 See for example the reportage anthologized in Zhou Yingnan, Zhou Yingnan wenji, 10-64. 100 Sadar Cultural Foundation published a series of Afro-Asian anthologies in 1964 and 1965. A good overview of the new policy is provided in Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas 101 Chinese, Chapters 6-7. Issues 7 and 8 of the Bandung Bulletin reproduced the entire text of the treaty and several 102 communiques and speeches about it. 103 The treaty, which was revised in mid-1955 and only ratified around 1959, was not implemented until after the passage of an Indonesian Nationality Law (in 1958) and the subsidence of the diplomatic crisis of 1959-1960. The New Order abrogated the treaty in 1967. For a detailed account see Cai Renlong, “Yinni huaqiao shuangchong guoji tiaoyue de chansheng ji yanbian 印尼华侨双重国籍条约的产生及演变 [The genesis and evolution of the Indonesian Overseas Chinese Dual Nationality Treaty]” in Chidaoxian shang de jiaoyin, 5-44. 104 It was intended to allay Asian states’ fears that the diaspora would be used as a “fifth column [to] export red China’s revolution” (Zhou Enlai, quoted in Liu, Huaqiao guoji wenti, 178), with the hope of achieving diplomatic recognition at the expense of Taiwan (Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 60-68). However, most Southeast Asian states simply opted for unilateral legislation rather than bilateral treaties. 105 Fitzgerald goes as far as to call this a policy of cultural desinification and political decolonization, i.e. dismantling the “Chinese colonies” overseas (China and the Chinese Overseas, 138-141). 106 The attitude expressed by the PRC in the Dual Nationality Treaty encouraged unilateral “naturalization” in British Malaya (Low, “Malayan Emergency,” 48-50) and South Vietnam (Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese, 113-115). 107 Note that the principle of single nationality had been affirmed earlier by the attendees of the Asian Relations Conference in 1947 (Low, “Citizenship Diplomacy,” 53). 108 Flair Donglai Shi, writing on Sinophone studies, notes that with the nullification of dual nationality, the “anti-Sinocentric call for anti-diaspora/localisation finds its haunting precedent in the most unlikely place—a newly established PRC” (“Reconsidering Sinophone Studies,” 318). Shu-mei Shih seems to believe that the Dual-Nationality Treaty licensed discrimination against Chinese by depriving them of consular protection: “Bandung was a pivotal moment that turned the lives of Chinese minorities from bad to worse” (“Race and Relation,” 149). This is a strange interpretation that conflicts with my own. Laachir, Marzagora and Orsini, “Significant Geographies.” The examples they give are the 109 Maghreb, the Horn of Africa, and North India. 40 === [PDF page 55] === 110 See Adelaar and Schapper ed., The Oxford Guide to Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia, especially the chapters on “Multilingualism,” “Language Policy and the Politics of Language,” and “Non-Areal Contact” for a sociolinguistic introduction to Southeast Asia. 111 Hoogervorst, Language Ungoverned, 11-14. 112 Sai, “Representing the Past.” 113 Skinner “Java’s Chinese Minority,” 358; Kwartanada, “The Road to Resinification”; "In 1948 85% of Chinese children in Dutch-occupied territories attended Chinese education” (Liem and Taga-Tan, “Between ideology and experience,” 84. 114 Skinner estimated 2.45 million in 1961 ( “The Chinese Minority,” 99); Cai Renlong notes 2.09 million in 1960 (Chidaoxian shang de jiaoyin, 23); Charles Coppel estimates 2.2 million in 1956 (cited in Kwartanada, “The Making of the Chinese Problem,” 186). 115 Cai Renlong, Chidaoxian shang de jiaoyin, 23. There was also a population that claimed ROC nationality but was considered stateless. 116 Coppel, “Mapping the Peranakan Chinese in Indonesia,” in Studying the Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, 115-118. The results show considerable variation: for example, in Yogyakarta and Surabaya, over half spoke Chinese at home, while in Eastern Indonesia, the proportion was quite low. “In 1948 85% of Chinese children in Dutch-occupied territories attended Chinese education” 117 (Mary Somers Heidhues, cited in Liem and Taga-Tan, “Between Ideology and Experience,” 83). 118 254,730 in 1953 (Leo Suryadinata, cited in Soebagjo, “Studying Chinese in Indonesia,” 44) and 301,401 in 1957 (Huang Kunzhang and Li Xuemin, Yinni Huaqiao huaren shi, 76). This number would presumably have fallen after new regulations in the late 1950s which required Indonesian nationals to attend Indonesian-medium schools—however, Chinese-language education in the 1940s and 1950s would have formed the basis for the bulk of the readership in the 1960s. 119 Almanak Pers Indonesia 1954-1955, 195, 185. 120 Hoogervorst, Language Ungoverned, 17. 121 Dialectologists have examined the extensive use of Malay loanwords in Siantar Mandarin, for example. Note, too, that this form of Mandarin was based on Southwestern guanhua (official speech) rather than the Beijing variant (Gan Yu’en and Shan Shan, “Yinni ‘Xianda guoyu,’” 91). 122 See Chia and Hoogervorst ed., Sinophone Southeast Asia, especially Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 7. 123 Stenberg, “Diverse Fragility,” 70. 124 I am reminded of how Lydia Liu has noted that the early 20th century split of the third person pronoun ta 他 into a gendered pair ta/ta 他/她 changed deictic practices within Chinese (Liu, Translingual Practice, 154). 41 === [PDF page 56] === 125 See Huang, Pragmatics, for a useful and accessible introduction. I have also found John Frow’s use of pragmatic concepts in literary analysis a helpful reference. 126 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of Baren’s role in promoting Afro-Asian literature, including Indonesian literature. “From 1950 to 1965, the number of Indonesian-language books ranked second in the [Foreign 127 Language Press’] overall publications” (Liu, Shaping of Indonesia, 191). 128 Lin Wanli, “Tan Lu Xun de duanpian xiaoshuo,” 260. Lin’s example is of Shannu’s translation of Lu Xun into Indonesian, but the same applies for the reverse. 129 Zhang Dayong gives the example of a dictionary and Letters from the South (南方来信), the Vietnamese compilation, which Sadar released in a translation by Bakri Siregar (Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu ‘Jiaoxing,’” 156-57). 130 Thus, I will not engage some of the central topics in the study of print culture, such as the Habermasian “public sphere” or the transition out of scribal culture, where they are not directly relevant. 131 In addition to Anderson’s well-known reflections in Imagined Communities on print capitalism, I would also point to Clifford Geertz’s analysis of the theater state in Religion of Java, Ann Laura Stoler’s theorization of the colonial archive, and Karen Strassler’s concept of the image-event in Demanding Images, as well as the work of Rudolf Mrazek and James Siegel. 132 See for example Chapters 4 and 7 of Anderson, Language and Power. 133 The seminal work is Ahmat Adam’s Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indnoesian Consciousness. These works have been supplemented by Nobuto Yamamoto’s Censorship in Colonial Indonesia on state surveillance, Tom Hoogervorst’s Language Ungoverned on the Sino-Malay press and Rianne Subijanto’s excellent Communication Against Capital on communist print culture. See Yuliantri and Dahlan, Lekra tak membakar buku, for a history of the PKI daily Harian 134 Rakjat; Subijanto, Communication Against Capital, on the 1920s Sinar Hindia; as well as recent work by Matthew Woolgar on the PKI in West Java. 135 Hill, The Press in New Order Indonesia, Introduction. See also Sen and Hill ed., Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia for an approach that encompasses mass media besides print. See also the work of Ariel Heryanto, e.g. in Identity and Pleasure, although this focuses primarily on post-1998 popular culture. 136 Oey, Indonesian government and press, and Dhakidae, “Fall of Political Journalism.” See also Eunike Setiadarma’s forthcoming dissertation on practices and concepts of care in the popular press. 137 Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai, examines the emergence of the Shanghai publishing industry, and Culp, The Power of Print, covers the transition into the socialist era. The anthology edited by Reed and Brokaw, From Woodblocks to the Internet, contains a study of the CPC’s print 42 === [PDF page 57] === activities (Reed, “Advancing the ‘Gutenberg’ Revolution”) and May 4th publishers (Ling, “Culture, Commerce and Connections”) that have a more direct connection to yinhua literature. 138 Reed, “Advancing the (Gutenberg) Revolution.” 139 The term is a riff on Brossat and Klingberg’s “Red Yiddishland.” 140 Leow, “Weeping Qingdao Tears.” 141 Seng, “Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism,” and Show, “Gendering Chinese Diaspora,” examine the postwar activities in Singapore of the communist propagandists Hu Yuzhi and Shen Zijiu respectively. 142 I am thinking particularly of the work of Isabel Hofmeyr (see “The Complicating Sea” on the “Indian Ocean as method”). Despite occasional comparisons (Chin, “Afro-Asian Silk Road,” 31), the kind of multisite, multilingual, and multiethnic research of the last decade in Indian Ocean print culture has simply not been done for the “South Seas.” 143 See for example the Bloomsbury Handbook to Postcolonial Print Cultures edited by Gajarawala et al, and the special issue of Radical History Review on “Revolutionary Papers,” edited by Ahmad, Benson and Morgenstern. It may be possible to think of certain questions of leftist politics, such as the relationship between underground and aboveground, between the party and the masses, in terms of their expression in print. Although from an entirely different period, Ian Haywood’s work on Chartist periodicals has also been useful for me. 144 Histories of Sino-Indonesian diplomacy universally remark on the Indonesian government’s aggravation at inflammatory broadcasts by the Southeast Asian Division of Radio Peking (under Huang Ailing) during the 1965-67 breakdown of diplomatic relations (e.g., Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 178-79). Liu Hong notes that in its prime it received thousands of letters from Indonesian listeners per month (“The China Metaphor,” 220). A reconstruction of this radio’s programming has not been undertaken to my knowledge. See Wilcox, “Performing Bandung,” Lindsay, “Performing Indonesia Abroad,” and the 145 companion documentary, Lindsay and Sujai dir., Menggelar Indonesia. 146 Setijadi-Dunn and Barker have examined ethnic Chinese film producers (“Imagining ‘Indonesia’), and Xu Lanjun, while focused on Hong Kong, has begun to delineate the transnational distribution apparatus (“The Southern Film Corporation”); in addition, Dafna Ruppin has examined the earliest stages of cinema in Indonesia (Komedi Bioscoop). Ang Hock Liem 翁福林 and the entertainment complex he owned, Lokasari (快乐世界; previously, Prinsenpark), in particular, deserve further study. 147 Strassler, Refracted Visions, especially Chapters 1-3. 148 Xu Qiongling has studied Indonesian returnees’ participation in PRC athletics (Quanquan chizi xin), while several Chinese-Indonesian athletes are discussed in Lembong et al ed., Tionghoa Dalam Keindonesiaan, vol. 2. 43 === [PDF page 58] === Chapter 1: Rise and Fall of a Print Culture A Walk Through Glodok In a short story about the transformation of an elderly worker from a cynic into a proselytizer, the reporter Zhou Yingnan included the following passage on yinhua print culture. The protagonist is explaining to his nephew, the narrator, how he changed: “Well, in the past, you know that I'm not very educated, I couldn't really understand the newspapers, and whenever I picked one up, there were so many new words, so I would just give up and forget about it […] The night school teacher taught us to organize reading groups. Yuanying, Minglong, Minqiao and I are in a group, and we have two copies of Xin Bao which we share. The four of us take turns reading, while one reads out loud, the other three read silently, if he doesn't know a word, someone else helps read it out, if all three don't know the word, then they ask the teacher at night school, and the teacher explains it all in detail. This is a good method, and we're all improving quickly [...] We're doing criticism and self-criticism now. If someone is wrong, they admit to it and correct it. If other people notice, then they criticize, and ask you to correct it. What a great rule."1 Here, language institutions such as newspapers and night schools, together with social technologies such as decentralized study groups and criticism/self-criticism, are all bundled together. The newspaper functions here not just as a means of communication, but as the center of a new kind of social life. Even more than political education or nationalist sentiment, it was this new print-centered culture that defined the yinhua world. Let us begin by examining the institutional geography of this print culture. Say that, sometime in the middle of the last century, you have just exited the old train station of Jakarta's downtown. A few steps and you find yourself at a broad intersection. A long avenue stretches south, splits into two parallel avenues around a canal, linking the old town to the Independence Square (Medan Merdeka) to the south. Perhaps on a clear day you could see the National Monument (Monas), though of course it might still be under construction. You are in one of the centers of printing and publishing in this part of the world, which is also one of the longestestablished Chinatowns in Southeast Asia, Glodok. Right on the corner of Asemka and Pintu Besar sit the "quasi-monopoly" of the Sin Po (新报) enterprise.2 Besides taking in a steady stream of profitable contract print jobs, this company also published two influential dailies, one 44 === [PDF page 59] === in Indonesian and one in Chinese—the one in the story quoted above—as well as multiple magazines. Its rival, the liberal Keng Po, was headquartered just across the street, while one of its allies, the communist Harian Rakyat (“People’s Daily”), was just down the block. The other major Chinese-language newspapers were not much farther, including the pro-CPC Seng Hwo Pao (“The Life;” 生活报) and its rival, the pro-GMD Thien Sung Yit Po (“Voice of Heaven;” 天 声日报). At the heart of Glodok is the bustling commercial street of Pancoran, a cultural hub lined with half a dozen Chinese-language bookstores where you could purchase new editions of Mao, Lenin, or Stalin in a number of languages. Opposite Pancoran is the cramped ghetto of Pinangsia, where the small printery Tjen Goan (振源) Company lies, ready to take emergency jobs. A little further down the thoroughfare, and you reach the PRC embassy, opposite from a police station— the former colonial prison—and next to the Seng Hwo Pao. Here one can view film screenings, or consult the free library, to read the latest publications from the PRC. The embassy is pursuing a more-or-less successful campaign of cultural diplomacy, and has many allies in the press, the schools, and some parts of the capitalist class, although it also has powerful enemies. Only a few steps further south, and you reach the former mansion of the last majoor der Chinezen Khouw Kim An, complete with the old-fashioned pillars and wide eaves. (It still exists today, surrounded by skyscraper hotels.) By this point, it has been repurposed as a headquarters for several communal organizations, including the predominantly-Chinese quasi-party Baperki. Its publications, including the Chinese-language Chiao Hsing Weekly (觉醒周刊), played a key role in connecting progressive Sinophone youth to the mainstream of Indonesian political life. As you continue south down the avenue, in the direction of Independence Square, you exit Glodok, and enter the neighborhood of Mangga Besar. Best known as a hub for entertainment, including the infamous Lokasari, also known as Prinsenpark or, in Chinese, “Happy World [快乐世界], in its smaller alleyways the offices of the Zamrud Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud; 翡翠文化基金会), which in the 1960s published over a hundred books of yinhua literature. Within twenty minutes walking, you can reach at least 45 === [PDF page 60] === four Chinese high schools with thousands of students in total, and a far greater number of elementary schools. To the west are two universities established by predominantly-Chinese organizations. To the southwest, next to Independence Square, the neighborhood of Pasar Baru (“New Market”), with its cleaner and more modern shops, forms a secondary center of Chinese print culture—this is where the office of Chiao Hsing Weekly and the Sadar Cultural Foundation are located, for example, in the same house as the renowned Indonesian writer Rukiah. Return once more to the corner of Asemka, where the Sin Po enterprise is located. Around 1964, the routine of the editors of Xin Bao (at this point renamed Zhongcheng Bao) might have looked like this.3 At 7AM, the editorial staff clocks in at their second floor office in the Asemka 29 building (where we started our walk). The first task on arrival is to turn on the radio: the Indonesian-language radio brings the editors up to speed on domestic news, while the Chinese-language broadcasting out of Beijing, on the other hand, functions like a news wire. It has to be transcribed word-for-word by dedicated staff, and then screened and revised for potential republication. Throughout the day the Indonesian news agency Antara delivers printed packets of news, out of which selections were translated for publication. While the news is all handled in house, supplements like Garden of Youth (青年园地) and Sparks (火花) were contracted out to fellow travelers who might be paid with an honorarium. Visual assets, like the production of zinc plates (“clichés”) from photographs or illustrations, appear like magic from the department upstairs, while the business side of things—subscriptions, distribution, advertising, and procurement—takes place downstairs. After a quick lunch across the street, it is time to finalize the text for printing around 2PM. Dragging out the process will drive the layout department wild with frustration, since they know that every extra minute spent on editing cuts into the time needed for composition. Once laid out, the chase is rushed to the printing department downstairs. A manual print is made with a roller by the head of the department, and the editor signs off on it, or makes final changes. At this point, the editorial staff can go home, assured that tens of thousands of copies of this newspaper will be out the door and on the way to 46 === [PDF page 61] === the train to Surabaya or the plane to Medan, the two farthest important markets, by 4PM, and hitting the streets of Jakarta later that evening. I draw this sketch (literally—see Figure 1) of a place in a time to concretize the institutional network that undergirded an entire print culture whose traces are now dispersed and submerged. Glodok is today a shade of its past. Residents who could afford to leave have moved to the suburban enclaves, mostly to the north and west. The center of economic activity has long since moved south. Despite recent attempts at “urban renewal” that involve ethnicized food and clothing, sometimes nostalgically branded with sinographs, the bookstores, the printeries, and the schools that formed the base of sinographic sociality are all gone. It is hard to imagine that through the transportation networks—the train station, Kota Jakarta, that abuts the Chinatown, as well as the ports of Ancol and Tanjung Priok to the north, and the airport of Kemayoran to the West, all three of which are near by today's standards—such institutions once set the pace for the yinhua world. Reams of newspapers, trunks of books, and cohorts of educators emanated outwards from here, drawing in a steady stream of words, people, and money in their wake. For the Chinese language in Indonesia there was no central state body for proper usage, as there was for Indonesian, or for Chinese in China, and we would hardly expect there to be one. Rather, this network of what I call “language institutions” assumed this responsibility, especially the publishing and educational organizations. Bookstores, cinemas, theaters, libraries, and so on played a role too, and the upstream decisions of community or political organizations also mattered of course. Together, they formed part of a larger ideological apparatus, as well as the substrate of a print culture, regulating the proper form and content of Chinese-language expression in Indonesia. I emphasize language and print here, to tactically suspend the reliance in popular and scholarly narratives on concepts such as community or identity. Following these threads allows us to see that assumptions of the internal coherence and external boundaries of Chinese-Indonesian history are sometimes circular, not always tenable. We will find, for example, that (especially towards the end of this period) the yinhua formation overlapped more with the Indonesian communists who read Harian Rakyat than the peranakan liberals who read 47 === [PDF page 62] === Star Weekly. Departing from a written language, and disambiguating it temporarily from ethnicity in general, permits a different perspective on the cultural history of Cold War Asia. (Incidentally, it also means that I exclude Indonesian-language newspapers and schools that were owned by or primarily served ethnic Chinese from the purview of my dissertation.) How did this print culture emerge so quickly in postcolonial Indonesia? And why was it destroyed? The crucial story here is of a shift over time to the left. By the end of the Sukarno era in 1965, the yinhua language institutions had all become avowedly anti-imperialist, generally sympathetic to communism, and critical of capitalism. This shift cannot be entirely accounted for by leftist infiltration, though this was certainly the default explanation given by liberal and rightwing commentators. We can name several compounding factors. In the first place, the pull of the left for not just some intellectuals, but the entire yinhua media complex, was enhanced by the favorable conditions of official anticolonialism in Indonesia and socialism in China. Another crucial factor was the left’s strong emphasis on cultural work which succeeded in making conservative rivals appear backwards. Finally, there was the minoritarian factor: the tensions between the local and the diasporic, while severe, especially at a time when lines of citizenship were being drawn, could also be ameliorated or even transcended through the political project of internationalism. In the following, I seek to provide a serviceable overview of the development of Chineselanguage print culture in Indonesia up to 1965, one that will be useful for any student of the Chinese diaspora, Indonesian history, or Cold War culture. My emphasis in this chapter is on the press, in order to set the stage for the discussion of yinhua literature—including in relation to book publishing, literary journals, and literary supplements—in the next chapter. To start, I probe the origins of this culture in the Netherlands Indies. Rather than drawing a straight line through the rupture of the Pacific War, I describe multiple possible beginnings. After that, I discuss the development of the yinhua press from 1945 to 1965, with an eye to how it navigated a challenging economic and political environment and even thrived. I conclude with the introduction of a ban on the Chinese script as part of the anticommunist violence that established 48 === [PDF page 63] === the New Order. Throughout, I trace the process by which a diasporic attachment to China, through the mediation of leftist culture in Chinese, was in turn transformed into an Indonesian patriotism. This account further discredits the assimilationist story of a foreign language as an obstacle to social integration and ethnic harmony, and sheds light on the links between antisinicism and anticommunism. This chapter also introduces several players that figure prominently in the rest of the dissertation. First and foremost there is the Sin Po enterprise, which published an influential Indonesian and Chinese daily. Although both used the same name, literally the “New Newspaper (新报),” I refer to the Indonesian-language edition as Sin Po and the Chinese-language edition (using pinyin) as Xin Bao. I maintain this usage after the newspapers were renamed “Loyal Newspaper” in the 1960s: in Indonesian, Warta Bhakti, and in pinyin romanization of Chinese, Zhongcheng Bao (忠诚报). By threading the changes that this publication experienced over this period, I hope to provide some narrative continuity to the historical ruptures. The Chinese paper was not just an edition, but an editorially independent paper. By 1965, it was the biggest, the oldest, and in some ways the most representative. As a part of a well-capitalized conglomerate, it had both commercial advantages and political disadvantages that placed it at the heart of the "problem" of Chinese print capital in a decolonizing Indonesian economy. Its relationship to its senior (but not necessarily larger) Indonesian-language sibling, the Sin Po, is metonymic of the minoritarian status of the Chinese language in Indonesia as a whole. My discussion of this highcirculation daily is interwoven with the stories of several publications with direct links to communist internationalism—that is, Red Tide (赤潮) in the 1930s, Below the Winds (风下) in the 1940s, and Chiao Hsing Weekly (觉醒周刊) in the 1950s. 49 === [PDF page 64] === Figure 1. Glodok’s language institutions. Map of yinhua print, education, and community institutions in Jakarta’s Chinatown in the 1950s. Source: design by author. 50 === [PDF page 65] === Late Colonial Currents The beginnings of sinographic print culture are still murky. The earliest known materials printed with movable metal type) are government publications from the 1850s.4 However, only at the turn of the century would ethnic Chinese publishers begin to print periodicals. Some newspapers are attested as early as 1903.5 One early bilingual newspaper, Ik Po 译报 ("Translation") founded 1904, was primarily composed of advertisements together with educational sections on Chinese language—these mostly unsystematic articles normally just gloss individual characters, providing Dutch- and Malay-based pronunciations. The spectacular masthead, which a counterposes a Confucian scholar-bureaucrat with a European-style angel, and makes decorative use of sinographs (see Figure 2), is suggestive of the cultural nationalist revival of the early 20th century.6 At the same time, it also hints at the potential history of a hybrid and multilingual print culture before the establishment of rigid linguistic boundaries. The political press can be traced back to at least 1909, when a spate of short-lived, irregular newspapers were founded, many of which promoted anti-Qing revolutionary activity.7 Most of these were linked to the soe po sia (书报社), or reading societies, established as fronts for the overseas republican movement. Only in the early 1920s, however, would a durable cohort of Chinese-language newspapers be founded, many of which survived for several decades. These included Xin Bao ("New Newspaper," 新报, Jakarta, 1921) as well as Thien Sung Yit Po ("Heaven's Voice Daily," 天声日报, Jakarta, 1921), which would later become the GMD party newspaper.8 Like the Chinese schools that the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan (Chinese Council [中华会 馆], hereafter THHK) began to establish all across Indonesia, as well as the various community organizations and chambers of commerce, these organizations recruited staff from China, many of whom were Southeast Asia-born students from the Jinan Academy (暨南学堂, later refounded as Jinan University [暨南大学]), or the Jimei School (集美学校).9 The yinhua press developed alongside what is generally referred to as the Sino-Malay press. Xin Bao, for example, was founded as the Chinese-language edition of the Indonesian/Malay-language Sin Po,10 founded in 1904, and enjoyed the competitive advantages 51 === [PDF page 66] === of scale. However, Xin Bao was not just a translation of the Sin Po, and operated with its own editorial leadership, first Xie Zuoshun 谢左舜 and later Song Zhongquan 宋中铨. The most visible difference between the two editions was in layout: where Sin Po featured news articles on its front page, Xin Bao's front page was almost entirely taken up by advertisements and announcements (see Figure 9). This "commercial" orientation of the pre-war Xin Bao publications—one which is also visible in contemporaneous Singaporean Chinese newspapers like Nanyang Siang Pau—would change in the era of anticolonial revolution. The Sin Po group would grow into one of the most influential media enterprises in Indonesia over the following half-century, publishing both the two aforementioned dailies, as well as several magazines (Figure 3) and briefly, a European-languages weekly (De Chineesche Revue) and a Surabaya edition (which later became Sin Tit Po).11 The Sin Po group's positions were considered radical by the authorities. Not only were they known for full-throated support of Chinese nationalism and played a leading role in 1930s solidarity campaigns in the war of resistance against Japan.12 More threateningly, they were also critical of colonialism, “the white peril.”13 They opposed participation in colonial government, rejected Dutch subjecthood, and supported Indonesian nationalists.14 The composer Supratman was a reporter at Sin Po and his “Indonesia Raya” (“Great Indonesia”), later to become the national anthem, was first published in its pages. Purportedly, the company also covertly subsidized the reproduction of Sukarno’s anticolonial propaganda pamphlets,15 and it may have lent matrices for illustrations to the communist Sinar Hindia.16 Indeed, historians have spoken of a “Sin Po Group” as the representative of “China-oriented” politics in this period. As important as their orientation towards China was what I would describe as their orientation away from the Netherlands—it is this shared political impulse that is often overlooked when cultural affinity is overemphasized, and it was this, too, that would make it possible for the yinhua world to develop a partnership with the broader Indonesian left in the years to come. As Nobuto Yamamoto has shown in painstaking detail, the Dutch colonial state enforced a censorship regime that was considerably more draconian than neighboring colonies, with the 52 === [PDF page 67] === effect that newspapers had to remain largely apolitical to survive. In the 1930s, such censorship actually intensified, as newspapers were routinely shuttered and editors imprisoned for looselydefined subversive content, which included antifascism. One reporter was punished for the offence of calling Hitler an insecure man in 1939.17 In the 1930s, articles deemed to be anti- Japanese, and usually brought to the attention of the government by the Japanese consul, were the primary reason for temporary suspension (persbreidel) of Chinese newspapers, which were already a major target of colonial censors, especially after 1936.18 Initially, the Xin Bao was treated more leniently than the Malay edition, not because it was less fervent but because the Dutch were less concerned about maintaining its control over its readership who were assumed to be recent immigrants.19 Even so, Xin Bao was warned and then "bridled" in 1938, and then again in 1939.20 The colonial attempt to seal off the Indies press from the dangerous developments in the rest of Asia, especially from communist and anticolonial influence, meant that radical opinions could not hope to establish a foothold even in disguise within the mainstream press. However, it is possible with some difficulty to identify the glimmers of a radical underground, one which never cohered into a tradition, but strongly suggest the potential for one in less repressive circumstances; here we follow Rianne Subijanto, who has described the emergence of the communist movement in Indonesia was an event in the history of communication.21 Historically speaking, the Dutch suppression of the communist uprisings of 1926, which nearly coincided with the White Terror of 1927 in China, closed the small window of liberal governance which permitted a degree of public dissent. The development of communism in Southeast Asia, as is well-known, mobilized and traveled along Overseas Chinese networks. During the Comintern’s Second Period, ethnic Chinese intellectuals, merchants, and workers participated in or led the founding of local communist parties in the Philippines, Siam/Thailand, and Malaya, and sometimes the lines between these and the CPC could be blurry.22 The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), however, was not only independent, but predated the CPC by several years. Notwithstanding the involvement of several individual creole Chinese 53 === [PDF page 68] === communists, contact between the two parties, and concomitantly, between Chinese-speaking leftists in Indonesia and the PKI, is generally thought to be insignificant before 1949.23 While this interpretation is largely correct, there were in fact many individual moments of contact— colonial conditions of censorship and repression, however, made them difficult to sustain. In this section, I discuss the “Red Tide Incident” of 1933 as an example of an interrupted or delayed tendency, which may help to illuminate the postwar strength and character of the Chinese left in Indonesia and its links to print culture. In late 1932, a group of immigrant Chinese communist educators established a party branch in a high school in the small city of Malang in the uplands of East Java.24 The core of the group were several alumni from Moscow’s Sun Yat Sen University, some of whom were also Hokkiens with links to Southeast Asia. Xie Huaidan and Lin Qiduo, co-editors of the Xiamen communist periodical Red Flag (红旗), had both escaped the city after the White Terror reached it. Like so many other leftist intellectuals, they found refuge in Southeast Asia’s language institutions.25 In time-honored tradition, one of their first activities was to establish cells for the production, distribution, and discussion of radical mimeographs.26 It did not survive long: within a few months, Dutch police retraced their publication, Red Tide (赤潮), through the post. Over fifty arrests followed, resulting in over a dozen deportations and at least two banishments to the penal colony of Boven Digoel.27 The police, it was reported, “carted off… a carful of propaganda” for translation.28 The press boiled over: European socialists exulted that “communist grows in Indonesia!” as colonial conservatives fretted that this “import communism… was no salon-communism” and the Singapore papers dwelled on the suffering of the suspects’ parents.29 These arrests demonstrate that by the early 1930s, communism was already sinking in roots within the Chinese-language community. It was linked not only to China and Moscow, but to rest of the region through the Chinese diaspora. Notably, because ties had been cut with China, the Malang cell was established not as a branch of the CPC but rather of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which the Red Tide cadre were able to contact through the Hokkien communist 54 === [PDF page 69] === network!30 Furthermore, the existence of two cells in North Sumatra and East Java suggest the special importance of these two regions for the history of the Chinese left in Indonesia—they which would produce many cadres in the years to come and also register relatively high support for Indonesian independence here during the anticolonial struggle of the 1940s.31 International comparison suggests that, but for the repressive efficacy of the colonial state, Chinese-speaking communists might have found more success in the Dutch East Indies, as they did in the Philippines, Siam and Malaya in the 1930s.32 Instead, the Red Tide Affair usually appears as an intriguing but insignificant historical footnote.33 Given all this, the postwar explosion in progressive activity, after the lifting of the colonial-fascist censorship, should be unsurprising. The close involvement of party-building with printing and publishing in the history of the CPC—what Christopher Reed has labeled, somewhat loosely, “print communism”—is even more visible in the history of this splinter.34 We see this in the biography of the first recruit at the elementary school, a progressive teacher, Chang Hsi Shek 张希石 (Figure 4),35 who came from a wealthy local family and had been involved in a May 4th-style literary magazine (New Life Weekly 新生周刊) while studying in Beijing University. Because he was an Indies subject, rather than deportation, he was banished to Boven Digoel. Eventually, he would be transferred to Australia.36 By 1947, he was back in Medan, preaching to young progressive Chinese about the anticolonial struggle. At every stage in his revolutionary career, he was involved in publishing, all the way until the coup in 1965.37 Although the red tide was stemmed in 1933 through white terror, it did not dry up. While most of the deportees reentered the struggle in Fujian, as Xie herself did, or in the Philippines, a few found their way back to Indonesia. There, they reunited with comrades who had escaped official attention, several of whom had turned their energies towards cultural entrepreneurship, for example founding the Dadi (“Good Earth”) Bookstore in Medan.38 In fact, this entire affair prefigures many of the later patterns of yinhua culture. The role of radical teachers, especially those who immigrated after the 1927 rightward turn in China, is obvious, as are the importance of the Chinese communities of North Sumatra and East Java as a progressive base. More 55 === [PDF page 70] === significantly, it suggests that the scholarly focus on nationalism requires complication. Like many other communists in the Comintern’s “Third Period,” the Red Tide organizers established a League Against Imperialism, perhaps with the hopes of eventually extending their reach outside of the Chinese-speaking community. The division of anticolonialism/anti-imperialist politics as part of outwards-facing organizing and agitation, and anticapitalist/communist for internal, cadre-oriented purposes will be a hallmark of later approaches linked to the strategy of the United Front. Furthermore, this branch was formally linked not to the Communist Party of China, but to the nascent Communist Party of the Philippines; in a period when the national divisions between communist parties was considerably more porous, and contact with the CPC was broken, they instead secured affiliation with Manila through a network of Quanzhou communists who were also Moscow alums.39 In this case, the “nation-state” was only one among many affinal links. At least as important were Comintern internationalism, Hokkien hometown links, and Southeast Asian regionalism. Leo Suryadinata in his study of late colonial peranakan politics has identified three “streams,” that were Indonesia, Netherlands, and China-oriented respectively, each of whom had their representative newspapers. It appears that such a tripartite characterization does not extend to the Chinese-language media, which by the 1930s was mostly agonistic towards the Dutch colonial state. (In contrast, the community in Malaya was far more divided, i.e. conciliatory, towards the British empire.) It is not hard to see why, considering the draconian censorship regime. The political use of deportation was frequent: twelve of the editors and/or directors of Thien Sung Yit Po, for example, the GMD-affiliated newspaper, were deported in the two decades before the war. For the New China Times in Medan, the number was seven.40 And that’s without counting all of the trials, fines, and prison terms. There is some evidence that as the war approached, the antifascist mood in the worldwide Chinese press intensified. Thus we read of more underground mimeographs being established with names like Sea of Blood (血海), Eliminate the Traitors (锄奸), and Battlefront (阵地);41 and of a new wave of newspapers being founded, including the one that renowned author Heiying 56 === [PDF page 71] === reportedly helmed, which emphasized both anti-Japanese mobilization and the new literature.42 The colonial state would not doubt have sought to quash such a convergence between the two streams of the radical underground and the commercial press, as it had with Red Tide—yet the time when it could do so had already passed. 57 === [PDF page 72] === Figure 2. Masthead of Ik Po. A relatively early example of a bilingual use of Chinese script in a (non-governmental) weekly newspaper from 1905. Source: PNRI microform collection. 58 === [PDF page 73] === Figure 3. Sin Po’s publishing empire. From top center, clockwise: the first-ever issue of the Malay edition of Sin Po, presumably from 1909; four issues of the Chinese-language daily, Xin Bao (note the prominence of advertising in comparison to the Malay edition); an issue of a pictorial periodical (possibly a Chinese-language weekly); an issue of Sin Po Wekelijkse Editie, the Malay-language weekly; three issues of the Malay-language daily Sin Po. Source: Sin Po Jubileum Nummer 1910-1935. 59 === [PDF page 74] === Figure 4. Xie Huaidan and Chang Hsi Shek in Asahan. Pictured here in an anniversary publication for Asahan’s Peishan Elementary school, Xie Huaidan (Xie Fang), fourth from the rightl, and her first recruit, Chang Hsi Shek, is on the far left. Xie and Zhang were founders of a communist cell in Malang that published Red Tide from 1932-1933. Source: Peishan zhi niannian, 14. 60 === [PDF page 75] === The Postwar Confluence The rapid success of the invasion of Southeast Asia in 1942 crushed European prestige while also vindicating warnings about Japanese imperialism. One of the effects of the fascist occupation was the formation of new links between the political, economic, and cultural leadership of the Chinese community. Several hundred Chinese elites known for anti-Japanese activism were interned in a concentration camp at Cimahi near Bandung, for example, including the entire leadership of Sin Po, as well as the writer Heiying.43 Outside the camps and prisons, in areas of concentrated Chinese settlement such as Java, West Borneo, and North Sumatra, the solidarity movement for the Chinese war of resistance Japan transformed into an antifascist underground. In conformity to a pattern throughout Southeast Asia, right and left antifascists formed underground networks, working together without merging: these organizations included the People’s Anti-Fascist Alliance [人民反法西斯大同盟] of North Sumatra, the Resistance Against Japan National Liberation Alliance (抗日民族解放大同盟) of Java and the Anti- Japanese Alliance of West Kalimantan (西婆罗洲抗日同盟会).44 While the bulk of antifascists were locally-born youth, many of the leaders of these organizations were either part of the post- 1927 generation of emigres escaping the White Terror,45 or the even more recent wave of communist refugees from Singapore, which included Baren and Hu Yuzhi.46 While the wartime achievements of this network were limited, especially in comparison to the record of armed resistance in Malaya and the Philippines, restricted mostly to promoting non-collaboration, cadre training, and spreading propaganda, the cadre of these organizations and perhaps their mythology became the bedrock of the entire postwar progressive establishment. The Japanese surrender in 1945 only ended the Pacific War in a formal sense—almost immediately, European powers returned to Asia eager to "reclaim" their colonies, as civil war broke out in mainland China. Despite the hardship, the recession of the draconian censorship regime meant that, for the first time, a Chinese-language public sphere could arise. The subterranean streams of radical print culture that survived the age of reaction now burst above ground to saturate the postwar revolutionary moment. The most consequential development for 61 === [PDF page 76] === the press was the rise of a Southeast Asian network of left-wing newspapers affiliated with overseas branches of the Chinese Democratic League and indirectly linked to the CPC, many of which developed organically from underground mimeographs. The regional center of this network was in Singapore, where Chinese leftists who had fled North to join the Malayan resistance, or across the straits to join the Indonesian underground, now reconvened. With the financial and political support of the anti-KMT capitalist Tan Kah Kee 陈嘉庚, a weekly magazine, Below the Winds (风下), followed by a daily newspaper, Nan Chiao Jit Pau (南侨日 报), were established, and a magazine focused on the women’s movement, New Woman (新妇 女).47 Although these were located in British Malaya, they were staffed almost entirely by Chinese communists who had spent the war in hiding in Sumatra, and especially in the first year of operation, they placed their emphasis on the anticolonial struggle in Indonesia (and Vietnam).48 in Jin Jin’s words, they operated from a concept of “Indonesia as subject [以印尼为 主体].”49 The sharp politics, fresh content, and reader-friendly style of Below the Winds and its associated publications made it, without a doubt, the cultural touchstone of this era. Many of the new organizations were overtly affiliated with the Chinese Democratic League (民主同盟; hereafter CDL), a “third-way” party with a base among intellectuals and professionals that functioned as a CCP-linked front organization in Southeast Asia.50 The political vanguard of this new left-wing media network was the Democratic Daily News (民主日 报), a newspaper founded out of the underground mimeograph of the People’s Antifascist Alliance.51 (While this newspaper, as well as an associated magazine, are lost today, reports on its coverage are preserved in Dutch intelligence archives.) This publication, which took the unusual step of establishing a short-lived Indonesian-language edition, Kerakjatan (“Democracy”), was an outspoken supporter of the Indonesian Revolution even compared to other communist-linked newspapers such as Nan Chiao Jit Pau (南侨日报) in Singapore and Seng Hwo Pao (生活报) in Jakarta, which were considerably more ambivalent. The efflorescent left-wing media network of revolutionary Asia did not survive the emergence of the Cold War intact. Although suppressed in still-colonized territories such as 62 === [PDF page 77] === British Malaya, it survived in a more nationalized version in liberated Indonesia. Jakarta’s Seng Hwo Pao took on an especially important role as the semi-official mouthpiece of the PRC in Indonesia. This newspaper is especially interesting for the way it shows how a group of progressive businessmen could, in a specific context, wholeheartedly embrace communism. (In some cases, the story runs the other way, with communists becoming successful businessmen.) It was founded by a group of antifascist friends linked to Java’s antifascist league (大同盟) who organized a joint stock trading company in 1944. This company had the stated postwar goal of plowing profits into the promotion of progressive politics in the Chinese language institutions through (1) supporting education (2) selling progressive books and (3) starting a newspaper.52 Stories such as this suggest that the postwar progressive press should be seen as a fusion of the underground left and the patriotic bourgeoisie that had been created in the crucible of the 1940s. (Only in the early 1950s would the right mount a coordinated counteroffensive, founding a spate of new newspapers under more direct party influence.)53 Legacy newspapers were soon forced to pick sides as the Chinese Civil War intensified: the Sin Po and Xin Bao soon switched from official neutrality to a critical stance towards Chiang Kai-shek.54 The new papers were both political allies and economic competitors in this new environment. Contacts with the Chinese left on the mainland intensified, and Xin Bao editors were even contacted to try to develop an Indonesian-language dictionary and historical encyclopedia.55 The question of the Indonesian Republic was more controversial. Forced evacuations and property destruction by the Indonesian military as part of a "scorched earth" strategy, as well as several massacres in parts of Javas by anticolonial militias, were strongly condemned by many parts of Chinese-Indonesian establishment. The Sin Po group’s position followed the public line of the Republic of China's representatives, sought to retain support for independence by portraying these incidents as negligent rather than malicious. Ravando has examined the Sin Po’s fiercely critical coverage of the Indonesian government’s inability to rein in its militias and even military, but the position of the Xin Bao—which was not simply a translation of the Malay edition, but a semi-autonomous publication—is harder to ascertain, given the paucity of 63 === [PDF page 78] === surviving records. What is clear is that serious tensions emerged within the Sin Po company during this period. In 1946 or 1947, as it struggled to manage the influx of refugees from the countryside, the Chung Hwa Tsung Hui, which included the Sin Po director Ang Jan Goan on its board, commissioned a report on recent anti-Chinese violence. Kwee Kek Beng, then editor-inchief of the Malay/Indonesian edition, completed much of the research for it. The result was the bilingual Memorandum outlining acts of violence and inhumanity perpetrated by Indonesian bands on innocent Chinese before and after the Dutch police action was enforced on July 21 1947,56 based on on-the-ground investigations and reports from local Chinese associations. Yet after its publication, Kwee faced accusations that he had received Dutch military support. (He later wrote that he had been offered it, but refused it.) 57 Of course, the colonial government did not delay in circulating these materials to press and community leaders. Shortly after, Kwee Kek Beng left Sin Po, and Ang Jan Goan, who worked closely with the Republican government,58 publicly distanced himself from the Memorandum.59 It is reasonable to surmise that this split between the editor and the director, who had worked together for over two decades, was related to this document, and/or to the formation of the Chinese militia known as the Pao An Tui in response to the recent violence. Perhaps the most influential part of the Memorandum was an album of photographs, apparently sourced from the Chinese press, that was compiled as a supplement. (Indeed, decontextualized images from this album continue to circulate in secondary literature today.60) The album contained images of mutilated or burnt corpses, apparently from the Malang area,61 followed by images of a massive anti-Republican protest—organized by pro-GMD partisans—in Medan in September of 1947.62 Together, these two sets of images produce a clear story of Indonesian violence followed by Chinese protest in reaction. Yet the left-wing papers were far more critical of the narrative of anti-Chinese violence. One leftist Jakartan, writing for a Singaporean newspaper edited by Hu Yuzhi, The Dutch have taken pictures of Indonesians' atrocities for propaganda purposes to the world… [which] have killed Chinese sympathy and made the Chinese turn to the Dutch. The question now open is how long the Dutch protection toward the Chinese would last? 64 === [PDF page 79] === This will depend how long would the Dutch need the Chinese to restore their policy of colonization.63 To try to force a retraction of this critical article, the Dutch sent agents equipped with these atrocity photographs. Initially, even pro-Western editors protested that their readers sympathize so strongly with the Republic that they could not include reports that would be considered pro-Dutch = anti-Republican by the readers for commercial (sic!) considerations.64 Despite initial suspicions, however, their efforts began to pay off, and the earlier widespread sympathy towards the Republic became more muted.65 The complexities of the experience of the independence struggle remained unresolved and often unarticulated. After Kwee’s departure, the Indonesian-language edition adopted the model of an editorial committee, in emulation of its Chinese-language counterpart, in an example of the spread of a new organizational culture and democratic ethic.66 Indeed, this era involved not just exposure to new information, but to the spread of a new culture of writing and reading, especially within the schools, that stressed progressive politics, organizational life and democratic deliberation. This culture is in evidence in one of the early issues of the magazine Seabird 海燕 (Figure 6), published by students from a Surabayan high school, prominently featured photographs of the "blackboard newspapers" (黑板报) and "wall newspapers" (壁报).67 These images show groups of students reading and discussing the texts—texts that they had perhaps written, and were certainly written by people they knew. No doubt they would have been encouraged to submit responses or pitch articles, as well; seasoned writers could join the editorial boards, and perhaps even manage a print magazine like Seabird. Some student magazines attained a high degree of professionalism, hardly surprising when we consider that high schoolers were frequently in their early twenties with intense and sometimes harrowing experiences at this point due to three or more years of lost schooling. These publications, which were certainly present in other parts of the progressive world, created a feedback loop of engagement, between active writing and passive reading, for every student. They were the grassroots infrastructure on which professional newspapers like Seng Hwo Pao rested, establishing many links rather than a categorical distinction between handwriting and printed 65 === [PDF page 80] === type. Implicitly and explicitly, fairly or unfairly, this "print" culture, which prized youth, intelligence, democracy, and sincerity, was contrasted with the old, irrational, authoritarian, and dishonest nature of right-wing propaganda from Taipei and/or Washington. Thus, the same issue of Seabird also included a cartoon depicting a geriatric Voice of America broadcaster farting into a microphone from a musical score held by Uncle Sam; the rational and the nonsensical, the earnest and the decadent, the new and the old, were clearly contrasted. (Cartoons, perhaps like this one, can be glimpsed on the bulletin board, as well.) Note, too, the use medium: photography for the blackboard and wall newspapers, which was associated with objective reality, as opposed to caricature for the VOA broadcast, used to identify targets of scorn and ridicule.68 One of the most important links between handwriting and the mass media was the mimeograph, an underestimated technology/medium central to 20th century radical politics. A mimeograph is essentially a machine that presses ink through a stencil to create duplicates. The simplest kind were simple, briefcase-like devices made of a bed and a hinged screen, using waxpaper stencils that were cut with a knife, a stylus against a special grooved surface, or special typewriter attachments.69 In the Chinese context, mimeographs, known as oil-based ink machines (油印机, less commonly “duplicator” 誊写机), had a far larger range of use cases because a full set of movable type was larger and more expensive than its alphabetic equivalent. In addition, unlike alphabetic mimeography, which normally used typewriters outfitted with special attachments, the comparative inconvenience of Chinese typewriters made handwriting using a special pen or knife the rule. In other words, the structure of an ideographic rather than alphabetic language determined that manual mimeography was the default option for informal publishing. Besides the economic obstacles of type-based printing, there was also a political reason for this medium's popularity. At times when it was illegal or dangerous to print communist, antifascist, or anticolonial literature, the manual mimeograph provided a method for discreetly producing small to mid-size runs, with a technical limit of several hundred copies. For example, the underground antifascist groups described above conveyed propaganda, using commercial networks as cover, through mimeographed publications. A generation of radical 66 === [PDF page 81] === youths would have made their first contact with radical literature through handling or perhaps even producing these publications (Figure 7). In 1954, for example, a teacher at Pa Hoa had her license revoked for using "stenciled loose pages" with political content, even after a warning; when she appealed the decision, the Attorney General doubled down and ordered her deportation.70 As ephemeral media, mimeographs are difficult to obtain—confiscation by the police is one of the few ways we are able to see any of these periodicals from almost a hundred years ago. A facsimile of a mimeographed student publication from Palembang High School (巨中) named Chu Sen survives in police archives, and the opening editorial states that since the number of readers on the mural newspapers (壁报) had not yet reached 50% of the student body (the total at that time was around 230071), they had decided to switch to publishing by mimeograph.72 Setting aside the fact that these are fairly impressive numbers, what this statement indicates is that the mimeograph was an intermediate rung on the ladder of increasing formalization and circulation. Above it was printing with movable metal type, which a select few student publications were able to achieve, and below it were the mural and blackboard newspapers. Radical publications climbed up and down the exact same ladder: for example, Forward (前进报), the underground mimeograph of the North Sumatran antifascists during the war, was converted into a weekly magazine after 1945. There is here a suggestive proximity of the communal and the radical: the same medium, the same techniques, the same logic of publishing applied to both the communal institutions and the political organizations. Mimeography however was not just the poor cousin of type: it had its own expressive potential. Part of that was in the replication of handwriting, much as Reed has shown how lithography enjoyed a boom in popularity before the hegemony of type and after the sunset of woodblock printing specifically because of its calligraphic affordances.73 With mimeography, the “hand” that was preserved was not the one holding the literati’s brush: rather, it was one that gripped a stylus or similar tool and exerted force to leave an impression. It had, I suspect, the same kind of visceral appeal that the “modern” woodblock 67 === [PDF page 82] === print had for Chinese intellectuals, in the hint of the eradication of the boundary between manual and intellectual labor. This culture of writing was buoyed by a variety of institutional innovations. Below the Winds in particular was an early pioneer in establishing an interactive, pedagogical, and critical relationship with its youth readership, and one that extended far beyond their base in Singapore.74 Their primary innovation was the creation in early 1947 of a Guided Self-Study Club (自学辅导社), which soon attracted over a thousand registrants. For a small fee, subscribers could mail in essays on monthly themes that they would receive back with a grade and revisions from Below the Winds’ staff within 15 days. (In addition to attracting youth whose schooling had been disrupted, this also helped some of the unemployed intellectuals make a living.) They could be rewarded for exemplary essays not only with publication but even fee waivers and publication fees.75 The assigned monthly themes give a sense of the open-ended attitude of critique, reflection, and observation they sought to inculcate, and specifically encouraged ego writing. The first prompt, "I—" (我——) was explained like so: "A narrative. It could be "my life," "my family," "my experience," "my thoughts," "my hopes and ambitions" … Write freely about anything to do with the author." Other prompts included, "A letter to ___," "A corner of society," and "A page of a diary," as well as the more politically pointed "Feelings about July 7th [the Lugouqiao Incident]." This canny and perhaps even profitable venture was also supported by the ample advertisements for books that Below the Winds ran, and even stationery: an advertisement for the Below the Winds Diary on "top-grade Daolin paper" claiming that the previous year's version sold 50,000 copies. Hu Yuzhi titled one of his editor's notes "A Page from my Diary" (日记第一页). This emphasis on ego writing was not, however, solipsistic, since there was a simultaneous emphasis on a direct engagement with reality. Writing exercises were often linked to assignments involving interviews with (especially proletarian or peasant) elders and field trips to working-class neighborhoods or plantation villages.76 Many leftist schools established night classes for workers, or even mobile libraries.77 As such, this new form 68 === [PDF page 83] === of education sought to redefine study not as book learning but rather as an ongoing relationship between subjective experience and objective reality, often mediated by writing. 69 === [PDF page 84] === Figure 5. “A Chinese printing press in Sukabumi burnt down.” This photograph from the companion album to the Memorandum of 1947. Especially during the Dutch military aggressions of mid-1946, the commercial districts of several towns in Java were burnt down as part of a “scorched earth” policy. Source: NA 2.05.52: 589. 70 === [PDF page 85] === Figure 6. Illustrations in Seabird (海燕) from Surabaya. Above: photographs proudly displaying the blackboard and bulletin board "newspapers." Below: A cartoon satirizing US propaganda, subtitled, "the so-called Voice of America." Source: Haiyan yuekan 海燕月刊 [Seabird Monthly], vol. 3 no. 5-6, 951-07-20, pp. 20-21. Courtesy of Redi Murti. 71 === [PDF page 86] === Figure 7. Reproduction of a student mimeograph from Palembang. This reproduction of Chu Sen (巨声?), the student publication of Palembang High School, is an example of the widespread use of mimeography. It was one of the pieces of evidence used to build a deportation case against the school principal, Lai Zengchuang. Source: “Lay Tjin Tjiong,” in ANRI RA8C: 1266. 72 === [PDF page 87] === Independence’s Challenges With the near-simultaneous victories of the Indonesian Republic and the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Sin Po Group was well-positioned to take an active role in the independent era. The Chinese-language editor-in-chief Song Zhongquan was a longtime CPC sympathizer and had spearheaded the founding of a Progressive Association (促进会, later renamed the Qiaozong [a contraction of “Confederation of Overseas Chinese Groups” 中华侨团 总会]) to provide a pro-PRC counterweight to the neutral/conservative General Chinese Association (Chung Hwa Tsung Hui 中华总会), and would lead one of the first "sightseeing" delegations of overseas Chinese to the PRC.78 Relatedly, while the Sin Po group had been wellknown for its opposition to Dutch subjecthood and insistence on Chinese citizenship in the 1930s, it was not opposed to Indonesian citizenship for ethnic Chinese, especially after the PRC openly came out in support of adoption of local citizenship in the early 1950s. As such, when Ang Jan Goan was invited to participate in the first-ever NPCC, he chose to decline since he was an Indonesian citizen, and it would be inappropriate to participate in foreign politics.79 Xin Bao's front page was now no longer dominated by advertisements, but instead featured news—especially news from the PRC. Part of the rise of the daily newspaper was also linked to the expanding use of radio. The yinhua press relied primarily on news distribution via radio from Beijing.80 This “broadcast” method of news delivery differed from prestige Western agencies that delivered their product primarily by wire, and Indonesian agencies like Antara seem to have delivered them in paper form by courier—these methods both permitted restriction to subscribers, i.e., monetization; but it was shared with other propagandistic organizations such as Voice of America. Often the “telecommunications workers” (电讯员) wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom for the length of the broadcast.81 For the pro-PRC organizations, the most important broadcasts came from China National Broadcasting, were written by the China News Agency, which focused exclusively on propagandizing the diaspora. (New China News Agency, or Xinhua, focused instead on the international, non-Chinese press, and broadcast news in regional languages such as Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese and Indonesian through Beijing Radio, 73 === [PDF page 88] === also known as Radio Peking.) These broadcasts were not meant primarily for direct consumption as, for example, Voice of America or Radio Peking was, but rather as material for republication. While the wire was necessary for news agencies run as businesses to turn a profit, since they allowed for restriction only to subscribers, the radio could potentially reach everyone within its range, which was an advantage to an organization primarily focused on propaganda. Here, the voice operates "under erasure" (as Siew-Min Sai has said of the role of Malay in Chinese-language teaching), as the intermediate stage of a text-to-text transmission. While the news originated in Beijing as a script, it had to be transformed into sound to reach overseas, before being recorded by hand and then finally transferred to the press, becoming print. When leftists in West Kalimantan sought to celebrate CPC victory in 1949 by raising the new flag, they had to rely on the radio's detailed description to place the five stars.82 This central role of radio in print culture, and specifically news production, does not just complicate ideas about typical relations between different media. It also reiterates the significance of the distinction between the sinophone and the sinograph: a former editor of Pontianak's Lee Ming Pao, recalls that the reports were broadcast slowly in Mandarin, then Cantonese, and then Hokkien; by listening to all three, he could check his transcriptions for accuracy.83 It goes without saying that this many-toone relation of sound to script is not possible in phonographic (that is, alphabetic) languages. Although the overall number of newspapers stayed roughly static, fluctuating around fifteen, overall circulation in 1955 for Chinese-language newspapers overtook the declining Dutch-language press and reached 110k, compared to the Indonesian-language newspaper circulation of 510k, or about 16% of the total.84 Considering that ethnic Chinese (up to half of whom likely did not speak, let alone read, Chinese) are roughly estimated to comprise about 2% of the Indonesian population in this period, these numbers are disproportionately high, although they would certainly have fallen relatively by the 1960s. For absolute comparison, in the late 1930s, the Xin Bao had achieved an approximate circulation of 9000,85 and by the 1950s, about 21k.86 Meanwhile, in the 1960s, a former editor estimates an average circulation of 50,000 for Xin Bao.87 Finally, while the total number of Indonesian-language newspapers was far higher, the 74 === [PDF page 89] === circulation numbers of the largest papers was close.88 Readership growth and industrial concentration was part of the story, but the political suppression of the right-wing papers after 1958 also played a role, accelerating the concentration of power within leftist newspapers like Xin Bao that had capital or Seng Hwo Pao which had government backing. The Sin Po conglomerate had an unusual position, since it owned its own equipment and was one of only two with a capacity topping 30,000 issues an hour.89 Not only could it better control quality and schedule by printing in house, it could even accepted jobs from its "competitors" to subsidize its newspaper. Smaller papers struggled in comparison. One writer in the minor daily Yinhua Economy (印华经济), signing their name as “Yinhua Newspaperist (印华 报人),” published an editorial in 1958 that gives us some insight into the working conditions. Apologizing profusely for the poor quality, they explained that because they did not own a press, they had to suffer the indignities of rushing to finalize their cases earlier in the day (suggesting that many may have owned their own Chinese typesets), and then transporting them to the printer in time, on pain of being demoted in the print queue. These rushed conditions led to frequent typos or workarounds as readers sometimes had to forgive characters set in the wrong typeface or leading, guess at the meaning of a smudged or faint word, or mentally combine component characters into the intended character.90 One of the most serious challenges faced by Sin Po in particular was the independent government’s economic nationalist program of “Indonesianization,” which sought to weaken the traditional strength of Chinese-owned businesses in the printing and publishing sectors. 91 Sin Po's requests to import new equipment were frequently denied, or made contingent on the discount sale of old equipment to designated Indonesian printers.92 At one point a hub of some of the most advanced print equipment in Asia, the perennial shortage in foreign exchange was already turning Jakarta's printeries into exhibits in the "greatest print museum in the world" by mid-century.93 In 1960, to shut down the yinhua press, the government simply stopped issuing it licenses, though eventually it promulgated a ban anyways since some papers endured by relying on inventory and the black market.94 Other Indonesianization regulations were more creative: for 75 === [PDF page 90] === example, in 1958, a new rule was even issued limiting advertising to 1/3 of the paper, that was specifically intended to drive advertisers out of the "quasi-monopolies" of Sin Po and Keng Po.95 While determined printers could make do with old equipment, they could not survive without was newsprint. Ang Jan Goan, long-term director of Sin Po, notes that the reason the publication permits were so effective was because without them, you couldn't purchase newsprint at government rates.96 One of the consequences of the unpredictable availability of newsprint was that shifts in paper size, color, and quality were not unheard of, and carried their own semantic freight. Although the era of Dutch and Japanese censorship was over, it did not take long before restrictions on the press were reasserted. From the start, the state’s security apparatus had called for tighter control over Chinese language institutions, under the assumption that foreigners’ political activity, which was sometimes interpreted to include anti-Americanism or excessive anticolonialism, was undesirable.97 Despite extensive writing on Chinese-Indonesians and anti- Chinese policies,98 the history of the development of the “minorities apparatus” in this period is still unclear—at his point we can only make a few remarks. Firstly, much of the basic infrastructure was inherited from the colonial state: for example, it continued to publish regular internal reports translating, summarizing, and commenting on the news from the Chineselanguage press.99 Secondly, responsibility for Chinese-related issues gradually shifted from the interior ministry to the security apparatus and eventually to military intelligence, reflecting a general movement from incorporative to repressive tendencies.100 Relatedly, initially discipline had been exercised on a case-by-case basis. Arrest and surveillance of “subversive” newspaperists was common, and in 1951 a mass arrest of suspected communists also targeted the editorship of the Seng Hwo Pao, which had become the main mouthpiece of the PRC in Indonesia.101 With the establishment of military law in 1957, the door was reopened for the sweeping actions that targeted not just individuals but organizations. The revelation that the government in Taiwan had, in collaboration with the USA, provided military support to the PRRI/Permesta 76 === [PDF page 91] === rebellion led the military in April 1958 to shut down the entire Chinese-language press.102 In May, a permitting system was introduced,103 and by December, eleven Chinese newspapers who were unaffiliated with the KMT were being published under the permitting conditions.104 Although the leftist press ironically emerged stronger from this storm, the military soon reasserted its control yet again during the PP10 crisis (discussed in Chapter 5), when it expelled ethnic Chinese from the countryside in some regions, creating a refugee crisis.105 Unsurprisingly, the catastrophe incited a backlash from the entire yinhua press, and a near-breakdown in Sino- Indonesian diplomatic relations—to curb this criticism, the government stopped reissuing publishing permits and newsprint purchase licenses, before eventually issuing a decree prohibiting all Chinese-language publishing.106 Chiao Hsing Weekly protested the policy, even dedicating their cover illustration to it, to no avail (Figure 8). This general constriction of the publishing space did not target only the Chinese-language press—many periodicals that were critical of government policy or supportive of the regional rebellions were closed summarily, and general restrictions on freedom of speech were introduced. However, the targeting of the Chinese-language press on the basis not of its content but of its script was unique, as the title of the tortuously worded initial decree of 1958 suggests: Prohibition on printing, publishing, announcing, delivering, distributing, trading and/or pasting newspapers or magazines that use scripts that are not Latin or Arabic or from a region of Indonesia (my emphasis).107 It would have theoretically been possible under these terms for a romanized Chinese publication to be issued, and no doubt if pinyin were widely understood at the time some clever publishers would have tried it. The euphemism above, reused in 1960 decree as well, shows how Chinese script itself had become highly politicized, a contradictory index of foreignness, communism, and wealth. Framing the conflict of left and right in the yinhua press as one between partisans of Beijing and Taiwan captures only part of the story. For it was during this time that a momentous political realignment took place: the formation of a durable and effective alliance between the creole and immigrant left. As is well-known, the primary political organization of creole Chinese 77 === [PDF page 92] === in this period, Baperki, shifted to the left in this period, leading much of its liberal leadership to defect.108 What is less remarked, at least in the secondary scholarship, is that this shift to the left coincided with a shift towards inclusivity of immigrants, which included the establishment of a Chinese-language organ. In effect, Baperki went from a peranakan-only multi-ideological organization to being a pan-Chinese leftist organization.109 As Siauw Giok Tjhan’s biographer notes, although the leadership remained peranakan, the majority of Baperki mid-level cadre were “totok,” primarily leftist and from poor families, and educated in the Chinese-language schools.110 The mediating link between these two groups in the arena of the media was a cadre of Sinophone, Sumatra-born intellectuals that I call the Chiao Hsing group. Chiao Hsing Weekly (觉醒周刊, 1954-1960) was founded as a Chinese-language analogue to Baperki’s Sunday Courier, and focused on Indonesian politics. Founded by members of the leadership of the Communist Party of Malaya, it would become a safe haven for cadre escaping the increasingly repressive environment of Singapore,111 as well as "the only Indonesiaoriented Chinese-language weekly in a largely China-oriented industry… [a] unique collaboration between Chinese-educated MCP members and left-wing Peranakan Chinese."112 Even after the Indonesian-language magazine Sunday Courier folded in 1956, Chiao Hsing outlasted its model, buoyed by subscriptions from the Chinese-language school system. In addition to serving as a soapbox to amplify Siauw Giok Tjhan’s parliamentary speeches and newspaper editorials, it also encouraged a cultural and social reorientation towards the local: for example, by promoting the study of Indonesian language, or through the weekly column of droll observations of Jakarta society by Sha 沙.113 Surely the experience of the CPM, which in the 1940s had already had over a decade of experience in thinking about the diasporic communist condition, and settled decisively on localization as its strategy, was a decisive factor in this approach. Many of the Chiao Hsing Group were "red diaper babies" (红屁股), i.e. leftist children, from the towns in North Sumatra where a vibrant leftist culture had developed in the 1940s. Zhang Dayong had watched the performance of Baren’s Temple of Five Ancestors,114 while U Kuo-sen had fought in the militias 78 === [PDF page 93] === during the revolution.115 Several of the Chiao Hsing core had joined the CPM because they were sent to school across the straits during the turbulence of the revolution in Sumatra; this younger generation would have had a different perspective and relationship to China, informed by the Malayan experience. For example, they certainly would have been aware of the acrimonious debates around 1948 between the CPC-linked intellectuals and a younger generation of MCP intellectuals over the "specificity" (独特性) of Malayan-Chinese literature. This seemingly innocuous topic turned into a political polemic on the whether to prioritize the Malayan or the Chinese revolution.116 In the next section, we will discuss the redefinition of "my country" (我 国) to refer to Indonesia, which Chiao Hsing Weekly led. Surely this propensity towards localization would have been affected by the Malayan experience. The Chiao Hsing group made its influence felt beyond its own publishing activities, by shaping the attitudes of the yinhua press. One of their tasks was the translation of Baperki materials, including Siauw Giok Tjhan's many speeches, into Chinese. These translations were then mailed out to the Chinese papers, which were of course always hungry for content.117 Indeed, as I show below, when Xin Bao was refounded after a thaw in 1963, it recruited its new editorial team specifically from the Chiao Hsing circle. They had moved from the margins to the center of the yinhua press. 79 === [PDF page 94] === Figure 8. Chiao Hsing Weekly protests the periodical ban. The cover of one of the final issues of Chiao Hsing Weekly, by staff illustrator Ye Fusheng, protests the restrictions on the Chinese-language press, with the caption, “Let the enemies of the Republic panic, we cannot lose this kind of periodical!” Source: Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 6, no. 50, cover page. 80 === [PDF page 95] === Reorientation to the Local/Left The crisis of 1959-60 did not end the yinhua press, but rather readied the stage for a new and little-known renaissance that was farther and more deeply local. This moment marks the beginning of "guided democracy," a period in which the authority of the executive in general and the presidency (i.e. Sukarno) in particular expanded dramatically. The next few years involved a power-sharing arrangement between the army, the communist party (PKI), and Sukarno himself, with the latter two growing closer and closer until it was more bipolar than tripolar. In this landscape, the yinhua press aligned vocally and uniformly with the Sukarno-PKI alliance. With the more radical streams of economic nationalism and political antisinicism restrained, a stable "accommodation" between the Indonesian Chinese and Indonesian nationalism prevailed.118 Protests in West Java in 1963 that targeted symbols of purportedly Chinese wealth such as cars, bicycles, and sometimes homes were rapidly suppressed with the help of the PKI’s youth organization, confirming that the communist-Sukarno alliance was the best protector for ethnic Chinese interests, and even irresolute centrists now threw in their lot.119 "Racialism," including but not limited to antisinic rhetoric, was now clearly identified with reaction and hence incompatible with the revived call to complete the unfinished revolution of 1945.120 Even rightwing, anticommunist, and military-backed newspaperists had to work within the rhetoric of socialism, anticolonialism, and revolution.121 Right-wing newspaperists did not simply disappear, but were forced to modify their positions as they scrambled to preserve their institutions. During a brief thaw in 1961, a number of newspapers were established, certainly with military permission (given the martial law still in place) but these do not seem to have lasted long.122 Some of these were actually staffed by the personnel of the pro-ROC newspapers, yet as one Taiwanese historian lamented at the time, they were forced to shift to the left.123 The rapid changes in names, directors, and corporate structures belies the continuity across these years of “groups” of investors, political backers, newspaper staff, and subscribers—a full tracing of their filiations is possible, but not yet completed. This pattern was not at all specific to the yinhua press, but a result of the politicization of the media 81 === [PDF page 96] === landscape: For example, even after the closure of its flagship daily, the Keng Po (now renamed Kinta) staff were closely involved in the founding and (at least in the early years) management of several nominally independent newspapers like Kompas and Sinar Harapan.124 Indeed, in many cases the staff of liberal or conservative newspapers from the 1950s were able to make a “comeback” in 1965.125 With military law lifted in 1962, the diplomatic crisis of PP10 resolved, and dual nationality finally eliminated, Sukarno was persuaded to permit the reopening of Chineselanguage newspapers.126 From 1963 to 1965, the yinhua press would was surprisingly vibrant. The rules of the game had changed decisively, however: all newspapers were now required to register along corporatist lines as affiliated with a specific sector, tendency, or party, to express unqualified support for the emergent body of Sukarnoist thought, and also to publish extracts of the president’s speeches and writings (sans commentary) on the front page. New regulations also ensured that the government now had the legal power to do what the military had been doing extralegally for the last few years. Freedom of the press was firmly subordinated to sociopolitical needs. The immediate occasion for this reopening was the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), established an alternative to the Olympics after Indonesia's removal from the IOC as punishment for exclusion of Taiwan and Israel from the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta.127 Even the PRC mouthpiece Seng Hwo Pao, nemesis of the anti-communist anti-Chinese lobby, was given a month-long permit to publish a daily bulletin, though it had to stay strictly within the limits of sports reporting.128 In quick succession, four newspapers were established in 1963 and 1964 in Jakarta: Harian Ibukota (“Capital City Daily”; 首都日报), Zhongcheng Bao (“Loyalty”; 忠诚报; in Indonesian, Warta Bakti), Api Revolusi (“Flame of Revolution” or “Torch”; 火炬报), and the smaller Obor Revolusi (“Torch of Revolution”; 革命火炬日报), and in 1965 there were thirteen Chinese-language dailies which had received permission to publish, close to the 1950s mean of fifteen.129 Ironically, within the politicized environment of the day, the laws of competition were suspended leading to "a proliferation of minuscule production units which diminished as soon as the protective government measures were withdrawn."130 While they all 82 === [PDF page 97] === had some connection with pre-1960 papers, the most widely-read continued to be Zhongcheng Bao, the reorganized Xin Bao.131 Perhaps due to the stricter control over the news, as well as the general mood of political enthusiasm, the literary supplements reached an unprecedented level of quality and quantity. As before, they highlighted creative writing from the Indonesian left and the PRC, but also, increasingly, from the world. The yinhua press, it appeared, was only getting stronger by the day. One of the most telling changes was the shift in referent of the deictic phrase "woguo" (我国, lit. “my country”), common within Chinese-language political writing. In the 1950s, woguo referred as a rule to China. However, in 1963, one of Sukarno's stipulations for opening Chinese-language newspapers was that this phrase refer to Indonesia.132 In other words, a relatively marginal usage in the 1950s had become universalized by 1960s. There was, however, one exception: Chiao Hsing Weekly had, since its founding, always maintained this orientation towards Indonesia. Organizationally and demographically, Chiao Hsing was special. Firstly, it was attached to the predominantly-Chinese organization Baperki, which militated for civil rights and equal citizenship for Indonesian minorities, which placed it squarely within the Indonesian political context. Secondly, it was staffed and led by a core of Chinese-speaking, Indonesianborn youths, many of whom were from Sumatra but educated in Malaya; in particular, it had strong, covert links to the Malayan Communist Party. The "Malayan experience” likely provided the template for a locally- rather than diasporically-oriented form of Chinese leftism.133 Although the Zhongcheng Bao shared the same headquarters and ownership structure as the old Xin Bao, its editorial staff had been completely replaced.134 Colonial-era veterans, such as Oen Tek Hian and Lin Qiongguang, were recruited into editorial positions by Harian Ibukota, since they were viewed as insufficiently radical. Pro-PRC activists viewed this newspaper, which was printed by Kinta, the renamed publisher of the liberal flagship Keng Po, as a “gray” newspaper, morally dubious, and discouraged yinhua intellectuals from submitting to their literary supplements.135 The majority of the staff moved to Seng Hwo Pao, which, as the quasi- 83 === [PDF page 98] === official PRC paper of Indonesia, was a natural home for "China-oriented" media workers in Indonesia. One of the likely reasons for this split within the old staff was almost certainly an unwillingness to accede to the redefinition of "my country”—they were no doubt crucial to the operation of the refounded weekly Seng Hwo Weekly, when it finally acquired a publication permit in 1964. As Li Zhuohui, the new editor-in-chief, explained it to me, a younger generation was needed, of journalists who could see Indonesia as their homeland. (The Sin Po Group had traditionally been the most "China-oriented" of all the peranakan-founded media enterprises.136) The new core of the Zhongcheng Bao was drawn from the Baperki-affiliated Chiao Hsing group, whose magazine had been closed since 1960, and were primarily working in translation and book publishing. This collaboration extended also to the Indonesian edition, as Baperki cadre and PKI member Tan Hwie Kiat took over there.137 This rearrangement suggests some of the internal tensions over political ideology and national orientation, yet, crucially, they never broke out into the open; the primary divisions existed both socially and conceptually between the international right and the international left, rather than between Indonesia- and China-oriented groups. The redefinition of woguo was only one part of a larger program of Indonesianization. By the late 1950s, furthermore, government media policy shifted emphasis towards the reform rather than replacement of loyal Chinese-owned media groups like Sin Po. Such companies were encouraged to adopt more "Indonesian-sounding names,” so that Xin Bao and Sin Po became first Pantjawarta and then Warta Bhakti, while the Sin Po company was renamed Surya Prabha (preserving its initials). Ethnic Chinese in the top echelons were replaced with non-Chinese Indonesians, such as A. Karim DP, a leader in the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) with ties to Sukarno, while the staff were mostly left untouched. Newspapers that were slow to make these adjustments in leadership, such as Sin Po’s liberal rival Keng Po, met all kinds of permitting obstacles.138 Acceding to "Indonesianization" policies however, while it did involve changes to staff and mastheads, did not involve giving up the Chinese language. Rather, "Indonesianization" for 84 === [PDF page 99] === yinhua publications like Xin Bao/Zhongcheng Bao involved a more substantive shift in the linguistic content, to emphasize direct allegiance to Sukarnoist political thought. This point merits special emphasis because, at the same time that the yinhua press of the 1960s turned decisively towards the Indonesian left-nationalist mainstream, an alternative and competing program known as "assimilation" also rose to prominence. Assimilationists advocated for Chinese-Indonesians to take the initiative of merging with majority through the dissolution of their distinctive traits, including through a disavowal of the Chinese language, most notably through name change. Socially, they were almost always peranakans from Dutch-educated or Christian families; politically, they allied with right-wing elements in the military in the early 1960s; and organizationally, they were represented by the military-funded quasi-official Lembaga Pembinaan Kesatuan Bangsa (Association for the Construction of National Unity, or LPKB).139 As critics such as Siauw Giok Tjhan would repeatedly point out, their reluctance to accept that their position logically entailed a mass conversion to Islam revealed that assimilationism was fundamentally an expression of anticommunism.140 In mid-1965, irritated by the constant “accusations and insinuations” against the leadership of the LPKB (i.e., himself), K. Sindhunatha requested that the Attorney General Please consider again our proposal from some time ago to implement controls over the Chinese-language and Chinese-script press such that the press can only be operated by official institutions or the government, specifically as an ‘information paper’ and in the interests of indoctrination. 141 He claimed that, motivated by their commercial interests, this segment of the press was constantly hindering the “construction of national unity” (i.e. assimilation).142 Indeed, Zhongcheng Bao had called assimilation a “dirty, dangerous concept,”143 but this opposition found many allies, especially in the Indonesian left: PKI Politburo member Njoto compared name-changing to enforced Japanization in colonial Korea.144 What was true in Jakarta was even truer in Medan, where we can observe the unique phenomenon of Chinese-speaking intellectuals establishing left-wing Indonesian-language newspapers.145 What differentiates these from peranakan papers like Keng Po or Sin Po was that, 85 === [PDF page 100] === unlike in Java, there was no ethnic Chinese readership of Indonesian-language print to speak of, and thus they were naturally intended to reach a broader and non-ethnic audience. The shortlived Kerakjatan, established in 1945 as a propaganda organ of the CDL, only survived for one year, but Chang Hsi Shek, the wealthy Medan communist who had been banished to Boven Digoel for his participation in the Red Tide Affair, revived this newspaper under the sponsorship of the Overseas Chinese Association in 1951.146 When this newspaper folded yet again, the indefatigable Chang, who had become the regional chair of Baperki, founded Harian Harapan (Hope Daily) with the assistance of the Chiao Hsing group. By 1965 this had become the PKI’s de facto voice in Sumatra, and counted former editor of Sunday Courier Annast, translator Chen Zhanhu, writer A.A. Zubir among its staff.147 (The other left-wing daily in Medan was Harian Gotong Rojong (Mutual Aid Daily), founded by another Chinese veteran of the revolution and Baren protege, Oei Boen Tjoan) The conflation of Baperki and the PKI in North Sumatra in the violence of 1965-66, which Jess Melvin has identified, must be understood in the context of the enormous local overlap in the two organizations.148 Tan Foe Khiong, editor-in-chief of Harian Harapan, a cadre of both Baperki and the PKI, described as lihai (cunning) by his political opponents,149 was among the first to be killed in the ensuing violence. Ironically, as Coppel has pointed out, by 1965, Chinese citizens of Indonesia were beginning to leave “exclusive” organizations to join non-ethnic leftist organizations such as the PKI’s youth wing.150 Assimilation was underway, but the wrong kind. If we were to take a step back, we might see that the convergence of (diasporic) Chinese communism and a version of Indonesian nationalism is not counterintuitive at all: it is a fact that the most vocal and consistent supporters of Indonesian nationalism within the Chinese-speaking community, from the colonial days onwards, had usually been communists and fellow-travelers. In retrospect, it is not hard to see that a multiethnic progressive elite was in the process of forming in 1965. 86 === [PDF page 101] === Banning Chinese On September 30th, 1965 a group of mid-level military officers calling themselves a Revolutionary Council kidnapped and killed several generals. This botched coup, referred to by its acronym G30S (Gerakan 30 September, “The 30th September Movement”), which may have involved parts of the PKI, gave the army a “pretext for mass murder,” with the support of the West.151 A Karim D.P., the director and political sponsor of Surya Prabha (the renamed Sin Po enterprise) was directly implicated in the manifesto that the rebel officers broadcast over the hijacked radiowaves—when Sin Po/Xin Bao editors contacted him to ask for guidance, he ordered them to ignore the military’s warnings and to republish the manifesto. On October 1, their declaration was reprinted in full in both the Chinese and Indonesian editions. The day after, it was shut down, this time for good.152 In the weeks to follow, a combination of vigilante, paramilitary, and military violence targeted Indonesian communists and their supporters, which included the Chinese embassy and the minority organization Baperki. Karim was soon captured and executed. While Asemka 29 itself was not looted or burned, several of the Xin Bao staff disappeared, probably going into hiding, including Liao Rongsheng (the Chiao Hsing affiliate in charge of the supplements, and a known Pemuda Rakyat member), as well as several translators. As the counter-coup consolidated, a slew of antisinic policies was introduced. These included bans on Chinese-medium schooling and on the public celebration of Chinese festivals. People were pressured both implicitly and explicitly to “voluntarily” change their names. The official use of the term “Tionghoa” was discontinued in favor of the pejorative “Cina.”153 In addition, “the publication of in foreign languages that are not in Latin scripts (for example, Chinese [‘Tiong Hoa’]) is only permitted in one government publication.” The next article banned "press which conflicts with Pancasila, such as those based on Communism/Marxism- Leninism.” The proximity of these two clauses confirms the adjacency of Chinese language with communism in the New Order imagination.154 This publication, Harian Indonesia (Indonesia Daily), carried the ominous subtitle, "bringing the official voice of the government" ("membawakan suara resmi pemerintah"), and was overseen directly by military intelligence.155 87 === [PDF page 102] === (Note that the Sumatran edition was also organized as a de facto autonomous publication for several years, however.) It had been formed out of a merger from three separate Chinese newspapers named Dwikora, run by the ministry of defense, the military, and the intelligence department respectively, in 1966.156 Based in the old location of the pro-ROC newspaper Thien Sung, and may have inherited some of its staff.157 Anti-Chinese rhetoric played a key role in the demonization of the Indonesian left, who were effectively portrayed as foreign agents within a narrative that attributed G30S to PRC instigation.158 Privately, the US ambassador exulted that, "we have bonanza chance to nail chicoms on disastrous events in Indonesia," and advocated for covert propaganda to spread the idea of "chicom complicity." (The term “chicom” is an abbreviation of “Chinese communist,” and like older terms such as “Judeo-Bolshevism,” suggests the interlinking of political and ethnic identity.) While in most of Indonesia, the primary victims of the massacres were not ethnic Chinese qua Chinese but Indonesian communists (which of course included some ethnic Chinese), in West Kalimantan, the counterinsurgency took on a genocidal character, and from 1967-1968 over ten thousand predominantly-rural Chinese were killed and a hundred thousand interned in concentration camps.159 One author from Singkawang who was a member of a small literary collective gives the following reckoning: one person was beaten to death trying to escape from detention, another was imprisoned for ten years, yet another died of alcoholism, two made it to China, and one became a successful businessman.160 The Chinese language became a sign for communist subversion. In the Salemba prison of Jakarta where many political prisoners from the sweeps of 1965 were thrown to rot, it was permitted to teach and study all languages except Chinese, since it was seen as a vector of communism.161 The mobilization of Dayak militias into the West Kalimantan counterinsurgency was achieved in part through the circulation of a rumor about the murder of a Dayak chieftain and the mutilation of his body with Chinese characters.162 The ban itself would reach absurd proportions in years to come. Japanese dictionaries filled with kanji were sold besides Chinese dictionaries that only had pinyin; Chinese-language printed matter was listed on customs forms 88 === [PDF page 103] === besides firearms and drugs as contraband; and within the single official newspaper, writers were warned to avoid use of words like “red” or “north.”163 Only in the late 1980s would it be relaxed, and then eventually repealed together with the most symbolically-significant anti-Chinese policies after the fall of the New Order in 1998. Why was the Chinese language banned? The criminalization of the Chinese language is often seen as an expression of the anti-Chinese sentiment of Indonesian nationalists, and this must be partially true—in 1959, for example, some local policies against Chinese-language signage or street names were introduced.164 However, this and related policies were workshopped by a primarily ethnic-Chinese anticommunist organization, the LPKB, and had been accepted and even promoted for years by anticommunist peranakans. The point is not only that assimilationism is, arguably, a form of antisinicism; it is also that antisinicism in the Cold War is not comprehensible without anticommunism. Furthermore, the New Order ban begs the question of why other places with histories of antisinicism did not implement bans. No other Southeast Asian government implemented as sweeping of a ban, and some actually relied on the Chinese-language press to promote anticommunism.165 Whereas in other anticommunist states, like the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, or Singapore, right-wing regimes were able to find willing Sinophone partners on the right, no such candidates existed in Indonesia, since a locallyoriented left had achieved hegemony within the language institutions of the Chinese in Indonesia, as symbolized by the transformation of the largest and oldest Chinese-Indonesian newspaper, Xin Bao, into a staunch PKI ally. There was also, of course, a more prosaic reason, related to but distinct from the absence of a suitable partners within the media: there were simply not enough Chinese-literate officials to maintain the kind of selective censorship regime that the Dutch had employed, or that continues to operate in places like Singapore. With the establishment of the New Order, the personnel of the yinhua print culture who were lucky enough to escape detention or death found themselves adrift. A secondary diaspora formed out of those intellectuals who were able to fled or happened to be abroad in 1965. Some of those who were associated with the CCP, the CPM, or the PKI were able to reach the PRC, 89 === [PDF page 104] === just in time to experience the Cultural Revolution, joining earlier generations of "returnees" as well as stranded PKI cadres. These include Xu Qiongling, who reported for decades for Beijing Sports Daily; Li Xu, author of Tin Island; and the Chiao Hsing translator Chen Zhanhu.166 Others, primarily non-communist writers who had flown too close to the communist sun, settled in other Chinese-speaking areas: Leo Suryadinata settled in Singapore, becoming an authority on Chinese-Indonesian studies; Li Qing continued his poetry career in Hong Kong; the anarchist Liang Piyun of Api Revolusi ended up in Macao. Others, especially peranakan leftists, made their way to Europe: the reporter Go Gien Tjwan, for example, right-hand man of Baperki chairman Siauw Giok Tjhan, who would join him after his release. For those who remained, survival became their main concern. While most of the Xin Bao staff were not subject to direct violence, the New Order's complete ban on the Chinese language cut off their living. They were able to lobby the board for three months’ severance pay167 and all went their own way. Some scraped out a living teaching clandestine classes, and there were hundreds of group study operations until at least 1969 in Jakarta.168 After several difficult years, Xin Bao editor Li Zhuohui eventually found work as a manager in a paper mill—it is as if he continued to put out paper, just without language. (Similarly, the founder of Zamrud Foundation, Yang Zhaoji, became a publisher of calendars.) Ironically, considering the vexing constant shortage in newsprint, Indonesia would become one of the world’s leading exporters of paper through the deforestation of Kalimantan. Some ex-political prisoners found employment in this capitalist frontier which was unfussy about the source of its labor. 169 A few “refugees” from the yinhua press found work at Harian Indonesia, perhaps feeling some shame.170 Besides Harian Indonesia, the last vestige of left-wing yinhua print survived in the hills and forests of West Kalimantan, where a rump of the PKI held out until the early 1970s. This branch of the PKI was predominantly composed of Chinese speakers, who the branch secretary SA Sofyan had begun to recruit beginning in 1960. From their guerilla base in the mountains near the Sarawak border, with the help of allies in the towns along the Kapuas river, they were intermittently able to publish two mimeographed periodicals: Red Flag (红旗), only for 90 === [PDF page 105] === circulation to cadres, and Labor (劳动报), for distribution to the masses.171 Forced from the towns into the mountains, they were also driven back to the underground medium of mimeography. Perversely, the two-levels media situation of the colonial era—-heavily-censored type printing aboveground and radical stenciled handwriting underground—had returned. But this was a repetition with a difference: whereas before, the compass was pointed towards the abstraction of "China," now it pointed resolutely towards the political future of the archipelago. This point bears repeating: the last holdout of the old yinhua print culture, and possibly even of the PKI within Indonesia, was represented by a Chinese-language, Indonesian-communist paper,172 an amalgamation of the Chinese language institutions and the Indonesian communist movement. 91 === [PDF page 106] === Figure 9. The front page of Xin Xin Bao c. 1942. During the Japanese occupation, Sin Po facilities were appropriated for the printing of an officially-approved newspaper. Initially called Xin Xin Bao (i.e. “New New Newspaper”), it was soon renamed Kung Yung Pao 共荣报. The prevalence of advertisements is consistent with the prewar Xin Bao. Source: Collection of PNRI. 92 === [PDF page 107] === Figure 10. The front page of Xin Bao, 1953. In independent Indonesia, front page advertising was replaced by news articles, almost entirely about China. Source: Collection of PNRI. Source: Collection of Xiamen University. 93 === [PDF page 108] === Figure 11. The front page of Zhongcheng Bao, 1964. Zhongcheng Bao (“Loyalty”), the successor to Xin Bao, prominently featured Indonesian politics on the front page, including reproductions without commentary of Sukarno’s speeches (bottom article). Source: Collection of Xiamen University. 94 === [PDF page 109] === A Deictic Shift To summarize the development of the yinhua press, using the hydrological figure: the many streamlets of the colonial era converged into a single stream in the struggle for independence, surviving and even swelling despite the blockages and diversions of the 1950s. At the moment when it was channeled into the leftist mainstream, the calamity of 1965 cut it off at its source. The sediment it left behind is our archive. The changes in the front page of the Xin Bao/Zhongcheng Bao recapitulate the shifts in the press as a whole in shorthand. In the colonial era, it was dominated entirely by advertisements, which was reflective of both the depoliticizing effects of colonial censorship, as well as the commercial orientation of Chinese-Indonesian culture (see Figure 9). Attempts to broach the most pressing political topics of the day, namely the rise of fascism and the impending world war, were throttled through the application of the persbreidel. After the declaration of Indonesian independence, the front page was reserved for reporting, prominently featuring news from China—news from Indonesia was routinely placed on the second or third page (see Figure 10). Freed from colonial/fascist censorship, and having supported both the Chinese and the Indonesian revolutions, it thrived during the "Bandung era" of progressive internationalism and Sino-Indonesian cordiality, effectively allying with pro-PRC papers such as Seng Hwo Pao. It survived the crisis of 1958-1960, when it was twice banned, along with the entirety of the Chinese-script press. Both times, however, it resumed publication and in fact increased circulation, making significant but non-fatal concessions to nationalist policies, beginning with its name, extending to its leadership, and finally to its editorial staff. The refounded Zhongcheng Bao of 1963, finally, featured an excerpt from the writing of Sukarno on the front page of every issue, delivered without comment or interpretation; furthermore, Indonesian news moved to the front page (see Figure 11). In the masthead the Chinese script was demoted relative to Latin script. Names (of the leadership, the company name, and the newspaper name) were "Indonesianized.” Karim replaced Ang Jan Goan as director, the company was renamed Surya Prabha, and the (romanized) name of the newspaper became the 95 === [PDF page 110] === translated “Warta Bhakti” rather than the transliterated “Sin Po.” After 1958, the permit number was also featured prominently on the masthead, reflecting increasing political regulation of the press. The Indonesian economy’s struggles with inflation and foreign exchange shortages appeared in the deteriorating print quality. By 1965, the reopened Zhongcheng Bao, which had formed the cornerstone of Chinese nationalist activity in the 1920s, had become well-integrated into the Indonesian left. (An integration would make it one of the first victims, though by no means the bloodiest, of the New Order.) This gradual transformation was part of a secular tendency within the yinhua press: the interrelated turn towards the local and the left. While in the early 1950s, the Chinese-speaking community was polarized between left and right—there were hardly any liberals or centrists— with partisans of the PRC and ROC struggling for control over schools, media, and community organizations, the leftists gradually gained the upper hand. The covert Taiwanese support for regional rebellions in 1958 was the nail in the coffin for the sinophone right, as pro-Taiwan newspapers were shuttered and pro-Taiwan schools transferred to Baperki's management. From the mid-1950s, the left was increasingly visible in Indonesian society; in the Chinese-language world, they were virtually hegemonic. The second change was a local reorientation towards Indonesia, as the discussion of woguo above suggests. This Indonesianization, then, like the leftward shift, was partially a result of overall political changes, including top-down policies, but they also reflected organic social changes, as the generation born in the 1930s and 1940s settled into a life that included struggle for social justice alongside the left-nationalist mainstream. My most basic claim here is that these developments were not separate, but intertwined: in other words, over this period, the yinhua media did not turn to the local and the left in two separate motions, but rather as a single organic shift towards the Indonesian project. Without understanding this transformation, it is impossible to explain its reaction: the violent suppression of the Chinese language, the substrate of the yinhua world which was one of the bases for the pursuit of the unfinished revolution. 96 === [PDF page 111] === This shift can be conceived of as a “deictic shift,” i.e. a change in the position from where one is presumed to speak, the “I-here-now,” of yinhua print culture from China to Indonesia.173 Crucially—and contra the insistence of assimilationists that language was an obstacle to national construction—this shift was not a language shift. This change has been widely remarked, whether in Leo Suryadinata’s metanarrative of a change in “orientation,” or in the common periodization of an earlier huaqiao literature that transformed into a huaren literature.174 While this transformation was perhaps dramatic in retrospect, at the time it was an organic development of progressive patriotism. We can even plot several key inflection points: • The cultivation in the colonial era of a sympathetic stance towards Indonesian nationalism, exemplified by Xin Bao; • The postwar popularization of a revolutionary discourse, later tempered into a discourse of Sino-Indonesian friendship, exemplified by newspapers such as Seng Hwo Pao; • The promotion of participation in Indonesian social and political life in the 1950s— including the study of Indonesian—especially in the pages of Chiao Hsing Weekly; • The hegemony of a Sukarnoist attitude in the 1960s, demonstrated by the reorganization of the Xin Bao as the Zhongcheng Bao. An especially clear example of the shift from the 1950s to the 1960s is provided by the publication history of Shen Huizheng’s “Child, Grow Up Faster! (孩子, 快长大!).” This poem calls on the reader to follow in the footsteps of their parents’ professions (teacher, doctor, soldier, worker, farmer, and so on), and concludes: Be diligent! The homeland’s task of construction awaits you, do not forget, to exercise your bodies, and learn skills well. Prepare at every moment to receive your glorious duty!175 First published in 1957 in Xin Bao, it was republished in 1963 in Harian Ibukota. In the intervening years, the referent for “homeland” (祖国) had changed from China to Indonesia even though not a single word was changed.176 The object of affection was, in some cases, less 97 === [PDF page 112] === important than the structure of feeling itself, and the vehicle of the Chinese language could serve as an accelerant as much as an obstacle to the transformation of Chinese into Indonesians, or huaqiao into huaren.177 The point is important, since it refutes simplistic distinctions between a Chinese and Indonesian orientation. Supposedly it was Zhou Enlai who called on overseas Chinese to, “respond to the motherland, and face towards the local [响应祖国，面向本地].”178 This confirms the metanarrative of localization that is standard in Chinese-Indonesian histories, but not in a direct way. While “Indonesianization” is typically imagined in a totalizing way, that encompasses formal citizenship, cultural practices (read: language), and personal attachments, I would instead suggest that by the 1960s two competing ways of being Indonesian had emerged for ethnic Chinese. The crucial distinction between them was one of left and right, which was closely linked to but not reducible to the distinction between “totok” and “peranakan.” A similar sentiment was expressed to me by the communist veteran Lin Shi Fang, who explained to me that although she had wanted to return to China upon graduation from high school in the early 1960s, but an older cadre asked her: "Whether you stay here, or return, you're doing the same work. Where are you more needed, in China, or in Indonesia?”179 She stayed. Similarly, in 1948, the student magazine Chung Hsio Sheng criticized youth for "running off to Ta Teh Institute," a leftist college in Hong Kong, because they had given up on the democratic struggle in Java, and were starstruck for Guo Moruo and Baren.180 Here, internationalism eases a transition between two forms of nationalism. That said, we should be careful not to leave the narrative logic of naturalization undisturbed. This perspective must be supplemented by an alternative perspective, one that is perhaps truer to the accounts of my interviewees and also to the material fate of my archives, from where we can see an expansive field of possibilities, uneven and combined, collapse into something restrictive and small. By the late 1930s, the printing press, vernacular language, and specific questions of nationalism, modernity, and literary culture appear under colonial capitalist conditions in ways that we can recognize as what Benedict Anderson calls "print-capitalism."181 Two comments here: while I am broadly in agreement with the central role that he allocates to print in the 98 === [PDF page 113] === development of nationalism, the place of the communist project as an event in the history of print surely deserves further study. In some sense, even as Anderson demurred from analyzing it directly, he also framed Imagined Communities as a response to “a fundamental transformation in the history of Marxism and Marxist movements,” i.e., what he saw as the metamorphosis of the communist project into a multiplicity of nationalist projects, represented by the Third Indochina War,182 and confirmed by the dissolution of the USSR.183 My own research suggests how much more impoverished our understanding of nationalism is if it is not set within an internationalist frame. Furthermore, the study of a diasporic print culture also complicates the mechanics of the formation of a nationalist imaginary as put forward in Imagined Communities. When he reads “Black Semarang” by Mas Marco, for example, he draws attention to the “ourness” that is evoked by the phrase “our young man”: “notice that Marco feels no need to specify this community by name: it is already there.”184 As if aware of the risk that this “our” would be interpreted by some as quite simply the entire community of readers, Anderson then specifies that it obviously excludes Dutch censors. At this point, though, we have exited the neat world of newspaper readerships, and entered the entire social and historical world of determinations of us and them, self and other. These are problems that immediately surface when we substitute a text by an ethnic Chinese writer here. Charles Coppel has done just this, applying the reading of “Black Semarang” to “Miss Riboet,” by Tan Boen Kim, and his resulting reading does not lead towards a bounded nationalist community but an unbounded creolized cosmopolitanism.185 Although Anderson did not publish much on Chinese Indonesians, he was deeply interested in them throughout his life, calling provocatively for them to be treated as “a commercial bourgeoisie” in 1971.186 His championing of a long-forgotten record of the revolution, Indonesia in Smoke and Fire, by Kwee Thiam Tjing, is another case in point.187 He described Kwee’s peranakan lect of Indonesian, which liberally uses words from Dutch, Hokkien and Javanese, language without a name […] oral, multilingual, and wild […] a lingua franca which receives with pleasure all kinds of translations to form a sort of language that cannot be translated.188 99 === [PDF page 114] === The hetereogeneity of such a language is more akin to the anarchist internationalism of Under Three Flags than the anticolonial nationalisms of Imagined Communities. The “language ungoverned” of Malay in the late colonial Chinese-owned press has attracted scholars precisely because of its difference from standard Indonesian. The history of Chinese-language print culture in modern Indonesia, on the other hand, is ruled by the pursuit of a standardized language that we could almost call decreolized or resinicized. The result was an apparent differentiation between Chinese and Indonesian as languages, as well as between the bearers of those languages. This process however was based on the shared participation within a modern linguisticnationalist ideology that assumed the desirability of a single, pure language as, more or less, the analogue of a strong and independent state. As the discussion of Shen Huizheng’s poem above suggests, such shared ideological presuppositions allowed for the object of nationalism to change since its form was preserved, reflecting what Anderson called, without elaborating on it, “nationalism's undivorcible marriage to internationalism.”189 The first-person plural can function both exophorically, that is, referentially in relation to the world, or endophorically, that is in relation to other parts of the same “text.” While exophora, or extratextual reference, is obviously fundamental to all textual activity, it typically fades into the background, as part of the unnoticed machinery that makes texts legible in the first place. I submit that the linguistic situation of the yinhua print culture persistently foregrounds this problem of reference, so that the “we,” the first person plural in the Chinese language when it is enunciated in Indonesia, is constantly up for debate and rarely settled. (And that’s without introducing the complications of inclusive and exclusive first person plurals, a grammatical feature shared by both Mandarin Chinese [women/zanmen] and Indonesian [kita/kami].) I want to stress that this tendency is analytically distinct from the social distinction between a minority and a majority, or a diaspora and a homeland, which might operate upon ethnic Chinese writing in Malay or Indonesian, although they are closely linked in practice. The problem can be conceived of in a general way: the deictic referent of a statement in a minority language requires more explanation than one in a majority language. This is of course partially a consequence of the 100 === [PDF page 115] === success of linguistic nationalism: “we,” enunciated in the United States of America, is unmarked, while “nosotros,” “nous,” and so on are marked. These ambiguities are even more pronounced in the case of published writing, as opposed to a spoken conversation, in which the eventual readership can never be predetermined at the point of writing. The point is clearer if we cite a more-or-less analogous text from the yinhua tradition. Zheng Tufei’s “Night of Fierce Rain (狂雨之夜)” is the only story within his first (and last) collection, Coconuts, which concerns itself with protagonists similar to the author, urban intellectuals born in Indonesia, educated in China. The plot of this moody, anti-feudal critique, which revolves around two men recounting their failed love affairs in a bar in Padang, is less important for this comparison than the way the setting is introduced: The sound of the bells from the distant clocktower had already reported the nightdeep one o’clock. I was returning from the seaside. The waves had struck my heart into a shiver, and I couldn’t listen to them any longer. Under the whistling of the wind, I covered my head and limped into a nearby bar that I frequented. I picked a seat near the door, got a glass of brandy, took a drink, and gazing silently out the door, drifted off. Tonight there was no moonlight, and the sky was frighteningly obscure. The starlight had been blocked by the dark clouds, leaving no trace. It might rain again. The branches of the coconut palms in front of the door crackled in the wind. The coconuts swayed in the wind like bells, and sometimes, unable to withstand the teasing, struck the ground with a whoosh, shocking the silent, deep night.190 The isolation of this scene—there is no first person plural in sight—gives no sense of the collective subject it is addressed to and emanates from. However, the coconut trees (mentioned again in the next pages, alongside rambutans and mangos) situate for the reader the “southern” setting. These cues are necessary cliches for the readership—whether in Southeast Asia or in China—to properly locate the text. This pattern of overexplication, a response to the particular linguistic situation of yinhua literature, is the subject of the following chapter. 101 === [PDF page 116] === Notes Zhou Yingnan, "Zuguo de ganzhao 祖国的感召 [The Call of the Homeland]," 254, in Zhou Yingnan wenku, vol. 4. Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 247. This account derives from Li Zhuohui, former editor of Zhongcheng Bao (the renamed Xin Bao), from 1963-65 (Li Zhuohui, interview with the author, Jakarta, 2023-10-16, 2023-10-17). Xie, “Dutch Adoption of Hong Kong Typefaces.” See Appendix E. For example, Ik Po 译报 described itself as "a new newspaper in Surakarta in the Malay language, with Dutch letters, mixed with Chinese letters." ("Surat kabar baru di Surakarta bahasa melayu, huruf olanda, tercampur huruf cina.") For a thorough list of these, please see the appendix on yinhua newspapers pre-1945. Two other key newspapers founded in 1922 include the Chinese Daily News (南洋日报) in Medan (later renamed the New China Times [新中华报]), and Thay Kong Siang Poo (大公商 报), formed from a merger of two earlier newspapers in Surabaya. Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi, 390. See Sai, “Representing the Past,” on the THHK schools. 10 On Sin Po, see Ravando, “A New Newspaper.” 11 These included a Chinese and Malay weekly, as well as a short-lived European magazine. It also briefly published a Surabaya edition, which later became the Sin Tit Po 新直报 and at one published under the title of (its later rival) Keng Po to avoid censorship. 12 Suryadinata, Peranakan Chinese Politics in Java, Chapter 3; Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 102-108. 13 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 42. The phrase was used by Kwee Hing Tjiat in a 1925 article, implicitly a critique of the idea of the “yellow peril.” 14 See Suryadinata, Introduction, Political Thinking of the Indonesian Chinese, for an overview of the Sin Po Group’s politics, as well as several translated articles. 15 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 42, 44-45; Bambang Sularto, Wage Rudolf Supratman, 169. The frequency with which this anecdote appears (and which I participate in) suggests there is also something else at work here. 16 Subijanto, Communication Against Capital, 59. 17 Injo Beng Goat, editor of Keng Po, was found guilty of insulting a head of state when he described Hitler sickly as a child and power-hungry ("Hitler in de ‘Keng Po’ beleedigd [Hitler Insulted in the ‘Keng Po’],” Bataviaasch nieuwsblad, 1939-10-31.) One wonders if colonial 102 === [PDF page 117] === administrators came to regret their sabotage of Chinese organizing against Japanese military aggression when, at the time of the imperial army's southwards advance in 1942, the Indies defenses folded in weeks. 18 Yamamoto, Censorship in Colonial Indonesia, 279. 19 Yamamoto, Censorship in Colonial Indonesia, 232. 20 Yamamoto, Censorship in Colonial Indonesia, 240. Subijanto, Communication Against Capital, Introduction. Subijanto’s formulation adapts 21 Warner and Siskin’s definition of enlightenment as “an event in the history of mediation.” 22 See Belogurova, Nanyang Revolution, Hara, “Chinese Overseas Communists,” and Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party.” 23 See McVey, Rise of Indonesian Communism, for a discussion of the relationship between the early CPC and the PKI, and particularly the role of Maring (pseud. Henk Sneevliet). See Xie, “Estranged Comrades,” especially Part 2, for the effectiveness of Anglo-Dutch cooperation in the suppression of Southeast Asian communism in the 1930s, including through Overseas Chinese networks. 24 My account relies on Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 75-83, which I was directed to by Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party,” 707. 25 Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 72-74. Ahmad, Benson and Morgenstern, “Revolutionary Papers” notes that the distribution of 26 mimeographs is often the first step of initiation into a radical cell, in their discussion of the Communist Party of Pakistan’s Surkh Parcham. 27 “Een Success in Solo,” Het Nieuws van de Dag, 1933-06-28, 1. 28 “Chineesche Communistische Propaganda,” Soerabaijasch Handelblad, 1933-06-22, 2; “Arrestaties in Chineesche Onderwijswereld,” Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 1933-06-19, 2. This archive was certainly destroyed before the Japanese invasion, along with the rest of the Department of East Asian Affairs’ files (Anrooij, “De Dienst voor Oost-Aziatische Zaken,” 35). 29 “Uit Indonesia, Communisme Groeit!” De Tribune: Soc. Dem. Weekblad, 1933-06-22; “Het import-communisme van”Tjia Tjhao,” Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, 1933-06-24, 2; “Wanmu kuikui Bacheng chichao an (万目睽睽巴城赤潮案),” 1933-08-22, Nanyang Siang Pau. 30 Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 77. Xie states the connection was made via Lin Qiduo, who contacted his friend from Moscow, Gao Chenglie 高承烈, who was now in Manila. Hong Xueli 洪雪立, too, had previously been involved in the Manila left, and would be again after his deportation. Ken Fuller notes that at this time, Chinese advisors exercised significant influence over the young CPP (Forcing the Pace). Apparently Co Keng Sing 许敬诚 (a.k.a. Xu Li 许立) a prominent Manila Hokkien communist was dispatched to strengthen the Indonesian organization; he escaped arrest because he returned shortly before they began.This connection demonstrates that much more research is needed into interwar left-wing Hokkien networks. 103 === [PDF page 118] === 31 The only mentions of pre-1930 Chinese communists in Indonesia are usually in relation to these two regions (Salmon, “Chinese Community of Surabaya,” 57-58; Buiskool, “Prominent Chinese,” 165, 249). 32 See Hara, “Chinese Overseas and Communist Movements” and Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party.” 33 English-language scholarship has been mostly oblivious until recently, while Dutch-language scholarship, based on colonial archives, only makes passing mention to it (Poeze, Politiek Politionele Overzichten, 290). The incident features more prominently within Chinese-language scholarship from the PRC (e.g. Baren, Yindunixiya jindai shi, 697; Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang Yinni huaqiao shi [gudai zhi 1949], 384), sometimes because the authors had direct links to the organizers implicated within the incident. Information available from memoirs is aptly summarized in Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party,” while Heijns, “Interpreting Practices,” mentions the affair in relation to Dutch sinology. Buiskool mentions it briefly, citing Petrus Blumberger and Kwantes ( “Prominent Chinese,” 165, 249). 34 Reed, “Advancing the (Gutenberg) Revolution,” 275. 35 For more information on Chang, see the Biographical Notes. 36 See Poeze, “From Foe to Friend to Foe Again” for a discussion of this episode which does not mention Zhang. I verified Zhang’s internment in the ANRI records of Boven Digoel. In a 1960 article, Zhang provides a list of Chinese internees, noting that by 1932, all eight PKI internees of Chinese descent had already been released (Chang Hsi Shek 张希石, “Ligu liufang ji 利辜流放 记 [Banished to Digoel],” Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia, 1960-11: 31-32). 37 These experiences are detailed in Chang Hsi Shek, “Geming duli xianquzhe.” See the Biographical Note on Chang for more information about his post-1945 activities. 38 See Lagu, “Dadi shudian.” One of the organizations they established, “Southern Star Society (南星社; “Lam Sing”),” shares a name with Ang Hock Liem’s postwar bookstore, but this appears to be a coincidence. 39 Xie Huaidan states that Lin Zhong 林仲 (a.k.a. Lin Qiduo 林启铎) contacted his comrade Gao Chenglie 高承烈, also a Moscow alum, who secured approval from the nascent CCP (Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 77). 40 Nanyang nianjian, Chen (辰), p. 124. 41 Yang Yi, Cong xinhua wentan tanji yinhua wenxue, 36. 42 Heiying, “Fei Zhendong yishi.” He moved to the poorly-attested Zhao Bao (朝报) after several years at the New China Times, where several of the senior editors had been deported for anti- Japanese activism. Other newspapers within this “generation,” according to Yang Yi, include Huiliu (汇流) in Bandung and Xincun (新村) in Surabaya (Cong xinhua wentan lunji yinhua wenxue, 36). See Appendix E. 43 The editors of the Chinese edition, Song Zhongquan and Xie Zuoshun, managed to escape and join the Chinese antifascist underground (Chen Fengcheng, Nanguan baigan lu, 45; Xu 104 === [PDF page 119] === Qiongling, “Song Zhongquan shengping jianjie,” 582). Several of the short stories collected in Heiying’s 1947 anthology Moved by the Times (时代的感动) are based on his camp experiences. 44 On North Sumatra, see Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 39-42; on Java, see Yang Qiusheng, “Tuanjie Zhaowa huaqiao”; on West Kalimantan, see Cai Renlong, Chidaoxian shang de jiaoyin, 45-64. 45 These included several who had been involved in the Red Tide Affair. For example, Zhao Hongpin in Sumatra and Huang Fuming in Java (Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party,” 708), as well as Hong Junsheng (aka Hong Quansheng 洪泉声). Teng Soe Hoa 邓泗华, one of the colonial policemen involved in the 1933 investigation, made a rabid report in 1948, insisting that “[Hong] must be deported” in order to “immediately break the neck and legs” of the Chinese communist network (Teng Soe Hoa, Geheim Rapport 570/i.d./g., 1948-08-04, NA 2.10.62: 1694.) The son of newspaperist Fu Weidan states that he was also a Red Tide veteran (Fu Keyang, “Yi xianfu Fu Weidan”). 46 This coterie had been more or less dispatched intentionally by the CPC to Singapore around 1940-1942 to build Overseas Chinese support. also included Shen Zijiu, Zhang Chukun 张楚琨, Yang Sao, Wang Jinding, Wang Jiyuan 王纪元, Zheng Manru 郑曼如, Zheng Chuyun 郑楚云 and a few dozen others. Their preexisting relationships, often formed in the cauldron of political and literary struggles in 1930s Shanghai, were further cemented by the experience of hiding in the Sumatran hinterland during the Japanese occupation. 47 See Seng, "Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism," for a discussion of Below the Winds, and Show, "Gendering Chinese Diaspora," for a discussion of New Woman. 48 Hu Yuzhi, “Nanyang zayi,” 116. 49 Jin Jin, Lengzhan yu huayu yuxi yanjiu, Chapter 2, Footnote 42. 50 CDL activities in Southeast Asia (specifically Burma, Sumatra, and Malaya) have not been systematically studied. He Bixiao’s "The Communist Breakthrough,” discusses the role of Hong Kong in this network, and a history of minor parties in China touches on the CDL at various points (Jeans ed., Roads Not Taken; esp. Part 3). Heiying's short story “Moved by the Times (时 代的感动),” from the eponymous collection, centers on an old man who becomes the proud chair of a newly established CDL branch. 51 The underground mimeograph Forward (前进报), was converted into a party organ. The Democratic Daily News also included a supplement on the women’s movement, Garden (田园). Dutch archives also attest to the existence of an associated magazine called Berjuang (“Struggle” in Indonesian). 52 See Yang Qiusheng, "Tuanjie Zhaowa huaqiao,” pp. 61-65. 53 For an overview of postwar newspapers, see Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni Huaqiao huaren shi, 113-120; and Fung Ai-chun, Huaqiao baoye shi, Chapter 3. Chung Kwang-shing, Yinni huaqiao baocong shi, also has valuable information, but is very anticommunist. Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, includes a helpful English-language table of newspapers and their orientations (80-81), though it should be noted that Keng Po did not have Chinese edition. 105 === [PDF page 120] === 54 Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 115. 55 "Sheng Huo Pao groep en Chinese communistische politieke infiltratie in Indonesie," in NA 2.21.205.72 Folder 43. 56 This document was published by the influential Jakarta Chinese General Association (中华总 会; or Chung Hua Tsung Hui), and at least partially compiled by the longtime editor of the Sin Po’s Indonesian edition, Kwee Kek Beng. It is also almost certainly the reason that Kwee left Sin Po, whose director Ang was quick to disavow it (Kwee, 25 tahon sebagi wartawan, 107). Kwee did recall that a Dutch offered him the use of military aircraft (Kwee, 25 Tahun Sebagai 57 Wartawan, 109). 58 For example, he went on a tour of Sumatra in 1948 to propagandize for independence with Republican officials, while also preaching moderation. (Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 168-177). He also lent staff to the Republican administration's offices in the Dutch-occupied capital. 59 Kwee, 25 tahon sebagi wartawan, 111, 113. Ang Jan Goan’s autobiography also does not exaplin the reason for the departure—the studious avoidance in both texts suggests something sensitive was involved. It is unclear if Ang had always opposed the Memorandum, considering he was on the board of the CHTH, or if he had a change of heart. 60 One album has been preserved in the Niels Douwes Dekker Collection in Cornell, which was previously owned by the architect Liem Bwan Tjie, in Box 19 Folder 11. Douwes Dekker was a photographer who worked for the Dutch Government Information Service (regeringsvoorlichtingdienst), and in addition to his own photographs, he “boxes of unsorted and mostly uncaptioned materials as personal belongings” that might have been seen as anti- Republican. Other versions are included in the Dutch archive: see NA 2.13.29: 551, NA 2.10.14: 2.4.3, and, the one that preserves the original captions and cover which I use, NA 2.05.52: 589. 61 These may have been from the Mergosono massacre of July 1947 (Pratiwi, “Kekerasan Terhadap Golongan Tionghoa”). This episode is also discussed in the memoir Indonesia in Flame and Smoke (Indonesia dalam Api dan Bara) Kwee Thiam Tjing (aka Tjamboek Berdoeri). 62 These photographs have been used without context, for example, in a South China Morning Post excerpt from Taomo Zhou’s Migration in the Time of Revolution (“Migration, identity and revolution: how the Chinese shaped Indonesia,” 2019-11-23, www.scmp.com/weekasia/politics/article/3037995/migration-identity-and-revolution-how-chinese-shaped-indonesia). According to Baren, the protest was specifically timed to coincide with his detention by Dutch authorities and the temporary disarray of the Chinese left, and “all the drawings and slogans were prepared single-handedly by the Pao An Tui” (Baren, “Geming guanganji,“ 393-94). Kwa Tjwan Sioe in Nan Chiau Jit Pau, 1947-09-03, quoted in translation in “Anti- 63 Nederlandse opvattingen in Chinese kringen in Nederlands-Indië [Summary of Anti-Dutch Activities in Chinese Circles in Netherlands India],” NA 2.05.52: 186. “Anti-Nederlandse opvattingen in Chinese kringen in Nederlands-Indië [Summary of Anti- 64 Dutch Activities in Chinese Circles in Netherlands India],” NA 2.05.52: 186. 106 === [PDF page 121] === 65 One agent gained an audience with Tan Kah Kee, who he convinced of the extent of Indonesian atrocities ("Rapport Inzake Bezoek aan Singapore dd. 16-23 August 1947 [Report on Visit to Singapore, 16-23 August 1947]," in ANRI RA3: 148). The Advisor for Chinese Affairs, Thio Thiam Tjong, also circulated the photographs in Singapore ("Overzeese Chineezen [Overseas Chinese]," Van Aerssen to T. Elink Schuurman, 1948-04-05, in ANRI RA3: 149). 66 Kwee, 25 tahon sebagi wartawan, 107. 67 The high school, Xinzhong, had a progressive reputation. This publication had a masthead calligraphed by Baren. 68 This comparison was, as one might expect, unfair, since in the "blue" schools the bulletin boards were lively centers of debate, with students routinely tearing down articles they disagreed with [See GWSP Box 2 Folder 27, "Visit to Min Kuang School, Chung Hua School and Lien Ho School"]. 69 While histories of (Western) print normally only discuss the mimeograph as one of a number of duplicators invented in the late 19th century that soon became obsolescent, except in school and church contexts, John McMillian has pointed out that it was a central communications medium for the 1960s student movement in the US: the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) reportedly affixed the label "Our Founder" above their office mimeograph machine (McMillian, "Our Founder, The Mimeograph Machine”). 70 "Morian Chen" in ANRI RA8C: 1266. 71 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 91. 72 The periodical is the semimonthly Chu Sen (the Chinese characters are unknown), from Palembang High School. It was preserved in facsimile and translation only because the Indonesian police took an interest in it in preparing a deportation case against Lay Tjin Tjong, principal of Palembang Middle School. It can be found in “Lay Tjin Tjiong,” ANRI RA78: 1266. Lay was a third-generation Jakartan Hakka who’d been active in the Southwestern Associated University’s anti-Chiang Kai Shek student movement. Due to the fall of the right-wing Wilopo cabinet, he was ultimately not deported, after a year-long detention (Lai Zengchuang, “Wo bi shiyue geming hai da,” 39-40). 73 Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai, Chapter 2. 74 Even though this magazine was published in Singapore rather than Indonesia, it was one of the most popular magazines in the entire region and had strong links to Indonesia because its editorial leadership had all lived in Sumatra. 75 Hu Yuzhi, “Nanyang zayi,” 118. 76 This pedagogy is carefully and romantically depicted in Huang Dongping's Sojourner's Song (侨歌) trilogy of novels. 77 Xie Zhishan, “Huiyi zai Bangjia de zhengrong suiyue,” 623-633. 78 Xu Qiongling, “Song Zhongquan shengping jianjie,” 582. 107 === [PDF page 122] === 79 Song Zhongquan to Liu Simu, n.d., in NA 2.21.205.72: 43. 80 Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese, 43-45. Yinhua Baoren 印华报人 [Chinese-Indonesian Newspaperist], “Women de yidian jiaodao 我 81 们的一点交代 [A Little Justification],” Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1960-04-22, p. 2. 82 Lin Hanwen, Xijia fengyu lu, 148. 83 Huang Xincong, Chidaocheng de gushi, 241 84 Almanak Pers Indonesia 1954-1955, 195, 185. 85 Yamamoto, “Print Power,” 482. Compare to Thien Sung and Thay Kong Siang Poo, each reaching 4000. These numbers are based on Japanese reports. 86 PRC-based scholars give these numbers for the late 1950s: Seng Hwo Pao (55k), Xin Bao (40k), Thay Kong Siang Poo (25k), Thien Sung Yit Poh (15k) (Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi (1950-2004), 115-117). While it is likely that circulation did increase after 1955, perhaps dramatically, the numbers for Seng Hwo Pao in particular should be treated with caution—an Indonesian almanac for example notes a huge discrepancy between selfreported and externally-assessed numbers for this publication (Almanak Pers Indonesia, 223). 87 Li Zhuohui, interview with the author, Jakarta, 2024-08-29. Ang Jan Goan notes that the combined circulation of the two language editions could have reached 100k in 1960, but for the limited supply of paper (Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 285). 88 In the mid-1950s: Keng Po (39k), Pedoman (30k), Sin Po (25k), Harian Rakjat (23k). See Almanak Pers Indonesia 1954-1955, cited in Dhakidae, “The Fall of Political Journalism,” 167. 89 Dhakidae, “The Fall of Political Journalism,” 125. Yinhua Baoren 印华报人 [Chinese-Indonesian Newspaperist], “Women de yidian jiaodao 我 90 们的一点交代 [A Little Justification],” Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1960-04-22, p. 2. 91 Dhakidae, “The Fall of Political Journalism,” 110-116. See Sutter, Indonesianisasi, for a fuller account of economic nationalist policies. 92 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 273-274. 93 Dhakidae, “The Fall of Political Journalism,” 127. 94 Qianren, “Huang Zhougui yu Shenghuo bao,” 157-158. 95 Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 247. 96 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 272. For example, Wang Jiyuan was detained for calling for the expulsion of the Netherlands from 97 West Irian (West Papua) by force (Qianren, “Shenghuo bao dashi ji,” 28). 108 === [PDF page 123] === 98 See Pedoman Penyelesaian Masalah Cina, for an exhaustive list of policies related to “The Chinese Question” published by the New Order government. 99 “Ichtisar Pers Tionghoa,” in ANRI RA8C 1330; “Ichtisar Pers Tionghoa,” ANRI RA8C 2506. The most significant institution here is the “Office for Oriental Affairs” (Urusan Politik Ketimuran; Oosters-Politiek Zaken), reporting to Attorney General, R.A. Soeprapto (in office 1949-1959). Studies of R.A. Soeprapto make no mention of his leading role in surveillance of Chinese institutions. 100 The “Section for Peranakan and Foreign Affairs” (Urusan Peranakan dan Bangsa Asing) established in the Yogyakarta years gradually ceased to be active after the mid-1950s. 101 On the basis of lists provided by pro-GMD activists, virtually the entire leadership of Seng Hwo Pao was arrested, including Wang Jiyuan, Huang Zhougui, Zheng Chuyun, Chen Daosan, Lai Zuoren, Wang Dajun, Weng Fulin, Zheng Manru (in Semarang), Zou Fangjin (in Belitung) (Qianren, “Shenghuo bao dashi ji,” 28). Several prominent leftist educators, such as Yang Xinrong, the principal of the pro-Beijing Xinhua School, were also arrested, and Yang was deported together with Wang Jiyuan (Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 65). 102 Peperpu No. 10/1958. 103 Peperpu No. 23/1958. 104 Willmott, National Status, “Alien Press Control.” 105 See Chapter 5 for an overview of the PP10 crisis. 106 Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 117-119. 107 "Larangan pencetakan, penerbitan, pengumuman, penyampaian, penyebaran, perdagangan dan/atau penempalan surat-kabar atau majalah yang mempergunakan huruf bukan huruf Latin atau huruf Arab atau huruf daerah Indonesia." (Quoted in Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 117.) 108 See Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, Chapters 6-9; or Lev, No Concessions, Chapter 8, for an alternate account from the perspective of Yap Thiam Hien, one of the liberal leaders. 109 This shift was obvious to contemporary observers: PSI politician Subadio noted that despite his sympathy for the Baperki’s struggle against discrimination, he was concerned about the alliance between pro-PRC, non-citizen totoks and "superior-feeling intellectuals from the Dutch era"—in other words, the immigrant masses under the leadership of the peranakan left (D.W. Wilmott, Notes from Interview with Subadio, 1954-06-11, GWSP Box 2 Folder 31). 110 Siauw Tiong Djin, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 249. 111 These links to the CPM were kept secret through pseudonyms, and the nominal editor-in-chief was listed as peranakan translator Go Hauw Gie 吴孝义. The depth of the connection was only revealed after the publication of memoirs and oral histories by former CPM leadership after the definitive end of hostilities in the 1990s. See Biographical Note on Zhang Dayong, as well as: 109 === [PDF page 124] === Zhang Dayong, “Dixia hangxian jiemi,” and “Xiao Yucan yu ‘Jiaoxing,’” and Eu Chooi Yip, Langjian zhumeng, and Chan Ai-sian, “Liuwang Yinni shisan nian.” 112 Suryadinata, The Orientation of Chinese Newspapers, 6. 113 Sha, probably an allusion to his place of origin, is a pseudonym for Teo Yong Jim 张荣任, one of the founders of the Sarawak Liberation League (Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu ‘Jiaoxing’”; on his role in this organization, see Seng, “Origins of the Socialist Revolution in Sarawak,” 50- 53). 114 Zhang Dayong, “Tongyan kan Xianda.” 115 U Kuo-sen, while still an adolescent, was one the Chinese militants who joined Saleh Umar’s forces after the 1947 Dutch Police Action—I discuss this group again in the Conclusion. See also Stenberg, “North Across the South Seas,” for U’s role in popularizing the Batak song “Butet (宝 贝)” in the Chinese-language repertoire. 116 See Fang Xiu, Zhanhou Mahua wenxueshi chugao, Chapters 3-5. 117 Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu Juexing zhoukan,” 142. 118 Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 31. 119 Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 46-47. See also Go Gien Tjwan, "Chinese In Indonesia," unpublished typescript, in IISG Bob Hering Papers, for a detailed discussion from the perspective of a Chinese-Indonesian leftist, and Selo Soemardjan et al, Gerakan 19 Mei 1963 di Sukabumi, for a multi-authored social-scientific study commissioned by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (LEKNAS). 120 Siauw Giok Tjhan made this argument most concistently and persuasively—see his collected writings in Pancasila Anti-Rasialisme. His biographer argues that he was an important influence on Sukarno’s pronouncements on race (Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 215). 121 This is borne out by Chung Kwang-shing’s discussion of post-1960 newspapers, which laments the “forced” shift to the left (Yinni huaqiao baocong shi, Chapter 8). 122 See Appendix E. These newspapers may have also formed an important precedent for the post-1965 military-managed newspapers. 123 Chung’s example is of Masjarakat (社会报; “Society”), which drew its staff from Commercial Daily (中华商报) and The Free Press (自由报) (“Yinni huaqiao baocong shi,” 55- 56). Merah Putih (红白报; “Red and White”), also considered left by Chung, had the same address as the pro-GMD newspaper Tsing Kwang, which suggests also that it may have been another right-wing paper that was “forced” to shift left. 124 Dhakidae, “Fall of Political Journalism.” 125 For example, the Sumatran edition of Harian Indonesia drew its staff from the New China Times (Tjukrono, “Wo zai Subei baoye duguo de rizi”). 110 === [PDF page 125] === 126 Regulations included Government Regulation (PP) No., 6/1963 "Stipulations Regarding the Promotion of the Press," in which powers of oversight were granted to the government, while in Ministerial Decision No. 29/SK/M/65, the partisan nature of the media was reinforced when it was mandated for all newspapers to be associated with a political party (Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 122). 127 Li Zhuohui, interview with author, Jakarta, 2024-08-29. 128 I.e., Ganefo Bulletin (新运会简报; Lembaran Ganefo). In 1965 they received permission to resume publishing shortly before the coup (Yinni huaqiao huaren shi 1950-2004, 123). 129 Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi 1950-2004, 123. The 1950s mean is approximate, based on Almanak Pers 1954-1955. See Appendix E for a full list of the 1963-65 newspapers—confusingly, several of these had different “editions” in different cities. For example, there was an Obor Revolusi in Medan as well, and a Harian Ibukota in Pontianak—I strongly suspect that the overlapping names were a workaround for the new regulations, and that they were de facto independent, probably inheriting the staffs of pre-1960 newspapers. 130 Oey, Indonesian Government and Press, 246. 131 Because the name Warta Bhakti, meaning "Loyal Reporter," was shared with the refounded Sin Po (i.e., the Indonesian-language edition), I refer to the Chinese edition as Zhongcheng Bao for clarity’s sake. 132 Li Zhuohui, interviews with author, Jakarta, 2023-10-16, 2023-10-17. 133 I return to the activities of the Chiao Hsing group in detail in the Conclusion of this dissertation. 134 According to Ang Jan Goan, by 1961 relations between the staff of the two languages had deteriorated substantially (Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 280). 135 Xia Ming, Xia Ming wenji. 136 Suryadinata, Peranakan Chinese Politics in Java, Chapter 3. Tan had been the lead journalist at Sunday Courier, and later at Republik (“Catatan Dari 137 Holand: Teman Kami Tan Hwie Kiat”). 138 See Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 284. Keng Po continued, however, to play an important role in printing and distribution, hiring out its business expertise to other periodicals such as Sinar Harapan (Dhakidae, “The Fall of Political Journalism,” 225-7). 139 For an overview of the LPKB’s activities, see Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis. For an enlightening discussion of the unholy alliance between Catholic-Chinese intellectuals and military intelligence, see Nair, “Spooks, Goons, ‘Intellectuals.’” Sindhunatha is believed by some to have been a CIA asset—I have not verified these rumors, but even if he wasn’t funded, he may as well have been. 111 === [PDF page 126] === 140 The notable exception is Yunus Yahya (aka Lauw Chuan Tho), whose advocacy for conversion later caused him to split from the predominantly Christian assimilationist group. 141 Letter to Attorney General (Jaksa Agung), 1965-04-05, ANRI RA37: 1974. 142 Letter to Attorney General (Jaksa Agung), 1965-04-05, ANRI RA37: 1974. “Janganlah menyia-nyiakan harapan presiden [Don’t throw out the president’s hopes],” 143 Zhongcheng Bao, 1964-06-17, translated in ANRI RA37: 1584. Njoto, “Nipponisasi? [Japanization?],” Harian Rakjat, 1963-10-02, quoted in translated in 144 ANRI RA37: 1556. 145 This phenomenon extends to the prewar years, as Said’s Sejarah Pers di Sumatera Utara (73- 76) suggests. He specifically mentions Pelita Andalas, published by Bin Po, as an influential Indonesian newspaper owned by non-assimilated Chinese. 146 See Yang Guojian, “Gelayadan Ribao.” Chang blames Kerakjatan’s closure in 1954 on his successor as editor in chief, Djafar Tobing, but shifts in the political climate surely also played a role (Chang Hsi Shek, “Geming duli xianqu”). 147 Yang Guojian, “Gelayadan Ribao;” Hamid, Gelora Api ‘26, 99. Plomp incorrectly writers that Hope was founded by “communist Chinese refugees from Java in 1959” (“Pulp Fiction,” 388). They were not refugees from PP10, but rather Baperki cadre, including several CPM and PKI members, who were sent by Siauw Giok Tjhan ad Zhang Xishi’s request (Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan”). The editor in chief, PKI cadre and Baperki member Tan Foe Khiong 陈富强, was one of the first to be killed after G30S. Hope’s office was next to that of the Bin Po, which Tan also assumed the nominal directorship of (Zhu Peiguan, “Mianlan Minzhu Ribao” 279; Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan”). 148 Melvin, “Why Not Genocide?” 73. 149 Idrus, Sekilas Pengalaman, 69. 150 Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 49. See also Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 230-231. For the history of G30S, see Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder; on the ensuing massacres, see 151 Robinson, The Killing Season. 152 Li Zhuohui, Interview with the author, Jakarta, 2023-10-16 and 2023-10-17. 153 These policies have been collected in a variety of anthologies, including Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, BAKIN, Pedoman Penyelesaian Masalah Cina, and Jafar Suryomenggolo, Hukum Sebagai Alat Kekuasaan. Suryomenggolo helpfully periodizes the policies of 1965-1969 into three “phases” whose goals shift from sweeping repression, to minor adjustment, to a new model of regulation. 154 Ketetapan MPRS No. 32/1966. 155 W.D. Sukisman was initially trained in Japan during the occupation, and later studied in UI’s sinology program, and worked briefly in the Indonesian Embassy in China. He was involved in 112 === [PDF page 127] === many of the New Order’s “Chinese Question” institutions (Kwartanada, "Making of the Chinese Question,” 194). 156 The exact sequence of mergers (at one point there were at least four Dwikora’s!) is difficult to establish, and appear to have involved power struggles between different factions of the New Order (such as the police, intelligence, and military); Tjukrono, “Wo zai Subei baoye duguo de rizi,” and Paget, “Indonseian Newspapers,” provide some hints of this process. 157 From 1966 to 1969, there was also a Sumatran edition of Indonesia Daily that was in fact autonomous. The staff of that edition was entirely reconstituted from the New China Times, which had been banned several years earlier from supporting the ROC (Tjukrono, “Wo zai subei baoye duguo de rizi”). 158 Recent research has shown that Mao may have had foreknowledge of general plans, and cautioned against rash action (Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 163-165); in any case, the embassy, just like the vast majority of the PKI, was totally unprepared for the developments of 1965. Davidson and Kammen, “Indonesia’s Unknown War.” Note also the expulsion of all ethnic 159 Chinese from Aceh in 1966 (Melvin, “Why not genocide?”). 160 Xia Ming, Shenqie huainian Yinni Shankouyang, n.p. This group is the Singkawang Youth Study Collective (青年学习小组), and included Guan Tianlai 管天来 and Wen Biao 文彪, both active in the 1960s. 161 Umar Saleh, Wu Zhiman wenji, 11. 162 Davidson and Kammen, “Indonesia’s Unknown War.” This rumor is also attested in Lin Shi Fang, Xi Jialimandan huaren shi, 112. It was apparently printed in the (local edition of?) the military newspaper Angkatan Bersendjata. Both sources consider it likely that the murder (apparently of a chieftain named Garanse) was either fabricated or a military frameup. Note, however, that this rumor was initially ineffective, and it was only with further political manipulation through the politician Oevang Oeray that the military was successful in instigating massacres. 163 Coppel, Studying the Chinese in Indonesia, Chapter 1; Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi (1950-2004), 10; Wu Yiqi, “Yinni huawen wenxue lishi fazhan gailüe,” 143. 164 Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi (1950-2004), 140. 165 See Kung, Diasporic Cold Warriors, on the GMD’s strength in the Philippines. 166 Several, including Xiao Yaobi (pseud. Liren) and Chen Zhanhu were assigned to the translation of Mao’s selected works into Indonesian, ostensibly as a way to protect them from the Cultural Revolution. 167 Li Zhuohui, interview with the author, Jakarta, 2023-10-28. 168 Guo Wenhe, Guo Wenhe wenji, Introduction. 113 === [PDF page 128] === For example, Umar Saleh, the son of North Sumatran guerilla leader Saleh Umar, and Yang 169 Guohao, a comrade of Lin Shi Fang’s in the West Kalimantan PKI (Umar Saleh, Wu Zhiman wenji, 12; Lin Shi Fang, Nüren de nahan, 21). 170 Li Zhuohui notes that some of his former colleagues apologized to him for working at Harian Indonesia (interview with the author, Jakarta, 2023-10-29). 171 Lin Shi Fang, interview with the author, Tanggerang, 2024-08-30. A passive supporter of the guerrillas who occasionally donated supplies to them told me that she never saw Labor, suggesting that its circulation was restricted (C. S., interview with the author, Jakarta, 2024-08- 31). 172 Of course, every issue was to be destroyed after reading, and none survive that I know of, though perhaps there are some issues in military archives. 173 Galbraith, “Deictic Shift and the Poetics of Narrative Involvement.” West-Pavlov has called the concept of the “Global South” a deictic shifter (cited in Yoon, China and African Literature, Introduction), i.e. something that changes the place from where one speaks. 174 Pan Yatun and Wang Yisheng, “Yindunixiya huawen wenxue,” 627. The periodization, using 1965 as the inflection point, is widely accepted among yinhua writers—see, for example, Li Qing, Yan Weizhen shiwen xuan, Preface. 175 Shen Huizheng, “Haizi, kuai zhangda ba! (孩子，快长大吧!),” Jiqing niandai, 722-724. The poem was published in Xin Bao, 1957-06-17, and Harian Ibukota, 1963-09-27. 176 The validity of this interpretation is reinforced by Shen Huizheng’s publication of several essays in the intervening period promoting adoption of Indonesian citizenship. 177 I am reminded here of Karl’s analysis in Staging the World of the interest in the world during the late Qing, in the transitional moment between the imperial Sinocentrism and Republican Western-philia. Cited in Li Qing, Yan Weizhen shiwen xuan, Preface; also Zi Lian 紫梿, “Nanguo ernü zhuan 178 南国儿女传 [Heroes of the South],” Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1958-11-27, p. 3. 179 Lin Shi Fang, interview with the author, Tanggerang, 2024-08-30. The same episode is recounted in Lin Shi Fang, Xijia fengyun lu, 184. 180 Zhonghe 众禾, “Guanyu pao Dade de yi xie yijian,” Zhongxuesheng, vol. 2, no. 8, 1948-08. 181 See Anderson, Imagined Communities, Chapters 2-3. 182 Anderson, Introduction, Imagined Communities, 1. 183 Anderson, Preface to the Second Edition, Imagined Communities, xi. 184 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 32. 185 Coppel, Studying Chinese in Indonesia, Chapter 8. 114 === [PDF page 129] === 186 He criticized his peers for treating this group as a “racial minority” rather than as a “commercial bourgeoisie.” Part of this talk is reproduced in Coppel’s rebuttal, “Values and the Study of Chinese in Indonesia,” in Studying ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and the entire debate is treated in Twang, Chinese Business Elite, 5-8. Anderson also thought highly of his colleague G.W. Skinner (Life Beyond Boundaries, Chapter 2) and was a close friend of Onghokham (Reeve, To Remain Myself, 130-134). His later political commentary on Thailand (over-)emphasized the importance of inter-Chinese tensions (e.g., “Riddles of Yellow and Red”). 187 Kwee Thiam Tjing, Indonesia dalam Api dan Bara. 188 Anderson, “Bahasa tanpa nama,” 546. 189 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 207. 190 Zheng Tufei, Yezi ji, 47. 115 === [PDF page 130] === Chapter 2: What Was Yinhua Literature? Heiying’s "An Ordinary Story," (平凡的故事; 1947), in a device not uncommon in mid- 20th century Chinese literature, opens with a contrast between the grandeur of history and the smallness of experience: We have entered an extraordinary era. This is an era of blood and tears, love and hate; torrents of blood, torrents of tears, flood every corner of the world […] My story is nothing special, but it has the shadow of this age of chaos. As my mother says, sighing: “What a time this is! The Japanese were beaten, the Dutch are back, Indonesians want independence [闹独立], wherever you go, there is no peace. Now, we’re also arguing, even at home, you sisters can’t get along, a father and child arguing, what a world this The story, it turns out, is one about print culture: the family owns a small print shop in Jakarta, then still Batavia, with three rotary presses, two electric and one manual, as if publishing is here the most ordinary and representative of professions. The conflict for this idyllic family arises when the narrator’s older sister, under the influence of her new boyfriend, joins "XXX.” First she leaves the progressive choir, and then she burns a packet of “red” books mailed by a relative, and the story ends not with a resolution but with an accusation: “This kind of person [the boyfriend] has wrecked the unity [团结] of Overseas Chinese society, and wrecked the happiness of my family.”2 (The antagonist is heavily implied to be a GMD agent.) What is notable here is that it is the right wing that is figured here as a political intrusion into the apolitical world of the family, and implicitly, the left wing that functions as the guarantor of stability, an allegory reinforced by the conservative conflation of family and society. The forces of progress print books, the forces of disruption burn them. This chapter turns to the literature that developed atop the substrate of the print culture described in the previous chapter. I first provide a chronological account of the history of yinhua literature up to 1965, using the history of the literary book as a proxy for the development of an autonomous field of literature. This account retraces the historical narrative about the press introduced in the first chapter, but this time with a different emphasis. Between 1945 and 1965 I identify several “waves” (潮) of literary institution-building—I borrow the figure of the “wave” appears from the memoirs in which it appears, with all its connotations of shared affect, of the 116 === [PDF page 131] === overwhelming power of circumstance, of the communion of the experiencing subject and the historical period. Initial attempts to establish a literary scene in the 1940s proved short-lived in the bifurcated Cold War environment, until a wave of literary supplements established in the late 1950s revived these dreams. These publication venues encouraged the development of shortform literature, specifically free verse and short stories. The closure of newspapers and periodicals around 1960 permitted a redirection of energy, especially via the Jadeite Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud, 翡翠文化基金会) and the Awakening Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Sadar) into the local publishing of original and translated literature, respectively. These institutions were shut down in the anticommunist coup of 1965 along with the yinhua press. The publication of books of original literary writing in Chinese stands in for the repeated attempts to assert the autonomy of literature, a desire to grow beyond a In the remainder of the chapter, I elaborate the idea of “allophone literature,” that is, literature written in a language that differs from the dominant language in a given society. This concept helps me to make sense of two recurrent concerns which have both thematic and stylistic expressions. The first is an overriding and often self-reflexive interest in the processes of mediation and communication. The second is the discourse of “Sino-Indonesian friendship,” which acted as the implicit context for most of yinhua literature, although its expression was varied and sometimes contradictory. I then examine how these concerns played out in a selection of poetry and fiction from the 1950s. Development of Yinhua Literature Origins or Exceptions? The earliest modern Chinese literature written by Indonesia-born authors likely appeared in the literary supplements of newspapers like Xin Bao in the mid-1920s.4 Other, earlier precedents exist, but they appear almost like accidents: does the novella Lone Swan 断鸿零雁记, by the Yokohama-born “revolutionary monk” Su Manshu 苏曼殊, published in a progressive 117 === [PDF page 132] === newspaper in Surabaya where he was then teaching,5 or the epic landscape poetry about North Sumatra by the Taiwanese Lin Jingren 林景仁, who had married into the local Chinese elite,6 or for that matter, those of his uncle Zhang Yunan 张煜南, better known as the brother of the millionaire Tjong A Fie.7 What of the Poems of Chaos and Separation (乱离杂诗) composed by Yu Dafu in his final years in exile,8 do they count as yinhua literature? While I am unwilling to enforce national criteria, which conform poorly to the itinerant qualities of a diasporic literature, in this exploratory exercise I am interested in literature that develops out of a sustained engagement with the social realities of Indonesia, even if written by authors who were born or died elsewhere. While prewar literary supplements are mostly lost, several anthologies of short stories by writers who “returned” to China for higher education are suggestive.9 In some sense, the publication first of Coconuts (椰子集; 1929) by Zheng Tufei 郑吐飞, and then of Daughter of Empire (帝国的女儿; 1934), followed by Foreign Lands and Homelands (异乡与故国; 1935) and Snow (雪; 1935) by Heiying 黑婴 represent milestones in the development of yinhua literature Both authors, still in university at the time of publication, employed vernacular, even modernist, prose to represent the lives of diasporic subjects, including Chinese contract laborers in the North Sumatran plantations. The concluding story of Zheng’s anthology, for example, “The Sorrow of the New Jews,” (新犹太人的悲伤)—a title that shows his engagement with modern forms of antisinicism modeled on imported antisemitism10—is the earliest known example of the yinhua genre of the contract laborer uprising.11 Unlike examples discussed in later chapters such as Baren’s Temple of Five Ancestors (c. 1946) or Li Xu and Li Ren’s Tin Island (1960), however, it ends in morose and utter defeat, a difference suggestive of the shift from the modernist pessimism of the 1930s to the revolutionary optimism of the postwar era.12 On his return to Padang, however, Zheng Tufei appears to have stopped publishing and gone into business. During the Pacific War, he was among the “patriotic capitalists” who financially supported the antifascist intellectuals that fled Singapore to Sumatra.13 118 === [PDF page 133] === Something of a wunderkind, Heiying’s early works—he also wrote extensive film criticism, and his personal life was closely followed in the gossip pages—represents the modest apex of literary acclaim for any author that could be claimed as "Indonesian-Chinese." The subjects of Heiying’s stories reflects his interest in race and diaspora: they include British sailors, Russian emigres, Japanese sex workers, as well as Chinese contract laborers. His style reveals a fascination with modern media, and scholars have been drawn to the invocation of cinema, cartooning, or music in his early writing.14 His success did not last, since the exigencies of war soon made the modernist style he employed appear dated and irrelevant. More importantly however, he returned to Indonesia, the conditions that had enabled his splash in Shanghai—a mature publishing industry, large reading public, and exoticist vogue for stories about the "tropical" world—were absent in the Netherlands Indies. Over the next two decades, his writing style underwent a gradual but marked pivot from something we could call modernism towards something we could call realism, a stylistic shift that is inseparable from his political growth. Whereas in Shanghai he had been the youngest member of the “New Sensationalist” circle, which was known for apolitical or even collaborationist tendencies, rather than the contemporaneous League of Leftist Writers, his work as a newspaperist supporting the war of resistance would land him in a concentration camp during the occupation.15 After his return to Indonesia, he worked first for the New China Times (新中华报).16 As the cases of both of these authors show, there were talented writers interested in representing Southeast Asian subjects within the forms of modern Chinese literature. However, the conditions did not yet exist in Indonesia for them to pursue a career as professional or even part-time writers, as confirmed by the far thinner record left behind by local writers that are mostly attested only in memoirs.17 Indeed, even until the end of this period, there were virtually no writers could not make a living full-time as a writer. Instead, they had to support themselves, often working in the schools, the press, or community organizations, although some had entirely jobs entirely separate from the language institutions: Huang Dongping, for example, was a traditional accountant at a salted fish store.18 For some, the amateurism of the yinhua literary 119 === [PDF page 134] === community was perhaps a boon: when one critic called for sabbaticals for teacher-writers, others accused him of encouraging writers to divorce themselves from social life, “the source of all literary creation… they will become like a stream without a source, withering and dying.”19 120 === [PDF page 135] === Figure 12. The masthead of Little Xin Bao, late 1930s. This supplement, edited by Fang Dingxun, was one of the first venues for publishing modern literature in Chinese in Indonesia. In practice, most of the content was not literature. The design of the masthead, by the design agency Linto (南岛), signals their participation in the international discourse of the “modern girl.” This aesthetic would be considered reactionary by the 1950s. Source: Xin Bao, 1937-01-07, in National Library of China Collection. 121 === [PDF page 136] === Jakarta Spring As mentioned earlier, the end of the war released an outburst of publishing energy, analogous to what Han Suyin termed the "Malayan Spring" to the north: “a widening of the public sphere, whereby new moods, vocabularies, and techniques were introduced into political life.”20 An unprecedented number of literary journals were founded, especially in Jakarta, such as Tong Yin Wen Yih (东印文艺; “East Indies Literature”) and Literary Front (文艺线). Unlike the prewar literary supplements, their physical and institutional separation from the newspapers asserted the relative autonomy of literature from current affairs. Even the early, biweekly Seng Hwo Pao, before it was pressed into more direct political service as a daily newspaper, focused primarily on literature.21 Similarly, pictorials such as Nanyang Post (南洋) and Yih Yeoh (艺友), and student publications such as Chung Hsio Sheng and Seabird (海燕), were filled with short stories, poems, and reportage, as well as editorials and letters debating literature. In the launch essay for Tung Yin Wen Yih—the use of “East Indies” (Tung Yin, 东印) rather than “Indonesia” suggests a certain ambivalence towards the revolution—Heiying emphasized the novelty of this phenomenon: Since the liberation of Java, the overseas Chinese publishing world has suddenly become very lively… However, these publications are general in nature (一般性), and as for purely literary (纯文艺) publications, I haven't seen any yet. As far as I can remember, in fact, there have never been any at all [here]. Why? Do readers not need literature? Are there no writers of literature?22 Heiying answers that, readers and writers are both eager for the appearance of just such a publication. He remarks that literature, because it has the unique capacity to "reflect the times" (反映时代), will have to take on the last three years, which were full of "so many joyful as well as sorrowful scenes, so many bright as well as dark stories"; and that, in the longer term, East Indies (Sinographic) literature will also have to take the "difficult but correct" road of developing its "specificity" (独特性) based on its "locality" (地方性), distinct from the literature of China. In 1949, a competition was held, co-sponsored by Xin Bao, with 35 entrants.23 In the revitalized postwar environment, Heiying was prolific, publishing and editing for many of the new periodicals. Exceptionally, he also published two volumes of short fiction, 122 === [PDF page 137] === Moved by the Times (时代的感动; 1947) and Under the Red and White Flag (红白旗下; 1950).24 Moved by the Times, published by the unknown Jakarta-based Mermaid Bookstore (鲛 人书屋), is an anthology of stories about the transformative effects of the Pacific War on the lives of individual Chinese-Indonesians.25 Based on my research, it may be the first (singleauthor, original) book of Chinese-language fiction published in Indonesia, and would not be followed by a second until 1960. While several other books with an important place in yinhua literature were also published in Hong Kong at this time, they were typically written by recent arrivals who had closer ties to the mainland, such as Hu Yuzhi’s utopian story Air Boyscout (青 少年航空兵; discussed in Chapter 2) and Baren’s literary memoir Neighbors (邻人们; discussed in Chapter 3).26 Heiying was, once again, the exception that proved the rule. Most of the postwar journals foundered within a few years: economic pressure aside, the political bifurcation of 1949 probably was also hostile for defenders of literary autonomy. As Yang Sao, Heiying’s successor at Seng Hwo Pao put it, in a condemnation of what he saw as the hedonism of some yinhua periodicals: Many friends feel that one of the faults of [my column] is that it’s too hard, that it’s unlike a supplement. That’s true. But that fault is created by the age. This age is one of suffering, of the final struggle between light and dark, life and decay, humans and demons, socialism or people’s democracy and colonial slavery […] Between these two camps, there is no third camp […] the era of supplements, of enjoying “eye candy” (眼睛 吃冰淇淋), has already passed.27 Indeed, the period from 1950 to 1955 was an ebb in yinhua literary publishing, as young writers with talent and resources aspired to make the one-way trip to China, where they melted into the mainstream of socialist construction. Literary activity did not cease, but it entered a period of quiescence. Although literary books published in Indonesia were relatively few, even towards the peak of the mid-1960s, the actual quantity of (imported) Chinese books circulating in Indonesia, was considerable, as many outside observers (Figure 13). An American reporter in 1951 noted with concern how red propaganda continues to flow through the schools and through the bookshops of Glodok. One such bookstore is right in the heart of the Chinese settlement. It is extremely 123 === [PDF page 138] === clean, and bright-eyes girls and eager young men jump to attend you. They speak, among them, more than a dozen languages and they can provide books in about half of these. Their shelves are crowded with standard book-length treatises on Communism, and a broad central table is covered with small booklets selling for only 1 1/4 cents each.28 This description could have applied to any of half a dozen bookstores: Shanghai Bookstore, a branch of one of Singapore’s most important progressive institutions, or maybe Nanxing (“Southern Star,” 南星) Bookstore or OK Sports, whose proprietors were stalwarts of Jakarta’s progressive elite.29 Similarly, the son of the founder of Shanghai Bookstore, while on his way to the 1956 Afro-Asian Students Conference in Bandung, remarked on the "the variety of Chineselanguage books, far, far greater than any bookstore in Singapore or Malaya."30 In other cities, they would have found similar situations: in Medan, for example, Dadi (“Good Earth,” 大地) Bookstore had formed the nucleus of the wartime Anti-Fascist Alliance, and its political and commercial success continued after the war.31 In addition to all these bookstores, the embassy and the community organizations also often maintained reading rooms (not to mention the schools, which often had night classes for adult education). In a pattern familiar to students of the Shanghai cinema of the 1930s,32 Overseas Chinese figured primarily as consumers rather than producers of media. Their appetite was fed by a steady stream of imports from Hong Kong and Singapore, a stream that turned increasingly red in the postwar period. To get an idea of the scale of these imports: in one shipment in 1948, a shipment of 21,000 problematic books from Shanghai Bookstore were confiscated from Tah Chung (大众社) in one confiscated shipment in 1948.33 Based on the ban lists, these books varied widely indeed, including publications like On Communist Morality, by Liu Shaoqi, the China Democracy League Handbook, or even a book of Indonesian songs filled with lyrics celebrating independence. 34 In Indonesia as in China, communists strongly emphasized the importance of bookselling.35 For example, the receiving bookstore of the shipment above had been founded in 1944 by antifascist capitalists with the goal of making money to invest into three areas: selling progressive books, starting a newspaper (Seng Hwo Pao, as it turned out), and supporting Chinese-language education.36 While progressive cinema had to be subsidized to be 124 === [PDF page 139] === profitable, one suspects that the market for political books did not require much additional support.37 The Dutch colonial government had maintained a strict and regularly-updated list of banned books. Communists arriving from China remarked on the “lifeless atmosphere (死气沉 沉)”38 produced by this “cultural blockade (文化封锁).”39 Even relatively innocuous works like Zheng Tufei's short story collection Coconuts were banned, let alone any political books.40 In the early independence years, these policies were maintained but the ability to enforce them weakened, even as police officials pressed for more stringent regulations.41 While the Indonesian government continued to update the colonial lists of bans on book imports, it was ineffective at controlling their imports or inspecting libraries. In Bangka, leftist schools placed their sensitive books (e.g. by Mao and Stalin) separately from the regular library so they could be easily hidden.42 Starting in 1954 with the nomination of the left-nationalist Ali Sastroamidjojo to Prime Minister, the cabinet began to rein in some of the Attorney General's more blatantly anticommunist recommendations,43 and eventually the ban on communist books was entirely lifted. Although Southeast Asia was primarily a consumption rather than production hub for books, this consumption was engaged and active, even creative, involving annotation, clipping, sharing, recalling the description of scrapbooking as a form of “writing by scissors.”44 For example, in 1949, anti-GMD activists circulated mimeographed pamphlets in Sumatra that instructed educators on how to make unobtrusive edits to a list of anticommunist textbooks.45 Ex-cadre memoirs and government records likely overstate the dominance of leftist literature—the USIS publication Story (小说报) earmarked 30% of its total production from Hong Kong to Indonesia, more than any other Southeast Asian country, which likely reflects both reader interest and the geopolitical importance of Indonesia.46 The CIA maintained a bookstore in Jakarta which may have stocked books targeted to Chinese readers.47 Similarly, every newspaper, no matter how committed on paper to realism, carried serialized wuxia fiction from Hong Kong, leading to debates about the moral probity of this unrealistic genre.48 125 === [PDF page 140] === Figure 13. Bookstores on Pancoran Street in the 1950s. In this image we can see the Kaiming (“Enlightened;” 开明) Bookstore. Within walking distance were a number of other bookstores, most of which stocked books from the PRC, primarily exported through Hong Kong or Shanghai. Source: Tropenmuseum Collection, No 60044100, www.wereldmuseum.nl 126 === [PDF page 141] === Bandung Summer Only after the Bandung Conference would an attempt to reconstitute a local literary gain momentum once more.49 In the wake of the failure of the 1940s literary journals, the limited market and significant capital requirements meant that the newspaper supplement would serve the function of literary journals in this period. A number of these were founded around 1956, perhaps out of a sense that the political struggle of the last few years against the KMT had become overly narrow. Also, the PRC after 1952 sought to demobilize the overseas Chinese in order to strengthen its diplomatic relations—one is reminded of the adage that “any revolutionary energy that does not find the means to inflect and alter the course of history is condemned to be ‘realized’ in culture.”50 One newspaper reprinted a quote they attributed to Lenin in the masthead of the literary supplement: "lately the newspapers spend too many pages on vacuous talk of politics, and not enough on the realities of the construction of new life.”51 This new generation of supplements differed from prewar ones like Xin Bao’s “Little Xin Bao (小新报),” and others that were often simply called “[Newspaper Name] Supplement,” which included a mix of life advice, general knowledge, and political essays together with literature. (Given that Malayan supplement culture began as early as 1925, and the close ties across the Malacca Strait and the Java Sea, it is almost certain that there are other precedents, but the paucity of records makes this difficult to confirm.) The difference between the general and the literary supplements was structural, rather than just a matter of content, of a more specialized literary focus. In effect they operated as publications within publications, with relative autonomy, and often relying on external editors or editorial collectives, and their own distinct “voice.” What was essential was that behind each of these supplements was an editorial collective (or an editor rooted within a small sociality); these groups sometimes organizing literary forums, open editorial meetings, choirs, and new year's parties.52 They were often local, and sometimes linked to schools. In 1958, the smaller paper Berita Ekonomi Yinhua (印华经济) invited high schoolers from the neighboring Bazhong School, also located in Mangga Besar, to operate a literary supplement, which they named 127 === [PDF page 142] === Wasteland (荒地), drawing on a well-worn trope of cultural barrenness (using the rather incongruous image of a cactus in their masthead).53 Yang Songnian and Zhou Weijie in their pioneering study of prewar Singaporean literary supplements, they had a “mission (宗旨).”54 It is important to note that this structure also had financial advantages: like letters from the reader, they were an affordable (assuming that fees were paid, as was general practice, to the writers) way to enrich and expand the content of the newspaper. Table 1. Selected Literary Supplements55 Equator (赤道线) Lee Ming Pau?-1960 Yinhua Art and Seng Hwo Pao 1956-1960 Zou Fangjin Letters (印华文 艺) Yinhua Literature Sumatra Bin Po56 1957-60 Yinhua Literature Society (印 (印华文学) 华人文学社), including Shalihong and Zheng Yuanxin57 Sprouts (萌芽) Thay Kong Siang 1957-60 Wu Jindun58 Poo New and Green Xin Bao 1957-60 Jakarta Chinese Youth Study (新绿) Society (椰华青年学习会)59 Coconut Island Xin Bao 1957-60; Yan Weizhen and Li Qing, of (椰岛) Zhongcheng Bao 1963-65 the Coconut Island Study Society (椰岛学习社), Bandung60 Wasteland (荒地) Berita Ekonomi 1959 Ba Chung Student Association Yinhua (巴中学生会)61 Oasis (绿洲) Harian Ibukota 1963-65 Lin Ting62 Coconut Winds Harian Ibukota 1963-65 Lin Ting63 (椰风) Sparks (火花) Api Revolusi 1963-65 Huang Yurong64 128 === [PDF page 143] === Storm (风雷) Api Revolusi 1963-65 Sun Xi? 65 Equator (赤道线) Api Revolusi 1963-65 Zou Fangjin66 Significantly, the memoirs available generally only list the literary supplements of the pro-PRC newspapers: until at least the 1960s, the Chinese-language right was on the back foot (indeed virtually all “new literature” associated with the May Fourth Movement was banned in Taiwan in this period).67 Some of these titles evoke the leftist literature of the 1930s in China is not accidental—the lost Singkawang literary journal Torrent (激流), for example, was named after Ba Jin’s novel of the same name,68 a lost Bagan Siapiapi student magazine was named Prairie Fire (燎原) in reference to the Mao quotation,69 and Seng Hwo Pao (legally registered under the English name “The Life”) was named in homage to the leftist media entrepreneur Zou Taofen 邹韬奋’s periodical of the same name.70 The most prestigious of these supplements were Yinhua Literary Arts in Jakarta and Yinhua Literature in Medan. In Figure 14 and Figure 15 I have made a diagram overlaying two typical issues of the former. One of the most consistent aspects of this structure was the collocation of Indonesian and Chinese literature on the same page, itself meaningful within a still largely segregated society. Culture, here, functioned (or was supposed to function) as a vanguard for political and economic change. Sometimes, this juxtaposition was actually mediated by Beijing, quite literally: in a 1959 special issue on Indonesian literature, for example, Yinhua Literary Arts republished a letter from the Lekra poet Anantaguna (then in China) to his colleague Agam Wispi (presumably in Indonesia), translated by Chen Xiaru for the journal World Literature. This one example can stand in for the epistemic “round trip” of yinhua literature through PRC culture back to Southeast Asian realities. The return of the literary supplement was accompanied by renewed efforts at anthologization and criticism. The editorial collective behind Yinhua Literature edited three literary anthologies from 1958 to 1960 that were published in Hong Kong.71 In fact, the Medan literary scene which was energized by the postwar democratic movement (discussed in the next 129 === [PDF page 144] === chapter), had already produced the first anthology of modern yinhua literature in 1950. Fittingly, it was entitled Excitement (激动的心情), after an unknown Indonesian short story that was included in translation.72 Nonetheless, perhaps aware of the limited local circulation of this earlier book, the preface to the 1958 anthology, the editors noted that an anthology of writings by Chinese who had "sunk roots (落叶生根)” in Indonesia had never been attempted before. Dismissing the notion of a disregard for culture, they instead pointed to the paucity of cultural organizations and the weakness of the publishing industry, which had resulted in a literature that "could never quite stand up, or would fall down halfway." Yinhua literature was endlessly deferred, as if “we [could] hear the soft sound of rain, without ever actually seeing it." Their selection, which was based on a survey of supplements, privileged realism, or works that "reflected the social life of local people;” and translations of Indonesian progressive literature were also prominently represented.73 Many memoirs remark on the "Indonesia-learning wave" that swept through the yinhua world. Although its ripples reached different parts of the archipelago at different times—later in areas with higher Chinese concentrations like West Kalimantan—everywhere it acquired the character of a political task under the overarching project of Sino-Indonesian friendship. Part of the reason is the implementation of a number of educational regulations by the Indonesian government intended to promote Indonesian as a national language, including requiring teachers in foreign schools to pass an Indonesian language exam, setting minimum hours of instruction for Indonesian, and eventually also requiring newspapers to carry Indonesian-language articles. As I show in detail in Chapter 4, southbound intellectuals in North Sumatra like Baren and Hu Yuzhi sought to elevate the study of Indonesian from passive, pragmatic absorption to politicized, formal study in the 1940s. However, it was only in the 1950s that this political enthusiasm for Indonesian spread throughout the entire community. As such, many of the first locally-produced literary books in Chinese were translations of progressive literature in Indonesia. 130 === [PDF page 145] === In this process, Chiao Hsing Weekly again played a crucial role in promoting the vision of a gradual and voluntary process of integration associated with the organization Baperki. Chen Zhanhu 陈展湖 (aka Shannu 善怒) was one of the most active promoters of the study of Indonesian through its progressive literature, i.e. the literature associated with Lekra (the Institute of People’s Culture). In an article introducing literary periodicals to potential students, for example, he strongly recommended Lekra's publication, New Era (Zaman Baru), to which he also contributed. Other journals such as Indonesia, Culture (Budaja), Indonesian Mirror (Mimbar Indonesia), and especially the pro-Western Confrontation (Konfrontasi), however, needed to be read critically.74 Similarly, he criticized the pessimism and individualism of the iconic poet Chairil Anwar—the brusque expressionism of writers like this stood for both the exhilarating appeal and the corrosive dangers of Indonesian literature for Chinese intellectuals working in a socialist-realist tradition.75 The critical attitudes expressed on paper sometimes have a pro forma quality, and I suspect that they did not prevent enjoyment and possibly even emulation of Indonesian writers with ambiguous or problematic politics—Chen himself was, after all, probably the first translator of Chairil’s most famous poem, “I (Aku).”76 After the closure of Chiao Hsing Weekly in 1960, the staff transferred their energies into book publishing through the Sadar (“Awakening,” preserving the same characters as Chiao Hsing 觉醒) Cultural Foundation. One of their first offerings was an anthology of Indonesian Short Stories (印度尼西亚短篇小说集) in 1960, selected from the pages of Seng Hwo Pao and Chiao Hsing Weekly.77 This volume included works by Lekra authors, including well-known ones (AA Zubir, Utuy Sontani, Rusman Sutiasumarga, and Pramoedya Toer) as well as relatively unremembered or unknown writers (Saibun, Pantjari, Putri Pertiwi, and S.P.O). This book of Indonesian authors, translated by Chinese nationals, published by a peranakan organization, staffed with CPM members, suggests some of the archipelagic ties of the left in Sukarno-era Indonesia. The preface states that cultural exchange can advance the larger project of Sino- Indonesian friendship by "dispelling clouds (拨开重重云雾)” and "eliminating divisions (消除 131 === [PDF page 146] === 隔阂).” Their introduction is critically appreciative—for example, "Flag (旗; Bendera)” by Utuy Tatang Sontani, is about a peddler's transformation in the independence struggle from passionate support to indifference and resentment. The writing is fluid, and the story a certain extent reflects the character of society at that moment. However, because the author overemphasized the character's "anger" of the story, the positive character of the work was weakened.78 Similarly, although the "prose was sorrowful and moving," Pramoedya Ananta Toer's "Inem (依 妮姆)” was superficial in its description of the protagonist's oppressive circumstances, so its “exposure of the cruel aspects of old feudal customs was relatively thin.”79 Notably, these studies of Indonesian/Malay literature precede the increased interest in Singapore/Malaysia in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the subject.80 They were not, however, entirely new—as I discuss in Chapter 4, both colonial-era student returnees such as Zheng Tufei and Southbound leftist writers such as Wang Jinding, Zhang Qicheng and Baren translated Malay/Indonesian literature, with a special interest in the pantun. However, Chiao Hsing led the effort in promoting progressive Indonesian literature to a general Chinese-speaking readership, followed closely by leftist CPCaligned newspapers such as Seng Hwo Pao and Thay Kong Siang Poo. The collocation of translated Indonesian literature with original Chinese literature was expressive of a political vision of multiethnic nationalism and/or international solidarity—in a historically segregated geography, this physical proximity on the page was not meaningless.81 132 === [PDF page 147] === Figure 14. Diagram of Yinhua Literary Arts, 1957. Yinhua Literary Arts, published weekly in Seng Hwo Pao, was one of the premier literary supplements of the late 1950s. This diagram, overlaid on a scan of the original newspaper page, indicates the structure and content of a typical issue. It suggests how the post-1956 literary supplements placed great value on criticism. Source: XMU collection. 133 === [PDF page 148] === Figure 15. Diagram of Yinhua Literary Arts, Indonesian Literature Edition, 1959. Translation, especially of Lekra authors, was a crucial part of yinhua literature. Note the inclusion of a translation of Rukiah from a PRC journal, World Literature (世界文学), later renamed Translations (译文). Source: XMU Collection. 134 === [PDF page 149] === A Forgotten Renaissance One of the most lasting products of the crackdown on the Chinese press, and the Indonesian language learning wave, was the periodical Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia, literally, “Guide to the Indonesian Language” (alternatively “Learning Indonesian,” from the Chinese title [印度尼西亚语学习]). Significantly, Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia was also spared during the bans of 1958 and 1960-1963. After all, its stated mission, teaching Indonesian to Chinesespeakers, was acceptable and even desirable to the assimilationist goals endorsed by the military. The ban on all "competitors" rapidly expanded their readership, with circulation increasing from 2000 to 8000.82 This periodical dedicated itself to refuting a widespread stereotype that Indonesian was an "impoverished" language.83 A typical issue included articles such as advice for teachers taking the state-mandated language exam: don't use dialect, and remember to learn the intricacies of Indonesian political abbreviations, "Manipol, Usdek, Pantja Sila, Nasakom, Nekad… Pembangunan semesta…"84 The same issue also published a republication of the exchange of notes on the dual nationality treaty, as well as a commentary by Buyung Saleh, chairman of Baperki; a measured defense of the historical significant of Sino-Malay for the development of Indonesian; a short story by the leftist filmmaker Bachtiar Siagian; translations; part of a series on the history of the Hongmen triads; and responses to letters inquiring about nuances of vocabulary. In a later issue, the magazine also initiated a competition for a comprehensive, standardized list of translations of placenames. As this summary suggests, the monthly rapidly expanded to include a variety of content, not all of which was directly related to learning Indonesian. Ironically, sometime around 1962, the publication was eventually closed because they had republished several poems by Mao.85 The anti-imperialist tone of this comparatively apolitical organization—unlike Chiao Hsing or Seng Hwo Pao, which were mouthpieces for Baperki and the PRC—is indicative of the overall radicalization of the yinhua community. When Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia was finally banned, they expanded their publishing program as Zamrud Cultural Foundation (“Emerald,” although the Chinese name of the 135 === [PDF page 150] === organization [翡翠文化基金会] translates to “Jadeite”). And here is another irony, since this organization, founded to promote the study of Indonesian, would wind up becoming the primary promoter of locally grown literature. One of the first books they published was Li Xu and Li Ren's screenplay of interethnic rebellion, Love and Hate on Tin Island (锡岛恩仇记), first serialized in Seng Hwo Pao, which I discuss in Chapter 5.86 Some of their books (which were, to be fair, thin and small) were compilations of articles, historical or linguistic, from Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia. Ironically, part of the turn away from periodicals and towards books was a result of political necessity. With the severe restrictions on newspaper and magazines, many organizations found it easier to borrow the form or even just the name of book publishing. Before Seng Hwo Pao, for example, received permission to revive its weekly in late 1964, it published several anthologies under the title “Seng Hwo Pao Literary Series (生活报文艺丛书)” on a monthly basis—a literary journal in all but name.87 More than any other organization and building on the foundations of the supplements established in the late 1950s, Zamrud was able to establish a self-conscious, self-reproducing "field" of yinhua literature that was relatively autonomous from the periodical and newspaper industry. The bracketing of the non-literary was, of course, concretized in the form of the book's covers, which excluded news, advertising, editorials and all the other non-literary content that jostle against the literary content within periodicals and newspapers. Before this point, it was virtually impossible for yinhua writers to be published outside of books, unless they were selected for inclusion into one of the few Hong Kong, Singapore, or mainland China-based anthologies. The promotion of the book form was organized and a departure from the earlier periodical norm. In addition to publishing over a hundred books (Figure 16), they also sponsored competitions: one of the major rewards of winning was inclusion in a book. The first competition for student writings received 20,000 submissions from 49 schools; a shortlist of 26 of these were selected and published.88 They also established an unprecedented writing prize with a jury drawn from all the sectors of the yinhua language-institutional network. The first, second and third 136 === [PDF page 151] === places received prizes of 75k, 50k, 25k rupiahs, and all the shortlisted writers received 10k each.89 Bracketing took place not just physically but also conceptually. The selection of outstanding works, and then open debate about literary techniques and movements, allowed a focused and sustained discussion on what constitutes "yinhua literature." In combination with the competitions, Jadeite also heavily emphasized literary criticism and debate, always including commentary on selected works. The critic Huang Yurong in particular was committed to providing constructive feedback for young writers. As editor of the well-regarded literary supplement Sparks in Zhongcheng Bao, he juried most of the competitions and introduced most of the anthologies, and even published a two-volume anthology of his own literary criticism (印 华文艺论集), which I discuss further in Chapter 6 in relation to the cult of youth. The other major player within yinhua literature was Sadar Cultural Foundation, reorganized from the staff of Chiao Hsing Weekly, and its various affiliates such as the United Indonesia Foundation (Yayasan Indonesia Tunggal). Focusing largely on translation, it became a major commercial publisher in the 1960s, and was so successful that they had laid plans to open their own bookstore in downtown Jakarta.90 Their most numerous editions, and likely the main source of their revenue, were illustrated stories (comics, or lianhuanhua 连环画), which appear to be mostly (but not entirely) adapted from PRC editions. The covers, however, were original illustrations, almost entirely by the artist Wen Peor, who had developed a distinctive style that was both decorative and delicate, as well as (when called for) muscularly proletarian (see Figure 17, Figure 35, Figure 39. Figure 42).91 If Zamrud survived the challenging political and economic environment by attaching itself to the Chinese-language school system, Sadar instead adapted by taking advantage of the lack of copyright in the socialist world to repackage and resell its cultural products.92 Both of these strategies represent responses to the precarious but at times strategic position of yinhua culture. Their commitment to promoting the study of Indonesian extended beyond just dictionaries and grammars to include bilingual facing-page editions of progressive classics such 137 === [PDF page 152] === as Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s The Bastard (Anak Haram), Rukiah’s Soldier’s Wife (Istri Prajurit; 军人之妻) and Sobron Aidit’s Basimah (巴西玛)—three writers who all had close links to leftwing Chinese intellectuals in Jakarta.93 Even more intriguingly, in 1964, Sadar launched the Afro-Asian-Latin-American Literary Series (亚非拉文艺丛书), which included anthologies of literature from Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Algeria and Japan. These appear to be original editorial projects, not repackaged versions of publications from Beijing. In retrospect, it is possible to see in the historical development of the yinhua literature of the 1945-65 period certain inherent patterns. We have seen how difficult it was for an integral literary context to develop. The geographic dispersion of the different parts of literary book publication is the image at hand. At very few points was it possible for the writing, editing, printing, and reading of a given work to all take place within Indonesia. University students such as Zheng Tufei and Heiying (who was in any case something of an exception) achieved some early success, but it was almost entirely in China. The Medan writers who edited the Yinhua Literature supplement published a number of anthologies, but they had to outsource them to Hong Kong. Even the minor boom in book publishing—more properly, booklet publishing—of the 1963-65 period can be understood as a circumvention of restrictive regulations for periodicals and newspapers. In any case, the project of an autonomous field for Chinese-language literature in Indonesia, open to “the currents of world communication,”94 and engaged with social and political realities, was interrupted in October 1965 when it was closer to realization than it had been and would be for decades. When the coup took place, Zamrud was in the middle of organizing the second edition of their annual competition. Thus, yinhua literature of this era can hardly be said to have failed, since it was ultimately subject to forces far greater than itself. Rather, the window of its enabling conditions had closed. 138 === [PDF page 153] === Figure 16. Publications by Zamrud Cultural Foundation. These books are just some of the ones published between 1961 and 1965. Most of them are fascimiles rather than original publications. This collection was preserved by Huang Yurong's widow, Chen Lijiao 陈丽娇 (pseud. Zhu Ying 竹樱), and later donated to the association’s library.. Source: photograph by author, Yinhua Writers Association collection. 139 === [PDF page 154] === Figure 17. Comics published by Sadar Cultural Foundation. This is a selection of the dozens of known comics (lianhuanhua, or cergam) published between 1962 and 1965 by Sadar. Like most of them, these have covers illustrated by Wen Peor, but the contents were lifted directly from PRC lianhuanhua. For a full list of known Sadar publications, see Appendix B. Sources: Kongfuzi.com, Redi Murti, 7788.com, Cornell University Libraries. 140 === [PDF page 155] === Characteristics of Yinhua Literature The Language Situation In studying Chinese-language literature in Indonesia, I have generally found myself faced with two possible approaches. The first is what I would call the "diasporic" approach, which examines literature in Chinese outside of China, usually in more than one country. It draws attention to the relationship between emigrant and homeland culture and invites comparison between overseas populations from the same “sending” country: e.g. Chinese-Filipinos, Chinese- Malaysians, Sino-Thai, and so on. A good example is Brian Bernards’ Writing the South Seas, which examines a number of Chinese-language writers from Southeast Asia who engage with the “Nanyang trope,” in relation to themes of “Chinese travel, migration, settlement, and creolization in Southeast Asia.”95 The other approach is the "minority" approach, which examines literature by Chinese in a given country, in this case, Indonesia. It focalizes the relationship between the immigrant culture and the recipient society and invites comparison with other minorities (e.g. Arab-Indonesians). For example, Tom G. Hoogervorst’s study of Chinese entrepreneurs of Malay print culture, Language Ungoverned, identifies how “Sino-Malay texts portray… a community that vacillated between the ancestral homeland, recipient society, and colonial system.”96 These twinned approaches are not, of course, limited to my case: Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative can be studied in relation to the literature of the African diaspora, or to African- American literature. This sociolinguistic distinction is obviously schematic, and in reality, many gradations exist, but I think it’s not unfair to say that, whereas studies of Overseas Chinese literature have little to say about Indonesia, studies of Chinese Indonesian literature have little to say about Chinese. A proper treatment of the Chinese-language literature of Indonesia must do justice to both the social context of Indonesia and to the linguistic context of Chinese. It is widely accepted that applying concepts and methods developed for a national literature (e.g. literature by Chinese in Chinese in China) to an overseas literature is inappropriate. Similarly, the literature of ethnic minorities and linguistic minorities shows different constraints and possibilities. For example, in 141 === [PDF page 156] === Asian-American literature, which is primarily written in English, and sometimes even defined as such,97 the problematic relationship between the racialized subject and the dominant language often forms a central concern.98 This situation involves the entire edifice of implications, complications, and refutations that Ngugi Wa Thiong’o summoned when he termed English “the language of the colonizer.” The literature of a linguistic minority, which is usually also an ethnic minority, expresses the relation between language and power entirely otherwise.99 Here I introduce the working concept of "allophone" literature, borrowing the term from the Quebecois/Canadian context, where it refers to native speakers of languages other than English, French, or indigenous languages.100 The concept highlights what I take to be most pertinent about the linguistic situation: namely, not so much that the language of yinhua literature is Chinese, but that it is not Indonesian. I also make some self-serving assumptions, namely that the minority language is neither the dominant language (as in certain colonial societies) nor a regional language (like, for example, Sundanese in Indonesia), and that it is an immigrant language, which corresponds here to saying that it is the dominant language somewhere else. What characteristics can be deduced of such a literature? Two things jump to mind: firstly, allophone literature does not, and in fact cannot, address the linguistic majority, unless translated or surveilled; and secondly, allophone literature may address a readership in the “homeland,” though that readership may be limited and uninformed. It may be that the immigrant minority is the entire readership, yet I have found that literatures reach for larger audiences. Just like the “we” discussed in the end of Chapter 1, the addressee, the “you,” of the yinhua text is not at all given. We can say in other words that for an allophone literature the structure of address is ambiguous. One of the consequences of this ambiguity is the frequent use of metapragmatic “cues” that allow the reader to establish a discursive situation, to know who is speaking to who. Let us say, too, that we are dealing with a language that is under pressure, whether for political, social or economic reasons—common enough, given the universality of linguistic nationalism, which encourages language shift through hard and soft means. In the case of yinhua 142 === [PDF page 157] === literature, this precarity is expressed in an obsessive concern with the language institutions, with the schools and the newspapers. This is compounded by the fact that an allophone literature’s literary and linguistic models will typically come from elsewhere, both literally (e.g. textbooks) and figuratively (e.g. ideas). The reliance on such models obviously produces a gap between representation and reality that can become unsustainable—think of elementary schoolers on the equator being taught that there are four seasons and that the sun is in the south. We might say that allophone literature faces a kind of trilemma. Its own base is too narrow to support itself, so it must bridge the distance that separates it from a broader readership, in either the “sending” or the “receiving” society (to use the terms of migration studies). In both cases, considerable distance, whether physical or linguistic, must be bridged. The technologies that can do so are, respectively, media and translation. I believe that this trilemma also accounts for the tendency of yinhua literature towards a self-reflexivity about language and media. The basic imagery of distance and connection, translation and mediation, are literalized in Shaping’s “Bridge”: Traversing the obstacles of nature, linking this shore to that shore. Across the distance of languages, connecting heart to heart, The forms and techniques of the structure aren't important as long as it's solid and strong, and will never collapse.101 The image of the bridge here stands in for print, amplified by communications technology and translational infrastructure, all in the service of Sino-Indonesian friendship… it is both univocal and polysemous, insofar as the thematic of “bridging” saturates the entire field of yinhua literature in this period. The anti-formalist, content-forward qualities of this literature—“the forms and techniques… aren’t important”—are not just features of an imported socialist realist aesthetic. The stripped-down free verse of this poem is designed for portability between languages and contexts. 143 === [PDF page 158] === Newspaper Odes One of the most characteristic genres of “Third World Republic of Letters” is what I refer to as the “newspaper ode,” typically a free verse poem in simple language of celebration and denunciation, often linked to recent events, and conforming to the logic of the call to action. The contrast with what we could crudely call modernism here—with a preference for moral ambiguity, complex language, eternal themes, and the logic of introspection and/or contemplation—is evident. As mentioned earlier, the primary venue for literary publication during this entire period was the newspaper supplement, and this venue encouraged both brevity and topicality. (One USIS official, commenting on Southeast Asian Chinese tastes, recommended that propaganda be "lighter, shorter, more readable," since full-length novels were "too heavy, too serious, and too long."102) One high school student, Liao Bimei 廖苾梅, published a series of anti-imperialist poems with inventive layouts in Chiao Hsing Weekly in 1958.103 One of them, dedicated to the Indonesian border sentries, warns colonizers away from Eastern Indonesia, using the hydrological metaphor so prevalent in leftist literature: just 只要 one bayonet thrust 刺刀一挥 one cannon roar 大炮一鸣 and the beasts' 野兽们的 corpses 尸首 will be in 就会在 the raging 汹涌的 waves 怒潮上 dancing 飞舞104 Other poems protested the US occupation of Lebanon, and celebrated Indonesian national day, suggesting how closely local nationalism among yinhua youth was linked to anticolonial internationalism. Liao’s protest of the French sentencing of Algerian freedom fighter Djamila Bouhired to death is especially rousing (Figure 18): Don't think 别以为 your butcher knife 你的屠刀 is omnipotent, 万能， The Algerian people's 阿尔及利亚人民 revolutionary struggle 革命斗争 144 === [PDF page 159] === already 已经 like strong acid 像镪水 corrodes 腐蚀着 your life 你的生命 even if you hang 即使你绞杀了 Djamila, 查米拉， Algeria 阿尔及利亚 cannot 却不能 be hanged 被你绞杀 The people— 人民—— Her 她那 invincible 不可战败的 people, 人民， will use 将用 your butcher knife 你的屠刀 to decide 决定 your fate. 你的命运。105 Such solidarity poems faced out to the world, but they did so through the reporting of the newspaper, its texts and images. Obviously, this poem’s address to the colonial butchers of Algeria functions rhetorically to model a stance of anticolonial opposition for the audience of young Chinese readers. Other newspaper odes did not have to face out to the world (through the newspaper), but could also face into the community (also through the newspaper). Thus, the subgenre of the ode to the media worker, which combined the conventions of proletarian literature with the concerns of the linguistic minority. A 1956 ode to the typesetter, "fragrant with oil-based ink," (油墨香), reads: You are the author's loyal assistant, the general reader's kind child. Only through you, does the author's thought and feeling, turn into the spiritual sustenance of the reader… Your work is ordinary, but, you should be proud, you should be optimistic, because your work has heat, has light!106 The direct address here is hardly metaphorical for the compositor through whose hands the poem had to pass. The gratitude for media workers expresses something central about the print cultures of minorities: because they reproduce the community as a linguistic community, they acquire a 145 === [PDF page 160] === special symbolic importance. This goes some way to explaining the preoccupation yinhua print culture had with its own fragility, or its own uncertain conditions of existence. Thus, when seeking to identify the structure of address of a given text, we will often be led to ask not just “who is writing to whom?” but also “in what language, and through what medium?” A poem from a few years later, with the exact same title, by a different author, suggests how the discursive milieu had intensified, in a more “revolutionary-romantic” direction: You are the assistant of the author a bridge on the cultural battlefront… The newspapers you print are sent to how many hands, spread to how many eyes, move how many hearts, clarify the minds of how many people? O! the crystallization of your labor Turns into swells of potential (一股股潜力), these swells of potential transform into world-changing forces of revolutionary struggle these forces, oh, are the brilliant light bursting out from the flames of your life.107 Chinese typesetting requires considerably more labor than alphabetic typesetting—the layout/typesetting department of the Chinese-language Zhongcheng Bao in the 1960s, for example, had over fifty people, which was over twice as many as the Indonesian editionlanguage Warta Bhakti, even though the paper itself was half the size (Figure 19).108 Thus, the predominance of typesetters or compositors, who made up the bulk of staff in most publishing operations anyways, was even more marked—they formed the proletariat of the printery. Colloquially known as "hands" (手民), they worked under high pressure and sometimes unpleasant conditions. While it is conceivable these poems were written by typesetters, it is also possible to read them as examples of how intra-communal antagonisms are suppressed. Xu Younian, for example, a member of the staff union of the Seng Hwo Pao, recalls that a dispute over typesetter pay in 1951 was hurriedly resolved after the editor-in-chief was arrested during the anticommunist “August Razzia.”109 146 === [PDF page 161] === Figure 18. Liao Bimei,“To the Executioner.” Source: Liao Bimei 廖苾梅, “Gei huizishou 给刽子手 [To the Executioner],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 9, 1958-03-01, p. 14. 147 === [PDF page 162] === Figure 19. Sin Po’s Chinese-typesetting room. This photograph suggests the labor requirements of printing a Sinographic paper. On the facing page, an image of the Latin-letters printery had only four workers in it; the linotype machine in particular made it vastly cheaper to publish alphabet-based newspapers. Source: Sin Po 1910- 1935 Jubileum-Nummer. m-Nummer. 148 === [PDF page 163] === Mediating the Homeland The aesthetic model for most of this literature at least in the 1950s was the cultural exports of the PRC. Régine Robin, discussing 1930s Soviet novel, has emphasized the characteristic quality of a “monosemic clarity of language redundant with the univocity of the message.”110 Yet in their displacement from the majority language of a socialist society to the minority language of a postcolonial society inevitably transformed even the most faithful copies. One subtle but recurrent pattern is the concern with themes of mediation. This is borne out by an anthology of diasporic poems published in the PRC, Songs on the Equator (赤道线上的歌唱), which included work by two Indonesia-based writers, Huang Dongping 黄东平 and Li Qing 犁 青.111 (While diasporic writers were often published in PRC newspapers and journals, it was rare for them to be included in books, likely because of political sensitivity.112) The blurb of this book clearly notes the two modalities that were permitted to patriotic overseas Chinese: Here there are the songs of overseas compatriots that brim with love for their socialist homeland, and also the people of Southeast Asia's rage-filled roar towards the colonizers. Interestingly, this formulation does not just specify the attitudes one should have (love/hate) towards specific objects (China/the West) but also the two aspects of subjectivity that these derive from (overseas compatriots/the people of Southeast Asia). The eponymous poem, by Huang, is an extended ode to the national flag of China, which casts a "red light," the "sun of the sojourners,"113 that spreads from the building of the embassy in Jakarta (which the speaker passes by every day) to cover all the Chinese in Indonesia: I've seen you, it's just like seeing our homeland just like it.114 The use of the inclusive first-person plural here (zanmen de 咱们的) in “our homeland” specifies a situation of address in which the listeners are PRC nationals. Because it is also a Mandarin word, not used in Southeast Chinese dialects spoken in Indonesia, it also locates Huang within the mainstream of the PRC’s tradition of Northern-centric writing. 149 === [PDF page 164] === While Huang focuses on the most obviously political of symbols, Li Qing’s poems instead emphasize the commodity as an extension of China. In “Chinese Printed Fabrics Have Come to Indonesia (中国花布来到了印度尼西亚),” for example, the reader is pulled into an aestheticized, almost sublime, vision of socialist abundance: Sprinkled with the sweat of workers, Impressed with the thoughts and feelings of workers, The printed fabrics bringing the motifs of spring in the homeland Bid farewell to the gates of Mother China. 115 This image recalls Laurence Coderre’s discussion of the contradictory and complementary relationship between new kinds of commodities and a socialist culture in the making, of “newborn socialist things.”116 By the end of the poem, the printed fabrics are sold out: The shelves were brimming and are now half empty, The empty shelves transmit an urgent notification to the homeland. Someone far from the homeland eagerly sends his regards, Please double your production, double your supply!117 In the Overseas Chinese context, the logic of a “patriotic capitalism” is stretched beyond breaking point. After all, within mid-century socialist common sense, the potentially positive role of capitalists within socialist development is usually premised on their contribution to industrialization. Li Qing’s poems, however, are written from the perspective of the commercial capitalist, and it is hard not to see the aestheticization of proletarian sweat by an importer as perverse—all this, at almost the exact same moment that non-Chinese importers expanded their political pursuit of preferential treatment.118 "Welcome, ‘Pembebasan’! (欢迎你! ‘Pembebasan’)” is even more mediated, celebrating Sino-Indonesian friendship as mediated not just through the commodity, but through the mediation of the commodity in an advertisement. The premise is the speaker’s joyous reading of an advertisement for Chinese-manufactured trucks which will be exported to Indonesia under the terms of a new trade agreement. (The brand is Jiefang, or “Liberation,” which he translates into “Pembebasan,” which remains in Latin script.) 150 === [PDF page 165] === Opening today's Indonesian newspaper, a beautiful truck stretches across the center. Printed on the paper in big inky letters: “Pembebasan.” Painted on the front of the truck: First Automotive Works.119 In this case, the materiality of the sign is highlighted (ink, paper, the mixture of scripts), even as the poem will go on to wish that sign into reality, to imagine the truck exiting the pages of the paper and traveling the roads of Indonesia. Both Li Qing and (especially) Huang Dongping frequently submitted poems to Chinese newspapers for republications. Huang, a bookkeeper by day, who got his start as an illustrator in the style of woodcuts or papercuts for Seng Hwo Pao, sent hundreds of these poems. While he was exceptional in the duration and intensity of his "correspondence publishing," the practice was universal among yinhua writers. The newspaper ode that centers on a specific object as a symbol, or better yet, an index of the homeland, were common indeed, and encouraged by not just the format of newspaper publication—short, topical—but also by the remote relation of writer and audience. All communication involves a sender and a receiver, but the transmission in this case was especially visible, and the patriotic texts with their fantasies of immediate presence of the homeland often ended up, unintentionally, being reflections on mediation, iconicity, and distance. Similarly, as writers sought to participate in the momentous changes in China, they responded to various campaigns of which they had no direct experience, and which also did not directly affect them. Texts intended to celebrate, for example, the Great Leap Forward, often had to be structured as celebrations of images of the Great Leap Forward. For Harlan Chambers, Chinese revolutionary literature often operated in the tension between “campaign time” and narrative time120—this tension, when echoed with high fidelity into yinhua literature, could become slack, solipsistic, emptied of the formal-political struggle that animated them originally. Zhou Yingnan, on the bountiful harvests of the Great Leap Forward: The telegram transmits the good news, of the fine autumn air to the north.121 There is of course no autumn in Indonesia. 151 === [PDF page 166] === We could say that one of the contradictions yinhua literature faced, then, was a reliance on imported models that stressed the vital need to embed oneself in social reality, while also enabling an escape from that social reality. (Social reality is, in important ways, always local.) The symptom of this contradiction was an obsessive concern with mediation itself, with what Friedrich Kittler called "discourses on discourse channel conditions."122 This tendency should not be read as an expression of sophistication and self-reflexivity. Rather, it should be historically understood as a failure to attain the socialist literary ideal of communicative transparency, as the signs of a struggle to overcome literary isolation. These observations would seem to confirm the stereotypes of the diaspora’s investment in the fantasy of the homeland, from which it is only a short distance to chauvinistic or dismissive attitudes to the country of residence. Yet the dynamic here is more complex. As I argue throughout this dissertation, the emotional investment in the PRC, even if it was motivated initially by a diasporic patriotism, was often redirected into a local orientation. As discussed in the previous section, debates on the proper subject matter for yinhua literature were intense in 1956, as progressive writers grasped for a way to synthesize socialist forms and local content. The official organ of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission in Beijing even weighed in on this debate, making direct reference to Indonesia, summarizing: based on past experience, the main problem of overseas Chinese literary work is that the tone’s too lofty [调子过高], and there is a quite severe tendency towards separation from the masses [脱离群众] […] Overemphasizing the slogan of “unity” should be avoided, and the creative method should begin from concrete life [实际生活], it’s enough to truthfully reflect life.123 The crucial factor here is the communist imperative to attend to the concrete, reflected in the injunction to realism. Much as “southbound” intellectuals like Hu Yuzhi and Baren encouraged youths who sought them out, often with the aim of improving their Chinese, to instead study Indonesian, the discursive effect of PRC literary orthodoxy was to mandate a turn to the local. In this article, the writer goes on to recommend study of the folk traditions of southern Fujian, and translation from Southeast Asian languages, as preconditions for an escape from the walled garden of disconnected sloganeering. 152 === [PDF page 167] === “Like Kith and Kin” The poems and stories I have quoted in this chapter mostly come from this contradictory moment of relative stability, where political enthusiasm could find no practical expression, and hence was channeled into literature. On the one hand, the newspapers were saturated with the affect of socialist construction in China (the Great Leap Forward, for short) and anticolonial solidarity in Indonesia (the Bandung spirit, for short). On the other hand, the PRC had warned its overseas nationals to, “on no account take part in any political activities” in their country of residence,124 and those who chose to “return” often found contribution to socialist construction more difficult than expected.125 This was not the case either in the preceding period, during the independence struggle, or later, during the revolutionary years of Guided Democracy, and the remaining chapters will focus on those periods when social context demanded of literature a more direct engagement, often under the sign of realism. In many ways, these “allophone” themes were first explored in a distinctly leftist idiom by exiles from China. Baren, who I turn to in Chapters 3 and 4, was the most committed and inventive of these in terms of the politics of literature. However, it was Hu Yuzhi, as one of the leading leftist propagandists in Southeast Asia, who was most engaged with the technolinguistic problem of communication. Hu’s unusual novel Air Boyscout 青年航空兵,126 a sci-fi adventure intended to serve as an introductory reader for Southeast Asian Chinese youths studying Mandarin, can be read as an elaboration of the communicative dilemmas of yinhua literature. During the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, he chose to abstain from political activity. In addition to studying the Indonesian language, a process I discuss in Chapter 4, he also taught Chinese language and politics to interested youths: With nothing to do, no books to read, and few friends to talk to, I spent my time with a few youths. They all grew up on the equator, went to English schools, had never been to the homeland, and had no knowledge of Chinese language or literature. But they wanted me to help them study Chinese and learn about their homeland. At first, I just gave oral explanations. Later, I started to write stories. I would write a paragraph, and then ask the youths to read it. I would revise it according to their opinions and then continue writing. The Chinese language level of these young people is only enough to read novels, so I 153 === [PDF page 168] === wrote the chapter in the style of a novel at the start… I just wanted to make it understandable to the children. I had no idea what style to use.127 The result of this pedagogical co-creation was later serialized (and completed) in the magazine Hu edited, Below the Winds, as “Air Boyscout” (青年航空兵), and then published as a book with the subtitle “A Dream Journey to the Homeland” (祖国梦游记) and the curious disclaimer “this book is not literature” (本文非文艺作品). The plot, which follows Chen Tixian 陈逖先, clearly an idealized version of the implied reader, as he flies around a futuristic liberated Asia, is less important than the gimmicky scenarios which are intended to entertain and educate. Indeed, as if to emphasize the irrelevance of the plot, the conclusion is a hasty Bellamy-like awakening from a dream (Figure 20). Given that this is, in effect, a language textbook, it also includes moments of reflection on language. Hu even invents new characters for this new age (Figure 21). Notably, too is his incorporation of local vocabulary. For example, when a secret signal is needed for an elaborate rescue operation, they choose the Indonesian-language call “merdeka” (freedom; transliterated as “默尔蒂加”), with the Chinese-language response “long live the people!” (“人民万岁”).128 Their flights are described as “eating wind,” (吃风) a calque from Malay (makan angin) for an automobile joyride, which was a stereotypical Chinese leisure activity. Air Boyscout includes several optimistic representations of interethnic, translingual communication, prefiguring this theme’s later dominance in yinhua literature. During the occupation, Tixian runs away from his birth family, who refuse to permit him to join the resistance, and a Javanese peasant family indebted to his merchant father then adopts him out of gratitude to the father. (This naked idealization of a racialized creditor-debtor relation is contradicted later, when one of Tixian’s peers is subject to a harsh struggle session for inheriting his merchant father’s exploitative habits.129) Later, in liberated Asia, Tixian and his adoptive little sister Rumini maintain a correspondence. He sends her postcards (Figure 21). She informs him that the family plans to return from Sumatra to Java, inspired by his return to his homeland: After dinner, we always take the stories about China you told us before, and repeat them all over again. But, Brother Amin [Tixian’s adoptive name], these stories are all stale now. I want to hear some fresh and true stories. 154 === [PDF page 169] === Brother Amin, you have stepped into the homeland you longed for day and night. I request that you tell us your first impression after returning to China. The first impression is always fresh, lively, interesting. And especially since it’s about China, which is so lovely. Please do not forget, Brother Amin, to mail us some landscape photographs of China, and posters, as well as… newly released Chinese pop songs. [Rumini’s elder] Brother Hasan told me to say one more thing: please never forget Indonesia, and also he hopes you can provide lots of opinions about the independence and national construction of Indonesia.130 Those old stories that Rumini refers to are legends that involve Sino-Indonesian friendship: the myth of the five Chinese laborers who killed their overseer (the basis of Baren’s Temple of Five Ancestors, discussed in Chapter 4), and also of a Javanese princess who heals the sick.131 In this exchange, the rudimentary oral myths are upgraded: a technologically-advanced China is able to export exciting new audiovisual media to Indonesia. Indonesia can then follow in the path of China, just as Hasan will listen to Tixian/Amin. Once more, we see here a basic similarity with a temporal difference, where one’s present is another’s future. Once more, it is associated with the language of siblinghood, although here differences of age and gender compound the basic trope of Sino-Indonesian brotherhood. Indeed, the logic of social stages and siblings is isomorphic: in both cases, you have a basic similarity, where the difference is the result of a staggering in time. The epistolary form served as a metaphor for communication between formal equals, both intimate and distant. Baren's 1948 primer for young readers in China, The Archipelagic Nation: Indonesia (群岛之国—印尼), was structured as a set of letters sent by Little Duan (小 端; his name is a pun on tuan, “master”), a young Chinese-Javanese reporter at a pro-democracy newspaper in North Sumatra, explaining Indonesian history, society, and politics.132 The reader is invited to imagine themselves as the letter's recipient, Little Yan, a childhood friend of Little Duan who is now living in revolutionary Yan'an. Comparison is the rule: if the Chinese peasant is like an ancient pine, the Indonesian is like a coconut palm, upright and open in character.133 The parallelism extends to politics, too. In his final letter, Little Duan writes that he will be moving to the Javanese city of Madiun, recently "liberated" by the PKI: "In a few days I'm going to Indonesia's liberated areas, and I'm afraid I won't have a chance to write anymore. 155 === [PDF page 170] === Merdeka!"134 His move echoes Little Yan's earlier move from Sumatra to China, which was of course the reason letters had to be written in the first place. Moreover, it reinforces an implicit interpretation of Chinese history as prefiguring Indonesian history. This temporal relation is itself a basically sibling-like one: the two nations' paths of development are basically similar but for timing, much as an older and younger sibling are basically similar but for their relative time of birth. As Liu Hong has shown,, the image of present China as future Indonesia would be embraced by many leftist intellectuals in the 1950s. History’s parallels are not so neat, though: by the time this book was published, the Madiun uprising had been brutally suppressed, and if Little Duan had indeed made it that far, he might have been among the executed.135 As Taomo Zhou has shown, the CPC’s cultural diplomacy in the 1950s was deeply influenced by the 1940s activism of the southbound intellectuals in North Sumatra.136 Their experiments in the rhetoric of fraternal communication also prefigured the discourse of “Sino- Indonesian friendship.” Examples are abundant. Thus, when former cultural attaché to the Jakarta embassy composed the lyrics to the “Song of Chinese-Indonesian Friendship (中国印度 尼西亚之歌; Lagu Persahabatan Tiongkok-Indonesia)” in 1963,137 he frequently paired contact and kinship. To be performed con grazia (优美地): We visit each other, 你来我往， Like kith and kin. 亲如弟兄。 The Great Wall and Borobudur hail each other, 万里长城和婆罗浮屠，遥相呼唤， neither mountains nor oceans are barriers to 青山碧海，难阻挡亲人情长。139 fraternal ties.138 Drawing on what Tamara Chin has called the Afro-Asian trope of the connected past, disrupted by colonialism and restored by independence,140 this song also combines the fraternal-friendneighbor-comrade figure and the implicit model of communications technology—two architectural wonders “hail” each other with the efficiency of the radio, annihilating time and space. Sima’s lyrics show no sign of historical change, since the past and the future will remain 156 === [PDF page 171] === the same. This gets at something important: the fraternal metaphor is normally a synchronic rather than a diachronic figure. It is a horizontal relation, rather than a vertical one like the parent-child relation, and so does not involve either ancestors or descendants. Fittingly, to complete the requisite aesthetic of symmetry, an Indonesian translation was authored by the eminent communist writer F. L. Risakotta.141 (Incidentally, I note here that Risakotta was a graduate of the Sinology Institute at University of Indonesia, helmed by the leftist Muslim peranakan Tjan Tjoe Som, a Han dynasty specialist.142) This link between the themes of communication and fraternity modifies what media theorist Bernard Siegert has called the postal principle, “by which anyone can address anyone,” undergirding the modern idea of literature.143 Siegert’s illuminating concept is perhaps specific to the 19th century West—since what we see here is something quite different: not the emergence of an undifferentiated public, but rather the postcolonial recovery or reconstitution of a precolonial network, in which the process of communication reaffirms the differential identities of the correspondents. This difference however is an egalitarian one, and here the delivery as the content of the message is a market of success. In 1958, Hu Yuzhi published a short article in which he reflected on a letter that he had begun when he left Sumatra but never finished. The draft, which he included, was saturated with the fraternal rhetoric ("To my respected Indonesian brothers:... our two nationalities are as intimate as two blood brothers (同胞兄弟)... as a younger brother, I...") that we can now associate with the epistolary form. Here, however, the sibling rank is inverted: Hu is Rumini, not Tixian. The conclusion of this article is also telling: "do I need to finish this letter now? There's no need, no need at all."144 The private form of the epistle, it seems, had been obsolesced by the formation of a publishing network from Beijing to Jakarta that produced everything from glossy magazines in Indonesian to respectable translations in Chinese. Not long after the Malayan Emergency was declared, Hu was deported back to China, where he would become one of the central figures in the incorporation of Shanghai’s old commercial press into Beijing’s new state-led system.145 One of the many projects he would have worked on, surely, would have been the supervision of publishing of books and periodicals in 157 === [PDF page 172] === foreign languages, and he likely supported the privileging of Indonesian among these languages.146 In comparison to the neighboring countries, or to the major world languages, the prominence of Indonesian-language periodicals—including editions of China Pictorial (Tiongkok), People’s China (Tiongkok Rakyat), and Peking Review (Mingguan Peking) was striking. Rumini and Hasan would have had plenty to read. 158 === [PDF page 173] === Figure 20. Dreams and fantasies in Young Aviator. Above: “My homeland! Even in my dreams I think of you…” Below: “Tixian suddenly heard a familiar voice which seemed to be calling him.” Source: Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 1949. 159 === [PDF page 174] === Figure 21. Experiments in writing in Young Aviator. Left: Hu Yuzhi’s neograph for min (民; “people”; note the extension of the stroke through the top), for a people that have stood up. Right: a visual analogy with a monumental statue of a young soldier, where the rifle matches the extended stroke. Below: a postcard from China that the protagonist sends to his adoptive family in Sumatra. Source: Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 1949. 160 === [PDF page 175] === Beyond Fraternity In 1956, in cooperation with the Indonesia-China Friendship Association (LPIT), Chiao Hsing Weekly announced a literary competition on the theme of “Chinese-Indonesian friendship” with a modest prize.147 Announcing the results, the editors fretted that the submissions had been rather formulaic, observing that of the hundred-odd submissions, many had focused on the themes of studying Indonesian language or of interracial friendship between children.148 The authorized discourse of “Sino-Indonesian friendship,” with its close links to cultural diplomacy and interstate relations, was widely adopted in left-wing yinhua literature. This political condition of possibility, which gave yinhua literature direct access to world history in the making, was also a formidable literary constraint. The fraternal ideal, of course, draws on a revolutionary semiotic that extends back at least to the French Revolution’s slogan of “liberty, equality and fraternity,” and perhaps also on the trope of sworn brotherhood, so central to popular Chinese literature. While it resonated with aspirations towards interethnic harmony, it also did not conform well to complex histories and social realities on the ground. There were several sites of friction in this discourse which (1) assumed that “Chinese” and “Indonesian” were self-contained and mutually exclusive categories, precluding both hybridity and conversion, both figuratively and literally, and (2) assumed that instances of antagonism, real or imagined, structural or contingent, should generally be ignored rather than analyzed. Entire areas of shared social life, such as the experience of mixed-race people, the employment of non-Chinese servants, the recurrent race riots of this era, and the significance of religious communities, were basically excluded. Sentiments of resentment or superiority were suppressed, while interracial relationships were sanitized, stripped of both power dynamics and sexual tension. In a word, this discourse was relatively fragile, and required both constant reiteration and a unifying enemy to maintain its coherence. To read it requires a careful attention to the everyday assumptions of race that continued to prevail within this newly-postcolonial society; to appreciate it involves discerning the formal means by which writers resolved the pressing 161 === [PDF page 176] === contradictions they were faced with. Younger yinhua writers struggled to fulfill the realist injunction while also adhering to the egalitarian stipulations of the discourse of friendship, as this section will show. Indeed, the tense interplay between the rhetoric of kinship and the history of creolization would be continually reworked in yinhua narrative, and I return to it in each of the following chapters: in Baren’s prose Notes from the Land Below the Winds (Chapter 3) and the play Temple of Five Ancestors (Chapter 4), the anticolonial screen-novel Tin Island (Chapter 5), and Xu Qiongling’s short stories (Chapter 6). The psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell has argued that lateral relations of siblinghood play a central role in subject formation and form the basis for peer-to-peer relations at large (as opposed to better-studied vertical, parent-child relations).149 For her, the arrival of a new sibling evokes the fear of replacement in the first child, and the overcoming of the destructive impulse this fear generates is the basis of all social relations. I find the proximity of fraternity and violence to which Mitchell points suggestive: could it permit a rereading of the declarations of brotherhood that saturate the Afro-Asian archive? Does it allow us new ways to conceive of the operation of birth order, of the elder brother, or what Mitchell has called the “fratriarchy”? To give one example, Zhou Enlai used the metaphor of daughters of China who had been married into a new household to represent the diaspora.150 The metaphor of Sino-Indonesian brotherhood, if juxtaposed to this patrilocal metaphor, would imply the homosexual and incestuous figure of two brothers conceiving a child who is then married off to one of the fathers. This absurd example suggests how the fraternal metaphor was a basically static one, that had great difficulty with accommodating diachronic thought across generations both backward and forwards in time. Indeed, what is striking about the conception of international solidarity is how ahistorical, how basically static, the national entities are assumed to be—their identities are inherited rather than constructed. The fraternal metaphor was, then, seriously compromised by the problem of sex: it could not adequately think desire, nor could it think the related question of reproduction. There is 162 === [PDF page 177] === always the risk that the Sino-Indonesian relation might overspill the limits of friendship, becoming queer, as in this extraordinary 1959 poem by an unknown young poet, Jieling 洁玲: In the place where I stayed, 在我停留的地方， I met a youth; 我认识了一个青年； He and I were together, 他和我作伴， just yesterday. 只不过是在昨天。 He is a brown youth, 他是个棕色的青年， His looks dashing and sturdy. 模样儿英俊而又矫健； He faced me, 他对着我的脸， and looked me over, and over… 端详了一遍又一遍… … The speaker then asks him what he wishes for—in his own language (“他的语言”), he notes. The other responds: “I want to see the smile of my grandparents, “我愿意看见老祖父的微笑， holding infants in their arms. 和他手中抱着的婴孩。 I don't want the bicycle with the basket to stop in 我不希望载着篮子的脚车停在我们前， front of my door, 用廉价收买我的辛劳。” purchasing my hard labor at a low price." 他说的话像河水在流， His words flowed like a river, 句句注入我的心田； sentences poured into the fields of my heart; 我听见一个民族的声音， I heard the voice of a nation, 来自一个种地的青年。 coming from a youth who works the land. 在我停留的地方， In the place where I stayed, 我认识一个青年。 I met a youth. 他和我一样的性别， He and I are the same sex, 我和他却像情人相互恋爱… …151 but I and he love each other like lovers... As in Baren’s “Pelabuhan,” which I discussed in the Introduction, the sympathetic Indonesian youth and the problematic Chinese trader are counterposed. Once more, too, this charged relation is triangulated by the speaker, who is linked to the former by sympathy but the latter by ethnicity. (Indeed, one wonders what brought him to this out of the way place, if not trade.) The indefinite article (“一个”) invites an allegorical reading, where the love interest stands in for all Indonesian youths (“voice of a nation”), while the concluding chiasmus (“he and I… I and he”) drives home the fantasy of merging together and becoming indistinguishable. Interracial same-sex relationships were probably common, yet their transgression of both socialist morality and nationalist makes them difficult indeed to trace.152 Despite the queer language, it is the 163 === [PDF page 178] === invocation of reproduction (“grandparents, / holding infants”) that frames the harm of the engrosser. More commonly, the fraternal imaginary is disturbed by interracial heterosexuality. This can intrude in a variety of ways: for example, through the relationship of older brother and younger sister, which is problematic not just because it is sexually-charged (at least in Chinese these words of address (ge and mei) may be used between lovers) but also because gender difference highlights the unequal power that the language of siblinghood is meant to suppress; or through the presence of mixed-race characters, reflecting a long history of unions between (often older) Chinese men and (often younger) Indonesian women, a history of creolization that Guo- Quan Seng’s Strangers in the Family examines in detail. This prudishness inverted the pre-war preoccupation of “Sino-Malay” novels with interracial unions and the problems of (racial and property) inheritance.153 Indeed, this comparison helps us to better situate yinhua literature: against the colonial model of unequal intimacy, represented in the native concubine, it counterposed a homosocial ideal of egalitarian cordiality, embodied in the Indonesian brother-inarms. Daniel Ojwang, in a critical discussion of postcolonial theory’s privileging of hybridity based on his analysis of representations of miscegenation in fiction by East African writers of Indian descent, notes that: hybridization alone is not a sufficient condition for social amity [...] its popularity within post-colonial literary studies is more an indicator of the crisis of humanist universalism than an acknowledgement of the power of cultural exchange.154 Similarly, for yinhua writers, the disavowal of hybridity viewed as an index of coloniality cannot only be viewed as an expression of a regressive diasporic politics of racial purity. It was, more immediately, a reflection of the new paradigm of what I call “citizenism” in Chapter 5—the postwar assumption, or rather, stipulation, that all individuals would “belong to” or “have” one and only one nationality, which was now equivalent to their citizenship. Thus, in fiction, the topic of interracial heterosexuality or family formation was avoided or referred to surreptitiously, as transnational communities such as the Chinese of Southeast Asia were “sifted” into a number 164 === [PDF page 179] === of discrete boxes called nationalities, which replaced the colonial continuum of race without entirely abolishing it. The postcolonial figure of brotherhood as the regulative ideal of Sino-Indonesian relation is haunted by the colonial figure of miscegenation. Indeed, it is a short step from fraternity to consanguinity: who is the shared ancestor of these two relatives? In the short story "Return" (回 乡) by Zhou Miaoquan 周淼泉, for example, the narrator Ah Mao returns to his hometown as a schoolteacher and seeks out the elder Pak Karto, a well-known storyteller. As a child, he would listen to stories with Pak Karto’s daughter Mina, including a story about a crocodile princess of the Solo River and her search for a human love, her encounter with a youth while bathing, “her two hands covering her full breasts.”155 Yet he never finished this story, despite the two youths’ entreaties, and even after the protagonist’s return, he is too traumatized by the war to continue the story. The stories color the youthful flirtation between Ah Mao and Mina, who used to “play market” (pasaran) together: she teases that “he takes people’s things and doesn’t pay for them.” The narrative concludes with Ah Mao and Mina rekindling their “close friendship,” and even the assertion that they are all “relatives” (亲人). Rather than the models of “love and revolution” or “red love,”156 here, the love story is narrated using the device of a Javanese folktale is used to narrate a love story in ways that would be impossible within a strictly "Chinese realist" mode—the mixed reality would have to be expressed in a doubled register in this way. While one’s choice of readings in modern literature was highly politicized, folklore, because it represented the product of the masses, was less “regulated.” Without a doubt, part of the appeal of Indonesian literature for Chinese speakers was that its study offered legitimate access into “-isms” that were frowned upon in the socialist realist mode: modernism, expressionism, individualism, traditionalism, antagonism. In any case, this internal generic difference reflects a general diglossia, in which multiple languages coexist in a single society. Here, it reflects the unequal and intimate encounter of urban Chinese and rural Javanese. This inequality is closely linked to a command of language, since it is the bilingualism of the educated speaker/protagonist that enables him to move between city and country, between 165 === [PDF page 180] === the site of publication and the moment of encounter. This “type,” which corresponds to the localborn Chinese-educated youth (or the so-called “totokized” peranakans), is the crucial mediating link between the two terms of Sino-Indonesian friendship, and it achieves its function to the extent that it disappears from view. In short texts by Indonesia-born writers introduced here, we see earnest attempts to apply the metaphor of international fraternity to the mixed realities of life in the archipelago. Rather than the requisite call to action, however, they end in irresolution. This irresolution raises questions about the actual function of the communicative ideal in yinhua literature: a cynic might argue that the insistent emphasis on dialogue between equals, rather than dismantling colonial segregation in itself, suppressed a more frank assessment of social reality, or even deferred the process of material social transformations. Broaching this question, however, requires a reexamination of the conjuncture from which the regulative ideal of fraternity as communication emerged, which was not the “return to order” of the 1950s, but rather the revolutionary moment of the 1940s. Above all, it was in the forge of North Sumatra that the sinophone left of Indonesia was shaped, hardened and tempered, and that is where we turn to next. 166 === [PDF page 181] === Notes Heiying, “Yi ge pingfan de gushi 一个平凡的故事 [An Ordinary Story],” Shidai de gandong, 27. Heiying, “Yi ge pingfan de gushi 一个平凡的故事 [An Ordinary Story],” Shidai de gandong, 32. Ahmad, Benson and Morgenstern, “Revolutionary Papers,” 20, citing the work of Refqa Abu- Remaileh and Ibrahim Mahfouz Abdou on mid-century Palestinian literature. Pan Yatun and Wang Yisheng, “Yindunixiya huawen wenxue,” 629. Mao Ce, “Su Manshu Duan Hong Ling Yan Ji.” Yu Mei-ling translates the titles of these two book-length poems as In Brestagi (摩达山漫草, lit. “Mount Moda [Muda?]”) and Lake Toba (天池草, lit. “Heavenly Pool”) (Yu Mei-ling, “Shiren zai Nanyang”). These poems are collected in volume 6 of his Haiguo gongyu jilu 海国公余辑录 [Compilation from Overseas in Leisure]. Annotated versions of these poems are available in Zhan Yayuan ed., Yu Dafu shici jianzhu, 562-578, and the history of their composition is discussed in Suzuki, Yu Dafu zai Sumendala, Chapter 2 and Wong Yoon-wah, Yuejie kuaguo, 63-97. See also Gao Jiaqian, Yimin, jiangjie yu xiandaixing, Chapter 8. One of the few exceptions I am aware of is the collection of 1930s issues of Xin Bao held at the National Library of China in Beijing. Careful scrutiny of the literary supplements of Chineselanguage newspapers of British Malaya would certainly uncover works by Indonesia-based authors. 10 The Jewish-Chinese comparison is the subject of Chirot and Reid ed., Essential Outsiders. 11 On Zheng Tufei, see Appendix A; also, Balan, “Zheng Tufei,” and Salmon, “Blood Under the Coconut Trees.” Two of his stories have recently been translated by Balan in Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities. 12 See Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 respectively for a discussion of these texts. 13 On Zheng’s life, see Appendix A. 14 Scholarship in English concentrates on Heiying’s early work, with a special interest in his relationship to music, cinema, and illustration: see Stenberg, “Ethnic Loyalty vs. Spring Fancy,” Jones, “Heiying’s ‘Pagan Love Song,’” Zhang, “Texture of the Metropolis,” and Bevan, Intoxicating Shanghai, Chapters 2 and 7; His later work is less studied: on the 1940s, see Stenberg, “Under the Red-and-White Flag” and Zhang Songjian, “Hei Ying’s Leftwing Heart”; and for his 1980s novel, see Tan, “After the Foxtrot Ends.” The secondary literature in Chinese also concentrates on his work in the 1930s as part of the larger rehabilitation of the “Shanghai 167 === [PDF page 182] === school” (海派). See Yang Hui, “1930 niandai hushang wentan dute de ‘xin ganjue,’” for a thorough overview of his publishing in Shanghai periodicals during this period. 15 Zhang Songjian, "Hei Ying's Leftwing Heart." 16 Heiying, “Fei Zhendong yishi.” Of the dozen authors that Yang Yi mentions, I have only been able to find some writings by A 17 Wu 阿五 and Xie Zuoshun 谢佐舜 (Yang Yi, Cong xinhua wentan lun ji yinhua wenxue, 33, 35). 18 Huang Dongping, “Wo yu Qiaoge (我于《侨歌》),” Da shikuai dixia de yecao, 180. Huang Yurong, “Yi dian shuoming—guan yu ‘tuochan chuangzuo’ yu ‘wagen’ (一点说明)— 19 —关于’脱产创作’与’挖根’), Yinhua wenyi pinglun ji vol. 2, 68. 20 Timothy Harper, cited in Show, "Gendering Chinese Diaspora,” 626. 21 Black and White (黑与白) and Motive Force (动力) were also launched at this time—they are likely pro-GMD magazines, although I have not had a chance to view them. 22 Heiying, “Juantou yu 卷头语 [Introduction]” Dongyin wenyi, 1:1, 1946, p. 1. 23 The winners were published in the 1950 New Year special edition. The co-sponsor was Renyan Xunkan 人言旬刊 (Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi [1950-2004], 126). 24 A series of quasi-journalistic vignettes about organizational life in Jakarta in the late 1940s, it is sometimes described as a novella (see Stenberg, "Under the Red-and-white Flag”). It was published in Hong Kong by Equator Publishing House (赤道线出版社), founded by Han Meng 韩萌, who sought to promote progressive literature by Southeast Asian Chinese authors like Heiying (see Tan, “Sinophone Circuits”). These include Lin Lin 林林/琳, Chen Canyun 陈残云, and latert cultural attaché to Indonesia, Sima Wensen 司马文森. 25 The sympathetic fascination with diverse protagonists that marked Daughter of Empire is still present in Moved by the Times. They include a British POW, a Japanese sergeant, MPAJA soldiers, and GMD spies (but not any Indonesian characters). 26 These were both republished in Hong Kong by 文化供应社 in 1949 and 新知书店 in 1948 respectively. They were first released in serial form in the CDL magazine Below the Winds. 27 Yang Sao, “Ye suan ziwo jiantao (也算自我检讨),” Yang Sao haiwai shiwen xuan, 100, quoted in Qing He, Yang Sao zhuan, 270. 28 James Michener, “Chinese Success Story,” Life, 1951-12-31, 77. 29 The respective owners of these two stores were Ang Hock Liem and Fang Dingxun 方定勋, both of whom were active in the Qiaozong. One elder recalls nine bookstores: “Kaiming, Shanghai, Dacheng, Nanyang, Nanxing, Liqiao, Huang Maochang Bookstore, Xiaoxiao Bookstore, and OK Bookstore (开明、上海、大成、南洋、南星、利侨、黄茂昌书店、小小 书店、OK 书店)” (Ding Jian, “Huaren gushi”). 168 === [PDF page 183] === 30 Chen Mong Tse, “Yu Shanghai Shuju youguan de diandian didi.” 31 Lagu, “Dadi Shudian.” 32 Zhang, Amorous History, 122-123, 174, 240. 33 Letter XY-216 in HANA2.10.62: 1470. 34 Lists of confiscated books are included in NA 2.10.62: 3230 and NA 2.10.62: 6136. 35 See Reed, “Advancing the (Gutenberg) Revolution,” on the CPC’s print entrepreneurship. 36 Yang Qiusheng, “Tuanjie Zhaowa huaqiao.” The sender was Pao Shih Tsun, a manager at Shanghai Bookstore and also one of the Sumatran exiles discussed in Chapters 3-4. 37 Xu, "Southern Film Company.” 38 Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 75. Baren, “Lüelun huaqiao minzhu yundong 略论华侨民主运动 [On the Overseas Chinese 39 Democracy Movement],” Hwa Shiang Pao (Hong Kong), 1948-01-04, p. 1. 40 Letter XY-216 in HANA2.10.62:1470. 41 Chief of National Police to Minister of Justice, 1952-02-09, in ANRI RA78: 338. 42 Xie Zhishan, “Huiyi zai Bangjia de zhengrong suiyue,” 623-625. 43 Selo Soemardjan to R.A. Soeprapto, 1954-02, ANRI RA8C: 1314. 44 The term is Ellen Gruber Garvey’s, cited in Hofmeyr, “The Politics of the Printed Page,” 94. 45 Summary of the Chinese Press, 1949-10-07, in NA 2.10.62 Folder 7209. 46 Ng, Kenny, “Soft-boiled, Anti-Communist Romance,” 95. 47 This bookstore was called Pacific Books, and also operated as a publisher (Price, Cold War Anthropology, 244). 48 In 1958, for example, Chiao Hsing Weekly hosted a debate on the genre running from issues 38 to 45, ending in a roundtable discussion in which the critic Huang Yurong participated. 49 Some minor newspapers, such as Lee Ming Pao in Pontianak, had never stopped publishing literature, possibly because the higher local concentration of Chinese-language speakers and the relative financial weakness of these newspapers made volunteer-run literary supplement an appealing and feasible option. 50 Tucholsky, cited in Brossat and Klingberg, Revolutionary Yiddishland, Preface. 51 Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1959-01-19, p. 4. 169 === [PDF page 184] === 52 “Boyin tai 播音台 (Broadcast),” Khuong Lu Yit Po, 1957-01-14. 53 Xu Qiongling, Fengyu nanyang wei liao qing, 220. 54 Yang Songjian and Zhou Weijie, Zaoqi Xinjiapo baozhang wenyi fukan yanjiu, 4. 55 I do not include here other supplements (such as those for youth, women, Indonesian language, entertainment, etc.) which may have featured literature but not exclusively. Leo Suryadinata also states that he was involved as a contributing editor in many of the Jakarta newspapers from 1963-65, probably under the pen name Gu Yi, though he did not specify which (interview with the author, Singapore, 2023-09-12). 56 One source states that Yinhua Literature was also published in Democratic Daily News for a while (Chen Shaoxin, “Shitan yinhua wenxue”) and another remembers that it was also published in Overseas Chinese Daily (华侨日报; Zheng Yuanxin, “Subei wentan wushi nian”). I have only found it in Bin Po. 57 “Yinhua wenxue de daolu 印华文学的道路 [The Path of Yinhua Literature],” Sumatra Bin Po, 1958-07-14. 58 Li Weihui, “Chentong aidao Wu Jindun laoshi 痛哀悼吴金盾老师 [Mourning Teacher Wu Jindun]” Qiandao ribao, 2023-03-20, www.qiandaoribao.com/沉痛哀悼吴金盾老师-李伟辉 59 Chen Shaoxin, “Shitan yinhua wenxue.” Chen notes that Zou Fangjin, Li Feng, and Huang Dongping were the chairs of this association. Li Qing states that Zou Fangjin, Yu Guowan 余国 万 and Yu (note: probably a typo – should be She 佘) Maifeng 余麦峰 were the leaders of it (Li Qing, “Bainian lai Yindunixiya huawen wenxue de fazhan,” 108). 60 Qi Qiuping lists the editor as only Yan Weizhen, Li Qing lists Yan and himself (Qi Qiuping, “Yindunixiya huawen baozhi fukan,” 12; Chen Shaoxin, “Shitan yinhua wenxue”; Li Qing, “Bainian lai Yindunixiya huawen wenxue de fazhan,” 108). Li Qing left Indonesia around the PP10 crisis, so presumably Yan continued without him when it was reestablished. 61 Xu Qiongling, Fengyu Nanyang wei liao qing, 211. Xu Qiongling was one of these editors. 62 Li Qing, “Bainian lai Yindunixiya huawen wenxue de fazhan,” 111. 63 Qi Qiuping, “Yindunixiya huawen baozhi fukan,” 12. 64 Huang Yurong, Lunyi shang de zhange, 11. 65 Sun Xi was a student at Nanyang University in Singapore at this time and was well-known for writing the prize-winning epic poem Jasmine Princess (茉莉公主) under the pseudonym Han Yuzhen 韩玉真. This poem was republished in Api Revolusi’s Blizzard. One obituary for him states incorrectly that he was the editor-in-chief for Api Revolusi, when it was actually Liang Piyun; however, I suspect he may have been the editor for the supplement Blizzard (Chen Yuxin 陈宇昕, “Moli gongzhu zuozhe Sun Xi shishi《茉莉公主》作者孙希逝世,” Lianhe Zaobao, 2023-4-28.) Another possible editor might be Leo Suryadinata, who was widely knowledgable about world literature and also would have known of Sun Xi’s work as a Nantah alum. 170 === [PDF page 185] === 66 Lai Yumei, “Lingluo chengni zhan zuo chen,” 4. 67 Chang, Literary Culture in Taiwan, “Recent Growth of Taiwanese Literary Studies Within Taiwan.” 68 Hui, Strangers at Home, Chapter 3. 69 Ministry of Education, Surat Putusan [Letter of Decree], 1954-06-02, in ANRI RA11: 1805. 70 Yang Qiusheng, “Tuanjie Zhaowa huaqiao.” 71 These are Selected Yinhua Literature (印华文学选), Selected Yinhua Works (印华创作选), and Sunglasses (遮阳眼镜), all from Weihua Publishing House (伟华出版社). I have only found the third volume, and the table of contents of the first; the title of the second volume is only attested. Little is known about Weihua, whose primary editors were Jiaoshi 礁石 (pseud. Zheng Yuanxin 郑原心) and Suyi 苏艺 (pseud. Shalihong). Weihua published multiple books in the late 1950s and early 1960s on Southeast Asian literature, history and folklore. See Appendix D. 72 Zheng Yuanxin, “Subei huayu wenxue wushi nian.” See also Appendix D. 73 “Xie zai Yinhua wenxue xuan ye qian 写在《印华文学选》页前 [Written for Selected Yinhua Literature]”, Thay Kung Siang Poo, 1958-01-13, p. 3. 74 . Chen Zhanhu (as Shan 善), “Yinni de wenhua kanwu 印尼的文化刊物 [Indonesian Cultural Periodicals],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 31 (1961-10): 12. 75 Chen Zhanhu (as Shannu 善奴), “Chairil Anwar,” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 6 no. 18 (1959- 05). See also Tan, "Wei Beihua and Chairil Anwar," on this poet's reception within the Malayan context. 76 Chen’s translation of “I,” probably originally published in a yinhua periodical, was selected for the lost 1958 anthology Yinhua wenxue xuan (“Xie zai Yinhua wenxue xuan ye qian 写在《印华 文学选》页前 [Written for Selected Yinhua Literature],” Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-01-13, 3), 77 This book also prominently featured the translations of Li Xu and Li Ren, the authors of Tin Island, discussed in Chapter 5. Reportedly, the publication of this book was also supported (financially?) by Sima Wensen, cultural attaché of the PRC Embassy in Indonesia (Sima Xiaoxin, “Sujianuo zongtong canghua ji de gushi”). It was printed at Seng Hwo Pao. 78 Yindunixiya duanpian xiaoshuo ji, Preface, 1. 79 Yindunixiya duanpian xiaoshuo ji, Preface, 2. 80 Most of the next generation of translators of Indonesian literature into Chinese were all profoundly influenced by yinhua print culture, including Guyi 谷衣 (pseud. Leo Suryadinata) and Xu Younian 许友年. The translation of Indonesian literature into Chinese peaked in this era both in quality and quantity. 81 This thought was prompted by Morgenstern, “A people’s literature of Palestine,” 63. 171 === [PDF page 186] === 82 The Zamrud founders were Chen Yansheng 陈衍生, who also translated under the pseudonym J. Tannin and published as Chen Ning, and Yang Zhaoji 杨兆基, a teacher at Zhenqiang Middle School. Huang Yurong 黄裕荣 and Lin Wanli 林万里 would later join as editors. It was initially funded by Guo Yuxiu 郭毓秀 of the northern Fujianese (i.e. non-Minnan) association of Jakarta (玉融公会), where Chen also worked (Ding Jian, Yang Zhaoji, 174-176). On the northern Fujian diaspora’s involvement in yinhua literature, see Zou Fangjin, “Zhanhou yinni huawen wenxue yu Fuqing huaqiao.” 83 “Yinniyu de hunxue’er (印尼语的混血儿) [The Mixed-race Children of Indonesian],” Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia, 1961-10, p. 12. 84 “Xian gei toukao yindunixiya yuwen de laoshimen (献给投考印度尼西亚语文的老师们),” Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia, 1960-0. 85 “Yin liu shou Mao Zhuxi shici bei guan de yi ben zhuming kanwu.” This article cites Zou Fangjin. The reason for the closure is also confirmed in Ding Jian’s biography of Yang Zhaoji. 86 It can be inferred that some of the publications were produced and probably funded by Seng Hwo Pao, which retained its editorial staff after its publications were closed. Friendship in Struggle (战斗中的友谊), the lavishly illustrated volume on Liu Shaoqi’s 1963 visit, for example, would have required external sponsorship. 87 These include Pioneer (拓荒者; Pelopor; 1964-04), In the Boiling Days (在沸腾的日子里; Di Hari yang Mendidih; 1964-05), Family Problems (家庭问题; Masalah Keluarga; 1964/8). Each publication included an Indonesian translation of the title. 88 Zou Fangjin, “Zhanhou yinni huawen wenxue”; Xuesheng xizuo xuan, 6. 89 Zou Fangjin, “Zhanhou yinni huawen wenxue.” 90 Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan,” 156. Apparently they already opened a bookstore in Pontianak named Sarinah in 1963 (165), though political factors may also have factored into that decision. 91 See Biographical Note on Wen Peor. 92 According to Koesalah Soebagyo Toer, the main translator from Russian, and a younger brother of Pramoedya (Liem, “Bridge,” 183). Zhang Dayong, manager of Sadar, also notes that the primary distributor for books from China, International Bookstore [国际书店] tacitly agreed not to import books that would compete with Sadar publications (Zhang Dayong, Xiao Yucan yu Juexing,” 156). 93 I return to these in the conclusion of Chapter 6. 94 The phrase is James Siegel’s, cited in Strassler, Refracted Visions, 13. 95 Bernards, Writing the South Seas, 3. 96 Hoogervorst, Language Ungoverned, 8. 97 For example, the overviews by Elaine Kim and Sau-ling Cynthia Wong exclude and defer (respectively) the study of literature in other languages, which they identify with immigrant 172 === [PDF page 187] === literature, on the assumption of a continuing process of language shift (Kim, Asian-American Literature, xi; Wong, Reading Asian-American Literature, 229). Note that Wong is, however, one of the leading scholars of Chinese-American literature in Chinese. See, for example, her “Generational Effects in Racialization.” 98 For example, Frank Chin’s attempt to develop a “Chinaman” language; Chang-Rae Lee’s figuration of the Asian speaker of English in Native Speaker as a kind of double agent; or the centrality of narratives of learning English within Chinese American women’s life stories (Wong, “Chinese American Literature,” 47). 99 While initially I pursued an analogy with Asian-American literature, I have actually found studies of writing in German, Italian and Yiddish in the USA more helpful. 100 My usage differs that of Lunny who, also drawing on the Quebecois precedent, uses "allolingual" to refer to feminist writing not in English ("Allolingual Citational Praxis"); Kadir, who uses it poetically to mean "from elsewhere ("World Literature"); and Bachner, who uses it in a deconstructionist vein to refer to “script as the cipher of absolute otherness” (Beyond Sinology, Chapter 4). Note too that, for euophony’s sake, I suspend my objections to the conflation of phonic and graphic which I mentioned in the Introduction regarding Sinophone studies. 101 Shaping, “‘Qiao’ wai yi shou ‘桥’ 外一首 [‘Bridge’ and One Other Poem],” Dengdai—shiwen xuan, 42. 102 Ng, “Soft-boiled, Anti-communist Romance,” 95. After these poems, he largely disappears from print media. Information on a Bazhong alumni 103 website (www.boanson.net) confirms that he was born in 1940 and was in the class of 1960. 104 Liao Bimei 廖苾梅, “Xiongying 雄鹰 [Eagles],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 5, 1958-02- 01, p. 17. 105 Liao Bimei 廖苾梅, “Gei huizishou 给刽子手 [To the Executioner],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 9, 1958-03-01, p. 14. 106 Lai Xiufeng, “Gei paizi gongyou 给排字工友 [To the Typsetter],” Xin Bao, 1956-10-29, 4. 107 Li Feng, “Gei paizi gongyou 给排字工友 (To the Typsetter),” Gei wo weixiao, 144-146. First published in Harian Ibukota, 1963-12-18. 108 Li Zhuohui, interview with the author, 2024-08-29. 109 Xu Younian, “Nanwang de jiyi,” 67. Xu would go on to work in the International Liaison Department of the CPC, teach Indonesian in Guangzhou Foreign Languages University, and publish research on Indonesian folk literature. 110 Robin, Socialist Realism, 264. The poems in Songs on the Equator were selected from Works (作品), the journal of the 111 Guangdong Writers’ Association. 173 === [PDF page 188] === 112 Lou Shiyi, “Lingling suisui de jiyi,” Section 6. 113 Huang Dongping, “Chidaoxian shang de gechang 赤道线上的歌唱 [Song on the Equator],” “就像我看见了咱们的祖国 / 一样。” Note the use of the inclusive first person plural, 114 zanmen. Huang Dongping, “Chidaoxian shang de gechang,” 4. 115 Li Qing, “Zhongguo huabu laidao le Yindunixiya,” 39. 116 The phrase is Laurence Coderre’s, and derives from Sun Dingguo. See Newborn Socialist Things, Introduction, 2. Compare, also, Coderre’s analysis of socialist department stores in Chapter 2 of her book, and how differently the same discourse functions once an international boundary is crossed by these commodities. 117 Li Qing, “Zhongguo huabu laidao le Yindunixiya,” 40. 118 Indonesian (non-Chinese) importers were represented by the organization KENSI, which was at the heart of the short-lived Assaatist movement (see Chapter 5). On the different “affirmative action” policies implemented in the 1950s, see Thee Kian Wie, Indonesia’s Economy since Independence, Part 1. 119 Li Qing, “Huanying ni! ‘Pembebasan,’” 36. 120 Chambers, “Revolutionary Times,” Introduction, especially 6-7. Chambers borrows the term from Gail Hershatter. “电报传来捷报，/ 北国正气爽秋高。” (Zhou Yingnan, “Fengshou 丰收 [Harvest],” in 121 Zhou Yingnan wenku, vol. 4, p. 73. 122 This is a term Geoffrey Winthrop-Young uses to describe the objects in which Friedrich Kittler is interested (Kittler and the Media, Introduction). Zhen Chongde 甄崇德, “Tantan huaqiao wenyi gongzuo 谈谈华侨文艺工作 [On Overseas 123 Chinese literary work], Qiaowu Bao, 1956-11-17, 31-32. Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese, 112. This quote is from a Zhou Enlai speech in 124 Yangon in 1957. 125 Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, Chapter 5. 126 The English translation of the title is not mine (I might opt for “Young Aviator”) but derives instead from a 1946 trilingual comic adapted from this story and published in Singapore, held in the National Library Board collection in Singapore. 127 Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 667. The following citations are from Hu Yuzhi’s 2006 Selected Writings. 128 Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 627. 174 === [PDF page 189] === 129 Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 425. 130 Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 509. 131 Hu Yuzhi, Shaonian hangkongbing, 432. 132 Baren, Qundao zhi guo, 299. I think Little Duan may have been modeled on Baren’s translator Chen Wenying, a reporter of mixed Javanese and Chinese parentage who also interpreted for him (Zheng Guanghuang, “Ji Chen Wenying aiguo shi yi sheng”). 133 Baren, Qundao zhi guo, 328. 134 Baren, Qundao zhi guo, 344. 135 The support for the Madiun rebellion, as well as criticisms of Hatta, led to the banning of Archipelagic Nation in the post-independence years (Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 141). 136 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, Chapter 2. 137 It was composed by the prominent Ma Ke 马可, who reportedly had also visited Indonesia (presumably on a cultural delegation). Note the possible influence of keroncong music on the arrangement. Sima Wensen and Ma Ke, Zhongguo Yindunixiya youyi zhi ge. This is the official (uncredited) 138 English translation. 139 Sima Wensen and Ma Ke, Zhongguo Yindunixiya youyi zhi ge. 140 Chin, “The Afro-Asian Silk Road.” 141 This version was published in the June 1963 edition of Tiongkok Rakyat (Sima Xiaoxin, “Wenhua waijiao zhi youhao laiwang jiyi”), but I haven’t been able to consult it yet. A shortened version was also recorded in 1963 by a Lekra cultural delegation after their return from China, and is available online (Paduan Suara Lekra, “Persahabatan Tiongkok-Indonesia [Chinese- Indonesian Friendship]”). On this recording, and the genre of lagu seriosa (serious songs) which it was part of, see Mohammed, Musical Nationalism. 142 The program had originally been established to support colonial intelligence sinology in the late 1940s by Meijer, Van der Valk, and Kramers (see Kwartanada, “Making of the Chinese Question”). Other graduates from the program include Sobron Aidit, also a Lekra writer, as well as W.D. Sukisman, an intelligence officer specializing in Chinese affairs, and Lie Tek Tjeng, a military-affiliated assimilationist intellectual who went on to study at Harvard. 143 Siegert, Relays, 35. Siegert interprets literature (as well as individuality and poetry) as a “subepoch” of the postal system, which he believes ends in the late 19th century with the advent of photography (73, 161). His work is also limited to the West. When this “epoch” took place in the (semi-)colonized world is an open question. Hu Yuzhi (writing as Sabin 沙平), “Yi feng wei wancheng de xin 一封未完成的信 [An 144 Unfinished Letter].” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 7/8, 1958, pp. 4-6. Note that in this article he 175 === [PDF page 190] === also clarifies that his pseudonym Shaping is a transcribed appreviation of “friend of Indonesia” (sahabat Indonesia). 145 He was first in charge of the Central Publishing Directorate (中央出版总署), and then later, after this organization was incorporated into the Ministry of Culture, a Vice Minister of Culture (Culp, Power of Print, 191-192, 219-221). 146 From 1950 to 1965, the number of Indonesian-language books ranked second in the [Foreign Language Press’] overall publications” (Liu, Shaping of Indonesia, 191). Note that Hu likely worked closely with Baren during the latter’s tenure in the People’s Literature Publishing House from 1953-1960, which I discuss at the end of Chapter 4. 147 See Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 3 no. 48 for the competition announcement. Note that the scale of this competition was far, far smaller than that of the Zamrud competitions of 1963-65, which appear to have tapped much more directly into the school network. The jury included Tjipto Darsono, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Gouw Hiauw Gie (of Baperki), Tjoo Tek Tjong (of the PKI), Zhang Guoji (of Huazhong) and Situ Zan (of Bazhong). 148 See Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 4 no. 14 for the results. The three winners were published in subsequent issues. 149 See Mitchell, Siblings, Introduction. 150 Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 75. Jieling 洁玲, “Yige zongse de qingnian 一个棕色的青年 [A Brown Youth],” Chiao Hsing 151 Weekly, vol. 5 no. 41: 17. I have not found any other information related to this author. 152 David Reeve’s biography of Onghokham discusses his closeted homosexuality, and its connection to Chineseness. Onghokham had several boyfriends who were generally non-Chinese and younger. See Seng, Strangers in the Family, Chapter 8, for an excellent reading of Kwee Tek Hoay’s 153 Rose from Cikembang in relation to family law. 154 Ojwang, Migration and Culture, 157. 155 Zhou Miaoquan 周淼泉, "Return" (回乡), Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-02-22, p. 3. 156 On recent treatments of the links between interracial/international love and revolutionary literature see Barraclough et al ed., Red Love Across the Pacific, and McGuire, Red at Heart. 176 === [PDF page 191] === Chapter 3: Notes on A Revolution The Land Below the Winds Not long after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, a pamphlet began to make the rounds in North Sumatra, with bearing title "Towards Chinese-Indonesian Unity: An Appeal from the Chinese Nation (Menuju Persatuan Tionghoa-Indonesia: Seruan Pihak Bangsa Tionghoa).”1 Addressing itself to "beloved siblings" (saudara-saudara tercinta), in the egalitarian language of the unfolding revolution,2 the writers sought to correct a "misunderstanding," the belief that any but a tiny minority of Chinese residents were opposed to Indonesian independence. "In the name of the educated classes of the cultural sector, reporters, and patriotic youth... representing the overseas Chinese of East Sumatra" they declared their support of "Indonesia for Indonesians," and stated further: 1. China is a peace-loving country and has no desire to invade Indonesia or influence its politics. 2. The Chinese government exists as a reflection of the right of nations to selfdetermination and therefore, naturally supports and sympathises with Indonesian independence. 3. The Overseas Chinese of Indonesia are here as guests and not as elder brothers [saudara tua] and therefore, have no desire to create conflicts with the Indonesian people. 4. The Overseas Chinese simply hope that they can contribute to the development of Indonesia in the economic field.3 This pamphlet is remarkable not only for its wide circulation, but also for the internationalist ideology that appears in it. The homosocial, interracial rhetoric of brotherhood here symbolizes a bold new way of imagining the relationship between peoples—more or less equal, similar yet different, related but also chosen—even as it contains the germ of inequality, in the form of sibling rank (and I even suspect, here, the shadow of Japanese Pan-Asianism, which favored selfrepresentation as an elder brother rather than as a father.) Such speech acts were meant to persuade by their demonstrative effect, the signatories offering themselves as examples of those supportive Chinese of which they spoke, and a counterexample to the disloyal Chinese who were 177 === [PDF page 192] === insinuated in some Republican pamphlets.4 They may have exaggerated the extent of support for Indonesian independence, but political propaganda often speaks prefiguratively, blurring present and future, indicative and subjunctive, the deontological and the ontological. In the navigation of multiple audiences which are also observing each other, it provides another example of the complexities of the structure of address. This pamphlet was one of the first public announcements of the existence of a wartime antifascist underground that had now emerged to take its place in the global uprising against colonialism. 5 One of the leaders of this network was Baren. Realizing that pamphlets were not sufficient, the antifascists transformed the underground mimeograph Forward was transformed into a party organ for their renamed organization, the Chinese Democratic League. Additionally, a new daily newspaper, the Democratic Daily News (民主日报; hereafter DDN), was established. Most unusually in comparison to Chinese organizing in Southeast Asia at this time, but consistent with Baren’s emphasis on interlingual communication, an Indonesian-language newspaper was was also established, Kerakjatan ("Democracy”).6 The struggle for independence was especially bloody and complex in this region of Indonesia.7 The concentration of oil, rubber, and tobacco made its reconquest a colonial priority, and fighting was fiercer than anywhere else outside Java. The conflict between colonizer and colonized intersected with complex ethnic and class tensions, erupting in the “Social Revolution” of March 1946, which decapitated the regional aristocracy. Immediately after this event, Kerakjatan published a multi-part historical treatise by Baren analyzing the reasons for the failure of successive movements such as the Taiping, the Boxers, and the 1911 revolution. While clearly sympathetic to the leftist militias that had led the campaign against the aristocracy, these texts cautioned against premature class struggle in the midst of a national liberation struggle..8 An important precedent for later Indonesian-language publications founded by so-called “totoks” like Chiao Hsing Weekly, it shuttered in 1946 after Baren’s relocation to the Republican capital of Siantar, lasting less than a year in total (although it was revived from 1951-1954 under Chang 178 === [PDF page 193] === Hsi Shek).9 However, this was not the end of his political writing in Indonesian, but rather the beginning of a new stage. From mid-1946 onwards, Baren penned a column on international relations as “Barhen” for the Republican official newspaper Soeloeh Merdeka.10 His articles carried titles like: “The Two-faced Anglo-American policy,”11 “Let Indonesia Become the Leader of the League of Oppressed Nations and the World Anti-Imperialist Front,”12 and “The Soviet Russian Revolution, Peaceful and Revolutionary.”13 Unsurprising, then, that Soeloeh Merdeka also reviewed (glowingly) Baren’s anticolonial play Temple of Five Ancestors, and the editor even tried to organize a second leg of the tour.14 Baren was even included in the newspaper’s anniversary compilation, his name sandwiched between two of his political allies, the communist Abdul Xarim and the left-wing nationalist Saleh Umar.15 These propaganda activities are important not only because they have been largely forgotten. (In part, this erasure is a result of Baren’s own selective narration, which I will return to below.) More to the point, they force us to rethink the links between diaspora, literature, and revolution. In this chapter, I turn to a prose suite that Baren began writing during the revolution Scattered Notes from the Land Below the Winds (风下之国散记; hereafter, Notes), interpreting them as experiments in desegregated writing. These texts recount (semi-fictionalized) episodes from Baren’s “Southeast Asian period,” from his departure from Hong Kong in 1941 to the end of his fugitivity in North Sumatra with the Japanese surrender in 1945. One of a group of antifascists who had retreated from China to Southeast Asia during the Pacific War, Baren and his partner Liu Yan distinguished themselves through their commitment to the struggle in Sumatra. From the initial flight out of Singapore in 1942 to the de facto deportation in 1947, the two relocated frequently, experiencing a broad cross-section of Indonesian (Figure 22). During this period, Baren never ceased writing: poems, propaganda, stories, essays, criticism, epistles, pamphlets, plays, histories, in these forms and more he sought not only to make sense of the revolutionary conjuncture but also to intervene in it.16 179 === [PDF page 194] === In recent years, he seems to have found his moment, as histories of the Cold War and Chinese literature are being rewritten from a transnational perspective. Josh Stenberg’s précis is apt: Today, this phase of his work is of substantial historical interest in that it offers a rare view of wartime and revolutionary Indonesia as seen through Mainland Chinese eyes. Later the author of Marxist histories of both ancient and modern Indonesia, Baren distinguished himself by a respectful and informed, if not always nuanced, perspective. Unusually for his era, Baren took a more than cursory interest in the culture and literature of a Southeast Asian nation, treating, for instance, the folk poetry of Sumatra with respect and admiration and adapting it for use in his works. Unlike local Chinese, he was not embedded in Sumatran race relations or economic concerns, a detachment that allowed him to condemn what he saw as racist exploitation in the business practices of colonialera Sumatran Chinese. His exoticization of Indonesian peoples, typical for the period, can be problematic and at its worst is reminiscent of European conceptions of the noble savage or the native female; but on the whole his characterization of Indonesians as positive, noble, also often heroic and beautiful, assembled all the necessary traits of the proletariat ideal.17 While a number of authors have examined other works, such as his Temple of Five Ancestors,18 the Notes have received less attention as literary experiments. Taomo Zhou has drawn on them as documents of his wartime experience, 19 while Yan Min and Xia Jing have cited them as examples of mainland Chinese depictions of Southeast Asia(ns), but the relationship between their formal qualities and the revolutionary moment from which they emerged have not been sufficiently appreciated.20 The term “below the winds” (风下) was, it seems, borrowed from Hu Yuzhi and Shen Zijiu’s choice of the same geonym for their cultural magazine in Singapore. For these intellectuals, “below the winds” provided of spatial metaphor of insurgency, as if the region were about to erupt from its oppressed position “below” the equator.21 In the transition into “Southeast Asia,” a new regional order of nation states, from the colonized terra nullius of the “South Seas,”22 this was a transitional geonym for an internationalist aspiration. And although based in Singapore, this media network, whose entire cadre had experienced the Sumatran exile together, positioned “Indonesia as subject [以印尼为主体].”23 Fundamentally, I see this period as a kind of opening, and I hope to recover the sense of possibility that saturated it. Historian Guo-Quan Seng, borrowing the language of Hu Yuzhi, has characterized 1945-1949 as a “dual- 180 === [PDF page 195] === revolutionary period," drawing a parallel between the communist revolution in China and the national democratic revolutions in Southeast Asia. I quote him at length: One of the political missions of the CCP’s newspapermen and women in Southeast Asia was to help the diaspora identify with the local nations and their struggle against Western colonialism. These local nationalist identities began to be imaginable for the Overseas Chinese through the intellectuals’ articulation of a postwar Mao Zedong-inflected socialist universalism—“New Democracy,” which encompassed the newly rising nations of Southeast Asia under socialist revolutionary leadership. According to this vision, far from standing as an obstacle to assimilation, Chinese-ness gave the Overseas Chinese unique access to the vanguard socialist and revolutionary theory. It was this vanguard socialist identity in Chinese [...] that made the adoption of local nationalisms both imaginable and attractive to their Overseas Chinese readers.24 All of this in Chinese, so to speak. With the accretion of time, with the solidification of a postwar order in which we still live—one that encompassed the founding of both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Indonesia—it has become difficult to think the radical potentiality of revolutionary Asia. Between 1945 and 1949, the bookends to both Indonesia’s independence struggle and the civil war in China, not only years but entire worlds passed. Why, in the heat of ongoing political struggle, did this professional revolutionary feel it was so important to reflect on his wartime fugitivity of a few years earlier? Could we read the Notes not just for the actual world they recorded, but for the possible worlds they strained to perceive? Can reading for omissions allow for a more textured sense of a moment that we only think we know? The unfinished product of half a life of engagement with the Indonesian struggle, the Notes were composed beginning in the mid-1940s and continually revised into the 1960s—most were only recovered posthumously. They cover the experience of the Pacific War, from Baren’s initial arrival in Singapore to the announcement of the Japanese surrender. Because Baren himself never had a chance to oversee the edition and publication of the Notes, there are some ambiguities about the exact composition, sequence, and even title of this series. In what follows, I sidestep some of these bibliographic difficulties by focusing on three of the Notes which were all published during his lifetime, and specifically in the revolutionary period of 1945-1949. I am interested in understanding why Baren found it necessary to turn to a detailed examination of his own wartime experience in the midst of an unfolding revolution, and why these examinations 181 === [PDF page 196] === took the textual form they did. We will read the Notes not in the order of the events they describe, but in the order in which they were written, or rather, published—an approach that will also take us from urban to rural, from the Chinese to the Indonesian world and then back again. (We could say that, in narratological terms, we will be reading not for the story but for the plot, not for what happened but for how it is told.) I also expend considerable effort on explicating Baren’s postwar involvement in what was known as the “social revolution” of North Sumatra— while his wartime activities are relatively well-known, in no small part due to the Notes in which he describes them, these postwar activities are in my view more significant both for his oeuvre and more telling of the trajectory of yinhua culture in postwar Indonesia. In this chapter, I will begin by reconstructing the development of the underground antifascist networks into the aboveground Democracy Movement. With this historical background in place, I then analyze “A Taukeh (一个头家),” a satirical account of a reporter’s encounter with a representative of the commercial bourgeoisie set in prewar Singapore. Reading it as a critique of the hegemonic ideology of overseas Chinese society, I link it to Baren’s participation within the “democracy movement” of North Sumatra and introduce the vexing relationship between class and race. Thereafter, I examine his most widely-read text, “Neighbors (邻人们),” a pastoral depiction of Baren’s wartime fugitivity within a mostly-Javanese village in the Sumatran plantation belt. I show how such quotidian narratives functioned as counterpropaganda against dominant views of Indonesian criminality. Comparing these two texts, I then show how formal differences between them—which are representative of the division in the Notes as a whole between short stories of the Chinese city and memoir essays of the Indonesian countryside—reflect the different “stance” that Baren took towards their subjects, as he sought to cultivate readerly antipathy towards the Chinese elite and sympathy towards the Indonesian masses. I then develop a comparison of these two texts, to show how their genre differences reflect the divided nature of colonial society, which opens a path to analyzing the formal problems of the Notes in relation to the political problems of the Chinese left in Southeast Asia. 182 === [PDF page 197] === In the concluding section, which is a kind of coda, I introduce a counterpoint to my rehabilitation of Baren’s political writing. My reconstruction of the activities of the women’s movement, under the leadership of Liu Yan, his partner at the time, serves as the backdrop for his unusual meditation on desire and reproduction in a creole community, “Rensheng and Those Around Him (任生及其周围的一群).” Here I work through the relation between his commitment to antiracism and his sexism. I suggest that Baren’s turn towards a depoliticizing, abstract humanism in this essay is linked to an intellectual failure to understand gendered oppression in historical terms. Reading “Rensheng” against the impressive record of the women’s movement in North Sumatra, in which he was peripherally involved through Liu Yan, then allows us to evaluate Baren’s realism and its limits. 183 === [PDF page 198] === Figure 22. Baren and Liu Yan’s itinerary in Southeast Asia. (a) Overall movements from 1941 to 1947. Source: design by author. 184 === [PDF page 199] === (b) The flight from Singapore to Sumatra in 1942. Source: design by author. 185 === [PDF page 200] === (c) Underground in North Sumatra from 1943 to the surrender in 1945. Source: design by author. 186 === [PDF page 201] === (d) Aboveground in North Sumatra from 1945 until departure in 1947. Source: design by author. 187 === [PDF page 202] === From Antifascism to Democracy In the early 1940s a group of several dozen CPC cadre and fellow-travelers traveled to Hong Kong and Singapore to open a third front, alongside the better-known centers of resistance in the communist Northwest and the nationalist Southwest, where they would prosecute a campaign of antifascist propaganda. It was publicly led by the veteran publisher and underground communist Hu Yuzhi, financially backed by the Singaporean Hokkien capitalist Tan Kah Kee 陈嘉庚, and ultimately directed by Zhou Enlai’s Southern Bureau, although distance and war ensured considerable autonomy.25 After the botched defense of Singapore, in spite of a last-minute campaign to mobilize and propagandize Chinese residents in which they participated, several dozen of these “southbound” (南下) intellectuals evacuated across the straits together with their families to the relative safety of Sumatra.26 While the majority of this group laid low, biding their time in study and enterprise, Baren and his comrade/partner, Liu Yan 刘岩 (alias of Lei Derong 雷德容; Figure 23), who he had met while they were teaching in Singapore together, refused to view their displacement as an exile from politics, and instead threw themselves into underground activities.27 There were, in fact, two antifascist groups, both based in yinhua language institutions. The one that Baren and Liu Yan joined was the Sumatran Overseas Chinese Anti-Fascist Alliance (苏岛华侨反法西斯同盟; abbrev. Fanmeng 反盟), which was led by communists linked to the Good Earth Bookstore (大 地书店), one of whom had even been involved in the Red Tide Affair discussed in Chapter 1.28 The other was called the Overseas Chinese Resistance Association (华侨抗敌协会; abbrev. Huakang 华抗) led by veterans from Malaya and based in the alumni networks of the East Sumatra Middle School ( a.k.a. Sudong 苏东).29 Although this latter group included leftists, it was not explicitly communist;30 thus, this alliance resembled a miniature version of the United Front between the communists and nationalists in China. While the leadership soon chose to coordinate under the unified banner of the Sumatran People’s Anti-Fascist Alliance (苏岛人民反 法西斯同盟; confusingly, this retained the abbreviation “Fanmeng” 反盟), a name probably chosen to promote interethnic collaboration,31 they remained functionally separate. 188 === [PDF page 203] === Taomo Zhou summarizes the “profound impact on the political consciousness of Chinese youth” of Baren’s analysis of the Indonesian situation as follows: Baren’s personal skill in youth mobilization as well as the appeal of his ideas on interethnic solidarity also played an important role in the rapid growth of the CCP’s influence in Sumatra in the 1940s. Baren believed that “class struggle will break down the stone wall between different ethnic groups.” He tried to facilitate dialogue with pribumi revolutionaries […] Using a Marxist analytical framework, Baren concluded that incidents of violence were the working-class pribumi’s rebellion against the Chinese capitalists, rather than an explosion of the pribumi’s primordial racial hostility against the ethnic Chinese as a whole. […] Beyond the defeat of the Dutch, he expected a more thorough social revolution led by a multiethnic coalition of the proletariat. […] The ultimate solution to the ethnic problem was for the ethnic Chinese to devote themselves, politically and economically, to Indonesia’s struggle for national self-determination.32 Antifascist memoirs often recall intense disagreements about whether to adopt a strategy of armed resistance, like the Malayan guerillas across the straits.33 Baren and Liu Yan came down firmly against this approach, pointing out that concentration in urban areas of a relatively small population of Chinese made guerilla warfare impracticable,34 especially considering what they tactfully called “a certain degree of ethnic contradiction.”35 Instead, they promoted a policy of cadre education (including learning Indonesian) and underground propaganda, with the hopes of making contact with non-Chinese antifascists.36 This conflict is important, since it prefigures a recurrent choice between propaganda and coalition-building, especially across ethnic lines, and armament and self-defense of the Chinese community—Anne van der Veer, writing of the postwar moment, calls this the choice between “conciliation and confrontation.”37 Somewhat counterintuitively, this dichotomy often mapped onto left and right respectively. In other words, we find here already the kernel of a postwar yinhua left, preoccupied with the problem of interethnic communication, obsessed with promoting “dialogue” in ways that we are more accustomed to associating with liberals. In any case, the critique of armed resistance was vindicated when, in 1943, one of the advocates of armed resistance was captured—he had been too open about his plans and the guns he acquired—and betrayed the organization, leading to mass arrests on September 20, 1943.38 The disaster, commonly abbreviated as “9-20,” drove the remaining antifascists deep into the 189 === [PDF page 204] === countryside, and some of Baren’s most interesting Notes would be written about this period spent in a succession of predominantly-Javanese villages in the plantation hinterland. The real significance of the anti-fascist network lay not in its limited achievements, but in its postwar transformation into a readymade community governance structure after the Japanese surrender to replace both discredited collaborators and to challenge the pre-war colonial elite. (A similar process took place in West Kalimantan.39) When, after 1945, most of their peers returned to Singapore, Hong Kong, or mainland China, Baren and Liu Yan chose instead to remain, bringing the anti-fascist network above ground. At this point, it acquired a dual character as both a community governance structure and as a progressive social movement. Formally, it was incorporated as a subbranch of the China Democratic League (CDL), a Chinese political party initially founded as a “third way” alternative but decisively pro-CPC by this time, and the chosen vehicle for the expansion of leftist influence throughout many of the urban Chinese communities of Southeast Asia.40 Over the next two years, Baren and Liu Yan led a fight for the democratization of the Chinese community within the framework of an Indonesia struggling for independence, first in Medan, from mid-1945 to mid-1946, and then in Siantar, from mid-1946 to mid-1947 (Figure 22(c)). It was a testament to their effectiveness that the colonial state singled them out and imprisoned then deported Baren in mid-1947 to Hong Kong, where Liu Yan would pass away the following year. On the strength of these credentials, Baren would also be appointed in 1950 as the first ambassador of the newly-established PRC. While most accounts narrate communal history in this period in terms of a conflict between “red” and “blue,” or partisans of the GMD and CPC,41 we must be cautious of emptying out the political content of the democracy movement, transforming it into a prepolitical matter of loyalty. this might be appropriate for 1950s Jakarta, in North Sumatra during the 1940s, what emerged had the characteristics of a real movement. I want to take seriously the question of what the “democracy” in the “Democracy Movement” actually meant. Certainly, it did organize support for the CPC against the GMD in the Chinese Civil War, including through wresting control of communal institutions from the “right,” and conformed to the CPC’s United Front 190 === [PDF page 205] === strategy.42 (Wang Liubo has shown how the Chinese community of North Sumatra split in the immediate postwar period into left and right, and that over time the left overtook the right, as measured by the number of institutions supporting the CCP or the KMT.43) However, it also promoted a program of social change within North Sumatra that included: reforming education, e.g. through the promotion of student and teacher participation school governance, and of literacy classes for working people;44 the total abolition of the colonial institution of the captaincy and its replacement with democratic associations;45 the organization of Chinese workers into multiethnic unions, culminating in a massive strike in 1947 of the Allies’ kitchen staff;46 and the encouragement of participation by excluded populations in political life, including through the establishment of Women’s Associations and Peasant’s Unions.47 In addition to these reforms, however, the CDL also aggressively pursued the cause of Sino- Indonesian friendship through: promoting the anticolonial cause in its propaganda organs, including via newspapers, schools, and performance troupes;48 organizing mass rallies together with non-Chinese groups, notably to celebrate Labor Day;49 mediating Sino-Indonesian conflicts where they arose, including the notorious battle of Bagan Siapiapi;50 and leading opposition to the disastrous formation of the right-wing militia, the Pao An Tui (Chinese Self-Defense Corps), which was de facto allied with the Dutch military.51 The significance of this program is clearer by comparison with the regional headquarters in Singapore, led by comrades such as Hu Yuzhi and Shen Zijiu, which strove to maintain “neutrality” in the war of independence being fought by the Malayan National Liberation Army, in a fruitless attempt to protect its legal presence in Singapore. During their transit through Singapore after their deportation from Indonesia, Liu Yan regretfully noted in her diary that their decision to stay out of local politics and effectively become a CPC lobby had “made the CDL hollow (造成民盟的空虚).”52 Perhaps not unrelatedly, when she broached the possibility of returning to Malaya to continue their overseas work to Hu and Shen, who were effectively their superiors in the party hierarchy, "it seemed they were not interested (似乎不表示兴趣).”53 Meanwhile, the Seng Hwo Pao, a CPC-linked daily founded around the same time in Jakarta, had 191 === [PDF page 206] === an attitude that Taomo Zhou has described as “distant, unenthusiastic, and sometimes even condescending.”54 The uncompromising support for Indonesian independence by the Chinese left of North Sumatra was notable, but what was truly remarkable, as I show later, was the degree of concrete cooperation it achieved with Indonesian revolutionaries. While the arrival of experienced communist cadre surely guided its direction, the decisive factor in this movement, I think, involves the revolutionary conditions of North Sumatra. Here as elsewhere, the Cold War knit together politics at a world scale with politics at a local level in organic ways. Most notably, the democracy movement was the expression of the rise of a broad coalition of intellectuals, merchants, peasants and youth, opposed to an older elite represented by the twin institutions of the captaincy and the consulate (whose radicalized form was the Pao An Tui). What united this rising coalition was their non-dependence on, or even antagonism to colonial rule: teachers and students chafed at the harassment by officials that they experienced in schools, traders small and large resented protectionist policies that favored Western trading houses, workers resented low wages and workplace indignities that the state refused to remedy, and peasants hated their exclusion from land ownership by a labor-hungry plantocracy. By allying themselves with the Indonesian independence struggle, these different groups both opposed Dutch political power as an expression of Western economic interests, and also liberated themselves from the oppression of two kinds of local tyranny: indirect rule through a comprador bourgeoisie, whether through the captaincy in its original form or new dress, as in Malaya; or overseas control through the extraterritorial privileges of representatives of the KMT with increasing police powers, as in the Philippines. Solidarity with Indonesians for workers, peasants and traders in the realities of coexistence or even cohabitation, while for intellectuals it was based in the ideals of internationalism and anticolonialism. 192 === [PDF page 207] === Figure 23. Liu Yan and Baren in 1947. These photographs of Liu Yan (above) and Baren (below) were given to a young CDL cadre and women’s movement activist, Dong Tianzhi, as mementos in 1947. Baren’s portrait is dated “one day after leaving the concentration camp.” Source: Collection of Dong Tianzhi. 193 === [PDF page 208] === The Chinese City What then, was the democracy movement? One of the primary goals of the “Democracy Movement” was the abolition of the “captaincy,” a loose system of indirect colonial rule whereby wealthy Chinese were promoted to become “officers” with titles such as “captain,” “major,” and “lieutenant.”55 In return for salaries or opportunities for extortion, they implemented and communicated colonial police, leading to its perception as “a mere tax collector… unelected.”56 In 1945 and 1946, Chinese General Associations were formed throughout the region, often with the participation and sometimes under the domination of the CDL, taking over the officers’ former functions,57 and organized into a confederation.58 When in mid-1946 the communist Resident Luat Siregar, an associate of Baren’s, recognized these associations as the official representative of the local Chinese community to/in the Republic of Indonesia, effectively ending the era of the officer system in North Sumatra.59 The attempt to remake the social and ideological structures of the Chinese society of North Sumatra is the immediate context for Baren’s short story “A Taukeh.” Likely written during the occupation,60 this story of pre-war Singapore sought to fashion a type, in the technical, literary sense, of the Chinese commercial elite that obtained within all of Southeast Asia.61 The story opens with a question of definitions: what, exactly, is a taukeh? Readers unfamiliar with this context are likely wondering the same thing, since I prefer to leave this term untranslated, but provisionally we could say that it refers to a wealthy Chinese person. But could a more precise definition be found? A Japanese dictionary glossed taukeh as, “director, capitalist, master” (主任，资本家，旦那), while colloquial Malay applied it to all Chinese, as in the common greeting, “Taukeh, pergi mana?” While the narrator dismissed the “hallucination” that, as some Malays seemed to believe, all Chinese owned mines or plantations, he was more vexed: “It seems that determining whether a taukeh is a capitalist or not requires further investigation.”62 The opportunity for this investigation was—and here the action of the story begins—a meeting with a notable community leader in Singapore, an exemplar of the taukeh type, brokered by a friend of the narrator, under the pretext of an interview for a newspaper article.63 The bulk 194 === [PDF page 209] === of the narration is occupied by a detailed account of the interview, with extensive quoted speech from the subject, interspersed with the narrator’s direct commentary to the reader. The image that emerges gets worse and worse as the story goes on, as the taukeh constantly interrupts the narrator, his friend, and even himself to take care of business. Special attention is paid to the way he exercises an indirect and oppressive control over the two-part ideological apparatus of the Chinese community: the school and the newspaper. At one point, he commands the sheepish friend, who is the principal of a local school, to expel a working-class student who is “too old” should be expelled, and to fire a leftist teacher—if he needed a reason, well, she was probably already his “communist-communal-wife (共产公妻起来)”!64 At another point, he calls the editor of a newspaper he sponsors to berate him for an innocuous mistake: a typesetter has used an inappropriately small typeface for his name in an article about him, and he claims sabotage. Intermittently, he berates his Malay servant, who glowers with resentment. If taukeh does mean “capitalist,” this is a subspecies that is shorn of any of the progressive aspects with which Marxist theories of history endowed the bourgeoisie.65 Politically, this story asks to be read as an illustration of an analysis that Baren would later present in 1947 on the “liberation of the Malayan Chinese intellectual.”66 This important article, overlapping in some anecdotal details with “A Taukeh,” details how the commercial elite directly intervened in the management of ideological institutions such as the schools and the newspapers. Unlike in China, where a segment of the intellectual class participated in power, much like the imperial literati, here, all (Chinese-speaking) intellectuals were excluded from the colonial state. And unlike in China, where cultural workers could expect some minimal degree of professional autonomy, here they were at the complete mercy of the arbitrary whims of the commercial elite in their daily work in the schools and papers. In a Gramscian vein, Baren argued that the arrested conditions of overseas Chinese society made the intelligentsia naturally progressive—he contrasted this to China, where the intelligentsia is split into a progressive and ruling-class faction (based on the long history of literati rule). Although as a rule, “society determines ideology,” in this case the superstructure would react back upon the base, since the 195 === [PDF page 210] === democracy movement could then, through education, transform the semi-feudal taukehs into a proper bourgeoisie that could effect rather than stymie progress. This argument not only justified the predominance of students, teachers and professionals in the leadership of the democracy movement but also legitimized their struggles as cultural workers as political work.67 It perhaps could have stiffened the resolve of characters such as the narrator’s bootlicking friend to reject some of these absurd demands. The problem, of course, was that taukeh attitudes were not confined to the elite stratum. They were not just dominant but hegemonic. For communists like Baren, what was variously labeled comprador consciousness” (买办意识), “trader consciousness” (商人意识) or even, mockingly, “taukeh philosophy” (头家哲学) permeated all Overseas Chinese society. Consequently, as Hu Yuzhi put it, We must eradicate the feudal conceptions of the “taukeh,” eliminate the slavish thought of the “loyal subject” (顺民), and transform the big-nation chauvinism that impedes the solidarity of nations.68 Widespread anti-Indonesian attitudes were especially vexing, and Baren argued that it was in part a result of elite control of the media. Narratives of (Indonesian) anti-Chinese violence, in particular, were central to the early Cold War propaganda front, since they touched on the legitimacy of postcolonial independence struggles.69 In East Sumatra, polemics on this subject rapidly took on a left-right divide. The right, far outstripping the rhetoric of the ROC’s official representatives,70 condemned “the reign of Indonesian terrorism,”71 and “the barbarous nature of the native inhabitants,"72 while deriding the CDL for “going native” (通番).73 Meanwhile, the left spoke positively of the Indonesian government’s attempts to protect Chinese property, describing the evacuation of Chinese from towns under Dutch threat as safety precautions.74 In this, they distinguished themselves from their peers in Malaya75 and Java,76 who became increasingly tepid or even hostile towards the Republic. This, then, was almost certainly the political context for the taukeh’s openly chauvinistic attitude would have been read as a criticism of anti-Republicanism in general. After a rant about the laziness of his Malay servant, an elderly peasant who he employed after taking over his land: 196 === [PDF page 211] === "Mister, no need to be polite, sit." We sat down together. The taukeh was sentimental in his own way. "The last few years, these 'barbarians' have been driving me crazy. They mortgage their land to me, miss their payments, so it should be mine, but I still have to let them plant it! And you can't just stay in the countryside forever, so you take what you can get, it's up to their conscience. They're unbelievably lazy, they don't put effort into any of their work. Who has ever heard of lazy devils rising up (翻身)? No wonder they're under the heel of the whites (红毛)." "Oh! Mister—" the taukeh, as if rediscovering that I existed, turned to me and said, "I heard that China used to be in charge of these barbarian lands (番邦). You must have read some old books, do they record this?" The reactionary content of the taukeh’s speech here is linked to his archaic vocabulary: offensive, old-fashioned words such as “barbarian” (番; PY: fan, Hokkien: hwan) had already become inadmissible in progressive company for almost a decade. From this perspective, taukeh ideology was not just a set of (chauvinist, misogynist, anticommunist) opinions but an entire way of thinking, as expressed through a mode of speaking, which is scrutinized and reproduced at length in the story. The reader, of course, learns to see as the narrator sees, to find the taukeh’s speech irregular and even aberrant: The taukeh’s speech always slides around left and right, it’s impossible to grasp. Like a fish in the sea, if you don’t use a big net, it can’t be caught. When they speak, they only observe their own internal subjectivity to develop a line of thinking.77 Here, Baren is forcing a link between discourse and history: the taukeh’s traits are learned adaptations to commercial life. Self-confidence and opportunism are, of course, beneficial to someone who makes a living off buying cheap and selling dear. Whereas the narrator always communicates directly with the reader, the taukeh’s speech is always set in quotation marks; the two alternate, the narrator’s textuality focalizing and interpreting the taukeh’s orality. The Southbound intellectuals were liable to interpret all aspects, especially the negative or unfamiliar ones, of the personalities of Overseas Chinese youth, as being conditioned by this commercial environment. Baren, for example, argued that the imitation of literary trends from China was in a literal sense importation: it treats ideas as if they are commodities, which can be transported from one place to another without alteration. As such, this literature expresses the commercial pathology of Overseas Chinese society, in which all things become commodities.78 As this line of reasoning suggests, this critique of taukeh hegemony could easily metastasize into 197 === [PDF page 212] === a totalizing and uncritical denunciation of all aspects of overseas Chinese society. For example, at the end of this story, a friend of the narrator, with whom we are clearly meant to agree, mocks the hybrid language—phrases that mixed Malay, English, Hokkien—that is taken as representative of “taukeh culture.” I return to this moment in depth in the next chapter, in the section on “Sino-Malay Disavowed,” but for now it is sufficient to point out the political struggle for democracy and the imposition of proper forms of Chineseness often coincided. In the critique of hybridity as a colonial or commercial symptom, there was also a disguised and disavowed chauvinism. The vehemence with which the exiles attacked the commercial elite coexisted uneasily with their de facto dependence on the “progressive” members of that class. Not only were they employed by them, but when they fled to Sumatra, many relied on donations to survive. Such a dependence is dramatized by Baren’s use of accounting paper for several of the first drafts of the Notes; this was likely the only paper available in conditions of wartime shortage (Figure 24). Such unease appears in the very first lines of the short story: the narrator, reflecting on the prevalence of Hokkien over Mandarin pronunciations in Singapore, chooses none other than the name of “our beloved Tan Kah Kee” (i.e., not “Chen Jiageng”) as an example. Tan, a Hokkien community leader responsible for popularizing anti-KMT politics among Overseas Chinese, and his closest associates were the immediate patrons of this entire coterie.79 Some of the intellectuals even became taukehs themselves, investing their profits into media projects such as Below the Winds.80 This disclaimer—the taukeh type should not be confused with Tan Kah Kee—clearly draws on a larger United Front discourse that differentiates good (patriotic, national) capitalists from bad (traitorous, comprador) capitalists. Indeed, the United Front was the basic principle of the CDL’s work in North Sumatra: at base, the Democracy Movement was based on a coalition of intellectuals, merchants, peasants and youth, opposed to an older elite represented by the twin institutions of the captaincy and the consulate. What united them was their non-dependence on, or even antagonism to, colonial rule: teachers and students chafed at the harassment by officials 198 === [PDF page 213] === that they experienced in schools, traders small and large resented protectionist policies that favored Western trading houses, workers resented low wages and workplace indignities that the state refused to remedy, and peasants hated their exclusion from land ownership by a laborhungry plantocracy. Solidarity with Indonesians was enabled by the fact of coexistence (for workers, traders, and peasants), and the ideals of internationalism (for intellectuals and students). By allying themselves with the Indonesian independence struggle, these different groups both opposed Dutch political power as an expression of Western economic interests and also liberated themselves from the oppression of communal tyranny. This could take the form of either indirect rule via the comprador bourgeoisie, or the extraterritorial control of representatives of the KMT. (Often, both.) Yet where should the line be drawn between a “patriotic” and a “comprador” capitalist in Southeast Asia? This line, already tenuous in China, was even more fragile in Southeast Asia. This distinction significantly redefined the Marxist distinction between an industrial bourgeoisie that could accelerate historical progress and a commercial or landholding bourgeoisie that obstructed it. It placed greater emphasis on subjective attitudes, on whether the capitalist promoted national liberation, both in public discourse and with material support, on the assumption that such attitudes directly expressed the relations of production, i.e. their enterprises’ links to national or foreign interests. This also brings us back to Baren’s original question of definitions: was the taukeh a capitalist? The answer, clearly, is no—in the sense that the taukeh could not fulfill the role of breaking apart the old society and readying the way for socialist revolution. Rather, colonial society had produced a perverse “type” of entrepreneur who preserved all the worst aspects of feudalism, patriarchy, and capitalism. Yet it was precisely this clean binary between good and bad, which in China could be translated into “national” and “foreign,” which was compromised in Southeast Asia, where one could easily be, for example, a patriotic capitalist about the Chinese war of resistance against Japan, and a comprador capitalist with regard to the European colonization of Southeast Asia. Indeed, as Baren was publishing this story, the Malayan Communist Party broke with Tan Kah 199 === [PDF page 214] === Kee over his softness on British colonialism.81 More generally, the colonial situation ratcheted up the preexisting tension, basic to the United Front, between a basically “subjective” evaluation of personal attitudes, and an “objective” evaluation of relations of production. The risk, of course, was that the former might completely displace the latter, as Rebecca Karl argues that it did at times in the PRC, when class became “more a question of revolutionary consciousness and activism than a socioeconomic category.”82 The editor of Soeloeh Merdeka, a newspaper sympathetic to the CDL, noted in disbelief that in some places the head of the new “democratic” association was the former Chinese office with a new title!83 When pressed on what kind of a social revolution involved this kind of continuity, a representative pointed out that some of the former elites were “able to revolutionize their spirits (mengadakan revolusi di dalam jiwanya) and adapt themselves to society today.”84 Unsurprisingly, then, towards the end of the story, the critical focus of the text shifts from the taukeh towards the narrator. After the interview is concluded, the naïve narrator comments to a friend that “he’s not so bad, at least he cares about the newspapers and the schools,”85 which leads the friend to laugh sarcastically. The narrator concludes: “Dear reader, my taukeh story has to wrap up now, to the sound of Zhang Heming’s scoff.”86 This ending is, of course, ironic, and we have been, as readers, taught to view with a critical eye the insufficiently critical narrator, who is on his way to becoming like the pathetic friend who accedes to all the taukeh’s unreasonable requests. 200 === [PDF page 215] === Figure 24. Manuscript of Baren, "Mount Salah." The company name on the right and the gutter in the center, which divides credits from debits, indicate this paper is meant for keeping accounts. Source: Baren, Wu zu miao, 1985. 201 === [PDF page 216] === The Indonesian Country By mid-1946, initial sympathy for Indonesian independence had begun to wane in the midst of an unrelenting campaign of anti-Republican propaganda. The fuel for this propaganda was a series of massacres in 1946 and 1947, which the central government in Yogyakarta condemned, but lower-level military commanders may have had a hand in, of which the Tangerang Incident of June 1946 is the best-known.87 The historiography of the Indonesian revolution is shifting rapidly—a recent volume edited by Bambang Purwanto et al, Revolutionary Worlds, is an excellent example of a more bottom-up approach informed by social history—and cannot be covered in detail here. However, the experience of anti-Chinese violence was and continues to be a central ethical, political, and conceptual problem, as Ravando and F.X. Harsono’s recent study of the photographic record of the excavation of mass graves for reburial in the 1950s movingly attests.88 At this point, I limit myself to remarking that the experience in the Northern parts of Sumatra where Baren was active, and those in Western parts of Java where the violence against Chinese was most extreme, were very different. In both places, political violence adopted the name of the “social revolution” in 1946—but whereas in the former, this was directed towards Malays and to some extent Simalungun Bataks perceived to be linked to the old aristocracy, in the latter, it was often Chinese who were accused of financially supporting the colonial reconquest that bore the brunt of this violence. The imputation of colonial collaboration took on a different coloring in these two places. Thus, when the Sin Po director Ang Jan Goan 洪渊源 visited Sumatra on a governmentsponsored junket in 1946,89 he expected he would have to dissuade radical youth from repeating the massacre of Tanggerang earlier that year. He was surprised to find that those who sought him out wanted to talk not about ethnic tension—in fact, it was clear that they were collaborating closely with Chinese community leaders—but instead to debate the finer points of the Chinese revolutionary experience. Specifically, they were hoping (in vain, it turns out) for encouragement in pursuing the social revolution in parallel, rather than after, the political revolution.90 While we don’t know the names of Ang’s interlocutors, their knowledge of the Chinese revolution was 202 === [PDF page 217] === almost certainly mediated by the alliance that Baren had helped build. Indeed, Baren was critical of the narrative of anti-Chinese violence, arguing that most so-called anti-Chinese violence should be seen not as “anti-Chinese (排华)” or “national hatred, but a kind of resistance against economic oppression.”91 The Chinese right wing had turned every act of resistance to exploitation into an instance of “ethnic hatred,”92 and the reach of anti-Indonesian propaganda reflected “taukeh consciousness (头家意识).”93 As he put it: They never understand that protecting the property of the Overseas Chinese really means protecting the taukeh’s property, since the Overseas Chinese masses have very little property to speak of; as for protecting the lives of the Overseas Chinese, besides striving for peaceful cooperation with Indonesia, there is no appropriate method.94 While it is unclear whether Baren ever read the Memorandum mentioned in Chapter 1, he would have taken issue with its insistence that merchants working with the colonial army were “neutral,” that all harmed Chinese were innocent, and that rape was “a brutal act commonplace to the base Indonesians.”95 Indeed, one imagines that the conflation of damage against property and persons—not to mention the attribution of “economic backwardness” to “a lack of energy and initiative”—could be analyzed as just such an example of “taukeh consciousness.”96 It is in this context, with the impulse to humanize the Indonesian poor against the background of a discourse of criminality—while also struggling to explain the real occurences of what appeared as and was experienced as anti-Chinese violence—that Baren must have felt a need to return to his wartime experiences of fugitivity in the largely-Javanese villages in the plantation belt of North Sumatra.97 “Neighbors” covers the time from Baren and Liu Yan’s arrival, together with their local “guide,” Ah Jin,98 in February 1944 to the village of Simpang Dolok (新邦罗乐)99 until June 1944, when they relocated once more. A series of gently humorous vignettes detailing their interactions with their mostly Javanese neighbors, the text was serialized in Below the Winds, the leading magazine for progressive Chinese youth at the time.100 It was also republished as a book in at least three editions, with 20,000 copies printed by 1951.101 203 === [PDF page 218] === Baren’s lifelong concern with the peasantry—most of his early fiction was focused on the Zhejiang countryside where he was born—allowed him to perceive rural life in the plantation belt, especially the fine gradations of stratification, in ways that differ strikingly from his peers and predecessors. Yet, unlike in China, here his sympathy for the rural poor was complicated by the racialized class structure, by his embedding within the urban Chinese middle class. As Baren notes, self-deprecatingly, intellectuals do not make good farmers. are dependent on their neighbors for help. Much of “Neighbors” is consumed with a series of transactions, each of which is a narrative event that opens onto a textured world of perceptions, obligations, negotiations, speculations, and misunderstandings: like the rental of the hut which evokes such feelings of complicity and guilt, or debates over the usufruct of the banana trees,102 compensation for the injury to the neighbor’s rooster, the purchase of food and furniture… A colonial official once influentially described the colony as a “plural society,” where different groups lead separate lives but meet in the marketplace.103 Baren, an enemy of people like Furnivall, was aware that in the plantation hinterlands more intimate forms of cohabitation existed, but that these were inextricably tied to the mediation of money. Often, Baren gives us the impression that they have been ripped off: I know that Indonesians generally lack a strong sense of private property (私有观念). Few Indonesians have the habit of saving money and trying to earn interest from it. However, in order to survive, the laws of a society of private property have developed their ingenuity, they have to do so. We have no right to say that they are robbing us!104 Such passages seek to inoculate readers against the accusations of looting that filled the press at this time, by alluding to theories of primitive communism. Not only that, but they turn the accusation around, highlighting the role of Chinese traders in incorporating the Indonesian countryside into colonial capitalism. Crucially, however, such episodes also depict Baren and his peers as the kind of Chinese who are bad with money, in a deviation from the racial stereotype. The most memorable aspect of “Neighbors,” however, is not the inversions of stereotype, or the more didactic moments of Marxist analysis, but rather the narrator’s modeling of a particular way of looking at the world. From the very beginning, the reader is inserted into these 204 === [PDF page 219] === unequal relationships. The narrator describes the “little old man” (小老人) who, impoverished by his gambling, has no choice but to lease his home to these Chinese strangers, who “banished him from his own house,” like so: I seemed to see the shadows of the faces of my hometown elders (故乡父老) in his face: when they talk prices to sell something, a pitiable expression of unspeakable hesitation and unease always appears on their faces.105 Through a series of associations between the Indonesian and Chinese countryside place the socialist intellectuals into the structural position of the oppressor class. The theme of an always reluctant and sometimes unintentional complicity in the dispossession of the Indonesian peasantry, saturates every conversation, gesture, and exchange, no matter how small: “He’s already certain in his heart that we are the masters of this house, this land—great beings!" Sentences such as these are a kind of “free” discourse, which present the interior world of the subject (in this case, the old man) directly to the reader, although in this case mediated not by a third-person omniscient narrator, but a first-person implied author. The reason that this invocation of complicity has affective power is because Baren recognizes in this elderly Indonesian peasant a paternal figure—and by extension, all Indonesians as potentially brothers. The reader, however, identifies not with the peasant but with the implied author. One student reader reflected on his transformative encounter with Baren’s writing—“like finding a treasure”—and recalled the photograph of the author that was included in the initial serialization of “Neighbors”: The Baren of the photograph, with his long beard, looked to me like a kindly old Chinese teacher or Chinese doctor, even a little like an old peasant.106 Because the implied reader, a progressive overseas Chinese youth, might also view Baren himself as a paternal figure, a chain of kinship is established, with the narrator Baren forming the middle term. Not for the first time, a form of intimacy is established between the Chinese diaspora and the Indonesian masses through the mediation of “China proper.” This chain is then complicated by what has become a kind of patricidal violence, as the moneyed tenants who displace the desperate peasant. 205 === [PDF page 220] === Qian Yingcai has pointed out the intense focalization of the first-person narrator in the Notes: The internal world and the external world are opposed yet united. They proceed from opposition into unity, through a mediation (中介)… This mediation is the struggle against a shared, unlucky fate.107 Qian here articulates the sometimes-claustrophobic contrast between the interiority of the narrator, as reflected in the interior monologue, and the social and natural environment, as reflected in the long passages of minute ethnographic and geographic description. The heightened modality (i.e. use of indicators of uncertainty), especially in the use of non-factives (seemed to: 仿佛、似乎、像), which we have already seen, focalize the process of perception itself in this interior monologue, narrated while Baren attempts with limited success to grow rice: In the air of the rotting mud, I seemed to smell the stink of the sweat on the Indonesian peasant’s body; we seemed to whisper with the land in our work, in my mind’s eye there unraveled my hometown’s land, woods, streams, paths, villages—all the familiar images, and I seemed to be telling all of these memories to the land of Indonesia beneath my feet. A poetic feeling and prosodic sentence (诗样的感情和有韵律的句子) sounded in my mind.108 Just as with the faces of the elders of his hometown, which he “seemed to see” in their landlord, we are confronted not so much with the resemblance itself, but the impulse to search for resemblance, the straining to read significance in the everyday. This “gaze” is, in contrast to the taukeh’s drifting and inconstant speech, intensely focused. In this passage, the communication with this made-familiar land implicitly contrasts with the narrator’s actual inability to speak to his neighbors. The Missing Militant The representation of these sublime encounters with Indonesian peasants in the Indonesian Notes is often read as a psychological datum about Baren’s political sympathies. At this point I would like to interrupt my own reading and trouble this kind of historical transparency. The risks involved in reading Chinese-language memory literature—including but not limited to the Notes—becoming clearer when we start to compare records from different 206 === [PDF page 221] === languages. Reading a compilation like The Unforgettable Years (忘不了的岁月), a 600-page commemorative volume published in 2003 that I have already cited multiple times, one might imagine that the only antifascists in Sumatra were Chinese-speaking. In part, we are dealing with assumptions about relevance or notability for the implied reader, who is presumed to be Chinese and hence to care more about Chinese. The assumptions are, to an extent, genre-specific: for example, Baren's posthumously published "Observations on the Revolution" has detailed records of the activities of specific Indonesian politicians, while the Notes often do not. It is in the memoir literature that this distinction between the memorable and the non-memorable is most striking, especially since it often coincides with the question of who is to be mourned. Unforgettable Years, for example, grew out of the commemoration of Chinese antifascist martyrs, remembered simply as September 20th, after the date of the first mass arrests in 1943.109 Yet these were not the only raids: in this section, we will look at three different records of a subsequent series of mass arrest in June 1944. What was it about these later arrests that made them less appropriate for commemoration? First, there is Baren’s account, also in “Neighbors.” The Japanese military has announced a search for GMD agents who have recently landed in Sumatra—Baren speculates that this is part of a counterintelligence operation, and the GMD agents are actually Japanese provocateurs (“翻戏”).110 However, as the questioning intensifies in their vicinity, Baren and Liu Yan decide to relocate once again. For Baren, this episode is narrated as a lesson in organizational security.111 An entirely different accounts comes from Fascist Prison: From Hell to Hell (Pendjara Fasis: Dari Neraka ke Neraka), published by the peranakan antifascist and accomplished writer Kho An Kim 许安金, also around this time.112 Unlike Baren, Kho An Kim, who was loosely linked to the Huakang, was eager to show his patriotism by helping the GMD agents by securing a safehouse for them, and was imprisoned shortly afterwards with approximately twenty others in June 1944, and brutally tortured for information about the GMD agents.113 Finally, there is an authoritative history compiled by the historical bureau of a Sumatran veterans’ organization, based in part on interviews with Nip Xarim, son of leading communist Abdul Xarim,114 the Fighters of the 207 === [PDF page 222] === Republic of Indonesia, Medan Area (Pejuang Republik Indonesia Medan Area Biro Sejarah; abbrev. PRIMA).115 This last account centers on an antifascist sympathizer working in Japanese intelligence, Amir Rasjid, who leaked news of the impending raids. Not only that, but he apparently fed information, on Abdul Xarim’s instructions, about right-wing antifascists (that is, the Huakang) to his superiors in order to distract attention from the left-wing antifascists (that is, Baren’s Fanmeng).116 All three of these accounts—a Chinese source in Chinese, a Chinese source in Indonesian, an Indonesian source in Indonesian—are in published sources. Yet in combination they present a Rashomon-like set of possibilities. If the PRIMA account of a deliberate sacrifice (read: purge) of the Chinese right to protect the Chinese left is true,117 it would be an outstanding if bloody example of the interethnic leftist solidarity. It would certainly force a revision the scholarly judgment that “no connections could be made with the PKI or any of its peripheral groups” must be revised.118 Whether or not Baren liaised with Abdul Xarim or his associates personally—and it is certain that after the surrender they were in contact119—as a leader of the Alliance who was determined to contact the PKI, he should have been aware of this link.120 But in that case, why is it unmentioned in Chinese accounts—was it simply never divulged to the Fanmeng, buried as an inconvenient truth, or a combination of the two? At stake is not just the causality of a specific event, but also contradictory modes of historical narration: for if the memorialized crackdown of September 1943 represents a heritage of resistance and victimization shared and claimed by all Chinese in North Sumatra, closer investigation of the forgotten arrests of June 1944 threatens to split that ethnic unity. There is, then, reason to question the scholarly judgment that “no connections could be made [by Baren] with the PKI or any of its peripheral groups.”121 Whether or not Baren had contact with Indonesian militants during the war, however, it is unquestionable that he worked closely with them from 1945-1947. As early as late 1945, CDL activists were already seeking to mediate conflicts between Chinese residents and Indonesian militias.122 After the consulate reportedly refused to help 208 === [PDF page 223] === mediate a bloody conflict that had erupted in the Chinese-majority fishing town of Bagan Siapiapi to the south, the government again turned to the CDL-dominated Chinese Association.123 In late 1945, the mayor of Medan Luat Siregar formally opted to go through the CDL-dominated Chinese Association to resolve intercommunal issues, effectively ending the colonial institution of the “captaincy.”124 By September 1946, a formal "Contact Body" (badan perhubungan) had already been established between the Republic of Indonesia and the Chinese community in occupied territory, building on the antifascist connection created by Abdul Xarim.125 Indeed, there is evidence that Baren worked as an official advisor to Luat Siregar, a PKI member and protégé of Abdul Xarim, during his 1946 stint as the Resident of East Sumatra.126 Perhaps to deflect accusations of disloyalty, he downplayed or omitted this in his later autobiographical writing.127 Links to another Xarim associate, the editor of Soeloeh Merdeka Jahja Jacoeb, are also attested.128 In addition, the CDL had close ties with Saleh Umar, a PNI leader, briefly Vice Governor of East Sumatra, and also a commander of the important Barisan Harimau Liar (Wild Tiger Battalion), and Baren would even sponsor two of his sons’ travel to China later.129 Given his close association with Indonesian revolutionaries, possibly during the occupation but certainly during the Social Revolution, it is striking that nowhere in the Notes does an Indonesian militant appear. In his later memoirs, he also omitted this interethnic collaboration from his later memoirs, probably for reasons of party discipline.130 The sum of these omissions is important because, although the postwar moment was far freer than during the colonial or occupation, there were limits to what could be said: as Raymond Williams puts it, “a time of revolution is ordinarily a time of lies and suppressed truths."131 It is not insignificant that even some of his closest comrades, such as Hu Yuzhi, reportedly considered him "too far left," (过左了) and many moderate community members saw his association with the PKI as harmful to the Chinese community's interests.132 If, as the PRIMA historians claim, Abdul Xarim tipped off Chinese antifascists multiple times about impending raids, then these may have been the 209 === [PDF page 224] === cause of Baren’s many relocations in the Notes, which typically begin and end each text. Indonesian militancy may, then, be absent from the text itself, even as it enframes it. I think the omission of militants should immediately complicate our understanding of the verisimilitude of the Notes. (Although such figures do appear in Temple of Five Ancestors, a play set in the 19th century, written around 1946, there it is enabled by historical distance.133) On the one hand, Baren almost certainly avoided representations that might stoke the fears of racialized violence that filled the press. On the other hand, however, it is also possible to read these texts with an eye not to the actual but to the latent revolutionary. In other words, we should (and he surely did) view the characters in texts such as “Neighbors” with one eye on the coming revolution, on not the characters as they are but as they would become. The protagonist, to the extent that there is one, of “Neighbors,” is the landless peasant Nawi (那威), who Baren, Liu Yan and A Jin hire at various points for odd jobs. The roof must be thatched, and later, planting furrows must be dug. Nawi overcharges, procrastinates, and underperforms—just like his gossiping neighbors, a Chinese merchant and a Javanese foreman, predicted. At one point he even pilfers his wife’s jewelry to fund his gambling. Despite his flaws, he is central to the narrative for his expressions of class consciousness. The real dividing line between us and them is not between Indonesians and Chinese but between the work of the fields (做田) and the “sorcery” of the markets:134 “Those Malays in the market are annoying. The Chinese peasants are our friends!” The effect of the comments of Nawi, or of the other neighbors, is not limited to their content, but also to the cultivation of a kind of intimacy with the speaker, as Baren detaches the reader from an inherited sympathy with the Chinese characters. It recalls the use by ethnographers of the neutral relay of experiences by informants that creates the sense of “listening … over the shoulder.”135 Implicitly, Nawi is contrasted to the Javanese foreman and the Chinese merchant, who are both friendly to the narrator, but ultimately choose to collaborate with the Japanese.136 In one of the few moments in which we remember that the narrator is a fugitive, Nawi appears to show an instinctive proletarian solidarity. When the police accost Ah 210 === [PDF page 225] === Jin, the young man who has been helping Baren and Liu Yan on the road to demand his paperwork, Nawi interrupts to distract them: Nawi’s eyes were sharp, and he waved familiarly to Ah Jin, seemingly on purpose. He even asked: “When is Mr. Spectacles [i.e., Baren] moving here? You’re always helping him watch the house, isn’t it tiring?” The Malay spy listened to Nawi’s words, glanced at him, and then glanced at Ah Jin. His suspicions seemingly dispelled, he took a look at the identity card and then let Ah Jin go.137 We can imagine that the original audience, reading new installments of “Neighbors” over the course of several months of serialization, is now primed to interpret this otherwise fortuitous encounter as being an expression of solidarity. Indeed, the smallness of the moment—just greeting—makes the passage seem more plausible. It is, in other words, a realism effect. Of course, the entire exchange could not have been witnessed by Baren, but must have been recounted later by Ah Jin. Often, non-factives such as “seem” (似乎) have the effect of making a narrative less immediate, since they introduce epistemological uncertainty, yet here they heighten the reader’s engagement. That’s because as readers we have been gripped not by the reality of the facts but by the simulated experience of witnessing and interpreting. It is this generous interpretation of Nawi’s actions that, it seems, the readers must extend to the actions of the anticolonial Indonesians which were being misrepresented in the press— even when the evidence was difficult to discover if one did not have the right mode of reading. In other words, Nawi represents the figure of the Indonesian revolutionary, who exists within Neighbors only as a potentiality rather than as an actuality. The eruption of the independence struggle, which we could call “1945,” is the text’s aporia, to which we are oriented both proleptically, from the time of the events recorded in 1944, and retroleptically, from the moment of publication in 1947. Nawi’s revolutionary character, then, is latent in the sense that it has not yet been expressed, even as this expression cannot be assumed beforehand. In this sense, then, Neighbors cannot be treated just as a record of what happened, since—as theorists of socialist realism and its cousins have always insisted—the reality that it depicts is as much a matter of what could be or will be as what is. 211 === [PDF page 226] === In the conclusion of “Neighbors," Baren leaves the village of Simpang Dolok, and as he speeds away on the train, he reflects: “I love them! I bless them! I silently uttered to myself a sentence from Saneatsu Mushanokōji’s ‘To The Child’: ‘Rise up in rage!’”138 Crucially, this final phrase is addressed not to the reader but to the neighbors themselves, who will not respond. It is an example of the “apostrophic structure” I described in the Introduction. We know, and the implied reader also knows, that they do in fact rise up in rage, setting the world alight in the wave of postwar decolonizations. We should note here that even for the most aggressively leftist, anticolonial of the communist intellectuals of North Sumatra, it was not possible to depict in the sympathetic terms the revolutionary in violent actuality, but only in (as with Nawi) potentiality. The outer limits of the progressive imagination were then established in terms of humanist sympathy, rather than militant solidarity. This is confirmed by the citation of a writer from the tradition of Tolstoyian progressivism, i.e. from the White Birch Group (shirakaba; 白樺).139 This turn towards humanism is not simple, was indeed a reversal from his pre-1945 convictions: only a few years earlier, he had insisted on the need to “abolish (扬弃) the hypocrisy of the spirit of humanism” since “"we neither hate nor love humanity."140 Indeed, the tension between a humanist mode that stresses the instillation of sympathy and a revolutionary horizon that must look towards justice is embedded in Baren’s misquotation, which substitutes “vigorous; energetic” (奋) with its homophone “rage” (愤): “Go, vigorously,” (“去罷，奮然的”) becomes “Rise up in rage!” (愤然的起来吧!). The difference between a sympathy for the oppressed that verges on pity, and solidarity which is expressed through action, is a vast one: and yet, it is one that must be bridged within what we might term the literature of the United Front, which must bind together contradictory and even antagonistic material positions. The more this binding is strained to its limits, the more we will find enthusiasm, exclamation, and perhaps even a rather un-Marxist subjectivism. Marsden Anderson, writing of Lu Xun’s short stories, has drawn attention to the use of “moments of purgation, in which the intellectual narrator feels a sudden uplift that is often incongruous with the events related in the story." These moments are ambivalent since they tend 212 === [PDF page 227] === to release the narrator from a relation of complicity, and hence bring relief, but they also selfreflexively draw attention to this “exorcism” and so problematize it, creating a “combination of emotional satisfaction and an awareness of the moral failure that obstructs the full enjoyment of it.”141 Yet, it seems to me that in Baren’s inheritance of Lu Xun’s narrative strategies, this ambivalent resolution must ultimately lead out of the text and into the world. The kind of sympathy that is cultivated by the Indonesian Notes, for all its weaknesses, is not cathartic, but finally unsatisfying. In other words, they perhaps cultivated a kind of desire that we might call pre-solidaristic, which could then only be actualized in practical activity. “Neighbors” then, does not depict a revolution, so much as the conditions of revolution. A Divided Reality In the two texts we have examined, “A Taukeh” and “Neighbors,” two radically different possibilities appeared within the two texts examined. Even though they both belong to the Notes from the Land Below the Winds, they differ dramatically in tone and genre. In this section, I argue that this formal difference reflects a segregated reality, in the gap between the Chinese city and the Indonesian countryside. In a letter of 1948 addressed to the Chinese literary youth of Southeast Asia—who were among his primary readership—Baren lambasted the tendency of some youth to “see the homeland as heaven and the place they are as hell,”142 he notes that expressions of patriotism for an idealized homeland are politically worthless, and instead called on his addressee to look “not at the homeland in their fantasies but the land that they live on.”143 In his view, even if wellintentioned, this out-of-touch political writing was as bad as escapist aestheticism (“odes to the sea, to the banana trees and coconut palms”144). His concrete suggestions: You live in Overseas Chinese society, but that society is not isolated. It is nothing more than one dimension (侧面) of colonial society. We can more or less say that under imperialist domination, the city is the overseas Chinese, and the countryside is the local peoples (华侨的城市，当地民族的乡村). Regarding these phenomena, what more can you uncover? For example, what is the nature of colonial domination? How is overseas Chinese society formed and structured? What is its economic basis? And that of the local nationalities? What kind of interethnic relations are created in this setting?145 213 === [PDF page 228] === This prescription for realism is a forceful argument for a literature of the “this time in this place,” (此时此地) as Malayan-Chinese writers put it—or, as Barbara Harlow might put it, a literature that insists “on the 'here-and-now' of historical reality and its conditions of possibility.”146 Indeed, these criticisms may as well have been directed at his comrade Hu Yuzhi, who had recently published a science fiction narrative (discussed in Chapter 2), and who in that moment was embroiled in a polemic with mahua writers that accused him of promoting mainland Chinese interests over the diasporic struggle.147 Baren went beyond those who argued for representations of Chinese in Southeast Asia, to insist that stories focused only on Chinese, as if they formed a standalone whole, were as limited as stories that centered city-dwellers in China without reference to the peasantry that sustained them. This was a straightforward consequence of the realist commitment to comprehending and representing the totality of social relations.148 The reader is encouraged to disidentify with the narrator of “A Taukeh,” to the extent that he identifies with the Chinese elite, and to identify with the narrator of Neighbors, to the extent that he identifies with the Indonesian masses: antipathy and sympathy, irony and sincerity, critical fiction and lyrical non-fiction. Although both texts were conceived of as part of a single project—evidenced by their shared subtitle, “A Note from the Land Below the Winds” (风下之 国散记之一)—they arguably belong to different genres. A closer examination of the thirteen texts normally assigned to the Notes shows that this split is characteristic of the entire project, between what we could call the Malayan and Indonesian Notes, one that is even formalized in his Complete Works.149 This divided unity is of more than bibliographic interest—if we understand genres not as inherited categories, but rather as structures that mediate certain kinds of social situations,150 then it reflects something important about colonial Southeast Asia. At least in the late 1940s, Baren certainly conceived of all of these texts as part of a single series on the “land below the winds,” yet at the same time, he found that different forms of realism were appropriate to the realities (which are, of course, part of one reality) of different spaces. That is, “Malaya” (read: Singapore) and “Indonesia” (read: rural Sumatra) correspond here to the racial geography of colonial Southeast Asia. “Under Dutch rule, the cities are 214 === [PDF page 229] === Chinese, while the countryside is Indonesian.” Even this phrase, which Baren returned to multiple times, implies a parallelism—but this parallelism is an unequal one, since “according to the laws of capitalism, the city controls the countryside.”151 This split extends an earlier geographical division in Baren’s fiction writing, between satirical stories of the city and lyrical stories of the country, and can be linked to the ambition of leftist Chinese writers to represent within a single narrative both the countryside and the city. The schematic comparison on the next page compares the formal features between these two “modes.” It should be clear from here that the subject determines the tone here—given Baren’s political views, it is unsurprising that the Chinese bourgeoisie and intelligentsia are represented satirically, while the Indonesian peasantry is represented lyrically. I must make two caveats: firstly, there are moments when the respective subjects appear in the “other” spaces, such as the Malay servant in “A Taukeh,” and the Hokkien merchant in Neighbors—but this thematic interpenetration corresponds to the occluded unity of the Chinese city and the non-Chinese countryside, since these figures appear as “minor” within these frames. Secondly, there are two Malayan Notes that flout the overall schema, and have more in common with the Indonesian Notes: these are “Mount Salah” and “The Courier and the Foreman,” which describe Baren’s observations about the working-class passengers on his journey from Hong Kong to Singapore. As such, they are the exceptions that prove the rule: like the Indonesian peasants, these subjects are working-class, rather than intelligentsia or capitalists, and so they are treated in the mode of the lyrical essay rather than the critical fictional mode. Obviously, the forms of characterization are intended to retrain the sympathies of the implied readership of Chinese-literate youth in colonial Asia, likely urban, away from their coethnic elite, and towards the non-Chinese masses. Indeed, (non-)fictionality here also has a layered relationship to social situation. In “A Taukeh,” we saw how the narrator disclaims any resemblance to real people, such as Tan Kah Kee. The reader is presumed to know people like that, and would thus accept the character’s essential realism. Meanwhile, for “Neighbors” to achieve its political aims, a truth claim is necessary—Nawi, and others like him, must actually 215 === [PDF page 230] === exist, real victims of colonial oppression—for the reader, presumed to be far removed from rural Indonesians.152 The line between fiction and non-fiction here, between two different types of reference, is in some sense epiphenomenal here, especially because both kinds of characters are readily and properly interpretable as “types.” While we will return again to the problem of character in Chapter 6, here we just note that, as a technical term in the literary realism practiced by Baren and many 20th century leftists, a truly typical characterization involves a dialectical linkage of the sociohistorical environment and individual consciousness—such realism was distinct from the undiscerning reproduction of what was merely actual, or accidental. Table 2. Comparison of Malayan and Indonesian Notes Feature Malayan Notes Indonesian Notes Genre Short stories Memoirs/essays Intertextual Relationship Shared setting Sequential Discourse Indirect discourse, primarily Direct discourse, description reported speech and internal monologue Narrative Structure Frame narratives Primary narrative only Subjects Chinese educators and Indonesian peasants and students in Singapore, Chinese Chinese exiles, also Chinese merchants merchants Setting Urban Singapore Rural Sumatra Characters Fictional composite characters Definite persons, sometimes with pseudonyms The endings of the sentences clarify the relationship between the structure of address that Baren employs within the text and the social situation it depicts. We have already seen “A Taukeh” ends on a knowing, self-aware note (“Dear reader, my taukeh story has to wrap up now”), and how “Neighbors” ends on a moment of intense earnestness. Extending our discussion in the Introduction on the “apostrophic structure” of “Pelabuhan,” we can see how most of the 216 === [PDF page 231] === Indonesian Notes end on an appeal, exclamation, exhortation, or benediction from the narrator, whether addressed to the reader directly or to the “neighbors.” The key trait they share is their sincerity and directness. They resemble what Marston Anderson calls those “moments of purgation, in which the intellectual narrator feels a sudden uplift that is often incongruous with the events related in the story" in Lu Xun’s short stories, which releases the narrator from their complicity, but also problematize the resultant pleasure.153 In contrast, the Malayan Notes—with the exception of “The Courier and the Foreman” and “Mount Salah,” which I already mentioned above—end either ironically, cynically, or both. Their reliance on reported speech reflects their heavy use of embedded narration (some of them have as many as three levels of narration), with the effect of focalizing the discursivity of the progressive Chinese community in Singapore, a world filled with text and speech. They are far closer to the satires of Zhang Tianyi, with their “often-facetious narrative personae repeatedly [calling] attention to […] ingenerate relationship between the signifying practices the text parodies and the social practices it describes.”154 In both series, the theme of complicity is central, but expressed in different form. 217 === [PDF page 232] === Table 3. Endings of the Malayan Notes Title Final Sentence(s) Synposis/Explanation A Taukeh Dear reader, my taukeh story has to The narrator’s friend mocks him wrap up now, to the sound of for trying to defend the taukeh he Zhang Heming’s scoff (“嗤”的一 has just met. 声).155 “Uncle Nanyang” “… the whole affair was quieted The narrator’s friend concludes a (‘南洋伯’) down. My dry story ends here.”156 story about a scandal in a Singaporean school. The Next “… [He] heard his older brother’s The narrator’s friend concludes a Generation (第二 statement and scoffed (嗤之以鼻). story about a leftist high schooler 代) That’s how things are.” 157 who has been arrested—her father The Story of a This family is adorable, don’t you Three sons set aside their political Family (一家的故 say? Woe (呜呼)! Amen!158 differences to cooperate on 事) managing the family business. Zhang Heming and “Some people cannot be saved until The narrator’s friend reacts to the Fang Ziming (章鹤 they have been destroyed—that’s news that his former love interest 鸣和方子明) how things are.”159 is now together with a Japanese official. The Courier and And that’s how the shadows of On the journey to Singapore, the the Labor Recruiter these two striking characters narrator encounters the two titular (水客和工头) became engraved in my memory. characters. 160 Mount Salah (萨拉 I was filled with happiness because The narrator’s ship is quarantined 山) I would be able to disembark the outside Singapore. next day, and I ignored whatever he said after.161 Yueliang’s Origins “’That’s how things are!’ said Fang Fang Ziming is gossiping about (月亮的由来) Ziming. […] Miss Zhu buried her the unhappy marriage of the head in Zhisheng’s embrace.”162 protagonist, Yueliang, while Singapore is being bombed. 218 === [PDF page 233] === Table 4. Endings of the Indonesian Notes Title Final Sentence(s) Synopsis/Explanation Rensheng and Those Bless you! Rensheng, bless you The narrator leaves the settlement Around Him forever! You and those around where he has been hosted by you!163 Rensheng. Pelabuhan After discussing with [Liu Yan], The narrator and his partner have we prepared to go west on the determined it’s safe to proceed on third day.164 their journey to West Sumatra. From Medan to Tiga Just like that, we were on the Due to increasing surveillance, the Dolok (从棉兰到) obscure path of life once again, narrator and his partner must yet where we were unable to decide again leave their hiding place. on our own movements.165 Neighbors “Rise up, fiercely…! After his departure, the narrator, Neighbors!”166 adapting something he once read, wishes his former neighbors well. In Silau Bayu A different struggle was now With the Japanese surrender, the Village (在泗拉巴 before our eyes!167 narrator and his partner will be 耶村) able to go above ground. We can go a step further and think of not just the racial-political but also the linguisticmedial situation. Can the subject within each mode be expected to read “their” text? For a taukeh, yes; indeed, we have seen him zealously scanning the papers for any mention of him. On the other hand, a Nawi cannot be expected to do the same, since he has no access to reading material, and is likely illiterate, certainly in Chinese. Incidentally, this situation also makes the problem of referentiality even more ambiguous: the fictionality of the Malayan mode might conceivably just be a defense against defamation charges, like the disclaimers in Hollywood movies, while the truth claims of the Indonesian mode is practically unverifiable, since nobody is able to challenge them. (Actually, the fact that Baren used the same name for different Indonesian characters across several of the Notes strongly suggests they are composites.) We could say that texts in the Malayan mode emerge from (and merge back into) Chinese-language discourse. The predominance of quoted speech and, in some of the other 219 === [PDF page 234] === Malayan Notes, secondary or even tertiary levels of narration, has the effect of focalizing the field of discourse itself, and the narrator recedes. texts in the Indonesian mode have a more circuitous life. On the other hands, the Indonesian Notes arise from outside of Chinese-language discourse, both in the sense that life in rural Sumatra is carried out in other languages, and in the sense that it is direct experience rather than reported speech that forms the content of the texts. The reliance on direct discourse, which sometimes almost becomes stream-of-consciousness, and is heavily modal, aggressively foregrounds the subjectivity of the narrator. The term sanji (散记; literally “scattered/loose/dispersed notes” is strongly associated with travel essays,168 and in the early to mid-20th century, writers such as Shen Congwen 沈从文, Sima Wensen 司马文森 and Sha Ting 沙汀 used it to describe their experiences of dislocation. To the extent that it is a travel narrative, it differs in rhetorical effect from those other texts insofar as it revealed to its Southeast Asian Chinese readers a dimension of their own lived experience, or at least one not physically far removed from them, and certainly one that was not considered worthy of detailed recording. I think it likely that before the Notes, which run to almost 300 pages in full, the plantation belt of North Sumatra had never been described so carefully in written Chinese—the primary rhetorical effect of their publication in venues like Below the Winds must have been to encourage young readers to see their own surroundings in an entirely new light, one that was both more mediated and more immediate.169 In his own words, this meant encouraging overseas Chinese youth “to get to know things as they really are (认识一 点显示真相).”170 Here we have an instance of my overarching argument: one of the paradoxical effects of diasporic youths’ investment in the authority of the representatives of the homeland was a return via realism to life in the here-and-now, a privileging of the multiethnic local over the monoethnic diaspora, land over blood. If works such as Mao Dun’s Midnight endeavored to represent the totality, demystifying the dynamics of exploitation and revealing the underlying class struggle, I would like to suggest that the “loose,” (散) and unenclosed quality of the Notes has to do with the difficulty of grappling with a colonial history in which “the class contradiction of Indonesian society, appears 220 === [PDF page 235] === as a contradiction of nationalities (民族矛盾) and becomes prominent as such.”171 The “looseness,” while also evoking the term sanwen (essay, 散文), also reflects the project’s exploratory ambitions, his intent to establish what Mikhail Bakhtin, referring to the novel, called a “zone of maximal contact with the present in all its open-endedness.”172 Indeed, Baren sometimes use the term as a verb rather than a noun: “what I want to ‘note’ is life (我要散记的 是生活).”173 For Chinese revolutionary writers, the problematic of “life” (shenghuo) indexed a theory and practice of self-transformation through participation,174 and thus observation, or even better, experience, were especially important categories for committed realists.175 The category of "life," or perhaps better, "living," in this sense developed as a way to overcome the separation between intellectuals and the "masses." Unlike his comrades in Yan'an, however, Baren was operating in a context where these class divisions were compounded and mediated by race. Ultimately, this investment in realism is linked to his attempts to write a form of desegregated prose, something that could dispel the mystifying notion of separate and parallel societies (European, Chinese, Indonesian...), instead representing a single society, "combined and uneven. 221 === [PDF page 236] === Figure 25. International Women’s Day Pamphlet, 1947. For Siantar’s 1947 March 8th celebration, a Chinese-language mimeographed pamphlet with a cover inked in bright red was published by the Siantar Chinese Women’s Association. Source:“Uitgave van Hwa Kiauw Fului Lian Hap Hwee (Federation of Overseas Chinese) te Pematang Siantar t.g.v. de Internationale Vrouwendag,” 8 March 1947, in NA 2.10.62: 4731). 222 === [PDF page 237] === Figure 26. Activists in Siantar take the stage. Above: Huang Miaozhen directs a rehearsal of “Sang Merah Putih” for International Women’s Day in 1947. Below: Huang Miaoxian, chair of the Siantar Chinese Women’s Association and the wartime companion/interpreter of Liu Yan, speaking at the May Day Rally. (Source: Wang Qianyu, On the Equator, 49, 61.) 223 === [PDF page 238] === Figure 27. Meetings of the Women’s Association. Above: The Third General Congress of The Medan Chinese Women’s Association, taken on June 29, 1947. Liu Yan is visible at left, wearing glasses. This image suggests the intergenerational and cross-class membership of the Association. Below left: a gathering of activists, likely of the Women’s Association of Medan. On the wall indoors, an anti-Civil War poster is visible. Liu Yan and Ba Ren are seated and closest to the camera. Below right: sitting on the grass. Liu Yan and Ba Ren are in the front row, first two from the left. Source: Dong Tianzhi collection. 224 === [PDF page 239] === Figure 28. A clothing drive, Medan, 1947. Based on verso inscriptions, these photographs from August 1947 are of a clothing drive for refugees displaced after the Dutch police action. A similar clothing drive had been organized around May Day, 1946, for unclothed plantation workers. Source: Dong Tianzhi collection. 225 === [PDF page 240] === To Walk Out of the Family If the Democratic Movement can genuinely be conceived of as approaching a social revolution, it is only insofar as it drew previously excluded groups into political life, transforming the social relations of the community. If, as discussed above, the differences between the democracy movement and its opponents could be seen as primarily ideological—i.e. a matter of whether they expressed the old taukeh perspective or the new democratic perspective—then the historiographical tendency to view the intracommunal conflicts of this period as a struggle between two “vertical” factions is largely justified. Such an arrangement should not surprise us, given that the left, here as in China, actively pursued a United Front strategy that was explicitly cross-class. From this perspective, there was significant support for right and left in all classes, from the bourgeois elite all the way down to the proletarian masses: there were both right-wing and left-wing chambers of commerce, schools, student and youth clubs, and even labor unions was typical, even if students and workers skewed heavily left.176 In two domains, however, we see a “horizontal” conflict between different strata, clear signs of class struggle, rather than this “vertical” pattern of factional conflict. There was simply no rightwing equivalent anywhere for the peasant’s organizations, that began to spring up at this time around land rights and access to education,177 or for the (Chinese) women’s movement, which gained considerable momentum. It is here that we must find the flickerings of a potential social revolution, the actual content of the democracy movement. While I reserve discussion of the peasant’s movement for later, here I introduce the women’s movement that arose under the aegis of the CDL, and specifically under the leadership of Liu Yan. The postwar “Chinese Women’s Associations” developed directly out of the network of “Home Economics Study Clubs” that Liu Yan had cultivated during the occupation (Figure 27). This network had radicalized scores of young women, or in some cases, simply given them the community and vocabulary they needed to analyze their situation.178 One protégé, who had been born to a single mother, learned to “transform her personal hatred into class hatred” after Liu explained how her experiences of discrimination derived from her mother’s treatment as a 226 === [PDF page 241] === "sacrificial object of the feudal system.” Liu then spent an entire night discussing women's liberation with the mother, persuading the older woman not only of the benefits of women’s liberation but also to bless her daughter’s participation in revolutionary work.179 This kind of dogged persuasion, with a focus on immediate improvement, seems to have been at the heart of the women’s movement: one of Liu’s first acts on arrival in North Sumatra was to organize the rescue of a woman from forced marriage with a Japanese officer.180 Her personal experiences may have provided the women she mentored with a model for resistance: as a teenager, she escaped, was captured, and escaped once more from a forced marriage, even swallowing her marriage ring as an act of protest while bound to a chair and subjected to torture.181 The postwar movement continued the emphasis on education, through both night schools for working-class youth, and kindergartens/creches for working-class mothers.182 In Siantar and possibly in Medan too, they were the most active participants in cadre education, including at Baren’s lectures, and he participated in their meetings.183 In addition, the Medan Branch also formed a "Women's Research Society" and a substantial library,184 to which the proceeds from her memorial fundraiser were donated. In addition, the cadre continued to intervene directly in family disputes, especially around arranged marriages, effectively weighing in on the side of children and women against parents and men. Their concrete work reflected an analysis of the dictatorship of the taukeh in the community at large as inseparable from the father’s power to dispose of the daughter in marriage—the movement was concerned with democracy in the family too. Elsewhere, Liu’s comrade (and likely CPC superior) Shen Zijiu reflected elsewhere that commercial capitalism in the diaspora tended to reproduce feudalistic norms through its reliance on kinship networks and personal loyalty: “to survive in these alien lands, you have to rely on your kin relationships, in other words, on feudal relationships.”185 The women’s movement did not leave behind a large written archive—we know that a there was a monthly supplement, named “Garden” (田园), of the Democratic Daily News, which was edited by the federation of women’s associations, but it is now lost.186 One of the more remarkable documents that survives is a brochure for the 1947 International Woman’s Day 227 === [PDF page 242] === celebration in Siantar, which was confiscated in the colonial reconquest of that city (Figure 25). The contributions in this pamphlet suggest the scope of their intellectual concerns: a letter of solidarity from Xu Guangping in China; a call from Xu Jiandong for Chinese women to support “backwards” Indonesians, in the spirit of Kartini; a celebration by Huang Miaoxian of Kathe Kollwitz’s prints, an anonymous argument for more active work among proletarian women, e.g. the cigarette rolling industry; a diagram of the new organizational structure of the Siantar Women’s Association was also included; and an essay by Baren arguing that subjective transformation of bourgeois women should not distract from the material struggles of proletarian women.187 This last piece was one of the few times Baren discussed the women’s movement in writing and even though his argument reflected communist common sense, an overly rigid insistence on it would surely have been counterproductive and even sexist.188 Thus, while Liu Yan must have agreed in theory, in practice she pursued a United Front strategy, for example instructing her cadre to prioritize the cultivation of wealthier progressive women whose resources could be used to expand women’s education.189 Women’s visibility in the public-facing aspects of the movement, for example in coalition-building, mass rallies, popular education, grassroots fundraising, epitomized the historic call for women of all ages to "walk into society," (走进社会) and to "walk out the family" (走出家庭).190 As Dutch intelligence noted, the women’s organizations played an important role in coordinating mass rallies across class and race towards the "formation of a United Chinese-Indonesian Front.”191 In 1946, Kerakjatan, the CDL’s Indonesian-language paper, reported that the “Committee for the Celebration of May 1 of the Indonesian, Chinese and Indian Nations in Medan” pointed to cooperation between women as a concrete example of interethnic and international solidarity: not only had they, “with pure and enthusiastic countenance” (dengan air muka yang jernih suci dan gembira), initiated a clothing drive for plantation laborers, but they had also begun a village-to-village fundraising campaign for the labor union confederation, SOBSI.192 They also organized clothing drives for the displaced and impoverished (Figure 28). On May 1, Liu Yan took the stage to expound on the “massive power 228 === [PDF page 243] === (tenaga raksasa)” of the working classes, which had played a central role in the Chinese, French, and Russian Revolutions, and also called for better organization and stronger unity.193 After the rally, Baren’s anticolonial play Temple of Five Ancestors (discussed in the next chapter) premiered in a nearby cinema. In many places, International Women’s Day on March 8th provided a kind of dress rehearsal for the May Day celebrations, with women’s organizations playing a key role coordinating across ethnic lines. 194 Songs such as “The International” (L’Internationale) and “The Red and White Flag” (Sang Merah Putih) were performed,195 and mentees of Liu Yan took the stage to speak (Figure 26). This energy was not limited to Medan and Siantar. In nearby Aceh, initial Chinese-Indonesian tensions were ameliorated by the energetic participation of the women’s organizations in the celebration of the five-month anniversary of independence.196 The women’s movement’s commitment to internationalism was also expressed in the Singaporean magazine New Women (新妇女).197 established in Singapore by Shen Zijiu, an experienced editor who helped to establish a “feminist cultural front” in 1930s Shanghai,198 as part of the CDL’s new media endeavor. Early issues prominently featured images of Indonesian women soldiers (Figure 29)—in one article, Shen Zijiu even would proudly show in a published conversation with Khatijah Sidek, a leader of the Indonesian Women’s Self Defense Corps of Sumatra: “We have always had a sympathetic attitude to the Indonesian women’s movement.”199 Interestingly, Khatijah responded saying that she had learned 1000 kanji during the Japanese period and could skim some of New Women. Their conversation soon drifted towards recent reports of anti-Chinese violence. While Khatijah noted her opposition to ethnic hatred, she stated the revolution would of course not be polite to traitors, and Shen requested that she keep in mind the officially neutral position of the overseas Chinese.200 (On this last point, Liu Yan might have differed, taking a more militantly pro-Republic position, which reflects also the difference between the Sumatran and Malayan CDL.) In June of 1947, "encouraged by the enthusiasm" of other associations that sprang up in the nodes of the Antifascist League, a congress was called to formalize the East Sumatra Chinese 229 === [PDF page 244] === Women's Federation (苏东华侨妇女总会) from the many Women’s Associations that had sprung up.201 According to one colonial spy-translator, Liu Yan concluded the congress with the statement that, "our inspiration is beyond imagination."202 This initial optimism, however, would be overtaken by events, when a Dutch offensive the next month wiped out Republican control of the urban centers of North Sumatra, and threw the democracy movement onto the defensive. Nonetheless, even after Liu Yan and Baren were forced to leave Indonesia, Dutch intelligence continued to note that the women’s movement in Sumatra was more advanced than in Java.203 In 1949, they commented with racist surprise that "the women do not lag behind… no matter how un-Chinese this mentality might seem," and indeed the women’s associations are "often more extreme than the men and seem to excel above all in the domain of spreading propaganda."204 230 === [PDF page 245] === Figure 29. Soldiers in New Woman. The third issue of Shen Zijiu’s magazine prominently featured the Sumatra Women’s Self-defense Corps on its cover, and images of militant women from Vietnam and Indonesia on the inside cover 231 === [PDF page 246] === “A Factory for Humans” The Dutch rapid advance over most of North Sumatra’s east coast in mid-1947, which resulted in Baren’s capture, internment and deportation, was a major setback for the Democracy Movement, which lost the room to maneuver that it had enjoyed for the last two years. One of his proteges wrote him a letter on the eve of his departure: “A great tree has been chopped down, but he left behind tens of thousands of seeds, buried deep in the soil.”205 Privately, however, he noted his despondence in his diary: “Will the democratic movement fail? … I am a pessimist… There is no second Baren.”206 The text "Rensheng and Those Around Him (任生及其周围的一群),” published a year after “Neighbors,” bears the marks of this disorientation. Written in a weeklong burst in the suburbs of Hong Kong, “pressed between illness and poverty (病贫交迫),” while caring for Liu Yan, who would pass away not long after from complications from colon cancer.207 (Baren qualified this text with the apology, “as for the development of events, it doesn’t have a very good structure, and the characters are not thoughtfully depicted. I fear it doesn’t count as a work of art.”208) If we sought, in the previous readings, to restore a political context that makes the Notes signify differently, here we are pursuing a different end, one that is more critical of Baren’s writing. Considering that Liu Yan was the acknowledged leader of the women’s movement, and that Baren directly participated in the work of the women’s association, it is remarkable that patriarchy and the women’s movement do not figure at all in his political writings. In “Rensheng,” however, questions closely linked to women’s liberation appear, but in a distorted and depoliticized way. This text recounts the couple's experiences on the small island of Selat Panjang (lit. “Long Strait”) off the coast of Sumatra, not long after their escape from Singapore in 1942. This was their first encounter with Indonesia. They are staying at the home of Rensheng, who lives in a tiny logging outpost, known as a panglong, which met the Singaporean demand for fuel and construction and were notorious for their harsh conditions for laborers, even in comparison to the plantations and mines.209 Although the social conditions of the Riau archipelago are quite distinct from those of North Sumatra (and Baren was never politically active in this area), both areas 232 === [PDF page 247] === hosted a large working-class Chinese population. Whereas “Neighbors” tends to portray Javanese life in the plantation belt as familiar, with the aim of cultivating sympathy for the Indonesian peasantry, “Rensheng” tends in the opposite direction, emphasizing the strangeness of rural Chinese society in the Riau archipelago, as a way to inspire outrage against injustice and, indirectly, its agents and accomplices. When the narrator asks the figure who only responds to the name of “Uncle”: In later days, we asked him many times about his life experience. He didn’t know how to answer and thought our questioning strange. Life? It’s just work, eat, smoke, sleep…. His life is a song without words. Who can hear this song? Nobody knows the plot of his life [生活的情节].210 Or, of a different laborer, “following the impulses of his mind, making a few sounds, let’s call that language.”211 If we are attentive, we will note in these quotations a nihilistic or defeatist attitude towards communication that is completely opposed to the spirit of “Neighbors.” Baren and Liu Yan, both teachers, attempt to impress a shape onto the loose experiences of the overseas Chinese. When Liu Yan begins to teach two little girls (sisters that, curiously, have two mothers), teaching them how to write, this strange sight attracts the entire community—particularly the women—who come and comment on them, spinning out multiple interactions and relationships that then form the narrative’s content. Liu writers her own exercises, starting with the sentence, “We are Chinese [中国人], our ancestors came from China…”212 One of the children is recalcitrant with writing, but tireless when it comes to memorizing songs: A Lian followed along, looking around, not paying any attention to how the words were written or pronounced; she seemed to be singing a sentence as if it were a song. The next day in class, Ah-Lian could sing a long passage without knowing a single word.213 This contrast between orality and literacy (like that between plot and written song for the “Uncle”) differentiates primitive (even where admirable) from modern.214 The inadequacy of the students metonymizes the community’s nonconformity with Baren’s ideas of what it means to be Chinese. This passage is part of a larger pattern of description in the Notes, where Baren’s descriptions of Liu are domesticating: she appears as a virtuous woman, nursing him to health, 233 === [PDF page 248] === teaching children, and requiring his protection from Japanese predation.215 It is impossible to see, from this vantage point, the Democracy Movement’s complex and overlapping program of night classes (including some targeted to women) and rural schools, which politicized and empowered the masses. Rather, it is the futility of education, communication, and even interpretation that recurs here. The tendency towards naturalization in “Rensheng,” which contrasts so strikingly with the tendency towards historicization in “Neighbors,” can be interpreted as a formal symptom of the analytic failure to apprehend the nexus of race and sex. This is clearer when we examine one of the narrative climaxes, which occurs when the narrator discovers that not all Chinese people are Chinese. Here is the tragic revelation that one of the neighbors, A Lu, does not identify with China at all: “So, do you like to hear about news from the homeland (祖国)?” “Do you mean Tangshan (唐山)?” This slightly-hunchbacked old man of nearly fifty years asked hesitantly. Then, he mournfully spat out a sentence: “There’s no place for a person like me in Tangshan.” “But what about when Tangshan is strong?” I also substituted “Tangshan” for “China.” “If Tangshan is strong, what good does that do for A Lu?” he said slowly. His heart had already become ice-cold.216 In an afterword to this essay, Baren credits this exchange with the epiphany that the struggle of the overseas Chinese was linked first and foremost to that of their land of residence, as the primary site of struggle, rather than their land of origin.217 Yet in “Rensheng” there is no “new object of love” to replace Tangshan, no shift in identification from China to Indonesia—the mourning here is transformed into melancholia, to borrow the Freudian terms.218 As is the rule with melancholia, it is clear here that something has been lost, but what? Shortly after this passage, the mystery of A Lu’s “coldness” is revealed, or rather, it is dramatized even further. A Lu’s wife—an immigrant who “maintains the ways (作风) of a completely Chinese country woman,”219— has just given birth, and a strange woman from the town visits them. The woman, it turns out, is here to buy the baby. It is at this moment that the 234 === [PDF page 249] === secret to the couple’s apparent indolence is revealed: over the last decade A Lu’s wife has given birth to eleven boys, almost all of whom have been sold (for approximately 130 yuan, or enough to cover a year’s expenses): The way Rensheng explains it, A Lu’s wife is a factory for humans (人类的工厂). I haven’t finished reading Marx’s Capital. In industrial society labor power is already a commodity, but in the commercial society of the overseas Chinese, even newborns are sold as commodities. Maybe this is one of the Asiatic modes of production? Ah! But later when I was wandering in Sumatra, I saw that this “adoptee commodity” (领子的商品), after a certain age, was often expelled or discarded and wandered the streets. When I first heard of the secret of A Lu’s lifestyle, my heart, as if struck by someone with an iron hammer, almost shattered. I couldn’t restrain myself from crying: “My homeland! Do you see your descendants floating overseas (漂流海外的子孙), how they scramble to live this inhuman life!” No wonder that when I mentioned the homeland, A Lu had said: “If Tangshan is strong, what good does that do for A Lu?” A Lu was right. It turns out that the homeland has no relation whatsoever (无丝毫关系) to him. Within his heart, utterly ice-cold to his homeland, lies the numb wound of selling off his own child, year after year.220 This section of the essay then ends with an a sarcastic “benediction” (祝福) wishing the couple a child every year, to help weather the difficult years to come. At this point it should be no surprise to the reader that this market in infants is interpreted for Baren as an especially damning symptom of the commercial pathology of overseas Chinese society. Although the purchase of children was also a common practice in China, it appeared more open and direct here, that is, the children are imagined to have been born for the express purpose of being brought to market—in other words, we have already entered the stage of what Marx terms real subsumption.221 Furthermore, the alienation of the child is understood here not through the exploitation of the mother’s gestational labor, or the physical or emotional pain of the mother, but through a tendentious sympathy onto the father. This moment is an example of a general pattern in Baren’s writing, in which the suffering of women is often visible only through the suffering of the men around them, especially when they are complicit in that suffering.222 The immediate repetition of the earlier conversation establishes this analogy (or, perhaps, a synecdoche): China: The Diaspora:: A Lu: The Child In other words, the severance of the link between A Lu and Tangshan is paralleled by the severance of the link between the child and A Lu. In this formulation, the most corrosive social 235 === [PDF page 250] === effect of colonialism is its disruption of patrilineality. Not only are A Lu and his wife’s children all male, but the words for both China (祖国, lit. “ancestral land”) and the diaspora (“子孙,” sons and grandsons) are implicitly or explicitly patrilineal. As Guo-Quan Seng has suggested in his study of the creole Chinese of Java, the consolidation of patrilineality in social, religious, and legal terms was basic to the construction of Chineseness in Southeast Asia. Seng also highlights the structural occlusion of non-Chinese foremothers with whom Chinese male settlers partnered. Following Seng, we can note that on both sides of this analogy a third term is omitted, which we might depict like so, using a horizontal line to establish the occluded-and-necessary third term of the analogy: China: The Diaspora A Lu: The Child Indonesia A Lu’s Wife This concern with (interrupted) patrilineality appears early in “Rensheng,” when the titular character’s father’s life story—the only recognizable biography in the essay—is summarized for the reader. The story of his emigration from Guangxi to Riau is a classic settler narrative: labor improves the land, while land realizes the labor. Yet in the end, despite his endless diligence, he remains impoverished due to the “invisible chain” of debt to urban merchants. Unlike his father, Rensheng does not conform to the trope of the hard-working Chinese (and its complement, the lazy Malay, which Alatas has surveyed), and prefers a little opium when he can get it to the salvific power of hard work. While this “philosophy of life” (人 生观) is presented as understandable, reasonable even, it is also “has an ice-cold taste, colder than coconut water.”223 As with A Lu’s child trafficking, the narrator willfully interprets Rensheng’s opium addiction as signs of trauma, against the grain of the essay itself. We could say that the problem with A Lu and Rensheng is that they disdain labor. Tragically, this reflects not an individual failure but a social pathology, one which we could characterize as the breakdown of patrilineal inheritance, in this place where family structures have morphed out of all recognition, where children can have multiple mothers, or be sold like factory products, and 236 === [PDF page 251] === sexual infidelity seems to be openly condoned. This critique of the market’s disintegrative effects on the family form has all the characteristics of what Melinda Cooper has called “left social conservatism.”224 If Baren’s representation of Chinese women replicates traditional ideals of “virtuous wives and good mothers,” (贤妻良母) his representation of indigenous women replicates colonial concepts of primitive licentiousness. As Xia Jing has noted, these depictions are typical of Southeast Asia in Chinese male writers’ eyes.225 “Here, what determines male-female relations is not society’s moral law, but the natural law of biology.”226 In one voyeuristic scene, the narrator overhears a Malay neighbor discussing an affair with a friend—her husband has just discovered a gift from the lover. In clipped phrases meant to convey foreignness, even though her Hokkien would certainly have been more fluent than Baren’s own, she confesses: Sister, I want this person. This person is good, this person, this person I want him [这个 人好，这个人我要]. Next time he leaves, I want this person to come again… He’s strong, he’s healthy, he’s… Oh! Why did he have to give me one dollar. That harmed me. I want to give to him, die for him, it would be fine, if only one more time, but I don’t want him to give me money.227 Here, the woman’s “natural” sexual morality, expressive of a primitive communism, is distinguished from the sexual license of capitalism by its refusal of prostitution. If this sexual desire had been directly avowed by a Chinese woman, it might have been interpreted as a kind of modernized subjectivity, of the “New Woman” problematic. However, because it is avowed by a Malay woman, it is interpreted as an expression of a romanticized, pre-capitalist amorality.228 As is typical, Baren’s narrator, or the implied author, is complicit, as is the reader. Yet the Lu Xunian complicity here is especially dramatic, even forced. At the end of the essay, the narrator reflects on the metal bed—a scarce and precious object in this remote outpost—on which he and his partner Liu Yan have been sleeping. It was once the property of Rensheng’s sister-in-law, whose husband had tragically “hacked himself to death”—it is unclear if this was an accident or suicide. The following passage, which I quote at length, makes the case that their use of this bed is a form of violence: 237 === [PDF page 252] === Yes! This metal bed once gave her deep happiness. Yet this metal bed, since her husband died, has become a painful memory. She is young—how could she not have dreams of springtime? But for her children she must continue these endless, painful days. And we now sleep in the bed where she once dreamed. In that moment, it was as if we had become the despoilers of her happiness (幸福的掠夺者). Because we had violated her precious memento. A metaphysical thought [玄学的思想] now arose and led me into the great ocean of life; I felt such pity and sorrow for these worm-like [蚯蚓似的] people, and yet, living among those “heroes” who pluck flowers from amid bones and blood, were we not despoilers too? To not stand with determination by the side of the injured, crushing all the despoilers of humanity with an iron fist, and instead to offer a little pointless sympathy to them, to comfort their traumatized hearts, and then to nonetheless attach ourselves to the despoilers in order to survive, the substance of this kind of humanism is nothing more than the disguised preaching of the despoilers, used to mollify the resistance of the injured——There is no middle path.229 I felt myself shudder.230 Although the narrator’s own sexual life is not directly described, the essay’s obsessive treatment of sexuality lets us gloss the bed as a metonym for sex. After all, it was in Selat Panjang that Baren and Liu Yan first adopted the “disguise” of a husband and wife, which eventually become real.231 At the time, his partner Liu Yan was in the last days of her struggle with cancer in their rented apartment in the village of Kau Wah Keng (九华径), on the outskirts of Hong Kong. (The need to procure cash for her medical expenses may have figured into the composition of the text.) It is not inappropriate to read it, then, as a bittersweet recollection of something like a honeymoon. What is the nature of the crime that causes the guilt that appears here? The narrator’s marital bliss is not of course the reason that Rensheng’s sister-in-law is widowed, or that A Lu and his wife sell their children, or that A Kun’s wife is having an affair. What the appropriation of the bed here signifies instead is the degeneration of the narrator, and by extension, the intellectual class he represents. From here, Baren makes a leap to the real cause of the guilt, “this kind of humanism.” Yet is not the racialized language of civilization and savagery, common in the exoticizing modernist stories of the 1930s, but largely suppressed within texts such as “Neighbors,” just a different kind of humanism? I think that we could read “Rensheng” as a skeptical critique of the literature of sympathy that “Neighbors” represents, and the communicative ideal of solidarity that it is premised on. 238 === [PDF page 253] === The overall effect of the catalogue of social deviations within this creole community, which are extended to include the narrator and the reader, is to impress upon us the depths of colonial privation. These deviant sexual relations, kinship structures, and modes of labor are a sign of an earlier social stage, whether due to Chinese degeneration or native primitiveness, and here the possibility of progress is not even visible. However, we could surely argue against Baren that these ways of living are eminently historical responses to colonial capitalism, and conceivably the social basis for a form of resistance to them. The point here is not just to identify his errors, but to indicate his ultimate inability to understand sexuality and family historically, which is to say, as a possible terrain for political contestation. Rather, he must resort to a racialized and naturalized language that is avoided (or suppressed) within the earlier Notes. We are confronted, I think, with the inadequacy of the fraternal-communicative ideal, which I discussed in Chapter 2, to grapple with the interrelated questions of reproduction, desire, and the family form as historical and political forms. To argue this is to place Baren at the origins not only of yinhua literature’s central conceit, communication as fraternity, but also of its political unconscious: the logic of patrilineality. Fragments of a Revolution This is all a roundabout way of asking: how would Liu Yan have recorded these experiences? Liu Yan was first of all an organizer rather than a writer. But in what we do have— a fragment of her diary, recording the deportation from Medan—her voice sounds assertive, even brash. When the immigration authorities bully Baren, she records that she became enraged, and loudly said to him: “Everything’s in order!” He didn’t dare to be mean anymore... Fuck (他妈的)! the essence of imperialism reveals itself. In today’s world this kind of thing is far too common.232 M. Yamin, who had left Sumatra on account of his refusal to cooperate with the Dutch who had assumed power, was on the same ship as them, and they helped arrange a loan for him to pay the disembarkation fee in Penang. When he left, they made a point to shake hands with him: 239 === [PDF page 254] === Of course this led Dutch and Chinese to gossip (邪说). But we don’t care about all that, the reality is that we sympathize with the Indonesian nation. 233 This is, of course, a far cry from the virtuous and meek figure she appears as in the Notes. And, indeed, in the outpouring of grief that accompanied the announcement of her death, it was her capability, her diligence and acuity that was stressed. On June 6th of 1948, the Chinese Women's Association of Sumatra held a memorial for her in Medan that over 600 people (including representatives of 18 organizations) attended; as one reporter marveled, guests of all kin and place groups came to visit this woman from Shanxi (Figure 30). The speakers stressed metaphors of kinship—especially maternity—to describe Liu Yan's diligence and selfsacrifice.234 Sandiwara Sin Chung Kuo, the CDL’s performance troupe, sand a song with the refrain, "you are a revolutionary daughter / you are the friend of the people." Ding Yunqing from Siantar termed her "the mother of the women of East Sumatra.” Lü Huiying, a leader in the Women's Federation, eulogized: "although you have left us, we have grown up, and will carry out your last wishes. Rest!" Thereafter, she proposed a motion to fundraise for the library, as Liu had requested, and the peasant and youth groups seconded the motion; 2800 guilders were raised on the spot. The abiding concern for literacy and education is clear here, but note also how the climax of the memorial (and of the article reporting it) is a vote on a motion. That the final tribute to her took this form should suggest how deeply an organizational culture that was also a print culture had permeated this corner of the world at this point. While the deportation of Baren in 1947 and the death of Liu Yan in 1948 were severe setbacks for the movement, the final blow was delivered not from without but from within. An order to disband overseas Chinese political organizations had already come down in 1950 from Beijing, and the CDL itself was fully dissolved in 1952.235 The judgment that these groups had fulfilled their historical mission was met with confusion and disappointment by the cadres who had poured years of their lives into it.236 The youth movement, for example, had just reached a high-water mark in 1952 with its Third All-Sumatra Congress, bringing in 72 organizations.237 The last holdouts were, unsurprisingly, the ones which represented the only avenues for political 240 === [PDF page 255] === participation for many members, the ones that had promised the deepest social transformation: the Women’s Associations and the Peasant’s Associations.238 What remained? There were the Chinese General Associations, which fulfilled their quasi-governmental role as liaison bodies between the Indonesian government, PRC representatives, and the Chinese-speaking community. (A cynic might wonder at the peacefulness of the transition from the officers to the associations, in comparison the violence of the overthrow of the sultans.) Perhaps more significantly, though, there were the less tangible shifts in cultural, educational, and linguistic domains: many of the newspapers and performance troupes that arose in the revolution continued until 1965, and the transformation of the education institution, including its incorporation of political materials and a new emphasis on Indonesian instruction, was irreversible. The fervor of this era is captured in the photographs that the young North Sumatran teacher Dong Tianzhi 董添治 kept with her after her “return” to China around 1950239—ones which I have used to illustrate this chapter. The fate of this archive is as sobering as its contents are inspiring. Nearly a hundred of these photographs, some of them in their original albums, were listed for sale in the online marketplace Kongfuzi.com in 2019, where they remain till now.240 The thing that grew in the Chinese community of North Sumatra in the 1940s, out of the antifascist underground, amid the independence struggle, had a real content. To paraphrase Ba Jin’s comments on the anarchist experiment in Quanzhou in 1933, it “was not big, but it was a real movement.”241 Overlooking this will, at a minimum, leave us unable to understand its long afterlife, not least in the terms that it set for yinhua literature. The origins of the regulative ideal of “Sino-Indonesian friendship,” in other words, should be sought not in Bandung in 1955, but rather somewhere in Siantar circa 1946. The presence of an experienced cadre of communists from China did not create this movement, but it helped to guide it—we simply note here that other areas with similar demographics and a strong left, such as Bangka and Singkawang, embraced the PRC with gusto, but not the Republic of Indonesia. 241 === [PDF page 256] === To their enduring credit, Chinese leftist intellectuals in North Sumatra understood that "in their economic and social life, the overseas Chinese of Indonesia can in no way whatsoever survive independently from the Indonesian nation as a whole."242 The political realism of this judgment, however, was still in search of a literary realism in which it could be expressed. The task for the progressive writer was to write a narrative that was neither exoticizing nor chauvinistic but reflected the complexities of actual and potential relations between Chinese and Indonesian people.243 Yet if they participated in and did not just observe (or oppose) the Indonesian revolution, then there should be a Chinese-Indonesian revolutionary literature. But one is hard-pressed to find an approximant to Rukiah’s The Fall and the Heart (Kejatuhan dan Hati), or Pramoedya’s Guerilla Family (Keluarga Gerilya).244 I am not the only one who feels this way. In 1953, newly-relieved of his post as ambassador to Indonesia and itching for permission to become a full-time writer once more, Baren wrote to his wife Ma Yansheng: Lately, the idea of writing a novel (小说) is on my mind, just to record what I’ve experienced. For example, I could describe the Indonesian revolution in 1945 and 1946, which I think about often. There are many people (人物) who appear in my mind. With time, they will disappear. But if I want to do that, first I have to leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and become an author so I can write these things. Not only could these things tell the imperialists that it is impossible to conquer the Indonesian people. It also has a great political significance for strengthening the friendship between the Chinese people and Southeast Asian peoples. As for the struggle of the Indonesian people, not only have I worked for them with my brain, propagandizing. I also have suffered with my body (in the concentration camp) for them, with tears and love.245 I have a right to write these things, and a duty to write these things. Also, I have some notes and materials I can use.246 This novel was not written. In some sense, it could not have been written, since the sense of totality which is one characteristic of the realist novel was not within reach—the Chinese experience in revolutionary Indonesia was highly contradictory and confused, and not easily amenable to narrative enclosure. Two of Baren’s comrades among the exiles, Wang Jinding and Gao Yunlan, also never finished their Southeast Asian novels.247 The notes he is referring to in this letter probably include not just the Notes discussed here, but also the posthumously published manuscript, “Observations on the Revolution,” written in late 1947, presumably after deportation, and edited in the early 1950s around the time of his 242 === [PDF page 257] === letter to Ma.248 This manuscript suggests a keen interest in the consciousness of Indonesian revolutionaries from across the political spectrum, and hints at a writerly ambition to compose a “typical” composite—one that could critically reveal the intricate links between history and consciousness in the Indonesian revolution.249 Yet, even assuming the conventions of revolutionary realist novel, further speculation about this project opens up a warren of unanswerable questions: Who would have been the protagonist? How would they transform? What about the narrative structure? How would the problem of language(s) be handled? How would Baren’s own implication (or that of other Chinese leftist intellectuals) be treated? What place would family life have in it? Would the conventions of “love and revolution” narrative appear? Our reading of the Notes against a reconstruction of the Democratic Movement shows why this novel would have been difficult. In the internal generic division of the Notes, we can see the enduring segregated structure of colonial life. I hope to have shown here how Baren’s experiments in integrated narration succeeded in devising new constructions of fraternal sympathy, i.e. of Sino-Indonesian friendship. Yet this success was, from the beginning, premised on a disavowed logic of patrilineality. It is this dual structure that makes the Notes a prototype for the left-wing yinhua literature of the next two decades. 243 === [PDF page 258] === Figure 30. Farewell to Liu Yan. Right and bottom: At Liu Yan's memorial, her photograph was framed with the couplet, "Jade bones buried in Hong Kong; sisters from Sumatra mourn a heroic soul" (香岛青山埋玉骨 苏 东姊妹悼英), and placed under a banner "Friend of the masses—undying spirit" (群众之友 精神不死). Upper left: Baren and Liu Yan departing after their deportation. Source: Dong Tianzhi collection. 244 === [PDF page 259] === Notes This leaflet, dated September 17, 1945, is widely reproduced, e.g. Siauw Giok Tjhan’s memoirs, in Prima, Medan area mengisi merdeka (722), and Toer, The Chinese in Indonesia (155). An original version can be found in NA 2.10.62 4076. Baren refers to the text’s Chinese title as “告印度尼西亚人民书” and credits it with having prevented further violence against Chinese in North Sumatra (“Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 301). Karen Strassler has pointed out to me that the rise of the Indonesian term of address “saudara” was itself linked to the struggle against feudalism, which was linguistically represented by the complex hierarchies of address in (for example) Javanese. Modified from the translation by Max Lane in Toer, The Chinese in Indonesia, 155. The independence struggle hinged, like all guerrilla wars, on the effort to win over the uncommitted to the side of the insurgency/counterinsurgency. Compare this pamphlet to a 1948 statement posted to the door of a Chinese association in Jambi: “But what kind of contribution are you making to Indonesia? / Where is the proof that you want to unite with the Indonesian people? / I am warning you! Beware!! / Do not wait for social revolution / Try to really understand the teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen!” (ANRI RA18: 208, cited in Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 14.) See also the government pamphlets, "Indonesian-Chinese Friendship [Persahabatan Indonesia-Tionghoa]" and "The Republican State Safeguards the Chinese Population" (in NA 2.10.62: 3254, 3255 and 6096). It was co-signed by four organizations (that included their English names!), which had all had grown out of the Anti-Fascist League: Indonesian Question Research Body (Badan Penyelidikan Soal-soal Indonesia), the Sumatran Anti-Fascist League (Lembaga Anti-Fascist Sumatera, i.e. the Fanmeng), the Chinese Reporters Association of Sumatra (Perhimpunan Wartawan-Wartawan Tionghoa Sumatera), and the New Life Association of Sumatra (Perkumpulan Penghidupan Baru Sumatera; formerly the Overseas Chinese Anti-Japan Association [Perkumpulan Anti-Nippon Hoakiau], i.e. the Huakang). I have also seen another version signed by the Chinese Creole Party (Partai Peranakan Tionghoa). Reportedly, it was established using the staff and office of the prewar Pelita Andalas (Lin Kesheng et al, “Mianlan Minzhu Ribao,” 263). The staff included Chen Lishui, Zhang Qiongyu, and Chen Wenying. For a political overview that also covers Aceh see Reid, Blood of the People; Van Langenberg, “National Revolution” is especially valuable for its survey of the 1947-49 period; for a bottomup, revisionist view from a Karoland perspective, see Steedly, Rifle Reports. Indonesian-literate readers should consult PRIMA, Medan mengisi proklamasi merdeka. Baren (writing as Barhen), "Repoloesi Tiongkok [The Chinese Revolution]," Kerakjatan, 1946- 04-19–20. Kerakjatan under Chang Hsi Shek’s tenure frequently published writing by North Sumatran Lekra writers such as Agam Wispi, Bakri Siregar, and HR Bandaharo (Yang Mu, “Yinni duli Xianfeng,” 593). Chang Hsi Shek would later founded Harian Harapan in the 1960s as a Baperki organ that was entirely staffed by PKI cadre (Yang Mu, “Yinni duli xianfeng,” 595-96). See also Chang Hsi Shek, “Geming duli xianquzhe,” 350-352. 245 === [PDF page 260] === 10 This newspaper was edited by the communist Jahja Jacoeb, a close associate of Abdul Xarim’s. 11 Barhen, “Politik Amerika-Inggeris yang Bermuka Dua,” 1946-09-14. 12 Barhen, Indonesia Hendaklah Menjadi Pangkalan Perserikatan Bangsa2 Yang Tertindas dan Front Anti Imperialisme Dunia,” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-10-03. 13 Barhen, “Revolusi Sovjet Rusia secara damai yang revolusioner,” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-12- 23. 14 Xu Anru, “Baren ji qi Wu Zu Miao,” 305. The editor, Jahja Jacoeb, proposed bringing it to the Sumatran capital of Bukittinggi, but the director Xu Anru turned him down because the performers had to go back to school. 15 The anniversary publication also included writings by Sutan Sjahrir, Adi Negoro, H. Sitompoel, Jahja Jacoeb, Hamzah Nasution, Madona Lubis, M. Rusli, Adaham Hasibuan, Chen Lishui (as C Lisui), Shao Zonghan (!), Abdul Majid, Hadely Hasibuan, and Wartawan Gadungan (“Sudah terbit nomor peringatan soloeh merdeka setahun [Commemoration Edition for the One- Year Anniversary of Independence Now Available],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-10-30, p. 2). 16 During his “Southeast Asian period,” in addition to the play Temple of Five Ancestors (五祖 庙), he also composed an epic historical poem Song of Indonesia (印度尼西亚之歌), although because it was unpublished during his lifetime, I do not dwell on it here. Reportedly, he also continued to revise his novel, Land (土地), later retitled The Revolt of Scholar Mang (莽秀才造 反记), which treated subjects of agrarian change, class conflict, and decolonization. He also published four books of political and social analysis, several occasional pamphlets, and countless articles in the progressive press which are lost. For a detailed timeline, including publications, see Wang Xinrong, “Baren nianpu.” 17 Stenberg, Minority Stages, 84. 18 I discuss this work in the next chapter. 19 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, Chapter 2; in addition, these essays figure as evidence in the extensive research done on Yu Dafu’s last days (Suzuki, Sumendala de Yu Dafu). 20 Xia Jing’s mentions are mostly in passing (Nanyang shuxie yanjiu, 63, 70, 129); Yan Min compares Baren and Sima Wensen’s novel Gold-panning in the South Seas (南洋淘金记), correctly noting that their writing marks a watershed in the turn towards lived reality (“生活化,” lit. life-ification) of Chinese narratives of Southeast Asia (Nanyang xushi, Chapter 3, Part 4). 21 The terms derives from a classical moniker for tropical Asia derived from its relation to the monsoonal trade winds (Hu Yuzhi, Fengxia shiming 风下释名 [Explanation of the Name ‘Fengxia’], Fengxia, 1945-12, no. 1, p. 18). As the quotation above suggests, they seem to have believed that the term originally was a pejorative colonial term, perhaps associating “below” with lowliness (Baren, Linrenmen, 122). However, Michael Laffan notes, giving the example of a 1621 document, that “Southeast Asians conceived of an overarching geographical unity for their domains, often terming them ‘the lands below the winds’ due to the monsoons that swept across them” (Islamic Nationhood, 11). 246 === [PDF page 261] === 22 Forthcoming work by Shelly Chan. Note that in practice the Below the Winds intellectuals used all three geonyms. 23 Jin Jin, Lengzhan yu huayu yuxi yanjiu, Chapter 2, Footnote 42. 24 Seng, “Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism,” 1. 25 Zhou, Migration in a Time of Revolution, 36-37. According to C.C. Chin, while Hu Yuzhi was the most visible, the Southeast Asian operation was led by “three Hu’s,” i.e. Hu Yuzhi in Singapore, Hu Yisheng 胡一声 in Kuala Lumpur, and Hu Shouyu 胡守愚 in Penang (C.C. Chin, interview with the author, Singapore, 2023-09-11). 26 In total, several dozen people were part of this retreat, all of whom had links to the CPC’s alliance with Tan Kah Kee (Wang Yamei, “Gensui Hu Yuzhi bobo”). The decision to evacuate seems not to have been unanimous: Shen Zijiu notes, perhaps in exasperation, that before their flight she had floated the idea of forming a guerilla force of volunteers, like the one in China, but someone objected, "To build a guerilla base in Malaya like the one in China, in my view, is too idealistic… This statement seemed to become a natural conclusion” (Liuwang zai chidaoxian shang, 23). See Yong, Tan Kah-Kee, 293-294, on the evacuation from Singapore. 27 They were preceded by Shao Zonghan 邵宗汉, as well as probably his wife Zhang Lüyi 张绿 漪, who had been introduced to this antifascist work by Chen Songyin 陈松阴 and Chen Yinghe 陈影鹤, two brothers who he had met while editing Modern Weekly (现代周刊) in Penang, where he had been sent by Liao Chengzhi 廖承志 (Wang Qianyu, “Ji Chen Yinghe xiansheng,” 451; Yang Xuechun “Shao Zonghan tongzhi,” 440). At some point the later-editor of Seng Hwo Pao Zheng Chuyun 郑楚云, using the alias Zheng Ming 郑明, also joined them. 28 The founders of this bookstore were Ding Yunqing 丁韵清, Zhao Hongpin 赵洪品 and their comrade Zhou Bin 周斌, who had been to Yan’an. Ding and Zhao were married, and Zhao had been involved in the “Red Tide Incident” discussed in Chapter 2 but escaped detection. The bookstore published an underground mimeograph Weekly News (每周新闻), which would be transformed into the Fanmeng’s Forward (前进报). All three were linked to the Pangkalan Brandan Chinese School (Lagu, “Dadi shudian,” 255). Zhou was executed during the occupation. The translation of Dadi (大地) into “Good Earth” is my own, based on the widely-read translation of the title of Pearl Buck’s book, but Taomo Zhou also uses this translation. 29 The Huakang was led by the couple Chen Hong 陈洪 and Zhang Fengshu 张凤书. They had both gotten in trouble for their anti-Japanese organizing at Sudong, and Zhang was deported. Chen, who was still a student, was not deported, but chose to follow her to Malaya, where they eventually married (“Huainian fumu Chen Hong, Zhang Fengshu 怀念父母陈洪、张凤书 [Remembering our Parents Chen Hong and Zhang Fengshu], Harian Baru, 2022-08-10, pp. 23- 24). 30 While in other parts of Indonesia, such as Java and West Kalimantan, there were actual rightwing (i.e. GMD-supporting) antifascist organizations, the Huakang appears to have been much more heterogeneous. The difference between these two groups seems to have been primarily organizational, with the Huakang more heterogeneous and less centralized. One of its leaders, Zhang Fengshu, was believed to have been an important figure in the Malayan struggle, and was described by Dutch intelligence as “one of the highest-ranking communist functionaries of Malacca” (Brondgeest “De ontwikkeling van het communisme, 7). 247 === [PDF page 262] === 31 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 40. 32 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 36. 33 Wang Jiasheng, “Dongdang suiyue,” 358. The primary advocates of armed resistance within the Fanmeng were a small group of Siantar youths led by Huang Wenquan, who Baren dissuaded from this approach (Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu yi qinren,” 195). A portion of the Huakang leadership, which had closer links to the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), seems to have been more supportive of this approach, though these “individualists [英雄主义]” and “adventurists [盲动主义]” were later marginalized (“Yinni Subei Huaqiao kangri gailüe,” 3). 34 Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu yi qinren,” 195. 35 Baren, “Geming guanganji,” 351. 36 “Yinni subei kangri gailüe,” 8-9. 37 See van der Veer, “Conciliation or confrontation.” 38 The traitor was Wang Tongjie 王桐杰, and Baren interpreted his betrayal as a symptom of the Huakang’s larger problem of indiscipline, or what he called “big guns-ism” (大炮主义) (Baren, "Neighbors," 149-150). Baren, “Linrenmen,” 149-150. According to another account, he had also purchased two guns in Malaya and showed them to others (Lu Huahan, “Sudao ‘Jiu er ling’ shijian,” 63). A “Wang Tung Chih” was arrested after the war on charges of collaboration, including with “Indonesian extremists” (“Daily Review of Chinese Press,” 1946-07-03, in NA 2.10.62: 1881). 39 Hui, Strangers at Home, 65-67. 40 While most accounts call the initial organization the Democratic League (民盟), Zhu Zhihui, one of the founding organizers, states that the initial name was the Overseas Chinese Democracy Promotion Society (华侨民主促进会), which resembles the name of similar organizations established in Java at this time (Zhu Zhihui, “Haiwai shenghuo 30 nian huiyi,” 346). In any case, it is clear that the organization, and the language of “democracy,” was in place before formal affiliation with the China-based CDL. 41 Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, and Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, both take this approach, which may be more appropriate for 1950s than the 1940s, when the movements had become states. 42 For example, it called for the withdrawal of American military from China, but also added a local twist by demanding the immediate release of all Chinese soldiers from Dutch military service ( “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 1946-06-22, NA 2.10.62: 1881). 43 Indeed, the left never achieved domination, and it was only with the intervention of the Indonesian state against the right due to Taiwan’s involvement in regional rebellions in 1958 that the ground was cleared for hegemony. 44 This occurred primarily through two new types of schools. Night schools in the cities, normally staffed by volunteers, were for the urban working class, and in the late 1940s over a thousand students attended class every night (Wang Jiasheng, “Dongdang suiyue,” 361). Rural 248 === [PDF page 263] === elementary schools, which were closely linked to the peasant’s associations, also spread throughout the region, and there were at least 40 by 1951 (Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, 231). The left’s leadership in founding and supporting these schools was a major factor in their regional rise. 45 Li Huanqing, “Zhanhou Subei huaqiao aiguo minzhu yundong,” 212-216. 46 Wang Jiasheng, “Dongdang suiyue,” 359. 47 An exhaustive list of communal organizations is provided by Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, 201-356). 48 The most well-known example is the performance tour of Temple of Five Ancestors, by the CDL troupe Sandiwara Sin Chung Kuo (新中艺). However, the CDL newspaper, Democratic Daily News, was consistently supportive of Indonesian independence and critical of the Dutch, which is why it was carefully read by colonial intelligence and always included in the “Daily Review of the Chinese Press.” 49 See the end of this chapter. 50 Fei Wan, “Jugong jincui,” 434. 51 Van der Veer, “Pao An Tui in Medan.” 52 Liu Yan, “Liuwang riji,” 395. 53 Liu Yan, “Liuwang riji,” 398. 54 Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 120. 55 While this system was ended in Semarang and Surabaya in the 1930s with the death of the local officers, in the rest of Indonesia it was in force through the 1940s (Buiskool, “Prominent Chinese,” 156). 56 “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 1947-05-13 in NA 2.10.62: 1882. 57 Zhu Peiguan “Mianlan Huaqiao zonghui.” Such services includied mediating between the community and the government, including through the issuance of passes, the mediation of intergroup conflicts, and the provision of some social services. In Medan, the former captain Chi Hua Chang 徐华璋 transferred the pre-war archives to the association (244). In contrast, in Jakarta, the left split from the federation to form their own association (Zhou, 58 Migration in a Time of Revolution, 88.). In Medan, it was the right that was forced to split. 59 This was not inevitable. Across the straits in Malaysia, just like the sultanates, the infrastructure of indirect rule survived in the form of the Malaysian Chinese Association. 60 Wang Keping, “Bianhouji,” 287; Baren xiansheng jinian ji, 414. 249 === [PDF page 264] === 61 The story was later republished in the Hong Kong journal Xiaoshuo (小说) in 1948, with the subtitle “Notes from the Land Below the Winds: Malayan Writings” (风下之国散记马来亚之 什); the version that is currently circulated is based on this one. 62 This problem of interpellation is the subject of the later essay, “Pelabuhan,” discussed in the introduction. 63 It is hard to say whether this taukeh refers to a specific individual. Parts of this story appear in other texts, such as “Letter to Literary Youth (给南阳文艺青年的一封信),” discussed below, so they are presumably autobiographical. In general, it seems that in the Malayan Notes, characters more fictionalized than those in the Indonesian Notes. 64 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 35. Baren would return to this theme in the story “Yueliang’s Origins (月亮的由来).” 65 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 32. Baren, “Lun Mahua zhishifenzi de jiefang 论马华知识分子的解放 [On the Liberation of the 66 Malayan Chinese Intellectual],” Fengxia, no. 8, 1947, pp. 156-158. 67 Specific issues included clearer boundaries between work and life; improvement and security of employment; professionalization; freedom of expression, including crticiism of social and political situations; separation of commercial from intellectual duties, e.g. advertising; and personal independence, especially off the clock (Baren, “Lun Mahua zhishifenzi de jiefang 论马 华知识分子的解放 [On the Liberation of the Malayan Chinese Intellectual],” Fengxia, no. 8, 1947, p. 157). 68 Cited in Zhang Chukun’s postscript to Shen Zijiu, Liuwang zai chidao xian shang, 135. 69 Part of the Dutch political strategy for defeating the Republic was the promotion of regional and minority interests, in the pursuit of federal United States of Indonesia that could be more easily manipulated. See Cheong, H.J. Van Mook, 90-94. 70 As Taomo Zhou shows, the Republic of China tried to walk a line between protesting Indonesian mistreatment of Chinese residents, while also protesting Dutch aggression; it was sometimes pushed further right (i.e. against the Republic) than it wanted to go by local elites (Migration in the Time of Revolution 28-30). 71 “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 4 Sept 1947, in NA 2.10.62: 1882) 72 “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 7 Aug 1947, in NA 2.10.62: 1882) 73 Pingfan, “Zhao Hongpin,” 168. 74 Democratic Daily News, cited in “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 11 June 1947, NA 2.10.62: 1881. 75 Eu Chooi Yip, an MCP leader in Singapore, recalls that Hu Yuzhi was opposed to armed struggle (Oral History, Reel 10). The deterioration of relations between the CDL ally Tan Kah 250 === [PDF page 265] === Kee and the MCP (his rubber estates were sometimes targeted by labor militants) also contributed to these tensions (Yeap, “Tan Kah Kee’s Changing Attitudes”). 76 For example, the attitude of the Seng Hwo Pao, the equivalent of the Democratic Daily News by another Southbound communist, towards the revolution was “distant, unenthusiastic, and sometimes even condescending” (Zhou, “Diaspora,” 120). 77 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 35. 78 This critique, which recurs in “A Taukeh” below, is not far from the idea of reification, though he does not use the term. 79 Tan’s associate Lau Boh Tan 刘牡丹 who provided all of the evacuees from Singapore to Sumatra with an allowance to get through the first year (Pao Shih Tsun, Oral History, Reel 6). Baren and Liu Yan were financially supported by Chen Songyin and Chen Yinghe throughout this period (Liu Yan, “Liuwang riji,” 398). 80 At war's end, Gao Yunlan 高云览, author of the communist jailbreak novel, Annals of a Small Town (小城春秋) and Zhang Chukun 张楚琨, the communist “handler” of Tan Kah Kee, were able to make a fortune in pepper and rubber exports that they then invested into the newlyformed Nan Chiau Jit Pao (Gao Xunying, Gao Yunlan zhuan, 171-173). Yeap, “Tan Kah Kee’s Changing Attitudes”; Harper and Bayly, Forgotten Wars, A World 81 Upside Down. 82 Karl, China’s Revolutions in the Modern World, 128-129, cited in Qian, Revolutionary Becomings, 207. 83 “Pembersihan [Cleanup],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-05-08, p. 2. 84 “Pembersihan [Cleanup],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-05-08, p. 2. 85 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 39. 86 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 39. 87 See Ravando, “Now is the Time to Kill All Chinese!” for a detailed account of the massacre. Ravando links the massacre to the program of “social revolution” in Java, which invites the question of why, in North Sumatra, the same term was used to target the Malay aristocracy. Furthermore, as I show below, people such as Baren were generally supportive of the program of social revolution. Other events include the evacuation of Palembang, the looting of Tangerang, and the battle of Bagan Siapiapi, all of which were conflated in the emergent narrative of anti- Chinese violence. 88 Ravando and Harsono, “Giving Voice to the Voiceless.” 89 The other Chinese representative on this trip was Dr. Kwa Tjoan Sioe (柯全寿), founder of the Jang Seng Ie (养生院), now the Rumah Sakit Husada. The two were leaders of the pro- Republican establishment in Jakarta. 251 === [PDF page 266] === 90 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 176. The Minister of Defense Amir Sjarifuddin’s purpose in organizing the trip was to dissuade Sumatran revolutionaries from overzealouness. Another colleague, Dr. Abdul Majid, gave speeches in rallies stating that according to Mao’s theory of New Democracy, the conditions were not ripe for class struggle. 91 Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 351. 92 Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 405. 93 Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 405. Like creole leftists such as Siauw Giok Tjhan, he emphasized that incidents of anti-Chinese violence were a result of Dutch counterinsurgency; anecdotally, he describes incidents in which Chinese soldiers were sent ahead of the regular army, which then allowed Dutch officers to swoop in and appear as saviors. These are discussed in “Observations on the Revolution.” I have not yet attempted to verify these incidents. 94 Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 392. 95 Memorandum, 8. 96 Memorandum, 1-3. 97 These are the spaces studied in Ann Stoler’s Capitalism and Confrontation. 98 Ah Jin is a pseudonym for Li Guohai 李国海, a former student from Nan Chiau Normal School in Singapore. On Li’s life, including his difficulties after moving to China, see Xiao Bangjie, “Yinghun nanmi jingsheng yongcun.” Yan Min interprets one of the main threads of the Notes as the development of A Jin into “a resolute revolutionary (坚定的革命者) (Yan Min, Nanyang xushi, 161). 99 Between Pematang Siantar and Batu Bara in North Sumatra. 100 It was serialized in issues 87-107 from August to December of 1947. It was one of only three long-form serialized texts that the magazine published, the other two being Hu Yuzhi’s Young Aviator and Shen Zijiu’s Exile on the Equator (流亡在赤道线上). 101 Baren, Linrenmen, Afterword, 122. 102 Incidentally, the rightful ownership after the war of wartime estate produce from prewar plantings became a highly contested issue (Twang, Chinese Business Elite, Chapter 6). 103 This concept is laid out in J.S. Furnivall’s Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy, especially Chapter 13. 104 Similarly, in another text discussed further below, Baren reasons that a Malay woman takes his tobacco without payment or even a “thank you,” because gratitude as a (Chinese) feudal norm is foreign to her (pre-feudal) social context (“Rensheng and those around him,” 110-111, 122). 105 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 186-187. 252 === [PDF page 267] === 106 Li Xuemin, “Zhengui shiliao shenqing huainian,” 433. 107 Qian Yingcai, Baren de shengping yu chuangzuo, 218. 108 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 197. 109 The “September 20 Incident (九二零事件)” was almost immediately memorialized, with the 1946 publication of a pamphlet in honor of the martyrs, "Blood Debt (血仇特刊)” and the construction of modest monuments in Siantar and Tebing Tinggi In the mid-1950s (“Yinni Subei huaqiao kangri douzheng gailüe”, 15). The names of the agents are given as Ma Baolong 马宝龙, Zhou Jingluan 周经鸾 and Ong 110 Chiau Heng (Baren, “Linrenmen,” 245; Kho An Kim, Penjara Fasis, 18). 111 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 246-47. 112 Kho was a founding member of the little-known Chinese Creole Party (Partai Tionghoa Peranakan) of Medan. He was one of the few ethnic Chinese authors to be published by the prestigious government publishing house, Volkslectuur/Balai Pustaka. The subtitle is a reference to Tan Malaka’s autobiography, From Prison to Prison (Dari Penjara ke Penjara). His postwar disappearance may have to do with his involvement in the infamous Pao An Tui (“Pembersihan [Cleanup],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-05-08, p. 2). 113 This experience makes up the bulk of Kho An Kim’s Fascist Prison, and is also described in Lu Huahan, “Sudao ‘Jiu er ling’ shijian huiyi.” 114 Xarim, an Acehnese communist interned for several years in Boven Digul for his role in founding the PKI's Sumatran branch in the 1920s, founded an independently-operating Sumatran branch of the PKI in 1945, turning it into one of the centers of gravity in North Sumatran politics in the postwar years. In 1953 he was purged from the PKI for unclear reasons. One Dutch military source characterized Xarim as a paramount threat due to his ability “to control two groups, Javanese workers and the Chinese community; through the former he achieves an accumulation of masses, and through the latter, of money." (PRIMA, Medan area mengisi Proklamasi, 707) The identification of the source is by Horton (“History Unhinged,” 20). Horton explains that 115 Abdul Xarim would have known Amir Rasjid through his brother Abdul Munir, with whom he was interned in Boven Digoel. 116 Prima, Medan Area Mengisi Proklamasi, 491. 117 Notably, when Abdul Xarim discovered plans to round up the Indonesian right-wing antifascist group IVAN, he did not intervene, and they were apprehended and executed, suggesting a deliberate strategy to ensure better odds for leftists after the war (PRIMA, Medan area mengisi proklamasi, 708). 118 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 40. Baren also states their activities were limited to Chinese circles (“Ji Li Fu,” 523). Anthony Reid states there was “little contact” between Chinese and Indonesian antifascists (Blood of the People, 155). The editors of Unforgettable 253 === [PDF page 268] === Years allude to occasional contacts before the September 20 Incident (“Yinni Subei Huaqiao kangri gailüe,” 6). His relationship with Xarim is attested in Heidhues, Citizenship and Identity, 125, as well as 119 Dutch intelligence (PRIMA, Medan area mengisi proklamasi, 707). 120 Note that PRIMA lists Baren, Zhao Hongpin and Ye Yidong 叶贻东 as leaders of the Fanmeng. It is possible that all contacts were made through Zhao, who had a wide network that included Chinese colonial police (”Baren, “Cong Mianlan dao Dijiaduoluo,” 149) and the Socialist Youth of Indonesia, a.k.a. Pesindo (Brondgeest “De ontwikkeling van het communisme, 121 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 40. Baren also states their activities were limited to Chinese circles (“Ji Li Fu,” 523). Something to this end is also reiterated in Reid, Blood of the People. 122 Shortly after the surrender was announced in 1945, Liu Yan traveled from Siantar to the Medan area to meet with Chinese community groups and Indonesian militias to try to mediate or mitigate conflicts (Wang Qianyu, 16): this particular episode adds to the general characterization of Liu Yan as an able negotiator. 123 Fei Zhendong and Ye Yidong were sent and apparently successfully brought an end to the conflict (Fei Wan, “Jugong jincui, 434). Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 367. In the same passage, Baren describes Abdul 124 Xarim as unprejudiced towards Chinese but somewhat lacking in strategic vision, omitting any mention of their longer history of collaboration. 125 Through this body, Baren promised he would bring Indonesian propaganda to the Chinese press in Malaya and Singapore during his 1946 circuit. According to a letter by Arief Loebis that was intercepted by NEFIS, CDL representatives including Shao Zonghan, Baren—introduced here as a former secretary of Chiang Kai Shek—his interpreter Chen Lishui, and Chen Hong of the old Huakang could contact him through Saleh Arif of the Central Market, and he would pass on news to the pemuda leader Zainal Zainur in Bukit Tinggi ("Letter from Arief Loebis to Governor of Sumatra, 7 Sep 1946" 2.10.62:5290). 126 Zhu Peiguan, “Mianlan huaqiao zonghui,” 243. NEFIS believed Baren to have briefly worked as a consultant and then quit the position under political pressure, and this is probably the truth (“Het Communisme onder de Chinese in Indonesie,” in NA 2.10.17: 977). Zhou Nanjing, even in agreeing that Baren never took an official position, references his "advisory work" (咨询工作) for the Republic of Indonesia (Zhou, Baren yu Yindunixiya, Afterword, 365). Baren also gave lectures for Indonesian politicians and militants in Siantar (Wu Shusheng, “Zhongyin yuyan qiaoliang,” 321). 127 “The Indonesian government wanted to hire me as a consultant, but I resolutely refused; I only worked as a consultant for the Chinese Association, assisting in the overseas Chinese democratic movement from the side” (Baren, “Zizhuan,” 413). Baren was likely trying to inoculate himself against criticisms of indiscipline or adventurism that had been worsened during his unsuccessful stint as ambassador from 1950-1952. Furthermore, the “Struggle Front” (Persatuan Perjuangan; Volksfront) that many of Baren’s associates were leaders in had rhetorical if not organizational links to Tan Malaka’s organization of the same name in Java. As a 254 === [PDF page 269] === heterodox communist who was sometimes accused of Trotskyism, Tan Malaka (who Baren praised in some of his political writing) could have been politically dangerous to be associated with. 128 For example, he tried to organize a performance of Temple of Five Ancestors in Bukit Tinggi in 1946 (Xu Anru, “Baren yu qi Wu Zu Miao,” 305). 129 See Biographical Notes for more information on Saleh Umar. The most detailed record of his observations on local politicians appears in the unpublished 130 manuscript “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” esp. Sections 4-6. 131 Williams, Modern Tragedy, Tragedy and Social Disorder. 132 Bao Limin, “Wang Renshu haisi Yu Dafu? 王任叔害死郁达夫? [Did Wang Renshu Betray Yu Dafu?]” Lianhe Wanbao 联合晚报, 1988-09-10, p. 8. 133 I discuss Temple of Five Ancestors in the next chapter. 134 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 247. 135 White, “Clifford Geertz,” 1192. White is describing the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s style in Religion of Java. 136 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 223. Old Ke, the merchant, is nonchalant when he hears about his peers “selling” their daughters to occupying officials (a logical investment), or to the deaths of smugglers at sea due to the Allied submarine blockade (a professional risk). This seems to Baren to express the “philosophy of life of a commercial society: everything is an act of buying and selling.” (Baren, “Linrenmen,” 248) Yan Min summarizes Old Ke’s characterization as “degenerate and opportuinistic,” and a “type [典型] of the overseas Chinese intermediary merchant [中间商人]” (Nanyang xushi, 160). 137 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 245-246. 138 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 249. 139 Baren’s refers to Mushanokoji (武者小路実篤) as the author of “To the Child” (与幼者), but he means Takeo Arishima (有島武郎), who was translated in 1919 by Lu Xun for New Youth (新 青年). Baren, who studied in Tokyo briefly in 1929, translated often from Japanese, including Iron (铁), 1929 by Iwafuji Yukio (岩藤雪夫). The Tolstoyan approach to rural life of the White Birch Group no doubt resonated with Baren’s concern for the Zhejiang peasantry, yet he was also no doubt aware of the scathing critiques of them by the proletarian cultural movement. See Zou Zhenhuan, “Baren fanyi lunshu.” 140 Baren, “Zhankai fan faxisi wenxue yundong,” 23. 141 Anderson, Limits of Realism, 92. 142 Anderson, Limits of Realism, 4. 255 === [PDF page 270] === 143 Anderson, Limits of Realism, 3. 144 Baren, “Gei Nanyang wenyi qingnian de yi feng xin,” 3. 145 Baren, “Gei Nanyang wenyi qingnian de yi feng xin,” 5. 146 Barabara Harlow, Resistance Literature, 16. 147 This is known as the “Mahua specificity debate (马华独特性论争)” and has a foundational place in the history of overseas Chinese literature. In another of his essays, Baren teases Hu Yuzhi for his absent-minded utopianism: he believes in a future of flying machines but can’t cook a pot of rice without burning it (Baren, “Zai Silabaye cun,” Part 6). 148 I am thinking of the discussion by Lukacs in “Realism in the Balance.” There is no evidence Baren read Lukacs’ work, though he followed Soviet literature closely, especially in the 1950s. The immediate context for this is, rather the 1930s practice, as exemplified in the writing of Mao Dun, of trying to reveal the links between the country and the city within fiction (see Chen Jianhua, Revolution and Form, Chapter 2; Qian Ying, Revolutionary Becomings, 75-80). 149 In the 1980s, the Indonesian Notes were published in a book called Indonesian Notes (印尼散 记), while the Malayan Notes, appended to Temple of Five Ancestors (五祖庙), were published for the first time. The distinction is also reflected by the editorial decision to include the Malayan Notes in the short fiction volume of the Collected Works, under the new heading of "Overseas Observations" (海外见闻), and the Indonesian Notes in the essays (散文) volume. Because two of the Malayan texts were published with the subtitle, "Notes from the Land Below the Winds: Malayan Writings" (风下之国散记马来亚之什), I think their separation into different volumes is awkward to justify, even as their formal features warrant it. 150 Frow, Genre, Introduction. 151 Baren, “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 351. In fact, Nawi was likely also a composite; consider that one of the other names, “Mandor 152 Huo,” appears in two different texts attached to different characters. 153 Marston Anderson describes this as a “combination of emotional satisfaction and an awareness of the moral failure that obstructs the full enjoyment of it.” His key example is of the ending of Lu Xun’s “New Year's Sacrifice (祝福)” (Anderson, Limits of Realism, 92). 154 Anderson, Limits of Realism, 178. 155 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 39. 156 Baren, “Nanyang bo,” 78. “Dry story (干故事)” is a double entendre on the “dryness” of the story and the friend’s desire for a drink to lubricate his storytelling. 157 Baren, “Di er dai,” 70. 158 Baren, “Yi jia de gushi,” 61. 256 === [PDF page 271] === 159 Baren, “Zhang Heming he Fang Ziming,” 49. 160 Baren, “Shuike he gongtou,” 11. 161 Baren, “Sala shan,” 20. 162 Baren, “Yueliang de youlai,” 91. 163 Baren, “Rensheng,” 138. 164 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 144. 165 Baren, “Cong Mianlan dao Dijiaduluo,” 184. 166 Baren, “Linrenmen,” 248. 167 Baren, “Zai Silabaye cun,” 314. 168 The immediate precedent for these texts is his “Notes from Living Overseas” (侨居散记), about his stopover in Hong Kong, published in 1941 in Singapore. Nick Admussen notes that after 1949 there was a notable hardening of genre, whereas earlier writers in the May 4th tradition consciously sought to bend genres (Admussen, “Trading Metaphors”). 169 In this sense, it was not so different from the explosion of mid-century travel literature in China during this period about more remote regions, especially non-Han ones—there is a kind of discovery of the nation at work. 170 Baren, Linrenmen (1952 edition), Afterword, 122. 171 Baren, “Lun Yinni de fandi douzheng,” 17. 172 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 76. Bakhtin’s emphasis on the polyglossic origins of the novel lends further confidence to this characterization, since Baren’s Notes are so concerned with the problem of (Indonesian) language. 173 Quoted in Gu Sifan, “Bianhou ji,” 337. 174 Kindler in "Towards a Partisan Aesthetics" reads Zhou Yang’s literary theory to differentiate between several terms that could translate “life”: the social and processual shenghuo 生活 is differentiated from the more metaphysical Rensheng 人生 and the biological shengming 生命. 175 The importance of observation is masterfully demonstrated by Christine Ho who, in her study of sketching in the PRC, Drawing from Life, has shown how the elevation of realism under socialism entailed the spread of practices of observational drawing and encouraged the direct experience of artistic subject matter. 176 For example in the strike in Medan and Belawan of October 8, 1946, the CDL-aligned “Staff Workers Association (职工会; Tjit Kong Hui) counted 1277 striking members, predominantly but not exclusively Chinese, while the non-CDL union counted one counted around 200, likely 257 === [PDF page 272] === all Chinese (“Boeroeh Asia di Medan dan Belawan [Asian Labor in Medan and Belawan],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-10-16, p. 2). 177 In some places, the left-right conflict did acquire the unambiguous characteristics of a class struggle. In Kisaran, for example, while all of the town’s organizations were dominated by the right-wing, the left was active among the suburban and rural peasantry (Yinni subei huaqiao cangsang suiyue xuji, 63). 178 On the activities of the clubs, see Huang Fulian, “Yi Liu Yan.” 179 Huang Fulian, “Yi Liu Yan,” 91. When her stepfather tried to marry her off, Huang was able to refuse with Liu’s support. After the war, Huang would become a formidable cadre in her own right, covertly leading the struggle to oust the pro-GMD principal of Siantar's Chinese Middle School. 180 Lü Huiying, “Yi Liu Yan Tongzhi,” 160-161. This woman was successfully escorted out of Pangkalan Brandan to a safehouse in Medan. 181 Baren, “Hanlei qinbi baogao Liu Yan xiansheng de shenshi,” 155-157. Politically, Liu had been formed by the campaign for coeducational schooling in Pingyao, and she was also involved in both the December 9 Movement in Beijing, and CCP-GMD negotiations around the Xi’an Incident (Zhang Chaoqun, “Lei Derong”). She must have been a talented organizer: after the Anti-Fascist Alliance gave up on contacting the PKI and reoriented towards the MCP in Malaya, she was one of two cadres selected to make the perilous journey across the straits; she later led a clandestine fundraising campaign for them that netted 4000 guilders (Huang Fulian, “Yi Liu Yan,” 90). 182 Liang Huizhen, “Mianhua Funühui,” 254. 183 Wang Qianyu, Zai chidao xian shang, 54. 184 “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 1946-08-13, in NA 2.10.62: 1881 185 Shen Zijiu, “Liuwang,” 29. 186 “Overview of the Chinese Press,” 1947-06-13, in NA 2.10.62: 1882. It appears in some memoirs as as tianyuan 田园. The title isalmost certainly an homage to Shen Zijiu’s groundbreaking supplement, Women’s Garden (妇女园地), in the Shun Pao 申报, from the 1930s. 187 “Uitgave van Hwa Kiauw Fului Lian Hap Hwee [华侨妇女联合会] (Federation of Overseas Chinese) te Pematang Siantar t.g.v. de Internationale Vrouwendag [Publication of the Federation of Overseas Chinese Women’s Association in Pematang Siantar for International Women’s Day],” 1947-03-08, in NA 2.10.62: 4731). 188 See Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, Chapter 1, for a detailed account of the critique of liberal feminism by Chinese Marxists such as Mao Dun. One of Gilmartin’s main observations is that the conflict between Marxism and feminism which was less acute in China than in Europe due to different social conditions (and by implication, that arguments like Mao’s were misplaced). 258 === [PDF page 273] === 189 Lü Huiying, “Yi Liu Yan tongzhi,” 162. 190 Liang Huizhen, “Mianhua funühui,” 253. 191 “Het Communisme onder de Chinezen in Indonesie [Communism among the Chinese in Indonesia]” in NA 2.10.17: 977. 192 “Perayaan 1 Mei [May 1 Celebration],” Kerakjatan, 1946-04-30. The somewhat sexist language here contrasts with the more neutral language of Soeloeh Merdeka. “Serbulah Persatuan Perjuangan Imperialisme Sedunia [Attack the United Front of World 193 Imperialism],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-05-02, pp. 1-2. 194 Lü Huiying, “Yi Liu Yan tongzhi,” 162. Similarly, in Aceh, initial Chinese-Indonesian tensions were mollified by the energetic participation in the celebration of the five-month anniversary of independence, and the Chinese, Indian and Indonesian women’s associations even joined into a single federation (Mawardi Umar, “A Successful Transition,” 331-2.) The CDL was active in Aceh, especially near the border with North Sumatra. 195 Wang Qianyu, Chidao xian shang, 44, 61. 196 Mawardi Umar, “A successful transition,” 331. 197 For a recent discussion of this magazine’s attempts to maintain the fraying MCP-CPC alliance, see Show, "Gendering Chinese Diaspora.” 198 Wang, Finding Women in the State, Chapter 3. 199 Zhiwen 之文, “Yinni nü ziwei tuan lingxiu Kadire nüshi laifang [印尼女自卫团领袖卡地惹 女士来访 [Indonesian Women’s Self Defense Corps Leader Khatijah Visits], Xin funü yuekan, 1946, no. 5, 10-13. Khatijah, who remained in Singapore and became a leader of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), does not mention this exchange in her memoir, although she does state that Chinese and Indian women’s groups fundraised for her organization (Memoir Khatijah Sidek, 87). She also speculates about why relations between Chinese and pribumi/bumiputera were more harmonious in Sumatra than in Malaya (125). Her memoir includes a moving description of a anticolonial activists teaching each other anticolonial songs in three languages—i.e. Malay/Indonesian, Chinese, and either Tamil or English—in a women’s prison (101). 200 Lin Zhiwen 林之文 (as Zhiwen 之文), “Yinni nü ziwei tuan lingxiu Kadire nüshi laifang [印 尼女自卫团领袖卡地惹女士来访 [Indonesian Women’s Self Defense Corps Leader Khatijah Visits], Xin funü yuekan 新妇女月刊 [New Woman Monthly], 1946, no. 5, 10-13. 201 Overview of the Chinese Press,” 1947-06-13, in NA 2.10.62 1882. According to this summary of an article from the Democratic Daily News, the meeting was held from June 28-July 1 in Siantar, and two delegates each from the associations at Kisaran, Pangkalan Brandan, Asahan, Siantar, Berastagi, Simpang Tiga, Rantau Prapat, Bindjei, Perdagangan, Batubara, and Seri Belawan were invited. The resolutions adopted suggest the scope of their program: resolutions were adopted for: (1) The development of a cadre training course. (2) A system of inspection to check and support work at the branches. (3) A campaign against a decadent hairstyle known as the "permanent wave." (4) The adoption of a constitution, a song, a banner, and an official pin. 259 === [PDF page 274] === (5) The promotion of reading clubs and schools. (6) The establishment of a cooperative. (7) The publication of a semi-monthly supplement to the Democratic Daily News, "Garden" (田园). Between the announcement and the meeting, two more associations formed at Perdagangan and Rantau Prapat (Lü Huiying, “Yi Liu Yan," 162). On the organizational history of the women’s movement, see also Liang Huizhen, “Mianhua funühui.” 202 Democratic Daily News 11 Jul 1947, cited in NA 2.10.62 1882. 203 “Het Communisme onder de Chinezen in Indonesie,” 81. 204 "Politiek en economisch verslag in de negara Sumatra Timur [Political and Economic Report on the East Sumatran State]," 1949-02-25, in NA 2.10.62 1694. 205 Wang Qianyu, Zai chidao xian shang, 112. 206 Wang Qianyu, Zai chidao xian shang, 139. 207 Luo Hanchao, “Bianhou shuoming,” 529. 208 Baren, Rensheng ji qi zhouwei de yi qun, Afterword, 108. It was originally written for Kong Lingjing’s Literature Today (今文学). 209 Erman, “Chinese ‘taukeh,’ labourers, and state control.” Both Baren and Shen Zijiu recorded a story that they heard in this area of a man sitting down to rest on a mangrove root, which then turned out to be an enormous snake (Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 139; Shen Zijiu, “Liuwang,” 12). Perhaps knowing that mangrove timber was the primary material for charcoal production would have allowed them to perceive this story not as a sign of remoteness from civilization but rather of proximity to capitalism, an allegory for the consumption of laborers by their products. 210 Baren, “Rensheng,” 101. 211 Baren, “Rensheng,” 101. 212 Baren, “Rensheng,” 109. 213 Baren, “Rensheng,” 109. 214 It recurs in Baren’s discussion of Indonesian literature, discussed in the next chapter, where he discusses the oral folk form of the “pantun.” 215 A different text, only published posthumously, suggests that Liu Yan nursed Baren back to health in early 1945, admonishing him not to die: “‘Your body is not your own.” “Then, is it yours?’ ‘Yes, it’s mine, but it’s also not mine,’ she giggled, ‘It’s the property of the Party. My body also isn’t mine, it’s yours, and it’s also the property of the Party’” (Baren, “Zai Silabaye cun,” 301). 216 Baren, “Rensheng,” 113. 217 Baren, Rensheng ji qi zhouwei de yi qun, Afterword, 111. This statement is from the 1952 edition. 260 === [PDF page 275] === 218 This analysis is based on Vijay Mishra’s analysis of mourning and melancholia in diasporic literature (Mishra, Literature of the Indian Diaspora, 8-10). 219 Baren, “Rensheng,” 112. 220 Baren, “Rensheng,” 114. 221 In trying to explain the market for children, i.e. the relatively high price commanded by children, the narrator recalls that in Zhejiang, adopted children are treated poorly by blood descendants because they are rival claimants to land, while among the overseas Chinese who are overwhelmingly merchants, an adopted child can be a trusted junior partner in the firm (Baren, “Rensheng,” 113). Baren does not perceive that part of the marketability of this child is a result not just of his sex, but also of his race, since both A Lu and his wife are “pure” Chinese. Interestingly, there was a relatively common practice of giving up daughters for adoption to non- Chinese families (Wu Qiao’e, “Wo de dage,” 489; Skinner, Report on the Overseas Chinese, 52; Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 151). 222 Similarly, when a brief and happy meeting with Yu Dafu in Medan in 1943 is interrupted late at night by a kempeitai demand that he procure sex for them, Baren narrates so as to elicit sympathy for Yu's difficult situation (Baren, "Yi Yu Dafu,” 510). 223 Baren, “Rensheng,” 106. The recurrence of this chilly language, I think, implicitly contrasts the warmth of revolutionary fervor. 224 Cooper, Family Values, 18. 225 Xia Jing, Nanyang shuxie yanjiu, 63-64. 226 Baren, “Rensheng,” 134. 227 Baren, “Rensheng,” 135. 228 I am reminded of Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, which critiques sociology and state policy to task for interpreting the sexual freedoms and experiments of early 20th century Black girls in American cities as reversions to primitive life rather than novel responses to their conditions: “Those who dared refuse the gender norms and social conventions of sexual propriety—monogamy, heterosexuality, and marriage—or failed to abide the script of female respectability were targeted as potential prostitutes, vagrants, deviants, and incorrigible children. Immorality and disorder and promiscuity and inversion and pathology were the terms imposed to target and eradicate these practices of intimacy and affiliation.” (Wayward Lives, Revolution in a Minor Key). 229 The “middle path,” of course, would have been invoked the polemics against misguided or even malicious fantasies of the possibility of neutrality in the movement of history, in the Cold War globally and the hot wars in China and Indonesia. 230 Baren, “Rensheng,” 138. Fang Fanren, Baren zhuan, 269. On paper Baren was still married to Wang Luohua 王洛华, 231 who he had left behind in Hong Kong with his two children. 261 === [PDF page 276] === 232 Liu Yan, “Liuwang riji,” 394. 233 Liu Yan, “Liuwang riji,” 395. She also complained about an “incompetent” reporter who had misquoted her, implying that Yamin was pro-Dutch. 234 The following description is drawn from Chen Wenying 陈文营, “Mianlan de minzhu nannü chentong zhuidao nü zhanshi Liu Yan 棉兰的民主男女沉痛追悼女战士刘岩 [The Democratic Men and Women of Medan Mourn the Fighter Liu Yan with Pain], Seng Hwo Pao, no. 192, 1948-06-20, pp. 8-9. 235 Zhu Peiguan, “Ji Zhongguo Minzhu Tongmeng Sudao zhibu shimo,” 237. 236 Cai Renlong, Nanwang de suiyue, 94. 237 Jieshuang, “Yi kuai shibei,” 374. 238 Li Huanqing, “Zhanhou Subei Huaqiao,” 224. 239 Dong is listed as a twenty-year old teacher, under the name Tong Thian Chie, in a Dutch list of members of the CDL performance troupe, Sandiwara Sin Chung Kuo (新中艺) (“Ledenlijst (49 personen) van de toneelvereniging Sin Zhungguo te Medan,” 1946-11-14, NA 2.10.17: 5020.) 240 “Nanyang huaqiao kangri aiguo geming wenshi yuanban jiu zhao pian 南洋华侨抗日爱国革 命文史原版旧藏照片[Original photographs of Nanyang Chinese anti-Japanese patriotic revolutionary history],” Kongfuzi.com, book.kongfz.com/201918/1179629952. Unable to afford the entire set, I purchased a set of scans from the seller; the seller’s relation to Dong Tianzhi is unclear to me. 241 “In Fujian, only in Fujian, was there a true anarchist movement. This movement wasn’t big, but it was a real movement. (在福建，只有在福建，才有果一个真正的无政府主义运动。这 个运动不大，但这是一个真正的运动)” (quoted in Gu Yeping, Zhongguo wuzhengfuzhuyi yundong, 404). 242 Pao Shih Tsun, Xiandai Yinni minzu yundong jianshi, 3. 243 As he had pointed out the entire Indonesian movement was effectively a youth movement, represented by the nominally socialist youth organization, Pesindo. He commended their energy but bemoaned their lack of theoretical acuity and unified leadership. (“Indonesia’s Youth Movement.” ) 244 Both Pramoedya and Rukiah were widely-translated in both Beijing and Jakarta into Chinese. 245 He is referring here to his internment from his arrest in July 1947 until his “voluntary” selfdeportation two months later. This episode is recorded in “A Foreign Prison,” (外国监牢记) a text that is sometimes included in the Notes. 246 Baren, “Gei airen Ma Yansheng de xin,” 472. Wang Jinding completed a manuscript of Equator (赤道线上), which was burned in 1967 by 247 Red Guards (Wang Jinding, “Lu hai meiyou zouwan,” 328). Gao Yunlan published the first part, 262 === [PDF page 277] === set in China, of a three-part novel, Spring and Autumn Kalpa (春秋劫), but never published the rest; it was also destroyed in the Cultural Revolution (for a summary, see Gao Xunying, Gao Yunlan zhuan, 158-164). 248 Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 41. 249 For example, he praised Luat Siregar as “a forceful revolutionary who was able to serve the people,” and mocked M. Amir as “a petty bourgeois intellectual who has had far too little Marxist-Leninism in his upbringing,” while Abdul Xarim he described as clever and progressive, but sometimes directionless (Baren, “Geming guanganji,” 366, 358). 263 === [PDF page 278] === Chapter 4: Indonesian Lessons At the uncertain juncture of 1945, there lay only two paths ahead: some form of collaboration with a colonial authority intent to reestablish itself, or coexistence with the great majority which was then seeking self-determination. Yet this latter path, which the communists enjoined the entire Chinese community to take, appeared blocked by something like a language barrier. Thus, one of the tasks they faced was to establish the conditions of dialogue by performing and promoting the study of Indonesian. This would demonstrate the possibility of an egalitarian and sympathetic communication. In contrast to the actual and imagined perception of Indonesian by local Chinese as a practical, limited and hybrid language, the Southbound intellectuals saw the language as undergoing a tremendous, even revolutionary, historical transformation, which they were privileged enough to witness and even (in their most active fantasies) participate in. In Baren’s 1948 primer for young readers in China, The Archipelagic Nation: Indonesia (群岛之国——印尼), the narrator Little Duan (小端; from the honorific tuan, “master,” “lord”) has this to say about the Indonesian language: Although their speech is different, their script is already unified (他们语言虽然不同， 但文字却已统一了). Just like in China, the unification of the script was not forced but natural … God forbid you believe those overseas Chinese who say Indonesia has too many nationalities, and cannot become a nation-state. They've been influenced by imperialist propaganda!1 Even the epistolary form of this book—a series of letters from a young reporter at a “prodemocracy newspaper,” son of a Chinese-Javanese plantation union, whose name is a translingual pun, to his childhood friend, who is now living in revolutionary Yan’an—represents the communicative ideal, of writing between equals, both intimate and distant.2 In this chapter, I seek to show how the encounter by a section of the Chinese communist intelligentsia with the Indonesian language, specifically in the context of 1940s Sumatra, shaped the ways in which they imagined world literature. Adhira Mangalagiri in her fascinating study of Sino-Indian literary exchange in the mid-century has focused on the moments of “disconnect” between Chinese and Indian authors.3 In this chapter, I show that the Sino-Indonesian cultural exchange was dense with connections, and if anything, the historian’s challenge is picking away 264 === [PDF page 279] === the layers of disavowal and occlusion which have accreted over these connections. This is the difference that diaspora makes to the telling of Afro-Asian solidarity. One of the most important interfaces was fortuitously created by the wartime exile of a group of Chinese communists working in Singapore into the hinterland of Sumatra, many of whom went on to careers within the cultural apparatus of the PRC. In the first section, I discuss the Southbound intellectuals’ study of Indonesian language and literature. The polyglot propagandist Hu Yuzhi, who wrote an Indonesian grammar and initiated a dictionary, plays an especially important role, but I also discuss his comrades Baren, Wang Jinding, Baren, and Shen Zijiu—as well as Yu Dafu, who will serve as a foil. I suggest that reveal an emergent linguistic ideology that reflected the postwar, postcolonial nation-state order. In the second part, I shift the narrative to the writer Baren’s prolonged engagement with Indonesian literature. In addition to offering a metaliterary reading of his play, Temple of Five Ancestors (1947; 1955). I conclude by drawing attention to his little-known activities in Afro- Asian publishing in the late 1950s. A School in Exile While the antifascist underground and democracy movement were organizationally shortlived, they accelerated or even catalyzed a complete transformation in the linguistic situation of the Chinese community of North Sumatra. The Southbound cadre elevated the study of Indonesian into a task of the highest priority. In addition to popularizing and facilitating the study of Indonesian, they also transformed it from an economic convenience into a political duty. Along the way, they also embraced a new linguistic ideology that viewed languages in a horizontal array (discrete and equal) rather than in a vertical continuum (blended and ranked). This allowed them to establish equivalences, including through a critical analogy of Indonesian modern literature with the May 4th tradition. Such a perspective would later take root within (1) the PRC's cultural diplomacy which involved substantive engagement with Indonesian literature and language, and (2) in local progressive Sinophone institutions, specifically through the 265 === [PDF page 280] === encouragement of an interest in Indonesian literature among a kernel of progressive Chinese youths in North Sumatra. To return to the antifascist years, studying Indonesian was both a pragmatic and a political necessity for the Southbound exiles. It would permit them to make a living in the short term, but also set the stage for postwar propaganda among the masses.4 Unsurprisingly for a group of intellectuals, one of their first activities once they had safely removed themselves from Singapore to the mountain town of Payakumbuh, was to establish a discussion group. The "Indonesian Problems Study Club" (印尼问题研究会), which often circulated handwritten research reports for reading during their meetings—sometimes to their network in other parts of Sumatra, too—focused on the politics, history, and language of Indonesia. Hu Yuzhi, the polyglot leader of the group, was unable to find a Chinese-Malay dictionary and set about compiling one on his own.5 At the time, only Hu could read let alone speak Indonesian with any fluency—the rest relied on him to transmit the content and tone of what he'd read.6 Most of the exiles hailed from north of the Yangtze and as such, speakers of “standard language" (普通话), mockingly referred to as "ordinary people" (普通人).7 However, rather than learning topolects like Hokkien or Cantonese that would have been more useful, they devoted considerable time to learning Indonesian. Ironically, Japanese was the language that had been critical for many of them in accessing the international left in the 1920s. Now, though, it could be an advantage, if kept secret, and a liability, if exposed—Yu Dafu, for example, was conscripted as an interpreter when he revealed his fluency, which ultimately led to his execution. Shen Zijiu, who had studied in Tokyo’s Ochanomizu University, recalled being seized by fear during an interrogation by military police on a train, only for one soldier to turn to another and gloat about his language skills, “See? They understand my Indonesian." This soldier was, of course, unaware that Shen was a beginner as much as he, and that in fact her Japanese was fluent.8 266 === [PDF page 281] === How and why they chose to study Indonesian marked them as outsiders. Wang Jinding, a literary critic and educator who had been a vocal proponent of mass literature and vernacularization in Malaya from the 1930s,9 recalls: Almost all of the Chinese (华侨) we met thought that it was unnecessary (多此一举) for us to study Indonesian (印尼语文). The Chinese who lived there have been living with Indonesians for generations, and to do business with them, even though they never studied Indonesian, and they can speak Indonesian (印尼话) just the same. In fact, that is only the Chinese own "Indonesian" (印尼语), shaped according to Chinese linguistic habits. Due to ethnic prejudice, the Chinese looked down on Indonesians.10 This unusual interest in studying Indonesian led first to suspicions that they were Japanese, and then to (correct) suspicions that they were wanted Chinese. Note that Wang Jinding's essay distinguishes Indonesian "language" (语文), what they were studying, from Indonesian "speech" (话), what the other Chinese were fluent in. They also sought out tutors, and these relationships were both exciting and dangerous. Wang Jinding recalls that his tutor once asked him whether he liked French literature, bringing up (French progressive author) Romain Rolland, perhaps because he had mentioned the novel, Graziella by the French Republican realist Lamartine in a homework assignment. A friend, Zhang Qicheng, found a separate tutor whose assigned readings included excerpts from Engels.11 These moments of mutual recognition, they realized, might easily lead to political exposure, and most soon returned to self-study. As media workers and language intellectuals, it is hardly surprising that these communist exiles threw themselves into language study. Many of the Southbound intellectuals were Esperantists, although by this point they had moved from the dream of a world language, with Hu Yuzhi arguing that "international languages were not a substitute for national languages but a means of communication between peoples."12 By this time, the utopian project of a single world language had been transmuted into the project of a family of national languages that would be internally standardized and fully translateable: as such, it is hardly surprising that they rejected both aesthetically and politically the hybridized, commercially-tainted "low Malay" in normal use among overseas Chinese. 267 === [PDF page 282] === Baren and Liu Yan, though less talented linguists than Hu Yuzhi, were also multilingual: indeed, Baren had translated multiple books through their Japanese versions, and Liu Yan had worked as an English instructor in Singapore. They brought the emphasis on study of Indonesian with them when they relocated to North Sumatra to participate more actively in antifascist struggle. Astonishingly, one participant recalls that some cells studying Indonesian often pretended to be studying Chinese or English to avoid suspicion!13 Thus, participation in antifascist cells initiated youth into two key activities that would shape postwar yinhua print culture: publishing political propaganda, and studying Indonesian. For those unfortunate enough to be captured and jailed, the prisons formed in some ways an even better school than the cells.14 Zhang Qiongyu, who ten years later would later interpret for Zhou Enlai during the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, learned Indonesian for the first time while imprisoned in Siantar.15 Among other things, he learned to sing Ambonese songs like "Sayang Kane," "Rasa Sayange," "Nona Manis Siapa Yang Punya," and "Hela Rotan" from ex- KNIL prisoners.16 Similarly, U Kuo-sen 吴国胜, detained in a Dutch concentration camp in Sabang, learned Batak songs including “Butet,” which would later be adapted into “Treasure” (宝贝), and would later publish anthologies of popular songs.17 One of the antifascist/democratic movement's most lasting effects, and one that is difficult to trace out, is the way it transformed the relationship of the Chinese-speaking community of Indonesia to language. This group’s perceptions and even romanticization of Indonesian can be seen in a preface to the grammar that Hu wrote and finally published in 1951 in Beijing.18 In this book, he used the pen name “Sabin,” (沙平), a contraction of “Sahabat Indonesia” (friend of Indonesia); the publisher also fancifully included an Indonesian title on the cover. "Because I loved the Indonesian people, I also came to love the Indonesian language."19 Comparing Indonesian to the "Italian of the East," with regular grammar and pleasing sounds, he waxes lyrically that the contract laborer in the Deli plantation was no less knowledgeable than the Amsterdam banker, and the Malay peasant in the thatched houses (rumah atap) are no less 268 === [PDF page 283] === culturally excellent than the New Yorker in the skyscraper. In a passage clearly intended to correct Han chauvinism, he writes, Overseas Chinese intellectuals typically look down on the local nationalities, and don't admit that they have any culture. They learn a few sentences of Malay, just to make buying and selling easier. I had no way of finding a teacher, so all the Indonesians I met became my teacher. The penghulu in the village, the Malay baby "showering" in the creeks, the coolie chopping wood in the forest, sailors, horsecart-drivers, the streetside vendors, the Malay aunties who washed our clothes, all became my volunteer teachers. I am only able to write this book thanks to them, those teachers whose names I don’t know.20 As this list also suggests, Hu Yuzhi's study of Malay was directly linked to his investment in direct contact unmediated by overseas Chinese with the romanticized Indonesian masses. The disdain for hybridized Malay used as a lingua franca, and, by extension, creole Chinese culture, is a characteristic of Chinese leftist discourse on language at this time, and directly proportional to the admiration of standard Indonesian. Interestingly, in his reevaluation of Indonesian, he also developed an explicit comparison of the language reforms of Indonesia and China, which more often was left implicit: Just like China's "May 4th" new culture movement, which began in the form of the vernacular (白话) movement, in Indonesia the script reform (语文改革) movement came first, and subsequently produced the new culture movement, with national independence and democratic freedom as its primary content.21 In other words, the Latinization of Malay, introduced to facilitate colonial administration, had the opposite effect, turning a local Sumatran language into the common language of the archipelago and setting the stage for both the nationalist movement and Indonesian participation in global intellectual exchange. In this original analogy, Indonesian's relation to Malay parallels classical Chinese's relation to modern Chinese.22 Indeed, Hu continued to be very active in script reform in the PRC, and was a proponent of full romanization. In this respect, Chinese should follow the footsteps of Indonesian's adoption of Latin to replace Jawi. In some sense, what Hu was intuiting was what Indonesianists have described as the unique affordances for modernity that are provided by a “markedly second and subsequent” language that belongs to nobody but is spoken by everybody.23 269 === [PDF page 284] === Sino-Malay Disavowed The parallel between Chinese and Indonesian was, however, predicated on a certain idea of standardized language. The studies I have discussed above either disavowed or, more commonly, ignored the voluminous writing by ethnic Chinese authors writing in Malay/Indonesian from the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as the urban lect spoken by many (and not exclusively) Chinese in Indonesia, which has sometimes been called “Sino- Malay,” but also “low Malay” or “market Malay.” Given the breadth and depth of the Southbound intellectuals' research, this must be intentional; it can only partially be explained by their location in Sumatra rather than Java, the epicenter of creole Chinese culture in Indonesia. Rather, May 4th intellectuals' investment in a modern vernacular largely stripped of topolectal difference (except, significantly, the Northernisms that marked proletarian speech) found a mirror in Indonesian's supersession of the various regional or communal languages like Batak, Javanese, and, crucially, “Sino-Malay.” Indeed, among the associates of the Antifascist League was one Kho An Kim, one of the rare ethnic Chinese writers who wrote primarily in Indonesian that was not based in Java.24 Despite Kho An Kim's likely acquaintance with Baren,25 this rare point of intersection between "totok" and "peranakan" literature is ellipted. Kho's own self-fashioning would lend credence to the idea that progressives sought to learn a "pure" Indonesian, unsullied by the hybrid culture of earlier migrants. His writing was marketed as "no different than that of true Indonesian writers (yang tidak ubah sebagai penulis indonesia sejati),” not "market Malay (melayu pasar)"26 and approvingly reviewed by Indonesian newspapers.27 The disavowed relationship between the “Sino-Malay” tradition and yinhua literature invites further research— one promising avenue of inquiry involves leftist peranakan intellectuals.28 The disavowal and/or omission of creole Chinese culture was reflective of a larger perception of the Chinese world of Southeast Asia as a cultural desert. In a polemic defense of the importance of the May 4th tradition to Southeast Asia, to critics who insisted on the need for a more local tradition, Wang Jinding wrote that: 270 === [PDF page 285] === What is the culture of us overseas Chinese? Our fathers and brothers of the last generation brought with them a pair of laboring hands and feet, but they did not bring the heritage of culture, and they even despised culture.29 Despite the efforts of cultural workers, he insisted that conservatism and chauvinism had prevented the development of a genuine culture that could transcend superstition and pornography. This unfortunate reality was captured in the caustic comment of a friend who had recently quit the politicized medium of woodcut printmaking to become a bookkeeper, "Brother, do we overseas Chinese need woodcuts? What's important is money, money."30 Baren's short story, "A Taukeh," which I discussed in the previous chapter as a critique of towkay hegemony over the ideological apparatus of the Chinese community, also expresses disdain at the hybrid language of peranakan culture, associating it with "towkay culture." A friend of the narrator cites the following offenses: the Anglicism lü (率; from "road") replaced lu (路) for road, the Indianism luozhi (罗知, from "roti") replaces binggan (饼干) for bread, the Malayism gaobei (羔丕; from "kopi") replaces kafei (咖啡) for coffee...31 The most egregious example is the code-mixed "balu [baru] laile" (峇鲁来了), for "newly arrived," which combines the Malay adverb "baru" (newly, just) with the Chinese verb phrase "lai le" (arrived, came). As with all ideologies of linguistic purity, loanwords appear here as a form of degradation. (Here, it is especially incoherent since several of the examples are for objects of foreign origin: the proper term for "coffee" is also a loanword!) As Tom Hoogervorst has shown, the creole Chinese press developed a self-consciously and sometimes proudly hybrid idiom on the basis of Malay, which drew lexically from multiple languages, including English, Dutch, Hokkien, Mandarin and Javanese; did not have a standard orthography or regulating body; and differed syntactically from both classical Malay and Indies administrative Malay (so-called “Ophuysen” Malay).32 While Hoogervorst’s study is focused on Indonesian-language writing, it is possible to imagine a form of sinography that is as liberal with its lexical borrowing as so-called "Sino-Malay." This is what we find in, for example, commercial accounts or legal petitions of the late colonial era, whose distinctive vocabulary led one Leiden sinologist to complain of this “bastard tongue,”33 or in multilingual publications such 271 === [PDF page 286] === as the early newspaper Ik Po 译报. There were even distinctive Southeast Asian graphs,34 such as ba 峇, used for transliterations, nya, a composite of the “woman” radical 女 with “elegant” ya 雅, for nyai (concubine),35 and ni 柅, an alternate word for rubber.36 One of the most visible features of such “hybrid” writing, in any language, is the frequent use of transliteration rather than translation for "foreign" words. For example, Sun Yat Sen's "Three People's Principles” (三 民主义) was generally referred to in Indonesian by the transliteration, "San Min Chu I,", rather than by the translation, "Tiga Prinsip Rakyat.” Yet within the Sinographic culture of the 1950s, Sukarno’s “Pancasila” is as a rule translated by its meaning of “Five National Principles” (五建 国原则) rather than transliterated as, for example, panchaxila (潘查希拉).37 I believe that this is reflective not just of a local difference between Chinese and Indonesian graphemic practice, but of the emergence of a different kind of international language culture in which yinhua print culture was especially involved. In this new culture, translation typically involved the selection of a Chinese written equivalent for an Indonesian written equivalent, rather than an interlingual transcription (of an Indonesian utterance in Chinese script). The perceived combination of commercialism and impurity in towkay culture was encapsulated in a psycholinguistic anecdote reproduced in Baren’s memoir, "In Silau Bayu Village," that a Javanese neighbor tells the narrator: As for those people that like to say that everything belongs to them, things won't end well for them. This is mine, that's mine, day in and day out all they say is "mine, mine," that kind of person doesn't participate in "gotong royong." My people despise that kind of "mine, mine." For "my house," we say "rumah saya,"(house - I) but the creole Chinese of Java like to say "saya punya rumah." (I - own - house) They have to add "punya," or "own." But people live in homes, they don't ride on them. Towkays always think they ride on top of homes.38 This passage extrapolates from one of the most distinctive grammatical features of the Malay dialect spoken by ethnic Chinese that is most obviously derived from Chinese: indication of possession through the grammaticalization of the verb for “to own” (“punya”), as a calque of the particle "dè” (的). This "head-final" practice differs from standard "head-initial" practice in Malay or Indonesian, which uses word order (possessor placed after possessed noun). In linguistic notation: 272 === [PDF page 287] === Sino-Malay construction Saya punya rumah 1SG POSS home Indonesian construction Rumah saya Home 1SG In the second part of the statement, the neighbor seems to interpret (1) as needlessly focalizing ownership, since the word “punya” is liable to be heard not in its grammaticalized former as a possessive but in its original sense as a verb phrase. In addition, he may hear it as focalizing the owner, through the earlier placement of the owner "saya," for "I." In his rhetorical comparison of a house to a horse, he is also perhaps alluding to a fundamental distinction between different kinds of possession, grammaticalized in some languages (but not Indonesian or Javanese) as alienable and inalienable possession. Fashioning himself an interlocutor between a folksy Indonesian wisdom and the narrator then insists that there may be some truth to the Javanese criticism of Chinese "mine-ism" ('我的'主义). Although the psycholinguistic interpretation here is questionable, it matters that one of the rare references to the creole culture of Java in Baren's writing is part of a holistic critique of commercial culture. Two Kinds of Indonesian At this point, we are ready to expand on the nature of the shift in linguistic ideologies at work. We can do so by comparing the “Indonesia-philia” of the Chinese leftist exiles, exemplified by their leading linguist Hu Yuzhi, with a fellow traveler who was equally bilingual but with very different attitudes towards the language. Like Hu Yuzhi, Yu Dafu appears to have been a natural polyglot and rapidly acquired Indonesian fluency. Due to his Japanese fluency, as mentioned above, he was impressed into military service. Baren wrote on several occasions about Yu’s Indonesian. In one essay, he recalls that on his arrival in Sumatra, Yu disguised himself as a petty trader, and his Indonesian was limited just to numbers for haggling: "satu" (one), "dua" (two), "tiga" (three).39 In another essay, when he 273 === [PDF page 288] === asks how Yu learned Indonesian, Yu responds, shaking his head: "God only knows, I learned it from the black and bruised skin of Malays."40 In other words, as an interpreter, any of his errors or imprecisions in translation would be visited on suspects as physical torture. In any case, Yu's acquisition of Indonesian was linked to pragmatic concerns of survival linked to oral communication, whether in the marketplace or the interrogation room. His use of Chinese, especially in this period, was quite different. Even though he is remembered primarily for his early promotion of the "vernacular" (白话) short story, later in life he wrote primarily regulated verse, often using historical allusion, as part of a web of social relations with other Chinese men of high status.41 In other words, unlike his use of Malay, his use of Chinese was primarily written, and at least superficially non-pragmatic. I think that we can perceive in Yu’s use of these languages a parable for a very different linguistic relation, one that is perhaps more representative of the social situation. In sociolinguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two languages are in use within a society—it is quite common that one has a “high” and one a “low” position..42 This diglossia might reflect a racial hierarchy, since the status of Malay was lower than Chinese, but it could also take a gendered edge, which is visible In Yu's relationship to his new wife, He Liyou (何丽 有), with whom he communicated in Malay/Indonesian. For example, almost all Chineselanguage accounts by those close to Yu in Sumatra specifically note that Yu referred to her in her presence as stupid (specifically, bodoh). In 1944 Yu Dafu married this "servant girl… with a plain face and low status," because he "sympathized with her fate!"43 Like the word "dumb" in English, "bodoh" suggests an inability to comprehend and communicate. "Dafu knew that a literate, clever woman would be harmful to his present situation… but he needed women."44 The linguistic/sexual inequality between the polyglot poet and the illiterate servant-girl is only deepened by Gao Jiaqian's gloss on her name, which Yu had chosen for her, may have been a cruel joke. "He Liyou" (lit. “how/what” – “beautiful” – “have”) can be read as a pun on her supposedly plain appearance, meaning something like "what beauty does she have?"45 274 === [PDF page 289] === On the one hand, Yu's Malay is ethnic, commercial and oral; on the other, Hu's Indonesian is national, political, written. This distinction is not just a matter of different attitudes towards Indonesians, though that is part of it—they also reflect different attitudes to language between the two polyglots. As mentioned earlier, although Yu is best-known for his role in popularizing vernacular prose, he was, especially in his later years, deeply invested in the classical tradition. Hu, on the other hand, an Esperantist, a phonocentrist, and an advocate of full romanization of the Chinese script, was as as anti-traditionalist as they come.46 I would argue that these two linguistic situations represent "emergent" and "residual" paradigms, homologous to the distinction between the post-war nation-state order and the prewar colonial-imperial order. While this is not visible in Yu's use, the transition from a hierarchical to an egalitarian view of languages is inseparable from the shift away from hybrid to distinct languages. In other words, in the late-colonial context, inequality coincides with linguistic hybridity, including in the use of codeswitching, extensive transliteration, and locallyspecific neologisms. In the postwar context, however, the precondition of linguistic equality is a clean separation of languages. This separation, of course, depends on linguistic standardization, which crucially almost always involves an explicitly ideological project of de-foreignizing, e.g. the elimination of loan words or perceptibly foreign spelling and sounds. In summary, Chinese-speaking communists in Indonesia highly valued the study of Indonesian and the practice of translation, as the case of the Sumatran southbound writers shows. Ironically, this emphasis was most visible among new arrivals who studied standard Indonesian as a foreign language, rather than among local-born who had familiarity from birth with Indonesian languages. As applied linguistics has long shown, acquisition of language as an adult through formal education (L2) fundamentally differs from acquisition from childhood through caretakers and peer groups (L1). Despite their praise of the sounds of Indonesian, their study was basically “bookish,” yet this was not a problem given the trend towards standardization of Indonesian. 275 === [PDF page 290] === Chinese leftists promoting the Indonesian language condemned the chauvinist tendencies to view Indonesian as inferior and inadequate, and the hybrid forms of Indonesian/Malay that were in common use, especially among creole Chinese. We could state that they understood languages not in a vertical continuum, with Chinese above Indonesian, but in a horizontal array; this rearrangement, however, also required a delineation of Chinese and Indonesian as distinct and contained. The "language institutions" of the schools and the press that they shaped promoted a model of multiple, mutually exclusive languages that were ultimately subject to the regulation of two separate nation-states. In other words, they promoted a postcolonial bilingualism to replace colonial diglossia. While intellectuals like Baren sometimes praised orality, which they linked to popular forms, in practice they emphasized a highly graphocentric approach to language. In Southeast Asia, because the language of daily life was often a mix of Southeastern Chinese topolects lexicalized with non-Sinitic languages, the gap opened between speech and script by the promotion of a Northern-based “plain speech” (白话; sometimes translated as “vernacular”) as standard Chinese was even more glaring. The conventionalized use of Northwestern dialect (e.g. “俺” /an/ for “I,” used in Temple of Five Ancestors) to symbolize proletarian status in a part of the world where Northerners were, as a rule, teachers and merchants, was one example. The elevation of the spoken word in theory, and its demotion in practice, was an unresolved paradox in yinhua linguistic practice. This elevation of fidelity of meaning, which was assumed to inhere in the graph, over sound, was linked to a general belief in the capacity to construct accurate correspondences between all well-regulated languages. More speculatively, it was also linked to the promise of socialist epistemology, which was to see through the formal appearances of things (where an older generation, in this case, of commercially-inclined Chinese, may have lingered) into their true core. Chinese leftist exiles were a vanguard of new linguistic ideologies, and their passion for the study of Indonesian is not separable from their faith in the project of linguistic standardization. Viewing Indonesian and Chinese as two separate, equal languages, they 276 === [PDF page 291] === produced a metalinguistic apparatus for establishing translatability between them, which is why many of them became involved in lexicography.47 When Hu left Sumatra, he had only finished the A’s for his dictionary project. He handed off the rest to Pao Shih Tsun 包思井48 who would go on to become a leading expert in Indonesian/Malay in postwar Singapore. The completed Hu- Pao dictionary was finally published in 1949, challenging the dominance of Lie Joek Koey's 李 毓凯 dictionaries, which were published by a KMT-affiliated press under different names in at least thirty two editions between 1931 and 1972. By 1952, Pao’s publisher could boast at least nine volumes related to Indonesian and Malay, which were already being categorized separately.49 Pao’s was not the only dictionary produced out of this seminal encounter of the modern Chinese left with the Sumatran revolution.50 Although there were efforts to publish more language resources in Indonesia and China,51 this Singaporean edition, with hidden Sumatran roots, was the standard reference for left-leaning writers until the simultaneous publication in 1963 of two more dictionaries. The first was the husband-and-wife duo Chen Feng (alias of Tan Beng Honn 陈明枫) and Huang Jinfeng's 黄金凤 Indonesian-Chinese Dictionary (印度尼西亚语汉语辞典) with Beijing's Commercial Press. Chen was a "totokized" thirdgeneration Javanese peranakan who had succeeded Shao Zonghan after his deportation as editor in chief of the CDL newspaper, Democratic Daily News.52 The other was Sadar Foundation's Concise and Practical Indonesian-Chinese Dictionary (简明实用印汉词典) by Chen Zhanhu (pseud. Shannu), a North Sumatran later associated with the Chiao Hsing group.53 Similarly, as Goh Siew Poh has argued, the “National Language Movement” in Malaya after 1957 was shaped by this earlier Indonesian experience.54 Every single one of these dictionary editors learned Indonesian, as was the rule in North Sumatra in the era of struggle, as adults, making a conscious and politicized choice. Here, again, we see the long afterglow of the unique history of 1940s North Sumatra: As Xie Kankan has recently shown, many of the cadre from the Medan-Siantar network went on to high-ranking positions within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Liaison Department. They also produced the personnel that went on to establish the Indonesian program at Beijing Foreign 277 === [PDF page 292] === Studies University.55 Not only that, but they did so, in an important sense, through (the ideology of internationalism that they encountered in) Chinese. In some sense, the fact that these dictionary editors learned Indonesian as a later language is typical. As Webb Keane has pointed out, “Indonesian is a language whose ideological value has from its early days derived in part from being portrayed to its speakers as a markedly second and subsequent language;” it was this openness which made it especially appropriate for a project of modernity.56 This impact was not limited to Southeast Asia, though. Hu Yuzhi would later become one of the most zealous campaigners for language reform in China, describing the inherited script as “a rotten corpse (腐 烂的死屍) that spreads its germs to living people. His search for a “future, living script (未来的 活文字)”57 was likely influenced by his interpretation of the Indonesian linguistic experiment, with its jettisoning of history (read: the Arabic-based script of Jawi) and embrace of modernity (read: the Latin script). 278 === [PDF page 293] === Figure 31. Two models of language ideology. (a) The hierarchy of civilizations, corresponding to the prewar racial-imperial order. (b) The assembly of nations, corresponding to the postwar nation-state order. 279 === [PDF page 294] === “They Don’t Read Our Books” Shen Zijiu recalls that one day, her home was raided by Indonesian policemen, and although they were unable to read the incriminating Chinese-language books, they did discover romance novels (言情小说) that they were learning Indonesian from. Suspiciously, they said, "you're not merchants—the other Chinese don't read our books," but they were mollified when she offered them the books as gifts.58 While we don't know which book exactly it was, we can guess. It might well have been the Sumatran author Hamka, well-known for his novels that staged a conflict between modernity and tradition for young men living in the city, far from their home villages. Wang Jinding recalls buying a copy of Hamka's Sinking of the Van der Wijck (Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck)59 while in Berastagi, and Shen began a translation of Hamka's Sojourn to Deli (Merantau ke Deli) during this period.60 A reader familiar with the Indonesian literary canon will notice here that the texts mentioned so far are not exactly standard. Although they also read the canonical authors associated with the magazine Pujangga Baru (New Poets), and the colonial publishing house Balai Pustaka, they also read and valued Sumatran writers associated with commercial publishing houses in Medan, including not just Hamka but also less-remembered writers such as Saleh Umar (pseud. Surapati). These "dime novels" (roman picisan), perhaps the same as the “romance novels” that the Indonesian police confiscated from Shen Zijiu, often featured protagonists caught in a conflict between tradition and modernity, often in relation to marriage and inheritance.61 For example, Wang Jinding recalls being smitten by the lucidity of Hu Yuzhi's interpretations of writings by M. Amir, who would become the Mayor of Medan after the war.62 In fact, the southbound intellectuals emphasized translations by authors who were politically active, as when they identified Sjahrir’s "Literature and the Masses" (文艺与大众) as a kind of proto-Maoist text. 63 In a postscript to translations of Amir, Wang Jinding noted that he "mainly wanted to use these texts to show the language of Indonesian (vulgarly known as Malay), which is not, as is commonly thought, impoverished (贫乏) and incapable of expressing rich feelings and concepts."64 280 === [PDF page 295] === Another politically active author was Saleh Umar (pseud. Surapati), a left-nationalist leader of the PNI and an influential link between the prewar generation and the postwar youth. Jinding translated both his "Deli's Golden Age" (黄金时代的日里) and "Revenge" (报复) he also translated.65 The Indonesian version of “Deli’s Golden Age,” which was also mentioned by other memoirists, including Baren, has not been identified, and Saleh Umar himself is hardly remembered in Indonesian literary history.66 In one article, Jinding praised Saleh Umar’s ability to build a narrative out of a specific event, which contrasted the fatalism, sentimentalism, and individualism that was typical of many writers—this ability, which was compatible with political agitation, was probably also what recommended him to the Japanese occupation, where he worked in the propaganda department.67 “Deli’s Golden Age” focuses on a Javanese laborer on a tobacco plantation, Warjo (瓦尔焦), who is mistakenly accused of attacking a Dutch planter whose life he was in fact saving.68 The opening sequence contrasts the impulse to save a stranger with the compulsion to remain in the field at work: In his heart a conflict stirred, as feeling and reason collided. This was a contradiction of two kinds of responsibility: the responsibility of a human, and the responsiblity of a coolie [做人的责任和做苦力的责任感]. The planter, who is embarrassed by this debt of honor to a laborer, never corrects the mistake. When his child dies, he is refused time off to bury him, and his depression leads him to slow down his pace, for which he is held criminally liable. Another misinterpreted gesture—he raises his hand, while holding a sickle, to salute the planter—leads to a ten-year imprisonment. This short text is representative of anticolonial fiction, in its contrast of the wealth of the planter and the poverty of the colonized; in the depiction of Warjo as a victim who does not contemplate resistance; and in the focus on the abuse of legal mechanisms. It was Baren who, probably informed by conversation with Jinding, would publish the most extended discussion of modern Indonesian literature in Chinese up to that point.69 In a special issue on "cultural freedom" edited by Mao Dun, heavily featuring Soviet literature, Baren adjudges the development of modern Indonesian literature as "not especially glorious" (并不十 分灿烂光辉). 70 In other words, although he does not spell out this analogy, they had not 281 === [PDF page 296] === progressed beyond the initial stages of the May 4th New Culture movement. Despite the rich cultural tradition and natural creativity of the Indonesian people, the intelligentsia had failed to grasp Marxism-Leninism and so neglected the task of developing a militant, mass culture; for him, this failure is attributable to the lack of a class basis for them, the weakness of the national bourgeoisie in relation to the predominance of Western big capital and Chinese small capital. Modern Indonesian literature, for Baren, emerges "under the practical circumstances of the ebb of the revolution (革命的退潮) and high political pressure,”71 i.e. the 1927 communist uprising. He speaks positively of Hamka's work as an investigation of the commercial pressures on a feudal society—which was close to Baren's own interests in Chinese agrarian change—and of the Pujangga Baru generation's commitment to nationalism. (The Pujangga Baru tradition will return in the next section, when Baren incorporates some of their work into his own.) He is critical of the modernist rejection of all tradition, which he sees as Europhile. The most direct statement on mass culture, Sjahrir's "Literature and the People” from 1938, is correct in terms of literary theory, but persists in viewing intellectuals as a class apart and above the people, with the task of educating rather than integrating with the masses. The post-war situation is even grimmer, since the old generation have fallen silent, and the futile search for "middle way" (中间思想) which would preserve cultural unity and political independence, without challenging imperial interests, is hegemonic. What is most interesting for us is that he introduces the essay with a discussion of the prevalence of the folk form of the pantun, which we will return to later. This folk form demonstrated a rich cultural tradition and plentiful creative talent and mourns the fact that this oral form has mostly not been written down. In the conclusion, his claims about the insufficiency of Indonesian literature are, interestingly, framed in terms of a simile with ideas about textuality and orality, as he returns to the opening discussion of pantuns. The failure to form an intellectual and cultural vanguard, on the implicit model of Moscow or even more precisely of Yan'an, was like the reliance on oral transmission of the form. The power of this simile derives from 282 === [PDF page 297] === associations between the textual and the scientific, as progressions from the oral and the primitive: Indonesia's literary thought has not yet approached the edge of Marxism-Leninism (还没 有接近马列主义的边缘). Although, in the past three years, the Indonesian people have already been encouraged by their practical struggles in the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, they are able to write only with their blood and lives on the land of their parents (但他们还只能用血和生命，写在他们父母的土地上), in this era that gives rise to epic poetry (创造这样史诗的时候), just as in the past they have only been able to use the mouth and the ear (只能用“口”和“耳”) to preserve the literary inheritance of their ancestors. 72 The Indonesian revolution, in other words, is almost prelinguistic, or rather, it is specifically preprint—written with the body using blood on soil, rather than with the machine using ink on paper. An Anthology in Disguise One of the primary means by which the North Sumatra Democracy Movement, discussed in the previous chapter, disseminated its propaganda was through the creation of a new culture of performance. The CDL in Medan established a performance group, the New China Troupe (新中 国剧艺团; Sandiwara Sin Chung Kuo) and similar groups appeared in Pangkalan Brandan (火花 剧艺社; Sparks Troupe) and Siantar (新民歌剧社; New People’s Troupe). 73 All three of these troupes were based in the antifascist network’s cadre education program, and they drew on a common repertoire of plays, dances, and songs. In addition to the nascent canon of revolutionary Chinese songs such as the Yellow River Cantata and the March of the Volunteers, they frequently sang popular songs of Indonesian independence, sometimes translating or adapting the lyrics. Republican radio stations extended the reach of these goodwill tours even further by inviting CDL-affiliated troupes to perform.74 The discovery and elevation of “folk” forms played a prominent part in this new culture: the sowing songs (秧歌) made famous by the revolutionary culture of Yan’an, whose analogue was discovered in Indonesian folk forms like the ronggeng dance. The turn to such forms that could be seen as properly representative of the national involved a recoding of forms of Southeast Asian performance which were sometimes seen as too 283 === [PDF page 298] === regional, such as the Hokkien genre of gaojiaxi,75 or too hybrid, such as the komedi stambul.76 While most of the repertoire was “borrowed,” even if heavily adapted—especially through creative translation—some “original” works were also created. “The late 1940s and 1950s were a high-water mark for Chinese-language community theatre.”77 Spoken theater (huaju), i.e. “straight” drama without music,78 was an important and novel part of this performance culture. As Stenberg states in his authoritative study of Chinese- Indonesian performance culture, it had a political genealogy: “its materials and inspiration derived from Chinese leftism before and after establishment of the PRC.” The most well-known of the original plays from this period was one by Baren entitled Temple of Five Ancestors, first written in 1946, and revised multiple times later on.79 Temple is based on a regional folktale about the collective trial and execution of a group of 19th century indentured laborers who murdered a plantation foreman. First written for performance in May 1946, it had at least three runs in the region.80 His stage directions describe the theme of the play as being, in a quatrain that may also nod to the pantun form, the racialized political economy of colonialism: The land of local peoples, 当地人民的土地， - the blood and sweat of Chinese coolies; 中国苦力的血汗； The capital of Europeans, 欧洲人的资本， this is the world of the colony. 这就是殖民地的世界。81 In devising the plot, Baren took literary license to combine this incident with a different story about a Batak-Gayo raid on a planter family, establishing a template for historical narratives of interethnic rebellion that would endure into the independence period.82 To do so, he also invents a Chinese character, Hei’er (黑二; lit. “Black Two”) who links the worlds of the plantation laborers and the peasant rebels, and dramatically sacrifices himself in the closing scene.83 In mid- and late 1946, this play went on tour throughout Northern Sumatra, as one part of the CDL's propaganda effort, both in Dutch-held Medan and the surrounding Republican areas, armed with knowledge of revolutionary Indonesian songs in place of a passport for the military checkpoints, some of which later recorded for radio.84 The actual play people saw was very different from Baren's script, since they cut all the Indonesian characters except for one woman 284 === [PDF page 299] === who sings and dances, purportedly because directly promoting interethnic solidarity would invite Dutch repression; it ends early with the tragic death of the five coolies, omitting the bloody interethnic insurrection that Baren called for.85 Recently, this play has attracted special interest from scholars of Chinese-Indonesian history and Chinese diasporic literature in recent years, who recognize it as a genuinely novel response to the historical conjuncture. For Taomo Zhou, this play represents the Chinese left’s support for the Indonesian revolution.86 Josh Stenberg has shown how, in comparison to a later treatment of the same theme by Shalihong, the play's strong emphasis on interethnic solidarity was characteristic of the internationalist politics of CPC exiles, as opposed to the minoritarian politics of Indonesia-born progressive Chinese which tended to emphasize only Chinese characters.87 And Nicholas Y.H. Wong has read Baren's play, as well as an earlier short story by Zeng Huading adapting the same legend, to propose an ecological analytic of colonial resource extraction for Chinese diasporic literature.88 These recent studies reflect the shared sense that Baren’s Southeast Asian works are a promising entry into transnational histories of Chinese literature, since he is one of only a few writers with a foothold in both Southeast Asian history and the modern Chinese literary canon. Adapting the Malay Pantun There are many ways to read this play, but I propose here to read Temple with a special focus on its inclusion of Indonesian poetry, beginning with the deployment of pantuns in the 1947 second version, sometimes also referred to by the alternate title Five Coolies Hanged to Death. The first version of the script, let alone performance records, cannot be recovered, but memoirs insist on the centrality of the musical dimension from the beginning to this play’s early life as propaganda. In mid-1946, when this play went on tour throughout Northern Sumatra, as one part of the CDL's propaganda effort, in both Dutch and Indonesian-controlled areas: at the checkpoints, “Indonesian revolutionary songs were more effective than any travel pass.”89 (This was during the peak of collaboration between the CDL and the Republic’s communist 285 === [PDF page 300] === leadership.) In addition to the problematic changes to the plot, the dialogue was also altered from Baren’s Mandarin, which, at least in later versions, made anatopic use of Northern Chinese-isms such as an (俺) in place of wo (我) for the first person singular.90 Xu Anru and the New China Troupe under his direction instead adapted the dialogue into Teochew, with a liberal inclusion of the “particular language used by Chinese workers that mixes Chinese and Indonesian (华工常用 的华、印尼语混合的特殊语言)”.91 In order to better serve Indonesian audiences, they also included Indonesian songs (or Chinese songs with Indonesian lyrics) into their program, many of which were provided by Zhang Qiongyu, who had presumably learned them during his imprisonment, and Chen Wenying, whose mother was Javanese and was one of the few fully bilingual CDL intellectuals.92 Notably, both the PNI leader Saleh Umar (aka Surapati), who we encountered above, and the PKI propagandist Jahja Jacoeb praised the play after seeing it performed in Siantar. 93 The Governor, Hasan, tried to extend the tour.94 The official Republican newspaper of Sumatra, Soeloeh Merdeka, hailed it as a success, “raising their hats” to this demonstration about Dutch cruelty, and singling out the singing ability of the Chinese youth who performed the only Indonesian character.95 The multilingual performance must have encouraged Baren in his choice to feature Indonesian pantuns within the play, usually delivered by the Javanese women characters (Melati and Bunga Tawa) who function as messengers and scouts for the interethnic rebellion. This decision reflected the communist intellectuals’ interest in folk forms in general, and the pantun in particular. Hu Yuzhi began to collect and publish them in translation in Below the Winds in 1946.96 Indeed, the interest in this form actually went back at least to the 1920s, when university students from insular Southeast Asia—including Zheng Tufei—began to translate what they generally termed “Malay lovesongs.”97 As a rule, these earlier translations associated the genre with a primitive and unrestrained sexuality that capitalist modernity also aspired to. While Baren may not have read these specific translations, people around him surely would have, and he likely was writing against the backdrop of the association of the Malay pantun with Republicanera discourses of free love and primitivism. 286 === [PDF page 301] === The inclusion of pantuns also serves an ethnographic function, communicating the authenticity of Baren’s account. I am reminded of how Gajarawala has shown in her antigenealogy of Dalit literature, one of the most consequential literary currents in postcolonial India was a “regionalism” whose ethnographic gaze placed a high premium on the collection and presentation of folksongs.98 For example, in the second act, when the Chinese agent of the plantation owner harasses Melati, she mocks him with this song: The rain comes, the goat runs; Hujan datang, kambing lari; 大雨来了，羊儿跑掉； The Chinese are happy at heart; Orang Tionghoa, senang hati; 中国人呀，心里快活； The Javanese suffer and die. Orang Jawa, susah mati. 爪哇人呀，辛苦死了. 99 He footnotes this with, "this is a folksong sung by Indonesian peasants to mock Chinese people. The author has personally heard it, straight from their mouths.”100 In this case, the interethnic antagonism is contained within an interaction with one of the "bad" (read: KMT) Chinese, and it is presented early in the play so that it can be overcome through shared struggle. Yet the voyeuristic pleasure of observing a primitive culture is not the primary purpose of the inclusion of these songs. Rather, they deliver a metacommentary on revolutionary culture. What is valuable about folk culture is, indeed, not its unchanging nature, but precisely the opposite: its historicity. To post-Yan’an Forum intellectuals, the “typical folk forms” of the pantun and the ronggeng dance must have seemed a clear analogue to the seed-sowing songs (秧 歌) of Northwest China, which were also very popular in the progressive Chinese schools of Southeast Asia.101 This kind of adaptation is literally the first thing we see on stage. In the opening scene, Bunga Tawa sings a pantun which, in modified versions, reappears throughout the play like a leitmotif: Different handle, different blade, Lain ulu, lain parang, 不同的柄儿，不同的刀， A church is built on the hill; Sayang gereja di atas bukit; 可惜啊教堂造在山顶 Different past, different present, Lain dahulu, lain sekarang, 不同的过去，不同的今朝， Things are different, not just a bit. Jauh beda bukan sedikit. 今昔的不同呀异常分明。102 287 === [PDF page 302] === On hearing this, Razal (who is the lieutenant of General Selan, the leader of the interethnic revolt) objects that the poem is a bit too morose. Instead, he improvises the following version, which has a more political content: Different handle, different blade, Lain ulu, lain parang, 不同的柄儿，不同的刀， Our land is completely gone; Bumi kita habis sekali; 咱们的土地呀全盘完了。 Different past, different present, Lain dahulu, lain sekarang, 不同的过去，不同的今朝， The people of Deli are dying. Orang Deli sengsara mati. 日里人民呀痛苦死了。103 Later in the play, Bunga Tawa now sings Razal’s version of the song, illustrating an instance of organic and successful folksong adaptation. Here, Baren uses the plasticity of the social form of the pantun, in which it is common to retain the allusive opening, referred to as a "pembayang," (approx. "shadow") usually the first couplet, but in this case, the first and third lines, while substituting in new referents, referred to as maksud ( “meaning”).104 A general plaint with an implicit, religious criticism of colonialism ("the church") is modified into an explicit, materialist critique ("our land"). Here we see not just a demonstration of applied Maoist cultural theory, but also evidence of the imbrication of the category of folk with “colonial modernity”—as Lydia Liu has indicated, this legacy represents an underexamined aspect of Maoist populist aesthetics.105 These songs are not just embellishments but integrated into the plot—they play a key role in inciting rebellion, in particular. For example, the decision of the five aggrieved Chinese laborers to execute their overseer is spurred by just such a song. In Act Two, the five laborers visit Bunga Tawa’s small streetside stall that serves as the primary site of extracolonial sociality to drink tuak. There, Bunga Tawa sings sad songs about lost love. But each quatrain she sings is progressively more tinged with revenge: The Chinese can't return, Orang Tionghwa ta' boleh 唐山人会不得唐山， The Northern winds haven't pulang, 北方的风信也没有送来； come. Angin utara belum datang; 灵魂烧焦了身体 The soul burns the body, Jiwa bernyala membakar badan, 谁胆敢把敌人杀害?106 Who dares to kill? Siapa berani membunuh orang? After Bunga Tawa sings, one of the customers repeats back the Indonesian-language poem in Chinese translation, as if it is the same. This repetition is also gendered: feminine song is 288 === [PDF page 303] === repeated back as masculinized speech. At this point, one of the other laborers responds with enthusiasm, “I dare!” And from there, the whole action of the attack on the overseer begins. This transformation of the pantun’s traditional tone, “sweet, fluent, and melodious oration [meant to] soften the hearts of an audience,” is severe.107 Now, according to one former student, this specific poem was Baren’s own composition.108 (Although by “Baren” we should here assume also the active hand of his localborn assistants, given his limited Indonesian.109) It is hardly surprising that this is an “invented” folksong, considering that it does not fulfill some of the generic requirements of the pantun.110 The point is not, however, to make an accusation of dishonesty, though the folksong is certainly presented as authentic, or to suggest that there is some ethnographic fantasy of “becoming native” at work, though that may be the case. We should be careful with distinguishing authentic from invented versions, since one characteristic of folksongs from the post-Yan’an perspective is that they are open to not just evolution but conscious modification. Rather, Baren’s own composition serves a definite didactic role, demonstrating the kind of anticolonial culture that can rise to the task of inspiring anticolonial struggle. The simplifying view of the pantun as an exclusively oral folk form would lead the southbound writers to ignore the frequent use of pantuns within contemporary print culture. For example, Kho An Kim, who I mentioned in Chapter 3 as the author of Fascist Prison, included many pantuns within his memoirs of Japanese imprisonment, Fascist Prison. Similarly, Dutch intelligence discovered lists of propaganda pantuns in Siantar by leftist militias that lambasted Republican elites—considering Baren’s close association with these groups, he may have been aware of them too.111 The curious lack of citations of other pantun poets resembles what Stenberg has characterized as a tendency to understand even “modern” songs with known composers as folksongs (民歌), unattributable to any specific author. Although the Chinese left was consistent in denouncing a specific kind of open chauvinism, it also normalized the primitivist idealization of Indonesianness, inverting the negative into a positive stereotype. Thus, for example, it is typical for modern musical genres like kroncong to be misprised as primordial 289 === [PDF page 304] === folk forms, unlike “yellow” genres like jazz which in fact influenced them.112 Similarly, ronggeng’s historic links with courtesan performance, which often caused “moral panics” in the early 20th century,113 were elided in favor of a sanitized, romanticized vision of folk culture. Baren’s deployment of the pantun, and specifically his “live” rewriting of it, is an inspired recovery of a local tradition that—as the memoirs of his former students show—had not been valued by Chinese speakers in North Sumatra. It represents a creative attempt to both apply and demonstrate the principles of New Democratic culture to the Southeast Asian context. Yet, within the cultural practice associated with the Yan’an Talks, the ultimate success of adaptation is determined by its effectiveness in moving the masses—as with the mass line in its idealized form, a feedback loop must be established between the masses and the cadre. Whether Baren’s translated pantuns could operate in this way, through the many layers of mediation that the articulation of a minority language with mass culture involves, is a gamble. There was always a risk that the “translation” of Maoist cultural theory to the Southeast Asian-Chinese context could be reduced to something like the importation of a new trend—in this light, the pantuns, and the folk wisdom of the Indonesian peasantry which it is supposed to crystallize, appear not as something old and organic, but as something new and artificial. Reinterpreting Pujangga Baru The problem of temporality, of the coexistence of the “traditional” and the “modern,” or of the feudal and the capitalist, that is a specific characteristic of the colonial situation, appears even more dramatically within the expanded use of diegetic poetry in the third revision of Temple of Five Ancestors. In the intervening years, much had changed: Baren had been deported from Indonesia and returned in glory as the PRC’s first ambassador to Indonesia before being recalled abruptly in early 1952. (Whatever his personal errors may have been, this period, when an openly anticommunist cabinet was in power, would have been challenging for even seasoned diplomats.114) On his return to China yet again, he was exhausted with political work and sought to “rejoin the ranks” (归队) of writers, and requested to be transferred out of the Ministry of 290 === [PDF page 305] === Foreign Affairs, where he had been located for several years, first as a researcher and then as a diplomat.115 His wishes were partially granted, and in 1954, he was transferred to the People’s Literature Publishing House, where he would aggressively pursue a translation program of Afro- Asian literature, which I discuss in the next section. During this period, he devoted the bulk of his energies to editorial and critical work, but he also found time to revisit his Indonesian writings and produce significant revisions. The most widely-read version of Temple dates from this period, and it is possible to continue our experiment in reading the play as literary criticism/literary history with this text. The revisions themselves were, in a small way, reflective of momentous geopolitical changes: although Baren himself did not travel to Indonesia ever again, he had requested that his colleague Zhou Erfu, who attended the 1955 conference in Bandung, bring back information about the names of the "five coolies" from Medan.116 This, together with new historical information he had gathered from Western historians, was duly incorporated into Temple. The language, including the translations from Indonesian, were smoothed out. In this revision, Baren probably enjoyed the assistance of fellow Sumatran exile Zhang Qicheng, who published an entire book of translated pantuns around the same time.117 Ever since 1945, Zhang had been a key part of the PRC brain trust on Indonesia, first in Hong Kong and then in Beijing—he essentially headed a successor body to the reading group that the exiles had formed, the “Society for the Study of the Indonesian Question.”118 He also used this name to publish a collection of translated pantuns, Selected Indonesian Folksongs (印度尼西亚民歌选 择) at the People’s Literature Publishing House of which Baren was the director. He referred to these pantuns as "the crystallization of the wisdom of the Indonesian people."119 Compared to Baren, Zhang seems to have had a clearer understanding of the formal characteristics of the pantuns, such as the use of interlocking rhyme schemes to make “linked” poems (pantun berkait), as well as the all-important allusive/analogical linkage between the first (pembayang; image, lit. that which casts a shadow) and second (maksud; meaning) couplets. Baren would have benefited from Zhang’s study, since they were close associates in Beijing. 291 === [PDF page 306] === As I have shown, Temple functioned as a kind of literary criticism and even amateur anthological work. Baren doubled down even further on this metaliterary function by choosing to integrate not just pantuns but modernist poetry in the third revision. These are presented within the same frame as the pantun, into one vital scene in the final act of the play. The contradictory and anachronistic manner of their inclusion, I think, is one way to revisit the problem of Afro- Asian literature as a work in progress. Recall that the work concludes with a raid by Indonesian warriors against the planter’s house, which is depicted in the manner of a general uprising. As with the initial outburst of the laborers, this uprising is was preceded (or incited) by a series of poems. The basic structure of the 1947 and 1950s version is the same. The rebels gather in a forest clearing, the brainy Razal, second-in-command, strumming a guitar, sings several pantuns, the most important of which goes: A road to the left, to the right Kiri jalan, kanan pun jalan, 左边是路，右边是路， too, Sama tengah meletak batu. 路当中放着块石头； With stone in the middle. Hidup jangan, mati pun 或者不许，死吧也不许， I cannot live, I cannot die either, jangan, 我呵将要放逐荒陬！120 I'm certain to be exiled. Dibuangkanlah saya bertentu. However, Selan, the brave leader of the rebellion, objects to the fatalism of this song. He changes the last couplet for a new, more combative one. The first two lines remain the same, but now the last two lines, which were probably Baren’s composition, are a call to arms: Do not retreat, do not fear Mundur jangan, takutpun 不许退后，也不许害怕， either, jangan, 假如勇敢，就能通过！121 The brave break through. Kalau berani bisa melalu. While retaining the dual "jangan" (do not, cannot, or may not)—the grammatical subject is omitted in this phrasing but implied in the final line—the modality shifts from abilitative ("I cannot") to imperative ("Do not"). The tone, too, shifts from plaintive, resigned, to encouraging, determined. The basic structure of this scene—Razal sings a poem which Selan then criticizes for fatalism and improves—is retained within the 1950s version, but several pantuns have been excised and several Indonesian poems from the 1930s have been introduced. The effect of the 292 === [PDF page 307] === inclusion of the poems is anachronistic in the extreme, since the play is set in the 1870s. So, after singing his pantun about exile, Razal sings "Marhaen," (Plebeian) by Sanusi Pane, a quasimystical poem about suffering, and then "Buruh," (Laborer) by AM Thahir, the frustrated plaint of an office clerk. Baren must have chosen these poems from the classic anthology of modern poetry, New Poetry (Puisi Baru), edited by Sutan Takjdir Alisjahbana, which he likely encountered in his research for People’s Literature Publishing House. The obvious question is, why did Baren include poems by the writers of the 1930s generation, associated with the journal Pujangga Baru, which he had thoroughly castigated in 1948 for neglecting the problem of the masses, and indulging in Western liberalism? After all, since he was already willing to brook anachronism, he could also have chosen from the explicitly socialist poems of the 1950s by the likes of Agam Wispi, or the intense existentialist poems from the 1940s of Chairil Anwar, which would have been available to him already. Not only that, but he had specifically compared these poems, which were pessimistic and individualistic, unfavorably to the folk form of the pantun, whereas here he seems to force an equivalence, or at least a comparison, between the two forms. Finally, as my descriptions above may suggest, the content of the poems, despite their titles which seem to refer to class, can hardly be considered “a song of the poor,” (贫民之歌) or “a worker’s song” (工人之歌), which is how Razal introduces them respectively.122 The form of the poems, which is self-consciously modern, even erudite, is even more jarring. "Marhaen" (Plebeian) does not address any specific historical and political oppression, but rather suggests a transhistorical state of abjection, while Thahir's "Buruh" (Labor) is based not on the consciousness of the factory proletariat but the deskbound tedium of the petty bourgeois. The reason for Baren’s selections can be found in the political changes of the postwar era and the attendant shift in the politics of literature. The Afro-Asian Conference of 1955 in Bandung consummated an about-face in foreign policy, which ceased promoting revolution through support of fraternal communist parties, and instead sought to accommodate existing nonhostile governments. In this process, bilateral cultural exchange played a key role as the thin end of the diplomatic wedge. This softening also involved a more generous—though still critical— 293 === [PDF page 308] === reappraisal of non-communist anticolonialism, which could be viewed through the capacious and inherently ambiguous rubric of “progressivism.” Thus, when Baren supplies a new backstory for the bard Razal as a former government clerk, and hence credibly literate, he not only softens the anachronism, but also reinforces a class analysis of nationalism. Razal’s pessimism appears here as a predictable expression of the basically petty-bourgeois character of Indonesian nationalist leaders such as Sukarno and Hatta. Since, in historical reality, the literary movement that expressed this petty bourgeois character was precisely the Pujangga Baru, the inclusion of these poems makes a certain kind of sense. Selan responds, as he must, with a criticism of the pessimism of these poems, which are “mournful” (忧伤) and “discouraging” (泄气). This charge was exactly the one leveled by Baren and Jinding, as well as Indonesian Marxists, against the late-colonial poets. Selan's “improvement” to Razal’s defeatism now takes the form of a different poem from the same anthology, "Struggle" (Berjuang) by the marginal poet Suman HS. I reproduce the first stanza, of two, here, which is allegorically addressed to a bird-hunter: Table 5. Versions of “Struggle” by Suman HS My Translation Baren’s Version New Poetry Version If you don't do anything, 假如那里不做什么， Kalau tidak berada-ada, Where the weaver finch nests 织布鸟就下来做窝。 Dimana tempua bersarang low…123 “喂，前进！前进！”意志召 rendah. "Hey, go ahead, go ahead!" says "Hem, maju, maju!" kata 唤着我们， “Use your youth! “好生地利用你年轻力壮， "Pergunakan umur muda! If not now, then when? 不是今朝更待何日呵！ Tidak sekarang bilakah lagi? Don't waste a good opportunity! 别抛弃这大好时光！ Ketika baik jangan dibuang! Don't overthink it! 别老闷想这太多， Jangan banyak berpikir – pikir! The place [of the nest] is 眼前已出现了信号之火， Alamat sudah tampak.” visible.” 假如在那里你不做什么， Kalau tidak berada-ada, If you don't do anything, 织布鸟就下来做窝。” Dimana tempua bersarang Where the weaver finch nests rendah. low…”124 294 === [PDF page 309] === On first reading, the first stanza can be read as an incitement to action. Yet on close reading, it is obvious that this incitement is a quotation by an “unreliable narrator” and meant to be read in the negative.125 The word “nafsu,” of Arabic origin, denotes lust, or more broadly, improper desire—translating it as yizhi (意志; “will” or “ambition”) is unusual. Indeed, the closing quotation marks—highlighted above—have migrated to the bottom of the stanza, so that they now include the refrains. This minor typographic error is notable in a work deeply concerned about authentic language. The refrain, “where the weaver finch rests low,” is an idiom that akin to “too good to be true:” since weaver finches normally nest high, if they nest low (i.e. in an easy to hunt location), that there is likely a good reasons, such as hornets or thorns. The postponed quotation mark also turns the admonitory words of the speaker into the reported speech of nafsu. The effect is to decrease the sense of irony, the layers of mediation that are inevitable to quotation, and to increase the sense of immediacy. Thus, Baren’s reading—I am tempted to say misreading—whether for typographic (the quotation marks) or idiomatic (the use of aphorism) reasons, ends up producing the exact contrary effect of the original: the warning has become incitement. This reading, however, need not be reduced to error; it is reflective of different modes of reading linked to the theoretical problems of anticolonial literature. The effect is especially contradictory because the original exchange of pantuns is not actually deleted in this version but retained, interlaced with this new exchange of modern free verse. This jarring temporality, the collocation of the folk form with the free verse as if they were the same, also intensifies the latent tension between the oral and the written, since the poems were certainly not intended for singing. (Part of this temporal shock is also gendered, since it is only the men who recite poetry.) The inconsistencies within Baren’s embedded use of Indonesian poetry, I think, can be seen not just as editorial mistakes, but rather as allegories for the unevenness of the project of Afro-Asian literature. Whereas in the 1947 version in Sumatra, an ethnological comparison is made between Malays (like Razal) who sing and Gayos (like Selan) who don’t, in the 1950s version in China, the comparison is recoded as one between Indonesians (like Razal and Selan) 295 === [PDF page 310] === who do and Chinese (like Hei’er) who don’t. This shift from an interethnic to an international framing makes the following, expanded disputation read like a reenactment of an international literary conference: Hei’er: But I really can’t stand the songs Razal sings at all. He’s always singing those heartbreaking songs, like a woman whose husband has died. I also like Malay folksongs, but I always feel like they’re missing a bit of joy. Razal: Hei’er, how can a people that is being crushed under a mountain sing joyful songs? Selan: Razal, my dear secretary, what you say is true. But if we resign ourselves to our destiny, we will only be able to sing tragic songs. If we dare to push aside the boulder, or even the mountain, that blocks our path, then we will be able to sing joyful songs. But (turning to Hei’er) my dear boy, Hei’er, my Chinese brother, you should know that there are two kinds of people in the world: there are those who act first and sing later, and those who sing first and act later. The first kind sings songs of victory; the second kind sings sorrowful songs, but these songs are also a kind of accusation (控诉), they tell us who we must struggle against. Don’t our Chinese brothers also like to sing? Hei’er: (Thoughtfully) Ah! Actually, in China, we workers don’t like to sing like our brothers over here do. […] It seems like Razal’s sad because he’s moved by the hanging of our five brothers. Razal: (Walking towards Hei’er, clasping his shoulders.) That’s right! My dear brother, you’re right. I don’t know why, but when I saw the scene of those five Chinese brothers hanging there, it was like my heart was also suspended (吊) in the air by some heavy thing. It hung there, sinking down, sinking down! For many days I could barely breathe. I asked myself: when will this noose be placed on the necks of us Malays, Bataks and Gayos? Selan: Brother, the noose has long been on our necks, it just hasn’t been tightened. Razal: … But I saw with my own eyes how the nooses tightened in just a moment around the necks of my Chinese brothers… It was as if the noose had tightened around my own neck, and I couldn’t breathe. And now, just to breathe, I sing.126 This conversation begins with tension between the tempestuous Hei’er and the phlegmatic Razal, rehearsing the standard opposition between two types of political literature: that of victimhood and that of resistance, which is here glossed as “sorrow” and “joy.” Zooming out, it is easy to see how this opposition could be applied to the relationship between “progressive” forms of modern literature typical of anticolonial movements in non-socialist states, including the streams called proletarian literature and critical realism, as well as the types of romanticism and realism promoted within socialist states. Selan insists that the two are complementary, since the former is also an “accusation,” (控诉) a term of art that Baren also frequently uses to describe his own Indonesian writings,127 but in the sense of Zola’s “j’accuse,” i.e., an indictment of an entire society, before that entire society. These generic differences are resolved by the shared 296 === [PDF page 311] === experience of colonialism: the parallelism of the hanging bodies and Razal’s hanging heart, the discussion of the noose, produces that particular kind of a temporally-differentiated identity, where one’s present is another’s future—in other words, the experience of fraternity. This discussion actually bears a great deal of narrative weight, since it serves to articulate the two separate historical incidents (the and the Selan raids of 1876) that Baren has combined. A World in Translation 1956 was a heady year—the Hundred Flowers Campaign coincided with a kind of “opening” onto the Afro-Asian world, including a voracious interest in progressive (i.e., noncommunist) literature from the rest of the world. While he was (probably intentionally, given his contentious ambassadorship) excluded from the Bandung Conference, he joined the Chinese delegation of December 1956 to the Asian Writers’ Conference in New Delhi, where he may have met Indonesian delegates.128 He also welcomed Indonesian authors, including a prominent novelist named Pramoedya Ananta Toer who had just begun to turn towards socialism, and was visiting for a conference on the 20th anniversary of Lu Xun’s death, into his home for extended conversations long into the night.129 His old friend Saleh Umar also visited that year, as the head of a Balinese cultural delegation. 130 Like Baren, he had retired from the political spotlight after his revolutionary spirit got him in trouble in the era of national construction. He probably visited his two sons in Peking University, where Baren had arranged scholarships for them. We can only speculate on what all of these conversations between old and new comrades would have been like, yet we have reason to believe they involved the relationship between anticolonialism, national culture, and humanism. In this section, I suggest that one of the many origins of the Afro-Asian literary project, at least as it developed in China, was the sociolinguistic encounter with the Indonesian revolution. Baren and several of the other members of the Southbound group, including Hu Yuzhi and Zhang Qicheng, went on to play important roles in the establishment of the socialist publishing apparatus. Baren in particular played a major role in the promotion of Afro-Asian literature in 297 === [PDF page 312] === China. After he signaled his desire to “return” (归队) to the literary world from diplomacy,131 he was eventually permitted to join the People’s Literature Publishing House in 1954. There, he found himself side by side with old comrades from the Shanghai days, including Feng Xuefeng and Lou Shiyi, even as he coordinated with his comrade from Sumatra, Hu Yuzhi, in charge of the Publishing Directorate (出版总署). When Feng was deposed as a “rightist,” Baren took his place as Director in 1955. Memoirs credit Baren with two major achievements: (1) building direct relationships with authors and translators, often by going directly to Shanghai and holding meetings (2) and establishing a long-term plan for publications.132 In 1960, however, he became the target of a national anti-rightist campaign which centered on his espousal of humanism, and he was forced out of public life. Publishing Afro-Asian Literature As many have observed, the period conventionally known as the “seventeen years period,” from 1949-1966, was a golden age of literary translation into Chinese. According to one calculation, 2/5 of “literary” books published in this period were translations.133 This was especially true for Indonesian, which was given special attention due to the country’s political importance. The presence of a nucleus of CPC intellectuals in Beijing with direct experience of Indonesia, also contributed. People's Literature was far and away the main force behind this push, including through its subsidiaries Foreign Languages, Writers (until 1958), and Shanghai Literature (1958-64). Around the time of Baren’s arrival, People’s Literature had already begun publishing Afro-Asian literature: both major modern realists, like Premchand, Ri Ki-yong, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer, as well as classical authors like Rustaveli and Kalidasa. In an article he wrote for the Indonesian edition of China Pictorial (Tiongkok) in 1958, Baren proudly introduced the rapidly-growing selection of Afro-Asian literature available on the Chinese market (Figure 32).134 He did not mention that he was effectively leading this program. He begins not with colonialism, but with Xuanzang’s Tang Dynasty quest to retrieve Buddhist scripture and the subsequent influence of the Ramayana on the Journey to the West, even 298 === [PDF page 313] === suggesting that trade with India had facilitated China’s urbanization and, from there, the rise of the popular narrative forms that would become modern fiction.135 Consistent with the emergent view of Third World exchange, he presented Afro-Asian literature as a return to a prior path of development (after the aberrations of colonialism), rather than a revolutionary break with the past. In discussing the current translation program, he emphasized the importance of a “systematic” approach, privileging direct translation.136 While Chinese translators had previously relied on the mediating languages of English, French, Japanese and Russian, they were now able to work directly from the originals in languages such as Indonesian, Mongolian, Vietnamese and Korean. This editorial policy also justified entirely new translations, such as a new edition of Shakuntala from Sanskrit, rather than French; and other editions, such as Zheng Zhenduo’s translations of Tagore, would be re-edited and republished in a more consistent manner. In all, he claimed that over 200 books from over twenty countries had been published. The layout of the article cleverly replicated his argument, with a few black-and-white images of older editions on the left crossing over the gutter (as if it were 1949) and into the full-color spread on the right, featuring an abundance of new books in a neat grid. The photographs beneath the article also showed leading Chinese cultural officials at the 1956 Asian Writers’ Conference in New Delhi and the 1957 Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Cairo. One of the results of by this systematic approach to Afro-Asian literature was the publication in September of 1959 of a new series, "Afro-Asian Literature Series," (亚非文学丛 书) available in both paperback and hardback.137 Table 6. “Afro-Asian Literature Series,” People’s Literature Publishing House138 Notes Author Title (Country; Language; Publication Information) Baren Basu139 The Recruit India; Bengali; 1949. Republished from 1955 (巴伦·巴苏) (新兵) edition (Writers Publishing House); includes Chittaprosad's illustrations 299 === [PDF page 314] === Bhabani So many hungers! India; English; 1947 Bhattacharyya (饥饿) (巴达查里雅) Ch’oe Hae Short Stories Korea (DPRK); Korean (崔曙海) (崔曙海小說集) Gumer Bashirov Honor USSR (Tatar ASSR); Tatar; 1948; (巴希罗夫) (荣誉) Republished from 1957 edition (People's Literature) Han Sorya Taedang River Korea (DPRK); Korean; 1955?; Republished (韩雪野) (大同江) from 1955 edition (Writers Publishing House) Hiroshi Noma Zone of Emptiness Japan; Japanese; 1952 (野間宏) (真空地带) Nguyễn Du The Tale of Kieu Vietnam; Vietnamese; 18th c. (阮攸) (金云翘传) Rabindranath Gora India; Bengali; 1910 Tagore (戈拉) (泰戈尔) Ri Ki-yong Land Korea (DPRK); Korean (李箕永) (土地) Sabahattin Ali The Devil Within Turkey; Turkish; 1940; Republished from (萨·阿里) (我们心中的魔鬼) 1958 edition (Writers Publishing House) Tugolbay People of Our Time USSR (Kyrgyz SSR); Kyrgyz; 1946 Sydykbekov (我们时代的人) (塞迪克别科夫) Utuy Tatang Tambera Indonesia; Sunda/Indonesian; c. 1941/1948 Sontani (丹贝拉) (宋达尼) The majority of these works were postwar realist novels by progressive authors from across Asia (though not yet Africa). Notably, each one featured a substantial introduction by the translator(s), which provided political, cultural and historical context. They also included an editorial preface, possibly composed and certainly reviewed by Baren, which it is possible to include in full here: All the countries and peoples of Asia and Africa have long, deep literary traditions, which over the centuries have produced countless great writers and works over 300 === [PDF page 315] === the centuries. The modern progressive writers of the Afro-Asian countries inherit this glorious tradition and have produced a great quantity of outstanding works. These works are the fruition of each nation’s spiritual labor (精神劳动的成果), and the shared wealth of all humanity. Historically, they have been a resource for the independent development of the literature of each Afro-Asian country and people, and also had a profound influence on the development of European literature. From the invasion of Western colonialism into Afro-Asia, Afro-Asian literature has been ravaged and suppressed, and the cultural exchange between the Afro-Asian countries was forcibly interrupted. But today, the Afro-Asian people have stood up, and Afro-Asian literature shall show all its glory, and contribute towards the progressive cultural project (进步文化事业) of all humanity.140 The preface described the scope of the series as “modern literature” from both the Asian socialist states (Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, and those of the USSR), as well as works from other countries that “reflect anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism.” Chinese and classical literature would not be included. Indonesian stands out as being one of the only languages from a non-neighboring country, with no “Sinographic” tradition at that, which was always translated directly. Indeed, Indonesian literature, especially from Lekra-associated leftist authors, was frequently available in Chinese before it was translated into other languages, if it was at all.) Some authors are still read (Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Abdul Muis, Siti Rukiah), others are only known to scholars or leftists (Utuy Tatang Sontani, H.R. Bandaharo, Agam Wispi), and others are mostly forgotten (S. Anantaguna, A.A. Zubir, P.H. Muid). I think that Indonesia probably figured within the top five source languages for literary translation, below Japanese, Russian, Korean, and English, and as a national literature it received comparable attention to India. Translators were readily available (by my count, at least sixteen), including several veterans like Zhang Qicheng, who had accompanied Baren to North Sumatra, as well as a generation of younger translators, such as Chen Xiaru, who would later interpret for Pramoedya Ananta Toer.141 Tambera is a historical novel that narrates an uprising on the “spice island” of Banda in Eastern Indonesia c. 1600. Although the plot revolves around an idealized image of anticolonial struggle—remarkable given that it was written before World War II—the protagonist Tambera is an ineffective dreamer who fails to participate in this struggle.142 Topically, this text was close to 301 === [PDF page 316] === Baren’s own interests in early anticolonial struggle, and echoes Temple of Five Ancestors. Yet as my description suggests, the framing of this struggle can hardly qualify as social realism. Indeed, the popularity of this author, Utuy Tatang Sontani, among Chinese publishers, who translated two of his plays and another novel in addition to Tambera, is on first glance quite odd. He was well-known in his own time, particularly for his dramatic works, and was also unusual as a writer who was established in both a regional language (Sunda) and Indonesian—his flamboyant individualism and “Freudian” interest in sexual psychopathology seemed to contradict his communist partisanship in the Indonesian culture wars of the 1950s.143 However, it is exactly this ambiguous quality that attracted Chinese publishers to him, as within the permissive atmosphere of the mid-1950s, they found space to read “progressive” literature with patience and curiosity. Even his frank depictions of sexuality could be glossed as indictments of colonial or neocolonial social disintegration. 302 === [PDF page 317] === Figure 32. Baren, “Afro-Asian Literature.” This spread of translated Afro-Asian literature illustrated an article by Baren (“Pa Djen”) for the Indonesian edition of China Pictorial. Source: Tiongkok, 1958-09: no. 97. 303 === [PDF page 318] === Rehabilitating Humanism In the late 1950s, there was a “Great Debate” on realism, at the heart of which stood questions such as the existence of a universal human nature and a corresponding literary humanism, the relationship between socialist realism and other formations such as critical realism and revolutionary romanticism, and the links between the author’s political worldview and artistic method.144 It is outside of my scope to trace this debate, which involves fundamental questions about the nature of the Third World adaptation of the canons of socialist realism for the decolonization project. However, it is possible to establish at least some links between the rehabilitation of humanism and the anticolonial experience through a reexamination of Baren’s literary criticism. Baren waded into this debate with a series of essays in the late 1950s criticizing the tendentious literature of the day, and would eventually become subject of a national campaign to criticize his “theory of human nature” (人性论) in 1960. Ultimately, this polemic, which also involved the rise to prominence of later Gang of Four member Yao Wenyuan,145 was settled on political rather than theoretical grounds, and I will not revisit Baren’s disgrace. Rather, as this section shows, I hope to frame his arguments here in relation to his experiences and interpretations of the ongoing project of Afro-Asian literature—and, to be more precise, of a dominant strand of progressive, anticolonial humanism within this literature—to allow for a more expansive and contextualized view of Chinese literary debates in the Bandung era. Baren, writing as Wang Renshu, was also a literary theorist of some renown. Although he was publicly ambivalent—it is hard to know if this was affected humility—about it, his Draft Treatise on Literature (文学论稿; 1954) was the most widely-available book on literary theory in the early PRC, selling over 220,000 copies and available also in the DPRK in Korean translation.146 Considering that the Treatise was revised from First Steps in Literary Theory (文 学初步; 1950), which was itself an expansion of 1940 Reader in Literary Theory (文学读本; 1940), both popular in their own right, Baren was probably the most important popularizer of literary theory in mid-century China. Parts of this book were adapted from a Japanese translation 304 === [PDF page 319] === of Soviet literary scholar V. V. Vinogradov, and were influenced by Plekhanov.147 From an opening discussion of the origins of literature—in work, not play or thought—it then summarized the development of Western literature with a focus on linking styles to class formations (for example, romanticism as bourgeois morality). Alongside this, Baren also contributed his own assessment of the development of Chinese literature from ancient to contemporary, concluding with a defense of realism, which is seen as the apotheosis of the synthesis of literature’s constitutive qualities of “figurativeness” (形象性) and “typicality.” (典 型) The later revisions substantially modified the version, correcting what he called the three main defects: (1) the omission of the Yan’an talks; (2) the “overly brash and crude” assessment of Chinese classical literature, in a manner reminiscent of the Proletkult’s rejection of tradition; (3) an “objectivist” tendency that “only examined literature as a superstructure of the societal base, as a product of class society, overlooking the way that literature also serves the base, as a weapon of struggle in class society.”148 The extensive and approving quotations from Feng Xuefeng, his predecessor as Director of the People’s Literature Publishing House, would be pruned from the second edition of the Draft Treatise after he was labeled a rightist—not long after, Baren would suffer the same fate.149 Because these texts were largely synthetic, advanced introductions, they have largely escaped the notice of literary historians. His contribution to Lu Xun studies has garnered slightly more attention.150 In fact, he arguably inaugurated the field: not only was the primary editor for Lu Xun’s posthumous Complete Works,151 he also wrote some of the first books on Lu Xun, beginning shortly after his death: On Lu Xun’s Miscellaneous Essays (论鲁迅的杂文; 1940), and Lu Xun’s Fiction (鲁迅的 小说; 1956). The first of these books developed out of a little-known but acrid debate that took place in 1938 in “orphan island” (孤岛) Shanghai (i.e., the international enclave of the city after the Japanese invasion, from 1937-1942) over, among other things, the utility of Lu Xunian style (鲁迅风) and specifically of the zawen (lit. “miscellaneous essay” or “random essay”) genre in the war against Japan. (This genre, which does not correspond to any in English, describes shortform writing, usually for newspapers, which were topical, satirical, and personal.) This debate 305 === [PDF page 320] === was incited by an article by critic Aying (阿英; pseud. of Qian Xingcun) that mocked imitators of Lu Xun—including, not so subtly, Baren—of perpetuating a genre deemed elitist and divisive in an age of mass literature. As Baren put it, they argued that the form only suited Lu Xun’s time, and the ‘Lu Xun Style’ of indirect and leisurely (迂回曲折) essays is simply unwanted now. The world of today is not the world of the zawen, not to mention that in the era of the united front, satire is unnecessary.152 A forum was convened to force a reconciliation, but no actual consensus was reached. There, Baren presented an extended defense of the genre in Lu Xun’s hands, which was later published as On Lu Xun’s Miscellaneous Essays. The following year, Baren and several colleagues cofounded the journal Lu Xun Style (鲁迅风), deliberately reclaiming a term that had been used mockingly, with several other essayists in Shanghai. In many ways, this debate simply continued the earlier “Two Slogans” debate between partisans of a “literature of national defense” (国防文 学), such as Zhou Yang and the establishment of the League of Left-Wing Writers, and of a “mass literature of national revolutionary war” (民族革命战争的大众文学), such as Lu Xun, Hu Feng, and Feng Xuefeng. The latter position objected politically to the class-collaborationist retreat from class struggle, and aesthetically to the narrow propagandistic prescriptions for literature. Baren’s literary-theoretic writings, such as the Draft Treatise, leave no doubt that he shared this perspective, and also that he viewed the zawen polemics as involving many of the same stakes. The basic charge against the zawen, after all, was that its criticality alienated allies on the right, and that its indirectness excluded less educated readers. The rifts that had developed in 1930s Shanghai persisted into 1950s Beijing, since they were never really resolved—the lionization of the deceased Lu Xun could hardly paper over these cracks. Ironically, Baren’s own problems began from a series of zawen—he never abandoned the form—that he wrote from 1956 to 1958 that inveighed against a prevailing approach to literature that he saw as dogmatic, reductive, formulaic. The most controversial of these was “On Human Nature” (论人性; 1957). A summary of this short text will suggest something of the meandering and speculative nature of the zawen, crossing frequently between political and personal. He recounts that how several revolutionary veterans generally avoid the 306 === [PDF page 321] === new culture because they feel that it “lacks human feeling,” (“缺乏人情味”) and he includes his own writings on literature—presumably, the Draft Treatise—within this overly “dogmatic” production. Then, he introduces his main point through another social observation: progressive youth from bourgeois families who choose to cut ties with their families, rather than using their emotional bonds to more effectively educate their parents on class politics. This leads to his main point: feelings of sympathy are precondition for effective political communication. Drawing on a Marxian theory of alienation,153 he argues that there is a common human nature—a shared set of basic needs, desires, and hopes—and class names exactly the “self-alienation” of this human nature, such that the task of the proletariat was the abolition of class in order to restore human nature. As such, “literature must serve class struggle, but its final objective is the liberation of all humanity, the liberation of human nature itself.”154 In this, he had evolved from the Baren of a decade earlier who had treated humanism with suspicion.155 Unsurprisingly, his critics accused him of promoting a falsely universal human nature, and overlooking or, even worse, denying the primacy of class. He was no doubt aware of the risks, since he experienced the denunciations first of Hu Feng in 1954, and then of his predecessor at People’s Literature, Feng Xuefeng, in 1957. However, he may have been encouraged by the Hundred Flowers Campaign, as well as his interactions with non-communist anticolonial writing through the emerging circuits of Afro-Asian literature, which, as I have shown here, built on his earlier Indonesian experiences. This simple observation allows us to liberate the otherwise-obscure debates over “human nature” (人性) of the late 1950s from their national cage, restoring them to an international context in which the place of non-socialist realism was being reexamined in earnest by a broad range of leftist intellectuals. After a cursory initial response failed to quiet his critics,156 he composed a lengthier response in the form of a letter to the editors of New Harbor (新港), which he entitled “In Place of an Essay” (以简代文). Although it appears spontaneous—and indeed, I find that it is the hastier instances of Baren’s prose are often more rewarding—this text merits close reading, especially for its deliberate use of citation. As in “On Human Nature,” here Baren positions 307 === [PDF page 322] === himself as the voice of a widely-shared but repressed sentiment. He quotes approvingly in full a short letter he received from a sympathetic worker, who suggests that more sympathetic nonproletarian characters be included in the new literature. Then, he recounts how “an author I met in the South Seas”157 suggested that Mikhail Sholokhov’s Fate of a Man might be a good example of a socialist humanism. Reading this novel, whose protagonist loses his wife and adopts a child in the aftermath of WWII, Baren (and the reader) thinks of his own son, who died of an illness after the Korean War: I felt that I had failed to give him a father’s love, and didn’t express any human feeling: I couldn’t but feel ashamed before the protagonist of Fate of a Man, and I cried… Wait, why am I talking about this? Let me stop here! I think that I shouldn’t have to write any other responses. And now I am sending this essay. Regards!158 The invocation of complicity at the conclusion of a text should also be familiar to us from Baren’s Notes from the Land Below the Winds, discussed in the last chapter. There is certainly a defensive, rhetorical gesture here, where Baren’s own suffering is meant to inure him from further criticism. More to the point, however, this emotional tangent is also an illustration of exactly the commonality of “human nature,” the ability of feelings to communicate what dogma cannot, which he has been defending all along. But whereas his apology for humanist forms has, previously, been largely tactical—to the extent that it can communicate a proletarian content— the effect of this sympathetic reading of Shklovsky is more ambiguous. The moral is rather of the enduring ties of family, which are if anything threatened by the political demands of socialist society—he neglects his son’s health because he is so committed to the nation. Recall, too, that in the earlier text he had expressed consternation about bourgeois youth who chose to cut ties with their natal families. While in “In Place of an Essay,” Baren emphasized a Soviet writer with impeccable credentials, it is easy to see how this insistence on the necessity of the exploration of “universal” human experience, without an obvious political purpose, is compatible with the mainstream of 20th century Third World literature. It legitimizes the reading of authors such as those associated 308 === [PDF page 323] === with the Progressive Writers Movement of India, such as Premchand and Mulk Raj Anand, or with Lekra in Indonesia, like Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Utuy Tatang Sontani. All of these writers may have been leftists, but they were not party intellectuals, and their novels wandered far from the kinds of heroic socialist narrative that Zhdanovism and its PRC derivation called for. The link between his defense of “human nature” and his involvement in Afro-Asian literature is demonstrated in his manuscript for an informal lecture on “The Problem of Realism in Foreign Literature” for an internal “literary theory study group,” (文艺理论学习会) probably linked either to People’s Literature or the Writers Association. Drawing heavily on Engels’ letters on literature, his speech has a surprisingly broad range of references, reflecting the ambit of the People’s Literature publishing program, from Margaret Harkness to the Ramayana. His main point is that literary realism should not be uncritically accepted, nor should romanticism be totally rejected; rather, for any given work, the interrelation of these modes, and their connection to the author’s specific methods and worldview (as well as the contradiction between them) deserved examination. A consistent resistance to any attempt to categorically define some literary forms as progressive, and others as reactionary, is perceptible here: Baren is insisting on, in different terms, the relative autonomy of culture—"literature directly expresses life [not thought], and thought is reflected only in a roundabout (曲折) way through life”159—which is to say, the necessary mediation between the political and the literary. The participation of Chinese intellectuals in the Afro-Asian literary project was an attempt to break out of what Baren might have termed, discussing Dutch censorship of Indonesia, a “cultural blockade” (文化封锁).160 Before the Bandung conference, Indonesia was already a privileged site for the Chinese literary world’s attempt to imagine a world literature that did not revolve around Paris or Moscow. This was in large part due to the fortuitous experience of a small group of communist intellectuals in wartime Sumatra, where they had formative encounters with the Indonesian language and its literature. For the Chinese leftists that landed in Sumatra in 1942, the study of Indonesian language and literature proved the concrete site by which they came to inhabit a new linguistic ideology, one for which translation was both a means 309 === [PDF page 324] === and an end. There is a powerful egalitarian promise embedded in this ideology of translation. As Kalliney has pointed out in The Aesthetic Cold War, one of the primary differences in the US-led and USSR-led cultural-diplomatic projects concerned language. Whereas the Soviet model was explicitly pluralistic, promoting a horizontal circuit of endless translations into languages that were not arranged hierarchically, the US approach, intentionally or not, centered English as the hub language through which the literature of all other languages could be accessed.161 This circuit of endless translations requires, however, the elaboration of standardized, discrete languages first, a process in which diglossic communities play a key role, including diasporic/minority ones such as Chinese in Indonesia. This shift in the conception of language from a colonial-racial system of “combined and unequal” into a nation-state system of “separate and equal” is, I suspect, not unique to the context I have studied. I imagine that it may be one of the most significant and wide-ranging linguistic shifts of the 20th century, and one which we continue to inhabit. The power of this shift is no doubt partially a result of a homology with the transformation of the racial subjects of colonies into the citizens of nation-states. Just as hybrid linguistic forms such as “Sino-Malay” could not easily survive the postcolonial era, people with links to multiple nation-states would have to choose one to which they belonged entirely—although often the choice was made for them. The emergent discourse of "Sino-Indonesian friendship" entailed a conscious egalitarianism that was expressed in a variety of ways, including through the construction of a formidable translation apparatus, built on a linguistic ideology that figured languages as formally equal and self-contained, all buttressed by a metalinguistic analogy between the paths of historical development that these two languages had traveled. Like an edifice with the scaffolding removed, the success of this enterprise was marked by the occlusion of its architects, since few from younger generations, even in the late 1950s, knew of the role that Hu Yuzhi and Baren had played. This is, indeed, a classic story of the invisible translator. Just as the mediating role of creole Chinese youth in the hardship of Sumatran exile was disavowed, the cultural 310 === [PDF page 325] === officials also became “vanishing mediators,” giving free rein to the fantasy of unmediated communication between “China” and “Indonesia.” 311 === [PDF page 326] === Notes Baren, “Qundao zhi guo,” 326. See the discussion of this text in Chapter 1, “Like Kith and Kin.” Mangalagiri, States of Disconnect. Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 139. This is the quote with which I began the Introduction. Heiying notes that they used Japanese, English, and Dutch dictionaries (Wenhai chaoxi, 50). This suggests that they either did not have access to the Java-published Chinese-Malay dictionaries, or that they distrusted them. Wang Jinding, "He Hu Yuzhi zai Nanyang,” 395. Baren, "Rensheng," 93. Shen Zijiu, “Liuwang,” 17. Several of his essays were even included into the compendium of Mahua literature compiled by Fang Xiu. 10 Jinding, "He Hu Yuzhi zai Nanyang,” 391. 11 Wang Jinding, “He Hu yuzhi zai Nanyang," 396-397. 12 Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism, 109. Hu Yuzhi and Zhang Qicheng were the most active, and the latter continued to be active in Esperantist circles until his death. However, Wang Jinding and Baren had also studied Espeeranto (Wang Jinding, “Lu hai meiyou zouwan,” 319; Laorong, “Mianhuai Wang Renshu tongzhi,” 134). The links between Esperantism and language reform in China are well-established (Wang and Liu, “From Planned Language to Language Planning”), but here it is Indonesian that plays an interesting mediating role. 13 “Yinni subei Huaqiao kanri gailüe,” 5. This was true not only in Sumatra. In the concentration camp in Cimahi, West Java, where 14 many Chinese intellectuals and community leaders were interned, there was study of English, Chinese, Dutch, and French (Heiying, “Fan Muke de guwen,” 326’; Heiying, “Dandan de xuehen 淡淡的血痕,” Shidai de gandong, 73-82). 15 Zhang Qiongyu would later work as a translator for the PRC embassy in Jakarta, most notably as interpreter for Zhou Enlai during the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference, and he frequently published language resources in the yinhua press under the pseudonym of Bahebolun 巴赫波伦. Later, he would help found the Indonesian language program in Beijing Foreign Languages University (Lin Yingqing, “Shenqie huainian Zhang Qiongyu”). 16 Shananyou, "Zai Riben Faxisi jianyu li,” 42. 17 Stenberg, “North across the Southern Seas.” U Kuo-sen would also later form part of the Chiao Hsing group, editing a 1962 three-volume collection with Sadar Cultural Foundation of 312 === [PDF page 327] === Indonesian songs, From Sabang to Merauke (Dari Sabang ke Merauke) with the well-known composer Soebronto Atmodjo. 18 Henk Maier has pointed out that it was often outsiders who were most interested in prescribing/describing standards for “good Malay” (We Are Playing Relatives, 9). 19 Hu Yuzhi, Yindunixiya yu yufa yanjiu, 1. 20 Hu Yuzhi, Yindunixiya yufa yanjiu, 1. 21 Hu Yuzhi, Yindunixiya yufa yanjiu, 2. 22 Hu Yuzhi, Yindunixiya yufa yanjiu, 2. 23 Keane, “Second Language,” 154. Other scholars that have made similar observations include Benedict Anderson and James Siegel. This point was emphasized to me by Karen Strassler. 24 The book in question is Ibu Buta (Blind Mother). According to Claudine Salmon, Kho published often in Pelita Andalas, a Chinese-owned Malay-language newspaper in Medan (Salmon, Literature in Malay, 82). 25 Kho was quite active in the anti-fascist underground. He was one of the Chinese representatives to meet the Allies when they landed in North Sumatra (“Yinni Subei huaqiao kangri douzheng gailüe,” 27), and a member of the “Club to Study the Indonesian Problem,” almost certainly a derivative of the group founded by Hu Yuzhi in Payakumbuh, the Indonesian Question Research Society (印尼问题研究会) (“Brondgeest “De ontwikkeling van het communisme,” 5). 26 Kho An Kim, Pendjara Fasis, 66; 85. 27 Kho An Kim, Pendjara Fasis, 85. An advertisement in the book noted that his Reader for the Times (Kitab Bacaan Zaman; 时代读本) for Chinese students reportedly had received the approval of the Governor of Sumatra and been reviewed in Soeloeh Merdeka. 28 For example, the writer Tan Boen Soan (aka Chen Wen Zan), filmmaker and critic Tan Sing Hwat 陈新发 and the historian and philologist Tjan Tjoe Som 陈祖森, as well as Sunday Courier, Baperki’s weekly magazine, in which they all published. 29 Wang Jinding, “Huangwu de yuandi,” 257. 30 Wang Jinding, “Huangwu de yuandi,” 258 31 Baren, “Yi ge toujia,” 39. I am using the pinyin transcriptions of these characters, but the actual pronunciations would be based on Hokkien. Respectively: sut, ko-pʰi, lo-ti. 32 Hoogervorst, Language Ungoverned. 33 JLL Duyvendak to Commissariat for Indies Affairs, 1934-11-09, Archives of the Sinological Institute at Leiden University, Box 1. 313 === [PDF page 328] === 34 For a list of loanwords into Minnan, Hakka and (rare) Mandarin, see Kong Yuanzhi, Zhongguo yindunixiya wenhua jiaoliu, 172-177. 35 Seng, Strangers in the Family, 21. 36 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpancun shange,” 7. 37 Note the counterexample from the 1960s for Nasakom, which was always transliterated, usually as nashagong 纳沙贡. 38 Baren, “Zai silabaye cun,” 283-4. Note that gotong royong refers to the practice of communal work in Javanese, traditionally for larger undertakings such as irrigation, ceremonies, or public construction. 39 Baren, “Fuluobayan,” 125. 40 “那真天晓得，是马来人青肿的皮肤上学来的!” Baren, "Yi Yu Dafu," 480. 41 I am thinking of how frequently he wrote dedicated verses and used matching rhyme schemes (和韵). Many of his dedicated verses were written in gratitude for direct financial support, and so they are hardly separate from the world of the economic. 42 See Fishman, “Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia,” for a classic discussion of the relationship between bilingualism and diglossia. Bilingualism (or multilingualism) is used to refer to the individual capacity to speak two languages and may or may not co-occur with diglossia, which refers to a societal situation of multiple language use, where the languages have different functions and often different statuses. I use the terms somewhat loosely and differently here, in my contrast between colonial multiglossia and postcolonial multilingualism. 43 Wu Liusi, “Jinian Yu Dafu xiansheng,” 70. Pao Shih Tsun (包思井) claims that she was Minangkabau, but nobody else does; she seems to have been adopted/purchased into a Chinese household (Oral History, Reel 10). Gao Jiaqian states that she was an adopted orphan (Yimin, jiangjie yu xiandaixing, 481). 44 Baren, “Yi Yu Dafu,” 489. 45 Yu restored her previous family name, "He," from before she was brought into the Chen family, and changed "Lianyou" (莲有) into "Liyou" (丽有) (Gao, Loyalists, 481). 46 See Bachner, Beyond Sinology, Chapter 1, which examines Hu Yuzhi’s figuration of the Chinese script as a “rotten corpse (腐烂的死屍).” 47 For a list of bilingual lexicographies (for Chinese and Malay/Indonesian) see Kong Yuanzhi, Zhongguo Yindunixiya wenhua jiaoliu, 198-199. 48 Heiying, Wenhai Chaoxi, 48-50. The advertisements on the inside back cover of another book by Pao, A Brief History of the 49 Modern Indonesian National Movement, listed offerings included a translation of The People's 314 === [PDF page 329] === Three Principles, as well as resources for Jawi. Interestingly, many books were offered in a Malay and an Indonesian version. 50 In the late 1940s, it was also proposed that Sin Po staff assist in the compilation of an Indonesian dictionary and encyclopedia, but it's unclear if this happened ("Sheng Huo Pao groep en Chinese communistische politieke infiltratie in Indonesie" in NA 2.21.205.72 Folder 43). Certainly, much of the historical research completed by Wen Dexuan (pseud. Mu You) was published in magazines in the 1950s. 51 In the late 1940s, CDL cadre in Hong Kong—probably Zhang Qicheng—considered inviting Sin Po staff to assist in the compilation of an Indonesian dictionary and encyclopedia, but it's unclear if this happened ("Sheng Huo Pao groep en Chinese communistische politieke infiltratie in Indonesie" in NA 2.21.205.72 Folder 43). Certainly, much of the historical research completed by Oen Tek Hian (温德玄 pseud. Mu You 慕由) was published in magazines in the 1950s. 52 Huang Jinfeng, “Chen Mingfeng,” 517. 53 Chen Zhanhu is mentioned in passing as part of the pro-democracy Chinese community in Wu Shusheng, “Daqi zhongyin yuyan qiaoliang de fanyi,” 321. 54 Goh Siew Poh, “Malaiya guoyu yundong zhong de yinni jingyan.” 55 Xie, “Polyglot Networks,” Section 4. Interestingly, Xie also notes that the other Indonesian program at Beijing University was staffed primarily by returnees from Java. Unfortunately I only read this article in the later stages of preparing this text, and so was not able to incorporate/deduplicate information. 56 Keane, “Public Speaking,” 154. 57 Cited in Bachner, Beyond Sinology, Chapter 1, Death and the Sinograph. 58 Shen Zijiu, “Exile on the Equator,” 14. 59 Wang Jinding, "He Hu Yuzhi zai Nanyang," 395. 60 Shen 34. This effort is possibly what was later published in 1950 as “To Deli” (到日里去), credited to Chen Liang (陈良), in the Democratic Daily News. This paper was founded by Shen's son-in-law Shao Zonghan, and he edited it until his deportation in 1948. 61 See Plomp, “The Capital of Pulp Fiction,” and Lubis, Medan Novels, for discussions of Medan as an alternative center for Muslim commercial publishing in the late colonial era. 62 Wang, "With Hu Yuzhi in the South Seas,” in Like a Dream, p 395 63 Sjahrir, “Wenyi yu dazhong.” This translation was first published in the first issue of Below the Winds, 3 Dec 1945. Wang’s preface to the translation positively notes the influence of Engels on Sjahrir. 64 Amir, “Xiandaihua,” 564. Note that Amir notoriously defected in mid-1946. 315 === [PDF page 330] === 65 He also translated an extended discussion by the poet Amir Hamzah—who had recently been dismembered by anti-aristocratic activists in the "social revolution" of 1946—on the earlier works of Armijn Pane. Many of his translations may have been included in two lost anthologies published in Hong Kong: Selected Indonesian Prose (印度尼西亚杂文选), for Literature and Life (文艺生活) Publishing House, and Selected Literary Works of the Nations of Southeast Asia (东南亚各民族文艺作品选) in 1949 with Lin Lin 林林 and Lou Shiyi 楼适逸, for Sanlian Publishing House (attested in Wang Jinding, Women de qi, 435). 66 Horton, “History Unhinged,” 55-57. 67 Wang Jinding, “Guanyu Yinni xiaoshuo,” 289-290. His list of authors is almost identical to Baren's, confirming that they developed their views in dialogue. Compared to Baren, he was more positive overall. He singled out Hamka's fatalism and sentimentalism, while noting that Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana's Sails Unfurled (Layar Terkembang) was, strangely, not too pessimistic (289). By the 1950s, when he published another short article on the same subject, his reading had broadened considerably (Wang Jinding, “Yindunixiya wenxue”). In this later article he compares the prewar Balai Pustaka authors Marah Roseli and Armijn Pane's novels positively to the post-1945 generation—Chairil Anwar, Idrus, and Asrul Sani, for example, known for expressive and iconoclastic writing. He emphasizes that they "have more life" (更有生命) and counts Pramoedya Ananta Toer as one of the inheritors of this prewar realist tradition. 68 See Saleh Umar, “Huangjin shidai de Rili,” 564. 69 Baren, “Yinni de xin wenxue yundong gaikuo,” 39. 70 Baren, “Yinni de xin wenxue yundong gaikuo,” 39. 71 Baren, “Yinni de xin wenxue yundong gaikuo,” 41. 72 Baren, “Yinni de xin wenxue yundong gaikuo,” 45. 73 On the history of these troupes, see the memoirs collected in Liao Zhangran ed., Guanghui suiyue ruge. 74 Huang Changping, “Jushe shenru Yinni kongzhi qu,” 306. 75 Stenberg, Minority Stages, 28-38. Stenberg notes that the primary performance genre, sometimes just called “Hokkien opera,” was gaojiaxi 高甲戏 until the 1930s, though it began to be eclipsed by gezaixi 歌仔戏 in the mid-century. 76 See Cohen, Inventing the Performing Arts, 64-70. 77 Stenberg, Minority Stages, 78. 78 Rather than replacing musical forms, though, the spoken theater coexisted alongside with it, often in the same program. As I suggest below, even a “spoken” play like Temple of Five Ancestors included musical/verse components that were central to its actual and intended effects. 79 According to Qian Yingcai ("Bianhou shuoming,” 4213), the script of this play has four versions: 1. The initial 1946 script, named Temple of Five Ancestors (五祖庙), which was performed, 316 === [PDF page 331] === which was mimeographed for local circulation. (I have not been able to consult this version.) 2. A revision in the late 1940s, with the new title Five Coolies Hanged to Death (五个被吊死 的苦力). (Included in Complete Works, vol. 15.) 3. A further revision in 1955, which is the most common version, with the restored title Temple of Five Ancestors (五祖庙). (Included in Complete Works, vol. 15.) 4. A final revision during the Cultural Revolution, named The People Who Lit the Torch (点起 火炬的人们) which survives in manuscript form in Baren's estate. (I have not been able to consult this version.) 80 These are: 1. In mid-1946 with Sandiwara Sin Chung Kuo (New China Theatre Troupe) (Xu Anru, “Baren yu qi Wu Zu Miao.” 2. In 1947 in Aceh and Pangkalan Brandan, directed by Chen Hong (Li Huanqing, “Kegu mingxin,” 471) 3. In 1947 in Malaya by the People's Voice Opera Troupe (民声歌剧团等) (Zhao Rong ed., Xinma huawen wenxue daxi, vol. 8, 337). 81 Baren, Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli, 353. The quotations in this and the following section are all from the 1947 version, but I sometimes include an Indonesian translation from the 1955 version if the underlying text is unchanged. 82 Specifically, the murder of a planter family named Luhmann by a peasant revolt of Bataks and Gayos led by a Panglima (“Commander”) Selan and his lieutenant Razal. The documentary record around this murder, and the panic it inspired locally, is treated in Chapter 6 of Stoler's Along the Archival Grain. The oral tradition of the Chinese laborers’ revolt that forms the other half of the play’s premise is discussed in detail by Stenberg and Minasny, who show that it probably refers to an incident around 1900 rather than 1870 as Baren had tentatively suggested (“Coolie Legend on the Deli Plantation”). 83 The name is reminiscent of the protagonist of the left-wing writer Zhao Shuli’s more famous short stories, “Little Erhei’s Marriage (小二黑结婚).” 84 Stenberg, Minority Stages, 89. 85 Xu Anru, "Wang Renshu yu qi Wu Zu Miao,” 301. Xu Anru was active in the Sumatra democracy movement and had joined the Below the Winds clique while working in Singapore at the outbreak of the Pacific War. Previously he had worked as a reporter in Vietnam (Xu Anru, “Huiyi Yuenan Huaqiao de aiguo yundong”). 86 Zhou, Migration in a Time of Revolution, 47. 87 Stenberg, Minority Stages, 95. 88 Wong, “Inter-Imperial Ecologies.” 89 Huang Changping, “Jushe shenru Yinni kongzhi qu,” 305. 90 The use of Northwestern Chinese vernacular to mark peasant language was relatively recent and linked to the relocation of the communist movement. Baren, who was from Zhejiang, likely had to ask his Northerner comrades (such as his partner Liu Yan, from Shanxi), to provide authentic phrasing. Indeed, one of his biographers suggests that Liu played a major role in the 317 === [PDF page 332] === devising of Temple, including through suggesting the combination of two separate historical incidents, and encouraging Baren to interview ex-contract laborers (Fang Fanren, Baren zhuan, 382). 91 Xu Anru, “Baren yu qi Wu Zu Miao,” 301. Because the lingua franca for Chinese in North Sumatra was Hokkien, the choice of Teochew is interesting: it is probably due to the popularity of chaoju (Teochew opera), but resonates with the predominance of people from Eastern Guangdong among the last generation of Chinese plantation laborers. 92 Xu Anru, “Wang Renshu yu qi Wu Zu Miao,” 305. 93 Xu Anru, “Wang Renshu yu qi Wu Zu Miao,” 302. 94 Huang Changping, “Jushe shenru Yinni kongzhi qu, 305. 95 “Sandiwara Sin Tiongkok [New China Theater Troupe],” Soeloeh Merdeka, 1946-06-27, p. 2. 96 See issues 100, 102, 104, 106, 111, 116. 97 In fact, according to the Republican Era Book Index, of the mere four books of Southeast Asian literature published in this period, two were of Malay pantuns (Minguo shiqi zong shumu, 23)! See the appendix on books of yinhua literature for some of these early pantun anthologies. Guo Huifen has traced some of the early translations (Zhongwai wenxue jiaoliu shi, Chapter 4; “Caiji malai minge zhi hua”). 98 Gajarawala, Untouchable Fictions, Chapter 3. 99 Baren, “Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli,” 373. Note the Indonesian translation is drawn from the 1955 revision. I corrected hati (heart) to mati (dead) in one place based on the translation. A three-line pantun is unusual, compared to the more common quatrain, but not unheard of. However, "Tionghoa" in place of "Cina" seems unlikely. The “hook” of this pantun, "Hujan datang kambing lari," (the rain comes, the goat runs) is commonly sung when it rains, but often classified as a children’s rhyme rather than a pantun. One version completes the couplet with "Belanda mabuk saben hari (the Dutchman's drunk every day)” (Wahr, “Housekeeper, Concubine, Mother”). This pantun, with slight variations, recurs in other writings by Baren, and must have made a deep impression on him, with slight variations. For example, "The tiger’s come, the dog’s run, the Indonesians suffer,” (Baren, Yindunixiya jindai shi, 687) and later, “The dog's come, the pig's run, the Acehnese are suffering,” where dog/tiger and pig are glossed as Japanese and the Dutch, respectively (Baren, "Yi Li Fu," 512). 100 Baren, “Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli,” 373. 101 See Holm, Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China, for an influential discussion of the yangge movement. 102 Baren, “Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli,” 355. 103 Baren, “Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli,” 355. 318 === [PDF page 333] === 104 The literature on the pantun is considerable, but also not systematic. For an introduction to the generic structure of the pantun, see Daillie, Alam Pantun Melayu. 105 Liu, “Translingual Folklore,” 204. 106 Baren, “Wu ge bei diaosi de kuli,” 380. 107 Cohen, “Review of Breaking the Spell by Sylvia Tiwon,” 823. 108 Wang Qianyu, “Baren xiansheng yu gongxueshe,” 196. 109 Xie Kankan makes this point too, naming Chen Lishui and Zhang Qiongyu specifically (“Polyglot Networks,” Part 4), to whom we could add Chen Wenying. 110 The critical generic feature of a discontinuity between the two couplets is missing, since each line builds directly on the last. Note also the anachronistic "Tionghoa" for the more idiomatic "Cina,” and the unidiomatic metaphor of “wind” for “message,” which works much better in Chinese. 111 “Suara rakyat jelata P. Siantar [Voice of the ordinary people of Pematang Siantar]” in NA 2.10.62: 5404. 112 Cohen, Inventing the Performing Arts, 91-94. In a 1959 short story, for example, a Javanese love interest is seen as pure because she listens to kroncong, and opposed to Chinese “new women” who prefer imported records (Chongji 冲激, “Hese nülang 褐色女郎 [Brown Woman]” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 6 no. 37, 1959-09-12, p. 17. 113 Van der Putten, “Dirty Dancing,” 115; Irawati Durban Ardjo, “New Sundanese Dance,” 400. Both of these sources note the transformation of ronggeng from social dance with links to sex work into stage performance with nationalist connotations, a transformation that Baren is participating in. 114 Reasons cited have included his vocal anti-Americanism, as well as his involvement in sheltering leftists during the August Razzia, as well as problems with embassy staff and a lack of communications with the ministry. Taomo Zhou cites an unpublished document of self-criticism provided by Baren’s son, which hints at some of the issues: “As an ambassador, I failed to fully realize that I represent my country and the head of my state. I acted as if I was first and foremost a sympathizer with the Indonesian Revolution. In addition, I have always believed that ‘Overseas Chinese youth are the bridge to the Indonesian Revolution.’ I failed to give priority to establishing formal diplomatic relations with the Indonesian Government. Whenever issues regarding the overseas Chinese came up, I purely emphasized our mission of ‘protecting the rights of overseas Chinese.’ I regard whatever the overseas Chinese requested as their natural rights. My thinking encouraged the already-existing Han chauvinist tendencies among the overseas Chinese. The overseas Chinese thought of themselves as the people of a strong nation and thought of us [the PRC diplomats] as the representatives of a strong nation. (Cited in Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 73.) It seems that, whatever the final straw was, the basic problem was that Baren still operated within the “movement” framework of the pre-1949 days, rather than in the “diplomacy” framework that was called for in this transitional moment. 115 Baren, “Gei airen Ma Yansheng,” 456. 319 === [PDF page 334] === 116 Zhou Erfu, “Meng de zhuiqiu,” 415. 117 Some terms were also updated, for example, an archaic term for “Chinese person,” Tangshanren "唐山人," was replaced with Zhongguoren "中国人". 118 Dutch intelligence identified that a Hong Kong-based Zhang Yan was soliciting publications related to Indonesia for this society, which was a kind of leftist think tank (J.E. Bondam, "Sheng Huo Pao groep en Chinese communistische politieke infiltratie in Indonesie [Seng Hwo Pao Group and Chinese Communist Political Infilitration in Indonesia]," in NA 2.21.205.72: 43). My identification of Zhang Yan as Zhang Qicheng, who was in Hong Kong at that time, is based on a variety of factors, including the listing of the name Zhang Yan and Zhang Qicheng’s established pseudonym Yanbo 烟波 of the 1949 pamphlet Free Indonesia (自由印尼). In 1950-1951, the Overseas Chinese Question Research Society (华侨问题研究会), whose name closely resembles the Indonesian Question Research Society that Hu Yuzhi had founded, and which apparently relocated to Hong Kong, published a number of studied on Malaysian and Indonesian Chinese as well as on nationality law. In the 1950s to 1960s, Zhang Yan also published a series of highquality translations of Utuy Tatang Sontani that few people in China besides Zhang Qicheng could match. 119 Zhang Qicheng, Yindunixiya minge xuan, 92. Zhang’s selection is sourced primarily on AW Hamilton's Malay Pantuns and supplemented by Balai Pustaka's Pantun Melayu and Peribahasa Melayu. Leo Suryadinata, an accomplished translator in his own right, has praised Zhang's translations which effectively replicate the metrical and metaphorical pattern (interview with the author, Singapore, 2023-09-12). Besides Zhang, the other primary translator of pantun into Chinese is Xu Younian, active in the 1980s, also a communist cadre. 120 Baren, Wu zu miao, 296. 121 Baren, Wu zu miao, 296. 122 Baren, Wu zu miao, 292-3. 123 Aphorism suggesting that unusual phenomena normally have an explanation: "Too good to be true." 124 Baren, Wu zu miao, 254. Not insignificantly, Chinese editions misplace the quotation marks. It is unclear to me if this 125 was a typographic error or present in Baren’s original manuscript. 126 Baren, Wu zu miao, 296-297. As in, for example, his afterword to the 1952 edition of Rensheng (111), and his “Gei 127 Nanyang wenyi qingnian de yi feng xin” (3). Qian Yingcai, Baren de shengping yu chuangzuo, 283. For a detailed discussion of the 128 Chinese delegation’s visit in India and its reception, see Mangalagiri, States of Disconnect, Chapter 3. Presumably, an Indonesian delegation would have attended too. 320 === [PDF page 335] === Liu Hong, “The China Metaphor,” 279-289. Other attendees at this gathering included Zhou 129 Yang, Baren, Mao Dun, Yang Shuo, Liu Baiyu, Liu Zixia and, implicitly, Pramoedya's translator Chen Xiaru. 130 “Memperkuat ikatan budaya antara sahabat AA [Strengthen the cultureal ties between AA friends],” Buletin Kedutaan Besar RRT [PRC Embassy Bulletin], no. 237, 1957-04-30. On delegations, see Lindsay, “Performing Indonesia Abroad.” 131 Baren, “Gei airen Ma Yansheng de xin,” 454, 460. His transfer was facilitaed by Hu Yuzhi and Hu Qiaomu 胡乔木. 132 Sun Shengwu, “Yongcun wo de xin,” 102-103. 133 Wei Yushan, “Xin Zhongguo wenxue chuban,” 9. 134 Baren (as Pa Djen), “Kesusasteraan Asia-Afrika di Tiongkok [Afro-Asian Literature in China],” Tiongkok, no. 97, 1958-08, 32-33. This article was also included in the August 1958 issue of the Indian periodical The Modern Review, as well as in the English edition of China Pictorial around the same time. 135 The emphasis in the article on Indian authors and Sino-Indian relations suggests it was perhaps first prepared with an Indian audience in mind, and may even have been connected to the 1956 Asian Writers Conference. 136 This was consistent with his program at the People’s Literature Publishing House as well, and the “Five Year Plan” drafted by the staff there in 1958 (Zheng Xiaoxun, “Zuichu shinian de Renmin wenxue chubanshe,” 216). 137 While I do not have direct evidence, in my view this series was likely associated with Baren within the publishing house. Notably, after this initial group, no further additions were made to the “Afro-Asian Literature Series,” which circumstantially suggests that his disgrace either discredited or incapacitated the series. From 1963-1965, Writers Publishing House published several other novels as part of a “Afro-Asian Modern Literary Works” (亚非现代文学作品) series, whose genesis likely lies in commissions from the late 1950s by People’s Literature. 138 This data is collated from Kongfuzi (a Chinese second-hand book marketplace) and Worldcat. One wonders if the coincidental similarity between the Bengali writer Baren Basu’s name and 139 Baren’s own led to the choice of a less than intuitive transcription (balun instead of baren) for it. 140 “Bianji liyan,” in Utuy Tatang Sontani, Danbeila, 1-2. 141 Xie, “Polyglot Networks.” 142 Tambera was only translated in 2022 by Lontar Foundation into English (and, incidentally, in 1964 into Russian). Aveling has shown how his depictions of Bandanese life in Tambera are largely based on imagination; he disagrees with A.H. Johns’ assessment that it is an important advance in Indonesian literature (Aveling, “Seventeenth Century Bandanese Society”). There is limited secondary scholarship on Utuy Tatang Sontani. Aveling, Man and Society, 143 emphasizes the psychological (almost Freudian) dimensions of his works, while Ajip Rosidi 321 === [PDF page 336] === discusses and rejects his class struggle-based history of Sunda literature (“Utuy T. Sontani memandang sastera Sunda”). See also Teeuw, Modern Indonesian Literature (190-195), Watson, Of Self and Nation (Chapter 4), and Woolgar, Communism, Cold War, and Revolution (195-96). 144 Hong Zicheng, “The “Great Debate” over Realism in the 1950.” 145 See his article “Criticizing On Human Nature by Baren” (“批判巴人的‘论人性‘“) in the second issue of Literary Arts (文艺报) in 1960. On this exchange, see Wang Tiexian, “Lun Baren de 'Lun Renqing.’” 146 Li Ranqing and Qian Yingcai, “Bianhou shuoming,” 591. 147 Baren, “Wenxue Lungao,” 586. 148 Baren, “Wenxue lungao,” 586-587. 149 Li Ranqing and Qian Yingcai, “Bianhou shuoming,” 590. Wang Xinrong, for example, dedicates the longest chapter of On Baren/Wang Renshu to 150 Baren as a Lu Xun scholar. 151 Although there were three listed co-editors, Zheng Zhenduo, Xu Guangping, and himself, he states in a letter from 1953 that he did the bulk of the work, although few people know this (“Gei airen Ma Yansheng de xin,” 459). While he never met Lu Xun, he was a confidante of his widow Xu Guangping. 152 Baren, “Lun Lu Xun de zawen,” 289. 153 He quotes extensively from Lenin’s conspectus of Marx and Engels’ The Holy Family, especially on the question of self-alienation. “The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-alienation. But the former class feels happy and confirmed in this self-alienation, it recognises alienation as its own power, and has in it the semblance of human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in its self-alienation; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. To use an expression of Hegel’s, the class of the proletariat is in abasement indignation at this abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its conditions of life, which are the outright, decisive and comprehensive negation of that nature” (Baren, “Lun renxing,” 409; translation by Clemence Dutt, in Lenin’s Collected Works). 154 Baren, “Lun renxing,” 408. 155 E.g., Baren, “Zhankai fan faxisi wenxue yundong.” 156 Baren, “Gei Xingang bianjibu de xin,” 410. 157 Perhaps Hu Yuzhi, Zhang Qicheng, or Wang Jinding. 158 Baren, “Yi jian dai wen,” 411. 159 Baren, “Guanyu waiguo wenxue zhong de xianshi zhuyi wenti,” 73 322 === [PDF page 337] === Baren, Baren, “Lüelun huaqiao minzhu yundong 略论华侨民主运动 [On the Overseas 160 Chinese Democracy Movement],” Hwa Shiang Pao (Hong Kong), 1948-01-04, p. 1. 161 Kalliney, Aesthetic Cold War, 11. 323 === [PDF page 338] === Chapter 5: National Contributions This chapter attempts to think class and race together, through the analysis of the cultural imaginary of economic decolonization. While all involved agreed that political independence was merely formal without a transition “from a colonial economy to a national economy,”1 the exact form of this economic decolonization was a site of contestation. My archives are not economic data but rather polemics, poems, and other texts. I emphasize how Chinese commercial small and medium-sized capital attracted polemic attention in the 1950s: in response to an economic-nationalist campaign against it, which was figured as a vestige (残余; sisa) of the colonial economy, left-wing intellectuals argued that it was actually an integral part of domestic capital, and hence indispensable for economic decolonization. This polemic also was reflected in debates over citizenship, as Chinese-Indonesian intellectuals (both creole and immigrant) and their allies sought to emphasize the historical and potential contributions (sumbangsih; 贡献) that could be made towards the nation. The recovery of the history of Chinese contract labor and peasant life in the outer islands played an important role in this milieu, as a way to falsify the accusations of colonial privilege and also to assert a kind of indigeneity. In the second part, I will try to interpret yinhua literature as the cultural expression of one component of a national bourgeoisie in formation, without necessarily reducing it to that. I focus on how yinhua imaginary turned to the history of contract labor, especially in places such as Bangka and Belitung, to “prove” a shared history of colonial victimization and anticolonial resistance, and hence to assert a legitimate place in the process of national development towards socialism.As my discussion of a new genre of landscape poetry of the tin mines, particularly by the Bangka-raised poet Shaping 莎萍 shows, the narration of this history also entailed tensions between class between middle-class intellectuals and their working-class subjects—importantly, these were also in some sense a generational gap, between earlier immigrants and their descendants (or later arrivals). I compare this poetry with examples of working-class culture, such as the “Hakka Mountain Songs” that circulated among miners and rubber tappers in the tin islands, to clarify this. Building on this line of reasoning, I then turn to a remarkable screen- 324 === [PDF page 339] === novel, Enmity and Gratitude on Tin Island (锡岛恩仇记; 1960), by the accomplished translators Li Xu and Liren, which was based on a miner’s rebellion in colonial Bangka. Showing how Tin Island depicted the intimate and antagonistic relationship between the colonial mine and the native village, I suggest that the screenplay’s subtext directly engaged the “problem” of Chinese rural life in Indonesia that had been raised by the PP10 crisis. I argue that, counterintuitively, by attending to the use of tropes of interracial romance and the inheritance plot, this story of anticolonial rebellion can also be read as a defense of property rights. In the final, third section, I attempt to provide an alternative accounting of 1950s yinhua culture from the perspective of Indonesian literature. I focus on renarrating the Tanjung Morawa Incident of 1953, in which Javanese and Chinese peasants were killed by police for resisting evictions, catalyzing a national political crisis. I draw a speculative line between this moment of interethnic solidarity, which is largely forgotten, and the far more visible project of international solidarity, as represented by the writing of progressive Indonesian writers affiliated with Lekra, including H.R. Bandaharo and Buyung Saleh. This section is an experiment in studying yinhua literature and Indonesian literature together, across the linguistic divide. My overall hope is that through this chapter, the reader will gain a sense of the complex interaction between the socialist forms of yinhua literature, and the petty bourgeois interests of the dominant section of its class base. The goal is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the inherent contradictions of yinhua literature’s cross-class character and interethnic orientation, or in other words, of its United Front character. Debating Capital Feudal Treasure The Round Table Agreement in 1949 on the “transfer of sovereignty” from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Republic of Indonesia was experienced by many militants not as a victory but as a betrayal. The price of formal independence was punishing: in addition to deferring the resolution of the status of West Papua, the Republic assented to the formation of a 325 === [PDF page 340] === United States of Indonesia of which it would be only one part, and humiliatingly assumed the bulk of the colonial fiscal deficit, i.e., of the costs of the war that had just been fought against it.2 Saleh Umar of North Sumatra, founder of the local branch of the PNI and leader of its left wing, was one of those who refused to lay down arms.3 In a little-known purge, the Army cracked down on him and hundreds of his comrades, transporting them to West Sumatra.4 Many were released after a few weeks, but some leaders were singled out for legal prosecution. While the arrests were transparently political, the charges revolved around corruption. Specifically, they involved the disappearance of a portion of the “feudal treasure (harta feodal)” confiscated during the overthrow of the aristocracy in March of 1946 referred to as the Social Revolution. Mohammed Said, journalist, right-wing nationalist, and later a leading historian of this period, summarizes the confession of one of Saleh Umar’s associates like so: part of the jewels had been used […] when they were in Pasar Matonggar, South Tapanuli, in order to buy weapons in Singapore […] a receipt existed as evidence; the man who arranged the purchase was Saleh Umar, and he in turn assigned a Chinese called Oei Boen Tjoan to carry it.5 The case was eventually dropped (dideponeerd) and the revolutionaries/thieves were released. The portion of the jewels that could be recovered was returned, with the press as witness, to the surviving aristocrats, a consolation for their lost titles.6 Every war ends in its own stories of lost treasure.7 This one draws together several of the most elusive and symbolic threads of the Indonesian Revolution. As representatives of the right wing of the national liberation movement, partisans of the return to order, it is clear why state prosecutors would have seized on the problem of the jewels. The hypocritical greed of the leftist revolutionaries is exposed, the unwarranted injury to the traditional rulers solemnly acknowledged. The key link between the confiscation of the jewels and their disappearance is Oei Boen Tjoan (黄文泉; PY: Huang Wenquan), who was also among the arrested.8 This “gallant character (风流人物),” this son of Siantar, a teacher turned merchant, seems to have known everyone.9 It was this expansive network that he had used to resettle Baren in the plantation hinterland during the Japanese occupation, as well as to distribute propaganda and messages.10 326 === [PDF page 341] === After the war, he became the chair of the CDL of Siantar, and helped to establish the city’s reputation as a “little Yan’an,” encouraging cooperation between leftist Chinese and Indonesian youth.11 When the city fell, he and three close friends made the long overland trek to Tapanuli, where they would rendezvous with Saleh Umar and join his guerillas.12 He was soon transferred from the military to the economic front: becoming “the most important Chinese economic adviser to the Republic’s biggest trading corporation in Sumatra, the Central Trading Company,” he helped arrange shipments of rubber, opium and possibly “feudal treasure” for weapons, circumventing the Dutch blockade.13 Saleh Umar entrusted Oei with more than just jewels: in 1949, Oei escorted two of his sons out of Indonesia on their journey to China, where they would complete their educations, before eventually returning to Indonesia to teach Mandarin.14 Oei, although especially colorful, was not unique: he was one of many arms smugglers, and has all of this type’s ambivalence. From some angles, the a selfless soldier; from others, a greedy profiteer. As these biographical extracts suggest, the interethnic leftist coalition that emerged during the independence struggle in North Sumatra, of which the Chinese Democracy Movement was a constituent part, did not die with Baren’s deportation in 1947. Sometime in the 1950s, Oei founded a newspaper called Harian Gotong Rojong (Mutual Aid Daily 互助合作日报), which became one of the pillars of regional left-wing media.15 In 1965, Harian Gotong Rojong was part of a leftist coalition that successfully wrested control of the wrest control of the local branch of the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI) from the right.16 Many of the key players in this struggle had faced each other across the left-right divide of 1949. Chang Hsi Shek (who had been implicated in the Red Tides affair, from the beginning of this dissertation) recalls that this coalition included, in addition to Harian Gotong Rojong, Harian Harapan (“Hope Daily;” 希望 日报), a newspaper Chang founded which was de jure affiliated with Baperki but de facto staffed by the PKI, and Patriot, the left-nationalist newspaper of Saleh Umar. Their opponents? Mohammed Said and (his collaborator and partner) Ani Idrus, of the newspaper Waspada (“Aware”)—the same Said who would write later about the disappearance of feudal treasure after its transfer to “a Chinese called Oei Boen Tjoan.” 327 === [PDF page 342] === What does it matter, though, that Oei, Saleh Umar, Chang and Said (not to mention Baren) probably all knew each other? Big politics in a small city is no surprise. I dwell on the faint traces of these relations, however, because this faintness matters. We are dealing with a compounded form of amnesia, a convergence of the omission of interethnic links from the Chinese-language record, the distortion of the left in English-language scholarship, and the erasure of immigrants from the Indonesian-language record. At stake is not just epistemic justice. If we accept that the political orientation of the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia mattered, and this was an assumption shared by the governments of the region, of both Chinas, and of the superpowers, then an adequate understanding of the history of midcentury Asia is also involved. How far have we progressed in the seventy-five years since Cold War social science asked, “how is it that the wealthy capitalists in Southeast Asia can support a communist government in China?”17 Since Dutch military intelligence sounded the alarm on “the penetration of communism into Indonesia via Chinese businesses”18? That is, someone like Oei Boen Tjoan matters not because he was unique, but because he wasn’t. A National Bourgeoisie? As Twang Peck Yang’s underappreciated Chinese Business Elite in Indonesia and the Transition to Independence, 1940-1950 shows, a new stratum (a class?) of recent immigrants with a strong appetite for risk and a marked antipathy to the Dutch thrived during this era.19 They formed the bulk of “anticolonial” or even “revolutionary smugglers” during the independence struggle.20 The trade was important enough that the word cincu (or chinchu, tjintjoe, probably from 船主), for “supercargo,” entered common Indonesian use, on account of the many pemudas who entered the trade.21 Some of the Chinese Traders, like Oei Boen Tjoan, who I introduced above, had openly leftist politics, and others less so.22 But to attribute their cooperation with the Republic to an “ingrained mixture of self-preservation and the profit motive,”23 as several respected scholars have done is not only more based in stereotype than in reality.24 (Death by aerial bombardment on the open waters was one of the occupational risks here.) It also entirely 328 === [PDF page 343] === misses the materialist point, which is that for a major segment of immigrant petty traders who had been subordinated to Dutch capital and excluded from colonial governance, economic selfinterest and political ideology converged on the ideal of independence.25 The great virtue of Twang’s study was to reveal how earlier accounts of the Chinese experience of the revolution—as wary, hostile, victimized—were far too monolithic, and often downright wrong. In the decades since its publication, other research such as Taomo Zhou’s book, as well as several contributions in the recent anthology Revolutionary Worlds, have begun to correct the political record.26 However, his challenge that we think class and race/ethnicity historically and together, which in this case is to also think the economic with the political, has not been taken up. As Twang points out, these two categories were interrelated in concrete ways. Not only did they rely on ethnic links to Malaya, “the armory of the Indonesian republic,”27 but it was their exclusion from a colonial economy dominated by Western corporations,28 and also from the domestic operations of the Republican economy,29 that led them into this risky business. Baren, not known for his sympathy to the bourgeoisie, made this point in 1948 when he listed the economic struggle of merchants against colonial economic domination as one the three pillars of the overseas Chinese democracy movement, alongside the workers/peasants’ movement, and the national liberation struggle.30 His analysis is confirmed by the coalescence of an anti-Dutch boycott movement by 1947, in protest against the continual confiscations and attacks on petty traders, which marked the transition from an implicit economic antagonism to an explicit political antagonism—just as the eventual fizzling out of this movement provides an excellent example of petty bourgeoisie wavering.31 For many scholars, especially those attached to Marxist and/or liberal theories of progress in which the bourgeoisie plays a central role, the strength of Chinese capital and its obverse, the weakness of indigenous capital, has been a determining factor in Indonesian economic history. As Richard Robison puts it in his classic study, Rise of Capital: by the end of the colonial era, the Indonesian bourgeoisie was still relatively weakly developed and concentrated in the sector of trade. its weakness was magnified by the fact 329 === [PDF page 344] === that its most important element, the Chinese merchants, were not able to assume a position of legitimate, public, social or political leadership.32 In this interpretation, the concentration of the indigenous elite in administrative and professional positions,33 rather than in commerce, facilitated the development of a “bureaucratic” capitalism in which the state and the military have played an outsize role. Furthermore, because the Chinese capitalists were “politically weak and socially harassed… [they] could not translate dominance of domestic finance and production into class dominance.” The difference between an indigenous and Chinese bourgeoisie is essentially political: Whereas a dominant Chinese capitalist class may impose the general interests of capital upon the state, an indigenous capitalist class possesses the potential for direct and public political action.34 The basic shape of this analysis—in which Indonesia’s modern political economy is shaped by the relationship between politically-weak capitalists and their bureaucratic patrons—is now widely accepted.35 The analysis is based on the assumption that the perceived foreignness of Chinese capital isolates it from mass politics. Even if this thesis holds over the long term, I would like to suggest that a closer examination of the Sukarno era suggests that a national bourgeoisie was in the process of formation, and that Chinese capitalists and petty bourgeoisie formed a constituent element of this new class, playing a significant, active, and visible role in the political-economic life of the Sukarnoist alliance. One of my assertions is that these groups’ support for the left-nationalist mainstream, which has been widely remarked though rarely analyzed,36 expressed both an earnest commitment to socialism and a pragmatic search for protection. Colonial Vestiges vs. Domestic Capital Were Chinese people (1) economically dominant? (2) disproportionately wealthy? (3) predominantly traders? Firstly, although Chinese businesses benefited from the economic vacuum opened up by the retreat of Dutch capital,37 one recent estimate puts their “share” of economic output was at the very most 10%, which is disproportionate but not terribly so.38 However, because this small and medium-scale capital was concentrated in retail, transport and 330 === [PDF page 345] === light industry—the vast majority of rural shops were Chinese-owned, for example39—it was more visible in the daily life of ordinary Indonesians than, for example, behemoths like Royal Dutch Shell. (Presumably, it was also easier to imagine taking over these small enterprises.) Secondly, in terms of income inequality, in 1930, the average Chinese person’s income was 5 times greater than that of a native Indonesian’s (and the average European’s was 47 times greater).40 It is possible that in the 1950s, this proportion was even higher, given the effects of the Korean War boom and the space opened up by the retreat of Dutch capital. Finally, the census of 1930 showed that Chinese were disproportionately involved in trade, but these numbers disaggregated for region showed a tale of two diasporas: in Java, 58% of Chinese were in trade, and 8% in mining and agriculture, while in Sumatra, the numbers are 18% and 45% respectively.41 By the 1950s, however, many of the contract laborers from 1930, if they were still alive and in Indonesia, would have exited these industries and entered the commercial or artisanal sectors. Having set this factual baseline, we can now approach the problem of anti-Chinese economic nationalism. A useful starting point is the political movement referred to as Assaatism, after the nationalist politician who in the mid-1950s agitated for legislation to protect indigenous (asli) businesses against non-indigenous or foreign (non-asli, asing) competition.42 It was closely associated with the National Economic Congress of all Indonesia (KENSI) in particular, and the indigenous commercial bourgeoisie in general.43 As his training in the Batavia Law School (Rechtshogeschool) and then at Leiden University would suggest, Assaat also reproduced racialized assumptions about economic aptitude that derived from Dutch colonial discourse.44 In a widely-reproduced speech he gave in 1956 to this organization, Assaat insisted that ethnicity not citizenship was critical, given “the exclusive and monopolistic nature of the Chinese group,” and dismissed accusations of racial discrimination since “the weak group and the strong group in the economic field are identical with the native Indonesian citizen group and the Chinese group.”45 With this ethnic definition, he could point to Indonesia’s relations with Dutch capital, which was far larger, as a positive model, since it was regulated by foreign policy. Furthermore, 331 === [PDF page 346] === he emphasized the political unreliability of ethnic Chinese: “their attitude is appropriate to their objective in coming here to seek a living, namely to be always on the side which appears to be strongest.”46 By drawing an equivalence between indigenous and “the economically weak group (golongan ekonomi lemah),” and Chinese and “the economically strong group (golongan ekonomi kuat),” Assaatism also did not differentiate between (for example) impoverished rural traders and wealthy transnational capitalists. Note that we rarely see expressions of antagonism between the interests of the Chinese bourgeoisie proper and the petty bourgeoisie, since antisinicism by equating them also forced them into an alliance. While this movement failed to persuade any political parties to publicly endorse their program,47 and its leader was soon discredited due to his involvement in the regional rebellions of the late 1950s, the underlying impulse of Assaatism survived its namesake. The PP10 crisis, named after one of the central policies associated with it, is a case in point. It began in May 1959 when the Minister of Trade Rachmat Muljomiseno, a former member of KENSI’s Presidium, declared that the licenses for all “small or retailing trading businesses of an alien character (yang bersifat asing)” would not be renewed in 1960.48 According to Alderton, businessmen concerned about the government’s nationalization of the import of key commodities sought out the Chinesedominated internal retail trade as compensation. Rachmat’s order was modified in two contradictory directions. In August of 1959, Colonel R.A. Kosasih used the authority of martial law, then still in place, to implement an even harsher ban on residence, not just commerce, which often disregarded for citizenship.49 This effectively created an internal refugee crisis, and even before the deadline of January 1, the military began to concentrate Chinese people in camps in the Bandung area. Not long after, President Sukarno issued Presidential Proclamation 10 (PP10)—the order that, somewhat misleadingly, is used to metonymize the entire year-long crisis—which sought to soften (but not withdraw) the commerce ban without withdrawing it.50 PP10 specified that citizenship, not race, would be the criterion; required compensation in the form of payment or interest; required that former proprietors be given the option of continuing as managers; and decreed that cooperatives under state supervision would take over management, 332 === [PDF page 347] === effectively denying control of the sector to the Indonesian businessmen who Rachmat represented. It caused an enormous internal refugee crisis, which the PRC tried to ameliorate through an unprecedented repatriation program that ultimately brought over a hundred thousand people “back” to China.51 The entire fiasco was only brought to an end after Indonesian soldiers killed two elderly women in July of 1960 for resisting eviction in Cimahi.52 Economically, the offensive against Chinese retailers backfired. PP10’s cooperative clauses precluded indigenous entrepreneurs from profiting from the crisis.53 These cooperatives, which lacked both capital (which the cash-strapped government did not supply) or expertise (which the displaced traders were unwilling to offer), flopped.54 Leftist critics argued that the economic crisis was exacerbated with the collapse of the distribution system.55 The bans, which were unevenly implemented anyways, were often permitted to lapse.56 Like the Benteng (“Fortress”) program which preceded it, which gave preferential credit and licenses to indigenous importers, its failure further eroded confidence in the power of private entrepreneurship to realize decolonization.57 In some ways, PP10 can be seen as the last gasp of right-wing economic nationalism before the ascendancy of left-wing economic nationalism from 1960-1965. By this point, it was clear that two mutually-exclusive paths for economic decolonization were open: while the right sought to replace Chinese small/medium capital with indigenous capitalists, the left sought to replace Western large capital with state-owned enterprise.58 Indonesia under Guided Democracy committed aggressively to the former course. While Dutch businesses had already been expropriated in 1957-1959, initially led by militant labor unions and soon coopted by the military was a milestone in the legitimization of direct state involvement in the economy.59 Its culmination was the nationalization of Anglo-American capital in the mid-1960s,60 although these nationalizations were among the first policies to be undone in the New Order. We can then speak of a shift in the project of economic decolonization from “indigenization” to nationalization over the course of the early independence era. 333 === [PDF page 348] === As this summary suggests, in order to decolonize the economy, it was necessary to define enemies and allies. In its defense of the PP10 policy, KENSI explicitly associated Chinese retail trade with colonialism: even the retail trade up to the remote corners is being dominated by foreigners. This situation can be understood as vestiges of the colonial regime and it could certainly not be left unchecked and should be speedily wiped out... It would be very discordant if there were people who claimed to be Indonesian citizens and raised voices in defence of the already shaky colonial vestiges by employing the empty term of racial discrimination and criticizing the decision as an unconstitutional action. 61 Something about this must have stung, since of all the many anti-Chinese formulations that were produced by right-wing economic nationalists, it was the figure of “colonial vestiges” that the yinhua press seized on. Indeed, while there had been a long history of “merchant migration” to Java, where peranakan elites sometimes had benefited from colonial governance, from the perspective of Chinese-speaking intellectuals whose main reference point was the Sumatran experience, this seemed like a grave distortion.62 We are dealing, in some sense, with two diasporas, a labor diaspora and a trade diaspora, which despite unique histories and geographies, cohabited within independent Indonesia—the accusation of colonial collaboration must have been especially insulting for a commercial elite that had, as the introduction to this chapter suggests, strong links to anticolonial smugglings. Prior to 1959, in the yinhua press it was only Baperki-linked publications like Chiao Hsing Weekly that paid sustained attention to Assaatism. The PP10 crisis, however, was a media event of the first order.63 For almost a year, it saturated the yinhua press, and also featured prominently within the PRC press, the Southeast Asian Chinese press, and the Indonesian leftwing press. The torrent was so unremitting and so destabilizing that the military revived the mid- 1958 ban on the Chinese-language press, or rather, on periodicals “printed in a script that is not Latin or Arabic or a regional language of Indonesia [huruf bukan huruf Latin atau huruf Arab atau huruf daerah Indonesia].”64 This proliferation of editorials, reports, testimonies, poems, histories, and more, took aim at the imputation of coloniality to Chinese business, the suggestion that “the overseas Chinese economy is a vestige of the colonial economy (华侨经济是殖民经济 334 === [PDF page 349] === 残余).”65 These words recur with such regularity that we can term it the Colonial Vestiges Thesis (CVT) for short. This formulation is suggestive, insofar as the vestige refers to what is almost past, what will soon be historical. A category of transition, it invokes a progressive vision of history. The refutation of the CVT, which I call the Domestic Capital Thesis, involved at least two claims. Firstly, it was argued that empirically speaking, Chinese-owned small and medium-sized commercial capital should be considered domestic capital because profits were not remitted abroad unlike with Western large capital.66 Secondly, it was proposed that Chinese capital in Indonesia, which was predominantly commercial, could and should be channeled into industrialization efforts. Light industry, especially in the areas of basic necessities (sandang pangan, lit. “food and clothing,”) had the capacity, unlike the zero-sum game of commerce, to raise the overall standard of living. This would ultimately solve the problem of “anti-Chinese violence,” whose roots lay in impoverishment and resentment. At the same time, it would reduce reliance on imperialist aid and FDI. The elegance of the DCT was in the way it linked together a number of problems: if its assumptions were accepted, and its prescriptions implemented, interethnic tension, postcolonial underdevelopment and neocolonial dependence could all be tackled together. This view was most persistently argued by Siauw Giok Tjhan and the organization he founded and led, Baperki, in the 1950s, through his speeches in parliament and his editorials in affiliated publications like Republik, Sunday Courier, and Chiao Hsing Weekly.67 Whether independently or in conversation, both Ang Jan Goan, director of the Sin Po in Jakarta,68 and Baren in North Sumatra69 had already come to this same conclusion a decade earlier. As Baren put it (in verse!) sometime in 1944, addressing an imaginary Indonesian hearer: Do not complain that some merchants are blocking your way. Direct them with the staff of legislation (立法的手杖) to embark on the road of construction. For the happiness of the people, you need a high degree of industrialization. Let their capital flow without overspilling the channels you construct.70 335 === [PDF page 350] === It was, crucially, acceptable to capitalists. A New Year’s editorial in Chiao Hsing Weekly, almost certainly by Siauw, encouraged merchants to divert their capital to industry. Industry, it argued, promised higher profitability, since in industry they would face less competition from risk-averse Westerners, and the import-focused KENSI traders. Siauw’s vision is explicitly anticolonial: industry was the only economic sector independent from the colonial structure of the agricultural export economy. It was also socialist. Perhaps thinking of the Chinese model of private-public partnership, he argued for investing capital into State-Owned Enterprises. One of his favorite examples, and one I encountered in talking to elders from that generation, was of a tire factory, which could process local rubber, generate jobs, and reduce Western dependency.71 There were two paths, and only two paths for Indonesia: to the right, the takeover of Chinese businesses by indigenous merchants would defuse antagonisms with imperialism and strengthen the ties of the Indonesian bourgeoisie with Western monopoly capital, while to the left, the funneling of Chinese capital and expertise into industrialization would strengthen economic self-reliance and keep the focus on the primary contradiction. Industrialists and merchants (工商界) had to understand that times had changed, and they would have to adapt.72 Trade was singled out for opprobrium as part of a larger ideology that Andy Liu has called “productivism,” which was not restricted to the left at all.73 Broadly speaking, in this conception, commerce does not create value, but only circulates it, and as a result all wealth accrued from trade is, socially speaking, parasitic. (Although it is not hard to imagine how, with respect to the Marxist distinction between productive and unproductive labor, petty traders could be seen as a form of transport workers.) This helps to explain the attack on the rural traders, insofar as they were often among the poorest of the Chinese community, and could be considered privileged only in comparison to even more impoverished neighbors. Of course, in this framework, the replacement of foreign rural traders with native rural traders only represents progress insofar as native exploitation is preferable to foreign exploitation—hardly an inspiring message. In some sense, the Assaatist attack on Chinese trade could easily spiral out of control 336 === [PDF page 351] === into a more general anti-capitalism, and that is broadly speaking what happened in the turn towards industry and the state. It is unfortunately outside of my competence to make a judgment on the actual record of ethnic Chinese investment into industry. Yet what is clear is that by the 1960s, the government had committed enthusiastically, at least on paper, to the Domestic Capital Thesis.74 In 1958 after its sixth session, the National Council produced a fascinating recommendation which bears the marks of Baperki-style economic thought.75 Reiterating the need for a ban on KMT activities, and its support for the “guided economy,” it then called for Indonesia to involve Chinese domestic capital in national economic development, especially in the industrial field, by enacting laws that determine opportunities for the employment of this domestic capital, in forms and with conditions that are attractive.76 Examples of specific measures included joint ventures with the government, support for technical and managerial training, favorable tax policies, relaxation of housing regulations (to resolve the housing shortage), and so on. While this document was only advisory, the ultimate legitimation of the DCT came from Sukarno himself after the rollback of the rural evictions, who stated in his speech on National Day in 1960: Once more, we shall invite and involve all power [tenaga] and all capital which has been proven to be progressive… non-native [bukan asli] "funds and forces" can be channeled towards industrial development, for example in the medium-sized industrial sector, which is still open to private initiatives.77 The formula of the progressive “funds and forces” was devised to shift attention from ethnicity to political commitment, and was used as such by Baperki. The DCT was further enshrined into Sukarnoist orthodoxy with the Economic Declaration (abbrev. Dekon) of 1963: A representative National Private Consultative Body [Badan Musyawarah Nasional Swasta] needs to be formed immediately. It is hoped that this body will be able to mobilize capital within the community and "domestic capital" belonging to foreign nationals [kepunyaan bangsa asing] for development (the latter referring here to capital that is not given facilities to transfer profits abroad [tidak diberikan fasilitas memindahkan keuntungan ke luar negeri]).78 The resulting organization, Bamunas, was inclusive of Chinese businesses and encouraged diversion of capital from commerce to industry. Although in its short life, its achievements were mostly limited to fundraising, one US commentator nonetheless noted that, “Its importance for 337 === [PDF page 352] === the morale of the business class should not be underestimated; it assures them of a place in the economic future.”79 Judging from its ideology, it is likely that organizations such as Bamunas have their origins in the alliance between the multiethnic left and immigrant capitalists, which had taken organizational form in response to the KENSI challenge by 1957: the Assembly of the National Enterprises Federation (Majelis Gabungan Usaha Nasional, a.k.a. Maguna), which included industries where Chinese had traditionally been active that had been hard-pressed by government policies, such as rice milling and automobile parts; and the National Enterprises Coordinating Body (Badan Koordinasi Usaha Nasional, a.k.a. Bakuna), a kind of proto-Bamunas jointly controlled by Baperki and the PKI.80 Despite acknowledging the importance of Chinese capital and (usually with some cynicism or confusion) its connection to the Indonesian left, economic histories of Indonesia make virtually no mention of these organizations.81 Is it not unfair, then, for Olle Tornquist, to chastise, it has seldom happened that а party as large as the РКI has held а class fraction, the national bourgeoisie, in such high esteem, placed so many hopes upon it and accommodated itself to it, while knowing so little about it.82 Tornquist’s Marxist study, like Robison’s discussed earlier in this chapter, places great theoretical importance in what we might call the deformation of the national bourgeoisie of the postcolony. Yet the clear evidence that out of disparate elements, including Chinese commercial capital, a national bourgeoisie was being assembled in the 1960s. (The great irony is that Suharto’s direction of ethnic Chinese crony capitalists to invest in light industry represents a kind of pyrrhic victory of the DCT.83) The explosion in political debate around the PP10 crisis turned this niche idea associated with Baperki into a left-wing common sense. Thus, when the head of the Overseas Chinese apparatus of the PRC, Liao Chengzhi, refuted the idea that “the Chinese economy was a vestige of the colonial economy” to the Indonesian Ambassador, insisting that on balance, Chinese capital had made a "definite contribution" to Indonesian development and only the small, "abnormal" part of it should be abolished.84 Even in defending PP10, the Indonesian government used the same logic: “if the ethnic Chinese gradually switch from business to industry, after 338 === [PDF page 353] === twenty to thirty years, the ethnic Chinese problem will disappear.”85 Meanwhile, any antipathies that individual communists might have felt against rural traders—traditionally depicted as exploitative and usurious—were overridden by the obvious intent to “embarrass the PKI and exacerbate relations with China” that lay behind the retail ban.86 By the 1960s, the PKI became an outspoken defender of the small trader as a member of the petty bourgeoisie, a “reliable ally of the proletariat” in the current anti-imperialist stage of struggle.87 When Sakirman, the main economic thinker of the PKI, called to “destroy the vestiges of the colonial economy,” he was referring not to expropriation of Chinese traders but to “actions to undermine the power of big foreign capital… such as CALTEX and STANVAC.”88 The Conditions of Citizenship Over the last several decades, there has been a sustained effort to include ethnic Chinese into Indonesian history as a refutation of the exclusions of New Order historiography.89 (This dissertation could not honestly claim to be outside of this tradition, either.) Not far from the surface here is the compensatory logic of “contribution,” which is easily and precisely translated as sumbangsih or gongxian 贡献. This exact word has already occurred several times in the quoted passages above. It is hardly incidental that this ambiguous term emphasizes the nontransactional nature of this relationship, even as it has a basically commercial overtone, in comparison to the adjacent category of “sacrifice,” for example. In other words, it is haunted by specific modes of economic racialization, carrying within it the germ of both the “forced contribution” and the quid pro quo. I am interested here not so much in enumerating contributions, which is in some sense an potentially endless task, but rather in this impulse’s genealogy. One milestone is an event organized by the predominantly Chinese mass organization Baperki in 1957. The “Symposium on What Contribution Indonesian Citizens of Foreign Descent Could Make to the Construction and Development of the National Culture of Indonesia (Simposion tentang sumbangsih apakah yang dapat diberikan oleh warganegara2 Indonesia keturunan asing kepada pembangunan dan 339 === [PDF page 354] === perkembangan kebudayaan nasional Indonesia)” brought together intellectuals from all across the political spectrum at a moment when it was still possible for them to engage in reasoned debate.90 The arguments there between the communist Buyung Saleh, an official representative of Baperki,91 and the (anticommunist) socialist Hazil Tansil, the most vocal critic of Baperki present,92 more or less indicates the shape of political discourse at the time, summarized below: Table 7. Comparison of Right and Left Positions at 1957 Baperki Symposium93 Topic Hazil Tansil (Right) Buyung Saleh (Left) Indonesia Millenia-old civilization A nation founded in 1945 National culture Inherited, autochthonous Syncretic, creole, new “Indonesian” Ethnic criteria of indigeneity Political criteria of loyalty Chinese cultural influence Historically negligible Significant, mostly positive Chinese traders Exploitative Not exploitative Chinese relative wealth Comparatively wealthy Predominantly poor Anti-Chinese sentiment No discrimination exists Racial hatred (hetze) Solution to the above Change in Chinese behavior Change in citizenship policy Part of the Catch-22 of the "contribution" framing is that, from a different angle, any “contribution” can also be seen as a form of interference, intervention, and subversion. If Chinese influence is a priori undesirable, then compiling longer and longer lists of evidence stokes the fire it is meant to extinguish. Thus claims of contributions to economic development of Indonesia as simply euphemisms for even more severe exploitation. Claims of cultural contributions could similarly be interpreted as simply cultural imperialism.94 340 === [PDF page 355] === In other words, the problem of defining the boundaries of the body politic was conceptually prior to the debate on contributions. The contrast between Hazil Tansil’s primordialist account of Indonesia as an ancient civilization, and Buyung Saleh’s revolutionary account of Indonesia as a recent project, was linked to fundamentally divergent ideas about citizenship. Mira Siegelberg has observed that from the 1940s to the 1950s a global shift occurred in how nationality was imagined: rather than being seen as a formal category established by juridical acts it was now imagined as simply a reflection of a social reality.95 This shift is reflected in the difference between the Indonesian Citizenship Act of 1946, which was expansive and permitted naturalization, and the Nationality Law of 1958, which was more restrictive and established no naturalization process.96 This latter law, which granted a kind of “second-generation jus soli” in the words of Siauw Tiong Djin, placed ethnic Chinese in the position of having to somehow prove their parents—many of whom likely had no birth certificate—were born in Indonesia.97 This was, in essence, a shift from the criterion of political loyalty to the criterion of ethnic belonging. Strictly speaking, it also made the “contribution” irrelevant, since in this view, a foreigner who contributes is still a foreigner, and a national who does not is still a national—the categories are predetermined by one’s ancestry, birth and upbringing. As could be expected, this position opened up a thorn’s nest of questions about what the social-scientific criteria for Indonesianness were, since few were willing to commit to a fully racial criterion. At the same time, Baperki continued to press for a definition of nationality that accounted for political loyalty. The tension between these two different definitions of citizenship, I think, helps to account for the paradoxical logic of the implementation of the Dual Nationality Treaty. The procedure that was finally settled in 1961 did not permit one to “become” a national of Indonesia (or of China), even if selecting Indonesian nationality was sometimes colloquially referred to as naturalization. Rather, the judicial process involved showing that one was already an Indonesian nationals with documentary proof, and then formally renouncing Chinese nationality in court. The peculiar logic of the exercise—one did not so much become Indonesian as become not-not- 341 === [PDF page 356] === Indonesian—recalls Kafka's Before the Law. A warren of forms was produced that allowed one declare truthfully that I have never renounced or rejected citizenship of the Republic of Indonesia, or that I have never been denied citizenship of the Republic of Indonesia, I now declare that I RENOUNCE CITIZENSHIP OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.98 Like all identity documents, proofs of nationality tend towards hypostatization: they end up producing the thing they supposedly reflect, constitutively confuse the locutionary effect of describing the world, with the perlocutionary effect of enacting a change in it. Much as undocumented Chinese migrants into the US in the 1890s used their discharge papers from habeas corpus cases to “create documentation of native-birth citizenship where previously none had existed,”99 in many cases in Indonesia it was the official renunciation of PRC nationality that became a surrogate for citizenship documentation. We can give the name of “citizenism” to the ideology that posits nationality-ascitizenship as the vehicle for postcolonial equality, shared by even the fiercest opponents on the Chinese question. Citizenism created the national citizen out of colonial subject, and required the supersession of race-based legal systems by a formally color-blind nationality law.100 The novelty of this moment can be seen in the variety of neologisms that emerged to describe citizenship. “Indonesian citizen” (warga negara Indonesia; WNI) developed the euphemistic meaning of “Chinese.” Possibly influenced by “warganegara,” a non-standard Chinese term for “citizen” emerged in the yinhua media, jimin (籍民; lit. nationality-person), which emphasized the “paper” nature of nationality, since ji refers to registration documents. The words huaqiao and huaren were invested with precise legal content, as referring respectively to people of Chinese nationality and Chinese descent. Thus the set phrase huaqiao huaren (华侨华人), which would surely have sounded repetitive just a decade earlier, now constituted something like what phonetics refers to as a “minimal pair.” 342 === [PDF page 357] === The turn to nationality-as-citizenship rather than race as the primary grid of global stratification, was then predicated on a shift from a regime that prioritized the proof of visible appearance or communal reputation to one based on state-sanctioned papers.101 As Jacqueline Stevens has pointed out, this evidentiary regime is exclusionary “because of and not despite protocols of modern citizenship."102 Such papers presuppose a suspicious gaze, since the bearer is presumed to be potentially dishonest about their identity.103 In such a regime, one of the big political issues is where to draw the line between who do and don’t need papers. (Here older conceptions of the legibility of race often reappeared.) One practical form this debate took was in the arguments over who would be exempted from the Dual Nationality Treaty’s procedures. Baperki pressed for as broad a definition as possible, arguing unsuccessfully that anyone who had voted in the 1955 General Election had implicitly opted for Indonesian nationality; they were successful, however, in exempting civil servants and military veterans.104 The most interesting debate, however, was about the ethnic Chinese peasantry, since it touched on core assumptions about both Chineseness, indigeneity, land and writing. Siauw recalls that he brought Sudjono from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the creole peasant community of Curug, not far from Jakarta. Sudjono supposedly visited the home of a Oei Talen, passing through a door with paper talismans (I: hu, C: 符) that the owner could not read, and emerged to confirm that it was indeed unlikely that Oei had any documents proving birth, marriage, or other life events.105 On the basis of persistent lobbying, Siauw and his allies were ultimately successful in including an agrarian exemption, yet it came with serious caveats: farmers whose way of life and relations with native Indonesian society demonstrates that they are actually natives (sebetulnya anak pribumi) themselves, according to the opinion of the Ministers of Home Affairs, Justice, and Agriculture.106 The ministerial requirement meant it was basically a rhetorical victory, and as far as I know was rarely applied. Nonetheless, the fact that in principle, the existence of Chinese peasants was linked to the possibility of Chinese indigeneity meant that the ex-laborers of the Sumatran 343 === [PDF page 358] === mining and plantation belts played a special role in the debates over Indonesian citizenship. They not only counteracted the stereotypes of Chinese as wealthy and urban, but also, through their links to the land, seemed to have a substantive claim on indigeneity as popularly conceived. Because the PP10 policy targeted only non-citizens, rather than all non-asli, the problems of nationality, residence, and livelihood became inextricably and intensely linked. It can hardly be a coincidence that the rural trade bans were implemented on the eve of the implementation of the treaty, when many people’s citizenship status, especially in the countryside, was still ambiguous—indeed, it seems likely that the mass evictions were meant to preempt the possibility of a permanent ethnic Chinese presence in the countryside that could benefit from the protections of citizenship.107 Overnight, whether to "become" an Indonesian turned into an urgent matter for hundreds of thousands of rural Chinese. Indeed, the very existence of rural Chinese was a volatile political matter. In explaining the initial retail ban, the Minister of Trade Rachmat had used the metaphor of the rooms of a house: In the front room we usually receive our guests; in the middle one we do not receive any guests but only those who respect us and whom we respect most; in the back room we never allow anybody to enter but ourselves or members of our own family.108 While he no doubt meant to evoke the image of a home invasion, for others, the same idea could be used in a politically opposite way. After all, if there were so many Chinese in the countryside, surely that was evidence of a long history of settlement and interaction—indeed, as evidence of indigeneity. Depicting Labor Forms of Testimony If we read the Chinese-language discourse in response to PP10 at this period, we find terms like “evidence,” “testimony,” “proof,” and “witness” recurring constantly. The “voice” of the contract laborer was an especially privileged source of truth in the propaganda war that raged over the radio waves and in the press in late 1959. Not just the yinhua press, but a substantial 344 === [PDF page 359] === portion of the PRC’s media infrastructure, turned its attention to the “Chinese question.” For example, the China News Agency (中国新闻社), a PRC state-run news agency that focused on the overseas Chinese, prepared seven dossiers with historical information, personal testimonials, editorials, political analysis, and more, to facilitate resistance to and protest against the rural bans. The Indonesian government was disturbed by the similarity in wording between communal and official protests, which suggested PRC instigation to it.109 One of these dossiers a speech by an ex-miner returnee, which was likely also broadcast by radio: Chen Fuxing said [陈福兴说]: everyone in two generations of my family was a worker in a tin mine on the island of Bangka in Southern Sumatra in Indonesia. When my father was nineteen, he was bought as a “piglet” by the Dutch and brought to the mines, where he worked for forty years, until when he was old and feeble at sixty, the Dutch boss fired him. My mother died young, when I was just seven, because of a combination of poverty and illness [贫病交迫]. During the Japanese occupation, my older brother was captured by the Japanese militarists, forced into hard labor, and beaten to death. My younger brother was fired from the mine in 1945, and he died not long after of poverty and illness as well. I began working at the age of twenty and spent almost thirty years living worse than an animal squeezed by the Dutch bosses. Even though two generations of my family worked diligently for a long time in Indonesia, and three of my five family members died there, when I returned in 1953, I could only buy my ticket with the help of my co-worker friends [工友] and the sale of my furniture. Chen Fuxing said: in Bangka under Dutch domination, all of the hard labor was done by Overseas Chinese laborers. My family’s experience is the experience of all the Overseas Chinese laborers who work in Bangka’s tin mines. The iron truth demonstrates [铁的事 实证明] that the vast majority of Overseas Chinese in Indonesia are working people who have made an indelible contribution [不可抹杀的贡献] to the economic development of Indonesia. What they received was often not enough to feed and clothe them, and many even became homeless. So I ask, do the Overseas Chinese really represent the “colonial economy”? Or, like the Indonesian people, were they also exploited by the colonial economy? Chen Fuxing said: the reactionary forces in Indonesia purposely distort the truth, and slanders the Overseas Chinese economy, equating it with the colonial economy. Their goal is obviously to divert the people’s attention away from the imperialist monopoly capital that actually threatens Indonesian national economic development, and to wreck the friendly solidarity of the peoples of China and Indonesia.110 Statements such as this were obviously edited, but the sentiments they conveyed were almost certainly authentic. Their mode of presentation (“Chen Fuxing said”) also showed the discursive weight that the “voice” of contract labor held within these debates. The international crisis further stimulated academic interest in China in the subject. Historians rushed to compile a mimeographed Draft History of Overseas Chinese in Indonesia (印度尼西亚华侨史初稿) which 345 === [PDF page 360] === was explicitly meant to “accommodate [配合] the struggle against Chinese exclusion,” i.e., the rural evictions of the PP10 crisis.111 A few years later, researchers from the same university began collecting oral histories from former contract laborers, almost entirely from Indonesia.112 The two main sites of contract labor importation in Indonesia were the tobacco plantations of North Sumatra and the tin mines of Bangka and Belitung. In the tin islands, well into the 20th century, the bulk of the labor force was imported from China: in 1947, for example, there were approximately 17,300 Chinese and 6,600 Indonesians in the mines.113 As a result, Bangka and Belitung were one of the areas of Indonesia where much of the Chinese population comprised contract laborers or their descendants, rather than traders. Bangka’s reputation for brutal working conditions was so notorious, even compared to the neighboring privatelyoperated island of Belitung—though de jure based on private concessions, it functioned de facto like a state monopoly—that recruiters usually had to employ deception or coercion. Unsurprisingly, Chinese unfree labor had a reputation for “assertiveness and rebellion.”114 Whether the many incidents of resistance during the colonial era should be interpreted as signs of conscious organization or spontaneous protest was a matter of intense interest to Dutch administrators and continues to be debated by historians.115 To name several of the most important events: a miner-led rebellion known as the “Liu Yi War” in 1899-1900;116 riots in 1911 inspired by the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty;117 and dramatic swells in strike activity in 1929 and 1936.118 The fact that the blame was often laid at the feet of secret societies, schoolteachers, and/or new arrivals119 corroborates the significance of immigrant Chinese-speaking intellectuals—including proletarianized ones—to the process of mass politicization, one that was already underway in late colonial era but accelerated rapidly in the independence era. On both islands, the period from 1945-1948 was a high water mark in the labor movement, with multiple multiethnic strikes with a strong political coloring.120 The increasing degree of organization was reflected in print, too: the Bangka union’s Menara Buruh (Tower of Labor; 工塔?) and Belitung union’s Kung Sheng (工声/Suara Buruh; “Voice of Labor) were both bilingual.121 346 === [PDF page 361] === Management’s most powerful weapon against immigrant labor was deportation, and it made liberal use of this. By the 1930s, the proportion of Chinese miners was already declining, and departures accelerated in the 1950s with the introduction of an alien head tax.122 While it is not entirely clear how strictly the retail trade ban was enforced on the tin islands, it is clear that many thousands of miners chose to repatriate rather than to navigate the increasingly hostile policies. A fall in tin prices led to the layoff of several hundred tin miners, including (apparently) a number of older miners.123 (By 1959, the tin mining enterprises had been nationalized, so this would have been a state decision, and hence especially insulting.124) Thus, by the 1960s, few Chinese remained in the tin mines. However, it also appears that not long after the crisis, the retail ban was permitted to lapse—in any case, on islands with such a high proportion of Chinese residents, it would always have been unfeasible to implement and economically disastrous.125 As the word “vestige” suggests, the debate over the role of Chinese people within the Indonesian economy was a matter of history. The recovery of the history of unfree labor, especially in the mines and plantations of Sumatra, assumed special importance. These accounts, as a rule, emphasized Chinese victimization under colonialism and examples of Chinese- Indonesian joint resistance. They marked an incomplete departure from earlier narratives that stressed (1) hardy pioneers, or (2) successful merchants or (3) a rags-to-riches combination of the two. Siew-Min Sai characterizes those narratives like so: The Nanyang Chinese male coloniser was the archetypical huaqiao representative. This archetype portrayed Nanyang Chinese people as “pioneers” and “national heroes” because they succeeded against great odds including lack of official state support, hostile Indigenous populations, ill-treatment and discrimination by European colonial governments, and managed to not only survive but thrived in the Nanyang. 126 The yinhua newspapers were full of poems, essays, short stories, and other literary creations that dealt in some way with the history of contract labor. One subgenre that briefly reigned over the supplements adapted the conventions of nature poetry to respond to the political crisis. Here are two examples, from a literary supplement in a Makassar Chinese-language newspaper, Khuong Lu Yit Po. Both, are based on the history of Sumatran pioneers, and share remarkable similarities. On the beaches of the fisheries of Bagan Siapiapi, now covered in rotting leaves: 347 === [PDF page 362] === Seawater, don’t tell me that you consumed the traces left behind by Chinese elders! 海水啊，难道你吞没了华侨先辈留下的功绩！ Only you, seawater, beaches! 只有你，海水呵，沙滩呵！ Can give me testimony. 能够给我作证。127 On the banks of the Deli River, which was muddy with the “ironclad proof” (铁证)—this figure of metallic truth was also invoked by Chen Fuxing—of Chinese blood: I, from the younger generation, 我，年轻的一辈， could not see my elders open up the 虽看不见先辈门积年累月地在这儿拓荒。 wilderness as the years accumulate. 然而， But, 我仿佛听见日里河水在向我低吟先辈们 I seem to hear the Deli river whispering their 的沧桑。 128 histories to me. Others were written for the Ciliwung River and the Java Sea. These poems bring to life the deeply-felt problems of evidence and erasure that the PP10 crisis surfaced. The fact that they all used the same aquatic imagery, and the same structure of address, suggests that something structural was at play. Water was a complex and powerful image: it permitted access to the entire vocabulary of nature odes, evoked processes of “overseas” migration, and alluded to temporal change in general. Perhaps most importantly, though, it dramatized a problem of historical disappearance: in these poems, the past is submerged, washed away, or diluted. In this metaphor, absence is, paradoxically, interpreted as a residue, as a sign of past presence. As the second poem, suggests, this specific temporality was linked to a generational gap, between earlier generations of immigrants and their descendants (or later arrivals). The Deli River provides “iron proof” of past contributions, even though the speaker “could not see” them. The impossible demand for a response reflects the way that traces of Chinese contract labor in the landscape do not rise to the level of evidence. Something so liquid could hardly serve as “iron proof,” and yet it had to. Because the open-pit (as opposed to underground) techniques of tin mining in Bangka and Belitung created “tin lakes” (锡湖), and indeed this was the colloquial term for a tin mine, it was easily available as a subject for this tradition. Shaping (莎萍) was a young writer raised in Bangka who frequently contributed to the literary pages of the Jakarta Chinese-language press, 348 === [PDF page 363] === and he wrote a number of such poems reflecting on huagong history.129 In late 1959, he was still optimistic, comparing the crisis to a ferocious storm that, although frightening, would ultimately pass: “waves / in the final instance, / turn into froth, splashing.” (浪涛 / 最后的结果， / 化成浪 花，飞溅。) 130 In June of 1960 he was considerably more morose. From “Tin Lake” (锡湖): When the sky glitters with the morning star, 当天空还闪烁着晨星， You awaken from your dreams, 你便从睡梦中醒来。 Put on your milky white veil, 披起乳白色的面纱， And embrace the washerwomen in your bosom. 把洗衣少妇拥进胸怀。 Under your calm surface, exactly 你平静的湖面下，究竟 How much youth is buried? How many corpses? 埋葬了多少青春？多少尸骸？ The sand of your shores, how much fresh blood 你湖岸的白沙，究竟用了多少鲜血。 And how many tears bleached it white? 多少眼泪把他淘白？ Tin lake, beautiful tin lake! 锡湖，美丽的锡湖啊！ You are history's witness. 你是历史的见证人。 Answer, speak, 你回答，你说 speak! Quickly! Quickly! 你说呀！快！快！131 Crucially, the perspective on this lake is a perspective from above and a distance. As is the case with many of these poems ostensibly about tin mining, the actual process of mining is conspicuously absent. By this point, much of the production would have shifted from the alluvial pits on the island to offshore dredges. Thus, like Shaping, what we see instead is the labor of women, probably non-Chinese, washing laundry in the “ruins” of the mining industry— aestheticized, feminized, and exoticized (the “veil”). Thus, two forms of labor are invisible: the male Chinese miners who have receded out of historical and geographic view, and the socially reproductive work of local women which is not seen as work. Indeed, both before and after the PP10 crisis, Shaping would write poems praising the tin mines, whether in the rhetoric of socialist plenty or of Third World resistance, suggesting that his concern was not with labor as a social experience, but as an abstraction, a literary device, a narrative figure. If, then, the nature poems of Shaping and his peers are not “about” labor, at least not in any unmediated way, then what are they about? Let us turn back to structure of address. As a rule these poems have the “apostrophic relation” that I discussed in the introduction of this 349 === [PDF page 364] === dissertation—they demand an answer from someone or something that cannot or will not answer. Yet if my discussion of Baren’s “Pelabuhan” earlier was basically optimistic, insofar as it looked forward to a future moment where direct communication would be possible, here the structure is more pessimistic. These poems all dramatize the intense desire for a response that is impossible—even figuratively, the rivers, seas, and lakes do not respond. I would like to suggest that they can be read as dramatizations of the emergent “documentary regime” of the postcolonial state: specifically, the subordination of residency and livelihood to the logic of birthright citizenship which the PP10 crisis represented.132 As discussed earlier, the system of birthright citizenship as a rule relies on producing documentation to demonstrate the circumstances of one’s birth. It also involves the typical bureaucratic paradox, where documents often end up becoming more real than the reality they supposedly document: an error in paperwork could override the consensus of a community or other physical evidence. These poems and others like them, then, can be read as stagings of the interrogative logic of citizenship, of the demand for impossible and necessary documentation. It is significant that nature is the addressee here, since it is the relationship to the land that constitutes asli-ness within this context. In 1964, at the warmest point of Sino-Indonesian relations, Shaping returned again to theme of tin mining, but in an entirely different tone. History is just like a tin processing site. 时代，就像淘锡场。 The substantial grains of tin remains, 重实的锡沙留下了； While the flitting waste products 轻浮的废料 Are discarded to the side of the pit. 被抛弃在沙沟旁。133 This poem, based on a visit to the tin mines of Mt. Maras, expresses a view of history was much more confident than the angsty questioning that predominated in the 1959-1960 poems which I cited at the beginning. Here, testimony is not demanded from a mute nature. Instead, the process of mining, just like “this era”—the term translates better into Indonesian zaman, which is itself telling of a shared linguistic history—bends towards the good and true automatically. One cannot help but notice that, perhaps because the miners in this poem (and in the industry in general at 350 === [PDF page 365] === this point) are Indonesian, rather than Chinese, the concern for labor has also evaporated. In any case, the place of the “Chinese contribution” seemed secure within Indonesian history, and the ”vestiges thesis” seemed to have been definitively buried. He could not have known that only one year later, in 1965, the entire world of yinhua literature would be discarded like “flitting waste products.” The Voice of Labor Perhaps because the younger generation of yinhua writers was so keenly aware of the end of the era of contract labor, it was also active in the preservation of the folk culture of that era. In 1964, probably with the involvement of the editor Zou Fangjin, who had once worked in Belitung as a labor propagandist,134 the newly-reconstituted Seng Hwo Weekly called for a movement to “collect folksongs,” as the “literature of the people,” from Overseas Chinese in Sumatra and Kalimantan.135 Reflecting a history of colonial oppression and interethnic solidarity, one editorial asserted, this literature had the capacity to reinvigorate yinhua literature. This was urgent since, as one collector noted, many Chinese contract laborers repatriated or passed away. Some were now pitiable bachelors lived in the philanthropic or corporate elderly homes, wasted by years of labor and the vices of soliciting and gambling until they are “only a layer of skin and a handful of bones.”136 The Hakka “mountain songs” (山歌) of Bangka and Belitung played a special role in this newly-discovered tradition, and Seng Hwo Weekly published several examples in the following months. The recovery of popular cultural traditions bears the unmistakable mark of Maoist theories of mass culture, though it did not fully reach the next stage, which involves adaptation and formalization. Indeed, this editorial effort was directly inspired by the “New Folksong Movement” movement that had begun during the Great Leap Forward in China, and examples of the modernized folk culture were often printed alongside these “mountain songs.” In the same issue as this editorial, for example, an illustrated article also introduced Third Sister Liu (刘三 姐), a musical play that was adapted into a popular film in 1960 about a legendary Zhuang 351 === [PDF page 366] === songstress that featured many (non-Hakka) “mountain songs.”137 The turn to the “folk” was not just a Chinese phenomenon, but a keystone of a global progressive culture that admitted a degree of cultural nationalism within formerly colonized countries.138 To adapt the socialist realist formula, we could speak of a literature that was “national in form, and progressive in content.”139 The progressive writers and artists of Lekra, for example, placed great emphasis on research and adaptation of folk forms, often with great success: the East Javanese theatrical genre of ludruk, for example, became indissolubly associated with proletarian politics and was even proscribed briefly the New Order.140 The discovery of a folk tradition had its own significance for yinhua culture. If, as the yinhua left never tired of arguing, the greater part of the Chinese diaspora in Indonesia was primarily proletariat rather than mercantile, especially in the outer islands, then there should be a corresponding cultural tradition that could serve as the basis of a new mass culture. At the same time, such a tradition would also buttress Baperki-style claims about the long residence of Chinese in Indonesia. These two kinds of claims, the proletarian and the indigenous, were two ways of phrasing the same claim on being part of that thing called “the people (rakjat; 人民).” In any case, readers of the yinhua press would not be disappointed. One article reproduced two dozen “worker’s mountain songs (工人山歌)” from the villages of the Jebus area in Western Bangka. Many of these songs reflected “work as a primary kind of consciousness,”141 yet others admonished against the vices of opium-smoking, gambling and visiting brothels. In generally, they reflected a keen consciousness of economic compulsion: If you don’t beat it, the ox won’t walk; 耕牛不打就不走， If I don’t work, my son won’t eat, 爷不卖力子不饱。 A thousand-jin load still has to be carried, 千斤担子也得挑， No rice in the basket makes one worry.142 釜中么米叫人愁。 The work songs included both rubber-tapping and tin-mining songs, confirming that workers moved frequently between independent smallholding and waged industrial labor in the mines.143 Or, as one song put it: After scoring the rubber palm, I go to the parit,144 割完树胶做巴力， 352 === [PDF page 367] === I was born poor, what else can I do?145 生就人穷怎奈何。 They are replete with the details of the embodied experience of labor. For example, the pain of crouching or kneeling at night (when the rubber flows more easily), here powerfully compared with the rituals of ancestor worship: Torch in hand, walking at night, 手拿烛光行夜路， The rubber-tapper’s life is bitter indeed. 割柅阿哥真是苦。 I left home at midnight, and it’s turning light, 半夜出门天光转， Others kneel before their ancestors, but I kneel 人跪祖公我跪树。 before a tree.146 This focus on the process of working, on the embodied experience of work, with its own technical vocabulary, mightily contrasts the tendency towards abstraction and metaphor in the writing of the students and teachers of the yinhua press. It is not that there are no abstractions at all. Some songs reflect on the ups and downs of rubber prices, while others directly invoke abstract labor: Three pounds of sweat for three pounds of rubber, 汗水三斤柅三斤， How can I not worry?147 你叫阿哥怎不愁。 Mining songs, unlike tapping songs, focus not on the fluctuations of price or the difficulties of extraction, but rather on the pitiable level of wages, or the petty cruelty of bosses. The suffering of mining is linked to the burning heat of the sun, since tin-mining was linked to a work schedule. Because of the nature of Bangka Malay, this translation is tentative, and I welcome corrections: So bleak, so bleak, 真凄凉来真凄凉， Today the sun is hard to bear, 今日日头真难当。 I hope the sun will be covered in clouds, 崖博日头云遮去， May Heaven have eyes, tolong.148 天公有眼爱多郎。149 Note here the fully integrated use of the loanword “tolong” as an optative (perhaps, “please” or “favor”) at the conclusion of the song. The difficulty of constructing an authoritative translation of a transcription recorded only sixty years ago is suggestive of the discontinuities between our present and that world. Some of the songs collected celebrated the act of singing, once more using metaphors of quantification, as in this couplet: 353 === [PDF page 368] === A single song can cuts a jin of bitterness, 一条山歌减斤苦， If you suffer then sing, and suffer no more.150 有苦唱歌苦就冇。 While such “mountain songs” were idealized as the oral culture of the illiterate working class, in a context of rising literacy, and given the varied educational background of tin miners, they may have operated more like popular written rather than oral poetry. For example, in his memoirs, Zou Fangjin recalls that when he was detained on the neighboring island of Belitung during the anti-communist razzia of 1951, he discovered a poem carved into his cell walls.151 The heptasyllabic quatrain marks this poem as falling within the conventions of the “mountain song,” Living in Nanyang isn't easy, 南洋州府唔好居， One salah and you're a coolie,152 一有色拉作估俚。 During the day there's not enough food, 日里三餐食唔饱， At night there's neither [mosquito] net nor blanket.153 夜里无帐又无被。 Literacy among Chinese workers may have been fairly high, especially by the 1950s. While secondary schools, which increased rapidly throughout Indonesia after 1945, have a deserved central place in narratives of Chinese-language education in Indonesia, it is not generally appreciated that there was also a boom in popular education. While this could take many forms, the most important were night schools (typically for older students), and the rural primary schools. These institutions operated in synergy with the secondary schools, whose students often serve as teachers, before and after graduation. Anecdotally, one result was an expansion of literacy in all strata of Chinese society, in both languages. The radical ideals behind popular education are suggested by the history of the Study Society (学习社) of Pangkal Pinang, operated primarily by radical students of the Chinese Middle School, which established a night school that enrolled over a thousand students at one point. It featured pay-as-you-wish tuition, no separation by age, education level, or gender, and permitted students to enroll or leave freely.154 One of the educators involved, himself the child of a tin miner, notes that they even built a mobile library which they could bring to the mines and orchards; however, because they were periodically inspected by the Department of Education, communist texts had to be stored 354 === [PDF page 369] === separately. Twenty similar such study societies operated throughout Bangka, reaching 7000-8000 students at any one time, and one elder calculates that one in fifteen Chinese in Bangka were enrolled at any one point in the mid-1950s.155 Here is an example of a worker striking in the legendary strike of 1947 in Belitung, published in Voice of Labor,156 which provides is a rare glimpse of the emergent proletarian consciousness: Put down your hoe, throw down your shovel, 放下锄头，丢下了铁铲， Crawl up from the palang157 and wipe away your sweat, 从“咈啷" 爬起，揩一揩臭汗， “Go on home!” We’re on strike. “回去吧！”我们罢工了。 We’ve thrown down our tools, but picked up strength, 扔下工具，收起了力量， Come down from the iron boat, to stretch our sore backs, 从铁船下来，伸一伸酸腰， “Go on home!” We’re on strike. “回去吧！”我们罢工了。 The furnace is extinguished, the drills are silent, 熄灭炉火，停止了锥声， Come out from the metal room, pat off the dust, 从铁寮出来，拍一拍灰尘， “Go on home!” We’re on strike. “回去吧！”我们罢工了。158 While the regular prosody makes it easy to remember or sing, the detailed emphasis on the production process distinguishes it from mountain songs, which tend to focus on conventionalized images of suffering. Once again, this focus on the concrete work process contrasts the use of mining as metaphor in the poems discussed earlier. The dust that is patted off is both metaphorical indignity and annoyance, and also literal dust produced by the process of mining. Indeed, poems and songs such as these could be construed as a form of “evidence” of Chinese indigeneity, especially where they incorporated Malay vocabulary, since they suggested a long period of residence. Siauw Giok Tjhan, for example, pointed out that in Bangka there were many villages (and even asli people) whose original names were Chinese.159 Linguistic borrowing has always been one of the main indices of cultural exchange, and as Tamara Chin has shown, Chinese philologists in the 1950s turned away from historical linguistics to contact linguistics, emphasizing loanwords rather than cognates, in an effort to show not shared ancestry but rather cultural exchange.160 Something similar happened, though in a less academic way, in 355 === [PDF page 370] === the yinhua press, where the enumeration of loanwords became a popular exercise in proving a history of Sino-Indonesian friendship: the Fujianese condiment shadie (沙爹, from sate) in Chinese, or the omnipresent stir-fried tjap tjay (from “mixed vegetables” [杂菜]) in Indonesian.161 Zou Fangjin’s articles on Indonesian loanwords in the Hakka lect of Belitung, for example, were included in his 1961 book, Traces of Chinese Labor in Belitung.162 He also discussed neologisms that showed how deep the effects of mining ran. The word for “year,” for example, 湖砂 (PY: husha, lit. “lake-sand”), derived from the amount of time it took to exhaust one open pit. The word for “month,” 号头 (PY: haotou, lit. “number”), meanwhile, was based on the numbered slips used to collect monthly pay.163 In other words, the basic units of time were no longer yoked to the seasons or the skies, but to the rhythms of the mining industry. The social history of the tin islands, however, went beyond simply exchange, contact, and influence. Though there is no need to romanticize it, it is clear that these were sites of creolization, hybridity, and syncretism. For example, the demotic Chinese language of Bangka has been described as “an almost creolized Hakka dialect with heavy borrowings from Bangkanese Malay.”164 Siauw, who sought to define Chinese-Indonesians as simply one ethnicity (suku) among the many that comprised the Indonesian nation (bangsa), also proposed that Malay-inflected Chinese lects such as those used in parts of Sumatra as candidates be considered “regional language” (bahasa daerah), just like Sunda or Javanese.165 Siauw’s enthusiasm for creolization had not quite transferred into the world of yinhua letters by 1965, though perhaps it would have given time. At that point, however, the national-linguistic analogy, with its assumption of two discrete nation-states with two separate languages—what I have been calling the regulative ideal of Sino-Indonesian friendship—was still too strong. An truly creolized culture was a bit too close to “dual nationality,” and in any case there is reason to believe that the Hakka lects of the tin islands were undergoing a partial decreolization with the spread of Mandarin-language schooling. 356 === [PDF page 371] === From Mining to Marronage This phenomenon was not specific to Indonesia, since in China as well, it enjoyed several decades of popularity.166 Claudine Salmon, writing of Southeast Asian novels in Chinese, contrasted what she called kuli novels to towkay novels which protagonized capitalists. These stories were formally linked to the “popular novels of revolutionary history” emerging from the PRC.167 Mandatory themes include the oppression of the old order, the virtues and resistance of the oppressed, the idealization of labor, and the implicit or explicit necessity of party leadership. Formally, they drew on socialist realism, as it was inflected by popular narrative. Typicality of characters, development of consciousness, and often the instrumental emplotment of romantic love, were common features. The Indonesian context, however, is unique insofar as it was an area with a substantial established diaspora and, before 1965, friendly relations with the PRC. This permitted the development of a thriving, if short-lived, Chinese-language public sphere, and many newspapers included literary supplements that provided space for budding writers. For me, the tensions between the openly pro-communist politics of this public sphere, and the Chinese- Indonesian community’s historical links to capitalism, are especially interesting. In early 1960, the pro-PRC Jakarta newspaper Seng Hwo Pao published a serialized story based on a miner’s rebellion in Bangka that received instant acclaim. The screenplay (电影文学 剧本) Tin Island168 was written by Li Xu169 and Liren170 and featured illustrations by Yang Quanchang 杨权昌.171 Literary screenplays were a flourishing genre in the PRC during the “seventeen years” period, and were usually intended to be read as fiction, which is why I prefer the term screen-novel. The two authors were locally born, Chinese-educated, fluent in Indonesian, and left-leaning. Both had worked in the early 1950s in the highly-politicized Chinese Middle School of Sungai Liat (烈港) in Bangka, which had no doubt brought them into close contact students only one or two generations removed from the mines.172 In addition, the literary editor at Seng Hwo Pao, Zou Fangjin—who we encountered above as a collector of poetry and amateur historian—had himself been active in Belitung’s labor movement and likely 357 === [PDF page 372] === encouraged the project.173 All of these yinhua cultural workers had connections to the PRC embassy, the Chinese schools and papers, and the larger Indonesian left. Tin Island was based on the Liu Nghie (刘义) rebellion of 1899, in which a runaway “piglet” adopting the name of one of the Black Flag leaders from the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands had led a group of “social bandits” for several months in raids against the mines;174 this rebellion was a watershed in the political radicalization of miners, who would become increasingly militant both for economic and political demands over the next decades. Into this basic narrative, Tin Island inserts a love story, and dwells at length on the relations between the Chinese miners and Bangkanese villagers; unsurprisingly, it also omits the suppression and defeat.175 Because the rebellion had involved the Sungai Liat area where the authors had worked, they would almost certainly have been privy to oral tradition that is now lost to us.176 As the full title suggests, and the cover illustration confirms, this text drew on various popular genres, both traditional and contemporary. The phrase “(Record of) Enmity and Gratitude,” (恩仇记) for example, refers both to Teochew opera and to a well-known translation of The Count of Monte Cristo. Similarly, the cover illustration’s typography clearly references Tarzanesque tropical adventure cinema, as does the focalization of the romance between Zheng Zhong and Mina in the The appeal of Tin Island, however, was not just its plot but the way in which it presented familiar subject matter to readers as something potentially cinematic. Reading this screenplay, readers were invited to imagine landscapes and personalities that may have been familiar to them as if through a camera.177 This visuality, I think, was one way to resolve the problem of evidentiality that was posed by the retreat of the era of contract labor from living memory: “I, from the younger generation, / could not see my elders open up the wilderness as the years accumulate.”178 Indeed, the landscape motifs that I discussed earlier are an important part of Tin Island. For example, in the second chapter, for example, after the carnivalesque wedding which dominates the first chapter,179 we are brought into “hidden abode of production,” the mines themselves:180 358 === [PDF page 373] === In thick fog and freezing cold, as the forested hills glisten with dew, amid the regular and monotonous beat of wooden claves, the bleary-eyed piglets walk. Through the wet, slippery, steep path. Through the twisting and turning trail. The piglets take one uneven step after another—a moment of carelessness and they will slip—while muttering curses under their breath… [Unreadable] Over twenty meters from the surface, over a hundred meters in breadth, the whitemuddy mine pit (垩泥矿坑) was like a demon spreading its ferocious maw. Planks of half a meter wide formed steps from below. The sharp drop made one shiver. The overseer Du Qinglong stood before the piglets, and said, with a straight face, word by word: "From today on, everyone has to mine four bamboo baskets (箩) a day!"181 This production increase, backed by physical violence, then initiates the conflict of the entire play, as the protagonist Zheng Zhong organizes a work stoppage in protest. We can skip over the ensuing fight scenes—there are quite a few. In summary, Zheng flees the mines and eventually finds shelter in the village of the friendly Ahmad and his adoptive daughter Mina, with the permission of the kindly chief Saleh.182 Crucially, there are other Chinese from the mines who have also found refuge in the village, including a group of widows evicted from company housing.183 This may have reflected the experience of many Bangka residents, who may have spent time in both spaces; as Erwiza Erman and Mary Somers Heidhues have emphasized, Bangka’s economy was bi-sectoral, and laborers moved frequently between tin-mining and cash crop agriculture (especially pepper, but rubber and fishing also played significant parts). The contrast between the infernal mines and the idyllic village is stark, as the intentionally parallel opening of Chapter 5 shows: Night, a crescent moon, the sky full of stars. In the treacherous cold, Mina and the heavily-burdened Zheng Zhong hurry. They trek steep paths, They ford shallow streams, They climb muddy slopes, They cross narrow bridges, They traverse dense forests… [Unreadable] At dawn, they arrived at the fishing village. 359 === [PDF page 374] === The veil-like fog dispersed, and red light appeared over the distant horizon. The morning mist, glittered like fish scales, caught fire and awakened the ruddy smiling face of the ocean. Just beside it lay the fishing village. "We're here, there it is!" Mina pointed gaily.184 Whereas tin-mining is depicted as dangerous and grueling, the following depiction of fishing is joyful and involves the entire community—the resulting haul is described in terms that remind one of the Great Leap Forward-era rhetoric of plenty. While the imagery contrasts the mine and the village as two separate worlds, the emplotment emphasizes that these two worlds are in fact antagonistic components of one single world. Zheng Zhong wishes to liberate the other miners, but before he can, the Inspector of Mines (矿物局长) sends his henchmen to search the village for runaways. In the ensuing conflict, Mina—who Zheng has fallen in love with—is kidnapped. This colonial violence strengthens the alliance of the miners and the villagers, who plan a raid on the Inspector’s mansion to liberate Mina, which is the climax of the “movie.” In this context, Tin Island’s characterization of rural Chinese as runaway contract laborers (or—and the distinction is crucial—their descendants) is equivalent to overwriting “economic migrant” with “political subject.” We could even draw a close analogy to what, in the transatlantic context, is referred to as marronage, from the term “maroon,” for an escaped enslaved person. More specifically, of grand marronage, i.e. the establishment of independent communities.185 This was no fantasy, either, since especially in the north of Bangka, there were a number of predominantly-Chinese, well-established villages.186 Furthermore, we should not dismiss the idea that Li Xu and Liren during their tenure in Bangka as teachers in the 1950s had access to oral traditions about the Liu Nghie rebellion and its aftermath. The crucial point here, though, is that the pastoral ideal depicted here is not a nostalgic past to colonial capitalism, but rather a post-lapsarian response to it. Ultimately, the Chinese miners abscond into the mountains with Bangkanese villagers into the mountains, from where they will wage their people’s war against colonialism. Indeed, one of the last things they do is opening the levees, which floods the mines, making them both economically unproductive and aesthetically available—forming a kind of prequel to the poems examined earlier in this chapter. 360 === [PDF page 375] === Figure 33. Cinematic illustrations in Gratitude and Enmity on Tin Island. This cover illustration by Yang Quanchang was also included in the original serialization from 1959-1960 in Seng Hwo Pao. Missing from this grayscale reproduction is the pink tint on the sky in the original book. Source: Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 1961. 361 === [PDF page 376] === Figure 34. Gestures of friendship at the conclusion of Tin Island. “Zheng Zhong shook Saleh’s hand: “Chief Saleh, we will be grateful for your virtue for the rest of our lives.” Source: Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 1961. 362 === [PDF page 377] === The Anticolonial Inheritance While Tin Island is straightforwardly critical of colonial capitalism, I would like to suggest that its relationship to postcolonial capitalism is considerably more ambiguous. After all, it was part of a broader defense of the legitimate rights of rural traders. Commerce specifically was looked down upon in “productivist” discourse, which was not limited to the left: if it does not create value, but only circulates it, then all wealth accrued from trade is, socially speaking, by definition parasitic.187 As such, I would suggest that Tin Island’s defense of rural traders has to take the indirect form of a defense of tin miners. This helps to explain why, although the novel is meticulous in describing the social world of the mine, there is very little description of the actual process of mining, and tin itself does not even appear—the mining itself is in a sense background. In my view, it would have been implicit to readers that the protagonists of Tin Island are the progenitors of the rural Chinese who were being swept up in 1959. By this time, the era in which Chinese laborers predominated in the tin mines (or, for that matter, the tobacco plantations) was becoming historical. Those still alive and in Indonesia would have largely exited these industries and, if they were able, entering agriculture, commerce or petty industry.188 It is also worth recalling that, although the initial ban of May had targeted all business in the countryside, making it really a residence ban (how could you live somewhere without any way of making a living?), the November policies limited its scope to a much narrower range of commercial activities. Nonetheless, the fate of policies affecting Chinese rural traders were understood, by both opponents and supporters, as referenda on the position of Chinese people in Indonesia tout court. The implication behind Tin Island, then, is that what wealth belonged to the rubber tappers, fishermen, bicycle mechanics, schoolteachers, and yes, rural traders, was legitimate because it had been “paid for,” or “earned,” in sweat and tears in the mines. There is, then, an implied continuity between the trader and the miner, and while some miners did indeed become traders, it is perhaps more common that the children of miners became traders. (And there were of course plenty of traders who had no relationship to the mines at all.) 363 === [PDF page 378] === We are, in other words, dealing with problems of inheritance, the classic preoccupation of the bourgeois novel. Yen-ling Tsai, in an insightful discussion of confiscation of school properties as an example of the racialization of property ownership, has summarized Filomeno Aguilar’s reflections on heritability and Chineseness in the Indonesian context: Chinese wealth is presumed as non-inheritable, because while affluence among "indigenous" Indonesians is explained as inheritance from earlier generations, the Chinese, on the other hand, are indelibly linked to their first-generation immigrant ancestors in an unbroken chain, who are perceived as escaping poverty from China and whose wealth must have been unscrupulously generated at the expense of the indigenous majority and their land …189 The debate on Chinese capital was, in some sense, a variation on the universal (under capitalism) question of the origins of capital. How blood-stained was this capital, and with whose blood? Within the mid-century discursive climate, while industry was viewed as legitimate in a way that trade was not. In Tin Island, while productive labor, used in fishing and mining (in a tragic way), is ennobled, trade rarely appears, and is represented negatively: the shopkeeper, restaurant owner, and moneylender are all depicted as vicious colonial collaborators. There is one important exception: in the very first chapter, Mina leads a group of Bangkanese women to the mine district, but they are barred entry at the gate on account of the wedding: “Don’t let a single one of these native women traders (做买卖的番婆) in today!”190 Eventually, because the Inspector is sexually interested in Mina, they are permitted in. Relating the history of commercial capital not only to race, but also to gender, is a necessary complication. Alexander and Alexander have argued that in colonial Java, the state favored male traders—especially immigrant ones—over Javanese women, who were eventually marginalized within local commerce where they had one played a major role.191 In many places in Southeast Asia, intermarriage with local women was an established means for Chinese bachelors to gain access to networks, capital, and—in places where colonial laws did not permit alienation to non-natives—land.192 As would be expected, then, the question of inheritance is routed through Mina, whose character must do the heavy work of mediating between “Indonesia” and the “Chinese.” 364 === [PDF page 379] === Earlier I described Tin Island as an interracial romance, but that is not quite true, though it is also not untrue. The revelation of Mina’s real father is a key moment in the narrative. In Chapter 3, her adoptive father Ahmad informs her that she is not his child, but the child of a Chinese tin miner who had once saved Ahmad’s life but died tragically. Transracial adoption, specifically of Chinese girls by non-Chinese families, is in fact well-attested.193 In any case, the narrative effect is to turn an interracial romance into an intraracial romance. Later yet, we learn from an old escaped laborer that her father was executed on the Inspector’s orders for protecting him back in the mines, which inspires a desire for revenge in her—Mina’s true father, then, is someone not unlike Zheng Zhong, an honest and brave tin miner who is not afraid to resist the boss. This revelation of her racial truth emphasizes her patrilineal Chineseness, rather than her matrilineal Indonesianness. Her mother is revealed to be a Javanese woman who was kidnapped and trafficked to the mines. After her father’s death, she mysteriously "disappeared,” just like she disappears from the story after a few sentences. The device of the revelation of parentage is a classic narrative device, appearing everywhere from Star Wars to Shakespearean comedy to Oedipus Rex. Yet its deployment here is also an inventive formal solution to the contradictions of the sociolegal identity of ethnic Chinese in mid-century Indonesia. As I mentioned earlier, within the framework established in 1955, people eligible for both nationalities did not so much “become” nationals of one country, but rather, through their renunciation of the other nationality, were revealed as having always been nationals. This resembles the structure of the future perfect tense, in which a present action determines what will always have been. In Tin Island, the revelation of Mina’s parentage, also permits the character to have always been Chinese without becoming Chinese. It also, however, reflects the colonial context of a society in which, as Ann Stoler puts it, social and legal standing derived from the cultural prism through which color was viewed, from the silences, acknowledgments, and denials of the social circumstances in which one's parents had sex.194 There is in fact an entire social history in the background of this revelation: as Guo-Quan Seng has persuasively shown in relation to colonial Java, with reference to the rest of Southeast 365 === [PDF page 380] === Asia, Chineseness was a fundamentally patrilineal construction. As a result, women, including both Chinese, Indonesian, and mixed ones, were “strangers in the family.”195 The racial liminality of women within the male-centered lineage may have been especially notable in a community where young male laborers predominated, like the tin mines of colonial Bangka. The extent to which gender itself was racialized is reflected in the fact that, at least in the mid-20th century, the standard term for “wife” in Bangka and Belitung Hakka was fanpo 番婆, a term that elsewhere was used only to refer to “native” women.196 This reflected a specific history in which colonial-era miner’s wives were, as a rule, either non-Chinese or mixed-race. This liminality affords Mina free movement between the space of the village and the mines, and in parallel, between Indonesianness and Chineseness. When Ahmad reveals to Mina her true parentage, he also bequeaths to her an “heirloom” (家传) dagger, which her unnamed father had once used to “roam the rivers and lakes” (闯荡江湖) in China, and somehow smuggled through customs when he came to Bangka.197 This dagger reappears when Mina, who has been kidnapped by the Inspector of Mines, defends herself against his attempted rape, stabbing him: Mina stood there calmly, holding the dagger in her hand, without any fear on her face, like the holy statue of a pure goddess […] Mina’s eyes gleamed with the flame of hatred. It was as if she was seeing her father, mother, godfather [Ahmad], Saleh, and Zheng Zhong’s eyes seemed to watch her approvingly. She felt herself growing, growing, turning into a great and fearless person…198 In this scene, the reader is encouraged to read the simile (“it was as if she was seeing…”) as a cinematic montage of various parental figures. We could even speak of a surfeit of fathers here. The Inspector shoots her and Zheng Zhong appears just in time to kill him and cradle Mina as she dies. Her death fits well with a larger pattern in stories of interracial love—think Madame Butterfly—which allow for the reestablishment of the transgressed racial boundary.199 As she is dying, she gives Zheng Zhong—who, remember, has been compared to her father multiple times, including in the “montage” above—her father’s dagger. At her funeral, later (Figure 34): “Uncle (伯) Ahmad, please take this dagger. It’s a relic (遗物) of Mina.” Zheng Zhong’s voice was unusually solemn, as he pulled the dagger out of his clothes and gave it to Ahmad. 366 === [PDF page 381] === “No, Brother (老弟) Zheng, you should keep it. You are worthy (你配)!” Ahmad said, tears falling uncontrollably from his eyes. He seemed to see the vivacious Mina before his eyes.200 I propose we read the transmission of this dagger, which is always described as a “relic” or “inheritance” (“遗物,” perhaps I: “warisan”), in relation to the debates about the legitimacy of Chinese property ownership in Indonesia. This is why this interaction between Ahmad and Zheng Zhong—“You should keep it. You are worthy!”)—matters, and why the village chief Saleh witnesses it. This patrimony passes not in a direct line from an earlier migrant (laoke) to a new arrival (xinke), but rather through the affinal mediation (the “vanishing mediator”) of racial and gendered others: an Indonesian man, a creole woman. It corresponds closely to the matrilocal, patrilineal social structures common in Chinese communities of Southeast Asia that Guo Quan Seng has discussed.201 The thematic of inheritance here posits property as identity, identity as property. As the official Dual Nationality Treaty and its supplements stated, dual nationality was "a problem inherited (yang kita warisi; 遗留下来的) from the past.”202 While in some sense the turn to citizenship replaced the colonial grid of race—the "civil status" (I: catatan sipil; D: burgerlijke stand) which separated Europeans from "natives," and also produced intermediate categories such as "foreign oriental,” into which Chinese fell,203 was abolished during this period—a racialized and gendered "common sense" is still perceptible. Thus, while PRC officials insisted that dual nationals be free to choose from either their paternal or maternal nationality, Article 5 of the Treaty stated that in the case no decision were made, paternal nationality would take priority. This patrilineal preference was reiterated again in the 1958 Nationality Law in Indonesia, which referred to the nationality of the mother only in case the father was unknown, stateless, or—in what was effectively a continuation of the colonial policy of paternal recognition—did not have a legal relationship to the child.204 As I have argued throughout this dissertation, the overarching narrative of Sino-Indonesian friendship encouraged yinhua writers to depict positive relationships between Chinese and Indonesian individuals, often using the homosocial rhetoric of brotherhood. Themes that had dominated the Sino-Malay novel, such as 367 === [PDF page 382] === interracial romance, intermarriage, biracial children, and the related sociolegal problems of inheritance and legitimacy, were a site of intense ambivalence. Tin Island, for example, deploys a complex and confused mass of kinship metaphors; this confusion is a real confusion speaking to real contradictions. In this context, Tin Island’s resolution should be seen as a narrative extension of the fraternal metaphor—an extension made inevitable by the length of the genre—where the brothers are also fathers. It is this contrivance of multiple patrilineality that permits the inheritance to be felicitous. Let us return to the dagger’s qualities. The first thing we note is that it is not a miner’s tool. It is, rather, a hero’s weapon, meant to kill villains rather than produce value. This reflects the privileging, characteristic of all United Front literature, of political attitude over social position, that we find in formulations such as “progressive funds and forces” or “patriotic capitalists.” It is consonant with the larger emphasis on the discourse of contribution. I overstate the point here only to draw out the remarkable lack of interest that Tin Island, like the nature poems discussed earlier, have in the concrete process of tin production. We see, in other words, a great deal of oppression, but very little exploitation. This slant is inseparable from mainstream yinhua literature’s character as the cultural expression of the rise of the Chinese petty bourgeoisie—the coalition of intellectuals, shopkeepers, artisans, traders. Here, the contract laborer as a representative not of a class but of an ethnicity (or more vaguely, of a community). It would however be too much to say that this is a misrepresentation or an erasure, since the substitution of the community for the class reflects a real social transformation: It was really only from about the 1920s onward that large numbers of Chinese in Indonesia began to move away from other occupations, mostly less desirable ones, as in the case of thousands of plantation and mining coolies, into what today are commonly regarded as their characteristic roles as small-scale traders, warung operators, commodity dealers, and money lenders.205 We are dealing, then, with ambivalence of a new generation of Chinese-speaking Indonesians, who were materially and economically tied to petty bourgeois interests but ideologically and politically strongly attached to leftist politics which privileged the proletariat and peasant. For a subject caught at the crossroads between class mobility and dual nationality, the dagger does 368 === [PDF page 383] === double duty as (1) a token that proves community belonging, i.e., something akin to proof of citizenship, and (2) actual inherited and bequeathable property, with economic value, i.e. capital. This dual character reflects the real interrelation of the postcolonial processes of nationalizing and citizenising, which was itself only the latest iteration in a long-standing link between property and subjecthood within the liberal tradition. In response to the PP10 crisis, as an existential threat to the continued reproduction of rural Chinese life in Indonesia, works such as Tin Island provided a powerful and implicit defense of the logic of rightful inheritance. Not a colonial inheritance, but an anticolonial inheritance. Yet perhaps we have overstepped. The prototype here is not a defense of private property (“I built this, and therefore I rightfully own it”) but rather of a plea for social inclusion (“I suffered and I served, and therefore I deserve something”). This is, indeed, what differentiates the rebellion narratives of left-wing mid-century yinhua literature from the pioneer-settler narratives that we find elsewhere, which Baren would associate with the taukeh. It is instead a claim on a shared inheritance. Furthermore, at the level of genre, it is also a an example of that shared in heritance. Before it is a weapon, the dagger is a trope, referring immediately to the martial arts/knight errant genre: when Ahmad reveals the dagger for the first time, Mina and Zheng Zhong both exclaim, "a fine blade (好剑)!"206 This transformation of a sword, jian, into a dagger or knife, dao, is part of its relocation from China to insular Southeast Asia, where daggers like the keris or rencong had great cultural significance. The—here, unusually successful— fusion of social-realist artistic ambitions and popular-commercial traditions is typical of yinhua literature in this period, which was itself caught somewhere between the commercial subjects of the colonial era, and the political citizenry of the postcolonial era. The fact that this text is written with the silver screen in mind, and encourages a visual mode of imagining, further strengthens the association with commercial traditions. (Such a link is most visible in the film poster style of the cover.) In this sense, it can also be seen as a sign of a shared cultural inheritance, that is, of a regional, popular, and commercial tradition of martial arts narrative (I: cerita silat; Hok: boo hap). Even though this genre was problematic within the socialist canon, its wide appeal made it, 369 === [PDF page 384] === arguably, one of the more suitable bases for a localized Maoist project of mass culture.207 Thus, while the premise of Tin Island, for example, is a historical incident that encapsulates the desired proletarian themes of exploitation, resistance, and solidarity, its popularity was no doubt its incorporation of older conventions. Note that this resemblance does not require direct influence, as the underlying social conditions may also have produced these cultural forms sui generis. This disavowed and partial continuity of genre, I think, could be said to reflect the disavowed and partial continuity of social life before and after the apparent rupture of independence. This chapter has focused on how Chinese-language writers represented the history of contract labor to Chinese-language readers, from the poems of Shaping to the screenplay Tin Island. I have tried to show how these descriptions of anticolonial resistance in the past can be productively read in relation to commercial enterprise in the present, i.e., that working-class narratives were instrumentalized for the interests of an emergent middle class. The apparent contradiction between the political ideology and the class interests of Chinese in Indonesia has been often commented. Studying yinhua literature allows us to make better sense of the complex interaction between socialist form and capitalist contents. At the least, we can note how socialist discourse in the 1950s was considerably more accommodating towards capital than is often imagined, and it is within the space of this accommodation that the Chinese diaspora in Indonesia thrived. More generally, we can see how questions of race, nation or ethnicity— however we want to characterize Sino-Indonesian difference—permit the elision of intracommunal class distinctions. I suspect that this process is not the prerogative only of a minority bourgeoisie, but in fact a local manifestation of the cultural quandaries faced by a postcolonial “national bourgeoisie.” Although these texts were part of a larger reaction to the “Colonial Vestiges Thesis,” they can hardly have been primarily intended to change the mind of right-wing Indonesians. After all, they were not reading Chinese-language newspaper, let alone the communist ones. Instead, the recovery of heroic histories of contract labor served to shift the self-conception of the Chinese community. One of the less remarked effects of the PP10 crisis was the production of both a 370 === [PDF page 385] === feeling of group solidarity in the Chinese community, crossing the significant divides between rich and poor, creole and immigrant, and rural and urban. As rural poor flooded into the cities, they relied on the support of donors, volunteers, and activists, often living in converted schoolhouses as they awaited repatriation. Thus, the elision of class was not simply a function of literature, but a real effect of political pressure upon the entire “community,” but especially the poorest parts of it. My argument that the cultural imaginary of contract labor is deeply embedded in the interests of the petty bourgeoisie should not be understood as (only) intended to deflate it. This is, rather, to restore to them a framework of legibility that respects a material history in which there were manifold links between the two classes, usually generational and a political analysis that conceived of both as part of the anticolonial masses. A class critique of this cultural imaginary would have to move beyond superficial observations about the irony and/or hypocrisy of communists supporting capitalists (read: the PKI’s defense of Chinese business), or capitalists supporting communists (read: Chinese business’ support of the PKI). It would have to seriously engage the entire problematic of the United Front, i.e. of cross-class collaboration within the framework of national liberation struggle. It would mean understanding that sometimes the “ironclad proof” (铁证) is alloyed with other, more malleable metals. Defending Land The Missing Peasantry Thus far, we have been faced with two serious challenges: firstly, it has been difficult to pierce the construct of the “Chinese community,” to tease apart its strata and uncover its internal antagonisms. As with many minorities, especially in the wake of disaster, the problems of class are often set aside in the interest of “unity.” If a yinhua proletariat existed, what forms did its culture take? What is the relation of the literature that I have described here to the rising class of yinhua capitalists? Would it be fair to characterize such a literature as petty bourgeois, given the small traders, shop clerks, and schoolteachers who comprised its base? Generally speaking, even 371 === [PDF page 386] === openly leftist yinhua writers sidestepped class struggle, which was deferred to the day after the defeat of imperialism—in this, they inherited the approach of the Popular Front, or more appropriately, the United Front. Secondly, I have sought to discover the links that tied yinhua literature to the social context of Indonesia. Often this has taken the form of tracing translations, or shared tropes. Yet it has not always been easy to bridge the gap between the concrete social struggles of Chinese speakers within the Indonesian revolution, and the Afro-Asian literary culture in which they participated. In what follows, we will attempt to attack both of these difficulties through a textual history of the Tanjung Morawa Incident. The Tanjung Morawa Incident refers to the killing of six peasants and wounding of seventeen more on March 17, 1953, on the outskirts of Medan.208 They had been protesting their evictions as part of a sweeping scheme to ready the plantation belt for the return of Western capital; to force the issue, the police resorted to crushing of their crops with tractors, producing the neologism, “tractorizing” (mengtraktorkan).209 The slaughter of unarmed peasants in the service of Western capital was only the latest example of the distance that still remained between formal independence and real decolonization. The “Tanjung Morawa Incident” cracked the ruling coalition.210 In retrospect, this was a watershed moment, when the political course of independent Indonesia was redirected away from restoration of the colonial system under the indigenous bourgeoisie in alliance with Western capital, towards an uncharted path that culminated in the takeover of almost all Western enterprises by 1965.211 What is less well-known is that the martyrs of Tanjung Morawa were primarily Chinese peasants. Resistance to the Governor Hakim’s “Deli Plan” was organized primarily through the Peasant Front of East Sumatra (Front Tani Sumatera Timur, FTST), a confederation of peasant associations. One of the Front’s key tenets was equality of land rights for all, in opposition to proposals that privileged “autochthonous” (i.e. Malay and Simalungun) rights to the exclusion of “immigrants” (everyone else, but especially Javanese and Chinese ex-contract laborers).212 Among its constituent organizations was the East Sumatra Chinese Worker Peasant Federation (苏东华侨工农联合会; Gabungan Buruh Tani Tionghoa, or GBTT), a confederation of peasant 372 === [PDF page 387] === associations that made up for its (relatively) small size with its militancy.213 The organized expression of the postwar peasant movement, the GBTT represented the tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese engaged in agriculture, especially along the north-south axis extending from Medan.214 The conflict at Tanjung Morawa revolved around a group of ten GBTT vegetable-farming families who refused the remote and barren land that had been offered them. In a letter setting out their conditions for resettlement, they asserted their loyalty to the Indonesian revolution, and recounted the deplorable conditions of their "importation" as part of the last wave of contract labor, shortly before the end of the penal sanction in 1931.215 The record of service, for what it is worth, was probably real: peasant’s associations south of Medan (i.e. around Tanjung Morawa) had received land allocations and rent reductions from the Republican forces216 and helped them in turn to infiltrate the Dutch zone.217 The state was, however, unrelenting, likely seeing these peasants as unruly foreigners. Even before this escalation, the Attorney General’s office already had his eyes on this organization, which "violated the norms of decency (fatsoennorm) [like] the guest who usurps the host's absolute right to manage his own household.” Evidence of communist tendencies included the use of democratic methods of village governance, solidarity with striking dock workers, their use of hammer and sickle iconography, and the hanging of a portrait of Marx in their meetings, concluding on a call for mass deportation of the membership.218 This central role of organized and militant Chinese peasants in this watershed moment has not been the subject of study, because, leaving aside the archival paucity characteristic of peasant movements, it is inconvenient for nationalist accounts of Indonesian history, and perhaps irrelevant for the urban-centered histories of the Chinese diaspora.219 The most detailed account in any language by Karl Pelzer describes them as “aliens who had refused to obey government orders,” which is uncharitable to say the least, even leaving aside the fact that the dualnationality question was still unsettled.220 At the time these deaths were considered newsworthy, and filled the press in 1953. Returning to this record allows us not only to reopen this moment 373 === [PDF page 388] === North Sumatran social history, but also to trace out some unexpected reverberations in Indonesian literary history. According to a detailed article in the Sumatra Bin Po, a funeral procession for the five Chinese martyrs drew 2000 attendees.221 Obituaries for the five Chinese note that three of them were middle-aged ex-contract laborers from the nearby Senembah Estate, who had arrived from the Hailufeng area in Eastern Guangdong around 1930, an early hub of agrarian organizing. Oral historians in the 1960s collected testimonies from guiqiao returnees, and identified an influx of contract laborers from this region who were fleeing the crackdown on peasant associations after the defeat of the Hailufeng Soviet.222 The organizing experience and political maturity that such immigrants would have brought with them go a long way to explaining the militancy of the GBTT, and provides yet more evidence of the unexpected reverberations of the Chinese revolution of the 1920s in Southeast Asia. The two slain youths were, respectively, a young teacher in the village and a recent graduate of the urban night schools, and a student in the same village school (and presumably a second-generation peasant).223 The centrality of popular education to both the organizational networks and the ideological project of the Democratic Movement, which I discussed in Chapter 3, is clear here. It was in instances such as the peasant movement of North Sumatra—and also among the organized miners of Belitung, mentioned in Chapter 5—that the postwar Chinese left was able to transcend the conservative tendencies of “United Front” politics, and approach the terrain of class struggle to contest not just cultural issues but social relations themselves. Interestingly, the incident is revealing of a community of interest between Javanese and Chinese as “immigrants” in a North Sumatra that had until recently been controlled by the alliance of Malay and Simalungun rajas in cooperation with Western planters, who they accused the Masyumi government of trying to reinstall. In addition to the five Chinese martyrs, a Javanese man also died. While in earlier stages, capitalists had relied on imported Chinese labor, in the early 20th century they shifted towards Javanese labor. This pattern of immigration completely upended the region’s demography, such that by 1930 many of the towns were 1/3-1/2 374 === [PDF page 389] === ethnic Chinese, and that almost half of East Sumatra (which would later be merged into the province of North Sumatra) was from Java.224 As ex-contract laborers who had often only recently gained access to (“squatted”) land, these groups also had the most to lose if a regime of differential land rights was reestablished. In addition to their shared interests, mixed Chinese-Javanese families were common on the suburban fringe of Medan. Chinese contract laborers, typically imported as bachelors, often married women from the families transplanted from Java as a unit, which also gave them better access to land that they might otherwise be excluded from as foreigners. In fact, one of the martyrs, Zheng Yamou, was partnered with a Javanese woman—we should not romanticize these interracial intimacies, however, since the article only mentions his partnership to drive home the point that “he could not even afford a marriage dowry,” i.e., to a Chinese woman. The two youths, too, might have been mixed-race. The multi-ethnic, working class milieu is suggested by the family background of one of Baren’s proteges, Chen Wenying, who was the son of a Chinese ex-contract laborer who had pivoted into the salted fish trade, and a Javanese woman who made and sold tempeh.225 A reporter for the Democratic Daily News, and later employed at the embassy in Jakarta, Chen had helped to compose and adapt (presumably bilingual) songs that were performed alongside Temple of Five Ancestors in 1946.226 Such data corroborate Baren’s depictions of Chinese-Javanese coexistence in the Sumatran hinterland, discussed in Chapter 3. They also lend credibility to Dutch military intelligence’s fearmongering about PKI leader Abdul Xarim, who it was claimed could “control two groups, Javanese workers and the Chinese community; through the former he achieves an accumulation of masses, and through the latter, of money."227 The forgetfulness that the proximity between Chinese and Javanese in postwar North Sumatra has been subject to is an object lesson in historiographical caution. While initially the Sumatra Bin Po reported among the martyrs an Javanese peasant named Darmo, in the days to follow their coverage focused only on the Chinese dead.228 Conversely, Darmo and two compatriots who passed later, Sukidi and Mardirsan, are memorialized in the names of three 375 === [PDF page 390] === streets in the town of Tanjung Morawa, but their Chinese comrades are not.229 This process of ethnic filtration, which does not necessarily involve malice and always has pragmatic justifications, in the progression from the event, to the reports, to the memories, to the scholarship, over time reproduces the illusion of separate societies. Solidarity, at that point, has become an abstract prescription based on a shared ideology of anticolonialism, rather than the conscious political extension of a material reality of living and dying together. In this case, this process of forgetting was encouraged by actions at the state level. The new policies introduced by the PNI, which represented the victory of the peasants, included the proviso that land could only be held by Indonesian citizens. 230 The line was now drawn not between autochthonous and immigrant but between citizen and alien, which would probably excluded the families of the martyrs. The GBTT was ordered to dissolve itself by Beijing as part of a new policy which discouraged overseas Chinese political activity. 231 By the late 1950s the Chinese peasantry of North Sumatra, which also faced stiff and sometimes violent competition from Batak farmers, had dwindled substantially in number.232 Eulogizing Go Sek Liu The flame of the GBTT burned brightly before it was extinguished, but what marks did it leave? I intend to show that this history of peasant organizing left a lasting impression on progressive intellectuals, demonstrating to them the concrete possibility of Sino-Indonesian revolutionary cooperation. The best place to start is with the memorialization of another martyr. For his role in supposedly instigating peasant resistance, the chairman of the GBTT Go Sek Liu 吴锡柳, was arrested after the Tanjung Morawa Incident, and died of illness in custody in December 1953, before the new government got around to releasing him. His death uncannily echoed the death of his predecessor, who had died in detention under the short-lived Dutch puppet state of East Sumatra, and further strengthened the sense of neocolonial continuity.233 There was an outpouring of public grief for Go, "naturally clever, diligent in self-study, and proficient in Indonesian,"234 but unlike the commemorations of Liu Yan, that I discuss in 376 === [PDF page 391] === Chapter 2, this time it was not limited to the Chinese-speaking community. His funeral was attended by representatives of many of the key organizations of the Indonesian left.235 There was good reason for this: Go had gone further than most in his participation in the Indonesian struggle. In the 1940s, he had been part of a close-knit group of progressive Chinese youth led by Oei Boen Tjoan, from the beginning of this chapter, who had helped to establish a reputation for the city of Siantar as a “little Yan’an.”236 In 1943, when the cities became unsafe, it was they who drew on their rural connections to resettle Baren and Liu Yan.237 As cadre in the postwar Democratic Movement, their activities helped to consolidate Siantar’s reputation as a “Little Yan’an.”238 Unlike the majority of their comrades who were apprehended and imprisoned when the city fell to the colonial army in 1947, they embarked on a miserable, months-long trek across the island to Tapanuli, where they apparently joined the troops of Saleh Umar.239 Over the next three years, Go worked first in the circulation of Republican propaganda, and later in the smuggled of arms from Malaya.240 In other words, Go was an exemplar of that crucial stratum of multilingual Sumatra-born youths who knit together constituencies across class, race and region, like the figure of Hei’er in Temple of Five Ancestors, who shuttles between the forest and the estates carrying messages and propelling the plot, or the members of the Chiao Hsing Group who articulated the Chineseliterate masses to the Baperki vision. This is the archetype of the courier, who leaves few traces of transmission. Doreen Lee, an anthropologist of Indonesian-Chinese descent, has recorded her family’s memories of someone who must be the same man, someone they had harbored during the occupation: Lee Fook looked like an old coolie, but he was the vanguard of the resistance movement around Kisaran heroes, but poor Lee Fook died of malaria, his grave forgotten, but for me and your older brother… Lee Fook was the primary disseminator of the post that came in, through his handlebars, he risked the most out of all of us. 241 Serendipitously, Baren also wrote an extended essay in memory of a Li Fu 李福, certainly the same person: an itinerant peddler who was careless about profits, treated “everyone’s home like his hostel,” and had memorized On Protracted Warfare.242 Baren concluded that essay with a 377 === [PDF page 392] === report of an encounter with a Pesindo (Socialist Youth of Indonesia) militia member and schoolteacher, where initial suspicion melts away on the mention of their shared comrade who has since passed.243 I digress here simply to highlight how the grand rhetoric of international friendship was based in the social life of the multiethnic revolutionary poor in North Sumatra. Go, too, inspired eulogies. His former commander described him as “a democratic warrior who died for antifascism,” noting that “even to today the Indonesian government still owes him” for weapons he procured pro bono.244 Anwar Dharma, later the editor of Harian Rakjat in Jakarta, who had worked with him in broadcasting propaganda, praised him as an “antifascist of consequence.”245 Indeed, once I started paying attention, I found Go’s legacy in surprising places. For example, I had long wondered as to the identity of Annast, the editor of Baperki’s Indonesian-language magazine Sunday Courier (where Anwar Dharma’s obituary was published), only to discover that he too was one of Go’s comrades-in-arms from the revolution.246 Similarly, I found that Buyung Saleh, the trade unionist-turned-literary scholar, also wrote an elegy for Go.247 Perhaps during his journey to Sumatra in the late 1940s, where he agitated among estate workers, he had met or heard of Go.248 I bring up these two examples specifically because they were prominent non-Chinese, “indigenous,” affiliates of Baperki. Buyung Saleh, in fact, was one of the leaders of the organization, and pushed its shift to the left around 1960.249 As the head of its research department, he also wrote an influential series of pamphlets on Chinese-Indonesian history. 250 His decade of involvement in the organization, despite accusations of essentially selling out,251 and his repeated attempts to defend its legacy later on, indicate serious commitment. I want to suggest that here, too, perhaps the groundwork for the 1950s-1960s alliance between the Indonesian left and the Chinese community can be traced back to the afterglow of interethnic, anticolonial cooperation in revolutionary North Sumatra. How else can we understand his extended elegy in terza rima written shortly after Go’s death which almost beatifies its subject? To live loyally Hidup berbakti 378 === [PDF page 393] === To die meaningfully Mati berarti Your departure was not accompanied by drums, Kepergianmu tak berpalu genderang just like your life of silent diligence; seperti pula hidupmu sunyi bertekun kerdja; your chest does not glitter with stars dadamu tak gemerlap berhias bintang But in our hearts you are venerated Tapi di hati kami engkau terpuja as a sincere fighter without vengefulness, selaku pejuang ichlas tak menuntut balas: energetic concrete, steel-boned! beton enerji bertulang baja! National differences form no barrier Perbedaan bangsa tak menjadi batas for we who love humanity bagi kita jang cinta umat manusia and fight for the freedom of the oppressed. dan juangkan kebebasan kaum tertindas. Thus, when you fought against Japan, you Demikianlah ketika melawan Djepang kau fought faithfully, berdjuang setia, and thus in our [inclusive] Great Revolution demikianlah dalam Revolusi Besar kami without owing anything you served dengan tak berhutang-piutang kau membakti Indonesia!252 Indonesia! The remaining twelve (!) stanzas extemporize on the coming socialist utopia, whose attainment will redeem Go’s sacrifice. What’s crucial here is how, for Buyung, Go’s service to a country not his own represents a pure form of internationalism (the rhyme of “loyally” and “meaningfully” at the start). The emphasis on how unrewarded (the absence of drums or military decoration) and unobligated (“without owing anything”) Go was should also be read against widespread stereotypes of Chinese as shrewd and calculating. While this poem’s original place of publication is unknown, it was included in Lekra’s Dynasty of 650 Million, an anthology of poems “about” China, many of which were composed during the various cultural delegations to China over the preceding years. One of Buyung Saleh’s other anthologized poems, written in Shanghai in 1960, shows a style that had become far more economical. I include my own Chinese translation here, too, even though I am hardly qualified to, simply as an exercise in demonstrating how “translatable” the diction of the emergent genre of solidarity poetry had become: in china di tiongkok 在中国 there’s lots of jade banyak giok 玉很多 the hardest is named chairman mao yang terkeras bernama ketua mao 最硬的一块叫毛主席 sharpened by the gongchandang yang diasah kungchangtang 它被共产党磨成 into a star menjadi sebutir bintang 闪烁在绿色夜空中 sparkling in the green sky253 kemerlap dilangit hijau 的一颗星星 379 === [PDF page 394] === Within the genre of celebrations of socialist leaders, this short piece stands out for its subordination of the individual to the organization. Linguistically, it makes striking use of Chinese-language words, which end four of the six lines. The rhyme of the loanwords giok (“jade”) and Tiongkok (“China”) reflects Buyung’s interest in the influence of Chinese on modern Indonesian, while the pairing of kungchantang (a transliteration of the Chinese name for the CPC) with bintang (“star”) seems to model the kind of Sino-Indonesian cultural exchange that he promoted. Many of the other contributors to Dynasty of 650 Million had been directly involved in propagandizing the peasant movement post-Tanjung Morawa. Agam Wispi, who would become a prominent leaders of the exiled PKI in China after 1965, penned a series on this theme, including “Peasant Girl (Gadis Tani),” “Evicted Peasants (Petani yang Diusir),” and most famously, “Death of a Peasant (Matinya seorang Petani),” which develops an extended analogy between the rice harvest and childbirth.254 As the campaign for land reform grew over the 1950s, the title of “Death of a Peasant” was borrowed for a 1962 anthology of Lekra poems focused on the agrarian struggle, which was then banned under the martial law still in effect. In this way, the struggle of ex-contract laborers in Sumatra, and the solidarity movement that developed around it, became a discursive resource for the intensifying struggle in the countryside of Java. The name of the disgraced Governor Hakim, who had been responsible for the Tanjung Morawa Incident, was now wielded as a warning to other officials.255 The fact that Buyung Saleh’s “Go Sek Liu in memoriam” was included not in Death of a Peasant, but rather in Dynasty of 650 Million, suggests how by the early 1960s the themes of Sino-Indonesian friendship and agrarian struggle had become separated within the Indonesian communist imaginary. Another Lekra stalwart, H.R. Bandaharo, would mention Go by poem at least twice in his poetry: the first time, in 1959 within an elegy for forgotten martyrs, as part of an implicit critique of Indonesians who fought less fiercely for the revolution than some foreigners;256 whereas in the second mention, in the 1970s, after his release from over a decade of New Order imprisonment—“that Chinese kid Go Sek who spoke with a Medan tongue (Si Go Sek anak cina yang bicara dengan lidah 380 === [PDF page 395] === Medan)”—Go Sek Liu metonymizes an entire generation of forgotten and defeated generation of leftists.257 If we scratch the surface of this set of references, we discover a layer of communist intelligentsia with a multiplicity of links to the local Chinese left, that was largely coterminous with the North Sumatran membership of Lekra. (Unsurprisingly, these authors were also among the first to be selected for publication in China, a process Baren likely had a hand in.258) This fact is not insignificant, given the outsize representation of this region in the history of Indonesian literature, including on the left: of the 27 poets including in a recent anthology of poetry from the PKI’s newspaper, Harian Rakjat, 10 were of North Sumatran origin, compared to 8 from all of Java.259 Although North Sumatra’s left-wing newspapers are poorly preserved in comparison to Jakarta’s, it is possible to piece together evidence of an increasingly close alliance of Chinese publishers and Indonesian intellectuals that can be traced more or less continuously backwards in time to the peasant’s movement, the independence struggle, the antifascist underground, and perhaps even earlier. Many Lekra authors submitted or even worked for the Chinese-owned progressive newspapers of Medan. Both Agam Wispi and H.R. Bandaharo had the newspaper Kerakjatan, in the early 1950s, while AA Zubir and Chalik Hamid (as well as Annast) worked for Harian Harapan in the 1960s.260 It was these dense networks on the ground that formed the foundation for the more visible edifice of Chinese-Indonesian cultural diplomacy, giving it substance and durability. Buyung Saleh Remembers The erasure of the world which made Go’s death a multilingual media event was a result of the authority of the Indonesian studies as it developed within the English-speaking world. With few exceptions, names like Go’s were not recorded in books like Prominent Chinese Indonesians, the monographs on the North Sumatran revolution, or the studies of Indonesian literature. A historian’s statement that their subject is forgotten, erased, or ignored always involves some hubris—not everyone forgets, erasure is never complete, and it’s self-serving to 381 === [PDF page 396] === imagine myself the exception to the ignorance. This consolidation of a particular way of understanding independent Indonesia did not go unnoticed among survivors from the old world like Buyung Saleh, who continued writing (under a pseudonym) after his release from the penal colony. His book review of Planters Against Peasants by Karl Pelzer, the head of Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University, which is still considered the authoritative text on the agrarian struggle in Indonesia, and which I have drawn from extensively, was coolly furious. It combined historiographic, methodological, and political criticisms, and I would rather not paraphrase it: Prof. Pelzer does not delve into the historical background of East Sumatra from 1942 to 1949. One must know why in East Sumatra in particular there was cooperation between Indonesian and Chinese peasants. The Chinese peasantry in Lubuk Pakam and Tanjung Morawa joined the Chinese Laborer and Farmers Association [Gabungan Buruh dan Tani Tionghoa] which from 1945 to 1949 helped Republicans infiltrate Dutch-occupied areas. Also, the leaders, such as Goh Sek Liu and Tan [sic] Boen Tjoan261 actively helped the Republic search for arms when the Republicans were engaged in armed resistance against the Netherlands and the NST [State of East Sumatra]. As such the struggle of the peasants against DPV and AVROS [the planters' associations] to defend the land they worked called forth emotionally [secara emosional mengundang kembali] the old anticolonial sentiments. Because it is unsupported by interviews and questionnaires from a broad section of society, and because it primarily uses sources written that are partial and partisan, in the end Professor Pelzer's study gives validation to the side of DPV/AVROS.262 His review of the anthology Political Thinking of the Indonesian Chinese, edited by Leo Suryadinata, which is also a standard reference work, was more ambivalent, also introduced the same counterexample.263 Besides noting that “several biographical notes are incomplete or erroneous,” he pointed out that the introduction and commentaries failed to acknowledge let alone explain the immigrant support for the Republic. Unlike the Dutch-educated peranakan elite, the totoks, primarily those in Medan such as Wang Ren Shu [i.e. Baren], Tan [sic] Boen Tjwan, and Goh Sek Liu were actively supporting the freedom movement with words, action and money. Tan Boen Tjwan, for example, smuggled arms for the republic. I hope that my own work has been able to expand on the questions that Buyung Saleh drew attention to. At the least, it is clear that the official discourse of international friendship was not “floating,” but grounded on a dense network of relationships and substantial history of 382 === [PDF page 397] === solidarity, in which the North Sumatran experience played an outsize role. Unsurprisingly, the first Indonesian Chinese Friendship Society was founded in Medan in 1951,264 long before an officially-authorized one was founded in 1955 in Jakarta shortly before the Bandung Conference. Saleh Umar, a founding member of both Societies, could have been describing the last ten years of his own experience when he called for the creation of more points of encounter (titik-titik pertemuan) […] that allow the oppressive boundaries between nationalities to become blurry (yang menyebabkan batas-batas kebangsaan yang menekan, dapat menjadi samar-samar).”265 My hope has been that these tedious reconstructions might allow us a pinhole camera’s view onto a more expansive version of modern Asian history, where the criss-crossing trajectories of these progressive intellectuals can be apprehended as more than just exceptions within preformed narratives of Chinese literature and Indonesian history. Rather, like geological fault lines, their trajectories mark the complex transition from the postwar revolutionary moment into the era of decolonization, when movements became states. Rethinking Race and Class Throughout this dissertation I have sought to deemphasize ethnoracial identity, and highlight political ideology. I have sought to ground this historiographical shift though an attention to the institutions of print and, to a lesser extent, pedagogy. At times I have also commented directly upon historical transformations of social relations, in terms of class, race, and gender. Yet I am also aware that the distinction of left and right is ultimately “superstructural,” lacking even the availability to direct experience that ethnicity has. To put it more directly: have I not just replicated the displacement of the revolutionary problems of social struggle onto the territory of political correctness which bedevils the old yinhua literature (and indeed is symptomatic of the United Front imaginary in general)? Am I not repeating the subjectivist deviations of mid-century leftist culture in my study of it? In other words, have I not conflated consciousness for what we could call class? 383 === [PDF page 398] === The central problem here, of course, is the interrelation of class and race. For thinkers like Baren, “the class contradictions of Indonesian society manifest as a national contradiction (民族矛盾) and become prominent as such.”266 (We should keep in mind that the term minzu, which I translate as “national” here, was at this point not fully disentangled from “race” or “ethnicity.”) The mediation of class relations by national relations should not be understood as the reduction of the latter to the former: as with all social mediations, it is necessary, much as Stuart Hall argued that "race is the modality in which class is lived."267 In other words, within a racialized structure, one does not have unmediated access to the experience of “class” alone. Conversely, changes at the level of culture and only there cannot be expected to meaningfully alter this situation. This is, of course, why mid-century leftist literature’s tendency to avoid the discourse of race as if this were in itself sufficiently antiracist is so disappointing, reflecting as it does an ultimately liberal conception of power (in this case, mediated by race) as a superstructural problem of prejudice. So what is the political economy of racialization that we are dealing with here? Such a question cannot possible be answered here, but I also cannot leave it where I found it. Popular debates in recent years about the applicability of the analytics of white supremacy and settler colonialism in East and Southeast Asia seem to me to be usefully provocative, but also in dire need of historicization. Comparison is always risky in this context, liable to overextension and mystification. In one particularly acrid debate in 1960 for example—to rebut Siauw Giok Tjhan’s comparison of the Chinese experience of discrimination to Black Americans under Jim Crow— the assimilationist Tjung Tin Jan argued that those Chinese who refused assimilation were closer to Nazi Germans in their attachment to purity.268 The analogy between Southeast Asian Chinese and European Jews as “essential outsiders,” or “entrepreneurial minorities”269 is common enough, and one that is almost invited by the use of the term “diaspora.” However, I would like to propose that the more promising and discomfiting analogy to develop would be between Chinese in Southeast Asia and Indians in East Africa. Surely, between Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis of the mechanisms of indirect rule,270 and Jairus Banaji’s expansion of the history of 384 === [PDF page 399] === commercial capitalism,271 we have the necessary parts describe a form of racialization specific to economic intermediaries within colonial capitalism. This is, essentially, what Baren argued in 1948: Chinese commercial capital and the native feudal class, or the taukehs and the sultans, are respectively the “economic… and political proxies [代理人]” of indirect rule, its “two indispensable pillars.”272 Insofar as the as the new subject of yinhua print culture was above all political, it should be seen as attempt to contest, negotiate, or transcend the imputed role of the economic intermediary within the colonial racial structure. In other words, the political enthusiasm of midcenutry yinhua literature can be understood as an attempt at epistemic decolonization. It was the crystallization of the efforts of a generation or two of intellectuals—here in the broad sense of all the schoolteachers and newspaperists that traveled south to populate the language institutions— who pressed together two overlapping diasporas, one of laborers and one of traders, that can be metonymized as the Chinese experiences of Sumatra and Java respectively,273 into the service of a world revolution that was manifested as national liberation. There are at least two contradictions that must be noted here. The first is that the intraethnic United Front between Chinese capitalists and Chinese laborers coexisted uneasily with the interethnic United Front between the Chinese people and the Indonesian people, where here “people” has the political plasticity of renmin or rakyat. The second is that the revolutionary project that I call the Red Nanyang was, from the start, transitional: it drew its strength from transnational networks, but it set its aims on the national ideal. As such, it had the germ of its own abolition within it. As Baren would be the first to point out, however, the commercial capitalists were only a minority of a minority—the vast majority of Chinese were laborers. While the ex-miner peasantry of Bangka and Belitung are the best-known example of this truism, the North Sumatran Chinese free peasantry, whose historical moment only lasted for approximately a decade, is arguably more telling. Their fate highlights the historical character of the 1950s, which can be seen in part as a period of Chinese deruralization, both through a secular process of urbanization, and through a national policy of quasi-ethnic cleansing (as in the policies of PP10, 385 === [PDF page 400] === and, to a lesser extent, the diplomatically-brokered resolutions to the Tanjung Morawa Incident). This process is inseparable form the transition from a colonial to national order, which involved the transformation of subjects into citizens. 386 === [PDF page 401] === Notes Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, 5. The phrase is traced back to a pamphlet by Soejono Hadinoto in 1949. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution, 435-445. The largely-artificial federal structure was dismantled within a year. West Papua remained a Dutch colony until 1962 when it was transferred to Indonesia—an independence movement there continues to this day. The majority colonial debt was paid off by the mid-1950s (before it was symbolically repudiated). The military unit Saleh Umar was associated with was called Brigade A, and although he exercised a political influence on it, the military leaders were Saragih Ras and Jacub Siregar. It was a successor to the Wild Tiger Brigade (Barisan Harimau Liar) which had been formed in the Karo highlands in 1945 under the tutelage of Inoue Tetsuro (Reid, Blood of the People, 175). As far as I know, there are no memoirs from BHL leaders, perhaps due to their involvement in the controversial Social Revolution of 1946. Van Langenberg, “National Revolution,” 837-840. Bedjo of Brigade B carried out the arrests on the orders of Alexander Kawilarang, the representative of Mohammed Hatta. Others arrested include Payungbangan, Saragih Ras, Go Sek Liu, Oei Boen Tjoan, Sumarno Hasibuan, Anwar Dharma, Jacub Siregar and Selamat Ginting (Reid, Blood of the People, 182; Anwar Dharma, “Pejuang antifasis”; Said, “What Was the Social Revolution?” 182). Said et al, “What was the Social Revolution?” 185. The confession is by Saragih Ras. The source, Mohammed Said, is not an impartial observer, as leader of the right wing of the PNI, and hence rival to Saleh Umar. On the BHL’s involvement in the Social Revolution, see Reid, Blood of the People, 230-231. Said et al, “What was the Social Revolution?” 186. The wealth in question here was mostly jewels from the rajas of upper Simalungun (Reid, Blood of the People, 231). “Yamashita’s gold,” imperial loot supposedly buried in the Philippines, for example; or the secret cache of Japanese weapons discussed in Steedly, Rifle Reports, Chapter 2. PRIMA, Medan Area Mengisi Proklamasi, 636. The main PRIMA historian is Mohammed Said (i.e. the same source as the previous quotation). Jieshuang, “Yi kuai shibei,” 377. Jieshuang notes his friendship with Adam Malik, later the Foreign Minister under Suharto, and Bedjo, the Javanese commander. He appears to have smuggled weapons for Bedjo (Yoe Sim Boen, “Sekilas tentang Tionghoa”). Oei was the third of eight children of and many of his (Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 194). Several of his siblings were also very involved in the independence movement, notably Huang Miaoxian 黄妙贤, who wrote a memoir that I have not been able to consult. 10 See Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 195-197, for a summary of his wartime activities. His centrality as a courier is corroborated in Lin Jian, “Yi Fanmeng,” 76. He is referred to as “Lao Huang” in Baren’s Notes from the Land Below the Winds. See, for example, “Cong Mianlan dao Dijiaduluo,” 157. Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 198. He founded a Sino-Indonesian Friendship Society (中印 11 联谊会) and also an Asia Youth Society (亚细亚青年联合会), though these organizations seem 387 === [PDF page 402] === to be simply formalizations of his existing relationships. His importance in building links between Indonesian and Chinese youth is confirmed in Wang Qianyu’s diary. These sources strongly suggest that it was Oei who facilitated Baren’s connection to politicians such as Abdul Xarim and Saleh Umar—he was the one who delivered the (unheeded) warning to Baren to evacuate Siantar, for example (“Yefeng jiaoyu,” 198). 12 Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng Jiaoyu,” 198. The friends were Go Sek Liu, U Kuo-sen, and You Rule 游如乐. Oei was the de facto leader of this clique, and his younger friends were sometimes referred to as his “subordinates (下属)” (Zhang Taiyong, “Tongyan kan Xianda,” 129). 13 Twang, Business Elite, 272. The company was founded in mid-1948 but by early 1949 had transferred most activities to Singapore (“Zhongyang maoyi gongsi shi zhounian 中央贸易公司 十周年 [Ten Years of the Central Trading Company],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 31, 1958- 08-02, p. 22. 14 Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 200. On Saleh Umar’s choice to send two sons to Chinesemedium schools from a young age, Mohammed Said comments, “he never explained why he didn't send them to a national school” (Said, “What was the Social Revoultion?” 158). It seems this was not uncommon at the time: the Aceh-born secretary of PRIMA, Abdul Muin Jamil, also from the same generation, had also studied at a Chinese-medium school (PRIMA, Medan area mengisi proklamasi, 830. 15 This newspaper seems to have had both Indonesian and Chinese-language editions, though it is unclear which was founded first (Paget, “Indonesian Newspapers,” 188; Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni Huaqiao huaren shi 1950-2009, 123). 16 Chang Hsi Shek, “Geming duli xianqu,” 359. Ani Idrus claims that the leftists, led by Tan Foe Khiong, manipulated the sexist sentiments of the PWI membership to oust her, on fabricated charges of misappropriation of funds (Sekilas Pengalaman, 68-73). 17 This was G.W. Skinner’s question to Kwee Kek Beng in the early 1950s, quoted in Zhou, Migration in a Time of Revolution, 78. Kwee’s response stresses the conciliatory attitude of the PRC towards capitalists. 18 “De penetratie van het communisme in Indonesië via het Chinese bedrijfsleven” (NA 2.10.17: 1451). The phrase was invoked in an internal debate in 1949 about whether or not to grant the progressive Singaporean rubber capitalist Lee Kong Chian 李光前 a business visa to enter Indonesia. The economic affairs department prevailed over military intelligence and he received the visa, in large part because Lee’s leftism was portrayed as being China-oriented, not Southeast Asia-oriented. Note that NEFIS had a file on Oei. Twang also notes that Northern Fujianese (Hokchia 福清 and Hinhua 兴华) were especially 19 well-represented, compared to the Southern Fujianese who were generally part of earlier migrations. For other discussions of the smugglers, see also Cheong, The Singapore Connection, Chapter 7; Erniwati, “Revolutionary Padang,” 369. 20 Twang, Chinese Business Elite, 224, 235. 21 Ferdy Salim, “Operasi Speedboat,” 216. 388 === [PDF page 403] === 22 For example, Liem Sioe Liong, who would later became one of the richest men in Indonesia through his association with Suharto dating from this time (Twang, Business Elite, 103; see also Borsuk, Liem Sioe Liong). 23 Van Langenberg, “National Revolution,” 530. Reid, Blood of the People, 220, makes a similar assertion. These two influential studies of the North Sumatran revolution are strangely incurious about the alliance between the Indonesian military and Chinese merchants that they also characterize as indispensable to Republican success. 24 Imagine stating that Indonesian revolutionaries were motivated by the benefits of political independence! Trivially true, this is only meaningful insofar as it contradicts (discredits) the ideal of selflessness. Any non-idealist account of political change has to account for the relation between interests and ideologies, and especially on their convergence. 25 As Baren was one of the few commentators to identify and analyze this convergence. Citing Yinni shehui fazhan gaiguan, Twang notes that Baren was “one of the few persons in Indonesia who ever wrote about the possible positive economic role for the Chinese in the Indonesian anticolonial struggle” (Business Elite, 204). 26 Purwanto et al ed., Revolutionary Worlds, esp. Chapters 14-16. 27 Harper and Bayly, Forgotten Wars, 1946: Freedom Without Borders. 28 Twang, Business Elite, 177-178. There is evidence that the import and export restriction policies the colonial state adopted during the Great Depression often favored European capital over Chinese capital (Post, “Bringing China to Java,” 39). In the mid-1930s, for example, Medan capitalists were prevented from importing rice from Burma by the Dutch shipping lobby (Fei Wan, “Jugong jincui,” 430-31). 29 Twang, Business Elite, 319-20. Baren, “Lüelun huaqiao minzhu yundong 略论华侨民主运动 [On the Overseas Chinese 30 Democracy Movement],” Hwa Shiang Pao (Hong Kong), 1948-01-04, p. 1. 31 On the boycott movement, see Twang, Business Elite, 227-29. Note that the disdain felt towards the Dutch, with their restrictive and often openly racist policies, often did not extend to the British, who had a more liberal economic policy and also tried harder to maintain a façade of colorblindness—the MCP and CDL split in Malaya had a class dimension. Note, too, the severe difference between the emergent Chinese bourgeoisie of Sumatra and the incumbent Chinese bourgeoisie of Java—the latter was much more culturally and materially intertwined with Dutch rule. 32 Robison, Rise of Capital, 4. Note that the strength of indigenous capital in the late colonial era is still debated (Booth, Economic Change, 28-29). On the legacy of Robison’s work, see Hadiz, “The Necessity of Political Economy.” Two recent economic histories, by Anne Booth and Thomas Lindblad, are useful for their empirical data, but Robison’s political economy-based approach is still relevant and his conclusions have not been refuted. 33 Robison, Rise of Capital, Chapter 1. A version of this argument is also developed in Tornquist, Dilemmas of Third World Communism. 389 === [PDF page 404] === 34 I think Robison’s terms are a bit imprecise here—can “Chinese capitalists” and “indigenous capitalists” really be conceived of as classes, or are they segments of a class? Analogous points are made in the East African context in critiques of Issa Shivji’s conflation of ethnic groups and class by Mahmood Mamdani and H. Bhagat (“A Critique of Issa Shivji’s Book”, 39) and Dan Nabudere (“Imperialism, State, Class and Race,” 66). 35 Compare Farabi Fakih’s blanket statement that, “the educated Indonesian Chinese middle class [did not] organize themselves in a coherent way so as to exert influence on the direction of development for a specific, imagined future Indonesian society” (Authoritarian Modernization, 10). 36 For example, it is generally believed that the PKI and the PNI both relied on Chinese capitalist donations (Hindley, 117-118; Rocamora, 192). 37 Robison, Rise of Capital, 100. The smuggling of the 1940s and the Korean War boom are also relevant factors. 38 Booth, Economic Change, 138-39. On the other hand, Beijing’s own (internal) estimate was 20% of GDP (Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 120), compared to 65% in the hands of Western capital and Europeans. This seems about right to me. 39 Over 90% of rural shops were owned by ethnic Chinese (Robison, Rise of Capital, 86). 40 Changing Economy in Indonesia, Volume 5, 78. 41 These figures are calculated from Table 18 of the 1930 Census. 42 For the views of KENSI, see the collection of speeches and resolutions in KENSI Berdjuang. In practice “foreign” applied to Chinese, and not (for example) to Arabs—the incorporation of Arab-Indonesians into the asli business elite, and the assumed role of coreligionist sympathies in this process, requires further study. 43 Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, 143-145. 44 “Many of the nationalist leaders had, to a greater or lesser extent, been influenced by the views of Dutch colonial officials on the entrepreneurial abilities of indigenous Indonesians, especially the Javanese” (Booth, Economic Change, 131). The corollary was that racialized ideas about the economic prowess of Chinese were also common. The analogous case in Malaysia is analyzed in detail in Syed Hussein Alatas’ The Lazy Native. 45 Assaat, “The Chinese Grip on our Economy,” 345. 46 Assaat, “The Chinese Grip on our Economy,” 344. 47 Feith, Decline of Constitutional Democracy, 482. 48 See Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, 142-144, for an overview, and Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks,” 83-97, for a more detailed account. Note that the indigenization of rural trade was a longstanding goal for economic nationalists, not just on the Muslim right: for example, the PNI 390 === [PDF page 405] === had adopted this position in its economic platform of 1954 (Rocamora, “Nationalism in Search of an Ideology,” 176-177). 49 While Rachmat’s links to the indigenous bourgeoisie through his party, Nadhlatul Ulama, and KENSI, are obvious, it is less clear what motivated Kosasih’s decrees and the extent of coordination. Siauw Giok Tjhan makes the promising observation that West Java command was because the military was permanently stationed in the area due to the ongoing Darul Islam insurgency. As a result, there was intermarriage between military commanders and village leaders and a shared economic interest in replacing Chinese retailers (53). The usuall explanation that Chinese in East and Central Java, in comparison, were more assimilated and hence there was less anti-Chinese sentiment is a non-explanation (J.L. Mackie and Mary Heidhues, cited in Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 218). 50 Baperki even affirmed PP10, and even organized seminars on cooperatives with the coordination of the minister of cooperatives, with the hope that affected retailers and engrossers would participate in the new businesses (“Fungsi Koprasi ialah untuk melenyapkan kapitalisme,” Bintang Timur, 1960-03-14, p. 3). 51 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 115. The actual numbers of displaced must have been significantly higher: Siauw Giok Tjhan estimated 300,000. 52 Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks,” 94. Mackie believes that Sukarno reined in the “excesses” at this point. The public funeral procession reportedly drew 15,000 people (Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni Huaqiao huaren shi 1950-2009, 145). The funeral procession as protest is part of a venerable tradition, that includes the Tanjung Morawa Incident and the East Java protests of 1966-1967. 53 Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks,” 97. 54 Thomas and Panglaykim, “The Chinese in the South Sumatran Rubber Industry,” 170; Robison, Rise of Capital, 86-87. Taomo Zhou notes that, despite the attractive interest rate of 9% (on paper) offered as an incentive to invest into the cooperatives, few displaced retailers took up this option (Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 122). 55 “In Defense of Small Traders,” in Feith and Castles, ed., Indonesian Political Thinking, 353. 56 Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks,” 83. 57 Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, 126-136. 58 Note that military entrepreneurs were often able to appropriate the rhetoric of leftist nationalization while in practice implementing rightist privatization. 59 These takeovers are examined in detail in Sutter, Indonesianisasi. See also Lindblad, Bridges to New Business, Chapter 8. 60 See Redfern, “Takeovers of Foreign Companies,” on the 1960s nationalizations. 61 Alderton, “PP10,” 18. The original quotation in English is from a 1959 article in the Indonesian Spectator. Italics mine; I have changed “remnants” into “vestiges.” 391 === [PDF page 406] === 62 While the census of 1930 showed that Chinese were disproportionately involved in trade, but these numbers disaggregated for region showed a tale of two diasporas: in Java, 58% of Chinese were in trade, and 8% in mining and agriculture, while in Sumatra, the numbers are 45% and 18% respectively. These figures are calculated from Table 18 of the 1930 Census (Volkstelling 1930, vol. 8, 122). 63 My thinking about the event is based on Strassler’s analysis of “images as events that happen” in Demanding Images (viii), and Qian’s analysis of documentary as an “eventful medium” in Revolutionary Becomings (22). 64 Peperti No. 3/1960 (Oey, Government and Press, 117). 65 Although the language of vestigiality was occasionally used by organizations such as KENSI, it was not especially important. I have not been able to trace the exact origin of this phrase, but believe it was probably crystallized in Baperki-affiliated media. 66 There is the open question of the volume of private overseas remittances in the Sukarno years. I am not aware of any satisfactory research on this subject, but it was in any case certainly far lower in absolute terms than the corporate profits remitted by Western capital before 1958. 67 On Siauw’s economic platform, see Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, Chapter 8. 68 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 202-5. Ang also states he set up a meeting between the Department of Economic Affairs and the capitalists of the Qiaozong. 69 “Yindunixiya geming guangan,” 355. 70 Baren, “Yindunixiya zhi ge,” 280. 71 “Xinnian de ganxiang 新年的感想 [New Year's Thoughts],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 1, 1958, p. 1. 72 “Guanyu Huaqiao ziben wenti 关于华侨资本问题 [On the Problem of Chinese Capital],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 48, 1958, pp. 1-2. 73 See Tea Wars. 74 The PKI was generally believed to have been funded in part by donations from Chinese businesses (see, for example, Hindley, Communist Party of Indonesia, 117-118). Although these assertions have generally taken a conspiratorial form, it should be clear from my narration that the Chinese-speaking commercial elite’s support for the PKI was likely both earnest (in terms of sympathy for socialism) and self-serving (in searching for allies against the native bourgeoisie). 75 The National Council (Dewan Nasional), an extra-parliamentary body composed of functional groups with advisory powers that operated from 1957 to 1959, is generally seen as a transitional step in Sukarno’s introduction of Guided Democracy. 76 See ANRI RA8A: 2342. In addition, it also called for the legislation to regulate the “boundaries… of the nation-state” (bangsa-negara), through laws of citizenship, residence and immigration (see ANRI RA8A: 2443). 392 === [PDF page 407] === 77 Sukarno, Di bawah bendera revolusi, 271. 78 Sukarno, “Deklarasi Ekonomi.” 79 Castles, “Socialism and Private Business,” 34. Bamunas was one of a number of corporatist consultative organizations established during Guided Democracy. 80 “Minzu qiye zuzhi dahui de dansheng 民族企业组织大会的诞生 [The Birth of the Congress of the National Enterprises Organization]” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 4 no. 18, 1957, pp. 4-5. 81 E.g., books by Lindblad, Booth, and Robison. Of course I have not searched comprehensively, but Google Scholar returns nothing except a passing mention in Raillon, “From politics to business” (2). 82 Tornquist, Dilemmas of Third World Communism, 93 83 Borsuk, Liem Sioe Liong, 15. The core businesses of the preemeninent Suharto-allied capitalist, Liem Sioe Liong, were in necessities: food (flour-milling) and shelter (cement). 84 Liao Chengzhi, “Huaqiao duiyu yinni jingji de lishi zuoyong bu rong hushi,” 393-394. Liao also noted that capitalists received friendly treatment under socialism, including attractive fixed returns on their investments. A few years later, this permissive stance towards Overseas Chinese capitalists, which de-emphasized class struggle, would later be at the core of the Red Guard attacks on the overseas Chinese apparatus, including against Liao personally (see Chapter 9 of Fitzgerald). For another, similar exchange, see Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revoultion, 121. 85 This is a statement from the RI ambassador Sukarni to PRC foreign minister Chen Yi, quoted in Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 121. 86 Mortimer, Indonesian Communism, 259. 87 Cited in Mortimer, Indonesian Communism, 145. 88 “Pendjelasan ketua komisi-komisi dan sambutan-sambutan kelompok-kelompok musjawarah tentang Ketetapan no. II/MPRS (Explanation from the chairs of the committees and speeches from the consultative groups on Resolution No. 2/MPRS),” in Keputusan-keputusan MPRS, 154. According to Zhang Dayong, Sakirman’s ultimate goal as a communist was state control of the distribution apparatus, unlike Siauw who as a socialist preferred to preserve a role for private capital for the foreseeable future (“Xiao Yucan yu Juexing zhoukan”). If that is the case, this speech at least suggests that by 1965 the PKI had decided that nationalization of distribution was premature. 89 The culmination of this approach has been the sweeping three-volume Tionghoa dalam Keindonesiaan, edited by Lembong et al. 90 The speakers were Kwee Kek Beng, Buyung Saleh, Siauw Giok Tjhan, JB Ave, Njoto, Tan Fay Tjhion, Hazil Tansil, Ramadhan K.H., Sunito, and J.B.A.F. Polak. Buyung Saleh appeared here in his capacity as a leader of Baperki, a predominantly-Chinese 91 mass organization that turned increasingly towards the left in the late 1950s. 393 === [PDF page 408] === 92 Foulcher, “Bringing the World Back Home,” 37, 51. Foulcher speculates, based on John Legge, that Hazil Tansil may have been one of the main links between the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Indonesian literary scene. 93 Compiled from Hazil Tansil and Buyung Saleh’s transcribed speeches, included in Simposion BAPERKI. 94 It hardly helps that such discussions are almost always framed in terms of a unilateral influence from North to South (Stenberg, “North across the Southern Seas,” 135). 95 Siegelberg, Statelessness, 210-213. The author points to the rise of the “genuine link principle” in international jurisprudence. 96 UU No. 3/1946 and UU No. 62/1958, respectively. See Willmott, National Status, which includes translations of both. 97 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 166. 98 Mega Christina, SBKRI No Way, 10-11. This book documents the forms of documentary discrimination Chinese Indonesians were subject to in the New Order, especially the hated “Letter of Proof of Indonesian Citizenship” (abbreviated SBKRI), which had originally been written into the nationality law not as a requirement but as an optional service. The records related to this document continue to form the bulk of the Ministry of Justice’s publicly accessible archives. 99 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 205. 100 See Frederick Cooper on the "notorious distinction between subjects and citizens" (Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference, 75). 101 See Pearson, The Invention of the Birth Certificate, Chapter 6, for a discussion of the relationship between race and birth certificates in the US. Stevens, Citizenship in Question, Introduction, 15. These could include misplaced documents, 102 impossible requirements, official errors, legislative loopholes, shoddy enforcement, lack of means of appeal or redress, and so on. 103 This point is borrowed from the conclusion of Torpey, Inventing the Passport. 104 Willmott, National Status, Ratification of the Treaty. 105 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan Remembers, 42. 106 PP No. 20Ⳇ1959, Article 12. 107 I suspect the removal of ethnic Chinese from the strategic depth of the countryside was a logical consequence of TNI military strategy, since most military-initiated anti-Chinese campaigns (e.g. the residence ban in West Java of 1959-1960, the West Kalimantan counterinsurgency of 1967-68) involved deruralization. Cribb notes the importance of the 394 === [PDF page 409] === countryside in Nasution’s doctrines of guerilla warfare after the experience of the independence war (Cribb, “Military Strategy in the Indonesian Revolution”). 108 Cited in Alderton, “The Ban on Retail Trade,” 34. 109 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 124. 110 “Yuanzai bangjia de xikuang gongren Chen Fuxing,” 29-30. 111 Yindunixiya huaqiao shi chugao, 10. The unnamed authors were from the Southeast Asian Studies Research Center of Sun Yat Sen University’s History Department (中山大学历史系东南 亚研究室). 112 Liu Yuzun et al ed., "Zhuzai" Huagong Fangwen Lu. These oral histories, as a rule, skip over the period from 1945-1963, which strongly suggests censorship. They focus instead on Dutch colonial oppression and overseas Chinese participation in the 1911 revolution. The four editors were professors at Xiamen University and Sun Yat Sen University. 113 Erman, Menguak Sejarah Timah Bangka-Belitung, 208. 114 Benton, Chinese Indentured Labor, 89. 115 For example, after listing a number of riots and strikes with clear evidence of nationalist and later socialist influence, Benton bizarrely argues that Chinese contract laborers “played little role in the anti-colonial struggle history” (Chinese Indentured Labor, 315; see also, 91-97). Even if his point is that they were isolated from the larger Indonesian independence movement, I find myself wondering about the roots of the support among organized Chinese labor for Indonesian independence after 1945. As Heidhues notes, “The speed with which labour unions were formed after 1945, however, suggests that clandestine activity in pre-war years had prepared the ground” (Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 161). 116 Or “Liu Ngie War.” Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 140-142. There was also a second Liu Yi War (Benton, Chinese Indentured Labor, 314). 117 Benton, Chinese Indentured Labor, 314. Strong sympathies among contract laborers for the 1911 revolution are corroboratedby oral histories (Liu Yuzun et al, Zhuzai huagong fangwenlu, 125). 118 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 144-145. 119 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 164; Benton, Chinese Indentured Labor, 315; Erman, Menguak Sejarah Tima, 142. 120 Erman, Menguak Sejarah Timah, 208-215; Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 190-193; Suryomenggolo, Organizing Under The Revolution, Appendix 3. A detailed and underutilized account of the Belitung strikes can be found in Zou Fangjin, Wulidong huagong shiji, 18-32. 121 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 201; Erman, Menguak Sejarah Timah, 209. No copies of either exist, as far I have been able to ascertain. 395 === [PDF page 410] === 122 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 219. 123 Taomo Zhou, based on a PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs report, states that the layoffs “angered younger miners, who left for China in protest, triggering a precipitous drop in tin production” (Migration, 122). Zou Fangjin states that 365 layoffs (about 2/3 of which were of Chinese miners) were negotiated between management and labor, and that miners were repatriated with compensation at Indonesian government expense (Yinni duli qianhou de Wulidong huagong, 200). 124 See Heidhues, Bangka Tin, Chapter 9, on the nationalization process. 125 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 220; Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks,” 96-97. 126 The prototype for this narrative is Liang Qichao’s stories of the (ultimately failed) “Chinese settler-colonist” (“Becoming Chinese in the Malay World,” 619). Jiangyan 江燕, “Wo zhanli zai Baganyabi haitan 我站立在峇干亚比海滩 [I Stand on the 127 Beaches of Bagan Siapiapi],” Kwong Lu Yit Poh, 1960-01-09, p. 3. 128 Cunfu 村夫, “Rili he shi tiezheng 日里河是铁证 [The Deli River Is Ironclad Proof],” Kwong Lu Yit Poh, 1960-01-16, p. 3. 129 See Biographical Notes on Shaping. 130 Shaping, Dengdai, 38. 131 Shaping, Dengdai, 40. This poem was almost certainly published in a newspaper, though I sourced it from his later anthology. There are countless similar examples which use similar apostrophic devices. Others focus on, for example, the Deli River (for the tobacco industry). 132 Stevens, Citizenship in Question, Introduction, 15. 133 Shaping, “Malasi shan 马拉斯山 [Maras Mountain],” Dengdai, 51-54. 134 On Belitung Christians’ civil lawsuit against Zou for blasphemy in 1951, see Zhou, Migration in a Time of Revolution, 109-110. 135 Jiyang 激扬, “Souji Huaqiao geyao chuyi 搜集华侨歌谣刍议 [My Humble Opinion on the Collection of Overseas Chinese Folksongs]’, Seng Hwo Weekly, 1964-09-19, p. 6. The author gives a few examples of such popular rhymes, such as: “What I eat is grass, what I produce is treasure (吃的是草，产的是宝).” 136 Lao Ping 老萍, ‘Wulidong kuangong shange 勿里洞矿工山歌 [Mountain Songs of the Belitung Miners],” Seng Hwo Weekly, 1964-12-19, p. 7. is probably the same Chen Laoping who wrote a self-published memoir of Belitung, Xidao fengyun huiyilu. According to that memoir, Chen was the son and nephew of tin miners. 137 On the popularity of Third Sister Liu media among Southeast Asian Chinese see Xu, “Contested Chineseness.” There were multiple performances of Third Sister Liu in the early 1960s in Indonesia (Stenberg, Minority Stages, 79). 396 === [PDF page 411] === 138 Examples are legion. On the adaptation of oral forms in African literature, see Hofmeyr, “The Politics of the Printed Page,” 90-91; 139 This exact phrase was used in 1956 in reference to Indian film (Roy, Beyond Belief, 40). 140 Budianta, “Malang Mignon,” 275. On ludruk, see Peacock, Rites of Modernization, where it is described as “proletarian drama.” 141 The phrase is from Williams’ description of a passage in Keating’s The Flower of the Dark (“The Welsh Industrial Novel”). 142 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 143 Erwiza Erman shows how Bangka had a dual-commodity economy of Bangka (pepper and tin), and that workers would shift from one to the other depending on international tin and pepper prices (Menguak Sejarah Timah, Chapter 5). It seems that rubber in the Jebus area functioned within this pattern like pepper. 144 Open pits used in alluvial tin mining. Colloquially used to refer to tin mines in general. 145 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 146 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 147 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 148 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 149 “崖” is “I,” but “博,” “gamble,” is a bit unclear. By context, it probably means something like “hope.” For the last line, “爱” is Hakka for “will”; 多郎 = Bangka Hakka for “oblige, grant a favor,” from tolong. 150 Shifen, “Nanbang yingpan cun shange.” 151 Poems like this also resemble the poems of Angel Island, collected in Lai et al ed., Island. 152 Salah is Indonesian for “wrong,” equivalent here to “mistake.” The translation used for “coolie” here is the phonological calque “估俚,” not the phono-semantic calque more commonly used now, “苦力” (~ “bitter labor”). 153 Zou Fangjin, Wulidong Huagong shiji, 188. 154 Hunqian mengrao de guxiang, 292. 155 Hunqian mengrao de guxiang, Dreamy, 292. 156 In 1947, on May 3, thousands of Chinese and Indonesian workers in the neighboring island of Belitung struck together in an unprecedented act of proletarian solidarity. 157 A palang is a long sluice used in alluvial mining. 397 === [PDF page 412] === 158 Zou Fangjin, Wulidong Huagong shiji, 25. 159 Siauw Giok Tjhan Remembers, 29. 160 Chin, “Afro-Asian Silk Road.” Such lists were a staple of the yinhua press, and still common today. For one list, see Kong 161 Yuanzhi, Wenhua jiaoliu,128-161 (Chinese loanwords in Indonesian), 172-177 (Malay/Indonesian loanwords in Mandarin, Minnan, and Hakka). 162 Zou Fangjin, Wulidong huagong shiji, 41-42. 163 Zou Fangjin, Wulidong huagong shiji, 40. Skinner, “The Chinese Minority,” 104. The most comprehensive work on this lect is Hakka 164 Woordenboek [Hakka Dictionary] by the colonial sinologist P.A. van de Stadt, published in 1912. 165 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan Remembers, edited by Peter Burns, 42. 166 See forthcoming work by Nicholas Y.H. Wong. Also, his “Historical Alibis.” 167 The term is Siwei Wang’s, from her dissertation, “A New Storm.” 168 It ran as part of the weekly supplement, Yinhua Literary Arts, from January 27 to March 23 of 1960. It was republished the following year as a book by Zamrud Cultural Foundation, the main Chinese-language publisher in Indonesia in the early 1960s. Additionally, in 2014 it was republished in Hong Kong by an Indonesian-Chinese foundation. I use this last version for citations throughout. 169 See Biographical Notes for more information on Li Xu. 170 See Biographical Notes for more information on Liren. 171 Little is known about the illustrator Yang Quanchang (杨权昌), though the style of the first illustration suggests some background in film poster design. However, in 1958, Li Xu praised two plaster block prints by the artist in a review for Awakening Weekly, so it is possible they knew each other (Li Xu 李旭, “Kan ‘Yinhua meixie di san jie huazhan’ 看’印华美协第三届画 展’ [Viewing the ‘Third Exhibition of the Yinhua Arts Association’],” Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 no. 40, 1958, pp. 8–9). The works were included in the third annual exhibition of the Yinhua Arts Association at Jakarta’s Des Indes Hotel. Yang also designed an illustration for National Day, for the cover of Chiao Hsing Weekly, vol. 5 No. 33. 172 Wen Dianyu, “Biekai shengmian,” 76. Li Xu also taught for a time in Belitung as well, since he wrote several essays on his memories of Belitung. They did not stay long there, however, since reportedly Li came into conflict with the principal. Note that according to both Heidhues and Erwiza Erman, Sungai Liat appears to have been a center of labor militancy as well in the 1940s. 173 Born in a downwardly mobile family in the Hakka heartland, and moved to Indonesia as an adolescent, Zou had worked various odd jobs throughout the archipelago. From 1950 to 1954, he was the secretary of the militant Chinese labor union of Belitung (中华劳工总会; aka Lao Kung 398 === [PDF page 413] === Hui—see Suryomenggolo, Appendices) from 1950-1954, and editor of their newspaper Voice of Labor (工声; aka Kung Sheng). He later worked at Seng Hwo Pao and then Api Revolusi. See Lai Yumei, “Lingluo chengni.” 174 On the original Black Flags, see Davis’s Imperial Bandits. On Liu Nghie, see Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 140-141; Benton’s Chinese Indentured Labor, includes an archival photograph on the cover of Liu Nghie, who, as the author notes, wears glasses, suggesting that he was probably literate and educated. 175 Heidhues notes that local tradition holds that in an earlier rebellion in Koba in the same year, miners left Bangkanese villagers unhurt and left payment for what they took, though she speculates that this may have been influenced by later stories of the Red Army in China (Bangka Tin, 139). 176 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 179. 177 Notably, cinema exports (both through free screenings in embassies and also subsidies to distributors and cinemas) were a major part of the PRC’s cultural diplomacy in this period; see Xu Lanjun, “Southern Film Corporation.” 178 Cunfu 村夫, “Rili he shi tiezheng 日里河是铁证 [The Deli River Is Ironclad Proof],” Kwong Lu Yit Poh, 1960-01-16, p. 3. 179 The first chapter takes place on the outskirts of the mine, during a wedding celebration—the carnivalesque atmosphere gradually reveals a sinister underlying reality. The debt created by gambling, opium, and prostitution are shown to bind the workers to the mines. The handsome and apparently kindly Inspector of Mines plans to raise the already-insupportable production quotas (the dagtaak) even further. The final scene of this chapter reveals that the Inspector, with the collusion of the bride’s father, raped her before the wedding. 180 Marx’s term from Capital, vol. 1. 181 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji,109. 182 The Indonesian names are informed guesses for the transcriptions Yamo (亚末), Meina (美娜) and Shale (沙勒). 183 This may have been linked to more recent memories of strike retaliation. Zou Fangjin notes that in 1947, management’s choice to cut medical benefits and school transport for striking workers and their families in Belitung was especially painful (Zou Fangjin, Wulidong huagong shiji, 26). 184 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 146. 185 Well-known examples include the quilombos of Northeastern Brazil and the Garifuna (of the Mesquite Coast) and Saramacca (in Surinam) communities. Cooperation with and creolization with indigenous communities is also typical. 186 Heidhues, Bangka Tin, 176. Tan Fay Tjhion’s draft manuscript based on fieldwork in 1957 in Belinyu explains that in several areas, there were in fact two parallel jurisdictions, Chinese and native, each of which contained its own villages (“Bangka Report,” p. 1-2, in GWSP Box 5 399 === [PDF page 414] === Folder 8). Tan also notes that none of his locally-born respondents had an Indonesian ancestor that they were aware of, which suggests that by the 19th century the era of intermarriage between early settlers and native women had already ended. 187 Andy Liu, writing of refrormers’ criticisms of “unproductive” tea merchants in the early 1900s, writes that “anti-comprador criticism offered a historically novel articulation premised on a distinctive notion of what counts as productive labor, one that overlapped with classical political economy” (Tea Wars, 233). 188 Alderton, “The Ban on Alien Retail Trade,” 104. Alderton states that this changed the number of affected businesses from upwards of 80,000 to around 25,000. 189 Tsai, “Materializing racial formation,” 85. Tsai continues, “under such logic, the relationship between Chinese Indonesians and their property possessions can be anything but legitimate. Aguilar's critical observation reveals a racialized knowledge framework… in brief, while the Chinese are considered politically as belonging to China, their wealth and possessions are nevertheless "indigenous" to Indonesia. Such an insight helps to shed light on the fact that military anti-Chinese campaigns in mid-twentieth-century Indonesia almost always took on the dual-form of expelling alien Chinese while confiscating their properties.” 190 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 101. 191 This point is forcefully argued by Alexander and Alexander, “Protecting peasants from capitalism.” 192 Shen Huifen, China's Left-Behind Wives, 94-101. This pattern was especially interesting to writers: Baren, for example, makes frequent mention of this in Northern Sumatra in Notes from the Land Below the Winds (风下之国散记), while Sima Wensen makes similar observations in Panning for Gold (淘金记). Wu Qiao’e, “Wo de dage,” 489; Skinner, Report on the Overseas Chinese, 52; Heidhues, 193 Bangka Tin, 151. 194 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 43. 195 See Seng, Strangers in the Family. 196 Hunqian mengrao de guxiang, 313; Chen Laoping, Xidao fengyun huiyilu, 134; Zou Fangjin, Wulidong huagong shiji, 39. Note that the 1912 dictionary by van der Stadt specifies that fanpo only refers to mixed-race women, and not all Chinese women, so this may have been a shift that took place by the mid-20th century (Hakka Woordenboek, 295). This term, now considered pejorative, is also the term used in the earlier quotation when the women traders are refused entry to the mine. 197 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 130. 198 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 175. Another example is Broken Arrow (1950), a film which Sukarno complained about to a 199 Hollywood producer during his trip to the USA: “Why has this Indian girl to die in the end? Why 400 === [PDF page 415] === can’t you make them a happy couple? How do you think we feel at such obvious maneuvers on the screen?” (Day, 136) 200 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 177. 201 See Seng, Strangers in the Family. See the “Exchange of Notes on the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty [关于 1955 年条 202 约的换文; Pertukaran Catatan Tentang Perjanjian 1955],” Article 1. 203 See Coppel, “The Indonesian Chinese: Foreign Orientals, Netherlands Subjects, and Indonesian Citizens.” 204 UU No. 62/1958, Article 1. 205 Mackie, “Towkays and Tycoons,” 84. 206 Li Xu and Liren, Xidao enchou ji, 131. 207 In 1958, for example, Chiao Hsing Weekly hosted a debate on the genre running from issues 38 to 45, ending in a roundtable discussion in which the critic Huang Yurong participated. 208 Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 73. These numbers are a lower limit, since other accounts state that eight died and thirty were injured. Ridiculously, the newspaper Tangkas on 17 March 1953, reported that the Chinese attacked the police shouting, "Attack! Life or death for Stalin!” (cited in Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 175). See Chapter 4 of Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, for a thorough account, though note also 209 Buyung Saleh’s critique of Pelzer later in this chapter. See also Feith, Decline of Constitutional Democracy, 294-296. 210 The Masyumi party, typically seen as the party of the Muslim bourgeoisie, handed over the reins of government to the nationalist PNI, whose left wing was also empowered. The new government—which would later organize the Afro-Asian Conference—totally overhauled the policy, pausing evictions, banning “tractoring,” and forming an independent agricultural ministry with union representation. 211 See Sutter, Indonesianisasi, on the 1957-58 takeovers of Dutch firms, and Redfern, Takeovers of Foreign Companies, on the 1963-65 wave targeting British and American firms as well as the subsequence reversals under the New Order. For some, the expropriation of small businesses owned by nationals of the ROC (1958), PRC (1960) and Malaya (1963), who were typically ethnic Chinese, also belong within this sequence. However, the role of large Western corporations and Chinese-owned small and medium businesses within the Indonesian economy was fundamentally different, which also meant that the social forces militating for their expropriation were also different. 212 Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 6, 51-52. 401 === [PDF page 416] === There were probably several dozen branches: Wu Fusheng notes 28 rural schools in 1950 (Wu 213 Fusheng, “Subei huaren nongmin,” 63) and Wang Liubo states there were 40 branches in 1951 (Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, 231). 214 Aggregating local newspaper reports, Wang Liubo estimates 37,500 Chinese peasants in an area including Binjai, Medan, Belawan, Lubuk Pakam, Tebing Tinggi, Kisaran and Asahan (Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, 75-77). Pelzer counts approximately 4% of “squatters” as non- Indonesian, i.e. Chinese, or about 4,000 people (Planter Against Peasant, 10). 215 Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 71. 216 Baren, “Geming guangan ji,” 404. Another example of cooperation: after the failure of a strike by Chinese working for the Allied forces in Medan in 1946, fired workers were resettled by the Republic with the support of SOBSI in the Tandem area near Binjai, where they formed the “New China Estate (新华农场)” (Wang Jiasheng, “Dongdang suiyue,” 359). In other words, it is highly likely that the Tanjung Morawa land had been “squatted” with some kind of official support or recognition during the revolution, a pattern that would match Van Langenberg’s assertion that the "squatter invasion" was often facilitated by the Army (897). 217 Buyung Saleh, “Karen Berbeda Tempat Tegak,” 54. 218 Research Department of the Attorney General’s Office, “Laporan Rinkas tentang Gabungan Perserikatan Buruh tani Tionghoa,” 1952-03-31, in ANRI RA78.834. See also Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 163-165. 219 Note that Zhou Taomo’s dissertation provides a detailed account of the Attorney General’s report on the GBTT (“Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 163-165), but does not examine the organization itself. 220 Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 73. 221 “Zuori zhongwu juxing gongzang gongji yishi: longzhong yansu songbinzhe yue liangqian ren 昨日中午举行公葬公祭仪式隆重严肃送殡者约两千人” (Yesterday at Noon a Solemn Burial Ceremony: Two Thousand Mourners Attend), Sumatra Bin Po, 1952-03-20, p. 3. 222 Liu Yuzun et al,‘Zhuzai’ huagong fangwen lu, 11, 99. 223 The dead listed were: Lin Genyu (林根于), 23, teacher at the peasant’s school and graduate of the night schools; Guo Yabu (郭亚哺), ex-Senembah Estate contract worker; Zheng Yamou (郑 亚谋), 55, ex-Senembah Estate contract worker, cohabiting with a Javanese woman because “he could not even afford a marriage dowry”; Wu Yafa (吴亚发), 58, ex-Senembah Estate contract worker; Lu Yajiang (卢亚江), 22, engaged, completing night courses in the peasant’s school. “Zuori zhongwu juxing gongzang gongji yishi: longzhong yansu songbinzhe yue liangqian ren 昨日中午举行公葬公祭仪式隆重严肃送殡者约两千人” (Yesterday at Noon a Solemn Burial Ceremony: Two Thousand Mourners Attend), Sumatra Bin Po, 1952-03-20, p. 3. 224 Volkstelling 1930 (Census 1930), vol. 4, Table 5 and Table 10, cited in O’Malley, Indonesia in the Great Depression, 150-151 and Reid, Blood of the People, 58. O’Malley notes that many Chinese engaged in market or cash crop agriculture likely lived in the towns and walked to their fields. 402 === [PDF page 417] === Zheng Guanghuang, “Yi xuexiong ji jiufu Chen Wenying,” 513. Note that his mother’s name, 225 Melati, while common enough, is also the name of one of the characters in Temple. Perhaps Baren modeled the interracial romance in Temple on Chen’s family history? 226 Wu Shusheng, “Daqi zhongyin yuyan qiaoliang de fanyi,” 321. 227 Prima, Medan Area mengisi Proklamasi, 707. 228 Similarly, Wu Fusheng notes the death of several “peasants of friendly nationalities,” (友族农 民) but does not name them, which fits within a broader pattern of leftist yinhua narratives of generic Indonesian presence. Note that Darmo’s exclusion from the funeral procession is likely on account of differing funeral rites. 229 "Pemkab DS Harus Ingat Sejarah..!! (The Village Government Should Remember History..!!)" Harian Bersama.com. 2023-04-18. This article implies that the Chinese martyrs were also commemorated in street names, but if so, they were later renamed. Pelzer, Planter Against Peasant, 50, 80. While, under colonial law, land under traditional 230 ownership could not be alienated to "foreigners", the interpretation and validity of colonial law was still up for contestation in the early years of independence. 231 Li Huanqing states that the issue was “resolved” in negotiations between the consulate and the Ali government, but does not elaborate (“Zhanhou Subei huaqiao,” 221). 232 Wang Liubo, Biandong yu fenlie, 72-79. Wang Jiasheng, “Dongdang suiyue liuhen,” 361. The previous chair’s name was Ye Ziyuan 叶 233 子元, and, like Go, he was a member of the China Democratic League. 234 The description comes from his epitaph, dedicated by the GBTT (Wu Qiao’e, “Wo de dage,” 493). Reportedly, Go Sek Liu spoke Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Indonesian, Javanese, and Mandarin (490). He also interpreted for Baren on multiple occasions. 235 The BTI, SOBSI, Gerwis, and Pemuda Rakyat (Dharma, “Pejuang antifasis yang konsekwen”). Dharma further notes that Go had good relations with the PNI, PSI, and PKI. Other members include Huang Miaoxian 黄妙贤 (Oei’s sister) and U Kuo-sen 吴国胜 (PY: 236 Wu Guosheng). 237 Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu yi qinren,” 195. They had pushed for armed resistance and apparently even purchased firearms, but were dissuaded by Baren and Liu Yan’s intervention. This period of organizing in Siantar is recorded in Wang Qianyu’s diary, recently published as 238 On the Equator (赤道线上). 239 Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu” 199. Oei Boen Tjoan, Go Sek Liu, U Kuo-sen, and You Rule 游如乐 made this trek. You’s leg would be amputated due to infection after the journey. In Tapanuli they were joined by Zhang Huatian 张华天, younger brother of Alliance leader Zhang Bao 张苞. See also Biographical Note on Oei Boen Tjoan. 403 === [PDF page 418] === 240 Dharma, “Pejuang Antifasis yan konsekwen.” 241 Lee, “boxed Memories,” 4-5. 242 Baren, “Ji Li Fu,” 494-6, 502. This essay was first published in 1947 in Below the Winds and arguably should be included in the Notes. 243 Baren, “Ji Li Fu,” 524. Here is the full passage, which explores the problematic of recognition: “He assumed I couldn't speak even the crudest Indonesian, and kept on talking. ‘Ah, that man, a real Chinese! He told me so much. He taught me to uphold truth and justice, to resist oppression and exploitation… He said, 'If the Indonesian people were the masters of the big North Sumatra plantations, that would be socialism! He also said that we Indonesians must stand up! … He told me to pick up this!’ The young man suddenly patted a carbine at his side, displaying supreme pride… ‘That's what he told me—but now, where is this Li Fu?’ the Indonesian youth pressed again." ‘He—Comrade Li Fu, my good friend—is dead!’ I could only lower my head, speaking weakly. ‘Really? Is that true?—Is life so fragile?!’ The Pesindo member stared at me for a long moment, his dark eyes widening in astonishment, as if to absorb me completely. But then, as if coming to his senses, he suppressed his emotions, and gradually regained his composure. He stretched out his right hand with all his might and said, ‘Well then! Good! Let us be friends forever!’ … I reached out and grasped his carbine-calloused, steel-hard hand tightly. I seemed to see our Comrade Li Fu again.” 244 Saleh Umar, “Dao Wu Xiliu,” 479. This translated reproduction of Saleh Umar’s obituary does not note the original place of publication. 245 Anwar Dharma, “Pejuang anti-fasis yang konsekwen.” 246 Anwar Dharma, “Pejuang anti-fasis yang konsekwen.” Annast is the pseudonym of Achmad Nur Nasution, a nationalist reporter. During the war he participated in the gyugun (Prima, Medan area mengisi proklamasi, 477) and later was part of Pemuda Demokrat Indonesia. 247 On Buyung Saleh’s biography, see Suparna’s obituary, which emphasizes his activities in the plantation worker’s union Sarbupri (“Buyung Saleh: Trade Unionist and Writer”). 248 Buyung stated in an interview with Ann Stoler that he was present in Sumatra in the late 1940s (“Working the Revolution,” 241). 249 Buyung Saleh’s formal position was secretary, under the chairman Siauw Giok Tjhan. Siauw Tiong-djin (Siauw Giok Tjhan, 205-206) and Daniel Lev (No Concessions, 196) both mention Buyung Saleh’s role (with Go Gien Tjwan, Liem Koen Seng and Tan Foe Khiong) in pushing the liberal lawyer Yap Thiam Hien out of Baperki. 250 These pamphlets, based on articles from Mingguan Sadar (the renamed Sunday Courier), were published by Baperki under the title “The Problem of the Minority of Chinese Descent in Indonesia (Masalah Minoriti Keturunan Tionghoa di Indonesia)” and distributed to political and press organizations in Jakarta. They are most notable as the likely source for much of Pramoedya’s argument in The Chinese in Indonesia. 404 === [PDF page 419] === 251 For example, after a 1957 symposium, the writer M. Balfas in Pedoman accused him of spending time in "Kwee Kek Beng's warung [shop]," and teased that this was a "Njai Dasima story," i.e. an interracial romance (Simposion Baperki, 44). 252 Buyung Saleh, “Go Sek Liu in Memoriam,” Dinasti 650 Juta, 45-7. 253 Buyung Saleh, “Giok Tiongkok,” Dinasti 650 Juta, 50. 254 Foulcher calls this poem a Lekra classic (Social Commitment, 49). These poems were all collected under the heading “Death of a Peasant” in the book The Unsilenced (Yang Tak Terbungkamkan; 1959), but some sources state they had been banned earlier, suggesting an earlier edition as well. “Death of a Peasant” was also translated by Bintang Suradi (pseudonym of a progressive Indo named van der Ster) in Contemporary Progressive Indoneian Poetry See, for example, “This is Wates (Ini Wates)” by Rumambi, in Matinja seorang petani, 29. 255 According to warungarsip.co, this publication was a response to a massacre of peasants in Boyolali, but I have been unable to find information on this event. 256 “Elegi II,” (Elegy II) 1959, in Bandaharo, Aku Hadir di Hari Ini. The exact line is: “I am reminded of Go Sek-liu who caught dysentery in detention” (“aku teringat Go Sek-liu yang kena disentri di tutupan”). 257 Bandaharo, “Terkadang di Kala-kala tak Terduga (Sometimes at Unexpected Moments),” Aku Hadir di Hari Ini. Note that the name “Go Sek,” which is strictly speaking incorrect (since his family name is Go not Liu) is attested elsewhere too in Indonesian. This phrase also suggests that Bandaharo had met Go (in comparison to the generic language of Buyung Saleh’s poem). 258 Many of them were first published in Writers Publishing House (作家出版社), which until 1958 was an affiliate of People’s Literature Publishing House, under the directorship of Baren. Yuliantri and Dahlan, Gugur Merah. Those poets are Agam Wispi, H Bandaharo, T Iskandar 259 AS, HR Roemandung Drastia Em, Aziz Akbar (aka Satyadharma aka S.T. Chaniago), Chalik Hamid, Achmadi Hamid, Achmad Jacub, Slamet Atmoredjo, Amanan Ismail Hamid. Hamid, Gelora Api ‘26, 99; Bintang Suradi trans., Contemporary Progressive Indonesian 260 Poetry, 88. 261 I.e. Oei Boen Tjoan. Saleh misremembers his family name. 262 Buyung Saleh, “Karena Berbeda Tempat Tegak,” 54. 263 Go Gien Tjwan, also a former leader of Baperki, was even more unsparing in his criticism of what he saw as Leo Suryadinata’s (and Mary Somers Heidhues’) distortion of the historical record, especially in relation to Siauw Giok Tjhan. However, his highly personal criticisms were not published, as far as I can tell. Go Gien Tjwan to Andrew Gunawan, n.d., in IISG Go Gien Tjwan Papers. “Laporan tentang urusan peranakan dan bangsa asing bulan oktober 1951 di propinsi 264 Sumatera Utara [Report on peranakan and foreign national affairs for October 1951 in North Sumatra],” in ANRI RA11 1806. 405 === [PDF page 420] === 265 Saleh Umar, “Menembangkan Titik-Titik Pertemuan.” 266 Baren, Lun Yinni de fandi douzheng, 17. 267 The phrase, which derives from Policing the Crisis, has now entered general use. 268 See Yunus Yahja ed., Lahirnya Konsepsi Asimilasi, (137-143). 269 The terms are Daniel Chirot’s, from Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the modern transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Even within this edited volume, many of the contributors appear to have held reservations about the comparison. A more sophisticated but ultimately idealist extension of this analogy can be found in Iyko Day’s Alien Capital, which applies Postone’s analysis of European antisemitism to Canadian antisinicism. 270 See, for example, Mamdani, Define and Rule, Settler and Native, and (earlier) Citizen and Subject. Mamdani’s pivot away from the methods of political economy has meant that his earlier observations in Politics and Class Formation on the Asian bourgeoisie were not developed further. 271 See Banaji, A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism, which argues that colonial capitalism was primarily commercial, and for a longer time than has generally been assumed in Marxist accounts of industrialization. Presumably Guo Quan Seng’s forthcoming project on the “diaspora of shopkeepers” will also address this question. 272 Baren, Lun Yinni fandi douzheng, 16, 8. 273 These two diasporas are only analytically distinct: it was possible for any individual to transit from either to the other in their lifetime, and they were mutually dependent in structural terms. 406 === [PDF page 421] === Chapter 6: The Age of Fervor One of the big life choices facing a graduating senior in a Chinese-medium high school was whether to remain or return. Especially for those with some combination of academic talent, political commitment, and economic privilege, this was a veritable rite of passage. Its gravity was lightened by the sense that both their homelands were part of something greater, a worldwide project of building a new world. Feng Shicai in his 1962 poem “Little Sister (小妹 妹) ” gestures to this decision that is no decision: Little sister, hopping, jumping. Now counting, now playing. “Indonesia and China, Close as brothers [亲密如兄弟].” When you learned to speak [牙牙学语], You already knew Indonesian, When you could wear a bookbag, You already knew both nations [友邦] were brothers. The tropical climate [椰风焦雨] nurtures you, The happy north attracts you. Will you return to construct socialism, or dedicate your remaining life [毕生精力] here? It’s all the same, it’s all the same [都一样的]. Little sister, study hard. “Indonesia and China, Close as brothers.”1 Here, Sino-Indonesian fraternity is voiced by a young girl, who sings the refrain, “Indonesia and China, / close as brothers.” This slogan’s repetition as a children’s song is, of course, a sign of the naturalization of the political as the cultural, a sign of the success of the new common sense. The fraternal metaphor here is embedded within a discourse of an (implied, possibly figurative) older brother to a younger sister.2 The child here is figured above all as a student, and the general process of maturation is figured as one of education: from language acquisition (“learning to speak”) to formal schooling (the bookbag) to the future moment of graduation, when she will make her choice. And while the older brother’s relation to the younger sister is typically a pedagogical one, here there is a subtle inversion, where it is the speaker who, in listening to the singer, learns something, even if that something is just the aura of youth. There is no difference 407 === [PDF page 422] === here, not just between returning and remaining, but also between studying hard and Sino- Indonesian friendship. The cult of youth was a staple of global progressive culture of the mid-20th century, including in mainland China, the source of many of yinhua literature’s tropes. There its canonical origins lay in the student uprisings of May 4th in 1919, later consecrated as Youth Day, a festival that was punctually observed in yinhua schools.3 But it was also embedded in the anticolonial/revolutionary tradition of Indonesia, in which the “Youth’s Oath” (sumpah pemuda) of 1928 plays an inaugural role,4 leading a Soviet journalist to comment in 1948, “in no other Asian country do youth organizations play such an important role as in Indonesia.”5 Benedict Anderson, writing in the upheavals of the 1960s on the upheavals of the 1940s, made of “pemuda consciousness” an engine of history.6 (Not only was Indonesia a young country, it also had a young population: while the numbers would likely have been lower for the Chinese minority, in 1961 a third of the entire Indonesian population was under ten.7) In the mid-century progressive culture the world over, youth played a central role both symbolically and materially. When the World Democratic Federation of Youth (WFDY) gathered in Calcutta, its delegates demanded from the United Nations for youth in general – concession of political and major social rights; for working youth – guaranteeing jobs and social security; for peasant youth – acquisition of land, lessening of exploitation by landlords and so on; for students – free education and assistance in acquiring education; for everybody – concession of rights for free unions and democratic organizations.8 And then concluded their conference with chants of “Hands off Asia!” “Young people unite, attack, win!” and “Long live the people’s revolution!”9 This militancy surprised even the organizers, and led US observers to believe (incorrectly) that it was the result of “orders from Moscow.’10 It was, rather, an expression of the “great experiment, of learning by doing,” in free Asia.11 This was not a boy’s club: we could extend Elizabeth Armstrong’s observation, referring to the left-wing international organizations, “women and girls were in all of these formations: as students, as youth and as workers,” to the postwar anticolonial movements as a whole.12 These were the years when the first generation that had not participated in the independence struggle 408 === [PDF page 423] === came of age—youths raised on stories of a time they only dimly recalled, if at all, eager to complete the unfinished revolution of 1945. Young women symbolized youth in a way that young men could not, since the social expectations around family formation, housekeeping and child-rearing introduced a rupture between youth and adulthood for women much more dramatic than men. During the first half of the twentieth century, the lives of middle- and upper-class younger women changed drastically: they now could expect coeducational schooling, companionate marriage, and sometimes professional lives. Older women, however, were still expected to take responsibility for the family, even if this family’s structure had changed significantly. Rachel Leow has urged which reflects on the scholarship on the international phenomena of the “Modern Girl” and “New Woman,” asks whether this newness/modernity might have to do with “her” age, or whether we might think “age as a category of gender analysis.”13 This chapter attempts to extend Leow’s insights, which she grounds in Southeast Asian Chinese communities, to yinhua culture, through an exploration of the conjunction of age, gender, and race in literature about and by Chinese young women and girls in mid-century Indonesia. I also take inspiration from Tani Barlow’s speculation that perhaps it will eventually be possible to demonstrate that the Chinese debates placed relatively more stress on female voluntarism and women’s centrality to social development— more, that is, than other socialist sociological traditions did. That remains to be determined.14 This chapter will corroborate the apparent centrality of female voluntarism to the problem of politics in general within revolutionary and progressive literature in Chinese. The guiding thread of this chapter is the overdetermination of the life choices of young women, the enormous semiotic burden that these decisions are asked to shoulder: “It’s all the same, it’s all the same.” To begin, I review the depictions of politicized young women within earlier yinhua literature, emphasizing how progressive (male) writers often framed their social critiques in conservative gendered tropes. I link this to the rapid expansion of Chinese-language schooling, which enabled the development of a vibrant progressive youth culture, which I discuss in the 409 === [PDF page 424] === next section. This culture drew attention not only from contemporary writers, but also from Indonesian intelligence and US social science. I then turn to an unpublished 1957 sociological survey of Chinese high schoolers completed by the anthropologist G.W. Skinner, which I read “through” the refractions of his Cold War commitments to explore left-wing youth culture. I conclude with an extended discussion of the rise of the Zamrud Cultural Foundation in the 1960s, which, under the editorship of Huang Yurong and in close collaboration with yinhua language institutions, stewarded a brief literary renaissance. Examining the narratives of young women by authors such as Cui and especially Xu Qiongling, and the controversies that they generated, I show how the concept of "character" emerged as a multivalent and powerful analytic to navigate "the years of living dangerously."15 To conclude this too-long dissertation, I then turn to the establishment of the Res Publica University (Ureca) by Baperki as an example of the culmination of the project of friendship. Songs of Youth Among the red classics of the era, Yang Mo's Song of Youth (青春之歌) had pride of place in sinophone Southeast Asia. A Singaporean reviewer praised its profound account of the heroic sacrifices and struggles of young men and women in areas such as love, thought, and revolution, and contains particularly vivid descriptions of the lives of university students, journalists, lovers, and battlefields.16 Progressive teachers encouraged their students to read books like Song of Youth, alongside other red classics like How The Steel Was Tempered, The Gadfly, and Red Crag.17 To feed the curriculum, radical bookstores plied a thriving business, as young Chinese readers devoured and digested the new "types" at the center of progressive stories, fashioning themselves after them. The editor of Chiao Hsing Weekly, in an essay about his mother’s work as a clandestine courier for the CPM, gives us an approximation of a syllabus: From the moment she began her underground activities, my mother smuggled many revolutionary books to the Singapore organization. After I returned to Indonesia, she brought even more of them. These included theoretical works such as Selected Works of Mao Zedong, How to Be A Good Communist, Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party, Popular Philosophy, Political Economy, as well as Soviet and 410 === [PDF page 425] === Chinese revolutionary novels such as How the Steel Was Tempered, The Young Guard, Private Aleksandr Matrosov, The Story of Zoya and Shura, The Gadfly, Story of a Real Man, Who are the Most Beloved People?, Daughters and Sons, Song of Youth, The Lettuce, A Thousand Miles of Lovely Land, Struggle in an Ancient City, and The Blazing Guardian (烈火金刚), too many to mention. They quenched the thirst of comrades for spiritual nourishment in their bitter struggle underground.18 Like Song of Youth, many of these novels were about young people learning “how to be a good communist,” which was hardly understood separately from the task of being a good person in general. They were read not as a mirror of young readers' actual experiences, but also as what Russian realist Chernyshevskii called a "manual for life."19 The socialist, or more broadly, progressive realist mode of reading did not strictly differentiate character and person, between text and context, realism and reality. To call something “realistic” or “unrealistic” is a political judgment, and it is only from the other side of the defeat of the communist project that socialist realist narrative can be called unrealistic. Thus, when PKI cadre Lin Shi Fang was organizing among the Chinese working classes of her native West Kalimantan, she often used storytelling. Summarizing books like Song of Youth achieved many things at the same time: building relationships, strengthening literacy, navigating decisions, and training cadre.20 Lin Shi Fang's own trajectory, from idealistic schoolteacher to hardheaded communist, was not unlike that of the book’s protagonist. Song of Youth is a revolutionary bildungsroman, which follows Lin Daojing’s growth from into a disciplined, dedicated cadre. First radicalized by the war of resistance with Japan, Lin meets a series of increasingly leftist love interests; met with raids and heartbreak, she learns to grow into a disciplined and dedicated communist. Its plot follows the “love and revolution,” in which romantic and revolutionary affects are often intertwined: the narrative engine of the first volume is a love triangle with a liberal and a communist. Her divorce from the selfish Yu Yongze, who represents the degeneration of May 4th liberalism, to join the party under the mentorship of the selfless Lu Jiachuan is the narrative climax. In what seems to be a common pattern, her mutual affection with Lu is diverted into political activity, which gradually teaches her how to channel her revolutionary enthusiasm into organizational discipline. 411 === [PDF page 426] === Given its lessons about enthusiasm and discipline, it was no wonder that when Indonesian leftists asked veteran translator Chen Zhanhu if he had recommendations for Chinese literature to translate, he thought of Yang Mo's book; his translation would appear in 1961, published by the Lekra as Nyanyian Remaja (Figure 35).21 The Communist Party of Indonesia made this book required reading for cadre.22 The difference in language between the original and the translation was hardly important, as socialist literature aspired towards a transparent style, a foregrounding of content, which could then circulate easily within the progressive ecumene. Yinhua writers, who were first and foremost readers of modern Chinese literature, inherited the preoccupation with the life stories of political women. It is in the unprecedented social upheavals of the 1940s that we see this type appear in full force. Baren's unpublished short story, "The Origins of Yueliang," which likely formed part of his Notes from the Land Below the Winds, is one such text. This story revolves around a high school student, Chen Xiumei, nicknamed Yueliang (lit. "Moonlight"), recounting her life story through the successive revelation of her past affairs. Unsupported by her family, she depends entirely on the gifts of her boyfriends (including two of the narrator’s friends) to pay for her tuition and living expenses. Perversely, these older men are all presented as victims of her economic precarity. Ultimately, in a resolution reminiscent of Zhang Ailing’s plots—although the narrative effect of Baren’s firstperson bystander, and Zhang’s intimate third-person omniscience, produce strikingly different affects—she falls for a manipulative playboy and the story ends with her entrapment in a loveless marriage. Crucially, the "origin" of this tragedy is traced back to her first romantic relationship as a middle schooler, with teacher, the communist Mr. Zhang. When he is arrested she ultimately decides not to join him in his exile to the penal colony of Boven Digoel. An abandonment at one and the same time of her duties as a faithful wife, and as a revolutionary, this narrative superimposes feudal and antifeudal morality. Here is an especially uncritical presentation of the eroticized, pedagogical relationship between a male mentor and female mentee: 412 === [PDF page 427] === The cultivation of revolution is often the cultivation of love. Mr. Zhang was still young— how could he avoid this law of nature? And the cultivation of love often makes a woman grant unconditional reverence to the revolutionary, so the object of that reverence becomes even more lovely […] It is impossible to know to what extent Miss Chen Xiumei admired her revolutionary mentor.23 A full evaluation of this dynamic’s place within Chinese literature is necessary but not possible here. I only note here that the “revolutionary mentor,” often an older male cadre, is a fixture of the political woman’s bildungsroman—it appeared in the radicalization of the protagonist of Song of Youth, for example. Sociologically, relationships between teachers and their students, usually but not always male and female respectively, was relatively common among Chinese leftists in this era.24 The incommensurability between personal liberation and social change in this text marks it as an example of the "Nora narrative," after the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House who chooses to exit the cage of married life (the “doll’s house”).25 This play’s critique of the bourgeois family form became a flexible shorthand for the women’s movement’s challenge to gender roles: the North Sumatran women’s movement, discussed in Chapter 3, expressed this May Fourth legacy in its rallying call to “leave the home [and] enter society (走出家庭，走入社 会).” Some writers responded to the emergence of the “new woman” by celebrating the “militant female idol… [imbued] with the quality of a secular goddess.”26 Others were more skeptical, asking “what happens after Nora leaves the home?”27 As I mentioned in the conclusion of Chapter 3, Baren retreated to the biological, the natural, and the humanist in sometimes-jarring ways when confronted with the social realities of reproduction. Tonally, this text also features the fatalism of “Rensheng and Those Around Him.” Here is the opening meditation: Here, I seem to glimpse the souls of all the supposedly liberated new women of China. Naturally I feel pity and sympathy, although sometimes I can’t help but want to laugh. Women are naturally the center of the story of human society, although not all writers love the theme of love. Life depends on materiality and lust. In a patriarchal world, how can women not be the protagonist of the story? But in my view, the stories of the girl of the South Seas are mostly written on water [写在水上]. She seems to not care so much about her own story, even though others are already continuously transmitting [传写] it on their tongues. 413 === [PDF page 428] === Here, the tragedy is the feminine tragedy of the inability to (for Baren, the unwillingness to) selfrepresent. His primary interest in this text is in the discursive world of gossip that revolves around the protagonist: she is always presented to us either through the distant observation of the narrator (from across the room, or through a crowd), or through hearsay and rumor, and at one point, there are three levels of embedded narration! The effect, of course, is to implicate the reader as a voyeur, just like the narrator with his feigned disinterest. This opening can be seen as an instant in what Tani Barlow has called “the event of women, “a politically inspired action to install a newly discovered truth,” namely the truth of sexual reproduction (difference) as proof of women’s natural rights (equality).28 Barlow’s account helps to make sense of Baren's association of the biological and the epistemological in this passage. In Barlow’s account, the link between truth and event is action, or rather, political voluntarism—it is precisely this link that is severed in “Origins of Yueliang.” The most striking narratological feature here, alongside the narrative nesting that it complements, is the passivity of the protagonist. Even Chen Xiumei’s original decision to abandon Mr. Zhang is a non-action: on the appointed day, she doesn’t appear at the dock to accompany him. It is not hard to see that this passivity is a deliberate mystification. Baren’s story incorporates the real events of the Red Tide Affair of 1933, in which a cell of CPC members was deported after they were discovered propagandizing against imperialism in North Sumatra and East Java, which I introduced in Chapter 1. However, his version of the story completely neglects the leading role of the Moscowtrained communist Xie Huaidan, editor of the mimeographed periodical after which the whole event is named.29 While Baren’s story is set in the late-colonial era, several other stories from the 1940s explicitly are set in the present. Both Jieshuang’s “Red Spring Girl (红春姑娘)” and A Wu’s “Trap (陷阱)” dramatize the chaos of the independence struggle using the trope of the fallen woman. Jieshuang’s two-page story echoes “Origins of Yueliang,” in its emphasis on the community’s obsessive interest in a woman. Set during one of the Dutch “police actions” in North Sumatra, the protagonist in this case is a young girl from the plantation who has been sent 414 === [PDF page 429] === to the home of a wealthy relative (the narrator’s neighbor) in town because her father “worries that she’s always hanging out with ‘native devils [番鬼]’ and is turning savage [野坏了].” The narrator takes pleasure in listening to her sing as she washes laundry—her corruption is marked by her switch, to the narrator’s dismay, from singing pure folksongs like “Bengawan Solo,” to degenerate popular music by singer Zhou Xuan. (The romanticization of Indonesian popular music as primitive folk forms was a common trope in yinhua literature.) One day, she disappears with an Indonesian man: “This wild shrew, leaving with an Indonesian… Isn’t it an insult to her ancestors?” “She’s making Chinese look bad!” “Unbelievable!” […] I was a bit confused. I wasn’t sure whether to feel joy or pity for her.30 This story, in addition to corroborating scholarship that indicates women often had more mobility between racial groups, figures miscegenation as the expression of postcolonial upheaval. Similarly, “Trap (陷阱)” by A Wu, centers on a young woman who smuggles arms between the Dutch and Indonesian-controlled zones during the war, recruiting her many boyfriends to help her. Ultimately, she becomes the concubine of her business partner—the “trap” of the title is the one that she has set for herself.31 This boundary-crossing is represented only in social and not in political terms—it is easy from here to desire an alternate narration, one that explores women’s experiences of the revolution. Very few people attained the militant ideal. The more general experience was of a commitment to what was often referred to as “group life” or “organizational life” (团体生活) within a progressive milieu. Not all male progressive writers were as committed to using the trope of the fallen woman to advance social critique. Several of Heiying’s stories in his 1947 collection, Moved by the Times, protagonize young women in more ambiguous ways. Heiying's "Woman" (女人) dramatizes the appeal and costs of this yinhua culture.32 In it, the narrator is surprised to discover that an old friend in Jakarta after the war, has given up her vehement opposition to marriage (lit. single-ism, 独身主义), and married and given birth to a child. Together they revitalize their prewar "organization (社团)”—presumably a civic organization 415 === [PDF page 430] === that helped with resistance fundraising. She (the friend) throws herself entirely into preparing their chorus for an important upcoming event, and when she learns mid-performance that her child has been hospitalized with a possibly fatal case of malaria, she doesn't flinch or stop. Instead, the chorus completes the performance, before she and the narrator catch a taxi to the hospital—on the way, she reflects that if she lived in a country with childcare and better hospitals, perhaps she wouldn't have to choose between work and children. The story closes in front of the hospital, and it's ambiguous whether her child has passed away or not. In narratives like this, an opposition is posited between organizational life and family life, between the pull of "public" and "private" responsibilities. This opposition, and the painfully incomplete personality that it produces, is characteristic of the pre-revolutionary world, and would be overcome in socialism. The unresolved conclusion is an example of Heiying’s proficiency in the short story form. Indeed, his oeuvre shows a preference for morally ambiguous situations, conflicted protagonists, and narrators who withhold judgment In this sense, and represents a prewar tendency that would struggle to survive the polarization of the early Cold War. (Indeed, from 1949, Heiying would take a decades-long sabbatical from fiction-writing.) It is hard not to read such stories by male writers, some of whom were committed leftists, symptomatically: they all seem to have been unable to represent the new participation (or sometimes, just proximity) of young women in political life without transforming it into a metaphor for social catastrophe. It is as if the protagonists have just enough agency to ruin their own lives, but not to participate in social change. The narrators, knowing, ironic, and superior, are rarely treated self-reflexively. In summary, the tension between the romantic and political lives of young women, and sometimes their conflation, was a centerpiece of yinhua literature in the late 1940s. It would be at least a decade before young women could write back to these narratives. Before we review those writers, we must first examine the youth culture which caused aroused such intense reactions from yinhua writers. 416 === [PDF page 431] === Figure 35. Cover of the Indonesian translation of Song of Youth. The 1961 publication by Lekra of Yang Mo’s classic tale of love and revolution, translated by Chen Zhanhu and with a cover illustrated by Wen Peor (Note the “n” is cut off from the title, Njanjian Remadja.) Source: photograph by author. 417 === [PDF page 432] === A New Culture In 1946, a scandal erupted, a kind of local skirmish in the emergent Cold War, at the Medan Chinese School (aka Mianhua), which had been founded just the year before as a counterweight to the East Sumatra Secondary School. Fei Xi 费曦, the editor of the school's mural newspaper (壁报) and a member of the Chinese Democratic League, had republished an article from the mainland leftist press, "Chiang Kai Shek Should Be Patriotic” (蒋介石是应该爱 国). She was confronted by Ding Zhangsheng, the leader of the GMD-affiliated youth organization, the Three Principles Youth Corps (三青团), who demanded an apology from her. She refused, and the (leftist) principal defended her and criticized the right-wing students. Apparently on the instructions of the consulate, the Chinese Security Corps (Pao An Tui) intervened, detaining both Fei and the principal, ostensibly for their own safety, until an expose in the leftist press forced their release.33 Fei was soon lionized as a heroine of the Democracy Movement, and in the neighboring city of Siantar, a play was even devised dramatizing the affair—one which likely influenced the struggle over the schools in that city in the following year.34 The culture that eventually did emerge as hegemonic within the Chinese-medium schools of Indonesia was Fei's, not Ding's: the progressive spirit of the mural newspaper, actualized through linguistic practices, rather than the martial spirit of the scouting movement. There are several things worth noting about this event. The first is that the conflict was sparked by the reproduction of a printed article in a school setting. In addition, Fei's immediate integration into a literary repertoire suggests the fluidity between "real" and "literary" character. Memoirs emphasize Ding's possession of a gun—this was apparently common in the late 1940s in North Sumatra among right-wing students—implying a contrast between the weapons of the left and the weapons of the right, between writing in support of violence, and violence to suppress writing. The second is that the two protagonists were the children of leaders of the two factions. Ding Zhangsheng was the son of the editor of the right-wing New China Times, while Fei Xi was the daughter of Fei Zhendong, chair of the left-leaning Chinese General Association.35 This conflict suggests how the left-right conflict among Chinese in Indonesia 418 === [PDF page 433] === sometimes divided the community along vertical lines, with entire families belonging on one side or another. The "united front" between students and teachers was a notable aspect of progressive school culture in this period, which was surely helped by the porous line between the two: it was not unheard of for teachers to begin their jobs before graduating from high school. As Fei Xi’s story and subsequent celebrity suggests, this was a period of intense political activism among young women. Indeed, I have found a substantial number of high-ranking women cadre within my research, all of whom had close links to the Chinese-medium school system, and often were heavily involved in education, propaganda, and coalition-building. Nonetheless, they all kept a low profile, and rarely wrote the kinds of texts that are easy for a dissertation in modern Chinese literature to approach. Liu Yan, discussed in Chapter 3, was an acknowledged leader of the Chinese women's movement in Sumatra, one of the leaders of the local Chinese Democratic League, together with her comrade and possible CPC superior Shen Zijiu in Singapore;36 Chan Ai-sian (曾爱善, a.k.a. Sister B), from the CPM’s Singaporean outpost, an important member of the Chiao Hsing group exiled in Jakarta;37 and Lin Shi Fang, who would become a leader of the PKI remnants in West Kalimantan after the 1965 coup.38 In some cases, they were overshadowed by their more prominent, male partners, although in others, they outranked them. One example is Zhang Fengshu 张凤书, reputedly linked to the CPM, and founder of one of the antifascist organizations in North Sumatra.39 She met her later partner Chen Hong while militating against Japanese aggression in Medan’s Sudong High School, for which she was deported and he was expelled. He followed her to Malaya, where they continued their activism and eventually married.40 While the most visible leaders of the left were, as a rule, men, at the middle and lower ranks, that was not at all the case. According to Lin Shi Fang, the cadre of the PKI holdouts in West Kalimantan after 1965 were approximately 30-40% women, and I think that this is a safe estimate for most leftist organizations in the period.41 In the late 1940s, Dutch intelligence had already noted of Chinese communists with racist surprise that "the women do not lag behind… no matter how un-Chinese this mentality might seem."42 With the caveat that the women's movement in Sumatra as more advanced than that in Java, they also 419 === [PDF page 434] === described women's associations as "often more extreme than the men and seem to excel above all in the domain of spreading propaganda.”43 Of course, few people attained the militant ideal of the woman cadre. In practice, most people’s experience of political life came through the youth culture that developed within the Chinese-language school system. In independent Indonesia, this system boomed, and gradually came under the hegemony of the left. While high schools (高中; i.e. the final four years of secondary education) were still relatively rare in the 1930s, they rapidly expanded after WWII.44 In 1948, 85% of Chinese children in Dutch-occupied territories attended Chinese-medium education, significantly higher than the prewar numbers when Dutch-medium and Indonesianmedium schools claimed more.45 While one of the immediate reasons was Japanese policies that had insisted each racial group should learn their “own” language, this situation was also the result of half century of cultural nationalist activism largely focused on the construction of the schools.46 In the mid-1950s, the three pro-Beijing schools in Jakarta each had over or close to 4000 students, while the two pro-Taipei ones had less than 2000 students each; put another way, there were four and a half times more students in the former than the latter.47 This situation was replicated across the archipelago: the former principal of the pro-Beijing Palembang Chinese School boasted they had (counting all of the students in the attached elementary schools) a student body of 20,000 students, compared to less than 1000 in the rival system.48 It is not clear if there were any pro-ROC schools in Surabaya. Of course not all students shared the politics of their teachers and principals, but they were certainly influenced; moreover, the point here is to emphasize how completely the left had succeeded in establishing dominance over the schools. The closure of all pro-Taipei schools and many of the smaller schools in 1958 only further concentrated students in the major pro-Beijing schools. In the same year, Indonesian nationals were forbidden from attending foreign schools—to "rehouse" these students, the leftleaning Chinese-Indonesian mass organization Baperki stepped in, establishing over a hundred elementary schools.49 The end result of the closure of many foreign schools was not the 420 === [PDF page 435] === reduction but concentration of leftist influence. From this point until 1965, the education of noncitizen and citizen Chinese was under the duopoly of the pro-Beijing establishment and the pro- PKI Baperki. The grassroots coordination required to successfully manage the ”separation of schools (分校)” also effectively embedded the alliance of immigrant and creole leftists within the communal life of every single Chinese concentration in the archipelago. Well-meaning commentators have sometimes downplayed the extent of communist influence in Chinesemedium schools (not just in Indonesia but throughout Southeast Asia), but this is misguided. The fact is that the left came close to hegemony among youth. As I have argued repeatedly, it is mistaken to assume that this leftism was incompatible with the Indonesian national project circa 1960: patriotism, socialism, and modernity were "transferable" from the PRC to the RI. Thus, the process that Didi Kwartanada has called “resinicification,”50 a process that Siew-Min Sai has linked to the process of becoming modern,51 should not be conceptually opposed to “Indonesianization.” There were aspects of this transformation that were actually convergent with progressive Indonesian identity—insofar as resinicization was also dehollandization, for example, it was a kind of decolonization. In all, these were highly visible institutions, located on prime real estate, sometimes with enviable facilities. Supported not just by fees but by fundraising, scholarships and subsidies (including for dorms for out-of-town students) had a redistributive effect. This communal redistribution had the dual effect of gathering and integrating Chinese students of different classes, while also fueling charges of Chinese "exclusivity."52 Voluntarism, and its symptom enthusiasm, were at the heart of the new youth culture. It was, indeed, one of the main differentiators between yinhua and peranakan attitudes to social life. Mely G. Tan observed in her study of Sukabumi, for example, that at a municipal cleanup event, no peranakan student volunteers showed up, while the students from Chinese-medium schools, red and blue alike, were numerous and well-organized. This anecdote points to that organizational element within the youth culture that had developed among Chinese-speaking youth, sometimes misrepresented as an expression of a collectivist culture. For the right, the 421 === [PDF page 436] === typical form was the scouting movement, a military in miniature, while for the left, it was the student council (学生自治会, lit. “students’ self-determination association”), a kind of protoparty. This organizational element was double-edged: it was the vehicle by which Chinese youth were able to contribute to the Indonesian project, but it was also the sign of their cultural foreignness. Along these lines, Ang Jan Goan noted in his memoir that he had to advise Chinese organizations that they should tone down their ostentatious celebrations of Indonesian National Day in the early 1950s, which were courting resentment.53 The culture of political campaigns was imported together with progressive books from China, and indeed, it was partially a textual culture. In Palembang High School in 1951, for example, a “Campaign of Democratic Order [民主秩序运动]” was initiated by the student association with the approval of the principal against “free thought [自由思想],” and renewed in its second year because there "still remained some liberal thought in us… (还保留着多少自由主 义的思想…)”54 The police was offput by this illiberalism, commenting that this attitude was “merciless and dangerous,” and used these statements to argue for the deportation of the principal.55 (They did not know that the non-communist principal had been hired to actually rein in ultra-leftist students and teachers.56) While the content of this campaign is unclear, another article in the same mimeograph denouncing the leaders of the student choir gives an idea of the intense social pressure it might have involved. This article ended with a flimsy pro forma selfcriticism: the writer noted that sometimes, unfortunately, members of the choir were too afraid to criticize the leaders! All this appeared to anticommunists as a form of dangerous collectivism, but for members of the culture, it was (at its best) an empowering and participatory experience. Qianren eulogized the pleasures of being part of “melting into the great hot flow of life” in a poem listing what he likes: reading, Beethoven, the moon, thinking of his beloved, and I like 我喜欢： everything I do and am 我的所作所为 to be like a small screw in the machine— 像机器上的小螺丝钉—— it won't loosen, fastened just tight enough... 它没有松脱，宁德正紧……57 422 === [PDF page 437] === This youth culture was also a print culture (provided we understand print broadly rather than only in terms of typeset letterpress). In Bangka, students and teachers to establish an adult school and a mobile library for peasants; they even experimented with a community garden before their experiment was suppressed by the local police.58 Labor unions, too, maintained reading rooms with subscriptions to progressive periodicals.59 The popular attempt to expand literacy, especially through night schools and libraries, was the critical link between intellectuals (here understood broadly), who volunteered as administrators and instructors, and working class students. Many mimeographs, supplements, and small-run magazines were tongren 同人 (lit. “same people,” i.e. friends) publications. The larger publications operated on a commercial basis, and encouraged as many submissions as possible. However, the most significant publications were often those that were not just an object of consumption but also an organizational tool. The influential Chung Hsio Sheng, for example, had close ties to the CPC’s secret Indonesian organization, and was such a publication.60 Those on the outside might passively read the texts it generated; potential recruits would be encouraged to participate in reading groups; assistance in printing and distribution was the next rung; the inner circle wrote, edited, and received instructions from “the organization.”61 Of course, many progressive youth never had direct contact with any party cadre, yet through books like Song of Youth, this militant ideal was disseminated wide and deep in the culture. Qianren’s “Peace Petition Interlude (和平签名工作插曲)” is an examination of one kind of political work that progressive youth were likely to be involved in, canvassing.62 In this story, the narrator fantasizes about “using his perfect Mandarin to recite the Peace Petition outreach materials […] he was confident that with his fluency, he could convince many people to sign.”63 However, he is soon discouraged by the difficulty of persuading disinterested or hostile strangers, and starts making excuses and avoiding his activist friends. Only when a more advanced peer persuades him to reflect thoroughly and then bring his self-criticism to the group 423 === [PDF page 438] === can he overcome this challenge and grow as an activist. The lesson is clear: enthusiasm and talent aren’t enough without perseverance and organization. As this story suggests, the democratic movement had a strong component of moral reform: one North Sumatran CDL cadre took an oath during his initiation to refrain from vices, cultivate the "virtue of collectivism" and practice self-criticism, conquer the desire to lead, and to remain unmarried before the task of democracy had been completed.64 As in Singapore, where students led an “Anti-Yellow Culture Movement” (where yellow refers to decadent and pornographic) in the 1950s, many Chinese in Indonesia strove to (appear to) consume only healthy media, abstaining from US “poison films (毒片)” and quarrelled over the value of wuxia novels.65 It helped, too, that the most diligent, creative, and caring educators were leftist. The new pedagogy which swept through these schools, while it was associated with communism, had diverse roots, including socialism and anarchism.66 It sought to integrate study and life, so that the world was experienced as a kind of open-ended lesson, and books valued for their privileged access into the world. Xie Huaidan, the Moscow-trained communist from the Red Tide Affair, was also a dedicated educator, and in her contributions to the yearbook of the elementary school where she worked,67 the links between language, pedagogy and print are clear. (This young, experienced activist from Shandong had already spent a decade in student organizing, and also two years in the Siberian gold fields teaching Chinese miners.68) Reflecting that "most of the children have never seen many of the things discussed" in the imported textbooks, (snow in the tropics?), she encouraged other educators to use direct experience, and gave an example with plants—the botanical metaphor for education is close at hand: Find a small piece of land, and let the children personally propagate some plants, to observe them—the plants—sprouting, budding, and blooming, and their—the plants'— relation to the sunlight, the dirt, the water, the wind, the dew...69 This impulse, to turn from the book to the world, or rather, to pass through the book into the world, was a foundational part of the new culture. It is of a piece with the realist injunction to 424 === [PDF page 439] === make observations on immediate reality, integrate them with theoretical study, and then act collectively and purposefully. In the same yearbook, Xie calls for the establishment of autonomous student organizations (学生自治组织). Besides cultivating habits of "independence, discernment, and judgment," these would also permit students to "encourage, guide, and supervise each other," and also to use their collective power to supervise teachers," especially those “lunchpail instructors [饭桶教员, i.e. useless] who will waste their precious time.”70 Her detailed recommendations on how to structure these groups—she comes close to calling for a constituent assembly of students—likely derive from her own experience as a radical student in China and Moscow. While Xie was ahead of her time, by the 1950s most schools had implemented some form of student self-government. For many young people, the student committees were their first experience of organizational life: these managed not only newspapers, performances, athletics and conferences, but also (quite often) capital campaigns, especially those related to student welfare, such as dormitory construction. The short-lived Ta Teh Institute (达德学院) in Hong Kong, which predominantly recruited from progressive Southeast Asian Chinese and was staffed primarily by non-communist leftist intellectuals linked to the China Democratic League, was the epitome of this democratic pedagogy: it formally included student representatives in its highest governing body, and had to secure student agreement to (for example) determine tuition fees.71 Control of the schools was an object of intense struggle, both between the left and right wings of the Chinese community, and between the Chinese community and the Indonesian state.72 In the late 1940s, the left attempted to take over community institutions, including the schools, wherever possible. This struggle was typically led by youth cadre within the schools, usually with guidance from adult cadre, and took the form of a "united front" of progressive students and teachers; as often as not, what was decisive was the backing of progressive elites on the board. When they failed, they often defected (or were expelled/fired), and founded separate, competing schools. The ultimate result was the politicization of a generation of students, who were often older and more experienced to begin with as a result of the wartime disruption of their 425 === [PDF page 440] === education. It goes without saying that the use of schools as emergency housing during the mass displacements of the independence struggle and of PP10, and the frequent mobilization of students in relief work, tested their mettle even further. An ordinary Chinese-speaking high schooler in Indonesia in 1960 might have changed schools multiple times due to politicallymotivated closures and probably had at least one teacher who was disciplined for leftist views; they were also probably in their early twenties. They would have had direct experience in school of the highs of Sino-Indonesian diplomacy, as in the Afro-Asian Conference of 1955, and its lows, as in the refugee crisis of 1959-1960. Organizational culture would have been normal for them: even if they had not joined a student strike, they had probably signed a petition, volunteered for a community project, and debated the ideas in the school paper. The cult of youth in yinhua literature was often indistinguishable from the cult of teaching. In “Warm Love (温暖的爱),” a teacher discovers that one of her students wants a new dress that her family cannot afford, and sews it for her: anything to cultivate “the homeland’s new flowers, the homeland's next generation [祖国新的花朵，祖国新的一代].”73 The theme of the transition from high school student into elementary school teacher was a staple of yinhua literature, sometimes framed as a form of historical agency.74 In the background of these stories was high unemployment and a network of underfunded, understaffed schools (especially in the countryside). In Zhou Miaoquan’s “My Friend (我的朋友),” for example, the narrator returns from “the mountains (山区)” where he has begun teaching to the city to visit his wealthy, beautiful, cinema-going, beer-drinking, white-passing childhood friend. The modernity of this friend is depicted as obsolete: “The train flew forward. My friend, Jianmin, you have been left far, far behind by the age.”75 The social status of teachers, as engineers of the human soul, rose significantly in this period: in practice the greatest beneficiaries of the struggle for organizational democracy in the schools were usually not students but educators, who were able to assert their progessional prerogative against the wealthy philanthropists who dominated the boards—it helped that they often had direct links to either the CPC or the GMD. In the most extreme cases, 426 === [PDF page 441] === teachers, usually leftists, seceded from (or being fired from) legacy schools and founded their own schools.76 The cult of teaching surely also expresses an intense attachment to the language institutions that, as I argued in Chapter 2, is typical of an allophone literature. Shaping praised his “beloved and respected” teacher, who was now going to return to school, for his perseverance: “‘eating bitterness [吃苦]’ is the best gloss [注释] for your ‘happiness.’” After sending off all his students to university, “Oh, now! / It’s time, for you to send yourself off.”77 Li Feng praised his Indonesian teacher in verse as "a golden bridge of friendship […] your speech is inextinguishable truth."78 Unusually, for a hyperbolically positive literature, Li Feng also wrote several sarcastic poems that take some of his laziest students to task. Parodying a socialist slogan, he calls them all red and expert: “all red ink (满纸红墨) […] expert at failing (专门留 班)."79 In the early 1950s, as part of the pivot from revolutionary internationalism to peaceful coexistence, the CPC instructed overseas leftists to rein in the student movement and depoliticize the schools. One principal recalls a 1950 meeting with the chair of the PRC’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, Liao Chengzhi, who asked why students from Indonesia “were normally received such outstanding marks in the politics examination?” When this principal explained that this part of the curriculum was emphasized North Sumatra, Liao “was not pleased (不以为然), and hoped we would be more careful (以后注意) in the future.”80 By 1953, most CPC-linked front organizations had been dissolved, sometimes to the bewilderment and frustration of their membership.81 This included an “overseas branch” of the CPC (侨党) that had been active from 1948 in Indonesia.82 The Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty of 1955 formalized the CPC's injunction to its citizens to refrain from involvement in local politics, and to respect local laws. Indeed, the period from 1952 to 1958, despite the enthusiasm of the rhetoric of Sino-Indonesian friendship, was a kind of "lull" in Chinese student self-activity—political enthusiasm was channeled in non-disruptive ways, into areas such as literature, volunteer work, or return to the homeland. Political activity was carefully avoided which also involved a depoliticization of the 427 === [PDF page 442] === educational system, i.e. a shift away from a revolutionary communism towards a general patriotism.83 It was only towards the end of the decade, and especially in the 1960s, that progressive youth began to seriously channel their enthusiasm into local organizations, especially the youth wing of Baperki, PPI (or the PKI’s corresponding organizations). Demobilization is narratively frustrating, since it is about things not happening when perhaps they would have, in the past, and so these remarks are somewhat speculative. Of course, some of the social contradictions that gave lived meaning to the democracy movement had not simply disappeared because they were geopolitically inconvenient. For example, in 1955, at Mianzhong School—the location of the incident I began this section with—when a conflict between the board, the administrators, and the teachers escalated into a general student strike, a new principal was called in to mediate and resolve the crisis.84 This memoir is vague about the exact grievance, though one suspects that students may have sided with teachers in it, as well as about the methods of resolution, but in general celebrates the restoration of order within the most important pro-PRC high school in Sumatra.85 Such conflicts, because they could not be articulated in terms of the struggle between the CCP and the KMT, remain inchoate. Political Orientations Both the Dutch colonial state, the Indonesian postcolonial state that succeeded it, had a keen interest in these schools. Indeed, the Department of Oriental Affairs (Kantoor voor Oosters- Politieke Zaken; Urusan Politik Ketimuran), reporting directly to the Prosecutor General, with its staff of spy sinologists, remained intact through the "transfer of sovereignty."86 As Taomo Zhou puts it, Chinese popular culture, especially among students, "was elevated to a national security concern in the 1950s."87 At least until the mid-1950s, Chinese leaving Indonesia to China were required to sign a form swearing never to return as part of an illegal policy designed to prevent communist infilitration.88 (Only after Indonesia’s leftward turn did it become possible to travel to China for study and return.89) Throughout the 1950s, regulations on Chinese schools became increasingly stringent.90 Early on, discipline was typically individualized: deportation of 428 === [PDF page 443] === teachers—as well as students—and decertification was common, although the temporary closure of a school was not unheard of.91 School libraries were closely watched for communist content, and a banned books list maintained. Officials viewed themselves as participating in a global educational front against the spread of Chinese communism: the Indonesian attorney general noted with approval the Thai decision to close hundreds of Chinese schools in the late 1940s,92 conferred with UNICEF officials on the problem, and consumed reports from USIS about Chinese "red schools" with interest.93 In 1957, as the left-nationalist government of Ali Sastroamidjojo was drifting away from anticommunism, a provincial military closed all foreign (i.e. Chinese) schools, and the national leadership soon followed.94 These policies against "private schools that use a foreign language as the language of instruction" carved out exceptions for religious instruction, since this would otherwise have shuttered Islamic schools that used Arabic.95 Eventually a smaller number of schools, mostly in the cities, were permitted to reopen. Because of Taiwan's backing of regional rebellions, pro-KMT schools were permanently shuttered, and their students were largely transferred to pro-Beijing schools. Indonesia was a key part of the “arc of containment” the anticommunist powers sought to construct in Asia.96 US social science, as one of the intellectual cornerstones of this arc, expressed an intense interest in the personal development, political orientation, and literary habits of Chinese youth. Although they were at pains to distinguish themselves from their Dutch predecessors, the US advisors that began to stream into Indonesia in 1945 in effect continued the technocratic tradition of the colonial state.97 For them, one of the key intellectual challenged of the day was developing a convincing explanation of the appeal of communism in the Third World that somehow (1) did not make reference to the realities of exploitation, oppression, and struggle, and (2) treated ideology, consciousness, and conviction as merely epiphenomenal. (In other words, any notion could be entertained, no matter how outlandish, except for the idea that young people, faced with the manifest injustice of the world, had decided to commit themselves to rectifying it.) 429 === [PDF page 444] === The most striking example of US interest in Chinese youth was George William Skinner's six-page survey of over a thousand high schoolers in 1957. An anthropologist best-known for outlining a theory of "macro-regions" in China, after being expelled from China in 1949, he spent the 1950s completing fieldwork on the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, especially in Bangkok (1951-1953) and Indonesia (1956-1958).98 A believer in the natural power of assimilation as a bulwark against communism, he framed his research as a way to “induce the vast majority of Southeast Asian Chinese to travel the roads towards freedom and democracy.”99 While his predecessor had won the respect of at least part of the Chinese community in his fieldwork and built many relationships which he sought to pass on,100 whether because he was less adept, or because the times had changed, Skinner met with considerably more suspicion. Pro-PRC schools refused entry to him.101 He was probably seen as a spy, and one later history notes that: The USA at one point dispatched an agent to Indonesia to instigate anti-Chinese and Chinese-exlusionary (反华排华) [activity]. This American, who knew how to speak Chinese, impersonated a scientist, and lived in the new residential area of Jakarta.102 Given the paucity of Chinese-fluent US academics in Jakarta, this almost certainly refers to Skinner.103 This helps to explain why at least one of his assistants, the son of noted peranakan journalist Kwee Kek Beng (who was close to the pro-PRC establishment), quit. As he wrote in his letter of resignation: My father had no objections [to my employment] because he thought that you as a successor of Dr. Willmott would share the same opinions and standpoints... But as you understand the financial side was not the main point, but the political one. My father feels embarrassed if his friends know that I am your assistant. I think why I do not need to explain... Please state that I have left you for study reasons. Then I wish you all the luck in your research and I would appreciate it VERY much if you do NOT make any attempts to get me in your office again.104 In this case, it was the mother who was "unalterably opposed."105 Ignoring warnings that it was detested for its role in banning textbooks, Skinner established a close relationship with the Inspectorate of Foreign Schools.106 It was with their support—after some delays, which he 430 === [PDF page 445] === attributed to pro-PRC officials within the Indonesian government—that he eventually was authorized to complete the most ambitious social-scientific survey that had yet been done of Chinese youth in Indonesia. With funding from the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, and the support of the Indonesian Ministry of Education, he distributed questionnaires to around 1800 seniors from 15 high schools in Jakarta, about 750 of whom were students from five Chineselanguage schools.107 This project represented a formidable endeavor, and the raw data (i.e. the questionnaires themselves), apart from his conclusions, are still relatively unexplored.108 He eventually used the computed results for an unfinished, unpublished manuscript, "Communism and Chinese Culture in Indonesia: The Political Dynamics of Overseas Chinese Youth." In this manuscript, he reflected by comparison with American youth, Chinese Totoks [immigrants] seem remarkably precocious in their political socialization. They have been fired, tempered, and cooled at an age when most of their American counterparts have yet to catch the spark.109 Just a few years before the student movements of the late 1960s threatened to capsize the West, may seem ironic in retrospect. Yet it also accurately conveys the way in which "1968," which always looked towards the cultural revolution elsewhere as a model, was a pale and belated imitation of a half-century of Asian student radicalism. Although Skinner needed to establish the political orientation of his respondents, but could not inquire about these directly, he and his team devised a set of proxies for sociocultural or political orientation: for example, places the respondent wanted to visit, or leaders that they admired, were used to determine how far left a student was. Special importance was attributed to the reading habits of these young people, which could be interpreted both as a sign of their sociocultural (to China, Indonesia, or the West) and political orientation (left, center, right). Skinner and his assistants sorted the 325 authors named across all questionnaires (including the non-Chinese-medium schools) into categories, from Communist to Rightist.110 The tabulated results showed that over 1/3 of respondents listed Lu Xun as a favorite author, followed in Chinese by Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Ding Ling, Guo Moruo and Lao She. At this point, Chinese-medium students were still reading primarily Chinese authors—only 13% listed Indonesian authors as well, although we can safely 431 === [PDF page 446] === assume that a significant number of them were thinking of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (137). Authors in other languages were not enumerated, but they included Fadeev, Gorky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Shaw, Ibsen, (Jack) London, (Jan) Romein, and (Marie) Curie (Figure 36). One of his unexpected results was that "high-quality" literary tastes were correlated with leftist politics and an orientation towards China, confirming the close links between print culture and leftist politics at this time. Keeping in mind the methodological questions that these literary assumptions raise, his final results demonstrated that about 80% of "China-Oriented Chinese," which overlapped substantially with Chinese-medium students, were leftist (47-48); about 50% of "Indonesia- Oriented Chinese," which overlapped substantially with Indonesian-medium students, were apolitical; and, finally, Indonesians were split evenly to left and right. Of course, the belief that Chinese education was thoroughly suffused with communism was the reason for the study to begin with, so this was hardly surprising. Skinner’s goal was to identify the underlying cause of the prevalence of communism among Chinese youth—in pathological terms, to identify its etiology—to better inform prevention strategies. "Communists... are made, not born," and so it was critical to American policy to identify the nonpolitical determinants, concomitants and consequences of political orientation among the Indonesian Chinese. What kind of persons — in term sof their social, economic, and psychological characteristics — are likely to be partisans of Mao Tse-Tung, Chiang Kaishek, or Siauw Giok Tjhan?111 Although he was not, it seems, a direct beneficiary of CIA largesse like his fellow Southeast Asianists Clifford Geertz and James Scott,112 his work was basically an expression of what the sociologist Ernst Utrecht, former dean of social sciences at Ureca and exiled sociologist, described as the misplaced sophistication [of] American bourgeois sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and political scientists [who] describe Indonesian society as one caught up in all sorts of vertical alignments, based on ethnic loyalty and strongly overdrawn religious or nationalist currents.113 As Sittithep Eaksittipong has explained, Skinner was influenced by the sociology on white immigrants in the US, and believed that the natural tendency towards assimilation into local 432 === [PDF page 447] === societies would form a bulwark against Communist influence.114 Since he was interested in measuring assimilation, he had to develop proxies for the abstract notions of "Thai-ness" (or, say, "Indonesianness") and "Chineseness," as well as "Westernness." While these heuristics are often questionable—for example, in the surveys, a taste for Jack London was counted not as "Westernization" but as evidence of a Communist political orientation—the graver problem is the reification of these concepts, which were then endowed with great causal power, even when unsubstantiated or contradicted by his research results. Indeed, Skinner's most influential contribution to the subfield of Chinese-Indonesian studies was the elevation of the distinction between peranakan (i.e. creole) and totok (i.e. immigrant) into an analytic rather than just descriptive category. This approach, which was never expanded into a monograph but was elaborated in a number of influential articles on the “Chinese minority” as a whole,115 is also exemplified in his primary division of respondents by their “orientation,” as discussed above. Indeed, it was because it was so tricky to identify reliable criteria for differentiating peranakan and totok—home language, religious practice, family name, and so on all proved inconsistent—let alone to generalize it beyond the context of early to mid- 20th century Java to all of Indonesia, that it had to be supplemented with the heuristic of “orientation,” which could then be employed circularly. Through the scholars that he sponsored, taught, collaborated with, or influenced, such as Onghokham, Mely Tan, Mary Somers Heidhues, and Leo Suryadinata, the concept of “orientation,” despite Siew-Min Sai’s criticism of it as an "academic version of a loyalty test," and continues to exercise the authority of common sense.116 The point is not to say that such a social distinction does not exist, but rather to note how in the Cold War context it was a means of effectively ethnicizing a political problem, much as Clifford Geertz elevated the distinction between abangan (syncretic) and santri (orthodox) Muslims into a primary social distinction above all others.117 The evasion of the problem of ideology, the methodological assumption that ideology could only be a dependent variable, rather than having a dialectical relation to social position, was basic to American social science in the Cold War. I have already detailed some of my reservations about the concept of “orientation” in Chapter 1, 433 === [PDF page 448] === but suffice it to say that I wager the youth being studied would not have seen themselves as "oriented" towards either China or Indonesia. Rather, they were oriented towards the new, the futural, the vital—towards youth itself. What, then, were the "nonpolitical determinants"—the “underlying conditions,” to preserve the medical analogy—of political orientation, at a more granular level than the macro distinction between peranakan and totok? The effects of speech group (e.g. Hokkien or Hakka) and place of birth, while not inconsequential, were considerably more mediated than he had expected. The effect of religion and the school environment were shown to be strong. Most interestingly for our purposes, however, he also discovered that age and gender were strong predictors of leftist political sympathies. The findings about communism's correlation with girlhood are, to an extent, buried in the report. It is in the middle of a discussion on the effect on sibling rank on political orientation, where he argues that the less "valued" a child is, the most predisposed to leftist ideology they are, that he shoehorns in his observations on gender: "the communist ideology appeals to girls in general,"118 since "the Chinese communist opposition to polygyny, forced marriage, male domination and all the rest has special appeal for girls."119 By my calculations, about 79% of the entire sample of "China-Oriented Chinese" girls were leftist, referring here to the entire range of ideologies from left nationalism to orthodox communism, significantly higher than the 66% of boys (Figure 37).120 Furthermore, while boys clustered at the two extremes, Skinner argued that these girls were especially attracted not to the farthest pole of orthodox communism but just short of it, to what he called "national" or "Chinese" communism, which had a profound critique of traditional family structures and a deep concern for sexual equality. Crucially, while Skinner had avoided discussing ideology throughout the report, it was only here, after a hundred pages, that he had no choice but to broach the topic of ideology. Indeed, it is here that Skinner comes closest to transcending his positivist assumptions, since political ideology appears here not just as an effect, but also exerts its own attractions. Almost all studies of Chinese-Indonesians, this one not excepted, were interested in interethnic relations. To this end, the survey also inquired about the number of friends of other 434 === [PDF page 449] === races and nationalities—it was not always consistent with differentiating the two, although this was not especially easy when these sociolegal categories were in flux—and asked: 35. Do you feel that most Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent contribute enough, not enough, or more than enough to the Indonesian economy? 36. In general, do you think that Chinese people’s [中国人] attitude to pure Indonesians [纯粹的印尼人] are friendly or not? 37. In general, do you think that Indonesians’ attitudes to Chinese people are friendly or not? 38. If there is enmity between peranakans and pure Indonesians, what do you think the reason is? __ Chinese people only socialize with their own ethnicity __ Natural racial differences __ Excessive Indonesian nationalism __ Different customs and habits __ Indonesians only socialize with their own ethnicity __ Economic interests __ Excessive Chinese nationalism __ Lacking mutual understanding __ Other reasons (please explain): _______________________ Regardless of how they answered the first questions, without fail respondents selected “lacking mutual understanding” as the reasons for interethnic enmity. However, some also bristled at what they saw as the subtext, commenting in the margins: The Chinese and Indonesian peoples [民族] originally coexisted in friendship. Is not the long history of intermarriage between Chinese and Indonesians a good example? The provocations of imperialism have produced enmity between the two nationalities. I hope we can make deep friendship between the two nationalities.121 The questionnaire was also designed with an eye to the romantic lives of young Chinese. For example, they asked about the desired qualifications in romantic partners: respondents from the left-wing schools usually selected “noble ideals,” “shared interests,” “compatible personalities,” “well-educated,” and “mutual love,” and rarely selected “high income,” “same religion,” “same topolect,” and “good family.”122 This commitment to the ideal of companionate marriage is hardly surprising. More striking was the high proportion of women who selected as their primary life goal “obtaining economic security from work,” although a few also selected “sacrificing personal interest, and offering oneself up to the Indonesian project [印尼之公共事 435 === [PDF page 450] === 业].” The last question, number 43, consisted of six subquestions, and was the only one that permitted longer responses. It was obviously intended to elicit answers that could place the respondent onto a continuum from modern to traditional. Some questions were also intended to assess the degree of “assimilation”: a. A wealthy man Mr. A has two wives. The wives do not dislike each other. Mr. A treats them quite well. What do you think of this situation? b. After several years of marriage, Mr. B and his wife feel that they can no longer live together. They both feel unhappy, and eventually divorce. What do you think of this situation? c. Two youths Mr. C and Ms. D are fellow students. They have many shared interests, and as a result they fall in love with each other. But the parents of both parties oppose their marriage. They marry anyways. What do you think of this situation? d. Two youths Mr. E and Ms. F work in the same place, and become good friends. They are both Indonesian citizens, but of different races (血统却不同). Their friends, thinking that their friendship might develop into marriage, try to persuade both of them to end the relationship. What do you think they should do? e. A judge is investigating a corruption case involving the foreigner (外侨) Mr. G and a government official Mr. H. Both plead guilty: Mr. G admits he bribed Mr. H, and Mr. H admits he accepted Mr. G's bribe. How do you think the judge should punish Mr. G? How about Mr. H? f. A merchant Mr. J wants to hire an assistant. Both his relative and a former fellow student both want this job. Another person that Mr. J does not know also comes to his office expressing interest in the job. What do you think Mr. J should do? Who should he hire?123 Most of these answers were consistent, unequivocal, and frankly unsurprising: they disapproved of polygyny, supported no-fault divorce, elopement, and interracial relationships, and called for impartial punishment and hiring. These are, essentially, the answers that I and most readers would probably list. While most respondents were pragmatic in accepting existing polygynous relationships and quick no-fault divorces, a few were more severe. In response to (a): “girls shouldn’t only consider whether men have money and just marry anyone [乱嫁人].”124 In response to (b): “the reason they’re in that situation is because they didn’t think hard enough.”125 This mode of judgment, one which views one’s love life as a measure of one’s moral fiber and political compass is one we will see reappear later as a manner of reading. 436 === [PDF page 451] === Questions (c) and (d), which touch directly on young people’s choice of partners, reflect the same politicization of romance that we saw in yinhua narrative of the 1940s. The right to freely choose one’s spouse on the basis of love and equality was defended, regardless of parental or peer approval (though that was often preferable). Some respondents to (d), the question on interracial relationships, were more direct—opposition to interracial marriage is a sign of “errors of thought and is abnormal.”126 A nineteen-year old Cantonese girl from Manado advised, “if they feel they can live happily together, then they should have courage and get married.”127 Another girl who “planned to teach after graduation […] and become a loyal teacher of the people,” who had no non-Chinese friends, explained “actually, there’s on need to consider such inconsequential [微不足道] issues. As long as they are healthy and have shared interests, different races don’t matter.”128 There is an emphasis on rationality as the precondition for passion here: “They should calmly and collectedly [以冷静的头脑] become intimate friends.”129 At the same time, however, such progressive beliefs were not free of contradiction. On the one hand, the support of free love coexisted uneasily with a conservative tendency to suppress intergenerational antagonism (i.e. between parents and children). On the other hand, the avowal of antiracist attitudes belied a societal reality in which the distance between Chinesespeaking students and the Indonesian masses was significant and possibly even worsening—thus, there were many respondents who were critical of racism with no non-Chinese friends. And the vast majority of respondents, even ones with wage laborer parents, had Javanese or Sunda servants. To explore these contradictions, however, we must exit the setting of the socialscientific questionnaires and reenter the world of literary production. 437 === [PDF page 452] === Figure 36. Favorite authors among high school seniors. The most popular Chinese and Indonesian authors in responses to the 1957 questionnaire. Source: Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” 35. 438 === [PDF page 453] === Figure 37. Correlation between gender and political orientation. Skinner’s analysis of the questionnaires suggested a clear leftist tendency among girl respondents in schools of all political orientations. Source: Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” Figure 18. 439 === [PDF page 454] === Judgments of Character One way to think about representations of young women was in terms of “character.” This word’s combination of moral and literary meanings precisely expresses the judgmental reading that was applied to writing about and by them. To be sure, this was not a form of reading that was gender-specific—it was, rather, heightened by gender. When one young author in 1958 wrote an innocuous short story, “Misunderstanding (误解)” in diary form about the discouragement experienced by a shiftless and underemployed high school graduate,130 a reader submitted a letter criticizing him for a failure in characterization: the narrator was “not specific (具体)” enough. In the jargon of the day, what did this mean? In practice, as the reader clarifies, it means that it’s difficult to ascertain whether the character is a positive or a negative type.131 The qualities that would have made this story appeal to liberal readers—the stylistic focus on interiority, the representation of the experience of alienation, and deliberate narrative ambiguity—are what made it technically inferior for socialist readers, who were, as Regine Robin puts it, “obsessed with transparency.”132 Here we can see a general pattern in criticism, one that extends to, and probably derives from, the literary criticism of the socialist ecumene: moral clarity is a value rather than a defect, yet this must be achieved without sacrificing narrative complexity. The concept of "character" was crucial to yinhua writers, which is why it is crucial for us. As Alexander Woloch has argued, characterization has received far less attention within Western literary theory in the 20th century than other techniques such as, for example, narrative structure, attributing this neglect to the importance of referentiality to characterization.133 In other words, the way that characterization necessarily involves the real world makes it resistant to both formal and deconstructive methods of literary analysis. I believe that this neglect is one of the reasons that socialist realism and its cousins has been understudied or misconstrued, at least within Anglophone literature. To use John Frow’s terminology, it is difficult to make sense of such a realist literature’s use of “character” if we cannot account for its relation to “person.”134 The problem of typicality, central to socialist literary theory, always involves reference to the extra- 440 === [PDF page 455] === textual world, to all the questions of social and historical reality, of actuality and normativity: type cannot be thought without reference to history (and specifically the history of class struggle). While the primary mode of thinking through social personhood within the liberal capitalist world was usually social science, within the socialist and anticolonial world it was often literature. This is why Clifford Geertz, who famously employed literary techniques in his anthropological work, criticized Pramoedya Ananta Toer's writing as merely a "sociological tableau," composed of "summarily reported event" and "desperately earnest conversations between typified characters in schematized scenes."135 More pragmatically, characters did not, and were not meant to, stay on the page: readers were encouraged not just to reflect on themselves in relation to them, to passively identify or disidentify, but also to emulate or disemulate them in social practice. One of the first and most intense centered on the protagonist of a short story published in the very first issue of Sparks by the Medan author Zheng Jinhua 郑金华 (better known now as Jinmeizi 金梅子). In "The Golden Turtle (金龟婿)," the backwards mother of Suqin, a young woman recovering from a heartbreaking affair with a teacher (!), arranges a match for her with a rich playboy, who turns out to be a con man that not only defrauds them of their life savings, but leaves her pregnant.136 The third-person narration is folksy and clearly indebted to the style of Zhao Shuli (赵树里). The important thing here is not so much the story itself as the criticisms it elicited from readers, which almost entirely centered on the character of Suqin, and were framed in the language of "realism." While the device of marriage as tragic conclusion was standard fare in the 1940s, as I noted in an earlier section, times had changed. Readers revolted against Zheng’s story. Huang Yurong, the most important literary critic of the era, summarized the dozen articles and letters that had been written in the ensuing debate: She is so weak, bowing before the feudal thought of her mother, without any sign of resistance, and her mind is so simple and numb. The author is writing about modern life, and in modern life, for a young woman to be manipulated like this, without any agency (主动性) at all, this is a representation that departs from reality (脱离现实的写法), ergo it distorts reality, with the result that it harms and corrupts modern women.137 441 === [PDF page 456] === What is significant here is not just, or not exactly, the treatment of fictional characters as real people—rather, it is the conflation of normative standards and actual patterns of attitude and behavior, or between the deontic and ontic. The possibility of this conflation is, in fact, constitutive of the realist mode within which these writers operated. We should not dismiss it as misreading. Rather, we should take note of how it involves the unstable but necessary distinction between essential reality and mere actuality. For these readers, the character of Suqin is unrealistic not because no similar persons exist, but because she represents a vestigial type that was being obsolesced. (By implication, Suqin’s presence in a story set in the colonial-era would have been realistic.) The task of the progressive writer was to instead depict “newborn (新生) things,”138 i.e., those emergent types that would soon become ordinary. This view on literature is fundamentally related to what Qian Ying describes, in her study of the socialist attempt to “document tomorrow,” as “the compression of temporal distinctions between the present and the future.”139 At least in part, the realism of such projects has to be judged ex post facto: if the posited future comes true, then it is vindicated. I say posited, rather than predicted, since the work here doesn’t just try to forecast the future, but rather is meant to participate in bringing about that future. If, however, that latent, emergent dimension of reality they posit fails to come true, or even collapses… In that case, the work may appear in retrospect as tragically deluded, or even deceitful. Or as Terry Eagleton puts it: The "subjunctive mood" of "bad" or premature utopianism grabs instantly for a future, projecting itself by an act of will or imagination beyond the compromised political structures of the present. By failing to attend to those forces or fault lines within the present that, developed or prised open in particular ways, might induce that condition to surpass itself into a future, such utopianism is in danger of persuading us to desire uselessly rather than feasibly, and so, like the neurotic, to fall ill of unstaunchable longing.140 There may also persist a nagging doubt, a persistence of faith: what if one had just tried harder? It is in this question that we see also the structural role of voluntarism: where there appears an unnavigable gap between the future that is demanded and the present that is observed, there the enthusiasm of youth must step in. 442 === [PDF page 457] === In the case of “Golden Turtle,” Huang Yurong was not, however, in full agreement with the other critics. He sought here (as elsewhere) to reassert the difference between reality and representation without separating them, and to shift the discussion from the immediacy of the social to the mediations of literary technique. In this case, Huang rejected this reduction of literary to social problems, pointing out that since people such as Suqin did exist in reality, the work could not be criticized for non-realism; however, he faulted the author for shallow characterization. If Suqin's weaknesses and their determinants had been more carefully represented, the work would be able to rise above the ideological level of the characters within it. The debate over "Golden Turtle" suggests how, in the early 1960s, yinhua representations of young women were made to bear enormous sociopolitical weight. Ironically, while the content of the debate involved the critique of feudalism, it took the form of gendered expectations of behavior, though the norm was not chastity or virtue but political consciousness. In fact, we could perhaps interpret this writing in terms of what Rachel Leow has called a “parental” or “generational” gaze.141 To this panopticon we might add the “pedagogical” or “teacher’s gaze.” As discussed in Chapter 2, it was Zamrud Cultural Foundation that achieved the most in this period in terms of establishing a properly literary field for yinhua literature. Within Zamrud, more than anyone else, the thoughtful critic/editor Huang Yurong was responsible for the cultivation of this literary scene. Born in 1933 in Guangzhou, Huang had come to Indonesia in 1950. Due to a surgical accident, he was partially paralyzed. Like many of his peers, he enrolled in Xiamen University's correspondence course in Chinese literature in the late 1950s.142 Like them, he also attributed special significance to the education of young women: watching them attend school from his window, he panegyrized: “your bookbags are full, your hearts are full, your eyes can see farther."143 He became both the chief editor of Zamrud Foundation's publications, and of Sparks (火花), the weekly literary supplement of Zhongcheng Bao (Warta Bhakti; 忠诚报), the renamed Xin Bao.144 He frequently appended literary analysis, always making sure to include praise together with his criticisms, to the stories, poems and essays he published—it would not be an exaggeration to say that he essentially ran a correspondence 443 === [PDF page 458] === school. Some of the poems and stories he appreciated, together with his commentaries, were collected into a Zamrud anthology of Yinhua Literary Criticism (印华文艺评论集). Revisiting this anthology allows us insight not just into the literature of the era, but how literature was imagined and debated. While not all writers of yinhua literature were socialist, the conventions and ideas of the tradition known as socialist realism had achieved dominance in this field by 1960. However, while earlier progressive texts had often imported not just the form but even the content from the PRC, in the late 1950s and early 1960s a concerted effort was made to invest realist writing with local content.145 Following the realist injunction to focus on the “here and now,” this literature often turned to its immediate social environment: the schools. Yet this injunction had to be squared with the political prerogative to write for and of the masses. Huang Yurong lambasted failed attempts to reconcile the realist and the socialist injunctions as having “the appearance of a an Overseas Chinese laborer, and the heart of an Overseas Chinese youth/student.”146 One of the ways to square this circle, however, was to turn to the night schools, which were the site where the two social positions were structurally linked. One of the writers that Huang featured often was "Cui" (lit. green, verdant; 翠), a pen name with feminine connotations, whose real author I know nothing about. Two of her stories were included in his anthology, both involving young women who overcome their doubts to recommit to social service, and both narrated by teachers. "Life is Glittering" is a brief essayistic text, narrated from the perspective of a literacy instructor for a night school—in the midst of a downpour, she is vacillating about whether to leave at all. This remarkable meditation ensues: Whenever it rains, the uneven ground in front of my doorstep becomes a little sea. As kids we would crouch under the eaves and make paper boats, and in a moment paper boats of all shapes and sizes would set sail on this vast little sea. A few could not withstand the water, either flattened by the rain, or catching on a stone; but others could, and they rode the waves and winds forward. We watched those victorious voyagers, leaping and cheering. That raucous laughter still sounds dimly in my ears. Those kids from back then, some returned to the north, others remained in the south. I wonder whether, in the great sea of life, they were able to withstand reality's tests of their willpower? I wallowed in the rain, in the raindrops, as if I could still see the paper boats of all shapes and sizes, forgetting everything else. 444 === [PDF page 459] === Suddenly, some thing pressed against my back, and I turned my head back in surprise, to see my mother standing behind me. Her austere gaze instantly sobered my mind and returned me to reality.147 The text dwells pleasurably on this memory—this is precisely the kind of passage that would have been praised in liberal literature—in order to then take the narrator and the reader for selfindulgence; indeed, for immaturity. Notably, it is the presence of the mother that restores "reality," understood here as the social obligations (which are also the political responsibilities) of the narrator-as-teacher. Hurrying on foot through the rain to the classroom—she can't afford a becak fare—she discovers that "the aunties had already arrived!" As if instructing the reader, the text notes how their promptness and her tardiness "formed a striking contrast." This brief story concludes with her reviewing her adult students' homework, where she finds this sentence: "I approve of my daughter becoming a teacher, because teaching is the work of cultivating talent."148 In an affective pattern that is basic to the socialist literature of exhortation, the feelings of shame and insufficiency that form the crisis of the plot, are transformed by the end of the narrative into an energetic will to improve. The parallelism between her mother and her student establishes maternal moral authority as the basic horizon for the young woman teacher. We also see here, in the reversal of the roles of student and teacher in the text—in which the teacher, while marking homework, instead learns from it—one of the key tropes of yinhua literature. In the longer story "Her New Life (她的新生),” the well-meaning narrator and the problematic protagonist are different. The unnamed narrator describes her friend A Li as a girl who, due to an unspecified mental illness, is in constant conflict with her family, especially with her mother. When she threatens to kill her mother one night, her family beats her unconscious, the police get involved, and eventually A Li comes to the narrator's house for refuge. The narrator sneakily reads her diary and realizes that she has been traumatized by the abandonment of a past lover. With the narrator's encouragement, A Li decides to change her ways and become a teacher—the story concludes with a letter from the now-reformed delinquent, reflecting, I don't want to be like morning glory [a vine, i.e., dependent on others?], I don't want to be crushed by my problems, so I need to be strong, to throw myself into the masses, for the task of education, to offer up my youth...149 445 === [PDF page 460] === In comparison to "Life is Glittering," here the world of the family and the school are not analogized, but opposed. We are a long way away from the literature of the 1950s, which imitated PRC literature closely but failed to observe the realities of life in Indonesia. It is possible to read the narrator of "Her New Life" as unreliable, since she often interprets A Li's actions in a way that minimizes the antagonism between A Li and her family. For example, on reading the letter, the narrator comments, "if her mom knew that she had become good, I'm sure she would be no less happy than me."150 Her "mental illness," for example, manifests primarily as conflict with her family, and one could read this as a sexist trope, although recent work in mad studies has criticized the "madness as metaphor" approach.151 Huang Yurong, while praising the work for broaching neglected subjects like mental illness and trauma, was perhaps attuned to this "unrealistic" aspect of the story, though he instead objected to the suddenness of A Li's rehabilitation: Perhaps the real life A Li didn't ever recover—it's fine to rewrite that, good even, but you have to do it slowly. There has to be a process of inspiration and education.152 “Foreign Friend” As I argued in Chapter 1, it was only in the 1960s that yinhua literature as a whole reoriented to the local via the left. This licensed new approaches to the impasses of yinhua literature, nowhere more clearly than in the “exercises (习作)” of Xu Qiongling.153 Active in the literary supplements from 1957 onwards, when she was still a teenager, her earliest works were melodramatic “social problem” fictions. "Criminals" (罪人), for example, depicts a family crushed by poverty.154 In this story, the protagonist does survival sex work to provide for her family. After her release from prison, after one of the frequent vice raids, one of her children dies, as does her disabled veteran partner. Flashbacks establish her dual oppression by policemen and pimps. One day she hits her remaining child in despair and anger to silence his cries of hunger, killing him. Out of guilt, she commits suicide on the railroad tracks: the mother’s blood would be the child’s baptism […] the black rails were dyed red by a pool of blood. The small stream flowed on, like it did every night past here, witnessing the arc and the finale of this tragedy. Only it knows who the real criminal is…155 446 === [PDF page 461] === As the author remarks in her 2020 postscript, the story was based on her speculations about the lives of the destitute that she saw through the train window on her daily commute to school.156 The train both connects (by place) and separates (by class) the implied author and the imagined subject, and it is hard not to read the narrative device of suicide on the tracks as a cathartic expression of racialized class guilt. Stories such as these were clearly responses to the call to develop a realist literature of interethnic sympathy, yet they are confined to charity and abstraction, observing reality through a window, as it were. Graduating in 1960 from the prestigious Pah Tsung School, she worked for several years in the information department of the Federation of Overseas Chinese Associations (Qiaozong; 侨 总), where she would have fielded inquiries about nationality, repatriation, overseas study, from all sectors of the community.157 "A Foreign Friend," (异国的朋友) published under the pen name Lu Manghan (鲁莽汉), is remarkable for its depiction of an interethnic romance, rare already, between a Chinese woman-Indonesian man couple, rarer still; and for the way it intertwines this subject with problems of translation and literary exchange.158 (Even her pen names toyed with gendered perceptions through her pen names: the masculine Lu Manghan (鲁莽汉, “a crude guy”), and the feminine Xiao Lingzi (小玲子, “little Ling”). The protagonist, Ying, is a university graduate from the town of B, The narrative begins with her departing on a train to a small town where she will work as a teacher, he is seen off by her friend Saleh Udin. Unlike her friends who have "gone home," to China, she has decided to stay in Indonesia to become an "engineer of the human soul." Three years earlier, she had met her new neighbor Saleh, a guitar-playing becak driver, when he moved into the alley where she lives, a place where "races weren't divided, but lived in harmony (不分什么种族，都和睦相 处),” bound by "the simple feelings that exist between working people," (朴素的劳动人民间的 感情).159 On her two-hour train commute to high school, she normally studies Indonesian, with her dictionary as her companion.160 One day she encounters Saleh, and they strike up a conversation about the book they're both reading, "On Contradiction," by Mao Zedong. She tells him about how she enjoys Indonesian literature, which is "very rich, healthy" (很丰富，健 447 === [PDF page 462] === 康),161 and how she's translated several stories of a certain SU who sometimes publishes in Harian Rakyat, stories about independence veterans, the peasantry, the urban poor, progressive intellectuals… Eventually, of course, she discovers it's him. They begin to fall in love, both against their parents' wishes who worry about interracial romance. She rejects his confessions because of her desire to stay loyal to her distant lover, her former history teacher (!) who has moved to Beijing, and he devotes himself instead to the organization (obviously the PKI, or its youth or student wing) he has just joined. One day, however, when she is assaulted by some muggers on the train who intend to rape her, he intervenes and is injured. The conductor asks her their relationship, and she responds without thinking that he is "my lover."162 Despite this admission, however, after he recovers, he insists that they remain platonic friends, so he doesn't hurt her (other) lover. The story ends just before the beginning, as he sends her off on the train, hiding the fact that he has been conscripted into the military. The progression of this romance about class, race and literature, is notched with a series of moments of intense embarrassment that are intermingled with feelings of pleasure and attraction. In their first encounter, when she discovers that Saleh is a sophomore in the Philosophy Department of the prestigious University of Indonesia, she feels ashamed to have assumed he was illiterate: He, a lower-class becak-peddling worker, no, a worker intellectual, what must his spiritual world be like? A youth with this background, who can press forward in the domain of knowledge, while expending such great physical and mental energy day and night, what a resolute will to life and spirit of study he has!163 Through Saleh's actions, statements, or achievements, the (presumably ethnic-Chinese) reader notices and corrects their own colonially-inflected stereotypes about proletarian Indonesians; rather than tutored colonial subjects, they become postcolonial tutors. In these epiphanic moments, Saleh transforms into a mighty teacher and the narrator shrinks into the position of a student or disciple. When she discovers that he is the S.U. that she has been translating, we learn that any becak driver might be an author. Another pedagogical reversal. 448 === [PDF page 463] === The sequence of their first encounter involves a moment of misrecognition, followed by intense embarrassment, and then a kind of admiring wonderment. It recurs throughout the short story. At one point, she hires him to transport her back from the train station in his becak and tries to give him a hundred rupiahs for the fifty-rupiah fare. He rejects her charity, his eyes filled with "rage as if he had been insulted" ("似乎被侮辱的愤怒").164 Later on, he stops to buy a book from a roadside vendor, and when she whispers to him that he can haggle the price down, he instead voluntarily pays the list price even though it's far higher than what the vendor asks. "How can I denigrate (贬低) the value art?"165 These two moments complement each other exactly; in the former, she overpays, while in the latter, she undervalues. In both cases, Saleh emerges as the champion of consistent and standardized value, whether that is the quoted price of the becak ride or the labeled price on the book. The prices that he insists on, however, are not enforced on him externally, but rather maintained through a self-sacrificing and voluntary commitment. Each of these encounters becomes a lesson, and the narrator is situated as the student to Saleh as teacher. Some kind of tenuous equivalence is established at the end, however, when they exchange gifts: he gives her a newly published anthology of his stories, and she gives him some of her translations of his stories and a pen from the Chinese brand Hero (英雄). In a sublimation typical of the socialist-realist plot, individual attraction is transformed into a productive, working collaboration. I think it's interesting, however, that his stories and her translations are not quite equivalent, and that the remainder must be made up with a pen, and specifically, a pen associated with the PRC's "national product" (国货) export drive. It is as if she is both upstream and downstream, before and after, the production of literature, providing both the tools with which to write, and extending the reach of the stories through translation. The irony of the recurrent disavowal of authority, of course, is that we are not reading a story by Saleh Udin, but by Xu Qiongling. And so, we have a complicated situation where narratorial disavowal is a kind of authorial assertion, as if we are hearing "I'm not here," over and over and over. 449 === [PDF page 464] === The inclusion of non-Chinese characters with some degree of interiority, let alone as love interests, was considered a novelty in 1964. Huang Yurong published two short essays on "Foreign Friend." In the first, “A New Figure,” (“新的形象”), he takes issue with the apparent objection of some readers that SU was an "unrealistic, fictional character," (不真实的、虚构的 人物) insisting that even if some of the story was contrived, the character himself does not "depart from reality" (脱离现实).166 He laments the lack of Indonesian characters in yinhua literature and praises the choice to make a progressive youth the protagonist. The next essay, "The Superfluous Third Party" (多余的第三者) takes aim at the handling of the "ambiguous relationship" (暧昧不明的关系) between the narrator and the protagonist, which develops neighbors, to friends, to literary interlocutor, to (almost) lovers.167 Although Xu clearly depicts the two characters' compatibility and mutual affection, in the face of the older generation, she refuses to narratively realize this romance, deferring it through the device of her loyalty to the man in Beijing. By highlighting his "heroic" sacrifice of personal feelings for social cohesion, Xu has made her narrator unlikable, since she maintains her affections to the end. As such, he deems the handling of the romance "failed," and suggests the deletion of this "superfluous third party." This revision would strengthen the overall theme of the story—i.e., the admirable type of the progressive Indonesian youth. Lin Wanli, one of Huang's co-editors at Zamrud, was even more direct: he stated that the presence of this extra love interest was because the author did not have the courage to break the old morality... to not delete the 'he' in "A Foreign Friend," the author must first delete the conservatism and cowardice in her own mind. Come, let's see the author's courage!168 Is this any different than the Skinner survey’s assumption that intermarriage was an index of interethnic harmony? Xu and her critics, read together, suggest how fraught the extension of the regulative ideal of Sino-Indonesian friendship into Sino-Indonesian romance was. The flimsiness or even transparency of the device of the coethnic love interest, as a way to defuse or defer the inter-ethnic romance, is visible from the moment he is first introduced. After one of their more emotionally-charged encounters—his inspiring refusal of the proffered tip for the becak ride—we read: "that night, I could not sleep, and from [Saleh Udin's] bronzed 450 === [PDF page 465] === and healthy silhouette, I thought of someone far away (联想到一个在远方的人)."169 This nearinterchangeability of the love interests is strengthened by the literary use of anaphora, i.e. of an unspecified third person male pronoun, "he" to specify both love interests, sometimes unidiomatically attached to a determinative, as in "a he" (一个他) or "another he" (另一个他). Pragmatists differentiate between “exophoric” and “endophoric” anaphors, i.e. those that refer out of the text and into the text. In this case, the “he” is exophoric. Xu Qiongling hardly needs to characterize “him,” since with just a few markers, she is able to summon the entire topology of the mentor-lover. Saleh, however, because he is a new type, requires extended description. Xu's story casts this interethnic romance as one that is mediated by literature: first by the reading of Mao Zedong, then by the serendipitous discovery that she has been reading and translating his writing all along, and finally by the exchange of writings which replaces a consummation. This relationship is an unequal one, in the sense that Saleh Udin is constantly posited as the teacher. But this authority he acquires through study of China: not only does he impress her with his superior knowledge of Mao Zedong in their first meeting, but he also tells her that he's read the newspapers and believes that "the today of your homeland is my homeland's tomorrow!"170 Not only that, but the narrative mentions offhand that SU and the history teacher actually begin a correspondence! The ultimate lesson that she learns, indeed, is one from his example of study and social engagement. The story opens with her sending off her friends to "return" to China; it ends with her being sent off by Saleh Udin to Indonesia, i.e. to a location outside the Sinophone comfort of Jakarta. Her final destination implies that while she may not have chosen Saleh Udin, she has certainly not chosen the other he either. I think that this resolution is suggestive not exactly of a "reorientation" from China to Indonesia, but rather of the establishment of a direct relation between Chinese and Indonesian unmediated by Beijing. This is, after all, the ultimate romantic fantasy of translation: direct and transparent access to a "source" text, for which the character Saleh Udin, or rather, the printed letters SU, stand. If Saleh Udin had been a person and not a character, then he likely would not have survived the anticommunist coup of 1965 unscathed—the manuscript of Chinese translations of 451 === [PDF page 466] === his writing, if discovered, would probably have been held as evidence against him. The narrator of “A Foreign Friend,” on the other hand, would have evacuated to China if they had the social and/or financial resources to do so. The moment represented by this story would have disappeared. The moment represented by this story did disappear. To read it today is (borrowing the standard horticultural metaphor) to wonder how tall an uprooted sapling might have grown. Even as historians have studied the Chinese experience of the tumultuous 1960s in Indonesia in detail, the explosion of Chinese-language creative writing in this period has escaped their attention. Charles Coppel has described the period from 1960-65 as a fragile but stable "accommodation" between the Indonesian Chinese and Indonesian nationalism, in which the more radical streams of economic nationalism and political antisinicism were restrained.171 We can go a step further: in the brief window between the early 1960s and the collapse of the Sukarnoist order in 1965, there was an explosion in Chinese-language writing, most of it enthusiastically Indonesian in orientation, that was quite unlike anything that had happened before or after. This literature extended the earlier identification of youth with revolution. In a classically romantic fashion, it turned immaturity into a virtue: as the editors of Zamrud put it, yinhua literature might be “childish (幼稚)… but it’s born and raised here.”172 We could even argue that yinhua literature demonstrated the characteristics of what Laurie Langbauer terms a "juvenile tradition"—that is, youth, writing about youth, for other youth.173 Indeed, the absence of writers who could serve as mentors, whether because of return or retirement, was bemoaned often in editorials on the state of yinhua literature.174 Furthermore, the minority language situation tethered this literature to the schools. In this context, the worldwide idealization of youth, with its links to the affect of enthusiasm and the ideology of voluntarism, took on special significance. Here as elsewhere, the figure of youth marked the site of serious social contradictions between present and future, is and ought. This was, in the name of a later anthology, an “Age of Fervor (激情年代).”175 Keith Foulcher has criticized Lekra’s emphasis on evaluating literature in terms of political attitudes, which reflected a “failure to pursue a fully-formulated theory of a radical aesthetics.”176 We could say the same of yinhua 452 === [PDF page 467] === literature, which was even more constrained in its attempt to square the circle of combining PRC literary theory and Indonesian social reality. Yet the absence of a fully-formulated theory does not mean there was not a developed and determinate body of practice. Finding ways to describe this must involve the problem of prolepsis—the emphasis on the incipient, the emergent, the futural that is constitutive of socialist realism and its variants.177 The Last Class To what extent was the depiction of the consolidation of Sino-Indonesian friendship on the basis of a progressive print culture in common, across languages, “realistic”? To answer this, we have to turn to recover the interrupted transformation of Chinese-language secondary and even tertiary education in Indonesia circa 1965. In this conclusion, we will shift our attention to the emergence of a dense network of links between yinhua youth culture proper and the mainstream of Indonesian left-wing culture—part of this story has already been covered in Chapter 1, in relation to the press, yet a similar process unfolded within the schools that has been little-remarked. The instantiation of the spirit of Bandung in Sino-Indonesian friendship was, unlike in the case of Sino-Indian literary exchange studied by Gal Gvili and Adhira Mangalagiri, deeply shaped by the existence of a substantial diasporic minority. The structure of address, in other words, involved at least three terms, and it was the vanishing mediator of the diaspora that interests us most. The most important of these mediators was the organization Baperki, which through the CPM-affiliated intellectuals of the Chiao Hsing group, was able to integrate Chinese youth into the broader Indonesian left. This organization’s intentions are visible in publications such as Guide to Indonesian Correspondence from 1961.178 The small booklet, which would no doubt have been vital for Chinese speakers of all ages grappling with formal Indonesian, was populated with templates for letters in Indonesian with Chinese translation that ran the gamut: holiday wishes, job applications, requests for raises or vacation time, inquiries about price or availability of goods, tax reductions, construction permission… 453 === [PDF page 468] === Comparing the Guide to competitors or predecessors, such as Lie Joek Kuey's Compendium of Yinhua Letters (印华信札大全), you'd notice that the bulk of these templates were quite different. For example, letters about buying and selling did not use copra, rubber, or cloves as their filler commodity, but rather books. One sequence of templates virtually tells a story in themselves. First, a request addressed to Sadar Foundation for twelve (twelve!) copies of the book I was holding. Then, a follow-up letter, impatiently requesting a response and expedited delivery. Finally, a response, if disappointing: unfortunately, the Guide was all sold out. And after that, a letter that the user could adapt to recommend this book to others. This brazen selfpromotion provides a glimpse into the lively print culture of the era, when books were an important and desirable media, and suggests how they circulated in practice. Other templates include a formal invitation to the inauguration of Baperki University, including a speech by Dr. FL Tobing as inaugural President, signed by the chair of Baperki, Siauw Giok Tjhan; and a telegram of birthday wishes to President Sukarno. The networks suggested by these templates were not just commercial or political, however, but also literary: for example, the opening diagrams that explained the format for preparing an envelope was addressed to Rivai Apin, a noted poet from the revolutionary generation who was, significantly, also a leader of Lekra. This actionable fantasy of directly addressing a left-nationalist literary icon invites the Chinese student of Indonesian to attach themselves to the mainstream of the Indonesian imaginary. Indeed, they indicate a remapping of the epistolary imagination that I discussed in Chapter 2 not as a correspondence between representatives of two nation-states, but rather one between an integrated minority and a hospitable majority in a single nation-state. Nota bene: these different models, although in tension, were not antagonistic, and their tension was ameliorated by a shared leftist project. Although Baperki was already well-known for its leftist sympathies, I found this book within the library of a Confucian temple. The location of this find hints at the ways in which Baperki's efforts in the field of translation helped to insert itself into totok community life, while also integrating totok community life into the left-nationalist mainstream of Indonesian society. 454 === [PDF page 469] === Baperki’s publishing may not have been dominant within the Chinese-language media ecology of the pre-1965 era, but it did occupy a specific and strategic location; and in fact was able to move from the margins into the center over time. Its involvement in Chinese-language education was central to its success. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, many of the most talented (and privileged) yinhua students chose to leave Indonesia for tertiary education. Some, like Leo Suryadinata, opted to go to Nantah University, which had rapidly become a regional intellectual center; others, like Xu Qiongling, went to Jinan University in the PRC, which had a long history of educating Southeast Asian returnees. The establishment in 1959 of Baperki University, soon renamed Res Publica University (after a Sukarno speech; abbrev. Ureca) gave high school graduates an accessible and attractive option.179 Recall that Baperki had moved into primary and secondary education in 1957 after the "school separation" decrees. As ethnic-Chinese graduates had limited options for tertiary education, a decision was made to establish a university that could provide them with further training. Ureca was hugely successful: by 1965, there were branches in Medan, Surabaya, and Semarang as well. The majority of the 3000+ students were enrolled in the engineering (including civil, mechanical, and chemical engineering, as well as architecture), reflecting Baperki’s commitment to industrialization.180 These students learnt by doing, in an example of the voluntarist ethic of Guided Democracy: they welded agricultural tools that could be used to plant the grounds with useful crops, they designed plans for the campus expansion and dug its foundations, helped with paving roads in Glodok,181 and experimented with vulcanization techniques to produce rubber tires locally.182 Alongside this technical focus, an Indonesian literature program was also established in Jakarta (and, reportedly, in Medan).183 One alum from this program, N.W., an Indonesia-born PRC citizen (at the time!) from a Chinese-medium school, had dreams of "returning" to teach Indonesian in China to further the two nations’ friendship.184 Of the twenty students in her cohort, all but one were ethnic Chinese. While the Indonesian literature program was small, the faculty recruited to Baperki were some of the brightest stars of the Indonesian literary left, and it 455 === [PDF page 470] === formed a kind of progressive alternative to the prestigious program at the University of Indonesia under liberal critic H.B. Jassin.185 The elder that I interviewed recalls that there was no Chinese literature major, to better encourage assimilation, but this must be an error: the teaching materials that survive list such a major (Figure 38), and indeed one recent anthology of leftist poetry lists a later PKI exile in Albania, M.D. Ani, as a graduate of this program.186 Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Bakri Siregar, the leading leftist writer and literary theorist respectively, taught the Indonesian literature courses.187 Both these instructors had links to the Chinese left. Pramoedya had been transformed by his multiple trips to the PRC in the late 1950s,188 translated several pieces of progressive Chinese literature (presumably via the English),189 and had been famously imprisoned for nearly a year in 1960 for his defense of the historical role of Chinese in Indonesia.190 This last work was structured as a series of warm letters to his interpreter from his 1956 and 1958 trips to Beijing, Chen Xiaru (thinly veiled as “Ch. Hs-y in P.”) and it was likely this deliberately provocative gesture towards interracial intimacy that offended not just the military but also some of his peers.191 This text was significant as one of the first times that Indonesian literature had responded to the epistolary appeal that characterizes so much of yinhua literature in this period (although the response is, tellingly, addressed to Beijing, not Glodok). Unlike Pramoedya, who was explicitly targeted by the embassy for cultivation, Bakri Siregar’s relation to China was more organic. He spent the 1950s in North Sumatra, where he was part of the Medan branch of the Chinese-Indonesian Friendship Association192 and published in the progressive newspaper Kerakjatan edited by Chang Hsi Shek,193 and had recently returned from a multi-year stint teaching in Beijing University.194 In other words, their theoretical interest in the socialist literature of the neighbor to the north corresponded to a social embedding within the Sino-Indonesian network. N.W. remembers Pram assigning his own book, Just Call Me Kartini (Panggil Aku Kartini Saja), and requiring students to write critical reflections on it. The Javanologist Tjan Tjoe Siem taught courses on Islam. Years later N.W. could still recite by heart poetry by Chairil Anwar and Amir Hamzah, and the intense debates about Alisjahbana's Sails Unfurled (Layar 456 === [PDF page 471] === Terkembang), which had been accused of plagiarism. Her senior, B., recalls that Pramoedya insisted on reading broadly, especially from perspectives that you disagreed with. He often brought the class to the Museum of Indonesia—now the National Archives—every week to study crumbling old editions of newspapers like the Sin Po, with which we began this dissertation. This assignment reflected his groundbreaking thesis that the origins of modern Indonesian literature lay not in elite reform efforts or government publishing, but in the “wild reading [bacaan liar]” of the commercial press, in which ethnic Chinese and Indo-European journalists figured prominently.195 Ureca represented an unprecedented site for cultural, political, and social exchange. N.W. was invited to recite poetry to an audience of tens of thousands at the PKI's 45th anniversary celebration rally, but withdrew at the last minute because of her father's remonstrations to focus on study, not politics. (The Batak girl who took her place was arrested a few months later after the tides turned.) Although foreign nationals like N.W. were not permitted to participate in Indonesian politics, and so could not join mass organizations or political parties, many students were recruited into groups like Baperki's youth organization PPI, or the PKI's student wing CGMI, without much regard for their formal citizenship—both organizations correctly believed that socialization would lead to naturalization. (The convergence with the PKI led Siauw Giok Tjhan to worry that Ureca students seemed more interested in the PKI’s struggle for communism over Baperki’s fight for civil rights against ethnic discrimination.196) For students whose Indonesian was not yet fluent, extracurriculars like choral singing and poetry recitation offered fun opportunities to practice. Alums remember these groups warmly since they all emphasized forming small study groups, which provided both community and academic help, as well as political education. What was true in Jakarta was even more true in Medan. Lekra writer Astaman Hasibuan reminisced that many (male) writers hoped to meet girlfriends at the Ureca campus in Medan: "If G30S had not happened, it's very likely that many of us would have married Chinese people."197 The conflation of Baperki and the PKI in North Sumatra in the violence of 1965-66, which Jess 457 === [PDF page 472] === Melvin has identified, must be understood in the context of the enormous local overlap in the two organizations.198 This political convergence is inseparable from the regional branch of Baperki’s successful recruitment of non-Chinese members into its leadership, including into the faculty of the Medan campus of URECA.199 In retrospect, it is not hard to see that a multiethnic progressive elite was in the process of forming in 1965. At this point, we can see how the pedagogical relation which so saturates yinhua literature constellates with the discourse of Sino-Indonesian friendship. This constellation is the arrangement of the Indonesian teacher and the Chinese student, which was staged already within Xu Qiongling’s “A Foreign Friend.” Ureca was the culmination of an alliance between left-wing Indonesian intellectuals and the Chinese language institutions, one that was political, social, and even at times romantic. This process had begun over a decade before, especially in the high schools which began to recruit Indonesian language teachers, in part to comply with Indonesianization regulations. One such teacher was the respected poet Sobron Aidit, the younger half-brother of the PKI General Secretary D.N. Aidit, who moved to Beijing in 1963 to teach Indonesian, which allowed him to survive 1965.200 As with Bakri Siregar, he had been involved in the yinhua world before moving: he taught (Indonesian?) for almost a decade at Bahua School from 1954 to 1963, was a member of the Indonesia-China Friendship Society,201 and worked in the cultural section of Baperki around 1960.202 Sobron was far from the only example of a non-Chinese leftist teacher in a Chinese high school. For example, Xinhua School in Pasar Baru, which had developed a reputation for leftism even in the crowded field of Jakarta, frequently hired graduates from Beijing University. These included two of the sons of the North Sumatra independence fighter Saleh Umar whom he sent to China to study around 1950 with Baren’s assistance.203 On their return in the 1960s, Wu Zhiman 吴志曼 (aka Umar Saleh)—who had at this point married a Sino-Thai returnee, who joined him in Jakarta—taught Chinese history, while Wu Zhida 吴志达 (Indonesian name unknown) taught Chinese language at Xinhua, the most radical of the pro-PRC schools.204 As graduates from Beijing, the brothers would have had a considerably more "standard" Mandarin than most Java- 458 === [PDF page 473] === born Chinese. Similarly, in the Baperki school in Medan, the Mandarin teacher was reportedly Batak,205 and LPKB complained that Sumatran schools were hiring Batak teachers who have forgotten “their duty within the national situation (tugas dalam situasi negeri).206 The phenomenon of ethnically non-Chinese instructors teaching Chinese language to ethnic Chinese students should caution us against assumptions about the relationship between language and ethnicity. The point should not be overstated, though: whatever glimmers of de-ethnicization may have existed at that moment were soon reversed by the suppression of Chinese-language education across the region. The alliance between the Indonesian left and yinhua print culture, mediated through an internationalist vision of youth and the institutions of Baperki, was expressed in print through the publication of a series of bilingual editions with facing-page translation. The translator was the redoubtable Li Xu, who had co-authored Tin Island, and they were published by United Indonesia Foundation, effectively an imprint of Sadar Cultural Foundation. All three of the known books from this series were by leftist authors embedded within this emerging multiethnic leftist nexus: Pramoedya’s The Bastard (Anak Haram; 私生子), Rukiah’s Soldier’s Wife (Istri Prajurit; 军人之妻) and Sobron Aidit’s Basimah (巴西玛). These books were explicitly intended as pedagogical tools, aids in language learning. As we know, both Pramoedya and Sobron Aidit had deep links to the world of yinhua literature and Jakarta’s progressive Chinese community. The same applies to Rukiah. The offices of the Sadar Cultural Foundation were above the home she shared with her husband, the peasant’s movement organizer Sidik Kertapati, and her children.207 She seems to have been friendly with their main literary translator Chen Zhanhu, who thanks her for her help in his seminal translation of Lu Xun’s short stories.208 By the 1960s, she had transferred most of her energy to children’s literature: the children’s journal that she edited, Kutilang (Songbird),was also published by a Baperki-affiliated organization,209 and she translated multiple anthologies of children’s stories, folktales, and legends for Sadar.210 459 === [PDF page 474] === I return to The Bastard in the epilogue, but for now let us discuss the other two texts in the series, with an eye to what it was that made them suitable texts for learning Indonesian. Both novellas represent the revolution from a naïve child’s perspective, and this elementary language was no doubt part of their appeal. “Soldier’s Wife,” selected from Rukiah’s collection Drought (Tandus), winner of the inaugural National Cultural Council award in 1953,211 centers on the development of the protagonist Siti’s political consciousness, through her changing relationship to the two men in her life: first her father, an honest and stubborn peasant whose conflicts with the Japanese occupiers leads to his disappearance, and then her husband, an enthusiastic young teacher who eventually joins the resistance, with her permission. “Basimah,” which also won an award from Harian Rakyat in 1961, begins with the narrator, a young child in Belitung, spying with his friends on the home of the “sex worker” Basimah—only later does he discover that this house is the headquarters of the local anticolonial resistance, and that the groups of men she hosted were conspiring against the Dutch. The centrality of the revolutionary experience to these novellas, and to the larger project of progressive literature in Indonesia, would have been easily legible to readers raised on the literature of socialist China, where the struggles against Japan and the GMD played a similar narrative function. Yet as my synopses should suggest, the attitude towards the revolution is far more ambiguous in these texts, and the conduct of the protagonists far less exemplary, than in the soon-to-be “red classics” from China. These translations by Sadar were part of a reassessment of the independence struggle in the 1960s within yinhua literature. They all dealt with the problem of the second generation of the ones who had experienced the struggle only dimly or indirectly. Official narratives of the independence struggle, which stressed heroism and sacrifice, conformed to few people’s experienced, but this was especially true for ethnic Chinese, many of whom may have remembered it as chaotic and even catastrophic. For the generation of ethnic Chinese that came of age in the 1960s, however, the narration of that earlier moment—remembered by some as catastrophic, and others as exhilarating—was no longer as intractable. 460 === [PDF page 475] === One short story from 1964 that broached the essential question of the Chinese place within the Indonesian revolution was Xu Qiongling’s short story “Reunion (重逢).” Like most stories of mistaken identity, it revolves around the dramatic ironies of recognition.212 It tells of a young mechanic, Jihua 纪华 (lit. “in memory of the Chinese”) who has volunteered for a grueling military training under the strict supervision of a Captain Said, in preparation to join the campaign to crush Malaysia: “when he put on his new military uniform, wow! Jihua felt like he was one of the warriors in the posters.”213 Incidentally, he does not resemble his Chinese father, Dongquan, himself the son of a tin miner, or his Dayak mother, who we are introduced to as she mournfully contemplates an ankle bracelet. A flashback to West Kalimantan during the Japanese occupation—the site of exceptionally brutal mass executions214—gradually reveals the truth of Jihua’s origins: he is actually Ali, the son of his father’s best friend, and was entrusted to his (adoptive) father when his (birth) father joined the antifascist guerillas. When imperial soldiers raid the village, demanding to know where the guerilla’s son is, the loyal Dongquan points to his own son, Huasheng 华生 (lit. “born Chinese”), who is then kidnapped and executed. Everything falls into place: together with Ali’s new name, Jihua, the ankle bracelet from earlier, recovered from a mass grave, is the last trace of Huasheng. If the reader has not already guessed at this point, the guerilla is none other than Captain Said. This convoluted plot, compressed into just over twenty pages, is remarkable both for the deftness with which it threads the needle of resolving competing historical and political demands on yinhua subjectivity; and the blatant way it literalizes these demands. The two children, Ali and Huasheng, are merged into one child, with a historical violence indexed by the inconsolable grief and resentment of the unnamed mother, who then receives the name Jihua. The brotherly love of the fathers is not reproduced in an endless succession of fraternal pairs—as is sometimes the case with the discourse of friendship—but is rather cathected into a single body that will be offered up to the national cause. Thus, the story ends with a kind of family reunion that is also a military exercise, and the captain’s pronouncement that “No, he is not only my son, he is also still your son, and he is also the son of our homeland.”215 In many ways this plot recalls that of Tin Island, 461 === [PDF page 476] === discussed in the previous chapter. Yet if in that screenplay the Indonesian woman Mina is revealed to be Chinese, here the reveal runs the other direction: Jihua is revealed to be Indonesian. What both plots share, however, is a reliance on the device of multiple patriliny, a precarious and extraordinary situation that can only be stabilized with revolutionary enthusiasm. In the mass violence of the coup in October 1965, Ureca’s Jakarta campus was one of the first targets of anticommunist student activists. A Chinese-funded institution staffed by prominent Indonesian communists was too potent of a symbol. By ministerial decree, it was forcibly transferred from Baperki to the military-allied assimilationist organization, LPKB, and given the name it still bears today, Trisakti University.216 Only three students out of several thousand had graduated from URECA. In the second wave of suppression, in March of 1966, Chinese-medium schools were closed, most of them permanently. One teacher in North Sumatra recalls that on the last day of class, he taught the story, “The Last Class (La Dernière Classe; 最 后一课),” by the 19th century French sentimental realist Alphonse Daudet. This story tells of a provincial schoolteacher’s final French lesson in the bilingual region of Alsace on the eve of the Prussian invasion.217 From its first translation by Hu Shi in 1913 until now, it has featured prominently in language textbooks, where it is often interpreted in relation to themes of territorial unity.218 It clearly had a wide circulation in Southeast Asia, too, where the theme of linguistic precarity must have resonated more.219 A few years earlier, a pro-GMD teacher in Medan had done the same when his school was closed.220 A few years later, another in Singapore would repeat the gesture when English was mandated as the language of education.221 The story ends like with the schoolteacher, overcome by emotion, turning instead to the power of writing, in an oblique reference to the textuality of linguistic nationalism: "My friends," he said, "I—I—" ＂我的朋友们啊，＂他说，＂我 But something choked him. He could not finish ——我——＂ his sentence. 但是他哽住了，他说不下去了。 Then he turned to the blackboard, picked up a 他转身朝着黑板，拿起一支粉 piece of chalk, and, pushing with all his strength, 笔，使出全身的力量，写了两个大 wrote as large as he could: 字： 462 === [PDF page 477] === "LONG LIVE FRANCE!" ＂法兰西万岁!＂ Then he stopped, head leaned against the wall, 然后他呆在那儿，头靠着墙壁， and, without speaking, made a gesture with his 话也不说，只向我们做了一个手 hand: 势： “It’s over… You may go.”222 “放学了，你们走吧。＂223 Imagine, now, the schoolteacher in Java or Sumatra, writing out this final passage, reading it, and gesturing to it. This is a mise en abyme, a picture within a picture, as the schoolteacher does not so much quote as reenact “The Last Class,” perhaps even repeating the protagonist’s gesture on the blackboard. Although this story is written from the perspective of the students, it is not hard to see why a Chinese schoolteacher in Southeast Asia would have felt it a fitting conclusion. Indeed, this inversion of student and teacher perspectives is fundamental to the pedagogical structure of yinhua literature. More than the ambiguous political analogy here of the school to a borderland—and here we must be careful, since it surely confirms the fearmongering around Chinese expansion to imagine the school closures as an invasion of sovereign territory—what we are interested in here is the interplay of speech, writing and gesture within the original story. The schoolteacher’s final statement is split into these three modes—“my friends…,” “LONG LIVE FRANCE!,” “It’s over… You may go”— and it is fitting that writing supplements, or rather, replaces speech in this moment. It was, after all, more than anything else the evangelism of the written word that was the vehicle of yinhua culture, cohering it out of scattered communities divided by topolect and island, and connecting it to the Third World Republic of Letters. 463 === [PDF page 478] === Figure 38. Typescript of Pramoedya’s History of Modern Indonesia. This mimeographed text was prepared in 1964 for the English, Indonesian, and Chinese majors in the Faculty of Literature of Ureca, and lays out Pramoedya’s revisionist accoutn of the development of modern Indonesian nationalism, with a focus on the role of the “pre-Indonesian” early press. Source: Photograph by the author. 464 === [PDF page 479] === Figure 39. The cover of the bilingual edition of Soldier’s Wife by Rukiah. With a cover designed by Wen Peor, this was one of a series of facing-page translations of progressive Indonesian novellas published by Sadar and translated by Li Xu in the mid-1960s. 465 === [PDF page 480] === Notes Feng Shicai 冯世才, “Xiao meimei 小妹妹 [Little Sister],” in Huang Yurong ed., Yinhua wenyi pinglunji, vol. 1, p. 50. A collection of Feng’s poems was also published by Zamrud, entitled Bright Days (明朗的日子). Note that “sister” here is not necessarily a term of kinship, but a generic term of address for a girl. The Indonesian police paid close attention to these celebrations, and sometimes forbade public observation of them (“Perayaan 4 Mei,” Head of Security Division to Minister of Home Affairs, The literature on the youth (pemuda) is too vast: see, for example, Anderson’s Java in a Time of Revolution, Cribb’s Gangsters and Revolutionaries, and Lee’s Activist Archives. See Strassler’s Refracted Visions for a thoughtful analysis of the romanticization of student struggle (Chapter 5, esp. 247-249). Quoted in Efimova, “Calcutta Youth Conference,” 460. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution, xiii. In retrospect, it seems that Anderson’s culturalism, which he turned to as an attempt to explain this consciousness, is symptomatic rather than explanatory of the mid-century crisis. Cited in Hawkins, “Job Inflation,” 267. Efimova, “Calcutta Youth Conference,” 464. The conference’s title, “Southeast Asian Youth Conference,” shows that the term had a broader reference then, including what we now call South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Efimova, “Calcutta Youth Conference,” 466. 10 Armstrong, Bury the Corpse of Colonialism, 106; Efimova, “Calcutta Youth Conference,” 449. 11 Harper and Bayley, Forgotten Wars, A People’s Constitution. The authors are referring with this phrase to the multiracial alliance between the All-Malayan Council of Joint Action (PMCJA) and Pusat Tenaga Ra'ayat (PUTERA), whose attempts at constitution-building were sabotaged by the British government as part of an anticommunist strategy. 12 Armstrong, Bury the Corpse of Colonialism, 37. Armstrong is referring to the International Union of Studies (IUS), the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), and the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). 13 Leow, “Age as a Category of Gender Analysis,” esp. 979-984. Leow, a Southeast Asianist, focuses in this article on colonial discourse on the mui tsai 妹仔, lit. "little sister," a Cantonese term for a bonded servant girl. 14 Barlow, In The Event of Women, 82. 466 === [PDF page 481] === The term, “tahun vivere pericoloso” (abbrev. Tavip), comes from Sukarno’s 1964 National 15 Day Speech. Cited in Jin Jin, Lengzhan yu huayu yuxi wenxue, Chapter 3, Section 1. Jin Jin notes that Hong 16 Kong and Taiwanese writers, including anticommunist ones, also wrote similar narratives. 17 Jieshuang, “Yi kuai shibei,” 9. 18 Zhang Taiyong, “Dixia hangxian jiemi,” Section 10. The English titles here are based on the official translations, or sometimes on the title of the film adaptation. 19 Cited in Robin, Socialist Realism, 10. 20 Interview with Lin Shi Fang, 2024-08-30. 21 Liem, “A Bridge to the Outside World,” 170. 22 Liu Hong, “The China Metaphor,” 194. 23 Baren, “Yueliang de youlai,” 86. 24 For example, Oei Boen Tjoan married a former student (Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 194). The age gap of a decade also seems to have colored Baren and Liu Yan’s relationship (they always referred to each other as “Old Wang” and “Little Liu”) but they met as equals while teaching at Nanyang Normal School. Lu Xun’s relationship with Xu Guangping was another example of a romantic relationship that began as a mentorship. 25 The Nora trope has been traced in detail in Chang, Casting off the Shackles of the Family. 26 Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 133-34. Gilmartin is referring to Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, and Wen Yiduo’s representations of student activists in the May 30th uprising of 1925. 27 This phrase comes from a speech by Lu Xun given at Beijing Normal Women’s College. Lu Xun is pointing to the chasm between individual liberation and social transformation: “if just one Nora left home she might not find herself in difficulties; because such a case, being so exceptional, would enlist a good deal of sympathy and certain people would help her out… while if a thousand or ten thousand were to leave, they would arouse disgust” (Cited in Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 101). 28 Barlow, In The Event of Women, 2. 29 Chi Yin, “Diaspora Party,” 707. His knowledge of the event was likely through Zhao Hongpin 赵洪品, who was involved in the North Sumatran cell but not detected; or possibly through Chang Hsi Shek (Mr. Zhang?), although the latter only returned from exile in 1947. 30 Jieshuang, “Hongchun guniang,” 21. 31 A Wu, “Xianjing 陷阱 [Trap],” Zhongxuesheng 2, no. 8, 1949-08, p. 23-25. 32 Heiying, “Nüren 女人 [Woman],” Shidai de gandong, 59-64. 467 === [PDF page 482] === 33 Zheng Guanghuang and Zhang Hao, “Mianlan huaqiao zhongxue,” 331; Zhu Zhihui, “Haiwai shenghuo,” 351-54. 34 Wang Qianyu, Chidaoxian shang, 23. On the shifts in control of the Chinese secondary school in Siantar, see Putuo, “Xianda huaqiao zhongxue.” 35 Zhu Zhihui, “Haiwai shenghuo,” 352-53. Fei Zhendong was the older brother of the noted anthropologist Fei Xiaotong who, incidentally, was married to a Chinese woman from Sumatra. 36 See Chapter 3. 37 Chan Ai-sian, “Liuwang Yinni shisan nian.” 38 See Lin Shi Fang, Xijia Fengyun, on Lin’s experience; it is also translated into Indonesian as Pergolakan Kalimantan Barat. 39 I.e., the Huakang (Chinese Resistance Association), the non-communist partner organization to Baren’s Fanmeng (Anti-Fascist Alliance). Laosong, “Chen Hong zai Yaqi.” 40 Laosong, “Chen Hong zai Yaqi.” 41 Lin Shi Fang, interview with the author, Tangerang, 2024-08-30. 42 "Het Communisme onder de Chinese in Indonesie [Communism Among the Chinese in Indonesia],” 1948, NA 2.10.17 977. 43 "Politiek en economisch verslag in de negara Sumatra Timur [Political and economic report on the state of East Sumatra]," 1949-02-25, NA 2.10.62: 1694. 44 Huang Kunzhang, Yindunixiya huawen jiaoyu fazhan shi, 82, 125. 45 Heidhues, Peranakan Chinese Politics, 20. 46 For the development of the Chinese-medium schooling system, see “Representing the Past” and “Mandarin Lessons” by Siew-Min Sai; and on textbooks, Hoogervorst, “Do you love China?” 47 My calculations based on the table in Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 91-93. If we include the predominantly-WNI Bahua, which followed the official position of recognition of Beijing, among the pro-PRC schools, this proportion rises to five and a half times. 48 Lai Zengchuang, “Wo bi shiyue geming hai da,” 39. Lai claimed that the pro-GMD schools had less than five hundred students. Note that according to Zhou’s figures, the Palembang High School had 2,326 students (Migration in the Time of Revolution, 93). 49 Siauw Tiong Djin, “Perjalanan Politik Siauw Giok Tjhan,” 14-15. Note that the regulation was implemented unevenly; for example, it wasn’t until 1964 that it was strictly applied in Siantar (Jieshuang, “Yige xianda huayi qingnian zhi si 一个先达华裔青年之死 [Death of a Siantar Chinese Youth],” in Jieshuang wenji). 468 === [PDF page 483] === 50 Kwartanada, “The Road to Resinification.” Leo Suryadinata has used the term as well as equivalent to “totokization,” e.g. in The Culture of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia. 51 Sai, “Mandarin Lessons.” 52 Although schools were not limited to ethnic Chinese, they formed the majority. Anecdotally, however, it seems that it was not unheard of in Bangka, North Sumatra and West Kalimantan, areas of concentrated Chinese settlement, for non-Chinese families to send their children to Chinese-medium schools, especially elementary schools. This seems to have been especially acceptable among smaller ethnic groups such as Bataks and Dayaks. 53 Ang Jan Goan, Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 201. Ang was concerned about giving the impression of having wealth to squander, but I think the public exercise of mobilizational power was also at issue. 54 Translation of first issue of Chu Sen, 1953-02-17, in ANRI RA11 1266. 55 Governor of South Sumatra to Attorney General R.A. Soeprapto, 1953-05-23, ANRI RA11 1266. 56 Lai Zengchuang, “Wo bi shiyue geming hai dai,” 33. “To be honest, the teachers there were a bit ‘ultra-left.’ Of course at that time you couldn’t say that.” Lai is an excellent example of the pro-Beijing non-communist left. 57 Qianren, “Wo xihuan 我喜欢 [I Like],” Qianren (zaoqi) shiwen xuan, 26. 58 Xie Zhishan, "Huiyi zai Bangjia de zhengrong suiyue.” 59 Jieshuang, “Yi kuai shibei,” 374. 60 Several of its editors, including Liang Yingming, Cai Renlong, and You Luzhong, were part of the CPC’s underground overseas organization (Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 136). Yang Xinrong 杨新容, principal of Xinhua School and the local CPC leader, was an advisor. 61 This description was provided to me by a former CPM cadre, and would probably have been similar in Jakarta (C.C. Chin, interview with the author, Singapore, 2023-09-11). 62 Qianren, “Heping qianming gongzuo chaqu 和平签名工作插曲 [Peace Petition Work Interlude],” Qianren (zaoqi) shiwenxuan, 207-210. Qianren is the pseudonym of Liang Fengxiang 梁凤祥. This story was originally published in Middle Schooler. 63 Qianren, “Heping qianming gongzuo chaqu 和平签名工作插曲 [Peace Petition Work Interlude],” Qianren (zaoqi) shiwenxuan, 207. 64 Oath by Lie Pek Seng, in NA 2.10.62 5239. Similarly the Federation of Chinese Associations committed to expelling "heroes and opportunists" from its ranks (Daily Review of the Chinese Press, 1947-06-26 in NA 2.10.62: 1882). 65 Jieshuang, “Yi kuai shibei,” 376; Lagu, “Dadi shudian,” 257. 469 === [PDF page 484] === 66 See Rocks, “Beyond the Bounds of Revolution,” especially Chapter 4, on the anarchist educator Liang Piyun, for example. While many of the leaders of the China Democratic League were communists, its membership’s ideology was closer to social democracy. 67 Xie worked in Asahan at the Peishan Elementary School (培善学校) from 1931 to 1932, where she recruited Chang Hsi Shek. The two then moved, together with Lin Zhong 林仲, to Java to to take up a position in Malang Chinese School where they established a second cell in Java (Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 75-83). 68 Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen, 56-63. 69 Xie Huaidan, "Wo dui huaqiao youzhi jiaoyu de yidian yijian," 61. 70 Xie Huaidan, "Xuesheng yingfou you zizhi zuzhi," 61. Such groups would later be considered "communist organizations" by the Indonesian attorney general (ANRI RA8A 401). 71 Lau, Xianggang Dade Xueyuan, 163, 177. Lau also notes that this horizontalist spirit caused trouble for many alumni and faculty during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in the 1950s. 72 All accounts of modern Chinese-Indonesian history that are not peranakan-focused dwell on the battle for the schools at length (as do memoirs). See Taomo Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revoultion, 90-94. For a more comprehensive study in Chinese, see Huang Kunzhang, Yindunixiya huawen jiaoyu fazhan shi. 73 Cao Yuan 曹苑, “Wennuan de ai 温暖的爱 [Warm Love],” Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1959-03- 23, p. 3. 74 There are too many to list. A random sampling from the late 1950s might include Wu Ping 吴 评, “Laike 来客 (Visitor)”, Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-01-21; Quming 趋明, “Yang Xiaoxia 杨 小霞,” Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-03-21; Ping 萍, “Lu 路” (Road) in Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1959-05-05, p. 3. All of these stories focus on the ennobling sacrifices made by urban youth who become rural teachers. 75 Zhou Miaoquan 周淼泉, “Wo de pengyou 我的朋友 [My Friend],” Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-03-13, p. 3. 76 For example, Yucai School (育才学校) was formed from expelled students and teachers from Siantar Chinese School (先达中华学校; abbrev. Xianzhong) in 1948 (Putuo, “Xianda zhonghua xuexiao,” 343), and Medan Chinese School (棉兰中华学校; abbrev. Mianzhong) was formed as an anti-GMD alternative to East Sumatra Chinese School (苏东中学) (Zhu Zhihui, “Haiwai sanshi nian huiyi,” 346-47). In Jakarta, this process had already begun in the 1930s with the establishment of Chinese High School (中华中学; abbrev. Huazhong) as a teacher-led split from Pa Hoa. 77 Shaping, “Qu ba! Gei jingai de ren: song huiguo shenzao de laoshi 去吧！给敬爱的人：送回 国深造的老师 [Go! My beloved and admired: sending off a teacher returning to the homeland for study],” Dengdai, 12-13. 78 Li Feng, “Xian gei laoshimen 先给老师们 [For my Teachers],” Gei wo weixiao, 110. 470 === [PDF page 485] === 79 Li Feng, “Ruci xuesheng 如此学生 [Such Students],” Gei wo weixiao, 169. 80 Zhu Zhihui, “Haiwai sanshi nian de huiyi,” 355. 81 Cai Renlong, Nanwang de suiyue, 94. 82 Cai Renlong, Nanwang de suiyue, 100; Zhou, “Diaspora and Diplomacy,” 136. Cai notes that he decided to exclude the sections about this organization from his published memoir. There was likely a cell in North Sumatra as well, based on the number of CDL cadre from there who went on to sensitive work in the party, notably Lü Huiying 吕慧英 and Wang Qianyu 王谦宇, both of whom were assigned to the International Liaison Department (中联部). 83 Charles Coppel notes of a later generation who emigrated (from Palembang) around 1959 that many were politically ill-informed and ideologically untrained (“The Pied Piper and the Prodigal Children” in Studying Chinese in Indonesia, 342). It is unclear whether this is a regional or historical difference. 84 This episode is mentioned in the autobiographical essay included in Guo Wenhe, Guo Wenhe wenji. 85 “Mianzhong xiaozhang Chen Yanyi wei huajiao jianku fendou de yisheng 棉中校长陈燕贻为 华教艰苦奋斗一生 [Medan Secondary School Principal Chen Yanyi’s Lifetime of Bitter Struggle for Chinese Education]” in Li Zhuohui, Pijing zhanji huajiao xianbei. 86 This office was a reconstituted version of the pre-war Department of East-Asian Affairs. See Yamamoto, Censorship, 82-89 and 211-212, for a description of this institution. One of its most significant tasks was the compilation of a summary of the Chinese press, a function it continued to execute until at least 1959 (Attorney General R.A. Soeprapto to Ministers, 1959-09-05, ANRI RA8A 2506). 87 Zhou, Migration in the Time of Revolution, 100. 88 Debates over these policies, including protests alleging discrimination, and internal efforts to reword them without changing them, are collected in ANRI RA8A: 2067, ANRI: RA8C 1278, and ANRI RB12: 118. 89 For example, Lin Wanli studied in Hebei Beijing Normal College from 1957 to 1964 (interview with the author, Bandung, 2023-11-20). The fact that more and more (non-Chinese) Indonesian students were also studying in the PRC must have also had an effect. 90 A full list is available in Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huawen jiaoyu, 118-121. 91 For example, a West Kalimantan elementary school was in 1953 closed in part because of “writing on the wall from a certain political tendency” (Surat Keputusan gubernur Propinsi Kalimantan [Decree by the Governor of Kalimantan Province], 1953-03-23, in ANRI RA11: 1113). 92 Attorney General R.A. Soeprapto to Supreme Court of Indonesia, 1951-05-16, in ANRI RA11 1779. 471 === [PDF page 486] === 93 Amir Rasad, “Gerakan Bangsa Tionghoa di Sumatera Timur (The Chinese Movement in East Sumatra),” 1951-09-06, in ANRI RA11: 1779. 94 The first policy was rolled out in early 1957 in Nusa Tenggara province (Peraturan Gub Mil NT 5/1957, 1957-06-22 in ANRI RA11: 1113), to the jubilation of the Attorney General and the rest of the Indonesian security apparatus (Attorney General R.A. Soeprapto to Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo, 1957-08-14, in ANRI RA8A: 3292). Jakarta followed suit in late 1957, and in 1958, a national policy was established (“Pengawasan Pengajaran Asing (Surveillance of Foreign Education),” Peperpu 20/1958, in ANRI RA8A: 3292). The leftist Minister of Education protested the hasty and sweeping nature of the policies to no avail (Prijono to Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo, 1958-06-20, in ANRI RA8A: 3292). John Bresnan in his memoir, At Home Abroad, states that the Ministry of Education was split into two specifically to isolate Prijono and prevent his interference with US-Indonesian higher education collaboration. 95 Perpu no. 48/1960. This 1960 law replaced and made permanent the earlier military decrees. See also Sardjono Sigit, Asimilasi Pendidikan, for the text of relevant educational regulations. 96 Wen-qing Ngoei uses the term to emphasize Anglo-American security cooperation, with a focus on British Malaya. Ngoei emphasizes that the “loss” of Indochina was more than offset by the success in establishing anticommunist power from Thailand, to Malaysia, to Indonesia, to the Philippines. 97 On US social science/scientists in the US, see Simpson, Economists with Guns, and Fakih, Authoritarian Modernization, especially Chapter 3. 98 See Harrell, “G. William Skinner,” for an overview of his intellectual career. 99 Cited in Eaksittipong, “Social and Political Lives,” 90. Eaksittapong notes that he was arguing against Thailand’s crackdown on Chinese communal institutions in the late 1940s, which he saw as counterproductive. 100 Donald Willmott, author of National Status of the Chinese in Indonesia, knew Skinner from their imprisonment together in in Chengdu during the Chinese Civil War (some of his field notes have been republished in Skinner, Rural China). Willmott also completed a survey, in Semarang in 1955, which may have inspired Skinner, for The Chinese of Semarang; it is recalled from a school principal’s perspective in Hui, Strangers at Home, 5. 101 G.W. Skinner, Notes from Interview with Yap Li Keng, GWSP Box 2 Folder 27. 102 Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi (1950-2009), 161. 103 Donald Willmott is another possibility, but he was based in Semarang, his tenure was earlier, and his relations were far friendlier with the Chinese community. 104 Kwee Hin Houw to G.W. Skinner, 1957-03-14, GWSP Box 2 Folder 28. Ironically, after his arrest and seven-year imprisonment by the Stasi while living in East Germany, Kwee (later known as Xing-Hu Kuo) would become an anticommunist activist. 105 G.W. Skinner to Donald Willmott, 1957-05-19, GWSP Box 2 Folder 30. 472 === [PDF page 487] === 106 Donald Willmott to G.W. Skinner, 1956-10-01, GWSP Box 2 Folder 30. Skinner’s primary contact, The Jang Lock, also received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study “methods of education of minority groups” in the United States (“The Rockefeller Foundation Annual Report 1956” 248), probably on Skinner’s recommendation. 107 The schools were Pah Tsung, Huazhong, Gaoshang 高商, Zhongshan 中山, Pa Hoa, SMAK, SMAK I (PSKD), SMAK (PSKDII), SMA Nusantara, Canisius, Santa Ursula, SMA IIIB, SMA IV, SMA IIB, SMA JMIK (Skinner, “Preliminary Report,” Introduction). Of these schools, approximately half were Chinese schools. The Catholic schools Canisius and Santa Ursula also had high Chinese enrollment but had Indonesian-language instruction). In processing and interpreting the data, however, Skinner was primarily interested in the responses of students from Chinese-medium schools. One suspects the non-Chinese schools were included as a concession to the Ministry of Education. 108 I am thinking along the lines of Mary Somers Heidhues’ perusal of the field notes of Skinner’s assistant Tan Fay Tjhion in “Bangka in the 1950s.” 109 Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” 229. 110 Skinner, “Communism,” 36. 111 Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” 2. 112 Price, Cold War Anthropology, 39-40. Price gives as an example of the determination to understand and manipulate non-Western psychology a well-funded study entitled "Anthropological Identification of the Determinants of Chinese Behavior,” also at Cornell University, where G.W. Skinner was based (206). Such studies were based on a peverse reading of the Chinese communist practices of “brainwashing.” 113 Utrecht, “American Sociologists on Indonesia,” 39-40. 114 Eaksittipong, “Social and Political Lives,” 90. 115 In “Java’s Chinese Minority” Skinner takes his colleagues Donald Willmott and Lea Williams to task for not treating peranakan and totoks as two entirely distinct societies. See also, Skinner, “The Chinese Minority.” On his influence, see Heidhues, “Studying the Chinese,” 602. 116 Sai, “Representing the Past,” 260. 117 The distinction is expanded on at length in Geertz, Religion of Java. 118 Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” 100. 119 Skinner, “Communism and Chinese Culture,” 94. 120 Calculations based on numbers in “Communism,” 96. Note that the numbers are lower for both than the 80% cited above, since that was based not on the entire totok sample but on the "China-oriented Chinese" sample; presumably, a portion of the totoks were classed for him as "Indonesia-oriented Chinese," and skewed centrist. 473 === [PDF page 488] === 121 No. 2051, in GWSP Box 8 Folder 22. 122 My summaries in the following section are based on examination of approximately twenty randomly-selected responses each from Huazhong School (“Chung Hwa”), Bahua School (“Pa Hoa”), and Bazhong School (“Ba Chung”). I have selected responses mostly from Huazhong School, which had a reputation as a more left-wing school; Bazhong’s reputation in science was strong, while Pa Hoa’s students were mostly WNI. 123 “No. 5001,” in GWSP Box 10 Folder 1. 124 “No. 2084,” in GWSP Box 8 Folder 24. 125 “No. 2077,” in GWSP Box 8 Folder 23. 126 “No. 2158,” in GWSP Box 9 Folder 3. 127 “No. 2073,” in GWSP Box 8 Folder 23. 128 “No. 2086,” in GWSP Box 8 Folder 24. 129 “No. 2085,” in GWSP Box 8 Folder 24. 130 Dongxu 冬旭, “Wujie 误解 [Misunderstanding],” Thay Kong Siang Poo, 1958-03-03, p. 3. 131 Zhang Henyue 张恨月, “Wo dui ‘Wujie’ de yi dian yijian [我对“误解”的一点意见],” 1958- 03-21, p. 3. 132 Robin, Socialist Realism, 148. 133 Woloch, The One vs. The Many, Introduction. 134 See Frow, Character and Person, for a sustained formalist attempt to think the two terms together. 135 Geertz, “Java Jive,” 32-33. 136 Zheng Jinhua, “Jin gui xu 金龟婿 [Golden Turtle].” The term “golden turtle” is a classical allusion referring to a wealthy son-in-law. 137 Huang Yurong, Yinhua wenyi pinglun, vol. 1, 1. 138 This is a term that Laurence Coderre has recently made analytic use of in Newborn Socialist Things. 139 Qian, Revolutionary Becomings, 146. 140 Eagleton, “Irony and Commitment,” 25-26. 141 Leow, “Age as a Category of Gender Analysis,” 982. 474 === [PDF page 489] === 142 Huang Yurong, Lunyishang de zhange, 11-12. 143 Huang Yurong, “Gei huaqiao nüxuesheng,” 5. 144 See Chapter 1. 145 See Chapter 2. 146 Huang Yurong, Yinhua wenyi pinglun, vol. 2, 31. 147 Cui, “Shengming zai shanguang,” 37. 148 Cui, “Shengming zai shanguang,” 38. 149 Cui, “Ta de xinsheng,” 46. 150 Cui, “Ta de xinsheng,” 47. 151 See Sherman, “Beyond the Madwoman in the Attic.” 152 Huang Yurong, Yinhua wenyi pinglunji, vol. 2, 46. 153 This is her own description of these early writings (Fengyun Nanyang wei liao qing, 335). 154 Xu Qiongling, “Zuiren 罪人 [Criminals],” Fengyun Nanyang wei liao qing, 214-219. This story was first published in Berita Ekonomi Yinhua, 1958-01-22. 155 Xu Qiongling, “Zuiren 罪人 [Criminals],” Fengyun Nanyang wei liao qing, 220. The language of baptism is somewhat inappropriate here. It recalls themes of sacrifice common to May 4th literature, which were often framed in Christian language. 156 Xu Qiongling, “Zuiren 罪人 [Criminals],” Fengyun Nanyang wei liao qing, 220. 157 See Appendix A: Biographical Notes for more information on Xu. 158 The version cited here is from Huang Yurong, Selected Yinhua Literary Criticism (印华文艺 评论集), vol. 1. It was originally published in January 1964 in the newspaper Api Revolusi. It is also collected in Xu Qiongling's later anthology, Story Under the Coconut Tree (椰子树下的故 事). It was written in 1959 then revised again in late 1963/early 1964. 159 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 8. This detail is biographical: the author lived in Bogor and commuted to Jakarta for high school 160 (Xu Qiongling, Fengyun Nanyang wei liao qing, 219). 161 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 11. 162 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 20. 163 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 11. 475 === [PDF page 490] === 164 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 12. 165 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 13. 166 Huang Yurong, “Xin de xingxiang 新的形象 [A New Figure]”, Yinhua wenyi pinglun ji, vol. 167 Huang Yurong, “Duoyu de disanzhe 多余的第三者 [Superfluous Third Party]”, Yinhua wenyi pinglun ji, vol. 1, 5. 168 Lin Wanli, Xuebu ji, 33. 169 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 12. 170 Xu Qiongling, “Yiguo de pengyou,” 18-19. 171 Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, 31. 172 "Zhi duzhe 致读者” (To the Reader), Daohuozhe de aiqing, 1. 173 Langbauer, Juvenile Tradition, Introduction. See for example, Yinhua wenxue she, “Yinhua wenxue de daolu”; “Yidian shuoming,” in 174 Huang Yurong, Yinhua wenyi pinglun ji di er ji; “Zatan fanrong yinhua wenyi 杂谈繁荣印华文 艺” (On Helping Yinhua Literature Flourish) in Lin Wanli, Xuebu ji. 175 Jiqing niandai. 176 Foulcher, Social Commitment, 207. 177 Robin, Socialist Realism, 69. 178 The author, Liao Sheng, is probably Liao Rongsheng, a Chiao Hsing affiliate, From Jakarta, not North Sumatra, he studied in the radical Xinhua School, and was also a member of the PKI's youth organization, Pemuda Rakyat. He was responsible for coordinating the cultural supplements of the Zhong Cheng Bao. During the anticommunist reaction in October of 1965, he was one of a small group of (politically active) employees who disappeared, whether because he fled, was captured, or both (Interview with Li Zhuohui). 179 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 242-43. Note that Atma Jaya University, a Catholic institution, and Tarumanagara University (founded by the Sin Ming Hui), also attracted many ethnic Chinese students. Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 245. See Chapter 5 for my discussion of the “Domestic Capital 180 Thesis.” 181 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 246. 182 Interview with alumni at the URECA reunion, 2024-09-22, Sentul. 476 === [PDF page 491] === 183 The alumni I interviewed stated that there was intentionally no Chinese-language program as part of Baperki’s integrationist program. However, other sources describe the leftist writer M.D. Ani (aka Murdiani, aka Siti Aisyah) as a graduate of URECA’s Chinese literature department (Hamid ed., Gelora Api 26, 106). The following information, unless otherwise noted, is based on interviews conducted a 184 URECA alumni reunion on 2024-09-22 in Sentul; and with N.W., Tangerang, 2024-09-14. 185 Leftist authors associated with Lekra generally viewed Jassin as the central figure of a fatally pro-Western, liberal approach to literature and culture, against which they opposed their own socialist, popular vision. Interestingly, Savitra Scherer also identifies a class distinction between the liberal authors associated with the Manikebu (Cultural Manifesto), many of whom had followed the “Western” track of secondary education, and the Lekra authors, most of whom had studied in the “native” schools before the war (From Culture to Politics, 76). 186 Chalik Hamid, Gelora Api ’26, 107. An earlier name is given as Murdiani. Apparently she was sent from Albania to China with a “task (tugas).” She passed away in Hong Kong in 1984. This course would almost certainly have involved Tjan Tjoe Som, the head of sinology at UI. 187 Several of the authors were linked to the Multatuli Literary Academy, an unaccredited cultural program that included Bakri Siregar, Sobron Aidit, Benny Tjung and Pramoedya Ananta Toer among its instructors. This group may have seen the alliance with Baperki as a way to continue their work. The Javanologist Tjan Tjoe Siem also taught in this school (N.W., interview with the author, Tangerang, 2024-09-14). 188 As Liu Hong and Savitra Scherer both note, the impoverished Pramoedya was deeply impressed by the social status and economic comfort of Chinese authors, and far less concerned with the restrictions on freedom of speech that preoccupied his liberal peers like K.H. Ramadhan. 189 These include White-Haired Girl (白毛女) as Dewi Uban, “Diary of a Madman” (狂人日记), as well as essays by Zhou Yang and Ding Ling (Liu Hong, China and the Shaping of Indonesia, 240-41). 190 Pramoedya’s early 1960s articles for the weekly, Bintang Minggu, of the left-wing newspaper Bintang Timur where he edited the cultural column Lentera, were edited into a book entitled The Chinese in Indonesia (Hoa Kiau di Indonesia), which was banned soon after publication. 191 See Mandal “Strangers Who Are Not Foreign,” 45. Most commentators agree that Pramoedya had a romantic interest in Chen Xiaru (e.g. Mandal, “Strangers Who Are Not Foreign,” 40), including Liu Hong who interviewed the latter. The character of Ang San Mei, a love interest of the protagonist Minke in the second volume of the Buru Quartet is sometimes assumed to be based on Chen (China and the Shaping of Indonesia, 253). Note that the first edition of Chinese in Indonesia was dedicated to Chen, but this dedication was removed in subsequent editions. 192 Perkenalan Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Tiongkok, 117. This branch was established before the national organization, as a result of the unique history of North Sumatra. 193 Chang Hsi Shek, “Geming duli xianquzhe,” 354. This is the newspaper that had initially been founded by Baren, Chen Lishui, Zhang Qiongyu in 1945, before closing in 1946; Chang refounded it around 1950, although it closed again in 1954. On Bakri Siregar’s contributions to 477 === [PDF page 492] === the North Sumatran literary scene see Bodden, “The Forgotten Theater of Indonesia's Lekra,” esp. 56-57, and Plomp, “Capital of Pulp Fiction,” 387-88. Hill, “Indonesians in Exile,” 29. Other sources state that he left in 1959 from Medan, so he 194 was presumably in China for four years. 195 On his literary-historical work in the early 1960s, see Scherer, From Culture to Politics, 132- 136. 196 Siauw, Siauw Giok Tjhan, 278. This point is reinforced by Zhang Dayong, who notes that Siauw was concerned about the risks of associating Baperki too closely with the PKI (“Xiao Yucan yu ‘Jiaoxing,’” 146). 197 Dian Purba, “Baperki, Komunitas Tionghoa dan G30S.” 198 Melvin, “Why Not Genocide?” 73. 199 Dian Purba in “Komunitas Tionghoa” mentions that there were Acehnese, Batak, and Indian within the core leadership. Aidit, Gajah di Pelupuk Mata, 269. He taught at the predecessor to Beijing Foreign 200 Languages University (Hill, “Indonesians in Exile,” 29; Xie, “Polyglot Network,” Section 4). 201 Perkenalan Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Tiongkok, 61. 202 Aidit, Gajah di Pelupuk Mata, 29. 203 Saleh Umar has already appeared in Chapter 3 as an associate of Baren’s, a favorite writer of the Sumatra exiles, a planner of the Social Revolution in North Sumatra, and a leader of the PNI’s left wing. His two sons were escorted by Oei Boen Tjoan, mentioned in Chapter 5, out of the country (Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu,” 200). Baren reportedly gave them their Chinese names, and was effectively their godparent (Han Yingping, “Wu Zhiman”). 204 Li Zhuohui, Dajiang haohai, 243-244. 205 The name that Dian Purba gives for this instructor at the Andalas School is Ten Sembiring (“Komunitas Tionghoa”). Apparently, it was not uncommon for Bataks in particular to be fluent in Chinese (Nurni Wahyaduri, interview with the author, Depok, 2024-09-12). 206 Report by K. Sindhunatha, 1965-08-18, ANRI RA37: 1888. 207 Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu Juexing Zhoukan.” 208 Chen Zhanhu, Pilihan Cerpen Lu Sin, Preface. 209 Res Publica Foundation (Yayasan Res Publica). 210 See Appendix C. 478 === [PDF page 493] === 211 This book was also translated, in a separate edition, in the PRC, as Huangdi 荒地. The translator Weng Xihui 翁锡辉 (using the pseudonym Xuefei (雪飞), was the nephew of Jakarta media entrepreneur Ang Hock Liem (Liu Hong, “The China Metaphor,” 188). 212 This story was published in Api Revolusi, 1964-07-09, 1964-07-16. I cite from the version reproduced in Xu Qiongling, Storms in the South Sea. 213 Xu Qiongling, “Chongfeng,” 221. 214 Hui, Stranger at Home, Chapter 2. 215 Xu Qiongling, “Chongfeng,” 234. 216 Similarly, the Surabaya campus was transferred to the LPKB and became Usakti, later renamed Ubaya. It is unclear who took over the Medan branch. 217 Jieshuang, Jieshuang wenji, 32. 218 The eventful translation history of “The Last Class” in Chinese is detailed in Zhang, “”From Fantaisie to Histoire.” Hu Shi’s modified title for it was “Land Cession (割地). On its further dissemination into Tibetan, see Bai, “World Literature and Nationalism.” 219 For example, Lin Wanli analyzed it in 1964 in the yinhua press (Lin Wanli, Xuebu ji, “Tan zuihou yi ke 谈最后一课 [On ‘The Last Class’]”), and Wang Jinding wrote an homage to it in 1938, while in Singapore (Jin Jin, Lengzhan yu huayu yuxi, Chapter 1). 220 Tjukrono, “Wo zai subei baoye duguo de rizi.” 221 Ng, “China’s Rise,” 177. Daudet, “La Dernière Classe,” 9. My translation, from the 1880 edition, reproduced on 222 Wikisource. 223 Daudet, “Zui hou yi ke.” This version is the People’s Education Publishing House translation, available on Wikisource. Note that the latest editions do not include “The Last Class.” 479 === [PDF page 494] === Epilogue In the 1990s, a relaxation of the restrictions on Chinese led to an outpouring of new initiatives, including the formation of the Association of Indonesian-Chinese Writers (印华作 协); due to the apparent end of the Cold War, long-separated parts of the Chinese diaspora were able to meet and exchange with an almost euphoric freedom. The Association gathers once every two weeks in North Jakarta. Formed in the thaw of the early 1990s, its youngest members are in their sixties now, and the meetings are an opportunity to sing karaoke, discuss politics, and share food. The library of this group is eclectic, and while many of the books would not be out of place in any diasporic library, I remember finding, the older books that I gravitated towards had received unusual treatment. They were almost all rewrapped in nondescript brown covers. Many of the books, I realized, were not even publications—they were more like unique objects that had been collaged out of snippets from Hong Kong-based publications, hand-bound to approximate a pictorial or variety magazine. Manual squiggles and abstract cutouts were added for visual On those shelves I also encountered a dusty copy of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's The Bastard (Anak Haram; 私生子), translated by Li Xu, who we already encountered as an author of Tin Island in Chapter 5 (Figure 41 and Figure 42). This book was one of a series of facingpage translations by Li Xu released in the mid-1960s, which I discussed briefly in It had certainly not been read for decades. On the inside cover was a black-and-white photograph of four young Indonesian men standing at attention, perhaps in front of a teacher—probably a film still from the lost 1957 cinematic adaptation of the story, Biola. I realized that the image had been pasted in both to decorate the book and to conceal the publisher’s information. Maybe the name of the publisher, Indonesian Unity Foundation (Yayasan Tunggal Indonesia), affiliated with Baperki, was too dangerous. If so, however, why was Pramoedya's name, and the title of the book, left uncovered? Perhaps these, which were left only in Chinese translation/transliteration, were illegible and hence safe, while the publisher's information, probably included in two scripts, would have been easier to match to a police blacklist? Ironically, this story is about a teen boy 480 === [PDF page 495] === ostracized for his father’s colonial collaboration, from the perspective of the kindly teacher who cultivates his musical talent. It is not hard to see why a book that sympathetically addressed problems of collaboration and prejudice, while also participating in the cult of education, would have been attractive to yinhua readers. With the advantage of distance, a slant rhyme with the story of yinhua literature is also discernible: the illegitimate heir of historical circumstance. 481 === [PDF page 496] === Figure 40. Scrapbooks from the Yinhua Writers Association library. Note the reproduction of the indices of typesetting, such as the hand-drawn lines on the covers, and of magazines in the bottom image, which suggest the attachment to a suppressed print culture. 482 === [PDF page 497] === Figure 41. A “wrapped” edition of The Bastard by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. This copy, in the collection of the Indonesian Chinese Writer’s Association (Yinhua Zuoxie) was published in 1962 by the Baperki-affiliated Indonesian Unity Foundation (Yayasan Tunggal Indonesia). The cover has been “wrapped” and the publisher with y a film still..Source: Photograph by the author. 483 === [PDF page 498] === Figure 42. Original cover of the translation of The Bastard. The original cover design by Wen Peor for Pramoedya Ananta Toer's The Bastard (Anak Haram), republished in 1962 by the Indonesian Unity Foundation (Yayasan Tunggal Indonesia, essentially an imprint of Baperki’s Sadar Cultural Foundation). Source: photograph by the author. 484 === [PDF page 499] === Beyond 1965 The military coup that began in 1965 and was consolidated in 1966, and the massacre of leftists by which it was achieved, was unlike all of the crises that had come before. Writing did not simply stop, of course. For example, the literary supplements of Harian Indonesia—Garden of Youth (青年园地) and the Sunday edition—formed a precarious base for the development of a new generation of writers, of whom the most prominent were like Cecilia (西西里亚)1 and Romeo Zheng (罗密欧·郑), who were permitted to write so long as they stayed away from a long list of themes and words.2 These severe constraints encouraged them to explore topics such as family life and entrepreneurship that had been sidelined in the era of anticolonial fervor. As Ma Feng has noted, it as in this era that several women authors rose to prominence,3 perhaps aided by a blinkered perception of what “counts” as political, one shared both by both their rightwing censors and the leftist authors we are examining. Some writers continued to write in secret, but most retired, even if they would later return to writing. As a rule, any reader examining the few anthologies of yinhua literature that exist will find a gap from 1965 until at least the end of the decade. Where the typical mode of address had been public and enthusiastic, it was now private and reserved. Wang Lie Yao and Yan Min’s characterize the “anxiety of writing” in the New Order and its aftermath like so: on the one hand, [writers] cannot not write, because of the forceful call of their ethnic roots; on the other hand, they cannot speak truthfully, and the signifier and the signified within their narratives produce ruptures and divergences. In reality, the “heterogeneity” [异质性] of this literature resides in the way that, on the one hand, it cannot but accommodate the call of power at all times, while on the other, it seeks to resolutely preserve the fortress of its ethnic culture. It forgets and constructs at the same time.4 With the revival of the 1990s, yinhua literature—and the sinophone community more generally—was no longer divided along the lines of left and right. Even though tensions between supporters of Taipei and Beijing did not disappear, everyone joins the same organizations and reads the same publications. The general sentiment is that the Indonesian state manipulated the “red versus blue” conflict of the Cold War, first suppressing the right, and then turning on the 485 === [PDF page 500] === left, in order to implement anti-Chinese discrimination. In other words, the New Order led to a simultaneous reethnicization and depoliticization (in the narrow sense) which still persists to this day. In literature, this takes the form of a “purposeful distancing, evasion, and indirection in relation to the political.”5 The contrast with the political enthusiasm of the old yinhua literature could not be more stark, and it is this historical background that I have sought to illuminate. The spine of Chinese-Indonesian history becomes a series of experiences of racial violence: 1998, 1965, 1945… all the way back to 1740.6 One of the writers who continued to write in secret was Huang Dongping, who we encountered in Chapter 2 as a paeanist to the PRC flag. In 1964, Huang Dongping had reportedly delivered a manuscript of collected poems for publication to the Overseas Chinese Commission, on the request of the Qiaozong. The double crisis of the Cultural Revolution and 1965 ensured that this publication did not come to fruition.7 He pressed ahead with publishing Sojourner’s Wind (侨风) by writing out the entire two volumes (400 pages!) by hand and then illustrating it with his own woodcuts. It is hard to overstate the pathos of seeing page after page of his spidery accountant’s hand (Error! Reference source not found.). I write “seeing” rather than “reading,” because the very form of Chinese writing, after its proscription, became the bearer of a heavy semantic and affective weight. His preface framed this editorial work as a form of grieving, reflecting the ambivalence, disillusionment, and nostalgia with which survivors of the old yinhua print culture lived in the New Order: When I read those old pieces that conflict with my thoughts at present, chills run down my spine and my hair stands on end, and I’m filled with a combination of gratitude and shame (感愧交集) […] All that I believed with such certainty back then, has turned into illusions (化为幻梦) […] At this point, bringing up past events, reviving those old feelings, feels like a kind of ruthless self-mockery (对自己无情的讽讥)… These volumes, with the passage of time, preserve the “remains (遗骸)” of the experiences and feelings that I and the overseas Chinese of a certain region once had.8 Describing the book as a “tomb” (坟), he noted that he tried to include the dates of publication of each of the poems where possible, “like gravestones (墓碑) inscribed with the year and month of birth and death and so on.”9 486 === [PDF page 501] === While Huang continued to invoke the ideal of Sino-Indonesian friendship, and many of his lesser-known works involve nuanced explorations of interethnic relations,10 his primary commitment now was the preservation of Chinese culture. The paradigm had changed. Contestation over the content and direction of this culture had become unnecessary, since the New Order, in suppressing it, had also defined it. The space for political life withered away, and the reality of ethnicity took its place. The old divisions of right and left fell by the wayside. What was once a project now appeared as simply an identity. After 1965, his writing underwent a shift from praise poetry for the socialist homeland to the novelistic documentation of the endangered world of the “Overseas Chinese community [华侨社会].” The epic trilogy, Sojourner’s Song (侨 歌) that Huang devoted the next two decades to, was initially meant to retrace the history of all the way to the New Order, he never broke the barrier of 1942.11 He justified this choice by pointing both to political risks, as well as the communal wounds that might be reopened by narrating the post-1942 era. In any case, the parallels between the New Order and the colonial era were not hard to spot. These novels were written out with a ballpoint pen pressed eleven layers of carbon paper, one chapter at a time, to minimize the risk of discovery and destruction, a process that is reflected in its episodic nature.12 The multiplicity of characters and plotlines has led one critic to praise its use of “scattered perspective [散点透视].”13 While the trilogy lies outside the scope of this dissertation, two of its features will help to illustrate some of the deeper effects of the language ban. The first and best-known volume, Beyond the Sea of Seven Lands (七洲洋外), hinges on the arrival of a communist teacher from China, whose pedagogy transforms the community by transgressing old social boundaries (e.g., visiting families in their homes, starting a night school for workers, taking field trips to the impoverished countryside) and providing the tools of self-representation (e.g., mimeographed maps of the archipelago, observational writing exercises, space to ask for relationship advice). The climax of the novel arrives when the teacher tells the night school students that their “last class” will take place outside the school: “they will enter the villages [to] see how the locals live.”14 For the students, the dire poverty and cultural complexity of 487 === [PDF page 502] === Indonesian life that they witness on this field trip are revelatory. For us, this narrative device illustrates my argument that the realist impulse which arrived “out of exile” refocused the attention of many Chinese in Indonesia on their immediate surroundings. This was a circuitous epistemological “return,” not to a fantasy homeland, but to the here and now. And yet Huang Dongping’s magnum opus is above all about the there and then. That turn towards a past that has been irreparably severed from the present, which is also a turn inwards towards the community itself, can be imagined as backtracking from, or backlit by the socialist promise of Sino-Indonesian friendship. For all of its contradictions, that promise had represented a genuine opening: towards the future, towards the other. There is nothing to stop us from criticizing what we are recovering: we can question whether the commitment to solidarity narrative obstructed a truer accounting of social reality; whether the faith in the power of friendship as communication was not misplaced or even misused; and whether the fate of the language institutions was not influenced by their own inertia. In any case, these questions belong to the same genre of counterfactuals as the why’s and what if’s that haunt the history of Indonesian communism. Indeed, if there is one lesson here, it is that the fate of Chinese literature, culture, and language in this part of the world cannot be understood and should not be remembered apart from the attempt to liberate Asia from capitalism and colonialism once and for all. 488 === [PDF page 503] === Figure 43. A facsimile of Huang Dongping’s poetry manuscript. The cover and preface of a (photocopied?) version of Huang Dongping’s handwritten Sojourner’s Winds (侨风). Note the use of manual techniques such as linocut printing and ink dying to decorate the cover 489 === [PDF page 504] === Notes See Ma Feng, “Huawen nü zuojia xiaoshuo.” See Zheng Ping, “Yinhua shiren Roumiou Zheng.” This work was provided to me by the author. See Ma Feng, “Malaixiya, xinjiapo, yinni huawen nü zuojia xiaoshuo bijiao yanjiu.” Wang Lieyao and Yan Min, Kunzhe zhi wu, 6. If we remain in the vocabulary of psychopathology, we could say that the old yinhua literature was characterized less by an anxiety than a mania of writing. Wang Lieyao and Yan Min, Kunzhe zhi wu, 6. I.e. the sexual violence of May 1998 (see Purdey, Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia), and the massacres of 1740 at Angke [红溪, lit. “Red River”] in Batavia. This latter event is the basis of Li Qing’s poem from the 1950s, “The Bloody Tides of Red River (红溪的血浪),” and Huang Dongping’s play from 1967, Red River (红溪). Yang Yi, Yinhua wenxue, 125; “Guanyu benshu 关于本书 [About this Book],” in Huang Dongping, Qiaofeng, 1. Huang Dongping, Qiaofeng (shouchao fuyin ben), 2. Huang Dongping, Qiaofeng (shouchao fuyin ben), 4. 10 For example, his Servant Girl Siti (西蒂女佣), which is an exception to yinhua literature’s embarrassed avoidance of the racialization of domestic work. 11 Huang Dongping, Da shikuai di xia de yecao, 183. 12 See Huang Dongping, “Wo yu Qiaoge (我于《侨歌》),” in Da shikuai dixia de yecao. 13 Li Junzhe, Zhanhou haiwai huaqiao huaren shehui bianqian, 297. 14 Huang Dongping, Qi zhou yang wai, 387. The allusion to Alphonse Daudet in the “last class” device is deliberate. 490 === [PDF page 505] === Glossary Key Terms asli (I) Indonesian term for indigenous lit. "original" opposed to asing (I; “foreign”) see also pribumi bangsa (I) nation, race equivalent to minzu (C) cergam (I) illustrated story, comic contraction of "cerita gambar" equivalent to lianhuanhua cersam (I) serialized story contraction of “cerita sambungan” cerpen (I) short story contraction of "cerita pendek" Cina (I/M) Chinese, China sometimes considered pejorative Hakka a people/language from inland Southern China 客家 lit. “guest” PY: Kejia Hokchia people or language of Fuqing, in northern Fujian 福清 more generally, of northern Fujian PY: Fuqing Hokkien people or language of (Southern) Fujian 福建 equivalent to 闽南 (M: minnan, H: ) PY: Fujian Hoklo Alternative term of Cantonese/Hakka origin for Hokkien 福佬 PY: fulao) huaqiao overseas Chinese 华侨 lit. “Chinese sojourner” 491 === [PDF page 506] === H: hoa kiau, etc. implies links to China and possible intent to return huaren person of Chinese descent 华人 lit. “Chinese person” implies naturalization or assimilation huazu Chinese ethnic group (uncommon, Southeast Asia) 华族 emphasizes status of national minority not to be confused with hanzu (M), used in China kongsi company 公司 More generally, a cooperative economic enterprise PY: gongsi In Bangka, head of a mining (archaic) also borrowed into berkongsi, “to share” kroncong genre of music popular in early 20th century with Portuguese roots kuli contract laborer, sometimes laborer in general 苦力 lit. “hard labor,” phonosemantic translation of "coolie," also 估俚 (PY: guli) kulong mining pit (M), likely borrowed 窟窿 lianhuanhua illustrated story; lit. "sequential pictures" 连环画 mandor overseer, as on a plantation (I/M) mountain song folk genre of poetry meant for singing from Southern China, often of pentasyllabic quatrains; associated with Hakka, but not exclusively from shange 山歌 Nanyang geonym, roughly covers area now known as Southeast Asia 南洋 lit. “South Seas” aka lamyang (H) Nasakom formula coined by Sukarno, intended to ensure that all organizations included at least one of the three major “streams” of Indonesian political life; in practice legitimized communists abbreviation of Nasionalisme-Agama-Komunisme (“Nationalist- Religious-Communist”) pantun short Malay poetry genre, typically rhyming quatrains of variable length, characterized by an allusive relation between first and second couplet 492 === [PDF page 507] === parit alluvial mining pit, from Malay 巴力 see also kulong PY: bali pemuda Indonesian term for "youth" peranakan creole; person born and/or raised locally mixed race (archaic) by extension, locally-oriented [Chinese] opposed to "totok" pribumi Indigenous (I) equivalent to bumiputera (M) see also asli ronggeng genre of social dance performed by women popular throughout 云龙 Indonesia in early 20th century; sometimes associated with courtesans sanwen prose genre of varying length, often meditative, reflective, or 散文 memoiristic sinkeh New immigrant (C) 新客 lit. "new guest" PY: xinke overlaps with totok sinograph Chinese characters aka hanzi 汉字 Sino-Malay contested term for variant of Malay language used by ethnic Chinese in 19th-20th century Southeast Asia Soe Po Sia early 20th century reading clubs, often politically radical 书报社 lit. “books and newspapers society” PY: shubaoshe southbound intellectuals from China who traveled to Southeast Asia, generally 南行 staying several years, in the 20th century PY: nanxing equivalent to nanxia 南下 (going [down] to the South) and nanlai 南 来 (coming to the South) suihak courier specializing in travel between Southeast Asia and China 水客 PY: shuike supplement a regular dedicated spread of a newspaper with a set topic (publication) typically translated as fukan 副刊 (C) and rubrik (I) 493 === [PDF page 508] === Tangshan China, used by Southeast Chinese emigrants (archaic) 唐山 lit. “Tang Mountains” taukeh a merchant or rich person, generally Chinese 头家 by extension, honorific for older Chinese men (M/I) PY: toujia) aka towkay Teochew (潮州; PY: people or language of coastal Eastern Guangdong chaozhou) (Chaozhou/Shantou region) Tionghoa (中华; PY: Indonesian term for Chinese, based on Hokkien pronunciation zhonghua) Tiongkok (中国; PY: Indonesian term for China, based on Hokkien pronunciation zhongguo) totok Immigrant; racially non-mixed (archaic) by extension, culturally unassimilated [Chinese] opposed to peranakan overlaps with sinkeh WNI Indonesian citizen (implicitly, of Chinese descent) abbreviation of warganegara Indonesia yinhua (印华) Generally, Chinese-Indonesian; used in this text to indicate a relation to Chinese-language in Indonesia zawen (杂文) a brief, occasional prose genre, often satirical in tone and with a political subject, generally published in newspapers or periodicals C Chinese (in general) D Dutch H Hokkien I Indonesian M Malay PY Pinyin 494 === [PDF page 509] === Organizations Afro-Asian Founded after Afro-Asian Conference Writers of 1955; splits c. 1965 due to Sino- Association Soviet tensions Bacheng Batavia High School In Jakarta 巴城中学 aka Pah Tsung Bahua Patekoan Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan See also THHK School 八帝贯中华会馆学校 aka Pa Hoa Baperki Consultative Body for Indonesian Predominantly Chinese mass Citizenship organization, associated with Siauw Badan Permusyawaratan Giok Tjhan Kewarganegaraan Indonesia 印尼国籍协商会 CDL China Democratic League Political party in China active in the 中国民主同盟 late 1940s in Southeast Asia Liga Demokrasi Tiongkok CGMI “Concentration of the Indonesian Left-wing university students Student Movement” association Consentrasi Gerakan Mahasiswa Indonesia CHTH Chung Hwa Tsung Hui 中华总会 Communal organization in Jakarta “General Association of Chinese” CPC Communist Party of China aka CCP CPM Communist Party of Malaya aka MCP CPP Communist Party of the Philippines 495 === [PDF page 510] === Fanmeng Sumatra People's Anti-Fascist Wartime communist underground Alliance organization in North Sumatra 苏门答腊人民反法西斯联盟 GBTT Chinese Peasant Worker Association Based in North Sumatra, affiliated Gabungan Buruh Tani Tionghoa with CDL 工农联合会 Gerwani “Indonesian Women’s Movement” Left-wing women’s organization Gerakan Wanita Indonesia Founded as Gerakan Wanita Istri Sedar (Gerwis) Good Earth 大地书店 Progressive bookstore in Medan Bookstore Linked to the Fanmeng GMD Nationalist Party of China; Guomindang 国民党, aka KMT Huakang Sumatra Chinese Resistance Wartime underground organization in Association North Sumatra 苏门答腊华侨抗敌协会 Huazhong Chinese High School In Jakarta 中华中学 aka Hwa Chung Inspectorate Inspeksi Pengajaran Asing Indonesian government agency for for Foreign 外侨督学司 supervising foreign (including Education Chinese-medium) schools; part of the Ministry of Education Staff: Thio In Lok, Amongpradja, The Jang Lok International International Liaison Department of Section of the CPC responsible for Liaison the CPC Central Committee relations with fraternal parties Department 中国共产党中央委员会对外联络 部 Kempeitai “Law Soldiers Corps” Notorious military police of Imperial 宪兵队 Japanese Army KENSI National Economic Congress of All Business federation, associated with Indonesia; Kongres Ekonomi “Assaatist” movement Nasional Seluruh Indonesia 496 === [PDF page 511] === LPKB Institute for Building National Unity Predominantly Chinese assimilationist Lembaga Pembinaan Kesatuan organization Bangsa Lekra Institute of People's Culture Leftist cultural organization Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat 人民文化协会 LPIT Indonesia-China Friendship Founded in 1955 (although local Association; Lembaga Persahabatan organizations in Medan and Jakarta Indonesia Tionghoa predated this), with both a national 印中友谊协会 organization and local branches Not to be confused with the China- Indonesia Friendship Association, based in Beijing Masyumi Council of Indonesian Muslim Right-wing political party, banned in Associations Party 1960 by Sukarno Partai Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia Mianhua Medan Chinese High School 棉兰华侨中学 Nantah Nanyang University Chinese-language university in University 南洋大学 Singapore NEFIS Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service Pao An Tui 保安队 Postwar ethnic Chinese militia aka Chinese Security Corps Pembaruan “Renewal” Leftist bookstore and publisher Pemuda "Youth of the People" Youth wing of the PKI Rakyat PKI Communist Party of Indonesia Banned in 1965 Partai Komunis Indonesia PNI Nationalist Party of Indonesia Partai Nasionalis Indonesia PPI Pemuda Permusyawaratan Indonesia Youth wing of Baperki "Consultative Youth Indonesia" 497 === [PDF page 512] === Qiaodang “Overseas Chinese Party” A general term for both formal and 侨党 informal overseas branches of the CPC Qiaozong Confederation of Overseas Chinese Pro-Beijing federation of communal Groups organizations based in Jakarta 中华侨团总会 Sadar Yayasan Kebudayaan Sadar "Awakening" or "Consciousness" Cultural 觉醒文化基金会 Baperki-affiliated publishing house, Foundation founded c. 1959 Sandiwara New China Performance Troupe CDL-affiliated choral and theatrical Sin Chung 新中国剧艺社 ensemble in Medan Kuo Institute Sudong East Sumatra Chinese School In Medan 苏东中学 aka Su Tung Ta Teh 达德学院 University in postwar Hong Kong Institute active that attracted many Southeast Asian Chinese students THHK Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan Early Chinese-Indonesian 中华会馆 organization, focused on education United Yayasan Tunggal Indonesia Publishing house, effectively an Indonesia 统一印尼基金会 imprint of Sadar Foundation Ureca Res Publica University Baperki-affiliated university Universitas Res Publica 共和大学 Urusan “Section for Eastern Politics” Research department attached to the Politik Attorney General’s office, focused on Ketimuran China and Chinese Successor to the colonial-era Kantoor/Department voor Oost- Aziatische Zaken USIS United States Information Service 498 === [PDF page 513] === Xinhua New China High School In Jakarta; not to be confused with 新华中学 Xinhua News Agency Yinhua Artists 印华美协 Jakarta-based association active from Association 1955 to 1965 Yinhua Perhimpunan Penulis Tionghoa Jakarta-based association founded in Writers Indonesia the 1990s Association 印华作家协会 Yinhua Balai Kesusasteraan Indonesia- Medan-based association of the 1950s, Literature Tionghoa responsible for the supplement Yinhua Society 印华文学社 Literature Zamrud Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud "Emerald" or "Jadeite" Cultural 翡翠文化基金会 Jakarta-based publishing house active Foundation in 1960s 499 === [PDF page 514] === Persons Name Sinographs Variants Pseudonyms Other Names A Wu* 阿五 Li Weikang 李 伟康 Abdul Xarim M.S. Abdul Xarim, Abdul Xarim Ang Hock Liem 翁福林 (Weng Fulin) Ang Jan Goan 洪渊源 (Hong Yuanyuan) (A.N.) Nasution Dharmawati Baren*† 巴人 Pa Djen, Barhen, Wang Renshu 王 Ba Ren 任叔, Wong Yen Suk Chan Ai-sian 曾爱善 (Zeng Sister B (B 姐) Aishan) Chang Hsi Shek† 张希石 (Zhang Zhang Biruo 张 Xishi) 碧若, Albert Chang Chen Shaoxin 陈绍新 Lao Bing 老兵 Chen Wenying 陈文营 Tan Boen Djin Chen Xiaru 陈霞如 Chen Hsia-yu Xiaru 夏茹 Chen Yansheng 陈衍生 Tan Jen-sen Tannin, J. Tannin Chen Zhanhu† 陈展湖 Tan To, Shannu 善努, Shangnu 尚努, Shan 善 500 === [PDF page 515] === Co Keng Sing 徐敬诚 (Xu Xu Li 许立 Jingcheng) Cui* 翠? Ding Yunqing 丁韵清 Dong Tianzhi 董添治 Eu Chooi Yip 余柱业 (Yu Zhuye) Fang Dingxun 方定壎 Fang Ting-hsiun Fei Zhendong 费震东 Vee Tsen Tung Go Gien Tjwan 吴银泉 (Wu Go Sek Liu 吴锡柳 (Wu Goh Sek Xiliu) Gouw Hiauw 吴孝义 (Wu Gie Xiaoyi) Heiying*† 黑婴 Hei Ying Tianma 天马, Zhang Youjun Fayang 伐扬 张又君 Hong Sisi 洪丝丝 Hong Yongan 洪 永安 Hong Junsheng 洪骏声 Hong Weizhen 洪维珍 (Ang Ie Tien) Hong Xueli 洪雪立 Hong Zhi 洪植,, Hong Li 洪立, Hong Xueli 洪 雪礼 Hu Yuzhi† 胡俞之 Sabin 沙平 Huang 黄东平 Oei Tong Pin Dongping† Huang Miaoxian 黄妙贤 Huang Yurong† 黄裕容 Huang Yurong Pizai 啤仔, Xiaofeng 小锋, Yu 裕? 501 === [PDF page 516] === Huang Zhen 黄震 Jieshuang 洁霜 Li Jieshuang 李 Sangming (桑 洁霜 明) Khatijah Chadijah, Khatijah Sidek Kho An Kim 许安金 (Xu Anjin) Kwee Hin Houw Xing-hu Kuo Kwee Hing Tjiat 郭恒洁 (Guo Hengjie) Kwee Kek Beng 郭克明 (Guo Garam/Garem Lai Zengchuang 赖增创 Lay Tjin Tjiong Lee Man Fong 李曼峰 (Li Manfeng) Li Fu 李福 Lee Fook Xie Congming 谢聪明 Li Qing*† 犁青 Li Xu*† 李旭 Xu 旭, Lisih? Li Xunan 李旭 南 Li Zhuohui† 李卓辉 Li Jianzhong 李 Bambang 建中 Suryono, Li Wenhui 李文辉 Liang Peiji 梁培基 Yinming 因名 Liang Piyun 梁披云 Liang Pe Yun Leiyu 雷雨 Liang Longguang 梁龙 光, Liang Xueyu 梁雪予 Liao Bimei 廖苾梅 Liao Rongsheng 廖荣盛 Liao Sheng 廖盛 Lin Qiduo 林启铎 Lin Zhong 林仲 502 === [PDF page 517] === Lin Shi Fang 林世芳 (Lin Heping 和平 Shifang) Lin Ting 林霆 Lin Wanli 林万里 Lin Li 林立, Liem Li? Liren*† 立人 Xiao Ming 萧明 Xiao Yaobi 萧药 碧 Liu Yan*† 刘岩 Liu Yen Lui Lit Min, Lui Lei Derong 雷德 Wen Oe 容 Liu Zhuhe 刘朱和 Lu Xun 鲁迅 Lu Sin Zhou Shuren 周 树人 Mah Soo-lay 马树理 (Ma Shuli) Oei Boen Tjoan† 黄文全 (Huang Wenquan) Oei Tjoe Tat 黄自达 (Huang Zida) Oen Tek Hian 温德玄 (Wen Mu You 慕由 Dexuan) Qianren* 千仞 Liang Fengxiang 梁凤翔 Quek Eng Lin 郭应麟 (Guo Kwee Eng Lin Yinglin) Saleh Umar Mohammed Surapati Saleh Umar Shalihong* 沙里洪 Suyi 苏艺 Li Jing 李靖 Shaping*† 莎萍 Chen Xisheng 陈喜生 Shen Huizheng 沈慧争 Shen Weizhen 沈伟真 Shen Zijiu 沈兹九 503 === [PDF page 518] === Siauw Giok 萧玉灿 (Xiao Tjhan Yucan) Sima Wensen 司马文森 Ssuma Wenshen Ye Ge 耶戈 Situ Meisheng 司徒眉生 Szetoe Meisen Situ Zan 司徒赞 Soeto Tjan Song Zhongquan 宋中铨 Sung Chungchuan Sun Xi* 孙希 Han Yuzhen 韩 玉真, Peng Pai 澎湃, Nusantara Lin Junjing 林君 努山塔拉 靖 Suryadinata, Liauw Tjien Tji Guyi 谷衣, Yu Liao Jianyu 廖 Leo† 裕? 建裕 Tan Beng Honn 陈明枫 (Chen Mingfeng) Tan Foe Khiong 陈富强 (Chen Fuqiang) Tan Kah Kee 陈嘉庚 (Chen Jiageng) Teng Soe Hoa 邓泗华 (Deng Sihua) Teo Yong Jim 张荣任 (Zhang Sha 沙? Rongren) Thio Thiam 张添聪 (Zhang Tjong Tiancong) Tjoa Sik Ien 蔡锡恩 (Cai Xi'en) Tjoo Tek Tjong 曹德崇 (Cao Dechong) Tsao Tali 曹达立 (Cao Dali) U Kuo-sen 吴国胜 (Wu Guosheng) 504 === [PDF page 519] === Umar Saleh Wu Zhiman 吴 志曼, Wu Duanren 吴端仁 Wang Jinding 汪金丁 Jinding KT Wang Qianyu 王谦宇 Wen Peor† 温悲鸥 (Wen Beiou) Weng Xihui 翁锡辉 Xuefei 雪飞 Xie Huaidan 谢怀丹 Xie Fang 谢芳, Anna Xu Qiongling† 许琼玲 Lu Manghan 鲁 莽汉, Xiaoling 小玲, Wuyan 午 言 Yan Weizhen 严唯真 Xiunong 秀农, Dongfangmei 东 方梅, Lifu 犁 夫, Fangming Yang Sao 杨骚 Beixi 北溪 Yang Quanchang 杨权唱 Yang Zhaoji 杨兆冀 Jo Tjao-Tjie Yang Zhaonan 杨兆南? Yoza Suryawan Yap Thiam Hien 叶添兴 (Ye Tianxing) Ye Fusheng 叶福生 Yap Hok Sing Ye 叶 (signature) Zhang Chukun 张楚琨 Cheong Choo Kun Zhang Dayong† 张大永 Tai 泰, Tairan 泰 Zhang Taiyong 然 张泰永, Zhang Taiquan 张泰全 Zhang Qicheng 张企程 Minglun 明伦, Zhang Yan 张演, Yanbo 烟波 505 === [PDF page 520] === Zhang Qiongyu 张琼郁 Bahebolun 巴赫 波轮 Zheng Jinhua 郑金华 Jinmeizi 金梅子 Zheng Tufei*† 郑吐飞 Zheng Sishui 郑 泗水, The Sie Swoei Zhou Yingnan 周颖南 Zhu Zhihui 朱志辉 Zou Fangjin 邹访今 Chang Xizhi 常 希之, Rubing 如 冰, Ruziniu 孺 子牛, Xia Feishuang 夏飞 霜 * Pen name † See Biographical Notes 506 === [PDF page 521] === Publications Name Description Associated People Api Revolusi† Chinese-language newspaper Liang Piyun, Zhou Yingnan, 火炬报 Huojubao based in Jakarta; affiliated with Zou Fangjin, Sun Xi, Shen "Torch of Revolution" PNI; notable supplements: Storm Huizheng (风雷), Equator (赤道); active 1964-65. Below the Winds Chinese-language weekly Hu Yuzhi, Shen Zijiu, Li Jinyu 风下 Fengxia magazine based in Singapore, 李今玉, Zhang Qicheng, Chen active 1945-48. Zhongda 陈仲达, Wang Affiliated with Nan Chiau Jit Jinding, Cai Gaogang 蔡高岗 Pau Bintang Timur Left-wing Indonesian Parada Harahap, S. Tahsin, Tom "Eastern Star" newspaper, based in Jakarta; Anwar, Pramoedya Ananta Toer affiliated with Partindo in 1960s; active 1926 to 1965. Notable supplements: Lentera (Latern); Also publishes weekly edition Bintang Minggu Chiao Hsing Weekly Left-wing Chinese-language Siauw Giok Tjhan, Eu Chooi 觉醒周刊 Juexing weekly magazine, published by Yip, Chan Ai-sian, Zhang zhoukan Mingguan Baperki, based in Jakarta active Dayong, Chen Zhanhu, Zhang Chiao Hsing 1953-1960 Qiongyu, Teo Yong Jim, Gouw "Awakening Weekly" Note: basis of the Sadar Cultural Hiauw Gie Foundation Chu Sen Mimeographed student Ma Joeng Fang (马永芳), Yek 巨声? publication from Palembang Lie Siang, Qiu Guangda 丘光 Chinese School (巨中), active 达, Lai Zengchuang early 1950s Chung Hsio Sheng Chinese-language monthly Yang Weican, You Luzhong, 中学生 Zhongxuesheng student publication, later Liang Yingming, Cai Renlong, "Middle Schooler" affiliated with the Qiaozong, Zou Fangjin, Gan Jiasong, based in Jakarta, active from Huang Yuanhuan, Li Qing, A 1947-1958 Wu, Yang Hua Democratic Daily News† Chinese newspaper, affiliated Ye Yidong, Shao Zonghan, 民主日报 Minzhuribao with the CDL at founding and Zhao Hongpin, Chen Wenying, later the Chinese General Tan Beng Honn 507 === [PDF page 522] === Association, based in Medan, active 1945-1960 Harian Gotong Rojong Indonesian-language newspaper, Oei Boen Tjoan 互助合作日报 Huzhu Medan, active 1950s-1965 hezuo ribao "Mutual Aid Daily" Harian Harapan Indonesian newspaper, Medan, Chang Hsi Shek, Tan Foe 希望日报 Xiwang ribao affiliated with Baperki and later Khiong, Chen Zhanhu, AA "Hope Daily" with PKI; c. 1959-1965 Zubir, Abdullah Nasution, Chalik Hamid, Miswar Bey Harian Ibukota Center-left Indonesian Situ Meisen, Oen Tek Hian, Lin 首都日报 Shoudu ribao newspaper, active 1963-65; Qiongyu, Lin Ting "Capital City Daily" notable supplements: Coconut Winds (椰风), Oasis (绿洲), Starfire (星火) Harian Indonesia† Government-approved bilingual Early New Order: W.D. 印度尼西亚日报 newspaper formed from merger Sukisman, Cecilia (西西里亚), “Indonesia Daily” of surviving Chinese-language Romeo Zheng (柔蜜欧 郑) newspapers, based in Jakarta, active 1966-present Harian Rakjat Left-wing Indonesian Njoto, Nurlan, Anwar Dharma, "People's Daily" newspaper, published by the Mula Naibaho PKI, based in Jakarta, active 1951-1965 Note: originally founded by Siauw Giok Tjhan, later transferred to PKI via Njoto Keng Po Major Indonesian-language P.K. Ojong, Injo Beng Goat, 竞报 liberal newspaper; publisher of Khoe Wen Sioe weekly magazine Star Weekly, and competitor to Sin Po; active 1923-58 Khuon Lu Yit Po Left-wing Chinese newspaper, Huang Haifeng 黄海峰 匡卢日报 Kuanglu based in Makassar ribao Kerakjatan Left-wing Indonesian-language 1940s: Baren, Chen Lishui, newspaper based in Medan, Zhang Qiongyu; 1950s: Chang 508 === [PDF page 523] === published by the Democratic Hsi Shek, Agam Wispi, H.R. Daily News; affiliated with the Bandaharo, Djafar Tobing CDL and later the Chinese General Association, active 1945-46, 1951-54 Lee Ming Pao† Left-wing Chinese newspaper Xu Xing 许行, Huang Shihu 黄 黎明报 Liming bao based in Pontianak; notable 诗虎, Zeng Xinghui 曾星辉, "Dawn" supplements: Equator (赤道); Huang Xincong 黄新聪 active 1945-1960 Nan Chiau Jit Pau Left-wing (pro-CPC) Chinese- Tan Kah Kee, Hong Sisi, Hu 南侨日报 Nanqiao language newspaper based in Weifu, Hu Yuzhi, Zhang ribao, South Seas Singapore, affiliated with the Chukun, Eu Chooi Yip, Wu Overseas Chinese Daily Tan Kah Kee group, active Liusi 1946-? Nanyang Siang Pau Chinese newspaper, Singapore, Late 1930s-1942: Zhang 南洋商报 Nanyang affiliated (pre-war) with the Tan Chukun, Hu Yuzhi, Wang shangbao, South Seas Kah Kee group; notable pre-war Jiyuan Commercial Daily supplements: Chaos (洪荒), Lion's Roar (狮风); active 1923- 83 Nanyang Post Multilingual pro-PRC monthly Yang Eng Kuei 杨永奎 南洋 (predominantly Chinese- “South Seas” language) pictorial; associated with the Tjen Goan Printing Company (振源印刷公司) Active 1946-1960, 1964-65 Note: renamed Nanyang Weekly (南洋周报) in 1964, increased in frequency New Woman Chinese-language monthly Shen Zijiu, Li Jinyu 李今玉, 新妇女 Xin funü magazine, based in Singapore, Lin Zhiwen affiliated with Nan Chiau Jit Pau, active 1946-1948 Penuntun Bahasa Chinese-language monthly Yang Zhaoji, Chen Yansheng, Indonesia (initially) focused on Indonesian Zhang Qiongyu, Oen Tek Hian 印度尼西亚语学习 language and history, loosely Yindunixiyayu xuexi linked to the Yurong (Northern "Learning Fujian) association, based in Jakarta, active 1959-c. 1963 509 === [PDF page 524] === Indonesian/Guide to Note: basis of the Zamrud Indonesian Language" Cultural Foundation Red Tide Leftist underground Xie Huaidan, Lin Qiduo, Hong 赤潮 Chichao mimeographed monthly, sixteen Xueli 洪雪礼, Chang Hsi Shek, aka Tjia Tjhao pages, published in East Java; active 1932-33 Sahabat† Chinese-language newspaper Zhang Shizhong 友谊报 Youyi bao based in Surabaya; notable “Friendship” supplements: Coconut Forest (椰 林), Sunflower (向阳花); active 1963-1966 Successor to Thay Kong Siang Poo, renamed Dwikora in 1966 Seabird Chinese student periodical 海燕 Haiyan published out of Xinzhong school in Surabaya, active early 1950s Seng Hwo Pao† Left-wing Chinese newspaper, Wang Jiyuan, Yang Sao, 生活报 Shenghuobao affiliated with the PRC embassy, Heiying, Zheng Manru, Zheng aka The Life based in Jakarta; notable Chuyun, Huang Zhougui, Zou supplements: Yinhua Literary Fangjin, Liang Peiji Arts (印华文艺), New and Green (新绿); active 1947-1960 Seng Hwo Weekly Chinese-language weekly Zheng Chuyun, Li Yixian 李义 生活周报 Shenghuo magazine published by Seng 贤, Yu Wanda 余万达, Zheng zhoubao Hwo Pao, active 1945-1960, Manru Mingguan Seng Hwo 1964-65 Note: entitled "Seng Hwo Pao" from 1945-1947, before a daily newspaper with that name is spun off Soeloeh Merdeka Leftist Indonesian-language Arief Lubis, Jahja Jacoeb (eds.), “Torch of Freedom” newspaper published in Medan Barhen, Chen Lishui and then in Siantar, active in the (contributors) late 1940s Sumatera Bin Po† Major Chinese-language Ye Yidong, Zhu Peiguan, 苏门答腊民报 newspaper, based in Medan, Shalihong, Zheng Yuanxin, Tan "Sumatra People's shifts left in late 1940s; notable Foe Khiong Daily" 510 === [PDF page 525] === supplements: Yinhua Literature (印华文学); active 1920s-1960 Sunday Courier Left-wing Indonesian-language Siauw Giok Tjhan, Annast 星期驿报 Xingqi yibao weekly magazine published by (Achmad Nur Nasution), Tan Baperki, competitor of Star Boen Swan, Tan Sioe Tjhay, Weekly, active 1949-1957 Ananda Shankara, Tan Sing Note: renamed (merged into?) Hwat, Tan Boen Nio Sadar Weekly (Mingguan Sadar) in 1956 Tiongkok Monthly pictorial magazine, "China" Indonesian edition of China Pictorial (in Chinese, 人民画报), published by China Pictorial Press in Beijing; active between at least 1955 and 1967 Tiongkok Rakjat Monthly pictorial magazine, "People's China" Indonesian edition of People's China (人民中国), published by Foreign Languages Press; active between at least 1958 and 1967 Tung Yin Wen Yih Chinese-language monthly Li Gui 李桂, Heiying 东印文艺 Dongyin literary journal, based in Jakarta, wenyi only active 1946 "East Indies Literature" Thay Kong Siang Poo† Left-wing Chinese-language Zhang Shizhong; Wu Jindun 吴 大公商报 newspaper, based in Surabaya; 金盾 “Public and Commercial notable supplements: Sprouts (萌 Newspaper” 芽); active 1920s-1960 Thien Sung Yit Poh† Large Chinese-language See Appendix E 天声日报 anticommunist newspaper, "Heaven's Voice" affiliated with the GMD, based in Jakarta Active 1922-1958 Qianjin Bao/Qianjin Antifascist underground Zhao Hongpin, Ding Yunqing, Weekly publication, later converted into Baren, Wang Jiasheng, Chen 前进报/前进周刊 the CDL journal, based in North Wenying, Zhang Qiongyu "Forward (Weekly)" Sumatra, active 1942-45 (as mimeograph), 1945-1947? (as journal) 511 === [PDF page 526] === Xin Bao† Large Chinese-language Ang Jan Goan, Song 新报 nationalist newspaper, pro-PRC, Zhongquan, Chen Yuxiu 陈毓 aka Sin Po (Chinese published by the Sin Po group; 秀, Chen Hanbing 陈寒冰, Situ Edition) notable supplements: Little Meisheng, Lin Qiongguang, "New Newspaper" Xinbao (小新报), Coconut Oen Tek Hian Winds (椰风); active 1921-1960 Succeeded by Zhongcheng Bao World Literature Literary journal, based in Cao Jinghua 曹靖华; Related 世界文学 Shijie wenxue Beijing; founded as Translations to Indonesian: Chen Xiaru, (译文), renamed in 1959; active Sima Wensen, Weng Xihui, 1953-present Liang Liji Zaman Baru Literary monthly published by AS Dharta, Nurlan, Rivai Apin, “New Age” Lekra Wakidjan, F.L. Risakotta, Agam Wispi, Benni Tjung, Oei Hay Djoen, Wen Peor Zhongcheng Bao† Large left-wing Chinese- A Karim DP, Ang Jan Goan, Li 忠诚报 language nationalist newspaper, Zhuohui, Liao Rongsheng, Aka Warta Bhakti Sukarnoist; notable supplements: Huang Yurong, Yan Weizhen (Chinese edition) Sparks (火花), Coconut Island “Loyalty’ (椰岛) Successor to Xin Bao * Not original nane See Appendix E 512 === [PDF page 527] === Biographical Notes The following notes are not comprehensive and are skewed to emphasizez the subjects’ relation to the history of yinhua literature. Baren 巴人, pen name of Wang Renshu 王任叔 Born in 1901 in Ningbo, Baren was active first as a student activist and then as a teacher in the Zhejiang area. His early writings were primarily poetry and short fiction, and he joined the CPC during the First United Front. In the 1930s, he was active as an editor in Shanghai, and notably co-edited the Collected Works of Lu Xun. In 1941 he left China for Singapore via Hong Kong, and spent the duration of the war and several years after in North Sumatra. In 1950 he returned to Indonesia as the first ambassador. After his recall in 1952, he was transferred to the publishing sector, and was the director of People’s Literature Publishing House until 1960, when he was labeled a rightist and demoted and expelled from the party. He died in 1972 of medical neglect. His collected works were published in 2017, and there is a meaningful body of secondary literature, primarily in Chinese, about his life and work. Sources: Zhou Taomo, Migration in the Time of Revolution; Qian Yingcai, Baren de shengping yu chuangzuo; Zhou Nanjing ed., Baren yu Yindunixiya. Buyung Saleh also Boejoeng Saleh, aka Saleh Iskandar (SI) Poeradisastra Born in Jakarta 1923, Buyung Saleh was adopted by communist parents at a young age and was unable to finish his secondary schooling due to the occupation. He worked as a communist reporter and a labor organizer in estates in West Java in the late 1940s (and according to Stoler, “Working the Revolution,” also traveled to North Sumatra during this period). Around 1950 he transitioned to literature, and is best-remembered as a self-taught literary critic involved 513 === [PDF page 528] === in a number of high-profile debates in the mid-1950s, notably with Soedjatmoko, where he advocated for a literature oriented towards and grounded in the masses. From 1955 onwards, he was a member of the eventually-dominant left wing of the Baperki executive, alongside Go Gien Tjwan and Tan Foe Khiong. He was also closely involved in Lekra and from 1962 to 1964 he taught in Moscow. He was interned for two decades in Buru during the New Order, and in the 1980s after his release he occasionally wrote for Tempo, often at the invitation of Goenawan Mohamad, under the name SI Poeradisastra. Sources: Suparna, “Buyung Saleh;” Siauw Tiong Djin, Siauw Giok Tjhan. Chang Hsi Shek 张希石 (Zhang Xishi), aka Zhang Biruo 张碧若, Zhang Wancheng 张万成, Zhang Jiejun 张杰 君, Albert Chang Chang Hsi Shek was born into a wealthy family in Medan in 1910, and was educated in Meixian, China. He studied literature at Beijing University, where he also co-founded the literary journal New Life Weekly (新生周刊). Around 1927 he returned to Indonesia, in part due to the rightward turn in China, and taught in Binjai, Asahan, and then Malang, occasionally attracting scrutiny due to his promotion of anti-imperialism. Around 1932 he established a communist cell together with Xie Huaidan and several others, which was suppressed in the “Red Tide Affair” of mid-1933 (see Chapter 2). Rather than being deported, he was interned in the penal colony of Boven Digoel as a Dutch subject, and he was transferred to Australia shortly before the invasion with the other internees, where he participated in the establishment of the PKI bulletin Red Front and helped to liaise between Indonesian militants, the Communist Party of Australia, and Chinese dockworkers and sailors. By 1947, he was back in Medan, and in 1951 he refounded the Indonesian-language newspaper Kerakjatan that Baren had edited from 1945-46, where several Lekra authors worked as editors, including Agam Wispi (Hamid ed., Gelora Api ’26, ) and H.R. Bandaharo (),; it closed in 1954. Sometime in the 1960s, as a leader of the local branch of Baperki, he requested assistance in reviving a minor newspaper called Harian Harapan, which 514 === [PDF page 529] === would become. He was very active in Sukarno-era assocations, including in the various “pioneer” (perintis) groups for revoultionary veterans, and seems to have made a living as a coproprietor of an electronics store Toko Wan Jie. He moved to Macao after 1965 and died in 1988. Sources: Chang Hsi Shek, Geming duli xianqu; Xie Huaidan, Suiyue jihen; Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu Juexing Zhoukan.” Chen Zhanhu 陈展湖, aka Hasanudin, Tan To, Shannu 善努, Shangnu 尚努, Shan 善 Born in Siantar in 1934, Chen Zhanhu was a leading translator, and was one of the few people capable of literary translation into Indonesian from Chinese. In addition to a number of lexicographic and grammatical works, he also published a translation of Lu Xun's short stories and Yang Mo’s Song of Youth in the 1960s. He was a member of the Chiao Hsing core staff in the 1950s and in the 1960s he was sent to Medan to assist in the revival of Harian Harapan. He may have had links to the CPM, and may have participated in the esatblishment of an underground network with Zhang Dayong in Riau at this time. He moved to China after 1965, where he edited the Indonesian edition of Mao Zedong's selected works and also worked for Beijing Radio, presumably in the Indonesian department. Sources: Liem, “A Bridge to the Outside World;” Zhang Dayong, “Xiao Yucan yu Juexing Zhoukan;” Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese. Heiying 黑婴, pen name of Zhang Youjun 张又君, Zhang Bingwen 张炳文 Born in 1915 in Medan, he went to school in Meixian and returned to Medan for high school. As a student in Jinan University in the early 1930s he became a minor literary celebrity for his modernist short stories and film criticism—see, for example, his collection Daughter of Empire (帝国的女儿). Around 1935, he returned to Medan where he worked at the New China Times for several years, before eventually moving to Jakarta to edit the Zhao Bao (according to some reports, Chen Bao, but this is probably a mistake) around 1940. He was interned during the 515 === [PDF page 530] === occupation at Cimahi with many other antifascist newspaperists. After the war, he was active in several literary journals in Jakarta, and briefly was editor-in-chief of Seng Hwo Pao, publishing the semi-fictional reportage cycle Under the Red and White Flag (红白旗下) and the short story anthology Moved by the Times (时代的感动). He went to China in 1950 where he seems to have largely retired from fiction, and worked for decades as an editor at Guangming Ribao, also publishing several books of biographical vignettes about authors. Before his death in 1992 he published his only novel, A Woman Floating Overseas (漂流异国德女性). The secondary literature on Heiying is considerable, but focuses almost entirely on his better-documented Shanghai period in the early 1930s. Sources: Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese; Heiying, “Fei Zhendong;” Stenberg, “Under the Red-and-White Flag;” Zhang Songjian, “Hei Ying’s Leftwing Heart”; Tan, “After the Foxtrot Ends;” Lan Sulan ed., Heiying wenxuan. Hu Yuzhi 胡俞之 aka Sabin 沙平 (PY: Shaping) Born in 1896 in Zhejiang, Hu Yuzhi was a a publisher, editor and writer who was key to the establishment of dozens of left-leaning publications throughout China and Southeast Asia as part of the CPC’s united front. An avowed anarchist and Esperantist in his early years, he became a clandestine member of the CPC around 1930. While in Shanghai in the 1930s, he co-founded Life Weekly (生活周刊) with Zou Taofen, released his widely-read Impressions of Moscow [莫斯 科印象记], published the collected works of Lu Xun, and set up the Communist-supporting Hong Kong-based International News Agency (国新社), later amalgamated into Xinhua. In 1940 he was sent to Singapore to on Tan Kah Kee’s invitation and via Zhou Enlai’s mediation to helm the Nanyang Siang Pau (南洋商报). In Singapore he also remarried Shen Zijiu (1898-1989), another communist editor, and together they spent the war in hiding in Sumatra. After 1945 they returned to Singapore where they established (again with Tan Kah Kee’s sponsorship) the New Nanyang Publishing House (新南洋出版社), with magazines such as Below the Winds, New Woman, and the newspaper Nan Chiau Jit Pau. He also published a science fiction children’s 516 === [PDF page 531] === story, Air Boyscout (青年航空兵), From this point onwards he was formally affiliated with the China Democratic League (CDL), whose leadership he served on continuously from the 1950s until the 1980s. He was deported in 1948 from Malaya, and on his return to China he became a high-ranking member of the Central Publishing Directorate and later of the Ministry of Culture. He was especially active in script reform and publishing reform. He died in Beijing in 1989. A six-volume selection of his prolific writing (primarily editorial and current affairs) was published in 1996. Sources: Culp, The Power of Print; Hu Yuzhi, “Nanyang zaji;” Wang Jinding, “He Hu Yuzhi zai Nanyang de shihou.” Huang Dongping 黄东平 aka Oei Tong Pin Huang Dongping was born in 1923 in East Kalimantan, educated in Kinmen, and worked for most of his life in Java as a traditional bookkeeper. He began his creative career as an illustrator and poet in the 1950s, and shifted to (secretly) writing fiction during the New Order. He is best-known for his trilogy about a small Chinese community in late-colonial Indonesia, Sojourner’s Song (侨歌). His collected works were published in 2003. He passed away in Solo in 2014. Sources: Huang Dongping, Da shikuai dixia de yecao; Yuan Ni, “Lao zuojia Huang Dongping.” Huang Yurong a.k.a Pizai 啤仔, Xiao Feng 小峰 Critic and writer, born 1933 in Guangzhou and died 1983 in Jakarta. Huang suffered from spinal problems (脊椎结合) from birth, worsened by an accident during surgery that confined him to his bed. He moved to Indonesia with his family in 1950, and actively submitted to yinhua periodicals. In the early 1960s, Chen Yansheng brought onto Zamrud Cultural Foundation as an editor. Huang's concerned with raising the overall level of writing through is most visible in his two-part anthology of Yinhua Literary Criticism (印华文艺评论集) from 1965. He also edited 517 === [PDF page 532] === the literary supplement Sparks in Zhongcheng Bao. He also received a degree from Xiamen University through a correspondence course. His caretaker and widow was Zhang Lijiao 张丽娇 (pen name Zhu Ying 竹樱). His writings were collected posthumously in Wheelchair Warsong (轮椅上的战歌). Sources: Huang Yurong, Lunyi shang de zhan'ge; Ding Jian, Xinhuo chuan wu jin. Li Xu 李旭, pen name of Li Xunan 李旭南 Li Xu was born to a wealthy family in Solo, and worked for many years as a teacher at the prestigious Chinese High School (Huazhong) of Jakarta. He also taught for a time at the Chinese school in Sungai Liat, Bangka in the early 1950s. He was well-known as a poet, and also frequently contributed literary criticism and reviews of plays, exhibitions, and literature. Huang, who later wrote an often-cited history of the Chinese diaspora in Indonesia, credited Li Xu with his interest in history and admission into Beida. According to him, Li also published a historical study on “Tin Island and Contract Labor” that I have not located. Li Xu moved to China after 1965 and died in the Cultural Revolution. Sources: Huang Kunzhang, “Talented Teacher Li Xunan.” Liren 立人, pen name of Xiao Yaobi 萧瑶璧, aka Xiao Ming (萧明) Liren was born in a low-income family in Central Java, and was active in the 1940s in the Semarang progressive association, “New Friends Society,” (新友社), and later worked as a teacher in schools in Sungai Liat, Bangka and Malang. In the late 1950s he became a reporter and translator for Xinhua’s Jakarta office. He occasionally wrote short stories and literary criticism, but seems to have had a special interest in folklore, compiling an anthology of Indonesian folktales. Liren moved to China after 1965 where he was involved in the translation 518 === [PDF page 533] === of Mao’s writings, and eventually remigrated to Hong Kong. Sources: Liang ed., Xidao shihua, Introduction; Huang Kunzhang, “Mianhuai Xiao Yaobi xiansheng.” Li Qing 犁青, pen name of Xie Congming 谢聪明, born Li Fuyuan 李福源, aka Li Qing, born into a rural remittance-dependent family in Anxi in 1933, and moved in 1948 to Indonesia. As a teenager, he was actively submitting his writing to literary journals, and after graduation became a teacher in Bandung. Best-known for his poetry, he was alongside Huang Dongping the most frequently published yinhua author in the PRC, and the two were anthologized in 1958 in Song on the Equator (赤道线上的歌唱). After the coup in 1965 he stopped writing and later relocated to Hong Kong. In the late 1980s he began to write again, and also was instrumental together with his partner Kasang 卡桑 in rebuilding Southeast Asian Chinese literary networks in the regional boom of the 1990s. A thorough collections of his Writings (犁青文集) was published in 2014, and the first volume is predominantly writings from his Indonesian period, while the sixth volume includes several memoirs on yinhua literature. Sources: Li Qing, Li Qing de shi; Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese. Li Zhuohui 李卓辉, aka Li Wenhui 李文辉, Bambang Suryono Born in Sumatra in 1938, and received a high school education in Singapore. De facto editor in chief of Zhongcheng Bao from 1963-65. After 1998, he was heavily involved in the revival of the Chinese-language press in Indonesia, and has written and edited dozens of books (largely compiled from articles published in newspapers he was affiliated with) since. Sources: Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese, 130. Liu Yan 刘岩, aka Lei Derong 雷德容 519 === [PDF page 534] === Born in Pingyao, Shanxi, in 1913, Liu Yan began her political involvement in the movement for coeducational politics and in her personal resistance to an arranged marriage. She became a communist in the December 9 Movement in Beijing, and was involved in negotiations with Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan during the Xi'an incident, as well as in in Deng Yingchao's New Life Movement. After the New Fourth Army Incident (in which KMT troops attacked CCP troops), she was dispatched to Singapore, where she was assigned to a false marriage, which appears to have become a real partnership, with Ba Ren. From 1942 to 1945 the two moved together throughout Northern Sumatra to evade capture, building an underground network of progressive youth. When Ba Ren was effectively deported from Sumatra in 1947, she accompanied him to Hong Kong. She began to exhibit symptoms of jaundice and was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine while in Hong Kong, and passed away in 1948. In the late 1950s, her body was moved from Hong Kong to Babaoshan Cemetery in Beijing. Sources: Baren, “Hanlei qinbi baogao Liu Yan Xiansheng de shenshi;” Zhang Chaoqun, “Fenzhan zai haiwai de kangri nü yingxiong Lei Derong.” Oei Boen Tjoan 黄文泉 (Huang Wenquan) Oei was born in 1917 in Siantar to a large, middle-class family. His father owned a butcher stall in the market. In the 1930s, he went to China to study, and returned shortly before the war and became a teacher and school administrator in North Sumatra and later Java. In Siantar, he was the leader of a cell of the Fanmeng (Anti-Fascist Alliance) that also included Go Sek Liu, later a peasant organizer, and U Kuo Sen, later a composer; he was reportedly dissuaded from armed resistance by Baren and other senior cadre. He was one of the main couriers and “fixers” in the antifascist network during the war. During the independence struggle, he appears to have been central in building Chinese-Indonesian solidarity in Siantar in his role as a leader in the progressive youth organizations and Chinese association, establishing a Chinese-Indonesian Union (中印联谊会) which toured the province organizing performances, forums and lectures. 520 === [PDF page 535] === His sister Huang Miaoxian was also very active in the movement. When Siantar fell in 1947, he trekked overland with Go and U to Republican territories where they reportedly joined Saleh Umar’s forces (presumably the reorganized Barisan Harimau Liar). He was later reassigned to assist in procuring weapons, and was an advisor to the Central Trading Corporation, first in Bukit Tinggi and then in Singapore. Together with Saleh Umar he was arrested in 1950 and charged with corruption. His activities in the 1950s are less clear, but he did found an Indonesianlanguage newspaper, Harian Gotong Rojong, which reportedly also had a Chinese edition. In 1965 he was in China, and unable to return to Indonesia, he moved to Hong Kong where he passed away in 1977. Sources: Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu yi qinren 椰风蕉雨忆亲人;” Twang, Chinese Business Elite. Saleh Umar aka M. (Mohammed) Saleh Umar, pen name Surapati Saleh Umar, born in 1909 in Pangkalan Brandan, co-founded the local branch of the PNI and Partindo in the 1930s in North Sumatra (then East Sumatra). He was a journalist and prolific writer, and during the Japanese period he was active in the Cultural Section (Bunkaka) although he was later arrested by the occupation. He refounded the local branch of the PNI after 1945 (whose left wing he led), served as Vice Resident of East Sumatra in 1946, and was partially responsible for the Social Revolution of 1946,. He was also a leader of the Barisan Harimau Liar (later reorganized as Brigade A), alongside Jacub Siregar, which grew out of the wartime Talapeta (a peasant youth organization), and was arrested alongside other critics of the Round Table Agreement in 1950, although charges were eventually dropped. He appears to have been personally friendly with Oei Boen Tjoan and, probably through him, with Baren. They facilitated the travel of two of his sons, Umar Saleh and Wu Zhida (吴志达; Indonesian name unknown) to China where they would eventually graduate from Beijing University, before returning to Indonesia in the 1960s to teach at Xinhua School in Jakarta (Huang Wenhe, “Yefeng jiaoyu;” “Xiangqi Wuma'er”). During the 1950s he was active in national parliamentary politics, as well 521 === [PDF page 536] === as in the Indonesia-China Friendship Association (both locally and nationally; see Perkenalan Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Tiongkok), and in 1956 he visited China as part of the Bali Cultural Delegation (Buletin Kedutaan Besar RRT, no. 228, 1956-09-29). Sources: Horton, “History Unhinged;” Reid, Blood of the People; PRIMA, Medan area mengisi proklamasi. Sobron Aidit aka Simon Sobron Born in 1934 in Belitung, died in Paris in 2007, Sobron Aidit is best-known as a writer of stories and poems, many of them collected in 1962 in The March of the Revolution (Derap Revolusi) and in 1955 in Meeting on the Street (Ketemu di Jalan; with SM Ardan and Ajip Rosidi). His eldest brother was D.N. Aidit, the Secretary General of the PKI. A 1960 graduate of the Sinology Institute at University of Indonesia, he was a teacher at Bahua from 1954 to 1963, secretary of the Indonesia-China Friendship Association, and part of the Cultural Section of Baperki. He also worked as a a reporter at Bintang Timur and Harian Rakyat and co-founded the Multatuli Literary Academy. In 1963 he traveled to China to teach Indonesian at the predecessor to Foreign Studies University, and remained there for two decades, later working in Radio Beijing. He later to France, where he opened an Indonesian restaurant and wrote several memoirs. Sources: Aidit, Gajah di Pelupuk Mata. Shaping 莎萍, pen name of Chen Xisheng 陈喜生 Shaping was born in Kinmen, off the coast of Fujian, and immigrated as an infant to Bangka. His father seems to have started out as a typical rural trader, engrossing export crops and selling small manufacture—though, apparently, not as a tin miner—and made a comfortableenough income to be able to send his son to the prestigious Chinese High School of Palembang. From 1958 to 1965, he published poetry frequently in the yinhua press, often focusing on Bangka’s scenery and history in particular. He is one of the few writers who was active both 522 === [PDF page 537] === before 1965 and after the 1990s. Sources: Hanchuan, “Yinhua shiren Shaping de chuangzuo neirong yu yishu tese;” Stenberg, “Finding the Distant Homeland.” Skinner, George William aka G.W. Skinner, Bill Skinner Skinner was born in Oakland in 1925, died in 2008, and trained in Chinese after enlistement at the U.S. Navy Oriental Language School in Colorado. As a doctoral student in anthropology, he began fieldwork in rural Sichuan in 1949, but his notes were confiscated a few months later and he was expelled from China. He then completed a survey of Chinese in Southeast Asia, followed by focused work in Thailand (from 1951-55), published in two related books later in the decade on leadership networks and Sino-Thai history respectively. He continued his research in Indonesia from 1955-58, including through an ambitious survey of Chinese high school students in 1957 (discussed in Chapter 6). His conceptualization of assimilation was heavily influenced by the recent sociology of immigrants in America, and although his research on Indonesia was never published in full, it influenced a generation of scholars in this subfield. He is best-known for his spatial approach to social structure in China, developed in the 1970s, and later in life he shifted to focus on sibling rank and family structure. Sources: Hammel, “George William Skinner;” Eaksittipong, “The Social and Political Lives of G. William Skinner;” Skinner et al, Rural China on the Eve of Revolution. Suryadinata, Leo 廖建裕 (Liao Jianyu), aka Guyi 谷衣 Born in 1941 to a peranakan family in Jakarta, Suryadinata received a Chinese-language education all the way through his graduation from Nantah University in Singapore in 1962, after which he returned to Jakarta, enrolling in the University of Indonesia and participating in the Guided Democracy revival of the yinhua press. From the late 1950s onwards, he was a prolific translator of Indonesian literature, usually using the pen name Guyi, and also published a number 523 === [PDF page 538] === of travelogues. He later continued his studies in Monash University (1969), Ohio University (1970), and American University (1975), where he completed a dissertation on peranakan political history in colonial Indonesia, and has published dozens of books on Chinese-Indonesian studies since then. Sources: Suryadinata, Liao Jianyu wenji; Aimee Dawis, “Leo Suryadinata: Pushihng the Boundaries, Jakarta Post, 2008-10-14. Wen Peor 温悲鸥 (Wen Bei’ou) Wen Peor was born in 1920 in Padang, and studied painting in Guangdong in the mid- 1930s, and became a schoolteacher on his return in Sawah Lunto, before joining the Tati Advertising Agency around 1941. After 1945, he joined the Pelukis Rakjat (“Painters of the People”) group in Yogyakarta, and was personally friendly with Affandi and Hendra Gunawan, who also influenced his style. (In later years, he seems to have served as an informal agent for the Pelukis Rakjat group, helping them to sell to collectors [see Claire Holt Papers, Folder 27].) He taught for several years in Bukit Tinggi, and then in 1955 he co-founded the Yinhua Artists Association and served as one of its leaders alongside Lee Man Fong—although the two later had an acrid split, according to Tsao Tali (interview with the author, 2023-09-23), with Wen accusing Lee of being insufficiently revolutionary—including on a cultural delegation to China in 1956. One of his paintings, My Hometown (我的故乡), was collected by Sukarno in 1957. By 1960 he had developed a very distinctive style of illustration, influenced by woodblock but adapted for zincographic printing, that was both abstractly decorative and muscularly proletarian. He was an active member of Lekra and on the cultural committee of the Qiaozong, as well as the primary designer for the book covers for Sadar Cultural Foundation in the 1960s (and also contributed often to progressive publications like Harian Rakjat and Zaman Baru). After the coup he moved to China, where he remained for several years in an Overseas Chinese Farm before being transferred with the help of Tsao Tali (interview with the author, 2023-09-23) to a more comfortable position at the Guangdong Academy of Art. He died in 2007 in Hong Kong. 524 === [PDF page 539] === Sources: Lu Sipei, “Where is Home?” Isabella, “Navigating and Exchanging Ambivalence;” Xia Ming, Chidao cheng de gushi; Wen Peor, Guxiang yu di er guxiang; Suryadinata, Prominent Indonesian Chinese. Xu Qiongling 许琼玲, aka Xiao Lingzi 小玲子, Lu Manghan 鲁莽汉 Born 1942 in Bogor, Xu was a Bazhong graduate from 1960 who would later study in Jinan University from 1964. She worked for several decades as a reporter at Beijing Sports Daily. Before leaving Indonesia, she worked in the Qiaozong in the Information Group (咨询组), which focused on providing legal support to community members. Some of her writing is anthologized in South Seas Storms and Unresolved Feelings (风雨南洋未了情) and Story Under the Coconut Tree (椰子树下的故事). Her student writings suggest a strong interest in social issues, and the short stories around 1963-64, such as “Foreign Friend,” discussed in Chapter 6, are remarkable for their inventive plotting. In recent decades she has written several novels about Southeast Asian Chinese returnees. Sources: Zhuohui ed., Baorong kuanda fengyu tongzhou, “Xu Qiongling 许琼玲;” Xia Ming, Shenqing huanian Shankouyang, Section on memories of the Qiaozong. Zhang Dayong 张大永, aka Zhang Taiquan 张泰泉, Tairan 泰然, Tai 泰 Zhang was born in 1934 in Siantar to a large family that owned several stores. In the 1940s he was sent to Malaya (first Ipoh then Singapore) to study, where he joined the CPM. In 1953, with the help of his mother, a suihak (courier), he developed a network that safely transported several dozen cadre (some of whom were also born in Sumatra) out of Singapore and to Jakarta with new identities. They became the core staff of the Baperki Chinese-language magazine Chiao Hsing Weekly, founded by Eu Chooi Yip and Chan Ai-sian but later managed by Zhang, and later of the Sadar Cultural Foundation. (The clandestine activities of the Indonesia- 525 === [PDF page 540] === based CPM continued in both Riau and West Borneo but are not well-understood; they culminated in the establishment of a Jakarta branch of the Beijing-based Malayan National Liberation League in 1965.) After the coup, he relocated with other cadre to the Riau Islands for several years, and left Indonesia in 1970, apparently to Hong Kong. In the 1990s after the Hat Yai Peace Agreement, he wrote several memoirs, several of which he later published on the Maoist forum Utopia (乌有之乡). Sources: Zhang Dayong, “Dixia hangxian jiemi;” “Ji Juexing Zhoukan zhuyao fuzeren Zhang Taiquan 记《觉醒周刊》主要负责人张泰泉 [Remembering Zhang Taiquan of Chiao Hsing Weekly],” siantarpeople.org, 2019-01-07. Zhang Qicheng 张企程, aka Minglun 明伦, Yanbo 烟波, (probably) Zhang Yan 张演 Zhang was born in 1913 in Zhejiang, China, and became a prominent Esperantist in the 1930s. He was one of the CCP cadre who moved to Southeast Asia in the 1940s, where he spent the war underground with Hu Yuzhi. After leaving Indonesia for Hong Kong in the late 1940s, he appears to have continued the work of the "Indonesian Problems Study Society," propagandizing for Indonesian independence, including in the pamphlet "Indonesia Merdeka" (自由印尼), and may have continued to be active in the early 1950s South Seas Research Society (南洋研究会). He worked during this period in the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration (中国 外文出版发行事业局), primarily in translation. In 1956 he published a translation of Indonesian pantuns, Selected Indonesian Folksongs (印度尼西亚民歌选择). I propose that Zhang Yan 张演, who led the collection of Indonesian-language research materials from Hong Kong and then Beijing in the late 1940s (J.E. Bondam, “Sheng Huo Pao groep [Sheng Huo Pao group],” in NA 2.21.205.72: 43), and later translated a number of plays by Utuy Tatang Sontani, is a pseudonym of Zhang Qicheng. Sources: Wang Hanping, ʺYongyuan zai shijieyu yundong de qianlie.” Zheng Tufei 郑吐飞, pen name of Zheng Sishui 郑泗水 (also Cheng Si Swie, The Soe Swie) 526 === [PDF page 541] === Little is known about Zheng Tufei outside of his publication of a striking anthology of short stories, Coconuts (椰子集), in 1929. He is generally assumed to be from Surabaya because of his name (Sishui is the Chinese name of the city), but someone with his name is recorded in an article about a welcome reception for the Chinese consul in the Padang newspaper Sinar Sumatra (1927-11-09), and given that his stories are all set in Sumatra and his later life, he almost certainly grew up in Padang. As a student at Jinan University in the late 1920s, he was a member of the collective behind the journal Qiuye (秋野). In 1929, he moved to Singapore where he wrote for a number of literary supplements. By the 1930s, he seems to have retired from literature. During the war, he is attested as a businessman in Padang, and seems to have supported the antifascist refugees—Yu Dafu dedicated a quatrain to him (Zhan Yayuan ed., Yu Dafu shici jianzhu, 561), Ang Jan Goan mentions a pig farm owned by a patriotic capitalist in Padang named Zheng (Hong Yuanyuan zizhuan, 170) and Shen Zijiu’s memoir similarly alludes to his support (Liuwang zai chidaoxian shang, 22). During the independence struggle he also appears to have been involved in the evacuation of Chinese from Padang (Democratic Daily News, 1946-06-18, cited in ANRI 2.10.62: 1881, “Daily Review of the Chinese Press,” 1946-06- 25). He was later active in textiles and palm oil, and appears to have had strong links with Hong Kong and Singapore, including in the founding of South Grand Textile (Chua, Alvin, “Cheng Tsang Man,” Singapore Infopedia, nlb.gov.sg/). Sources: Balan, “Zheng Tufei and "The Coconuts;” Salmon, “Blood under the coconut trees.” 527 === [PDF page 542] === Works Cited Archives Nationaal Archief, The Hague, Netherlands (NA) Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia (ANRI) G. William Skinner Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, USA (GWSP) International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam (IISG) Newspapers and Periodicals Api Revolusi (火炬日报) Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad Berita Ekonomi Yinhua (印华经济) Below the Winds (风下) Bintang Timur Chiao Hsing Weekly (觉醒周刊) Chung Hsio Sheng (中学生) Democratic Daily News (民主日报) Tong Yin Wen Yih (东印文艺) Harian Rakjat Khuon Lu Yit Po (匡卢日报) Kerakjatan Lee Ming Pao (黎明报) Nan Chiao Jit Pau (南侨日报) Nanyang Siang Pau (南洋商报) New Woman (新妇女) Penuntun Bahasa Indonesia (印度尼西亚语学习) Sahabat (友谊报) Seabird (海燕) Seng Hwo Pao (生活报/The Life) Seng Hwo Weekly (生活周报/Mingguan Seng Hwo) Soeloeh Merdeka Soerabaijasch Handelsblad Sunday Courier (later Sadar Weekly) Sumatera Bin Po (苏门答腊民报) Thay Kong Siang Poo Xin Bao (新报/Sin Po [Chinese Edition]) Zhongcheng Bao (忠诚报/Warta Bhakti [Chinese Edition]) Published Sources Adam, Ahmat. The Vernacular Press and the Emergence of Modern Indonesian Consciousness (1855-1913). SEAP Publications, 1995. Adelaar, Alexander, and Antoinette Schapper, editors. The Oxford Guide to the Malayo- Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia. Oxford University Press, 2024. Admussen, Nick. “Trading Metaphors: Chinese Prose Poetry and the Reperiodization of the Twentieth Century.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 22, no. 2, 2010, pp. 88–129. Aguilar, Filomeno V. “Citizenship, Inheritance, and the Indigenizing of" Orang Chinese" in 528 === [PDF page 543] === Indonesia.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 9, no. 3, 2001, pp. 501–33. ———. “The Triumph of Instrumental Citizenship? Migrations, Identities, and the Nation‐state in Southeast Asia.” Asian Studies Review, vol. 23, no. 3, Sep. 1999, pp. 307–36. Ahmad, Mahvish, Koni Benson and Hana Morgenstern. “Revolutionary Papers: The Counterinstitutions, Counterpolitics, and Countercultures of Anticolonial Periodicals.” Radical History Review, vol. 2024, no. 150, Oct. 2024, pp. 1–31. Aidit, Sobron. Gajah Di Pelupuk Mata: Memoar Sobron Aidit [Elephant on the Eyelid: Memoir of Sobron Aidit]. Gramedia Widiasarana Indonesia, 2002. Alexander, Jennifer, and Paul Alexander. “Protecting Peasants from Capitalism: The Subordination of Javanese Traders by the Colonial State.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 33, no. 2, 1991, pp. 370–94. Almanak Pers Indonesia 1954-1955 [Indonesian Press Almanac]. Lembaga Pers dan Pendapat Umum, 1955. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Marxists.org, translated by Ben Brewster, 1971 (first published 1970). Amir, Mohammed. “Xiandaihua 现代化 [Modernization].” Wo Fangfu Zai Mengzhong 我仿佛 在梦中 [Like a Dream], edited by Wang Qiaoying 汪乔英 and Wang Yamei 汪雅梅, translated by Wang Jinding 汪金丁, Wenlian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 562–64. Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. A Life beyond the Boundaries. Verso, 2016. ———. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006 (first published 1983). ———. Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946. Equinox Publishing, 2006. Ang Jan Goan 洪渊源. Hong Yuanyuan Zizhuan 洪渊源自传. Edited by Liang Yingming 梁英 明, Zhongguo huaqiao chuban gongsi, 1989. Anrooij, Francien van. “De Dienst Voor Oost-Aziatische Zaken En Zijn Voorgangers [The Department of East-Asian Affairs and Its Predecessors].” De Koloniale Staat (1854- 1942): Gids Voor Het Archief van Het Ministerie van Kolonie [The Colonial State (1854- 1942): Guide for the Archive of the Ministry of Colonies], Nationaal Archief, 2009, pp. 34–37. Anwar Dharma. “Pejuang Anti Fasis Yang Konsekwen, Mati Sebagai Tahanan Peristiwa Tanjung Morawa [A Consequential Anti-Fascist Fighter Dies, A Prisoner from the Tanjung Morawa Incident Prisoner].” Sunday Courier, no. 2, Jan. 1954, pp. 16–17. Armstrong, Elisabeth. Bury the Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949. University of California Press, 2023. Assaat. “The Chinese Grip on Our Economy.” Indonesian Political Thinking, 1945-1965, edited by Herbert Feith and Lance Castles, Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 344–46. Aveling, Harry. Man and Society in the Works of Indonesian Playwright Utuy Tatang Sontani. 13, University of Hawaii, 1979. Southeast Asia Papers. Bachner, Andrea; Beyond Sinology. Columbia University Press, 2013. New York. Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara (BAKIN). Pedoman Penyelesaian Masalah Cina [Guide to the Solution of the Chinese Problem]. Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara (BAKIN), 1979. 3 vols. Bai, Yunfei. “World Literature And Nationalism: Tibetan Translations Of Alfonse Daudet’s Short Story ‘La Dernière Classe’1 - ProQuest.” Archiv Orientalni, vol. 87, no. 3, 2019, pp. 509–35, 574. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. University of Texas Press, 1981. Bălan, Ioana Cătălina. Zheng Tufei and “The Coconuts”. Revolution, Coolies, and Heartbreaks in Nanyang. 2023. Leiden University, MA Thesis. ———. “Two Stories from Yezi Ji (The Coconuts) by Zheng Tufei Introduction.” Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities, vol. 54, Jun. 2023, pp. 222–25. search.informit.org (Atypon), https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.T2024030500012900638366247. Banaji, Jairus. A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket, 2020. ———. Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation. Brill, 2010. 529 === [PDF page 544] === Bambang Sularto. Wage Rudolf Supratman. Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 1985. Bandaharo, H.R. Aku Hadir di Hari Ini [I am Present Today]. Ultimus, 2010. Baren. “Gei Xingang Bianjibu de Xin 给新港编辑部的信 [Letter to the Editorial Department of ‘New Harbor’].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 10, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 410–11. Baren 巴人. “Cong Mianlan dao Dijiaduluo 从棉兰到蒂加笃罗 [From Medan to Tiga Dolok].” Complete Works of Baren (巴人全集), Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 145–84. 9 vols. ———. “Di er dai 第二代 [The Next Generation].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 62–70. ———. “Fuluobayan 浮罗巴烟 [Pelabuhan].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 139–44. 9 vols. ———. “Fuluobayan 浮罗巴烟 [Pelabuhan].” Lüxingjia 旅行家 [Traveler] 1, no. 6, 1958. p. 9- 15. ———. “Gei airen Ma Yansheng de xin 给爱人马兖生的信 [Letters to Ma Yansheng].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 8, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 453– 82. ———. “Yindunixiya geming guangan 革命观感记 [Observations on the Revolution].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 17, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 345–406. ———. “Guanyu Waiguo Wenxue Zhong de Xianshi Zhuyi Wenti 关于外国文学中的现实主 义问题 [On the Problem of Realism in Foreign Literature].” Dandong Shizhuan Xuebao 丹东师专学报, no. 3, 1988, pp. 71–73. ———. “Hanlei Qinbi Baogao Liu Yan Xiansheng de Shenshi 含泪亲笔报告刘岩先生的身世 [Tearful Report of the Life and Times of Ms. Liu Yan].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了 的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 155–59. ———. “Ji Li Fu 记李福 [Remembering Lee Fook].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren],vol. 9, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 495–524. ———. Linrenmen 邻人们 [Neighbors]. 3rd ed., Sanlian shudian, 1951. ———. “Lun Lu Xun de Zawen 论鲁迅的杂文 [On Lu Xun’s Miscellaneous Essays].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 13, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 283–366. ———. “Lun Renxing 论人性 [On Human Nature].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 10, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 407–09. ———. Lun Yinni de Fandi Douzheng 论印尼的反帝斗争 [On Indonesia’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle].” Shixue Lungao 史学论稿 [Historical Works], vol. 17, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 1–36. Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren]. ———. Lun Yinni de Fandi Douzheng 论印尼的反帝斗争 [On Indonesia’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle ]. Shenghuo Shudian, 1947. ———. “‘Nanyang Bo’ ‘南洋伯’ [’Uncle Nanyang’].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 70–78. ———. “Qundao zhi guo: Yinni 群岛之国—印尼 [The Archipelagic Nation: Indonesia].” Shixue Lungao 史学论稿 [Historical Works], vol. 17, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 297–344. Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren]. ———. Rensheng ji qi zhouwei de yi qun 任生及其周围的一群. Xin wenyi chubanshe, 1952. ———. “Rensheng ji qi zhouwei de yi qun 任生及其周围的一群 [Rensheng and Those Around Him].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 93–138. 9 vols. ———. “Sala Shan 萨拉山 [Mt. Salah].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 12–20. ———. “Shuike He Gongtou 水客和工头 [The Courier and the Foreman].” Baren Quanji 巴人 全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 3–11. ———. “Wenxue Lungao 文学论稿 [Draft Treatise on Literature].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 14, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 1–587. 530 === [PDF page 545] === ———. “Wu Ge Bei Diaosi de Kuli 五个被吊死的苦力 [Five Coolies Hanged to Death].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 15, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 350–412. ———. Wu Zu Miao 五祖庙 [Temple of Five Ancestors]. Complete Works of Baren (巴人全 集), vol. 15, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 201–316. ———. Wu Zu Miao 五祖庙 [Temple of Five Ancestors]. Huacheng chubanshe, 1986. ———. “Yi Ge Toujia 一个头家 [A Taukeh].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 21–39. ———. “Yi Jia de Gushi 一家的故事 [Story of a Family].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 50–61. ———. “Yindunixiya Jindai Shi 印度尼西亚近代史 [Modern History of Indonesia].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vols. 18–19, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017. ———. “Yindunixiya Zhi Ge 印度尼西亚之歌 [Song of Indonesia].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 8, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 245–349. ———. “Yinni Xin Wenxue Yundong Gaikuo 印尼新文学运动概述 [A Survey of the New Literature Movement of Indonesia].” Shijie Wenhua Baodao 世界文化报导 [World Literature Report], Xin wenhua congkan chubanshe 新文化丛刊出版社, 1948, pp. 39– 45.———. “Yueliang de Youlai 月亮的由来 [Yueliang’s Origins].” Baren Quanji 巴人 全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo, 2017, pp. 79–91. ———. “Zai Silabaye Cun 在泗拉巴耶村 [In Silau Bayu Village].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 9, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 250–314. ———. “Zai Waiguo Jianlao Li 在外国监牢里 [In a Foreign Prison].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 9, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 315–53. ———. “Zhang Heming He Fang Ziming [张鹤鸣和方子明] (Zhang Heming and Fang Ziming).” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 4, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 40–49. ———. “Zhankai Fan Faxisi Wenxue Yundong 展开反法西斯文学运动 [Launch the Anti- Fascist Literary Movement].” Dongnanya Fanfaxisi Huawen Wenxue Shujuan 东南亚反 法西斯华文文学书卷 [Anti-Fascist Chinese-Language Literature of Southeast Asia ], vol. 3, Shijie tushu chuban gongsi, 2015, pp. 18–27. Barendregt, Bart. Sonic Modernities in the Malay World. Brill, 2016. Barlow, Tani. In the Event of Women. Duke University Press, 2021. Barraclough, Ruth, Heather Bowenstruyk, and Paula Rabinowitz, editors. Red Love across the Pacific: Political and Sexual Revolutions of the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Belogurova, Anna. Nanyang Revolution: The Comintern and Chinese Networks in Southeast Asia 1890-1957. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Bernards, Brian. Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature. NUS Press, 2016. Bevan, Paul. ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ - An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age. ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage, Brill, 2020, pp. 82–95. China Studies 41. “Bianji liyan 编辑例言 [Editorial Introduction].” Danbeila 丹贝拉 [Tambera], by Utuy Tatang Sontani 宋达尼, People’s Literature Publishing House, 1959, pp. 1–2. Bodden, Michael. “Modern Drama, Politics, and the Postcolonial Aesthetics of Left-Nationalism in North Sumatra: The Forgotten Theater of Indonesia’s Lekra, 1955-65.” Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, by Tony Day et al., Cornell University Press, 2018, pp. 45–80. Booth, Anne. Economic Change in Modern Indonesia. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Borsuk, Richard, and Nancy Chng. Liem Sioe Liong’s Salim Group. ISEAS, 2014. Bray, Joe. “Speech and Thought Presentation in Stylistics.” Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, edited by Michael Burke, 2025. Bresnan, John. At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, 1953-1973. Equinox Publishing, 2006. 531 === [PDF page 546] === Brokaw, Cynthia, and Christopher A Reed. From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008. Brill, 2010. Brondgeest, C. A. M. “De Ontwikkeling van Het Communisme Op Sumatra.” NEFIS, Feb. 1946. In NA 2.10.62: 1699. Brossat, Alain, and Sylvie Klingberg. Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism. Ebook, Verso Books, 2016. Buiskool, Dirk Aedsge. “Prominent Chinese During the Rise of a Colonial City: Medan 1890- 1942.” 2019. University of Utrecht, Ph.D. Dissertation. Buyung Saleh. Masalah Minoriti Keturunan Tionghoa Di Indonesia [The Problem of the Minority of Chinese Descent in Indonesia]. Baperki, 1957. Cai Renlong 蔡仁龙. Chidaoxian Shang de Jiaoyin 赤道线上的脚印 [Footsteps on the Equator]. Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2014. ———. Nanwang de Suiyue 难忘的岁月. Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2018. Castles, Lance. “Socialism and Private Business: The Latest Phase.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, Jun. 1965, pp. 13–45. “Catatan Dari Holand: Teman Kami Tan Hwie Kiat – Budaya Tionghoa.” Budaya Tionghoa, 28 Aug. 2004, www.budaya-tionghoa.net/2004/08/catatan-dari-holand-teman-kami-tanhwie-kiat/. Chambers, Harlan David. Revolutionary Times: Temporalities of Mobilization and Narrative in China’s Revolution. 2022. Columbia University. Chambert-Loir, Henri, editor. “Bahasa Tanpa Nama [Language without Name].” Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan Di Indonesia Dan Malaysia [Adapt: The History of Translation in Indonesia and Malaysia], vol. 2, 2009, pp. 525–46. Chan, Shelly. Diaspora’s Homeland. Duke University Press, 2018. Chang Hsi Shek 张希石. “Geming Duli Xianquzhe Zhang Xishi Zhandou de Yisheng 革命独立 先驱者张希石战斗的一生 [The Llife of Struggle of Revolutionary Independence Pioneer Chang Hsi Shek].” Chidao Huohua Ziqiang Bu Xi 赤道火花自强不息 [The Spark of the Equator Never Tires], edited by Li Zhuohui, vol. 3, Liantong huawen shuye youxian gongsi 联通华文书页有限公司, pp. 340–70. Yinhua Xiezuo Jingying Fendou Fengyu Rensheng 印华写作精英奋斗风雨人生. Chang, Shuei-may. Casting off the Shackles of Family: Ibsen’s Nora Figure in Modern Chinese Literature, 1918-1942. Peter Lang, 2004. Chang, Sung-sheng. Literary Culture in Taiwan: Martial Law to Market Law. Columbia University Press, 2004. Cheah, Boon Kheng. Red Star Over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation, 1941-1946. 4th ed., NUS Press, 2012. Chen Fencheng 陈奋澄. Nan Guan Bai Gan Lu 南冠百感录 [Prisoner’s Feelings]. Drukkerij Shih Tay, 1948. Republished by Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui, 2014. Chen Hong, Zhang Fengshu zinu 陈洪、张凤书子女 (Children of Chen Hong and Zhang Fengshu). “Huainian Fumu Chen Hong, Zhang Fengshu 怀念父母陈洪、张凤书 [Remembering Our Parents Chen Hong and Zhang Fengshu].” Harian Baru (新报) [Jakarta], 2022-08-10, pp. 23–24. Chen, Jianhua. Revolution and Form: Mao Dun’s Early Novels and Chinese Literary Modernity. Brill, 2018. Chen Laoping 陈老萍. Xidao Fengyun Huiyilu 锡岛风云回忆录 [Memoirs of Storms on Tin Island]. Photocopied Manuscript. Chen Mong Tse 陈蒙志. “Yu Shanghai Shuju de diandian didi 与上海书局有关的点点滴滴 [Bits and pieces about the Shanghai Bookstore].” Wang Gungwu Library, blogs.ntu.edu.sg/lib-wgwl, 2005. Chen Shaoxin 陈绍新 (writing as Laobing 老兵). “Shitan Yinhua Wenxue de Lishi Fazhan Yu Qianjing 试谈印华文学的历史发展与前景.” Shijie Huawen Wenxue Luntan 世界华文 文学论坛, Jan. 2003, pp. 8–10. Chen Zhanhu 陈展湖 (as Shannu 善努). “Xu 序 [Preface].” Pilihan Cerpen (Selected Short Stories), by Lu Xun 鲁迅 (as Lu Sin), Yayasan Kebudayaan Sadar (觉醒文化基金会), 532 === [PDF page 547] === 1963. Cheong, Yong Mun. The Indonesian Revolution and the Singapore Connection, 1945-1949. Brill, 2021. Chi Yin. “‘Diaspora Party’: The Origins, Characteristics and Development of the Southeast Asian Branch of the Chinese Communist Party before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, vol. 25, no. 1, 1, Mar. 2025, pp. 694– 712. Chin, Tamara T. “The Afro-Asian Silk Road: Chinese Experiments in Postcolonial Premodernity.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 136, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 17–38. Chirot, Daniel, and Anthony Reid. Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe. University of Washington Press, 2011. Chung Kwang-shing 钟广兴. Yinni Huaqiao Baocong Shi 印尼华侨报丛史 [History of Overseas Chinese Newspapers in Indonesia]. 1975. Coderre, Laurence. Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China. Duke University Press, 2021. Cohen, Matthew Isaac. Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. ———. Review of Review of Breaking the Spell; Colonialism and Literary Renaissance in Indonesia. [Semaian 18.]by Sylvia Tiwon. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde, vol. 156, no. 4, 2000, pp. 821–24. Cooper, Frederick. Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference: Historical Perspectives. Princeton University Press, 2018. Cooper, Melinda. Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism. Zone Books, 2017. Near Futures. Coppel, Charles A. Indonesian Chinese in Crisis. Oxford University Press, 1983. Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Publications Series 8. ———. “The Indonesian Chinese: Foreign Orientals, Netherlands Subjects, and Indonesian Citizens.” Law and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, edited by M. Barry Hooker, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), 2002, pp. 131–50. ———. Studying Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Singapore Society of Asian Studies, 2002. Asian Studies Monograph Series 7.Cribb, Robert. Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People’s Militia and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1949. Equinox Publishing, 2008. ———. “Military Strategy in the Indonesian Revolution: Nasution’s Concept of ‘Total People’s War’ in Theory and Practice.” War & Society, vol. 19, no. 2, Oct. 2001, pp. 143–54. Cui 翠. “Shengming Zai Shanguang 生命在闪光 [Life Is Glittering].” Yinhua Literary Criticism (印华文艺评论集第二辑), vol. 1, Jadeite Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud), 1965, pp. 38–46. ———. “Tade Xinsheng 她的新生 [Her New Life].” Yinhua Literary Criticism Vol. 2 (印华文 艺评论集第二辑), vol. 2, Jadeite Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud), 1965, pp. 38–46. Culp, Robert. The Power of Print in Modern China. Columbia University Press, 2019. Daillie, François-René. Alam Pantun Melayu - Studies on the Malay Pantun. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 2002. Daudet, Alphonse. “La Dernière Classe.” Les Contes Du Lundi, A. Lemerre, 1880, pp. 1–9, available on Wikisource. Daudet, Alphonse [都德]. “Zui hou yi ke 最后一课 [The Last Class].” Chuzhong Yuwen: Qi Nian Ji 初中语文: 七年级 [Middle School Language: 7th Grade], vol. 2, Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, available on Wikisource. Davidson, Jamie S., and Douglas Kammen. “Indonesia’s Unknown War and the Lineages of Violence in West Kalimantan.” Indonesia, vol. 73, Apr. 2002, p. 53. Davis, Bradley Camp. Imperial Bandits: Outlaws and Rebels in the China-Vietnam Borderlands. University of Washington Press, 2017. 533 === [PDF page 548] === Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. Verso, 2003. Dhakidae, Daniel. “The State, the Rise of Capital and the Fall of Political Journalism: Political Economy of Indonesian News Industry.” 1991. Cornell University, Ph.D. Dissertation. Dinasti 650 Juta [Dynasty of 650 Million]. Lekra, 1961. Ding Jian 丁剑. “Huaren gushi: zhonghua wenhua gongxianzhe Yang Zhaoji 华人故事：中华 文化贡献者杨兆骥 [Chinese Stories: Contributor to Chinese Culture Yang Zhaoji].” Harian Umum Perdamaian 和平日报, 2021-05-29. ———. Yang Zhaoji: xinhuo chuan wujin 杨兆冀: 薪火传无尽 [Yang Zhaoji: Passing the Torch without End]. Jakarta, 2020. Djagalov, Rossen. From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema Between the Second and the Third Worlds. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020. Eagleton, Terry. “Nationalism: Irony and Commitment.” Nationalism, Colonialism, Literature, edited by Seamus Deane, 5th ed., University of Minneapolis Press, 1988, pp. 23–39. Eaksittipong, Sittithep. “The Social and Political Lives of G. William Skinner and Chinese Society in Thailand.” Alternative Representations of the Past, edited by Ying-Kit Chan and Fei Chen, De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 85–118. Efimova, Larisa. “Did the Soviet Union Instruct Southeast Asian Communists to Revolt? New Russian Evidence on the Calcutta Youth Conference of February 1948.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, Oct. 2009, pp. 449–69. Erman, Erwiza. “Chinese ‘Taukeh’, Labourer, and State Control; Case Study of Chinese ‘Taukeh’, Labourer, and State Control; Case Study of ‘Panglong’ in Eastern Region of Sumatra (1890-1930).” Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, vol. 18, no. 2, 2017. ———. Menguak Sejarah Timah Bangka-Belitung [Uncovering the History of Tin in Bangka- Belitung]. Ombak, 2009. Erniwati. “Everyday Life of the Chinese in Revolutionary Padang, 1945-1948.” Revolutionary Worlds: Local Perspectives and Dynamics during the Indonesian Independence War, 1945-1949, Amsterdam University Press, 2023, pp. 355–78. Eu Chooi Yip 余柱业. “Oral History Interview: Political History in Singapore 1945-1965.” Interview by Lim How Seng 林孝胜. 3 Jul. 1992, www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/interview/001359. National Archives of Singapore, Accession Number 001359. Audio Recording. Fakih, Farabi. Authoritarian Modernization in Indonesia’s Early Independence Period: The Foundation of the New Order State (1950-1965). Brill, 2020. Fang Fanren 方凡人. Baren Zhuan 巴人传 [Biography of Baren]. Hunan wenyi chubanshe, 1997. Fang Xiu 方修, ed. Mahua xin wenxue da xi 马华新文学大系 [The complete compendium of Malaya Chinese literature], Vols. 1–10. Singapore: World Bookstore, 1971. Fang Xiu 方修. Zhanhou Mahua Wenxueshi Chugao 战后马华文学史初稿 [Initial Draft History of Postwar Malayan Chinese Literature]. T.K. Goh, 1978. Fei Wan 费皖. “Wo suo zhidao de minmeng sudao zhibu 我所知道的民盟苏岛支部 [The Sumatra CDL That I Knew].” Qunyan 群言, no. 12, 2008, pp. 38–41. Feng Shicai 冯世才. Minglang de Rizi 明朗的日子 [Bright Days]. Feicui wenhua jijinhui 翡翠 文化基金会 Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud [Jadeite Cultural Foundation], 1964. Feng Ziyou 冯自由. Huaqiao Geming Kaiguo Shi 华侨革命开国史 [History of Overseas Chinese Revolutionary Nation-Building]. Zhonghua shuju, 1947. Ferdy Salim. “Kisah Organisasi Operasi Speedboat Di Awal Kemerdekaan RI [Story of the Organization of Operation Speedboat at the Beginning of Independence of RI].” Memoar Pejuang Republik Indonesia Seputar “Zaman Singapura,” 1945-1950 [Memoirs of Fighters of the Indonesian Republic during the “Singapore Era,” 1945-1950], edited by Kustiniyati Mochtar, Gramedia, 1992, pp. 207–22. Fishman, Joshua A. “Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia; Diglossia With and Without Bilingualism.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 23, no. 2, 1967. 534 === [PDF page 549] === Fitzgerald, Stephen. China and the Overseas Chinese. Cambridge University Press, 1972. Foulcher, Keith. Social Commitment in Literature and the Arts: The Indonesian" Institute of People’s Culture" 1950-1965. Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1986. Foulcher, Keith, and Brian Russell Roberts, editors. Indonesian Notebook: A Sourcebook on Richard Wright and the Bandung Conference. Duke University Press, 2016. Frow, John. Character and Person. First edition, Oxford University Press, 2014. ———. Genre. Routledge, 2005. Fu Keyang 傅克养. “Yi Xianfu Fu Weidan 忆先父傅维丹 [Remembering My Father Fu Weidan].” Shenghuo Bao de Huiyi 生活报的回忆 [Memories of Seng Hwo Pao], Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2014, pp. 91–102. Fuller, Ken. Forcing the Pace: The Partido Komunista Ng Pilipinas, From Foundation to Armed Struggle. University of Hawai’i Press, 2022. Fung Ai-Chun 冯爱群. Huaqiao Baoye Shi 华侨报业史 [History of the Overseas Chinese Fu Wumen 傅无闷. Nanyang Nianjian 南洋年鉴 [South Seas Almanac]. Nanyang Siang Pau 南 洋商报, 1939. Furnivall, J. S. Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Gajarawala, Toral Jatin, Neelam Francesca Rashmi Srivastava, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, and Jack Daniel Webb, editors. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Galbraith, Mary. “Deictic Shift Theory and the Poetics of Involvement in Narrative.” Deixis in Narrative, Psychology Press, 2012, pp. 33–73. Gan Yu’en 甘于恩 and Shan Shan 单珊. “Yinni ‘Xianda Guoyu’ Cihui Yufa Tedian Gaishuo 印 尼 ‘先达国语’ 词汇语法特点概说 [On the Lexical and Grammatical Features of Siantar Mandarin in Indonesia].” TCSOL Studies 华文教学与研究, 90-96, vol. 4, 2013. Gao Jiaqian. Yimin, Jiangjie Yu Xiandaixing: Hanshi de Nanfang Lisan Yu Shuqing (1895-1945) 遗民、疆界与现代性: 汉诗的南方离散与抒情 (1895-1945) [Loyalists, Boundary and Modernity: Southbound Diaspora and Lyricism of Classical-Style Chinese Poetry, 1985- 1945]. Lian jing chu ban si ye gu fen you xian gong si, 2016. Gazali Ibrahim, H. “Membela Selat Malaka Bersama John Lie [Defending the Malacca Straits with John Lie].” Memoar Pejuang Republik Indonesia Seputar “Zaman Singapura,” 1945-1950 [Memoirs of Fighters of the Indonesian Republic during the “Singapore Era,” 1945-1950], edited by Kustiniyati Mochtar, Gramedia, 1992, pp. 175–90. Geertz, Clifford. “Java Jive.” New Republic, vol. 214, no. 17, 22 Apr. 1996, pp. 31–34. ———. The Religion of Java. University of Chicago press, 1960. Gilmartin, Christina K. Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s. University of California Press, 1995. Goh Siew Poh 吴小保. “Malaiya Guoyu Yundong Zhong de Yinni Jingyan—Duli Jianguo Shiqi de Huashe Wei Ge’an 马来亚国语运动中的印尼经验 一一独立建国时期的华社为个 案 [The Indonesian Experience in Malayan National Language Movement During Independence Period: A Case Study on Chinese Community].” Journal of Malaysian Chinese Studies, vol. 20, 2017, pp. 89–118. Groppe, Alison M. Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China. Cambria Press Amherst, NY, 2013. ———. “The Dis/Reappearances of Yu Dafu in Ng Kim Chew’s Fiction.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 22, no. 2, 2010, pp. 161–95. Gu Sifan 谷斯范. “Bianhou Ji 编后记 [Afterword].” Yinni Sanji 印尼散记 [Indonesian Notesi], by Baren 巴人, Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 1986, pp. 335–40. Gu Yeping 辜也平. Ershi Shiji Chuqi Zhongguo Wuzhengfuzhuyi Yundong Yanjiu 20世纪初期 中国无政府主义运动研究 [A Study of the Chinese Anarchist Movement in the Early 20th Century. Renmin chubanshe, 2022. Guan Ruifa 關瑞發. “Huayi Malai Shige Fazhan Lücheng Lunxi 華譯馬來詩歌發展履程論析.” Journal of Chinese Cultural Studies (華人文化研究), vol. 2, no. 2, Dec. 2014, pp. 127– 535 === [PDF page 550] === 67. Guo Moruo 郭沫若. “Dazhong Zhi You Liu Yan Muzhi 大众之友刘岩墓志 [Epitaph for Liu Yan, Friend of the Masses].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 164– 65. Guo Huifen 郭惠芬. Zhongwai Wenxue Jiaoliu Shi 中外文学交流史：中国—东南亚卷 [Sino- Foreign Cultural Exchange: Southeast Asia]. Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe 山东教育出版 社. ———. “Caiji Malai Minge Zhi Hua, Niangzao Mahua Xinshi Zhi Mi 采集马来民歌之花，酿 造马华新诗之谜 [Pluck the Flower of the Malay Folksong to Distill the Honey of Mahua Poetry].” Huawen Wenxue 华文文学, no. 61, Feb. 2004, pp. 11–16. Guo Wenhe 郭温和. Guo Wenhe Wenji: Huajiao Guanghui, Mianhuai Shiyou, Huashang Cangsang (郭温和文集: 华教光辉，缅怀师友，华裔沧桑) [Guo Wenhe’s Collected Writings: The Glories of Education, Missing Friends and Teachers, and the Vicissitudes of Commerce]. Edited by Li Zhuohui 李卓辉, Indonesia Harian Baru Publishing House, 2020. Gvili, Gal. Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962. Columbia University Press, 2022. Hadiz, Vedi R. “The Rise of Capital and the Necessity of Political Economy.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 43, no. 2, May 2013, pp. 208–25. Hamid, Chalik, editor. Gelora Api ’26 [Fire of ’26]. Ultimus, 2010. Hammel, E.A. George William Skinner 1925-2008. National Academy of Sciences, 2009. Hammond, Andrew, editor. The Palgrave Handbook of Cold War Literature. Springer International Publishing, 2020. Han Meng 韩萌, editor. Xinsheng de Ren 新生的人 [Newborn Person]. Qiushi chubanshe 求实 出版社, early 1950s. Hanchuan 寒川. “Yinhua Shiren Shaping de Chuangzuo Neirong Yu Yishu Tese 印华诗人莎萍 的创作内容与艺术特色 [The Creative Content and Artistic Features of Yinhua Poet Shaping].” Harian Inhua 印华日报, 8 Dec. 2024, https://koran.harianinhuaonline.com/2024/12/08/110487/ Hara, Fujio, editor. “Chinese Overseas and Communist Movements in Southeast Asia.” Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, Routledge, 2013, pp. 323–43. Routledge Handbooks. Harper, Tim. Underground Asia. Harvard University Press, 2021. Harper, Tim, and Christopher Bayly. Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia. Allen Lane, 2010. Harry A. Poeze. “From Foe to Partner to Foe Again: The Strange Alliance of the Dutch Authorities and Digoel Exiles in Australia, 1943–1945.” Indonesia, no. 94, 2012, p. 57. Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. WW Norton & Company, 2019. Hawkins, Everett D. “Job Inflation in Indonesia.” Asian Survey, 1966, pp. 264–75. He Qing 禾青. Yang Sao Zhuan 杨骚传. Di 1 ban, Hai xia wen yi chu ban she: Fujian sheng xin hua shu dian jing xiao, 1998. Hee, Wai-siam. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chinese-Language Cinema in Singapore and Malaya Before and During the Cold War. Hong Kong University Press, 2020. Heidhues, Mary F. Somers. “Citizenship and Identity: Ethnic Chinese and the Indonesian Revolution.” Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese since World War II, 1988, pp. 115–38. ———. Peranakan Chinese Politics in Indonesia. Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1964. Heidhues, Mary Somers. “Studying the Chinese in Indonesia: A Long Half-Century.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, vol. 32, no. 3, 2017, pp. 601–33. Heijns, Audrey. “Interpreting Practices in a Colonial Context: Interpreters of Chinese in the 536 === [PDF page 551] === Dutch East Indies.” Translation and Interpreting Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, Dec. 2019, pp. 372–91. Heiying 黑婴. Shidai de Gandong 时代的感动 [Moved by the Times]. Jiaoren chubanshe 鲛人 出版社, 1947. ———. Heiying Wenxuan 黑婴文选. Preprint, Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui, 2013. ———. Wenhai Chaoxi 文海潮汐 [Waves in the Literary Sea]. Huayue wenyi 华岳文艺, 1989. ———. “Fei Zhendong Zai Mianlan de Yishi 费振东在棉兰的轶事 [Anecdotes of Fei Zhendong in Medan].” Yinni Subei Huaqiao Cangsang Suiyue Xuji 印尼苏北华侨沧桑 岁月续集 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra in Indonesia Supplement], Yinni Subei huaqiao huaren lishi huishe 印尼苏北华侨华人历史会社, 2018, pp. 239– 45. Het Communisme Onder de Chinezen in Indonesie [Communism Among the Chinese in Indonesia]. 8 Oct. 1948. NA, 2.10.17: 977. Hill, David T. “Indonesia’s Exiled Left as the Cold War Thaws.” RIMA: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 2010, vol. 44 no. 1, pp. 21-51. ———. The Press in New Order Indonesia. Equinox Publishing, 2006. Hindley, Donald. The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951-1963. Univ of California Press, 1964. Ho, Christine I. Drawing from Life: Sketching and Socialist Realism in the People’s Republic of China. University of California Press, 2020. Hofmeyr, Isabel. “The Complicating Sea: The Indian Ocean as Method.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 32, no. 3, Dec. 2012, pp. 584–90.. ———. “The Politics of the Printed Page: Tracking Print Culture in African Studies.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures, edited by Toral Jatin Gajarawala et al., Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Bloomsbury Handbooks. Hong, Lysa, and Jianli Huang. The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts. NUS Press, 2008. Hong Zicheng and Zhu Ping. “The ‘Great Debate’ over Realism in the 1950s—: With a Focus on Two Chinese Anthologies.” Chinese Literature and Thought Today, translated by Jeffrey Keller, vol. 55, nos. 3–4, Oct. 2024, pp. 186–203. Hoogervorst, Tom. “Do You Love China or Not?”: Late-Colonial Textbooks to Learn Mandarin through Malay.” Sinophone Southeast Asia, 2021, pp. 210–44. Hoogervorst, Tom, and Caroline Chia, editors. Sinophone Southeast Asia: Sinitic Voices Across the Southern Seas. Brill, 2021. Hoogervorst, Tom G. Language Ungoverned: Indonesia’s Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911– 1949. Cornell University Press, 2021. Horton, William Bradley. “History Unhinged: World War II and the Reshaping of Indonesian History.” Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation. Tokyo: Graduate School of Literature, Waseda University, 2016. Hu Yuzhi 胡愈之. “Nanyang Zayi 南洋杂忆 [Miscellaneous Memories from the South Seas].” Wo de Huiyi 我的回忆 [My Memories], Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 1990, pp. 97–126. ———. Shaonian Hangkongbing 少年航空兵 [Young Aviator]. Hu Yuzhi Wenji 胡愈之文集 [Selected Writings by Hu Yuzhi], vol. 6, Sanlian shudian, 1996, pp. 408–668. ——— (as Sabin 沙平).. Shaonian Hangkongbing: Zuguo Mengyou Ji 青少年航空兵: 祖国梦 游记 [Young Aviator: A Dream Journey through the Homeland]. Wenhua Gongyingshe, 1949. ——— (as Sabin 沙平). Yindunixiyayu Yufa Yanjiu 印度尼西亚语语法研究 [Studies of Indonesian Grammar]. People’s Publishing House, 1951. Huang Changping 黄昌平. “Jushe Shenru Yinni Kongzhi Qu Yanchu 剧社深入印尼控制区演 出 [The Troupe Enters Deep into Indonesian-Controlled Territory to Perform].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄 书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 304–06. Huang Dongping 黃东平. “Chidao Xianshang de Gechang 赤道线上的歌唱 [Songs on the Equator].” Chidao Xianshang de Gechang 赤道线上的歌唱 [Song on the Equator], 537 === [PDF page 552] === Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1958, pp. 1–16. ———. Qizhouyang Wai 七洲洋外 [Beyond the Sea of Seven Lands]. Youyi chuban gongsi, 1986. Huang Dongping 黄东平. Da Shikuai Dixia de Yecao 大石块底下的野草 [Wild Grass Under a Big Rock]. Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997. ———. Qiao Feng (Shouchao Fuyin Ben) 侨风 (手抄复印本) [Sojourner’s Winds (Hand- Huang Fulian 黄孚莲. “Yi Liu Yan Yu Xianda Jiazheng Dushuhui 忆刘岩与先达家政读书会 [Remembering Liu Yan and the Siantar Home Economics Reading Club ].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 89–91. Huang Jinfeng 黄金风. “Chen Mingfeng zai Yindunixiya de zuji 陈明枫在印度尼西亚的足迹 [Tan Beng Hong’s Footprints in Indonesia].” Wangbuliao de suiyue), edited by Huang Shuhai (黄书海), 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003. Huang Kunzhang 黄昆章. “Mianhuai Xiao Yaobi Xiansheng 缅怀萧瑶璧先生 [Remembering Mr. Xiao Yaobi].” Shenghuobao de Huiyi 生活报的回忆 [Memories of Seng Hwo Pao], edited by Qian Ren 千仞 and Liang Junxiang 梁俊祥, Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文 化基金会, pp. 410–11. Huang Shuhai 黄书海, editor. Jieshuang Wenji 洁霜文集 [Writings]. Late 1990s. “Yinni Subei Huaqiao Kangri Douzheng Gailüe 印尼苏北华侨抗日斗争概略 [Overview of the North Sumatran Overseas Chinese Resistance against Japan].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘 不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 1–15. Fei Wan 费皖. “Jugong Jincui Fuwu Qiaobao—Fei Zhendong Shilüe 鞠躬尽瘁服务侨胞 —— 费振东事略 [Kowtowing in Service of Overseas Chinese Compatriots: Chronology of Fei Zhendong].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 426–37. Xiao Bangjie 肖邦杰 (as Bangjie 邦杰). “Yinghun Nanmi Jingsheng Yongcun—Mianhuai Kangri Zhanyou Li Guohai 英魂难觅精神永存 ——缅怀抗日战友李国海 [His Soul Lives On: In Memory of Comrade-in-Arms Li Guohai].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了 的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 524–28. Yang Xuechun 杨学纯, editors. “Shao Zonghan Tongzhi Geming de Yi Sheng 邵宗汉同志革命 的一生 [Comrade Shao Zonghan’s Revolutionary Life].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了 的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 439–41. Huang Wenhe 黄文和. “Yefeng Jiaoyu Yi Qinren 椰风蕉雨忆亲人 [Storms among the Palm Trees, Remembering a Relative].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 193– 201. Huang Xincong 黄新聪. Chidao Cheng de Gushi 赤道城故事 [Story of the City on the Equator]. Edited by Li Zhuohui 李卓辉, Penerbit Harian Baru, 2022. Huang, Yan. Pragmatics. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014. Huang Yurong 黄裕荣. “Gei Huaqiao Nüxuesheng 给华侨女学生 [For Overseas Chinese Women High Schoolers].” Gei Huaqiao Nüxuesheng 给华侨女学生 [For Overseas Chinese Women High Schoolers], Feicui wenhua jijinhui 翡翠文化基金会 Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud [Jadeite Cultural Foundation], 1962. ———, Lunyi Shang de Zhange 轮椅上的战歌歌 [Wheelchair Warsong]. Edited by Pan Yatun 潘亚暾, Jinan University, 1995. ——— (writing as Pizi 啤子 and Xiao Feng 小峰), Yinhua Wenyi Pinglun Ji 印华文艺评论集 [Yinhua Literary Criticism]. Jadeite Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud), 1965. Hui, Yew-Foong. Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Brill, 2011. Chinese Overseas, v. 5. Hunqian Mengrao de Guxiang 魂牵梦绕的故乡 [Dreamy Hometown]. Zhongguo youyi 中国友 谊, 2004. Idrus, Ani. Sekilas Pengalaman dalam Pers dan Organisasi PWI di Sumatra Utara [A Glimpse 538 === [PDF page 553] === of Experience in the Press and PWI Organization in North Sumatra]. Waspada, 1985. Irawati Durban Ardjo. “New Sundanese Dance for New Stages.” Heirs to World Culture, Brill, 2012, pp. 396–420. Jessica Tan 陳麗汶. “After the Foxtrot Ends: On Returnee Author Heiying’s Mature Bilndungsromans 狐步舞結束以後：論中國歸僑作家黑嬰的成長小說.” 中國現代文 學, no. 33, Jun. 2018, pp. 43–62. Jieshuang 洁霜 (writing as Sangming 桑明). “Hongchun Guniang 红春姑娘 [Red Spring Girl].” Xinsheng de Ren 新生的人 [Newborn People], Chidaoxian chubanshe 赤道线出版社, 1951, pp. 20–21. ——— (writing as Shuang Hong 霜红). “Yi Kuai Shibei 一块石碑 [A Stone Stele].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄 书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 368–84. Jin Jin 金进. Lengzhan Yu Huayu Yuxi Yanjiu 冷战与华语语系研究 [The Cold War and Sinophone Studies]. Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2019. ———. Mahua Wenxue 马华文学 [Malayan Chinese Literature]. Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2013. Jiqing Niandai 激情年代 [Age of Fervor]. Tuohuang zazhi she 拓荒杂志社, 1995. Jones, Andrew F. “Hei Ying’s ‘Pagan Love Song.’” A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University Press, 2017, pp. 376–81. Kadir, Djelal. “World Literature: The Allophone, the Differential, and the Common.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 2, Jun. 2013, pp. 293–306. Kahin, George McT. Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 2018. Karl, Rebecca E. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Duke University Press, 2002. Keane, Webb. “Second Language, National Language, Modern Language, and Post-Colonial Voice: On Indonesian.” Translating Cultures. Routledge, 2003. Keputusan-Keputusan Madjelis Permusyawaratan Rakjat Sementara Republic Indonesia: Garis- Garis Besar Haluan Negara Dan Garis-Garis Besar Pola Pembangunan Nasional Semesta Berentjana Tahapan Pertama 1961-1969. Departemen Penerangan RI. Kho An Kim. Pendjara Fasis Atau Dari Neraka Ke Neraka [Fascist Prison, or From Hell to Hell]. Toko Boekoe Djaman, 1947. Kim, Elaine. Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context. Temple University Press, 1982. Kindler, Benjamin. “Towards a Partisan Aesthetics: Zhou Yang, Chernyshevsky, and’life’.” Made in China Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 2020, pp. 118–24. Kong Yuanzhi 孔远志. Zhongguo Yindunixiya Wenhua Jiaoliu 中国印度尼西亚文化交流 [Sino-Indonesian Culture Exchange]. Peking University, 1999. Kung, Chien-Wen. Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s. Cornell University Press, 2022. Kustiniyati Mochtar, editor. Memoar Pejuang Republik Indonesia Seputar “Zaman Singapura,” 1945-1950 [Memoirs of Fighters of the Indonesian Republic during the “Singapore Era,” 1945-1950]. Gramedia, 1992. Kwartanada, Didi. “Making of the Chinese Problem.” Lembaran Sejarah, vol. 16, no. 2, 2020, pp. 183–205. ———. “The Road to Resinification: Education for the Chinese during the Japanese Occupation.” The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the Pacific War, Brill, 2009, pp. 327–33. Kwee Kek Beng. 25 Tahon Sebagi Wartawan [Twenty Five Years as a Reporter]. Kuo/Paragon Press, 1948. Kwee Thiam Tjing (as Tjamboek Berdoeri). Indonesia Dalem Api Dan Bara [Indonesia in Fire and Smoke]. Edited by Benedict Anderson, Elkasa, 2004. Laachir, Karima, Sara Marzagora, and Francesca Orsini. “Significant Geographies: In Lieu of World Literature.” Journal of World Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, Aug. 2018, pp. 290–310. Laffan, Michael Francis. Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma Below the Winds. 1st ed., Routledge, 2003. 539 === [PDF page 554] === Lagu 拉古. “Dadi Shudian de Chuangban Yujieshu 大地书店的创办与结束 [The Founding and Closing of Dadi Bookstore].” Unforgettable Years 忘不了的岁月, edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 255–59. Lai, Him Mark, Judy Yun and Genny Lim, editors. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 Second Edition Edited By. 2nd ed., 2014. Lai Yumei 赖玉梅. “Lingluo Cheng Ni Zhan Zuo Chen—Yi Xianfu Zou Fangjin 零落成泥碾作 尘——忆先父邹访今 [Becoming Mud and Dust: Remembering My Husband Zou Fangjin].” Zou Fangjin Wenxuan 邹访今文选 [Selected Texts by Zou Fangjin], by Zou Fangjin 邹访今, edited by Zou Jianyun 邹建云, 2013, pp. 1–4. Yinni Shenghuobao Jinian Congshu 印尼生活报纪念丛书 [Commemorating Indonesia’s Seng Hwo Pao]. Lai Zengchuang (赖增创; Lay Tjin Tjiong). “Wo Bi Shiyue Geming Hai Da 我比十月革命还大 [I’m Older than the October Revolution].” Living Elsewhere (活在别处), edited by Wang Cangbai (王苍白), University of Hong Kong Center of Asian Studies, 2006, pp. 29–45. Laorong 劳容. “Mianhuai Wang Renshu Tongzhi 缅怀王任叔同志 [Fondly Recalling Comrade Wang Renshu].” Baren Xiansheng Jinian Ji 巴人先生纪念集 [In Memory of Baren], edited by Shanghai Lu Xun jinian guan 上海鲁迅纪念馆 [Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall], Renmin wenxue chubanshe, pp. 133–41. Laosong 老松. “Chen Hong Zai Yaqi 陈洪在亚齐 [Chen Hong in Aceh].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003. Lau Chi Pang (刘智鹏). Xianggang Dade Xueyuan 香港达德学院 [The Ta Teh Institute in Hong Kong]. Zhonghua shuju xianggang youxian gongsi, 2011. Lawrance, Benjamin N., and Jacqueline Stevens, editors. Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness. Duke University Press, 2017. Lee, Christopher J. Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Ohio University Press, 2010. Lee, Doreen. Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia. Duke University Press, 2016. ———. “Boxed Memories.” Indonesia, Apr., 2003, No. 75 (Apr., 2003), pp. 1-8 Lee, Fiona. “Neutralizing English: Han Suyin and the Language Politics of Third World Literature.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 57, no. 2, Mar. 2021, pp. 226–40. Lembong, Eddie, Leo Suryadinata, Didi Kwartanada and Yudi Latif, editors. Tionghoa Dalam Keindonesiaan: Peran Dan Kontribusi Bagi Pembangunan Bangsa. Yayasan Nabil, 2016. Leow, Rachel. “Age as a Category of Gender Analysis: Servant Girls, Modern Girls, and Gender in Southeast Asia.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 71, no. 4, 2012, pp. 975–90. ———. “Weeping Qingdao Tears Abroad: Locating Chinese Publics in Colonial Malaya, circa 1919.” Itinerario, vol. 44, no. 2, 2020, pp. 316–40. Lev, Daniel S. No Concessions: The Life of Yap Thiam Hien, Indonesian Human Rights Lawyer. University of Washington Press, 2011. Li Feng 立锋. Gei Wo Weixiao 给我微笑 [Smile For Me]. Mengping 梦苹, 1990s. Li Huanqing 李焕清. “Kegu Mingxin de Zhuiyi Sigan Liedan de Shangtong—Dui Chen Shixing Zui Chentong de Daonian 刻骨铭心的追忆撕肝裂胆的伤痛——对陈世兴兄最沉痛的 悼念 [Memories Inscribed in My Heart, Pain That Rends My Gut: Mourning Brother Chen Shixing].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 466–71. Li Huanqing (李焕清). “Zhanhou Subei Huaqiao Aiguo Minzhu Yundong Ruogan Wenti Pingshu 战后苏北华侨爱国民主运动若干问题评述 [Several Issues of the Postwar North Sumatran Chinese Democracy Movement].” Unforgettable Years (忘不了的岁月), edited by Huang Shuhai (黄书海), Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 211–30. Li Junzhe 李君哲. Zhanhou Haiwai Huaqiao Huaren Shehui Bianqian 战后海外华侨华人社会 变迁 [Postwar Overseas Chinese Social Transformation]. Liaoning jiaoyu, 1998. Li Qing 犁青. “Bainian Lai Yindunixiya Huawen Wenxue de Fazhan 百年来印度尼西亚华文 文学的发展 [The Last Hundred Years of Development of Indonesian Chinese-Language 540 === [PDF page 555] === Literature].” Li Qing Wenji 犁青文集 [Li Qing: Writings], vol. 6, pp. 104–18. ———. “Huanying Ni! ‘Pembebasan’ 欢迎你！’Pembebasan’ [Welcome! ’Pembebasan’].” Chidao Xianshang de Gechang 赤道线上的歌唱 [Songs on the Equator], Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1958, pp. 36–38. ———. “Jianku Chengzhang Zhong de Yindunixiya Huawen Wenxue 艰苦成长中的印度尼西 亚华文文学 [Indonesian Chinese-Language Literature’s Painful Growth].” Li Qing Wenji 犁青文集 [Li Qing: Writings], vol. 6, 2014, pp. 147–75. ———. “‘Zhongguo Huabu Laidao Le Yindunixiya 中国花布来到了印度尼西亚,’ [Chinese Printed Fabrics Have Come to Indonesia].” Chidao Xianshang de Gechang 赤道线上的 歌唱 [Songs on the Equator], Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1958, pp. 39–40. ———. Li Qing de Shi 犁青的诗 [Li Qing’s Poems]. Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2001. ———. Li Qing Wenji 犁青文集 [Li Qing: Writings]. Huixin chubanshe 汇信出版社, 2014. Li Ranqing 李燃青 and Qian Yingcai 钱英才. “Bianhou Shuoming 编后说明 [Editorial Afterword].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 14, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 588–91. Li Xu 李旭 and Liren 立人. Xidao Enchou Ji 锡岛恩仇记 [Gratitude and Emnity on Tin Island]. Feicui wenhua jijinhui 翡翠文化基金会 Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud [Jadeite Cultural Foundation], 1961. ———. “Xidao Enchou Ji 锡岛恩仇记 [Gratitude and Emnity on Tin Island].” Xidao Shihua 锡 岛史话 [The History of Tin Island], Shenghuo Wenhua Jijinhui, 2014, pp. 99–179. Li Xuemin 李学民. “Zhengui Shiliao Shenqing Huainian—Chong Du Baren Yinni Sanji 珍贵史 料 深情怀念——重读巴人《印尼散记》[Treasured Materials, Profound Memories: Re-Reading Baren’s Indonesian Notes].” Baren Yu Yindunixiya 巴人与印度尼西亚 [Baren and Indonesia], Nandao chubanshe, 2001, pp. 432–43. Li Xuemin 李学民 and Huang Kunzhang 黄昆章. Yinni Huaqiao Huaren Shi 印尼华侨华人史 (1950至2004年) [Indonesian Chinese History (1950-2004)]. Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005. ———. Yinni Huaqiao Huaren Shi 印尼华侨华人史 (古代至1949年) [Indonesian Chinese History (Ancient Times to 1949)]. Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005. Li, Yi. Chinese in Colonial Burma. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017. Li Zhuohui 李卓辉. Baorong Kuanda Fengyu Tongzhou 包容宽大风雨同舟 [Great Tolerance, All in the Same Boat]. Liantong huawen shuye youxian gongsi 联通华文书页有限公司, 2013. Yinhua Xiezuo Jingying Fendou Fengyu Rensheng 印华写作精英奋斗风雨人生 ———, editor. Pijing Zhanji Huajiao Xianbei 披荆斩棘华教先辈 [Through Bramble and Thistle: Pioneers of Chinese Education]. Inhua Media Nusantara, 2022. Yinni Bainian Huajiao Jingying Fendou Shipian 印尼百年华教精英奋斗史篇 [History of a Hundred Years of Struggle by Elites of Chinese Education] 1. Liang Huizhen 梁惠珍. “Mianhua Funühui Zai Qiaoyun Zhong Dansheng He Fazhan (棉华妇 女会在侨运中诞生和发展).” Wang Buliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 252–54. Liang Junxiang 梁俊祥, editor. Xidao Shihua 锡岛史话 [The History of Tin Island]. 生活文化 基金会, 2014. ——— and Liang Fengxiang 梁凤翔, editors. Tieti xia de kangzheng: Yinni Zhaowa huaqiao kangri shiliao xuanji 铁蹄下的抗争: 印尼爪哇华侨抗日史料选辑 [Resistence under the Iron Fist: Selected Historical Documents on Overseas Chinese Resistance in Java]. Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2015. Liao Chengzhi 廖承志. “Huaqiao Duiyu Yinni Jingji de Lishi Zuoyong Bu Rong Hushi 华侨对 于印尼经济的历史作用不容忽视 [The Historical Function of the Overseas Chinese in the Indonesian Economy Should Not Be Overlooked].” Liao Chengzhi Wenji 廖承志文 集 [Texts by Liao Chengzhi], vol. 1, Sanlian Shudian, 1990, pp. 393–94. Liao Zhangran 廖章然, editor. Guanghui Suiyue Ruge—Zhanhou Subei Huaqiao Wenyi Huodong de Gaikuang 光辉岁月如歌—战后苏北印华文艺活动概况 [Years Like Songs—Survey of Postwar North Sumatran Yinhua Cultural Activities]. Medan, 2007. 541 === [PDF page 556] === Liem, Maya HT. “A Bridge to the Outside World Literary Translation in Indonesia, 1950-1965.” Heirs to World Culture, Brill, 2012, pp. 163–90. Liem, Maya HT, and Ing Lwan Taga-Tan. “Between Ideology and Experience; Siauw Giok Tjhan’s Legacy to His Daughter Siauw May Lie.” Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, vol. 18, no. 1, 2017, p. 5. Liew, Zhou Hau. “Sinophone Geopolitics and Postcolonial Materiality in Cold War Borneo.” English Language Notes, vol. 62, no. 1, Apr. 2024, pp. 81–96. Lin Hanwen 林汉文. Xijia Fengyu Lu 西加风雨录 [West Kalimantan Storms]. 2017. Lin Jian 林坚. “Yi Fanmeng Jiaotong Lianluozhan de Jianli Ji Qi Fazhan Guocheng 忆反盟交通 联络站的建立及其发展过程 [Remembering the Establishment and Development of the Anti-Fascist Alliance’s Communications Stations].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁 月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 68–76. Lin Jingren 林景仁. Lin Jingren Ji 林景仁集. Edited by Yu Meiling 余美玲, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, 2013. Lin, Pei-yin. “Alternative Chineseness War Experience and National Longing in Pan Lei’s Red River Trilogy (1952) and Deng Kebao’s Alien Lands (1961).” Chineseness and the Cold War, by Jeremy E. Taylor and Lanjun Xu, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2022, pp. 170– 87. Lin Shi Fang 林世芳. Nüren de Nahan 女人的呐喊 [A Woman’s Call to Arms]. Liantong huawen shuye youxian gongsi 联通华文书业有限公司, 2023. ———. Xijia Fengyun 西加风云 [West Kalimantan Storms]. Sadong Press, 2010. ———. Yinni Xi Jialimandan Huaren Shi 印尼西加里曼丹华人史 Sejarah Suku Tionghoa Di Kalimantan Barat [History of the Chinese Ethnicity in West Kalimantan]. Inhua Media Nusantara (印华日报), 2017. Lin Wanjing 林万菁. Zhongguo Zuojia Zai Xinjiapo Ji Qi Yingxiang 1927-1948 中国作家在新 加坡及其影响 1927-1948 [Chinese Authors in Singapore and Their Influence, 1927- 1948]. Wanli shuju 万里书局, 1994. Lin Wanli 林万里. “Tan Lu Xun duanpian xiaoshuo de Yinniyu yiben 谈鲁迅短篇小说的印尼 语译本 [On the Indonesian Translations of Lu Xun’s Short Stories].” Lu Xun zai Dongnanya 鲁迅在东南亚 [Lu Xun in Southeast Asia], by Wong Yoon-wah 王润华 and Pan Guoxun 潘国驹, Global Publishing, 2017, pp. 256–61. ———. “Xuebu Ji 学步集 [Learning to Walk].” Unpublished Manuscript. Jakarta, 1965. Lin Wanli (林万里). “Yinni Huawen Wenxue Huibian 印尼华文文学汇编 [Edited Historical Materials on 1960s Chinese Literature in Indonesia].” Unpublished Manuscript. Jakarta, 2002. Lin Yingqing 林映青. “Shenqie Huainian Zhang Qiongyu 深切怀念张琼郁 [Fondly Recalling Zhang Qiongyu].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 190–92. Lindblad, J. Th. Bridges to New Business: The Economic Decolonization of Indonesia. Brill, 2008. Lindsay, Jennifer. “Performing Indonesia Abroad.” Heirs to World Culture, Brill, 2012, pp. 191– 220. Liu, Hong. China and the Shaping of Indonesia, 1949-1965. With Kyōto Daigaku, NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press Japan, 2011. Kyoto CSEAS Series on Asian Studies / Center for Southeast Asian Studies 4. ———. “The China Metaphor”: Indonesian Intellectuals and the PRC, 1949-1965. Ohio University, 1995. Liu Hua 刘华. Huaqiao Guoji Wenti Yu Zhongguo Guoji Lifa 华侨国籍问题与中国国籍立法 [The Overseas Chinese Nationality Question and Chinese Nationality Legislation]. Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2004. Liu, Lydia He, editor. “Translingual Folklore and Folkloristics in China.” A Companion to Folklore, 1st ed., Wiley, 2012, pp. 190–210. Liu, Lydia He. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity– 542 === [PDF page 557] === China, 1900-1937. Stanford University Press, 1995. Liu Yan 刘岩. “Liuwang Riji 流亡日记 [Diary of Exile].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003. Liu Yuzun 刘玉尊, Huang Chongyan 黄重言, Gui Guanghua 桂光华 and Wu Fengbin 吴凤斌, editors. “Zhuzai” Huagong Fangwen Lu ”猪仔“华工访问录 [Interviews with “Zhuzai” Overseas Chinese Laborers]. Zhongshan daxue dongnanya lishi yanjiusuo, 1979. Lou Shiyi 楼适逸. “Lingling suisui de jiyi 零零碎碎的记忆 [Fragmented Memories].” Chaonei 166 hao jiyi 朝内166号记忆 [Memories of Chaonei No. 166], by Tu An 屠岸, Illustrated edition, Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2016. Low, Choo Chin. “China’s Citizenship Diplomacy at Bandung: An Evaluation from the British Perspective.” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2015. ———. “The Malayan Emergency and the Desinicization of the Malayan Chinese.” Chineseness and the Cold War, by Jeremy E. Taylor and Lanjun Xu, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2022, pp. 45–61. Lu Huahan 卢华汉. “Sudao ‘Jiu Er Ling’ Shijian Huiyi 苏岛‘九•二O’事件回忆 [A Few Memories about 9-20 in Sumatra].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 62–67. Lu, Sipei, and Cenyan Huang. “Where Is Home? Wen Peor’s Art and Social Practice.” Journal of the British Academy, vol. 13, May 2025. Lü Huiying 吕慧英. “Yi Liu Yan Tongzhi 忆刘岩同志 [Remembering Comrade Liu Yan ].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄 书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 160–63. Lukács, György. “Realism in the Balance.” Aesthetics and Politics, edited by Fredric Jameson, Verso, 2020. Lunny, Deborah Rose. “English Hegemony, Anglo Privilege and the Promise of ‘Allo’Lingual Citational Praxis in Transnational Feminisms Research.” Feminist Review, vol. 121, no. 1, Mar. 2019, pp. 66–80. Luo Hanchao 骆寒超. “Bianhou Shuoming 便后说明 [Afterword].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], by Baren 巴人, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 529–31. 9 vols. Ma Feng 马峰. Malaixiya, Xinjiapo, Yinni Huawen Nü Zuojia Xiaoshuo Bijiao Yanjiu 马来西 亚、新加坡、印尼华文女作家小说比较研究 [A Comparative Study of the Novel by Malaysian, Singaporean and Indonesian Chinese Female Writers]. 2015. Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. ———. Yinhua Xiaoshuo Yu Shenfen Rentong 印尼小说与身份认同 [Indonesian-Chinese Fiction and Identity]. Zhongshan Daxue, 2018. Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity. Harvard University Press, 2012. ———. Neither Settler nor Native. Harvard University Press, 2020. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674249998. ———. Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. Monthly Review Press, 1976. ———. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton University Press, 2018. ——— and H. Bhagat. “A Critique of Issa Shivji’s Book: Class Struggles in Tanzania.” Debate on State, Class and Imperialism, edited by Yash Tandon, Tanzania Publishing House, 1982, pp. 36–54. Mandal, Sumit. “Strangers Who Are Not Foreign.” The Chinese in Indonesia, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Select Publications, 2007. Mangalagiri, Adhira. States of Disconnect: The China-India Literary Relation in the Twentieth Century. Columbia University Press, 2023. Mao Ce 毛策. “Su Manshu Duan Hong Ling Yan Ji Zuichu Fabiao Shidi Kao 苏曼殊《断鸿零 雁记》最初发表时地考 [On the Time and Place of Publication of Su Manshu’s Duanhong Lingyan Ji].” Zhongguo Wenxue Yanjiu 中国文学研究, no. 3, Oct. 1987, pp. 66–13. 543 === [PDF page 558] === Matinja seorang petani. Lekra, 1962. Mawardi Umar. “A Successful Transition. The Chinese in Revolutionary Aceh, 1945-1949.” Revolutionary Worlds: Local Perspectives and Dynamics during the Indonesian Independence War, 1945-1949, Amsterdam University Press, 2023, pp. 317–38. McGuire, Elizabeth. Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2017. McVey, Ruth T. The Rise of Indonesian Communism. Equinox Publishing, 2006 (first published 1965). Melvin, Jess. “Why Not Genocide? Anti-Chinese Violence in Aceh, 1965–1966.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, vol. 32, no. 3, 2013, pp. 63–91. Memorandum Outlining Acts of Violence and Inhumanity Perpetrated by Indonesian Bands on Innocent Chinese before and after the Dutch Police Action Was Enforced on July 21 1947. Chung Hua Tsung Hui, 1947. Menggelar Indonesia: Misi Kesenian Ke Manca Negara, 1952-1965 [Performing Indonesia: Arts Delegations Abroad, 1952-1965]. Directed by Jennifer Lindsay and Henny Saptatia Sujai, 2010. Michener, James. “Chinese Success Story.” Life, 31 Dec. 1951, pp. 77–81. Minguo Shiqi Zong Shumu 民国时期总书目 外国文学 [Republican Book Index: Foreign Literature]. Vol. 16, Beijing Library 北京图书馆, 1987. Mishra, Vijay. The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary. Routledge, 2007. Mohammed, Sharifah Faizah Syed. Musical Nationalism in Indonesia: The Rise and Fall of Lagu Seriosa. Springer Singapore, 2021. Morgan, Jennifer L. Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Duke University Press, 2021. Morgenstern, Hana. “A People’s Literature of Palestine/Israel꞉ Arab Socialist Realism and the Anticolonial Cultural Journal in the 1950s.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, pp. 57–70. Mortimer, Rex. Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965. First Equinox Edition, PT Equinox Publishing Indonesia, 2006. Mozingo, David. Chinese Policy toward Indonesia, 1949-1967. Equinox Publishing, 1976. Nabudere, Dan. “Imperialism, State, Class and Race.” Debate on State, Class and Imperialism, edited by Yash Tandon, Tanzania Publishing House, 1982, pp. 55–67. Nair, Deepak. “Spooks, Goons, ‘Intellectuals’: The Military–Catholic Network in the Cold War Diplomacy of Suharto’s Indonesia.” History and Anthropology, vol. 33, no. 3, May 2022, pp. 372–90. Ng, Kenny. “Soft-Boiled, Anti-Communist Romance: The Story Paper and Liu Yichang’s A Singapore Story.” Chineseness and the Cold War, by Jeremy E. Taylor and Lanjun Xu, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2022, pp. 94–109. Ngoei, Wen-Qing. Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia. Cornell University Press, 2019. Oey, Hong Lee. Indonesian Government and Press during Guided Democracy. Hull University Press, 1971. Ojwang, Dan. Reading Migration and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. Onghokham. The Thugs, the Curtain Thief, and the Sugar Lord: Power, Politics, and Culture in Colonial Java. Metafor Pub., 2003. Paget, Roger K. “Indonesian Newspapers 1965-1967.” Indonesia, no. 4, 1967, pp. 170–210. Pan Yatun 潘亚暾 and Wang Yisheng 汪义生. “Yindunixiya Huawen Wenxue 印度尼西亚华文 文学 [Chinese-Language Literature of Indonesia].” Encyclopedia of Overseas Chinese (华人华侨百科全书), vol. 11, Zhongguo Huaqiao chubanshe, 2002, pp. 627–30. Pao Shih Tsun 包思井. “Oral History Interview: Japanese Occupation of Singapore.” Interview by Chen Mingluan. 28 Jun. 1992, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/interview/001353. National Archives of Singapore, Accession Number 001353. Audio Recording. 544 === [PDF page 559] === Pao Shih Tsun 包思井. Xiandai Yinni Minzu Yundong Jianshi 现代印尼民族运动简史 [A Brief History of the Modern Indonesian National Movement]. Zhongnan United Publisher 中南 聯合出版社, 1950. Peacock, James L. Rites of Modernization; Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama. University of Chicago Press. Peishan Zhi Nian Zhou Nian 培善之廿周年 [Peishan’s 20th Anniversary]. Peishan xuexiao 培善 学校, Asahan, 1932. Pelzer, Karl Josef. Planter and Peasant: Colonial Policy and the Agrarian Struggle in East Sumatra 1863-1947. Martinus Nijhoff, 1978. ———. Planters against Peasants: The Agrarian Struggle in East Sumatra, 1947–1958. Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. Pingfan 平凡. “Zhao Hongpin de Geming Yi Sheng 赵洪品的革命一生 [Zhao Hongpin’s Revoutionary Life].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003. Plomp, Marije. “The Capital of Pulp Fiction and Other Capitals: Cultural Life in Medan, 1950- 1958.” Heirs to World Culture; Being Indonesian 1950-1965, edited by Jennifer Lindsay and Maya H.T. Liem, Brill, 2011, pp. 371–96. Poeze, Harry A. Politiek-Politioneele Overzichten van Nederlandsch-Indië: Bronnenpublikatie [Political and Policing Overviews of the Netherlands Indies]. KITLV Press, 1983. Post, Peter. “Bringing China to Java: The Oei Tiong Ham Concern and Chen Kung-Po during the Nanjing Decade.” Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 15, no. 1, Apr. 2019, pp. 33–61. Price, David H. Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology. Duke University Press, 2016. PRIMA (Badan Musyawarah Pejuang Republik Indonesia Medan Area Biro Sejarah; Historical Bureau of the Consultative Body of Fighters of the Republic of Indonesia, Medan Area). Medan Area Mengisi Proklamasi: Perjuangan Kemerdekaan Dalam Wilayah Sumatra Utara [The Medan Area Fulfills the Proclamation: The Struggle for Independence in the North Sumatra Region]. 1976. Protschky, Susie. “Burdens of Proof: Photography and Evidence of Atrocity during the Dutch Military Actions in Indonesia (1945–1950).” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-En Volkenkunde/Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, vol. 176, nos. 2–3, 2020, pp. 240–78. Putuo 普陀. “Xianda Zhonghua Xuexiao Liangci Yishou Jingguo 先达中华学校两次易手经过 [Two Handovers of the Siantar Chinese School].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 340–44. Qi Qiuping 齐秋萍. Yindunixiya Huawen Baozhi Fukan Lishi Yu Xianzhuang Zonglun 印度尼西 亚华文报纸副刊历史与现状综论 [History of Indonesian Chinese-Language Newspaper Supplements]. MA Thesis. Qian Yingcai 钱英才. Baren de Shengping Yu Chuangzuo 巴人的生平与创作 [Life and Work of Ba Ren]. Zhejiang wen yi chu ban she: Zhejiang sheng xin hua shu dian jing xiao, 1990. ———. “Bianhou Shuoming 编后说明 [Editorial Afterword].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 15, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 421–23. Qianren 千仞. Qianren Zaoqi Shiwen Xuan 千仞早期诗文选 [Early Poetry and Prose by Qianren]. Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2014. Qian, Ying. Revolutionary Becomings. Columbia University Press, 2024. Qiaozong Wenji 侨总文集 [Writings on the Qiaozong]. Unpublished Typescript, Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会. 3 vols. Raillon, François. “From politics to business: the network of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (KADIN) in Indonesia (De la politique aux affaires: le réseau des Chambres de Commerce et d’Industrie (KADIN) en Indonésie).” Archipel, no. 26, 1988, pp. 193-216. Ravando. “A ‘New Newspaper’: Sin Po and the Voices of Progressive Chinese Indonesian Nationalists, 1910-1949.” 2023. University of Melbourne, Ph.D. Dissertation. 545 === [PDF page 560] === ——— and F.X. Harsono. “Giving voice to the voiceless: ‘Sin Po’ and the Chinese massacres during the revolutionary period.” Rethinking Histories of Indonesia: Experiencing, Resisting and Renegotiating Coloniality, ANU Press, 2025, pp. 205-238. ——— (as Ravando Lie). “Now Is the Time to Kill All The Chinese! Social Revolution and the Massacre of Chinese in Tangerang, 1945–1946.” 2014. MA Thesis. Redfern, William. “Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and the Takeovers of Foreign Companies in Indonesia in the 1960s.” 2010. University of Michigan, Ph.D. Dissertation. ———. Shenghuo Bao Dashi Ji《生活报》 大事记 [Seng Hwo Pao Timeline]. Edited by Qianren 千仞 and Liang Junxiang 梁俊祥, Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2013. Yinni Shenghuobao Jinian Congshu 印尼生活报纪念丛书. Reed, Christopher A. “Advancing the (Gutenberg) Revolution: The Origins and Development of Chinese Print Communism, 1921–194.” From Woodblocks to the Internet, Brill, 2010, pp. 275–314. ———. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937. UBC Press, 2004. Reeve, David. To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham. University of Hawaii Press, 2022. ASAA Southeast Asia Publications. Reid, Anthony. The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra. Oxford University Press, 1979. Robin, Régine. Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic. Stanford University Press, 1992. Robinson, Geoffrey. The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66. Princeton University Press, 2018. Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity. Robison, Richard. Indonesia: The Rise of Capital. Equinox Publishing, 2009. Rocks, Morgan William. “Beyond the Bounds of Revolutions: Chinese in Transnational Anarchist Networks from the 1920s to the 1950s.” 2020. University of British Columbia. Ph.D. Dissertation. Roosa, John. Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto’s Coup d’état in Indonesia. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Rosidi, Ajip. “Utuy T. Sontani Memandang Sastera Sunda [Utuy T. Sontani’s Views on Sundanese Literature].” Lekra Bagian Dari PKI [Lekra, Part of the PKI], Dunia Pustaka Jaya, 2015, pp. 17–51. Roy, Srirupa. Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism. Duke University Press, 2007. Ruppin, Dafna. The Komedi Bioscoop: Early Cinema in Colonial Indonesia. John Libbey Publishing Ltd, 2016. KINtop Studies in Early Cinema, volume 4. Sai, Siew-Min. Representing the Past of Chinese Language Education: Language, History and Chinese Identities in Indonesia. 2006. University of Michigan. ———. “Becoming Chinese in the Malay World: Colonialism, Migration and History in Singapore.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, Oct. 2023, pp. 606–24. ———. “Mandarin Lessons: Modernity, Colonialism and Chinese Cultural Nationalism in the Dutch East Indies, c.1900s.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, Jul. 2016, pp. 375–94. ———. “The Nanyang Diasporic Imaginary: Chinese School Teachers in a Transborder Setting in the Dutch East Indies.” Chinese Indonesians Reassessed: History, Religion and Belonging, Routledge, 2012, pp. 45–64. Said, H. Mohammed. Sejarah pers di Sumatera Utara, dengan masyarakat yang dicerminkannya, 1885-Maret-1942 [History of the North Sumatran Press and the Society it Reflects, 1885-March 1943]. Waspada, 1976. ———. “What Was the ‘Social Revolution of 1946’ in East Sumatra?” Indonesia, vol. 15, Apr. 1973, p. 144. Saleh Umar. “Dao Wu Xiliu 悼吴锡柳[Mourning Go Sek Liu].” Wang Buliao de Suiyue 忘不了 的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., 世界知识出版 社, 2003, pp. 479–83. ———. “Mengembangkan Titik-Titik Pertemuan [Cultivating Points of Encounter].” Perkenalan Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Tiongkok [Introduction to the Indonesia-China 546 === [PDF page 561] === Friendship Society], Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia-Tiongkok, 1956, pp. 12–13. ——— (as Surapati 苏拉巴蒂). “Huangjin Shidai de Rili 黄金时代的日里 [Deli’s Golden Age].” Wo Fangfu Zai Mengzhong 我仿佛在梦中 [Like a Dream], translated by Wang Jinding 汪金丁, Wenlian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 563–65.Salmon, Claudine. “Blood under the Coconut Trees: A Radical View of the Dutch Indies, 1929.” Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, Jun. 1988, pp. 94–114. ———. “The Chinese Community of Surabaya, from Its Origins to the 1930s.” Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, translated by Helen M. Reid, vol. 3, first published 1997, 2009, pp. 22–60. “Saleh Umar.” Encyclopedia of Indonesia during the Pacific War, Brill, 2010, pp. 582–84. Salmon, Claudine. "Blood under the Coconut Trees: A Radical View of the. Dutch Indies (1929)". Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 22, no. 1. ———. Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: A Provisional Annotated Bibliography. Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1981. Etudes Insulindiennes-Archipel 3. ———. “The Chinese Community of Surabaya, from its Origins to the 1930s Crisis.” Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 南方华裔研究杂志, vol. 3, 2009. Sardjono Sigit. Asimilasi Pendidikan [Educational Assimilation]. Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 1990. Scherer, Savitra Prastiti. From Culture to Politics: The Writings of Pramoedya A. Toer, 1950- 1965. Komunitas Bambu, 2019. Schmid, Wolf. Implied Reader. The living handbook of narratology. 2013, www-archiv.fdm.unihamburg.de/lhn/node/59.html. ———. “Narratee.” The Living Handbook of Narratology, 2013, www-archiv.fdm.unihamburg.de/lhn/node/60.html. Seng, Guo-Quan. “Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism and Its Limits: The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese in Singapore, Medan and Jakarta Compared (1945–1949).” Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1–30. ———. Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia. Cornell University Press, 2023. ———. The Origins of the Socialist Revolution in Sarawak, 1945-1963. 2008. MA Thesis. Setijadi-Dunn, Charlotte, and Thomas Barker. “Imagining ‘Indonesia’: Ethnic Chinese Film Producers in Pre-Independence Cinema.” Asian Cinema, vol. 21, no. 2, 2010, pp. 25–47. Setyautama, Sam. Tokoh-Tokoh Etnis Tionghoa Di Indonesia. Gramedia, 2008. Shananyou 沙南友. “Zai Riben Faxisi Jianyu Li 在日本法西斯监狱里 [In a Japanese Fascist Prison].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 35–44. Shaping 莎萍. Dengdai: Shaping Shiwen Xuan 等待: 莎萍诗文选 [Waiting: Selected Poetry and Prose by Shaping]. Yinhua Zuoxie, 2002. Shen Zijiu 沈兹九. “Liuwang Zai Chidaoxian Shang 流亡在赤道线上 [Exile on the Equator].” Liuwang Zai Chidaoxian Shang 流亡在赤道线上 [Exile on the Equator], Sanlian Shudian, 1985, pp. 1–40. Shen Zijiu 沈兹九 and Hu Yuzhi 胡愈之. Liuwang Zai Chidaoxian Shang 流亡在赤道线上 [Exile on the Equator]. Sanlian Shudian, 1985. Sherman, Beth. “Beyond the Madwoman in the Attic: Representations of Female Madness in Victorian Popular Literature.” 2024. City University of New York, Ph.D. Dissertation. Shi, Flair Donglai. “Reconsidering Sinophone Studies: The Chinese Cold War, Multiple Sinocentrisms, and Theoretical Generalisation.” International Journal of Taiwan Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, Mar. 2021, pp. 311–44. Shifen 史芬. “Nanbang Yingpan Cun Shange 南榜营盘村山歌 [Mountain Songs from Villages near Jebus].” Seng Hwo Weekly, 17 Oct. 1964, p. 7. Shih, Shu-Mei. “Race and Relation: The Global Sixties in the South of the South.” Comparative Literature, vol. 68, no. 2, Jun. 2016, pp. 141–54. Show, Ying Xin. “Gendering Chinese Diaspora: New Women’s Monthly and Transnational Sisterhood in Postwar Malaya.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, Oct. 2023, pp. 547 === [PDF page 562] === 625–42. ——— 苏颖欣. “Lunzhan, xianshi yu mahua geming wenxue: Jin Zhimang de “cishi cidi” shijian 论战、现实与麻花革命文学：金枝芒的＂此时此地“实践 [Polemic, Reality and Chinese Malayan Revolutionary Literature: Jin Zhimang and His Practice of ‘Here and Now’].” ROUTER: A Journal of Cultural Studies 文化研究, no. 32, Apr. 2021. Siauw Giok Tjhan 萧玉灿. Siauw Giok Tjhan Remembers: A Chinese Peranakan in Independent Indonesia. Edited by Peter Burns, James Cook University, 1984. Siauw, Tiong Djin. “Perjalanan Politik Siauw Giok Tjhan [Siauw Giok Tjhan’s Political Journey].” Unpublished. ———. Siauw Giok Tjhan: Bicultural Leader in Emerging Indonesia. Monash University Publishing, 2018. Sidek, Khatijah, and Wan Hashim. Memoir Khatijah Sidek, Puteri Kesateria Bangsa [Memoir of Khatijah Sidek, Warrior Woman of the Nation]. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1995. Siegelberg, Mira L. Statelessness: A Modern History. Harvard University Press, 2020. Siegert, Bernhard. Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System. Stanford University Press, 1999. Sin Po Jubileum Nummer 1910-1935. Sin Po, 1935. Sima Wensen 司马文森 (Lyrics) and Ma Ke 马可 (Music). Zhongguo Yindunixiya Youyi Zhi Ge 中国印度尼西亚友谊之歌 [Song of Chinese-Indonesia Friendship]. Yinyue chubanshe. Sima Xiaoxin 司马小莘. “Sujianuo Zongtong Canghua Ji de Gushi《苏加诺总统藏画集》的故 事 [The Story of the Catalogue of the Collection of President Sukarno].” Zhonghua Dushu Bao 中华读书报, 27 Oct. 2010, p. 5. ———. “Wenhua Waijiao Zhi Youhao Laiwang Jiyi 文化外交之友好往来记忆.” Waijiaoguan Shuo Shier 外交官说事儿, 14 Jan. 2022, user.guancha.cn/main/content?id=676856. Simpson, Bradley R. Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U. S. -Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968. Stanford University Press, 2008. Sjahrir, Sutan, “Wenyi yu dazhong 文艺与大众 [Literature and the Masses/Kesusasteraan dan Rakyat],” translated by Wang Jinding 汪金丁. Kangzhan wenxue ji qita 抗战文学及其他 [Resistance Literature and Other Works], by Wang Jinding, 2017, pp. 453–60. Skinner, G. William. “Java’s Chinese Minority: Continuity and Change.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 20, no. 3, May 1961, pp. 353–62. ———. “Communism and Chinese Culture in Indonesia: The Political Dynamics of Overseas Chinese Youth.” Unpublished Typescript. 1962. Cornell University Rare Books and Manuscripts Center, G.W. Skinner Archive, Box 7, Folders 30-33. ———. “Preliminary Report on Results of the Questionnaire given to Jakarta High-School Seniors in April 1957.” 1958. Cornell University Rare Books and Manuscripts Center, G.W. Skinner Archive, Box 7, Folders 30-33. ———. Report on the Overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia. Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1950. ———. “The Chinese Minority.” Indonesia, edited by Ruth T. McVey, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1963. ——— et al. Rural China on the Eve of Revolution: Sichuan Fieldnotes, 1949-1950. University of Washington Press, 2017. Steedly, Mary Margaret. Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence. Univ of California Press, 2013. Stenberg, Josh. “Diverse Fragility, Fragile Diversity: Sinophone Writing in the Philippines and Indonesia.” Asian Ethnicity, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 59–77. ———. “Ethnic Loyalty versus Spring Fancy: Gender and Southeast Asia in Hei Ying’s Fiction.” PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, vol. 19, no. 2, 2022, pp. 474– 90. ———. Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display. University of Hawaii Press, 2019. ———. “North across the Southern Seas: Cold War Chinese Careers of Indonesian Songs.” 548 === [PDF page 563] === Chineseness and the Cold War, Routledge, 2021, pp. 135–50. ———. “Under the Red-and-White Flag: Elective Chineseness and Socialist Realism in Hei Ying’s Jakarta.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, Oct. 2023, pp. 694–707. ———, and Budiman Minasny. “Coolie Legend on the Deli Plantation: Tale, Text, and Temple of the Five Ancestors.” Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, vol. 178, nos. 2–3, Jun. 2022, pp. 159–91. Stevens, Jacqueline. “Introduction.” Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness, Duke University Press, 2017. Stoler, Ann Laura. Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870-1979. 2nd ed., with A new preface, University of Michigan Press, 1995. ———. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Univ of California Press, 2010. ———. “Working the Revolution: Plantation Laborers and the People’s Militia in North Sumatra.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 1988, pp. 227–47. Stolte, Carolien, and Su Lin Lewis, editors. The Lives Of Cold War Afro-Asianism. Leiden University Press, 2022. Strassler, Karen. Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia. Duke University Press, 2020. ———. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java. Duke University Press, 2010. Subijanto, Rianne. Communication Against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia. Cornell University Press. Sukarno. “Deklarasi Ekonomi.” Dekon Dalam Ujian, Yayasan Pembaruan, 1963, www.marxists.org/indonesia/indones/1963-Dekon.htm. ———. Di Bawah Bendera Revolusi [Under the Flag of Revolution]. Banana Books, 2016. Suparna. “Buyung Saleh: Trade Unionist and Writer.” Inside Indonesia, no. 22, Mar. 1990, pp. 12–13. Sun Shengwu 孙绳武. “Yongcun wo de xin 永存我的心 [Forever in my Heart].” Wo yu Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe 我与人民文学出版社 [People’s Literature and I], Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2001, pp. 97–103. Suryadinata, Leo. Culture of the Chinese Minority. Marshall Cavendish International, 1997. ———. Peranakan Chinese Politics in Java. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1976. ———. The Orientation of Chinese Newspapers in Indonesia as China Rises. ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute Singapore, 2023. ——— 廖建裕. Xian Jieduan de Yinni Huaren Zuqun 现阶段的印尼华人族群 [The Chinese Ethnic Group at Present]. National University of Singapore Department of Chinese Studies, 2002. Sutter, John O. Indonesianisasi; Politics in a Changing Economy, 1940-1955. 1959. Suzuki, Masao, and Zhensheng Li. Sumendala de Yu Dafu 苏门答腊的郁达夫 [Yu Dafu in Sumatra]. 1st ed., Shanghai yuan dong chu ban she, 1996. Tan, Li Wen Jessica. “Unfinished Revolutions: Wei Beihua, Chairil Anwar, and the Limits of Realism of Postwar Mahua Literature.” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, vol. 18, no. 2, 2021, pp. 479–500. Tan, Mely G. The Chinese of Sukabumi. 2nd ed., Springer Nature Singapore, 2025. Engaging Indonesia. Taylor, Jeremy E., and Lanjun Xu. Chineseness and the Cold War. Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2022. Teeuw, Andries. Modern Indonesian Literature. KITLV Press, 1967. Thee, Kian Wie. Indonesia’s Economy since Independence. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012. Tjukrono, Paulus. Wo zai subei baoye duguo de rizi 我在苏北报业度过的日子 [My Days in the North Sumatran Press]. 7 Dec. 2022, huawenindonesia.com/wozaisubeibaoyeduguoderizi. 549 === [PDF page 564] === Toer, Pramoedya Ananta. The Chinese in Indonesia. Translated by Max Lane, Select Publications, 2007. Tornquist, Olle. Dilemmas of Third World Communism The Destruction of the PKI in Indonesia. Zed Books, 1985. Torpey, John C. The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2018. Tsai Yen-Ling. “Materializing Racial Formation: The Social Lives of Confiscated Chinese Properties in North Sumatra.” Chinese Indonesians Reassessed, Routledge, 2012, pp. 83– 102. ———. “Spaces of Exclusion, Walls of Intimacy: Rethinking ‘Chinese Exclusivity’ in Indonesia.” Indonesia, no. 92, 2011, p. 125. Tsu, Jing, and David Der-wei Wang, editors. Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays. Brill, 2010. Chinese Overseas: History, Literature, and Society, v. 3. Twang, Peck Yang. The Chinese Business Elite in Indonesia and the Transition to Independence, 1940-1950. Oxford University Press, USA, 1998. Umar Saleh (吴志曼). Wu Zhiman Wenji 吴志曼文集 [Writings by Umar Saleh]. Harian Baru, 2021. 2 vols. Ungar, E. S. “The Struggle over the Chinese Community in Vietnam, 1946-1986.” Pacific Affairs, 1987, pp. 596–614. Utrecht, Ernst. “American Sociologists on Indonesia.” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Jan. 1973. van der Veer, Anne. Conciliation or Confrontation: Chinese Responses to Anti-Chinese Violence in North Sumatra during the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1949. Seminar Series in Humanities and Social Sciences. International Seminar: Conflict and Violences. ———. “Navigating Contested Middle Ground. Ethnic Chinese in Revolutionary East Sumatra, 1945-1950.” Revolutionary Worlds: Local Perspectives and Dynamics during the Indonesian Independence War, 1945-1949, Amsterdam University Press, 2023, pp. 339– 54. Van Langenberg, Michael John. “National Revolution in North Sumatra: Sumatera Timur and Topanuli,” 1942-1950. 1976. University of Sydney, Ph.D. Dissertation. Vanhove, Pieter. World Literature After Empire: Rethinking Universality in the Long Cold War. Routledge, 2021. Wahr, Roderick C. “Housekeeper, Concubine, Mother: An Exploration of the Njai in the Dutch East Indies.” The Indo Project, 12 Nov. 2024, www.theindoproject.org/housekeeperconcubine-mother-an-exploration-of-the-nyai-in-the-dutch-east-indies/. Wang Hanping 王汉平. “Yongyuan Zai Shijieyu Yundong de Qianlie—Ji Zhongguo Baodao Qian Zong Bianji Zhang Qicheng 永远站在世界语运动的前列——记《 中国报道》 前总编辑张企程 [Forever at the Forefront of the Esperanto Movement: Remembering Former Editor of China Report, Zhang Qicheng].” Duiwai Chuanbo 对外传播, no. 5, 1995, pp. 9–10. Wang Jiasheng 王家声. “Dongdang Suiyue Liuhen 动荡岁月留痕 [Traces of the Years of Tumult].” Wang Buliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 356–61. Wang Jinding 汪金丁. “He Hu Yuzhi Zai Nanyang de Shihou 和胡愈之在南洋的时候 [When I Was in Nanyang with Hu Yuzhi].” Wo Fangfu Zai Mengzhong 我仿佛在梦中 [Like a Dream], Wenlian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 383–410. ———. “Huangwu de Yuandi 荒芜的园地 [A Barren Garden].” Wo Fangfu Zai Mengzhong 我 仿佛在梦中 [Like a Dream], Wenlian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 256–59. ———. “Lu Hai Meiyou Zou Wan 路还没有走完 [The Road Is Not Finished].” Wo Fangfu Zai Mengzhong 我仿佛在梦中 [Like a Dream], Wenlian chubanshe, 2003, pp. 310–30. ———. “Guanyu Yinni xiaoshuo 关于印尼小说.” Women de qi 我们的旗 [Our Flag], edited by Yuemao Zhao, Wenlian chubanshe, 2011, pp. 289–90. ———. Women de qi 我们的旗 [Our Flag]. Edited by Yuemao Zhao, Wenlian chubanshe, 2011. ———. “Yindunixiya wenxue 印度尼西亚文学 [Indonesian Literature].” “Kangzhan 550 === [PDF page 565] === wenxue” ji qita “抗战文学”及其他 ["Resistance Literature" and Other Writings], Wenlian chubanshe, 2017, pp. 408–10. Wang Qianyu (王谦宇). Chidao Xian Shang 赤道线上 [On the Equator], Dadao chubanshe 大 道出版社, 2008. Wang, Siwei. “New Storm from Latin America: Staging Cuban Revolution in Socialist China.” 2025. Columbia University, Ph.D. Dissertation. Wang Tiexian 王铁仙. “Lun Baren de ‘Lun Renqing’ 论巴人的《论人情》[On Baren’s ’On Human Nature’].” Shanghai Lu Xun Jinian Guan 上海鲁迅纪念馆 [Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall], edited by Shanghai Lu Xun jinian guan 上海鲁迅纪念馆 [Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall], Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2001, pp. 242–53. Wang, Yalan, and Haitao Liu. “From Planned Language to Language Planning: Esperantists’ Activities in China in 1911–1958.” Language Problems and Language Planning, vol. 41, no. 3, Dec. 2017, pp. 265–86. Wang Yamei 汪雅梅. “Gensui Hu Yuzhi bobo Nanyang taonan 跟随胡愈之伯伯南洋逃难 [Floating in the South Seas with Uncle Hu Yuzhi].” Women de qi 我们的旗 [Our Flag], Wenlian chubanshe, 2011, pp. 398–405. Jinding wenji 金丁文集 [Works by Jinding]. Watson, Conrad William. Of Self and Nation: Autobiography and the Representation of Modern Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press, 2000. Watson, Jini Kim. “Cold War Reckonings.” Cold War Reckonings, Fordham University Press, 2021. Wei Yushan 魏玉山. “Xin Zhongguo Wenxue Chuban Yu Yuedu 新中国文学出版与阅读 [Literary Publishing and Reading in New China].” Bianji Zhi You 编辑之友 [Editorial Friend], no. 4, 2021, pp. 5–18. Wen Dianyu 温典育. “Biekai Shengmian de Xidao Shihua Censhu Chahua Hui 别开生面的 《锡岛史话》赠书茶话会 [A Book Talk for the Fascinating ‘History of Tin Island’].” Huazhong Garden 华中园地, vol. 72, 12 Mar. 2015, pp. 75–76. Wen Peor 温悲鸥. Guxiang Yu Di Er Guxiang 故鄉與第二故鄉 [Hometown and Second Hometown]. Guangdong huayuan 廣東畫院, 2001. Wilcox, Emily. “Performing Bandung: China’s Dance Diplomacy with India, Indonesia, and Burma, 1953–1962.” Inter-Asia in Motion, Routledge, 2023. Williams, Lea E. Overseas Chinese Nationalism: The Genesis of the Pan-Chinese Movement in Indonesia, 1900-1916. Free Press, 1960. Williams, Raymond. Modern Tragedy. Random House, 1966. Willmott, Donald E. The National Status of the Chinese in Indonesia 1900-1958. Ebook, Equinox Publishing, 1961. Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. Kittler and the Media. Polity, 2011. Woloch, Alex. The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton University Press, 2009. Wong, Cynthia Sau-ling. “Generational Effects in Racialization: Representations of African Americans in Sinophone Chinese American Literature.” Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by Shu-mei Shih, Columbia University Press, 2013, pp. 375–84. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Chinese American Literature.” An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, 1997, pp. 39–61. ———. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton University Press, 1993. Wong Yoon-wah 王润华. Yuejie Kuaguo 越界跨国 [Crossing Boundaries]. Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2017. Wongsurawat, Wasana. The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation. University of Washington Press, 2019. Woolgar, Matthew. Communism, Cold War, and Revolution: The Indonesian Communist Party in West Java, 1949-1966. Oxford University Press, 2025. Wu Fusheng 吴馥生. “Subei Huaren Nongmin de Guoqu He Xianzai 苏北华人农民的过去和现 在 [The Past and Present of Chinese Peasants of North Sumatra].” Yinni Subei Huaqiao Cangsang Suiyue 印尼苏北华侨沧桑岁月 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra 551 === [PDF page 566] === in Indonesia], vol. 1, 2015. Wu Liusi 吴柳斯. “Jinian Yu Dafu Xiansheng 纪念郁达夫先生 [Remembering Mr. Yu Dafu].” Yu Dafu Jinian Ji 郁达夫纪念集 [Yu Dafu Memorial Volume], edited by Li Bingren 李 冰人 and Xie Yunsheng 谢云声, Nanyang redai chubanshe 南洋热带出版社, 1958. Wu Qiao’e 吴巧娥. “Wo de Dage Wu Xiliu 我的大哥吴锡柳 [My Big Brother Wu Xiliu].” Wang Buliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 488–93. Wu Shusheng 吴书生. “Daqi Zhongyin Yuyan Qiaoliang de Fanyi 搭起中印语言桥梁的翻译 [The Translators Who Built a Bridge between Indonesian and Chinese].” Unforgettable Years 忘不了的岁月, edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003. Wu Yiqi 吴奕錡. “Yinni Huawen Wenxue Lishi Fazhan Shulüe 印尼华文文学历史发展述略 [Summary of the Historical Development of Indonesian Chinese-Language Literature].” Guangdong Shehui Kexue 广东社会科学, no. 4, 2000, pp. 141–45. Xia Jing 夏菁. Zhongguo Xiandai Zuojia de Nanyang Shuxie Yanjiu 中国现代作家的南洋书写 研究 [Studies of Modern Chinese Authors’ South Seas Writings]. Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2015. “Xiangqi Wuma’er: Yi ge qinhua yinni ‘Gaogan’ de chuanqi yu luopo 想起乌玛尔：一个亲华 印尼‘高干’的传奇与落魄.” Yinni toutiao 印尼头条 [Indonesian Headlines], 12 May 2019, id.toutiaosg.com/想起乌玛尔：一个亲华印尼高干的传奇与落魄/. Xie Huaidan 谢怀丹. Suiyue Jihen: Yi Ge Mosike Zhongshan Daxue Nüxuesheng de Huiyilu 岁 月屐痕 一个莫斯科中山大学女生的回忆 [Footprints: Memoirs of a Student from Moscow’s Sun Yat-Sen University]. Fujian renmin 福建人民, 1990. ——— (writing as Xie Fang 谢芳). “Wo Duiyu Huaqiao ‘Youzhi Jiaoyu’ de Yidian Yijian 我对 于华侨ʺ幼稚教育ʺ的一点意见 [My Views on Overseas Chinese ‘Juvenile Education’].” Peishan Zhi Nian Zhou Nian 培善之廿周年 [Peishan 20th Anniversary], Peishan xuexiao 培善学校, 1932, pp. 84–87. CNBKSY, G749.342. ———. “Xuesheng Yingfou You Zizhi Zuzhi 学生应否有自治组织? (Should Students Have Autonomous Organizations?).” Peishan Zhi Nian Zhou Nian 培善之廿周年 [Peishan 20th Anniversary], Peishan xuexiao 培善学校, 1932, pp. 103–04. CNBKSY, G749.342. Xie, Kankan. Estranged Comrades. 2018. UC Berkeley, Ph.D. Dissertation. ———. “Polyglot Networks: Overseas Chinese Returnees and the Establishment of Indonesian Language Programs in China, 1945–1965.” China Review, vol. 25, no. 2, 2025, pp. 121– 50. Xie, Yun. “Dutch Adoption of Hong Kong Typefaces.” Hong Kong University. Chinese Mining in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong University. Xie Zhishan 谢志善. “Huiyi Zai Bangjia de Zhengrong Suiyue 回忆在邦加的峥嵘岁月 [Remembering the Glory Years of Bangka].” Hunqian Mengrao de Guxiang 魂牵梦绕的 故乡 [Dreamy Hometown], Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2004, pp. 623–33. Xu Anru 徐安如. “Wang Renshu Yu Qi Wuzumiao 王任叔与其《五组庙》[Wang Renshu and His Temple of Five Ancestors].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 484–92. ———. “Huiyi yuenan Huaqiao de aiguo jiuwang yundong 回忆越南华侨的爱国救亡运动 [Remembering the national salvation movement of Overseas Chinese in Vietnam]. Zhongguo Qiaolian gongzuo 中国侨联工作. 2019, no. 4 (no. 464). Xu, Lanjun. “Contested Chineseness and Third Sister Liu in Singapore and Hong Kong: Folk Songs, Landscape, and Cold War Politics in Asia.” The Cold War and Asian Cinemas, Routledge, 2019, pp. 73–92. ———. “The Southern Film Corporation, Opera Films and the PRC’s Cultural Diplomacy in Cold War Asia, 1950s–1960s 1.” Chineseness and the Cold War, Routledge, 2021, pp. 25–44. Xu Qiongling 许琼玲. Fengyu Nanyang Wei Liao Qing 风雨南洋未了情 [Storms in the South Sea]. Zuojia, 2011. ———. “Song Zhongquan Shengping Jianjie 宋中铨生平简介 [Biography of Song Zhongquan].” Qiaozong Wenji 侨总文集 [Writings on the Qiaozong], Unpublished 552 === [PDF page 567] === Typescript, vol. 3, Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, pp. 582–85. ———. Yezi Shu Xia de Gushi 椰子树下的故事 [Stories Under the Coconut Tree]. ——— (writing as Lu Manghan 鲁莽汉). “Yiguo de Pengyou 异国朋友 [A Foreign Friend].” Yinhua Wenyi Pinglun Ji 印华文艺评论集 [Yinhua Literary Criticism], vol. 1, Jadeite Cultural Foundation, 1965, pp. 7–21. ———. “Chongfeng 重逢 [Reunion].” Fengyu Nanyang Wei Liao Qing 风雨南洋未了情 [Storms in the South Sea], Zuojia chubanshe, 2011, pp. 221–35. Xu Younian (许友年). “Nanwang de Jiyi 难忘的记忆 [Unforgettable Memories].” Shenghuobao de Huiyi 生活报的回忆 [Memories of Seng Hwo Pao], edited by Qian Ren (千仞) and Liang Junxiang (梁俊祥), Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, pp. 64–67. Xuesheng Xizuo Xuan 学生习作选 [Selected Student Works]. Vol. 1, Feicui wenhua jijinhui 翡 翠文化基金会 Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud [Jadeite Cultural Foundation], 1964. Yahya, Yunus, editor. Lahirnya Konsepsi Asimilasi (Birth of the Concept of Assimilation). Yayasan Tunas Bangsa, 1989. Yamamoto, Nobuto. Censorship in Colonial Indonesia, 1901-1942. Brill, 2019. Yan Min 颜敏. Huawen Wenxue de Kuayujing Chuanbo Yanjiu 华文文学的跨语境传播研究 [Communications Studies and Sinographic Literature]. Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2021. ———. “Shiyi Xiangcun Yu Dushi Kunzhe—20 Shiji 70 Niandai Yihou Yinni Huwen Wenxue Zhong de Yizu Xiangxiang 诗意乡村与都市困者——20世纪70年代以后印尼华文文 学中的异族想像 [The Poetic Village and the Urban Prisoner—The Imaginary of the Ethnic Other in Post-1970s Yinhua Literature].” Huawen Wenxue 华文文学, no. 82, May 2007, pp. 79–82. ———. Xiandai Zhongguo Zuojia de Nanyang Xushi 现代中国作家的南洋叙事 [Modern Chinese Authors’ Nanyang Narration]. Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Yan Weizhen 严唯真. Yan Weizhen Shiwen Xuan 严唯真诗文选 [Selected Poems and Writings by Yan Weizhen]. With Li Qing 犁青. Yang Guojian 杨国坚. “Huiyi Zai Gelayadan Ribao Yu Zhang Xishi Xiangchu de Rizi 回忆在 《格腊亚丹报》与张希石相处的日子 [Remembering Working Zhang Xishi in Kerakjatan].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 445–48. Yang Hui 杨慧. “1930 Niandai Hushang Wentan Dute de ‘Xin Ganjue’—Nanyang Huaqiao Zuojia Heiying de ‘Xiangchou’ Shuxie 1930年代沪上文坛独特的‘新感觉’——南洋华 侨作家黑婴的‘乡愁’书写.” Journal of Sichuan University (Social Science Edition), no. 196, 2015. Yang Mu 杨慕. “Yinni Duli Xianfeng—Zhang Xishi Xiansheng 印尼独立先锋—张希石先生 [A Pioneer of Indonesian Independence: Mr. Zhang Xishi].” Yinni Subei Huaqiao Cangsang Suiyue 印尼苏北华侨沧桑岁月 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra in Indonesia], vol. 2, 2015, pp. 589–97. Yang Qiusheng 杨秋生. “Tuanjie Zhaowa Huaqiao Aiguo Minzhu Renshi de Dazhong Maoyi Youxian Gongsi 团结爪哇华侨爱国民主人士的大中贸易有限公 [Dazhong Trading Company and the Unification of Java’s Overseas Chinese Patriotic Democrats].” Shenghuo Bao de Huiyi 生活报的回忆 [Memories of Seng Hwo Pao], Life Cultural Foundation (生活文化基金会), pp. 61–65. Yang Yi 杨怡. Cong Xinhua Wentan Lun Ji Yinhua Wenxue 从新华文坛论及印华文学 (Chinese-Indonesian Literature from the Perspective of Chinese-Singaporean Literature). Xinjiapo wenyi xiehui, 2003. ———. “Yindunixiya Huawen Xinwenxue 印度尼西亚华文新文学 [Chinese-Language New Literature of Indonesia].” Dongnanya Huawen Xinwenxue Shi 东南亚华文新文学 [Chinese-Language New Literature of Southeast Asia], edited by Zhuang Zhongqing 庄 钟庆 et al., Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 2007. Yeap Chong Leng 叶钟铃. “Tan Kah Kee’s Changing Attitudes Towards the Malayan Communist Party / 陈嘉庚对马共态度的转移：从‘若即若离’到公开冲突.” Asian Culture (亚洲文化), no. 28, Jun. 2004. 553 === [PDF page 568] === Yeziji: Nanyang Ribao Liu Zhounian Jinian Tekan 椰子集—南洋日报六周年纪念特刊 [Coconuts: Nanyang Daily Sixth Anniversary Special Edition]. Nanyang ribao guan 南洋 日报馆, 1927. “Yin liu shou Mao Zhuxi shici bei guan de yi ben zhuming kanwu因六首毛主席诗词被关停的 一本著名刊物 [A Renowned Periodical Closed because of Six Poems by Chairman Mao].” 15 Sep. 2021, www.xinjiapo.news/news/151669. Yindunixiya Duanpian Xiaoshuo Ji 印度尼西亚短篇小说集 [Indonesian Short Stories]. Yayasan Kebudayaan Sadar (觉醒文化基金会), 1960. Yinni Subei Huaqiao Cangsang Suiyue Xuji 印尼苏北华侨沧桑岁月续集 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra in Indonesia Supplement]. Yinni Subei huaqiao huaren lishi huishe 印尼苏北华侨华人历史会社, 2018. Yong, Ching Fatt. Tan Kah-Kee: The Making of an Overseas Chinese Legend. World Scientific, 2014. Yoon, Duncan M. China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century African Literature. 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 2023. Yoon, Duncan McEachern. Cold War Africa and China. 2014. UCLA, Ph.D. Dissertation. Yu Dafu 郁达夫. Yu Dafu Shici Jianzhu 郁达夫诗词笺注. Edited by Zhan Yayuan 詹亚园, Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006. Yu Mei-ling 余美玲. “Shiren zai Nanyang: Lin Jingren ‘Modashan mancao,’ ‘Tian chi cao’ tanxi 诗人在南洋：林景仁《摩达山漫草》、《天池草》探析 [A Poet in Nanyang: Analysis of ‘Voyage to Brastagi’ and ‘Lake Toba’ ].” Taiwan wenxue yanjiu xuebao 台 湾文学研究学报, no. 24, Apr. 2017, pp. 199–243. ———. “Daoyan 导言 [Introduction].” Lin Jingren Ji 林景仁集, by Lin Jingren 林景仁, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, 2013. Yuan Ni 袁霓. “Lao Zuojia Huang Dongping Zai Chuang 老作家黄东平重病在床 [Elder Writer Huang Dongping in His Bed].” Yinhua Zuoxie 印华作协网, n.d., https://www.yinhuazuoxie.com/lingdao/laozuojiahuangdongping.html. “Yuanzai Bangjia de Xikuang Gongren Chen Fuxing Bochi ‘Huaqiao Jingji Shi Zhiminzhuyi Jingji Canyu’ de Miulun 原在邦加的锡矿工人陈福兴驳斥‘华侨经济是殖民主义经济 残余’的谬论 [Former Bangka Tin Miner Chen Fuxing Refutes the Absurd Thesis That ‘The Overseas Chinese Economy Is a Vestige of the Colonial Economy.’].” Fandui Yinni Paihua de Douzheng Gaojian Xuanji Di Er Ji 反对印尼排华的斗争稿件选辑第二集 [Selected Materials for the Struggle Against Chinese Exclusion in Indonesia, Volume 2], China News Agency (中国新闻社), 1960, pp. 29–30. Yuliantri, Rhoma Dwi Aria, and Muhidin M. Dahlan, editors. Gugur Merah [Red Autumn]. Merakesumba, 2008. ———, editors. Laporan Dari Bawah: Sehimpunan Cerita Pendek Lekra: Harian Rakjat, 1950- 1965. Merakesumba, 2008. ———, editors. Lekra Tak Membakar Buku: Suara Senyap Lembar Kebudayaan Harian Rakjat, 1950-1965. Merakesumba, 2008. Zeng Aishan 曾爱善. “Liuwang Yinni Shisan Nian 流亡印尼十三年 [13 Years of Exile in Indonesia].” Langjian Zhumeng 浪尖逐梦 [Chasing Dreams on Cresting Waves], by Eu Chooi Yip 余柱业, edited by CC Chin 陈剑, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2006. Zhang Chaoqun 张超群. “Fenzhan Zai Haiwai de Kangri Nü Yingxiong Lei Derong 奋战在海 外的抗日女英雄雷德容 [Lei Derong, A Resistance Heroine of the Struggle Overseas].” Wenshi Yuekan 文史月刊, no. 5, 2005. Zhang Chukun 张楚琨. Zhang Chukun Shiwen Xuan 张楚琨诗文选 [Selected Poetry and Writing by Zhang Chukun]. Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1994. Zhang Dayong 张大永. “Tongyan kan Xianda 童眼看先达 [Siantar in a Child’s Eyes].” Yinni subei huaqiao cangsang suiyue 印尼苏北华侨沧桑岁月 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra in Indonesia], edited by North Sumatran Chinese Historical Society 印尼 苏北华侨华人历史会社, vol. 1, 2015, pp. 123–31. ——— (writing as Zhang Taiyong 张泰永). “Dixia Hangxian Jiemi 地下航线解密 [Secret 554 === [PDF page 569] === Underground Route Revealed].” Shenmai Xinzhong de Mimi: Xinjiapo Yu Pinlangyu de Gushi 深埋心中的秘密: 新加坡与槟榔屿的故事 [Secret Buried in the Heart: Stories of Singapore and Penang], 21 shiji chubanshe 21, 2008, available on www.wyzxwk.com/content.php?classid=21&id=340836. ——— (writing as 张泰泉). “Xiao Yucan Yu ‘Jiaoxing’ 萧玉灿与’觉醒’ [Siauw Giok Tjhan and ’Chiao Hsing’].” Xiao Yucan Bainian Danchen Jinian Wenji 萧玉灿百年诞辰纪念 文集 [Writings in Commemoration of the 100 Year Anniversary of the Birth of Siauw Giok Tjhan], Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui, 2014, pp. 134–70. Zhang, Jianqiao. “From Fantaisie to Histoire: Applying an “Alsatian Lesson” to China.” 2023, University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. Dissertation. Zhang Qicheng 张企程. Yindunixiya Minge Xuan 印度尼西亚民歌选 [Selected Indonesian Folksongs]. Zuojia chubanshe, 1956. Zhang Songjian 张松建. “Hei Ying’s Left Wing Heart: Indonesia, China ＆ the Cultural Cold War 黑婴的左翼之心：印尼、中国与文化冷战.” 汉语言文学研究, vol. 13, no. 04, 2022, pp. 77–89. Zhang, Yingjin. The Texture of the Metropolis: Modernist Inscriptions of Shanghai in the 1930s. pp. 152–73. Zhang, Zhen. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Zhao Rong 赵戎, editor. Xinma Huawen Wenxue Daxi Di Ba Ji: Shiliao 新马华文文学大系第 八集：史料 [Compendium of Singaporean-Malaysian New Literature Vol. 8: Historical Materials]. 1971. Zheng Guanghuang 郑光煌. “Ji Chen Wenying Aiguo Shi Yi Sheng 记陈文营爱国是一生 [Remembering Chen Wenying’s Patriotic Life].” Harian Baru 新报 [Jakarta], pp. 15–16. Zheng Guanghuang 郑光煌 and Zhang Hao 张浩. “Mianlan Huaqiao Zhongxue 棉兰华侨中学 [Medan Chinese Middle School].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 513– 15. Zheng Jinhua (郑金华). “Jin Gui Xu 金龟婿 [The Golden Turtle Son-in-Law].” Yinhua Wenyi Pinglun Ji Di Er Ji 印华文艺评论集第二辑 [Yinhua Literary Criticism Part 1], by Huang Yurong (黄裕荣; writing as Pizi (啤子), Xiao Feng (小峰)), vol. 2, Jadeite Cultural Foundation (Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud), 1965. Zheng Ping 郑平. “Yinhua Shiren Roumiou Zheng 70 Niandai Shige Chuangzuo Qianxi 印华诗 人柔密欧·郑70年代诗歌创作浅析 [Analysis of Yinhua Poet Romeo Zheng’s 1970s Poetic Work].” Zheng Tufei 郑吐飞. Yezi Ji 椰子集 [Coconuts]. Zhenmeishan shudian 真美善书店, 1929. Zheng Xiaoxun 郑效洵. “Zuichu Shinian Jian de Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe—Yi Feng Xuefeng, Wang Renshu Tongzhi 最初十年间的人民文学出版社——忆冯雪峰、王任 叔同志 [The First Ten Years of People’s Literature Publishing House꞉ Remembering Comrades Feng Xuefeng and Wang Renshu].” Xin Wenxue Shiliao 新文学史料, no. 1, 1991, pp. 214–19. Zheng Yuanxin 郑原心. “Subei Huazu Wenhua Wushi Nian 苏北华族文化五十年 [Fifty Years of Chinese Culture in North Sumatra].” Wenyi zhi you 文艺之友, 7 Aug. 2008, https://blog.udn.com/FOWNLP/2110651. Zhongling Xiaokan Chuang Kan Hao 钟灵校刊创刊号 [Chungling School Publication Inaugural Issue]. Chung Ling School 钟灵学校, 1926. Zhongshan daxue lishi xi dongnanya yanjiu shi 中山大学历史系东南亚研究室 [Southeast Asian Studies at Zhongshan University]. Yindunixiya Huaqiao Shi Chugao 印度尼西亚 华侨史初稿 [Draft History of Overseas Chinese in Indonesia]. Zhongshan daxue, 1960. Zhou Erfu 周而复. “Meng de Zhuiqiu—Yi Renshu 梦的追求——忆任叔 [The Pursuit of Dreams: Remembering Renshu].” Baren Quanji 巴人全集 [Complete Works of Baren], vol. 15, Ningbo Chubanshe, 2017, pp. 413–20. Zhou Nanjing 周南京, editor. “Baren Yu Yindunixiya Lishi Yanjiu 巴人与印度尼西亚历史研 究 [Baren and the Study of Indonesian History].” Baren Yu Yindunixiya 巴人与印度尼西 555 === [PDF page 570] === 亚 [Baren and Indonesia], 1st ed., Nandao chubanshe, 2001, pp. 444–56. Beijing Daxue Huaqiao Huaren Yanjiu Zhongxin Congshu 11. Zhou Nanjing 周南京, editor. Baren Yu Yindunixiya 巴人与印度尼西亚 [Baren and Indonesia]. 1st ed., Nandao chubanshe, 2001. Beijing Daxue Huaqiao Huaren Yanjiu Zhongxin Congshu 11. Zhou Nanjing 周南京. “Yindunixiya Huaren de Xianzhuang He Qiantu 印度尼西亚华人的现状 和前途 [The Present and Future of Indonesian Chinese].” Yinni Subei Huaqiao Cangsang Suiyue 印尼苏北华侨沧桑岁月 [Vicissitudes of the Chinese of North Sumatra in Indonesia], vol. 2, Yinni Subei huaqiao huaren lishi huishe, 2015, pp. 825–41. Zhou Nanjing 周南京 and Wang Xinrong 王欣荣, editors. “Baren Nianpu Zhailu (1942-1945) 《巴人年谱》摘录 (1942-1945) [Baren Timeline (1942-1945)].” Baren Yu Yindunixiya 巴人与印度尼西亚 [Baren and Indonesia], 1st ed., Nandao chubanshe, 2001, pp. 374– 401. Beijing Daxue Huaqiao Huaren Yanjiu Zhongxin Congshu 11. Zhou, Taomo. “Diaspora And Diplomacy: China, Indonesia And The Cold War, 1945-1967.” Cornell University, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2015. ———. Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War. Cornell University Press, 2019. Zhou Yingnan 周颖南. Xiaoshuo Shige Baogao Ji 小说诗歌报告集 [Stories, Poems and Reportage]. Edited by Zhang Jun 张军, vol. 4. Zhou Yingnan Wenku 周颖南文库 [Zhou Yingnan Library]. ———. Zhou Yingnan Wenji 周颖南文集. Zuojia chubanshe, 1992. Zhu Chongke 朱崇科. Nanyang Jiuge Yu Bentu Zhongguoxing 南洋纠葛与本土中国性 [Nanyang Anxieties and Native Chineseness]. Guangdong renmin chubanshe. Zhu Peiguan 朱培琯. “Ji Zhongguo Minzhu Tongmeng Sudao Zhibu Shimo 记中国民主同盟苏 岛支部始末 [Remembering the Origins and End of the Sumatran Branch of the CDL].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄 书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 231–37. ———. “Mianlan Minzhu Ribao Yingyun Er Sheng 棉兰《民主日报》应运而生 [The Birth of Democratic Daily News in Medan].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, 1st ed., Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 275–79. ———. “Mianlan Huaqiao Zonghui Zuoyong Gaishu 棉兰华侨总会作用概述 [Overview of the Function of the Medan Overseas Chinese General Association].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 238–47. Zhu Yi 朱毅. Wanlong Jiaoxiangqu 万隆交响曲 [Bandung Symphony]. Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 2005. Zhu Zhihui 朱志辉. “Haiwai Shenghuo Sanshi Nian Huiyi 海外生活三十年回忆 [Memories from Thirty Years of Life Overseas].” Wangbuliao de Suiyue 忘不了的岁月 [Unforgettable Years], edited by Huang Shuhai 黄书海, Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2003, pp. 346–54. Zou Fangjin 邹访今. “Yinni Duli Qianhou de Wulidong Huagong 印尼独立前的勿里洞华工 [The Patriotic and Democratic Movements of Chinese Labor in Belitung, Indonesia].” History of Tin Island (锡岛史话), edited by Liang Junxiang (梁俊祥), Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui 生活文化基金会, 2014, pp. 183–204. ———. “Zhanhou Yinni Huawen Wenxue Yu Fuqing Huaqiao 战后印尼华文文学与福清华侨 [Postwar Indonesian Chinese Literature and the Fuqing Diaspora].” Fuqing Wenshi Ziliao 福清文史资料, vol. 8, 1989, pp. 7–13. ——— (as Chang Xizhi 常习之). Wulidong Huagong Shiji 勿里洞华工事迹 [Traces of Chinese Labor in Belitung]. Feicui wenhua jijinhui 翡翠文化基金会 Yayasan Kebudayaan Zamrud [Jadeite Cultural Foundation], 1963. Zou Zhenhuan 邹振环. “Baren Fanyi Lunshu 巴人翻译论述 [A Description of Baren’s Translations].” Baren Xiansheng Jinian Ji 巴人先生纪念集 [In Memory of Baren], edited by Shanghai Lu Xun jinian guan 上海鲁迅纪念馆 [Shanghai Lu Xun Memorial 556 === [PDF page 571] === Hall], Renmin wenxue chubanshe, pp. 329–42. Wang Haibo 王海波, editor. Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe Liushi Nian Tushu Zongmu 人民文学 出版社六十年图书总目 [People’s Literary Publishing House Sixty Year Book Index]. Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2011. Wang Lieyao 王列耀 and Yan Min 颜敏. Kunzhe Zhi Wu—Yindunixiya Huawen Wenxue Sishi Nian 困者之舞—印度尼西亚华文文学四十年 [The Prisoner’s Dance: Forty Years of Indonesian Chinese-Language Literature]. Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2007. 557 === [PDF page 572] === Appendix A: Indonesian Literature in the PRC The following information is collated from Worldcat.org, Xiamen University Libraries, Beijing University Libraries, Kongfuzi.com, the National Book Index (全国总书目) and Wang Haibo ed., Sixty Years of People's Literature Publishing House (1951-2011). Abbreviations for publishers are provided below the table. Table 8. Indonesian Literature in the PRC, 1956-1965 Title Author Year Translators Genre Notes Da Kacha (嘉查) Stories and 1956 Lai Xuanxian Folktales New Literature Legends of 賴选賢 (新文艺出版社); Java* (印度 Hikayat dan 尼西亚民间 Dongeng Jawa 故事) Purba Various Selected 1956 Zhang Qicheng Poetry WPH; Collection Indonesian 张企程 of pantuns, (印度尼西亚 W. Hamilton, 民歌选) Malay Pantuns Various Indonesian 1957 Voice of the Songs Tianjin People's Songs (印度 Masses Publishing House 尼西亚歌曲 Editorial (天津人民出版 选) Department (群 社) 众歌声编辑室) Abdul Muis (阿布 Wrong 1958 Chen Xiaru 陈 Fiction WPH; Translation 杜尔.慕依斯) Education 霞如 (Novel) of Salah Asuhan (错误的教 育) Pramoedya Ananta Guerilla 1958 Ni Zhiyu 倪志 Fiction WPH; Translation Toer (普·阿·杜尔) Family (游击 渔, Zhu Bingyi (Novel) of Keluarga 队之家) 朱秉义, Tu Gerilya Bingli 涂炳立 (rev.) Utuy Tatang Stars in the 1958 Zhang Qicheng Theater DPH; Translation Sontani (宋达尼) Sky (天上有 张企程 (as of Di Langit Ada 星星) Zhang Yan 张 Bintang 演) 558 === [PDF page 573] === Various Indonesian 1958 - Songs Music Publishing Songs (印度 House (音乐出版 尼西亚歌曲 社) 集) Marah Rusli (玛 Siti Nurbaya 1958?? Fiction Attested in Baren, 拉·庐斯利) (西蒂·努尔 (Novel) "Kesusasteraan 帕雅) Asia-Afrika" Utuy Tatang Tambera (丹 1959 Huang Fiction PL; AA Sontani (宋达尼) 贝拉) Yuanhuan 黄元 (Novel) 焕, Huang Xiangkun 黄祥 坤 (rev.) Umar Ismail (伊斯 Pearl from 1959 Zhang Yan 章 Theater SLA; Translation 马依尔) Nusa Laut 燕 of Mutiara dari (努沙劳勿的 Nusa Laut 珍珠) Utuy Tatang Awal and 1959 Chen Xiaru 陈 Theater DPH; Also Sontani (宋达尼) Mira (阿哇 霞如, Zhang includes 尔和美拉) Qicheng 张企 Restaurant 程 (as Zhang Flower and Stars Yan 张演) in the Sky Utuy Tatang Restaurant 1959 Zhang Qicheng Theater DPH; Translation Sontani (宋达尼) Flower (饭店 张企程 (as of Bunga Rumah 之花) Zhang Yan 张 Makan 演) Abdul Muis (阿布 Surapati (苏 1962 Ni Zhiyu 倪志 Fiction WPH 杜尔.慕依斯) 拉巴蒂) 渔, Zhu Bingyi (Novel) 朱秉义 Sitor Situmorang Poems (西托 1963 Chen Xiaru 陈 Poetry WPH; AA (西托儿·西杜莫郎) 儿西杜莫郎 霞如 诗集) H.R. Bandaharo (哈 Poems (哈拉 1963 Beibo 北波, Poetry WPH; AA 拉哈普·班达哈罗) 哈普·班达哈 Lin Qi 林其, Li 罗诗集) Qing 犁青, Kasang 卡桑, Chen Xiaru 陈 霞如 A.A. Zubir, Agam Fire of '26 1964 Huang Fiction WPH; AA; Wispi, S. (1926 年的 Yuanhuan 黄元 (Short) Translation of Api Anantaguna, 火炬) 焕, Liang Liji '26 559 === [PDF page 574] === Sugiarti Siswadi, T. 梁立基, Wen Iskandar AS (卓別 Jiahan 温家瀚, 尔·阿·阿等) Yang Songling 杨松龄, Xue Hexian 薛河献 Agam Wispi (韦斯 Years of 1964 Huang Poetry WPH; AA; 比) Awakening Yuanhuan 黄元 Translation of and other 焕, Chen Julin Tahun2 Poems (勇敢 陈居林 (rev.) Kebangkitan dan 的年代) Lain-lainya Sabarsantoso Poems (萨巴 1964 Huang Poetry WPH; AA Anantaguna (萨巴 尔桑多梭·阿 Yuanhuan 黄元 尔桑多梭·阿南塔 南塔古纳诗 焕, Ma Chuan 古纳) 集) 马川 Marhain, Simpatis, Long Live 1964 Wang Jiazhen Poetry WPH; AA; Satria Temasek, North 王家桢, Chen Translation of Lelonokaryani, Kalimantan Xiaru 陈霞如 Hidup Darma K, SK (北加里曼丹 (rev.) Kalimantan Wirjono BA, MA 万岁) Utara Simanjuntak and Amarzan Ismail Hamid (玛尔海恩 等) Siti Rukiah Wasteland 1964 Weng Xihui 翁 Poetry SLA; Translation Kertapati (鲁基亚) (荒地) 锡辉 (as and of Tandus Xuefei 雪飞) Fiction P.H. Muid (莫伊特) The Soldier 1965 Wang Theater WPH; Translation Returns (战 Shengming 王 of Prajurit 士归来) 晟明 Pulang Notes: AA Afro-Asian Literature Series (亚非文学丛书), published between 1958 and 1964 by PL and later SLA PL People's Literature Publishing House (人民文学出版社), the prestige publisher for literature. WPH Writer's Publishing House (作家出版社), an imprint of PL before 1958, afterwards affiliated with the China Writers Association. SLA Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing (上海文艺出版社), successor to the New Literature Publishing House (新文艺出版社), affiliated with PL after 1959, merged in 1964. DPH Drama Publishing House (戏剧出版社), founded 1957, merged in 1960 into PL but retained name. 560 === [PDF page 575] === Appendix B: Sadar Cultural Foundation Note on Sources The following information is collated from Cornell University Libraries, Xiamen University Libraries, Worldcat.org, the National Library of Indonesia, the personal collections of Redi Murti and Tan Suherman, book marketplaces such as Tokopedia.com and Kongfuzi.com, and the memoirs of Zhang Dayong. A key for abbreviations is provided after the tables. Given the importance of illustrations for Sadar, I have noted the cover designer and illustrator where possible. Note that I have also included publications from the Indonesian Unity Foundation (Yayasan Indonesia Tunggal), which seems to have functioned as an imprint of Sadar. I have not included other closely-affiliated publishers that only published in Indonesian, such as Baperki Publishing House (Penerbit Baperki) or Res Publica Foundation (Yayasan Res Publica). I also suspect that Seventeen Publishing House (十七出版社, likely a reference to August 17) is Sadaraffiliated, but have been unable to confirm this suspicion and so leave the few books associated with them out for now. Table 9. Sadar Publications: Illustrated Stories Fragrant Water (香喷喷的海 Wen Peor cov. 1960? In Chinese 水) The Greedy Wife (Istri jang Pushkin (adapted 1961 Based on "The Fisherman Snake Goddess (Dewi Ular) Wen Peor cov. 1961 Based on Lady White Snake (白蛇传); in Indonesian A Million Pounds (Uang Mark Twain (adapted 1961 Based on story of same Kertas Djutaan) from), Basuki name; in Indonesian Resobowo cov. The Story of Afandi (阿凡提 Wen Peor cov. 1961 Indonesia Raya also listed as 的故事) publisher on cover; in Chinese 561 === [PDF page 576] === Tjebol with the Long Nose Wen Peor cov. 1961 In Indonesian (Si Tjebol Berhidung Pandjang) Sambo, A Victim of the Basuki Resobowo 1961? Possibly based on Colonizers (Sambo, Korban cov.? Bannerman's "Story of Little Indonesian The Necklace (Kalung) Guy de Maupassant 1962 At least two editions (adapted from), Wen published; in Indonesian Peor cov. Because of Greed (Karena Wen Peor cov. 1962 In Indonesian Terlalu Tamak) King Bersin (Radja Bersin) Wen Peor cov. 1962 In Indonesian Story of Don Quixote (Kisah Basuki Resobowo 1962 In Indonesian The Brave Princess (Puteri Wen Peor cov? 1962 In Indonesian Radja Jang Gagah Berani) The Story of Afandi (Tjerita Wen Peor cov. 1962 In Indonesian Afandi) Gulliver in Lilliput (Gulliver Jonathan Swift 1963 Based on Gulliver's Travels; di Negeri Lilliput) (adapted from), Wen in Indonesian Peor cov? Abu Nawas Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian Alibaba and the 40 Pirates Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian (Alibaba dan 40 Penjamun) Brave Janos (Janos Jang Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian Berani) Divorce (Retak Bercerai) Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian The Shepherd and the Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian Princess (Gembala dan Puteri Radja) The Love of a Girl (Tjinta Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian Kasih Seorang Gadis) 562 === [PDF page 577] === The Story of King Sardan Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian (Tjeritera Radja Sardan) Three Sisters (Tiga Saudari) Wen Peor cov. 1963 In Indonesian Travel to the Country of Jonathan Swift 1964 Based on Gulliver's Travels; Little People (小人国游记) (adapted from), Wen in Chinese Peor ov. A Warrior (一个勇士) Wen Peor cov. 1964 In Chinese Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1964 In Indonesian (adapted from), Wen Peor cov? Snow White (白雪公主) Wen Peor cov. 1964 In Chinese Still Loyal (Tetap Setia) Wen Peor cov. 1964 In Indonesian The Necklace (一串项链) Guy de Maupassant 1965 In Chinese (adapted from), Wen Peor cov. Truth and Lies (诚实与说谎) Wen Peor cov. 1965 In Chinese A Pair of Slippers (一双拖 Wen Peor cov. 1965 In Chinese 鞋) Fragrant Water (Banju Wen Peor cov. 1965? Likely multiple editions; in Alibaba and the 40 Pirates Wen Peor cov. In Indonesian (阿里巴巴与四十大盗) Provoked by the Crows Wen Peor cov. In Indonesian (Dihasut gagak) Truth and Lies (Djudjur dan Wen Peor cov. In Indonesian bohong) Heroic Youth (Pemuda Basuki Resobowo In Indonesian Searching for the Golden Wen Peor cov. In Indonesian Horse (Mentjari Kuda Emas) Snow White (Puteri Saldju) Wen Peor cov. In Chinese 563 === [PDF page 578] === Shakuntala Kalidasa (adapted In Indonesian from. Wen Peor cov. The Queen Returns to Life Wen Peor cov? In Chinese (皇后复活) Memet Tadja Wen Peor cov. In Indonesian Little Painter (Pelukis Tjilik) Wen Peor cov? In Indonesian 15 Little Heroes (15 Wen Peor cov? In Indonesian Pahlawan Tjilik) Table 10. Sadar Publications: Literature and Folklore The Weapon Eats the Master L. Saining 1961 In Indonesian (Senjata makan tuan) Song of Youth (Njanjian Yang Mo (as Jang 1961 In Indonesian Remadja) Mo); Chen Zhanhu (as Shangnu 尚努) trans., Wen Peor cov. Legends from Songbird 1 Rukiah ed., Wen Peor 1962 Based on the children's (Dongeng² Kutilang 1) ill., cov. periodical Kutilang, edited by Rukiah; in Indonesian Legends from Songbird 2 Rukiah ed.; 1962 Based on the children's (Dongeng² Kutilang 2) Bramastho and Keris periodical Kutilang, edited Dwi, ill., Wen Peor by Rukiah; in Indonesian cov. Basimah (巴西玛/Basimah) Sobron Aidit, Li Xu 1962 BL; IU; Bilingual edition trans., Wen Peor cov. Soldier's Wife (军人之妻 Rukiah (斯·鲁基娅), 1962 BL; IU; Bilingual edition /Isteri Pradjurit) Li Xu trans., Wen Peor cov. The Bastard (私生子/Anak Pramoedya Ananta 1962 From Cerita Dari Blora; IU; Haram) Toer; Li Xu trans., Bilingual edition Wen Peor cov. Return (归来) Toha Mohtar, Leo 1962 IU; Translation of Pulang; in Suryadinata (as Guyi Chinese 564 === [PDF page 579] === 谷衣) trans., Wen Peor cov. On the Banks of the Bekasi Pramoedya Ananta 1962 Third edition; in Indonesian (Di Tepi Kali Bekasi) Toer, Wen Peor ill., cov. Selected Short Stories of Lu Lu Xun (as Lu Sin); 1963 Acknowledgments thank Xun (Pilihan Tjerpen Lu Chen Zhanhu (as Rukiah, Lisih (Li Xu?) and Sin) Shannu) trans., Wen Leo Suryadinata (as Liau Peor cov. Tjen Tji); in Indonesian Indonesian Allegories (印度 E Baharudin ed., 1963 IU; Translation of 尼西亚寓言) Zhang Hua 张华 Tutursatwa Indonesia, (likely Zhang Zhihua published by Lekra; in 张志华) trans., Wen Chinese Peor cov. One Life: South Vietnamese One Life: 1964 “Afro-Asian-Latin American Literature (一条人命：越南 Vietnamese, Wen Literary Series (亚非拉文艺 南方文学) Peor cov. 丛书);” IU; in Chinese The White Chain: Japanese Wen Peor cov. 1964 “Afro-Asian-Latin American Short Stories (白色铁索: 诗 Literary Series (亚非拉文艺 歌短篇小说集) 丛书);” IU; in Chinese Spring Has Arrived: Korean Wen Peor cov. 1964 “Afro-Asian-Latin American Stories and Poems (春天来 Literary Series (亚非拉文艺 到了: 朝鲜诗歌短篇小说 丛书);” IU; in Chinese 集) Didi the Peasant Child (Si Kuslan Budiman, 1964 In Indonesian Didi Anak Petani) Basuki Resobowo ill., cov. Si Kampeng Utuy T Sontani, 1964 In Indonesian Basuki Resobowo ill., cov. 20 Selected Myths (20 Rukiah ed., Wen Peor 1964 Possibly anthology from the Dongeng Pilihan) cov. children's periodical Kutilang; in Indonesian Collection of Ancient Greek Rukiah, Wen Peor 1964 Possibly anthology from the Fables (Sekumpulan Fabel cov. children's periodical Yunani Kuno) Kutilang; in Indonesian It's Not an All Night Fair Pramoedya Ananta 1964 Third Edition; in Indonesian (Bukan Pasar Malam) Toer 565 === [PDF page 580] === Sapar: A Novelette about the Utuy Tatang Sontani, 1964 In Indonesian Life of a Becak Puller in Wen Peor ill., cov. Jakarta (Si Sapar: sebuah novelette tentang kehidupan penarik2 betjak di Djakarta) African Summer: Algerian Wen Peor cov. 1965 “Afro-Asian-Latin American Short Stories and Poems (非 Literary Series (亚非拉文艺 洲的夏天: 阿尔及利亚短篇 丛书);” in Chinese 小说诗歌集) In the Purial Mountains: Wen Peor cov. 1965 “Afro-Asian-Latin American Cuban Short Stories and Literary Series (亚非拉文艺 Poems (在布里亚山里: 古巴 丛书);” IU; in Chinese 短篇小说诗歌集) Letters from South Vietnam Bakri Siregar trans., 1965 In Indonesian (Surat-surat dari Vietnam Selatan) Guerilla War (Perang Gerilja) Oey Hay Djoen trans. Cuban story, attested by Zhang Dayong; in Indonesian Indonesian Folktales (印度尼 Liren, Wen Peor cov. In Chinese 西亚民间故事) Midnight Fire (Api di tengah Albert Maltz, Wen In Indonesian Table 11. Sadar Publications: Politics A Year of Decision (决定性 Sukarno 1957 Independence Day speech of 的一年) 1957; in Chinese Another Victory for the 1960 In Chinese Democratic Forces: The Establishment of the Gotong Rojong National Council (民 主力量的又一次胜利:记互 助合作国会的成立经过) Islam in the Soviet Union 1961 IU; in Indonesian (Islam di Negara Sovjet) 566 === [PDF page 581] === Documents that Define an Sukarno 1961 In Chinese Era (划时代的文献) West Irian: An Inseparable Gavriil Kesselbrenner 1962 In Chinese; “My Homeland Part of Indonesia (西伊里安: (卡格斯普列尼) Series (我的祖国丛书)” 印度尼西亚不可分割的领 土) Stories of Mao Zedong Bogdanov, Nikolai 1963 IU; in Indonesian (Kisah-Kisah Mao Tse-tung) Korea, Its Land and People 1963 IU; in Indonesian (Korea, tanah dan rakjatnya) Pancasila Against Racism (建 Siauw Giok Tjhan 1963 IU; Translation of Pancasila 国五原则反对种族主义) anti-rasialisme; in Chinese The Year of Living Sukarno 1964 In Chinese Dangerously: Sukarno's Speech of August 17, 1964 (敢于冒风险的一年: 苏加 诺总统 1964 年 8 月 17 日国 庆演说) The War of Liberation of the Wilfred Burchett, 1965 In Indonesian People of South Vietnam Njoto intro., Oey Hay (Perang Pembebasan Rakjat Djoen trans., Wen Vietnam Selatan) Peor cov. Table 12. Sadar Publications: Reference, Language, Education Collected Documents on the Editors of Chiao 1959 In Chinese Nationality Question of the Hsing Weekly (觉醒 Republic of Indonesia (印度 周刊编辑部) 尼西亚共和国国籍问题文件 汇编) Indonesian Short Stories (印 Pramoedya, Sontani 1960 Likely (co-)edited by Li Xu; 度尼西亚短篇小说集) et al; Li Xu, Liren et in Chinese al trans.; Yap Hok Sing 叶福生 ill. 567 === [PDF page 582] === Guide to Indonesian Liao Sheng 廖盛 1961 In Chinese Correspondence (印尼文书 (Liao Rongsheng 廖 信指导 ) 荣盛?), Indonesian Idioms (印尼谚语 Zhang Qiongyu 张琼 1961 In Chinese 选) 郁 (as Bahebolun 巴 赫波伦) Dictionary of Common Liem Li 林立 (Lin 1962 Checked (diperiksa) by Indonesian Abbreviations (印 Wanli?), Chen Zhanhu, Liem-se 林斯 度尼西亚语常用简字备语辞 and Mu-sun 茂松; in 典/Kamus Singkatan² Bahasa Chinese Indonesia) Indonesian Word Formation Zhang Qiongyu 张琼 1963 In Chinese (印度尼西亚语构词法) 郁 (as Bahebolun 巴 赫波伦) Concise and Practical Chen Zhanhu (as 1963 In Chinese Chinese-Indonesian Shannu 善努), U Dictionary (简明实用印华词 Ming 伍明, Lin She 典/Kamus Indonesia- 林斯 and Mou Song Tionghoa) 茂松, Indonesian Practical Zhang Qiongyu 张琼 1963 In Chinese Grammar (印度尼西亚语实 郁 (as Bahebolun 巴 用语法) 赫波伦), Beginner's Indonesian Chen Zhanhu (as 1964 IU; in Chinese Grammar (印度尼西亚语法 Shannu 善努) 初步) Exact Sciences, Natural Wu Ming, Tjing 1964 Bilingual Sciences and Chemistry Tjing (Ilmu Pasti, Alam and Kimia) Decree no. 32 of 1964 on 1965 In Chinese Foreign Exchange (关于外汇 来往条例的 1964 年第 32 号 法令) The Science of Force (Ilmu B. Hookianlan Subtitle: "dinamika untuk Gaja) sekolah teknik jurusanmesin, listrik, pertambangan perkapalan, tjor, mobil"; in Indonesian 568 === [PDF page 583] === News Readings (新闻选读) Zhang Qiongyu 张琼 Subtitle: “Indonesian 郁 (as Bahebolun 巴 Language Lectures vol. 2 赫波伦) (印尼语文讲座第二集)”; in Chinese Table 13. Sadar Publications: Music From Sabang to Merauke vol. U Kuo-sen and 1961 3 Volumes; multiple 1(Dari sabang hingga Soebronto Atmodjo editions; in Indonesian merauke) vol. 1 ed., Wen Peor cov., Wen Peor cov. From Sabang to Merauke vol. U Kuo-sen and 1962 In Indonesian 2: Resopim (Dari sabang Soebronto Atmodjo hingga merauke jilid 1: ed., Wen Peor cov., Resopim) Wen Peor cov. From Sabang to Merauke vol. U Kuo-sen and 1963 In Indonesian 3: Sandang Pangan (Dari Soebronto Atmodjo sabang hingga merauke jilid ed., Wen Peor cov., 1: Food and Clothes) Wen Peor cov. From Sabang to Merauke vol. U Kuo-sen and 1965 In Indonesian 4: Nasakom Together (Dari Soebronto Atmodjo Sabang hingga Merauke jilid ed., Wen Peor cov., 4: Nasakom Bersatu) Wen Peor cov. From the jungle of North 1965 In Indonesian Kalimantan: collection of songs for choir (Dari rimba Kalimantan Utara: kumpulan lagu-lagu paduan suara) AAL Afro-Asian-Latin American Literature Series (亚非拉文学丛书) BL Chinese-Indonesian Facing Translations Literature Series (中印对照文学丛书) IU published by United Indonesia Foundation (Yayasan Indonesia Tunggal/统一印尼基金 会), effectively an imprint of Sadar. 569 === [PDF page 584] === Table 14. Sadar Publications by Language Chinese 35 (36%) Indonesian 57 (57%) Bilingual 4 (4%) Total 96 570 === [PDF page 585] === Appendix C: Zamrud Cultural Foundation The following provisional booklist is collated from Worldcat.org, Xiamen University Libraries, the personal collection of Lin Wanli (and the checklist compiled by Ma Feng), and Kongfuzi.com. Works attested in secondary sources that I have been unable to verify are excluded. For multi-author publications, I include authors based on their prominence in the book (e.g. if they are winners of a competition) and my sense of their prominence in yinhua literature. Many names are clearly pseudonymous. Abbreviations in the notes column refers to the series they are part of, if any—see below for a full list. Table 15. Zamrud Publications 1961-1965 Enmity and Li Xu 李旭, Liren 立 1961 Literature From Gratitude on Tin 人 (Screenplay) serialization in Island (锡岛恩仇 Seng Hwo Pao 记) The Tragedy of Red J.T. Vermeulen (费慕 1961 Non-Fiction Translation of River (红溪惨案本 伦), Li Ping 李平 (History) "The Chinese in 末) trans. Batavia and the Troubles of 1740"; HD Dictionary of Yang Fan 杨凡 1961 Non-Fiction YH Loanwords (印度尼 西亚外来语辞典 /Kamus istilah asing) History and More Zhang Shizhong 张实 1961 Non-Fiction YH (史话及其他) 中 (Language) The True Story of Lu Xun, Chen 1961 Translation Bilingual edition Ah Q (阿 Q 正传) Yansheng (as Tannin (Literature) of novel 陈宁) trans. To Overseas Huang Yurong, Yu 1962 Literature Chinese Girl Xiaomin 余小敏, (Anthology) Guan Xianzi 管弦子, 571 === [PDF page 586] === Students (给华侨女 Li Ruichang 黎瑞昌, 学生) Wu Hui 吴晖 et al The Holy Mother, Zhang Shizhong 张实 1962 Non-Fiction YH Lu Xun and Tan 中 (History) Kah Kee (圣母·鲁 迅·陈嘉庚) The Overseas Oen Tek Hian 温德玄 1962 Non-Fiction HD Hongmen (as Mu You 慕由) (History) Organization and Heaven and Earth Society (海外洪门 组织天地会) The Dragon Rises Oey Hong Lee 1962 Non-Fiction Second edition Analysis of Yang Fan 杨凡 1962 Non-Fiction Synonyms (词义辨 (Language) 析/Perintjian Sinonim) Dictionary of Liang Yinming 梁因 1962 Non-Fiction Commercial and 明 (Language) Economic Terms (商业经济名词汇 编/Kamus istilah perniagaan dan ekonomi ) Notes on Diagnosis Dr. Guo Yihao 郭一豪 1962 Non-Fiction NS (診餘漫筆) 医士 (Medicine) Madame Sukarno's - 1962 Non-Fiction Compilation of Visit to China (苏加 (Politics and texts from 诺夫人访华记) Current Events) Chinese and Indonesian newspapers Indonesian Diman 狄曼 ed., trans. 1962 Non-Fiction Construction (印尼 Current Events) 经济与建设) Before and After the - 1962 Non-Fiction Asian Games (亞運 (Politics and 前後) Current Events) 572 === [PDF page 587] === Revolution, Sukarno 1962 Non-Fiction Translation of Socialism, and (Politics and "Resopim" National Leadership Current Events) (革命、 社会主 义、 民族领导) Observations of - 1962 Non-Fiction Compilation of West Irian (西伊见 (Politics and articles 闻录) Current Events) Indonesian Customs - 1962 Translation Likely IF and Folktales (印尼 (Folk Literature) 民俗与民间故事) The Good Son of - 1964 Republication? the Working People: Lei Feng (劳动人民 的好儿子——雷 锋) Leifeng (雷锋) - 1964 Republication? Comic Learn from Leifeng - 1964 Republication? (向雷锋同志学习) Daji and Her Father Kao Ying 高缨, trans. 1962 Translation Indonesian- (Tatji dengan Tano (Literature) language edition ajahnja Daji and Her Father Kao Ying 高缨, trans. 1962 Translation Bilingual edition (Tatji dengan Tano (Literature) ajahnja/达吉和她的 父亲) Roro Gendut (罗 Li Xu ed., trans. 1962 Translation 罗·曼都传) (Literature) Coconut Winds and Lin Lifeng 林立枫, Li 1963 Literature CS Banana Rains (椰风 Ruichang 黎瑞昌, (Anthology) 蕉雨) Zheng Jinhua 郑金华 et al New Husband and Zhang Hanying 张汉 1963 Literature CS Wife (新夫妇) 英, Huang Yurong 黄 (Anthology) 裕荣, Feng Shicai 冯 世才, Zhu Ying 竹樱 et al 573 === [PDF page 588] === Wrong Path (歧路) Feng Shicai 冯世才, 1963 Literature CS Lin Lifeng 林立枫, (Anthology) Liang Piyun 梁皮云, Zhuoren 卓人 et al A Woman's Zhang Hanying 张汉 1963 Literature CS Accusation (一个女 英, M. Balfas, Chen (Anthology) 人的控诉) Weidong 陈伟东, Xuruo 虚若, Li Ruichang 黎瑞昌, Chairil Anwar et al On the Steamship 1963 Literature SG (轮船上) (Anthology) Foreign Lovers (异 Sugiarti Siswadi, 1963 Literature CS 国情鸳) Zheng Jinhua 郑金华, (Anthology) Xiao Min 小敏, Li Ruichang 黎瑞昌, Zhuoren 卓人, Qiu Jian 秋涧 et al Do Not Trample Dongmei 梅 ("Winter 1963 Non-Fiction WH Love (不要糟蹋爱 Plum"), Hong Hua 洪 (Education) 情) 华, Wu Guanzhong 吴 贯忠 et al Rabies (疯狗症) Wang Ting 王婷, Ma 1963 Non-Fiction WH Lianfang 马莲芳, (Education) Dongmei 冬梅, Hanifa 哈尼法, Zhang Lijuan 张丽娟 et al Are There Any Jiang Chen 江晨, Lü 1963 Non-Fiction WH Benefits to Playing Xiaoqiao 吕小乔, (Education) the Lottery? (赌票 Dongmei 冬梅, Lu 尾有好处吗？) Liujun 陆柳君, Wang Ting 王婷 et al Traces of Chinese Zou Fangjin (as Chang 1963 Non-Fiction HD Labor in Belitung Xizhi 常习之) (History) (勿里洞华工事迹) The West Oen Tek Hian 温德玄 1963 Non-Fiction Likely HD Kalimantan Kongsi (as Mu You 慕由) (History) Organizations (西加 的公司组织) 574 === [PDF page 589] === Indonesian Hou Hanhong 侯汉宏, 1963 Non-Fiction NS Medicinal Plants II Fu Side 傅斯德 ed. (Medicine) (印尼药用植物 I) On Civil Equality Sukarno 1963 Non-Fiction and Solidarity (论公 (Politics and 民平等、团结) Current Events) Friendship Amid Zhou Changping 周昌 1963 Non-Fiction Illustrated and Struggle: Brochure 平, Cai Zhongguan 蔡 (Politics and full-color; edited of Chairman Liu's 中观, Wen Guowei 温 Current Events) by the staff of Visit to Indonesia 国炜, Wu Yameng 吴 Seng Hwo Pao (战斗中的友谊： 亚蒙, Wang Feng 王 刘主席访问印尼大 峰 ed. 画册) North Kalimantan is - 1963 Non-Fiction Compilation of Fighting (北加利曼 (Politics and articles 丹在斗争中) Current Events) Happy New Year - 1963 Other (Games (恭喜新年) and Entertainment) True Story of Shuwen 叔文 1963 Republication General Dogmeat (Politics and (狗肉将军正传) Current Affairs) Secret Stories of the Tao Yinju 陶隐菊 1963 Republication Later Han (后汉秘 (Politics and 事) Current Affairs) Afterglow of Jinling Lieutenant Chen (陈少 1963 Republication 3 volumes; part (金陵残照) 校) (Politics and of the series Current Affairs) "Afterglow of Jinling" Prince Kamar and Huang Yurong ed. 1963 Translation Part 1 of A Princess Budur (加 trans. (Literature) Thousand and 梅录太子和百都伦 One Nights 公主) At the Same Table 1964 Literature SG (同桌) (Anthology) Xiao Li (小丽) 1964 Literature SG (Anthology) 575 === [PDF page 590] === Xiao Man and her 1964 Literature SG Schoolfriends (小曼 (Anthology) 和她的同学) Ali and Mina (阿里 1965 Literature SG 和美娜) (Anthology) The Foghorn (雾海 Zhang Yunbing 张运 1964 Literature YL 笛声) 秉, Lin Lifeng 林立 (Anthology) 枫, Xie Menghui 谢梦 辉, Lin Qiu 林虬, Liu Jijun 刘积均 et al Student Changcheng 长城 1964 Literature Subtitle: The Compositions (学生 ("Great Wall"), Xu (Anthology) First All- 习作选) Manyun 徐曼云, Lin Indonesian Fengyu 林凤玉, Yu Yu Student Writing 余愚, Chen Caihong Competition (首 陈彩虹, Hongling 虹 届全印学生作 玲 et al 文比赛) The Fire Thief's Bai Liu 白流, Zhou 1964 Literature YL Love (盗火者的爱 Ruilin 周瑞麟, Zhang (Anthology) 情) Hanying 张寒鹰, Zheng Jinhua 郑金华, Feng Shicai 冯世才, Liu Zhuhe 刘朱和, Zhang Hanying 张汉 英 et al Memories of Nine Lai Xuanxian 赖选贤, 1964 Literature MS Years of Student Yang Mei 杨梅, (Anthology) Life (九年来学习生 Zhang Yan 张焱, Yang 活回忆) Wei 杨维, Zheng Meiying 郑美膺 et al Flame of Youth (青 Zeng Xuan 曾宣, Lin 1964 Literature YL 春的火焰) Lifeng 林立枫, Liao (Anthology) Bimei 廖苾梅, Zhuoren 卓人, Cui 翠 et al A Fellow Student's Zhou Youguang 周有 1964 Literature MS Mishap (一个同学 光, Yang Li 杨丽, (Anthology) 的遭遇) Xiao Qiang 小强, Li Wenhua 黎文华, Zhan Jiayan 詹嘉燕 et al 576 === [PDF page 591] === Child of Bandung Zhongzi 钟子, 1964 Literature YL (万隆孩子) Muerlang 木二郎, (Anthology) Suren 苏人, Xiaomiao 小苗, Lin Lifeng 林立 枫 et al Hope (盼望) Jianxue 坚学 ("Study 1964 Literature YL Diligently"), Lin (Anthology) Lifeng 林立枫, Mai Hui 麦穗 ("Wheat Stalks"), Chen Weidong 陈伟东 et al The Precious Wei Jie 魏介, Jiang 1964 Literature MS Moment (珍贵的时 Fengzhu 江凤珠, Situ (Anthology) 刻) Nanyin 司徒南印 et al Zamrud's Selected Hu Meifang 胡梅芳, 1964 Literature Compositions by Yang Zhenzhen 杨真 (Anthology) Children (翡翠儿童 真, He Peiying 何佩 习作选) 英, Lai Meiyun 赖美 运, Lu Yuhua 卢玉华, Chen Jiongliang 陈炯 亮 et al Bright Days (明朗 Feng Shicai 冯世才 1964 Literature YH 的日子) (Poetry Anthology) Famous Ancient and Xie Renwen 谢人文 1964 Other (Art) Contemporary Chinese Paintings (中国古今名画摘 记) Happy Spring - 1964 Other (Games Festival (春节愉快) and Entertainment) Dalin and Xiaolin Zhang Tianyi 张天 1964 Republication (大林和小林) 翼？ (Literature) Dai Li: Bad Debts Huangpu Xiaoju 皇甫 1964 Republication and a Woman (戴 小菊 "Whampoa (Politics and 笠: 一笔女人烂账) Chrysanthemum") Current Affairs) Remembering Jinshui 金水 et al 1964 Republication Chiang Kai Shek (Politics and Current Affairs) 577 === [PDF page 592] === and More (漫记蒋 介石及其他) Kung Ling-kan and Su Hui 苏蕙 et al 1964 Republication Woman (孔令侃与 Current Affairs) 香'车'美人) Inside Story of Yunting shanren 云亭 1964 Republication Taiwan (台湾内幕) 山人 ("Hermit of the (Politics and Cloud Pagoda") Current Affairs) Red Guards on the - 1964 Republication Honghu Lake (洪湖 (Politics and 赤卫队) Current Affairs) Chess Game in Lieutenant Chen (陈少 1964 Republication Two volumes; Northeast China (关 校) (Politics and part of the series 内远东一局棋) Current Affairs) "Afterglow of Jinling" Talking War over Lieutenant Chen (陈少 1964 Republication Two volumes; Drinks in the Fields 校) (Politics and part of the series (酒畔谈兵录) Current Affairs) "Afterglow of Jinling" Secret Conversation Qinyuan 沁园 1964 Republication Politics (Part 1) (政 Current Affairs) 海谈秘（一）) Secret Conversation Qinyuan 沁园 1964 Republication Politics (Part 2) (政 Current Affairs) 海谈秘（二）) The Rise and Fall of Lieutenant Chen (陈少 1964 Republication Part of the series Hu Zongnan (胡宗 校) (Politics and "Afterglow of 南的兴灭) Current Affairs) Jinling" Secret Conversation Qinyuan 沁园 1964 Republication Politics (Part 3) (政 Current Affairs) 海谈秘（三）) Secret Conversation Qinyuan 沁园 1964 Republication Politics (Part 4) (政 Current Affairs) 海谈秘（四）) 578 === [PDF page 593] === Poems by Mao Mao Zedong, Trans J 1964 Translation Zedong (Sandjak2 Tannin, Checked Tjoa (Literature) Mao Tse-tung) Tiong-koan Ali Baba and the Huang Yurong ed. 1964 Translation Part 2 of A Forty Pirates (阿里 (Literature) Thousand and 巴巴与四十大盗) One Nights The Ninth Holy Huang Yurong ed. 1964 Translation Part 3 of A Statue (第九座神 (Literature) Thousand and 像) One Nights The Final Struggle Lieutenant Chen (陈少 1964 Republication Part of the series of the Guilin Clique 校) (Politics and "Afterglow of (Supplement to the Current Affairs) Jinling" Afterglow of Jinling) (桂系的最 后挣扎（金陵残照 补篇）) The Snake Prince Yeren 椰人 ("Coconut 1964 Translation IF (蛇王子) Person") (Literature) The Story of Huang Yurong ed. 1964 Translation Part 4 of A Aladdin and the (Literature) Thousand and Magic Lamp (阿拉 One Nights 汀和神灯的故事) Onion and Garlic Huang Yurong (text); 1964 Translation Comic; IF (红葱和白蒜 Wang Bingqing 王炳 (Literature) /Bawang Merah dan 庆 (illustrations) Bawang Putih) Student Hu Nan 胡南, Huang 1965 Literature Subtitle: Second Compositions Yu 黄煜, Yuren 愚人 (Anthology) Yinhua Students' (Volume 2) (学生习 ("Fool"), Yu Yu 余愚, Writing 作选（第二集）) Dong Tao 冬桃 Competition (第 ("Winter Plum"), Li Li 二届印华学生 李莉 et al 作文比赛) Submissions for the Zhongzi 钟子, Zhang 1965 Literature Results of the Zamrud Literary Yunbing 张运秉, Bai (Anthology) first national Competition (翡翠 Liu 白流, Cui 翠, Li (non-student) 文艺比赛入选作品 Ruichang 黎瑞昌 et al competition 集) Tides of Spring Huang Yurong 1965 Literature YH Winds (春风的波 (Poetry 浪) Anthology) 579 === [PDF page 594] === Song of Dawn (黎 Liu Zhuhe 刘朱和著 1965 Literature YH 明之歌) (Prose Anthology) Storm in the Garden Bo Zhi Ai 波之爱, 1965 Literature YL (田园风雨) Zhuxin 烛芯, Yu Yu (Anthology) 余愚, Cui 翠 ("Verdant") et al Yinhua Literary Huang Yurong (as 1965 Literature YH Criticism vol. 1 (印 Pizai 啤仔 and (Criticism) 华文艺评论集 第一 Xiaofeng 小锋) 辑) Yinhua Literary Huang Yurong (as 1965 Literature YH Criticism vol. 2 (印 Pizai 啤仔 and (Criticism) 华文艺评论集 第二 Xiaofeng 小锋) 辑) Chinese Pinyin (汉 Qiaoshi 侨师 1965 Non-Fiction 语拼音) ("Overseas Teacher") (Language) Chinese Pinyin - Qiaoshi 侨师 1965 Non-Fiction Explanation for ("Overseas Teacher") (Language) Instructors (汉语拼 音 教学说明) Compilation of Zamrud Cultural 1965 Non-Fiction Indonesian Place Foundation (本社) ed. (Language) Names (印度尼西 亚地名汇编) Indonesian Hou Hanhong 侯汉宏 1965 Non-Fiction NS Medicinal Plants II ed. (Medicine) (印尼药用植物 II) The Vietnamese - 1965 Non-Fiction Compilation of People Will Be (Politics and articles Victorious (越南人 Current Events) 民必胜) 37 Poems by Mao Mao Zedong (writer), 1965 Other Traditional blue- Zedong (Cursive Jiang Baoyi 蒋抱一 (Calligraphy) wrapper sewn Calligraphy) (毛主 (calligrapher) binding 席诗词三十七首 (草书)) Zamrud Songs 2 (翡 - 1965 Other (Songs) 翠歌曲) 580 === [PDF page 595] === Zamrud Songs 1 (翡 - 1965 Other (Songs) 翠歌曲) Selected Songs from - 1965 Republication "Cloud of Eternal (Literature) Sorrow" Opera (歌 剧 “望夫云” 唱词 选辑) Secrets of the Shi Yuchun 时雨春, 1965 Republication Chiang Family (蒋 Jiang Shangqing 江上 (Politics and 家将秘闻录) 青, Rong Zhai 容斋 Current Affairs) Secret Conversation Qinyuan 沁园 1965 Republication Politics (Part 1) (政 Current Affairs) 海谈秘（五）) Mr. Li Zongren - 1965 Republication Returns (李宗仁先 (Politics and 生归来) Current Affairs) Ramayana: Part 1 Li Xu ed., trans. 1965 Translation YH (拉玛雅纳 1) (Literature) Ramayana: Part 2 Li Xu ed., trans. 1965 Translation YH (拉玛雅纳 2) (Literature) Ramayana: Part 3 Li Xu ed., trans. 1965 Translation YH (拉玛雅纳 3) (Literature) Ramayana: Part 3 Li Xu ed., trans. 1965 Translation YH (拉玛雅纳 4) (Literature) Ramayana: Part 5 Li Xu ed., trans. 1965 Translation YH (拉玛雅纳 5) (Literature) The Story of the Zhaoyang 朝阳 ed., 1965 Translation IF Mouse and the Deer trans. (Folktale) (鼠鹿的故事) Marvelous Maritime Huang Yurong ed. - Translation Part 5 of A Encounters (航海奇 (Literature) Thousand and 遇记) One Nights; planned publication interrupted by G30S 581 === [PDF page 596] === Learning to Walk Lin Wanli (as Lin Li - Literature planned (学步集) 林立) (Criticism) publication interrupted by G30S Indonesian Scenery Shalihong (沙里洪) - Literature planned (印尼风光) (Travelogue) publication interrupted by G30S YH Yinhua Writings (印华文丛), generally reserved for single-author publications SL Small Literary Anthologies (文艺小集), later renamed YL YL Youth Literary Anthologies (青年文艺专辑), writing by young people (i.e. not students) CS Competition Submissions (征文集丛), from competition shortlists, overlaps with YL HD Chinese-Indonesian Historical Documents (中印文物丛书), historical research SG Student Garden (学生园地), writing by and for high schoolers WH Woman and Home (妇女与家庭), writing by and for women MS Middle Schooler's Time (中学生时代丛刊), writing by and for middle schoolers NS Natural Sciences (自然科学丛书) IF Indonesian Folktales (印度尼西亚民间故事) Table 16. Zamrud Publications by Genre Literature 32 (29%) Non-Fiction 28 (26%) Translation 19 (17%) Republication 24 (22%) Other 6 (6%) Total 109 582 === [PDF page 597] === Appendix D: Books of Yinhua Literature pre-1965 This appendix collects the results of my search for books of literature written in Chinese by writers with close ties to Indonesia. Unlike many of the other booklists, this one is determined not by an organization, but by my own subjective judgment as to what counts as a "book" of "literature” that is “yinhua.” Caution should be exercised when trying to generalize from the following table—I compile it instead to facilitate and encourage future research. My criteria for inclusion are based on a loose mix of how significant it is for the history of yinhua literature, how overall interesting the work seems, and my confidence that it actually exists. I have included all literary anthologies, as well as works of literary criticism/history, folktales, and (perhaps questionably) travelogues. I also include works translated by yinhua writers from Indonesian/Malay into Chinese. Where I was unsure whether to include a work, I erred on the side of permissiveness in the hope of encouraging more people to look into them. Notable exclusions: - Political or historical works (unless focused on literature), e.g. by the “Southbound” writers and their associates. - Anthologies with only a single yinhua text, such as those published by Equator (赤道出版社) and Truth (求实) Publishing Houses in Hong Kong from 1951-1953. - A number of attested works where information is too vague or limited for corroboration. This affects a number of works mentioned by Li Qing in “A Hundred Years of Yinhua Literature.” - Martial arts (wuxia) and republished classical literature, such as versions of the Three Kingdoms or Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai stories. Further research here would certainly push back the start date of this table. - Works that focus on Malaysia, Malaya, Singapore, or Malay language, even if they have some links to Indonesia. This affects a number of translations of pantuns from the 1930s, as well as several books by Leo Suryadinata (as Guyi) in the early 1960s. - Publications from Sadar and Zamrud, which are listed in other appendices. 583 === [PDF page 598] === Table 17. Other Books of Yinhua Literature pre-1965 Author Title Year Publisher Notes Lin Jingren Berastagi (摩达山 1920 Huitong Bookstore (Classical) poetry; 漫草) 汇通书局, Medan Attested in Yu Meiling, “Daoyan,” 42. Lin Jingren Lake Toba (天池 1920 Singapore (Classical) poetry; 草) Attested in Yu Meiling, “Daoyan,” 42. Zhong Malay Love Songs 1928 Far East Book Anthology of translated Jingwen 钟敬 (马来情歌集) Company (远东图 pantuns, likely include 文 et al ed. 书公司), Shanghai works by Indonesiaborn students; contributor Gechen (革 尘) may be Lin Gechen, later in Medan Zheng Tufei Coconuts (椰子集) 1929 Zhenmeishan Short fiction Bookstore (眞美善 書店), Shanghai Heiying Daughter of 1934 Kaihua Bookstore Short fiction Empire (帝国的女 (開華書局), 儿) Shanghai Heiying At Home and 1935 Qianqiu Bookstore Essays Abroad (异国与故 (千秋出版社), 乡) Shanghai Wen Zichuan Selected Malay 1935 Singapore Attested by excerpts in 温梓川, Love Songs (马来 Nanyang Siang Pau, Zheng Tufei 恋歌选) 1935-02-01, p. 15, includes earlier translations by Zheng Tufei, as well as Wen’s translations from his 1929 Nanyang Love Songs (南洋恋歌) Heiying Snow (雪) 1936 Qianqiu Bookstore Short fiction (千秋出版社), Shanghai 584 === [PDF page 599] === Baren Temple of Five 1946 China Democracy Play, mimeographed; Ancestors (五祖庙) League?, North attested in JS Sumatra Heiying Moved by the 1947 Jiaoren Bookstore Short fiction Times (时代的感 (鲛人书局), Jakarta 动) Zhang Midnight Poems 1948 Great China Poetry Shizhong 张 (子夜诗歌) Bookstore (大中华 实忠 书馆), Surabaya Chen Feelings of a 1948 Times Printery (时 (Classical) poetry and Fencheng 陈 Prisoner (难冠百感 代印刷馆), Jakarta memoir; Republished 奋程 录) recently by Shenghuo Cultural Foundation Zhang Ziming Poems from the c. Republished in Liang 张自铭 Inner Room (深室 1948 Fengxiang ed., Tieti xia 诗存) de kangzheng Sabin Air Boyscout (少年 1948 Cultural Supply Science-fiction novel 航空兵) Society (文化供应 社), Shanghai Wang Jinding Indonesian Short Before Equator Publishing Translated short stories; et al trans. Stories (印度尼西 1950 House (赤道出版 attested in Mi Jun, 亚短篇小说集)* 社), Hong Kong Redai shichao, advertisement, n.p.; and Wang Jinding, Women de qi, 435. Heiying Under the Red and 1950 Equator Publishing Novella; At least two White Flag (红白 House (赤道出版 editions 旗下) 社), HK Chen Excitement (激动 1950 Chinese Service Literary anthology; part Wenying, Zhu 的心情)* Society (华侨服务 of "Sumatran Writings Zhihui, Zheng 社), Medan; printed Series" (苏岛文丛); Yuanxin ed. in Hong Kong attested in Zheng Yuanxin, “Subei huaqiao wenyi” Baren Neighbors (邻人 1950 Sanlian Bookstore Memoir/reportage, 3rd 们) (三联书店), edition Shanghai 585 === [PDF page 600] === Baren Rensheng and 1950 Haiyan Bookstore Memoir/reportage, 2nd Those Around Him (海燕书店), edition (任生及其周围的 Shanghai 一群) Zhang Ziming Poetic Talk on 1952, Jiaoling Native History (in verse); coll. 张自铭 Jiaoling (蕉岭先达 1958 Place Association Academia Sinica, 诗话) (蕉嶺同鄉會), Taipei Jakarta Shalihong Indonesian Scenery 1955 Shanghai Bookstore Travel literature (印尼风光） (上海书局）, HK Lu Qianli 陆 Indonesian 1956 Zhongyin wenhua Anthology of translated 千里 ("Six Folktales (印尼民 she (中印文化社), folktales; found on Thousand Li") 间故事) Jakarta Kongfuzi.com Various Songs on the 1958 Guangdong People's Includes work by Equator (赤道线上 Publishing House Huang Dongping, Li 的歌唱) 1957 广东人民出版社, Qing Guangzhou Shalihong Bali Scenery (峇厘 1958 Zhiming Bookstore Travel literature 風光) (智明書局), HK Yinhua Yinhua Literature 1958 Weihua Publishing Literary anthology; Literature (印华文学选)* House (伟华出版 preface and table of Society (印华 社), HK contents republished in 文学社) ed. Thay Kong Siang Poo 1958-01-13 Yinhua Yinhua Works (印 1959 Weihua Publishing Literary anthology; Literature 华创作选)* House (伟华出版 "Indonesian Chinese Society (印华 社), HK Literary Works 文学社) ed. Anthologies" (印尼华 侨文艺创作选集) vol. Suryadinata, Indonesian Poems 1959 Shanghai Bookstore Translated poetry Leo (as Guyi (印尼名诗选 (上海书局), 谷衣) trans. /Sanjak-sanjak Singapore Indonesia) Shalihong, Sunglasses (遮陽 1960 Weihua Publishing Literary anthology; Qingfu 青夫 眼鏡) House (伟华出版 "Indonesian Chinese (of the Yinhua 社), HK Literary Works Literature Anthologies" (印尼华 Society) ed. 586 === [PDF page 601] === 侨文艺创作选集) vol. Zheng The Indonesian 1960 Weihua Publishing Literary criticism; Yuanxin (as New Literature House (伟华出版 includes extensive Jiaoshi 礁石) Movement (印度尼 社), Hong Kong translated poetry 西亚的新文学运 (pub.), Medan (ed.) 动) Shalihong (as Indonesian 1960 Weihua Publishing Anthology of translated Suyi 苏艺) Folktales and House (伟华出版 folktales and Zheng Legends (印度尼 社), Hong Kong Yuanxin (as 西亚民间故事传 (pub.), Medan (ed.) Jiaoshi 礁石) 说选) Da Kacha, Lai Indonesian 1960 Rixin Bookstore (日 Translated folktales; Xuanxian 赖 Folktales (印度尼 新書店), Hong republication of PRC 选贤 trans. 西亞民間故事) Kong (pub.), Medan edition Suryadinata, Sumatran Folktales 1960 Youth Bookstore Translated folktales Leo (as Guyi (蘇門答臘民間故 (青年书局), 谷衣) ed. 事) Singapore trans. Suryadinata, Javanese Folktales 1960 Youth Bookstore Translated folktales Leo (as Guyi (爪哇民間故事) (青年书局), 谷衣) ed. Singapore trans. H.M. Taulu, Manado Folktales 1960 Youth Bookstore Translated folktales Suryadinata, (萬鴉佬民間故事) (青年书局), 谷衣) trans. Suryadinata, Indonesian Notes 1960 Youth Bookstore Travel literature; no Leo (as Guyi (印尼散记) (青年书局), relation to Baren's 谷衣) Singapore Indonesian Notes Suyi and Travels in the Land 1960 Yimei Book Travel literature Jiaoshi 礁石 of a Thousand Company (艺美图 Islands (千岛之国 书公司), Hong 采风录) Kong Luo Qidong On the Jadeite Belt 1960 Youth Bookstore Short stories 骆起东 (翡翠带上) (青年书局), Singapore 587 === [PDF page 602] === Chairil Poems by Chairil 1961 World Bookstore Translated poetry Anwar, Anwar (凯里尔·安 (世界书局), Suryadinata, 哇诗选) Singapore Leo (as Guyi 谷衣) trans. Suryadinata, The Specificity of 1961 Shanghai Bookstore Literary criticism; Leo (as Guyi Malay New (上海书局), Hong includes a chapter on 谷衣) Literature (馬來新 Kong Indonesian literature 文學的獨特性) Shalihong (as Indonesian Short 1962 Weihua Publishing Short fiction (in Suyi 苏艺) Stories (印度尼西 House (伟华出版 translation) and Zheng 亚短篇小说选) 社), Hong Kong Jiaoshi 礁石) Armijn Pane; Shackles (桎梏) 1962 Yimei Book Translated novel, Shalihong, Ye Company (艺美图 translation of Belenggu Zuoquan 叶作 书公司), Hong 权 trans. Kong Sun Xi 孙希 Princess Jasmine 1964 Xinma Cultural Epic poem; Sun Xi was (as Han (茉莉公主) Company (新马文 a Mahua writer with Yuzhen 韩玉 化事业公司), Indonesian citizenship 真) Singapore Suryadinata, Indonesian Short 1960/ World Bookstore Translated short stories Leo (as Guyi Works (印尼短篇 1962 (世界书局), and poems?, at least 谷衣) ed. 创作选) Singapore two editions trans. Zheng The Blue Toba Hong Kong? Poetry; attested in Yuanxin 郑原 Lake (蓝色的多巴 Zheng Yuanxin, “Subei 心 (as Yingshi [峇?]湖诗集)* huaqiao wenyi.” 莹石) * No known surviving copies. 588 === [PDF page 603] === Appendix E: Yinhua Newspapers The following tables represent the most complete list of 20th century yinhua newspapers published to date. I have also included incomplete (given time constraints) lists of selected literary supplements and periodicals with direct relevance to my argument. While I have tried my best to double-check all of the information here, given the relative paucity of records (and sometimes conflicting information within them), scholars should exercise caution. See also Table 1 for a list of selected literary supplements. Newspapers pre-1945 This list is considerably less developed than the following two due to the scarcity of records and virtual total absence of surviving exemplars. Major newspapers are bolded. Lists of personnel are long (and not even complete!) for the better-documented newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s because many only remained for a year or two due to the policy of political deportation. Bilingual newspapers that are predominantly in Malay (e.g. Ik Po, est. 1905) are excluded. Before the 1930s, the line between newspaper and periodical can be relatively fluid, but in general if a publication included the term bao 报 in its title and was released at least once a week I include it here. Circulation numbers are derived from the Mantetsu reports (via Nobuto Yamamoto, Censorship) and/or the 1939 South Seas Almanac published by the Nanyang Siang Pau (Nanyang Nianjian). There are almost certainly duplicates below, due to errors in the sources, differing transcriptions, or changes in names. Note that all newspapers ceased publication except for Kung Yung Pao from 1942-45. 589 === [PDF page 604] === Table 18. Yinhua Newspapers, 1945-1960 Bacheng Ribao* Not to be confused with 巴城日报 Badaweiya Ribao “Batavia Daily” 1908-? Hoa Tok Po Associated with the Chen Bopeng 陈伯鹏 华铎报 Hua duo bao Revolutionary Alliance Bai Pingzhou 白萍洲 “Chinese Tocsin" Weekly, then tri-daily; c. 20 Zhong Gongren 钟公任 1909-1919 pages (Li and Huang, 388) Circulation: 3000 Had a Malay edition Thien Sung Yit Po Right (prewar) 天声日报 Tiansheng Affiliated to GMD Wu Gongfu 吴公辅, Wu ribao Circulation: 3k (pre-1937); 4-5k Weikang 吴伟康, Wu "Voice of Heaven Daily" (post-1937) Shenji 吴慎机 (succ. 1921-58 Address: Toko Tiga Sebrang 21 directors) Liang Xiyou 梁锡佑, Zhang Ziming 张自铭 (vice dirs.) Jakarta Shen Liangmu 沈良牧, Xu Juqing 徐琚清 (succ. EIC's) Zhong Guyi 钟孤逸 Wei Tianyu 魏天育 Xin Bao* Nationalist 1920s: 新报 Address: Asemka 29 Hsieh Tso-yi 谢佐禹 aka Sin Po (Chinese Circulation: 5-6k (pre-1937), 9k Lie Chen Fu Edition) (post-1937) Chuang Yu Lin "New Newspaper" Supplements: 1921-60 - Little Xinbao (小新报) 1930s: Ang Jan Goan (dir.) Song Chung Chuan 宋中 铨 Fang Dingxun 方定 xun (aka Fang Ting-hsiun; supplements) Xie Zuoshun 谢佐舜 Li Ruige 黎瑞格 Oen Tek Hian 温德玄 Lin Qiongguang 林琼光 590 === [PDF page 605] === Kong Siang Djit Po Address: Pkoedjan (sic) 49 Tang Weiming 汤惟明 工商日报 Gongshang Attested in 1926 in Zhongling Lin Chenghui 林成辉 ribao xiaokan “Industry and Commerce Closed by 1939 (Nanyang Daily” nianjian) 1922-? Badaweiya ribao* Later renamed Chuan Min Yit 巴达维亚日报 Po 全民日报 ("The People's “Batavia Daily” Daily"; PY: Quanmin Ribao) 1926-? Ho Suk Min Kok Yit Po GMD-affiliated 荷属民国日报 Heshu Circulation: 1.5k minguo ribao "Dutch-Territories Republican Daily" 1929-? Zhao bao* According to Yang Yi, founded Heiying 朝报 in the 1930s, anti-Japanese “Morning Newspaper” 1930s Shih Pao Address: Stadhuisplein 41 Phoa Liang Gie 潘良义 时报 Shi bao Coll. PNRI (dir.) c. 1932-? Closed by 1939 (Nanyang Liao Jiemin 廖杰民 Fan Xiaoshi 范小石 (ed.) Kung Yung Pao Founded as Xin Xinbao 新新报 Oei Tiang Tjoei (dir.) 共荣报 Gongrong bao “New Newspaper” Siek Tjoen Yam 薜俊炎 “Harmony Newspaper” Pro-Japanese (ed.) 1942-45 Used Sin Po equipment Staff from (Malay- Address: Asemka 29 language) Hong Po Sishui ribao* Attested by Zeng Lubai 泗水日报 “Surabaya Daily” 1903-? Surabaya Minduo bao* 民铎报 1908- Han Boen Sin Po Associated with the Restoration Zhang Yunlei 张云雷, 汉文新报 Hanwen Society (光复会) Shen Junye 沈均业 xinbao Had a Malay edition (eds.) 591 === [PDF page 606] === “Chinese script new Runs until at least 1911 when Su Manshu (contributor) newspaper” Su Manshu publishes The 1909-? Long Swan 斷鴻零雁記 here (see Mao Ce, “Su Manshu”) Sibin ribao* Closed by 1939 (according to Tian Tong 田桐 (EIC) 泗滨日报 Nanyang nianjian) “Surabaya Coast Daily” 1908-? Soe Pin Sin Po Address: Kampoeng Doro 3 Huang Fenqiang 黄奋强 泗滨新报 Sibin xinbao Relation to Soe Pin Djiet Po Li Boyi 李伯义 “Surabaya Coast New unclear; possibly renamed Qiu Shouyu 丘守愚 Newspaper” Attested 1923-1932 by Salmon, “The Chinese of Surabaya,” probably using Dutch intelligence summaries) Dagong bao* Later merged into Thay Kong 大公报 Siang Poo (Thay Kong?) “The Great Public” c. 1908-1922 Shangbao* Associated with Chamber of 商报 Commerce (Siang Poo?) Later merged into Thay Kong “Commercial News” Siang Poo?-1922 Thay Kong Siang Poo Address: Panggung Gang 3 No (prewar) 大公商报 Dagong 15 Yap See shangbao Circulation: 4k in 1930s Lie Kong Hie "Public Commercial Formed from merger of Dagong Zhang Shizhong (EIC) Daily" bao and Shangbao 1922-60 See next table for postwar Zhaowa meiri dianxun* Closed by 1939 (Nanyang 爪哇每日电讯 nianjian) “Java Daily Telegraph” 1928-? Qiaosheng Ribao* Attested by Li Xuemin and 侨声日报 Huang Kunzhang “Voice of the Overseas Chinese” 1929-? 592 === [PDF page 607] === Xincun* Active in 1930s 新村 Had a literary supplement (see “New Village” Yang Yi) Siang Po Relation to earlier Shangbao 商报 Shangbao that merged with Thay Kong “Commercial News” unclear Sudao minbao* Attested in Zeng Lubai 苏岛民报 No apparent relation to later “Sumatra People’s Sumatera Bin Po Newspaper” 1904-? Sumendala Ribao* Founded as Sumendala Bao (苏 (prewar) 苏门答腊日报 门答腊报; “Sumatra Ye Yanqian 叶燕浅 (dir.) “Sumatra Daily” Newspaper”) Liang Rujia 梁如九, Xu 1914-c. 1925 Succeeded by Sumatera Bin Po Yishi 许一时, Hong Jingming 洪敬铭 (eds.) Rili chenbao Closed by 1939 (Nanyang 日丽晨报 nianjian) “Deli Morning Newspaper” c. 1922?-? Sudao ribao* Apparently distinct from Medan 苏岛日报 Sumendala Ribao “Sumatra Daily” Closed by 1939 (Nanyang 1922?-? nianjian) Nanyang Daily News Pro-Chen Jiongming Chang Kiam Hao 张剑豪 南洋日报 Nanyang ribao Address: Jalan Kereta Api 8? (dir.) 1922-1929 (火车路 8 号) Cheng Ching Nih 陈敬倪 Further information: see Yeziji (EIC) Hong Jingmin 洪警民, Fan Changfeng 范长 风, Wang Fuyan 汪馥 炎 (eds.) Sumatera Bin Po Pro-GMD Ye Yanqian 叶燕浅, 苏门答腊民报 Successor to Sumendala Ribao Chen Jianli 陈建利, Sumendala minbao Further information: see Chen Jinzhong 陈金 "Sumatra People's Nanyang nianjian and next 钟 (succ. dirs.) Newspaper" table Yap Ee Chong 叶贻昌, c. 1925-60 Liang Rujiu 梁如九, Zhang Lantian 张蓝田 (succ. mans.) 593 === [PDF page 608] === Xu Yishi 许一, Hong Jingming 洪敬铭, Yap Ee Tung 叶贻东, Choo Chien Choon 朱 健军 (succ. EICs) New China Times Left-wing Khoo Soo Sie 丘卫才? 新中华报 Xin Zhonghua Address: Kumango 38-40 (dir.) bao Supplement: Dark Grass Hong Sisi 洪丝丝 aka 1929-42,?-1960 Weekly (青草周刊) Hong Yongan 洪永安, Successor to the Nanyang Daily Yang Guohui aka News Yong Kuo Hui 杨国徽 (EICs) Cheng Ching Nih 陈劲倪 Ang Hock Liem (supp.) Heiying (EIC?) Hwa Chiau Yit Po Coll. NLC (1939) 华侨日报; Huaqiao Refounded postwar (see next ribao table) “Chinese Daily News” 1930s-1960 Chen bao* Unclear if related to Rili 晨报 chenbao “Morning Daily” Attested in Chung Kwang-shing c. 1936-? Qiaosheng bao* Attested in Chung Kwang-shing 侨声报 No apparent relation to c. 1936-? Surabaya and (later) Makassar newspapers of same name Djawa Kong Po Linked to the local Soe Po Sia Ma Naidong 马乃东, Su 爪哇公报 Zhaowa (progressive reading society) Ganding 苏甘定, Han gongbao Had a Malay edition Xiqi 韩希琦(succ. Semarang 1909-c. 1910 Zhong Zhaowa Bao* Has a Malay edition as well; Ma Queyou 马厥猷 (dir.) 中爪哇报 Unclear if same as Djawa Kong "Central Java Daily" Po 1909-? 594 === [PDF page 609] === Zhenli Zhoubao Attested in anarchist-leaning 真理周报 Penang newspaper Yik “Truth Weekly” Khuan Poh in 1919 (see Leow, “Weeping Qingdao Tears Abroad) Semarang Yit Po Attested in 1926 in Zhongling 三宝垄日报 Sanbaolong xiaokan ribao “Semarang Daily” 1923-? Tiong Nam Yit Po Affiliated with GMD 中南日报 Zhongnan Closes before 1939 (Nanyang ribao nianjian) South (Seas?) Daily" 1926-? Xijiang Ribao* Possibly same as Sek Kang 锡江日报 Siong Po (锡江商报?) listed “Makassar Daily” in 1927 Dutch Survey of the Chinese Press (cited by Nobuto Yamamoto) Makassar Minsheng bao* GMD-affiliated 民声报 Probably the “Min Sei Po” in 1927-? Mantetsu report of 1940 (cited by Nobuto Yamamoto) "Kai Jo Shu Po" Attested in Mantetsu report of 1927-? 1940 (cited in Nobuto Yamamoto) Huiliu* Had a literary supplement (see Chen Yansheng 陈衍生 Bandung 汇流 Yang Yi) Liang Peiji 梁培基 “Confluence” 1930s “Sam Yu Weekly News” Attested in 1927 Dutch survey Siapiapi of the Chinese press (cited Bagan by Nobuto Yamamoto) 595 === [PDF page 610] === Xingqi ribao 星期日报 “The Week Daily” * Not original name NLC National Library of China PNRI National Library of Indonesia (Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia) Sources: Chung Kwang Shing, Yinni huaqiao baocong shi Heiying, “Fei Zhendong” Feng Ziyou, Huaqiao geming kaiguo shi Fu Wumen ed., Nanyang Nianjian (pub. 1939) Fung Ai-chun, Huaqiao baoye shi Li Qing, “Bainian lai Yindunixiya huawen wenxue de fazhan” Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi gudai zhi 1949 Williams, Overseas Chinese Nationalism Yang Yi, Cong xinhua wentan tanji Yinhua wenxue Yamamoto, Censorship in Colonial Indonesia Yeziji: Nanyang ribao liu zhounian jinian tekan Zeng Lubai, Zhongguo xinwen shi Zhongling xiaokan chuangkan hao Newspapers 1945-1960 The following list includes all the major newspapers as well as several minor ones during the period after independence and before the ban of all Chinese-language newspapers in 1960. Note that in 1958, all newspapers were also closed for six months, and right-wing, GMDaffiliated, and pro-Taiwan newspapers were not permitted to reopen. Most of these newspapers can be consulted (at least for the 1950s) in the Xiamen University collection. For more information on newspapers founded before 1945, see the previous table. Only supplements with explicit literary focus are included (i.e. youth, teachers’, women’s supplements, etc. are excluded, as are the in-house variety suppelements). Note, too, that according to Chung Kwangshing, almost all of the prewar newspapers were revived after the Japanese surrender, but most did not survive longer than a year; I have omitted these since they are only attested in Chung (Huaqiao baocong shi, Chapter 2). 596 === [PDF page 611] === Table 19. Yinhua Newspapers, 1945-1960 Thien Sung Yit Po Right (postwar) 天声日报 Tiansheng Affiliated to GMD Wu Shenji 吴慎机 (dir.; ribao Circulation: 12-15k in 1954 aka Ng Sim Kie) "Voice of Heaven Daily" Address: Toko Tiga Sebrang 21 Deng Guangxi 邓广希 1921-58 (dir.) Zhang Ziming 张自铭 Chiu Ching Ho 丘正欧 Xin Bao* Center-left, pro-PRC (postwar) 新报 Circulation: 21k in 1954 Ang Jan Goan (dir.) aka Sin Po (Chinese Address: Asemka 29 Song Chung Chuan Edition) Supplements: Chen Yuxiu 陈毓秀 (aka "New Newspaper" - Little Xinbao (小新报) Chen Juk Siu) 1921-60 - Coconut Winds (椰风) Chen Hanbing 陈寒冰 Situ Meisheng 司徒眉生 Succeeded by Zhongcheng Bao (aka Szetoe Meisen) Oen Tek Hian 温德玄 (PY: Wen Dexuan) Lin Qiongguang 林琼光 Jakarta Seng Hwo Pao Left Huang Zhougui (dir.) 生活报 Shenghuobao Affiliated with PRC embassy Wang Jiyuan (EIC) aka The Life Circulation: 18k (self-reported), Yang Sao (EIC) 1947-60 7.5k (govt-assessed) Heiying (EIC) Address: Hayam Wuruk 122 Zheng Manru (EIC) Supplements: Zheng Chuyun (EIC) - New and Green (新绿) Zou Fangjin (supp.) - Yinhua Literary Arts (印花 Liang Peiji 文艺) Note: Seng Hwo Pao from 1945-47 is actually the predecessor to the affiliated weekly magazine Seng Hwo Weekly The Free Press Right Xu Juqing 徐琚清 (dir.; 自由报 Ziyou Bao Circulation: 10-12k in 1954 aka Hsu Chu Ching) 1951-58 Address: Mangga Besar 18 Liang Xiyou (dirs.) Wang Chi Kao 王季高 (EIC) 597 === [PDF page 612] === Zheng Xuejia 郑学稼 Zhang Xunyi 章勋义 Chinese Commercial Right Guo Meicheng 郭美丞 News Affiliated with Chinese (dir.) 中华商报 Zhonghua Chamber of Commerce Kwee Boe Lim 郭武林 shangbao Address: Pancoran 29 (manager) aka Tiong Hoa Siang Po Mah Soo-lay (EIC) 1953-58 Xing Songyu 刑颂文 Berita Ekonomi Yinhua Center-left Chen Luwei 陈露微 印华经济 Yinhua Jingji Address: Mangga Besar 101 (EIC) "Chinese-Indonesian Supplements: Wasteland (荒地) Economy" aka Berita Ekonomi Note: Founded in early 1950s as Yinhua a weekly (then tri-daily) c. 1958-60 magazine Nanqiao ribao Left-wing newspaper, shut Zhang Shizhong, Lin 南侨日报 down for anticolonial Jiangxiang 林降祥 Relation to Nan Chiau Jit Pau in Singapore unclear 1946-? Thay Kong Siang Poo Affiliation: Left (postwar) 大公商报 Dagong Circulation: 2.5k in 1954 Wu Xuliang 吴序良 shangbao Address: Panggung Gang 3 No (manager) "Public Commercial 15 Zhang Shizhong (EIC) Daily" Supplements: Sprouts (萌芽) Fu Weidan (consultant) Surabaya 1922-42, c. 1945-60? Succeeded by Sahabat Wu Jindun 吴金盾 (supplements) Chinese Daily News Center-right The Chung Shen 郑丛森 华侨新闻 Huaqiao Address: Kembang Djepun 166 (dir.) 1946-58? Tsing Kwang Right Ye Ligeng 叶立庚 青光报 Qingguang Circulation: 2.5k in 1954 Zhang Rui 张锐 "Blue Light" Address: Bongkaran 22 Yao Derun 姚徳润 c. 1946-58? Supplements: Chen Wensheng 陈文胜 - Good Earth (大地) - Raging Tide (怒潮) In Hwa See Po Right 印华时报 Yinhua shibao Address: Bunguran 5 598 === [PDF page 613] === “Chinese-Indonesian Times” ?-1958? Sumatera Bin Po Pre-1948, pro-GMD (postwar) 苏门答腊民报 Post-1948, shifts left Ye Yidong 叶贻芳 (dir.) Sumendala minbao Circulation: 5k in 1954 Ye Yifang 叶贻产 (dir.) "Sumatra People's Address: Perniagaan 16 Lim Kat Ting (EIC) Newspaper" Supplements: Yinhua Literature Zhu Peiguan 朱培琯 c. 1922/28-60 (印华文学) (EIC) Tan Foe Khiong (nominal Note: reorganized from dir.) Sumendala Ribao* (苏门答 腊日报; “Sumatra Daily”) c. 1928 Note: apparently revived after 1963 (acc. Zhang Dayong), presumably with new name New China Times Left before 1947; shifts right Khoo Peng Huat (dir.) 新中华报 Xin Zhonghua Circulation: 6.5k in 1954 Xia/Shia Yingwei 夏应 bao Address: Kumango 38-40 伟 (EIC) 1929-42,?-1960 Medan Hwa Chiau Yit Po Left Tjan Tao Siew (dir, EIC) 华侨日报; Huaqiao Active in 1930s ribao Address: Jalan Gedeh Medan "Chinese Daily News" no. 55-57?-1942,?-1960 Democratic Daily News Left; founded by CDL Ye Yidong 叶贻东 (dir.) 民主日报; Minzhu ribao Circulation: 5k in 1954 Zhao Hongpin (manager) aka Min Tju Dje Pao Address: Shao Zonghan, Tan Beng 1945-1960 Honn 陈明枫 (EICs) Sumatra Times Center-right Tann Wee Beng 陈维明 苏岛时报 Sudao ribao Circ. 4-6k in 1954 (dir.) 1949-1958? Jalan Mayor 3 Chang Ting Lien (EIC) Lo Shan Pao 罗善保 Xingzhong Ribao* Right 兴中日报 Circulation: 4000 "Restore China Daily 1957-1958 599 === [PDF page 614] === Lee Ming Pau Left; circ. 3.4k in 1954 Xu Xing 许行 (founder) 黎明报 Liming bao Jalan Raya 2 Huang Shihu 黄诗虎 “Dawn” Supplement: Equator (赤道) (director) 1946-60 Zeng Xinghui 曾星辉 (supp.) Pontianak Huang Xincong 黄新聪 Chen Pau Right 诚报 Chen bao Circulation: 2.4k-4k in mid- 1947-58 1950s Adress: Jalan Tepekong Supplement: Bright (光明) Chiao Sheng Pao Right Lim Shen Si (dir) 侨声报 Qiaosheng bao Circulation: 1.6k in 1954 Yap A Tok 1951-58? Address: Pintudua 82 Yu Chian Kuo (ed.) Khuon Lu Yit Pao Left Huang Haifeng 黄海峰 Makassar 匡庐日报 Kuanglu ribao Circulation: 2k in 1954 (EIC?) c.1949-1960 Address: Sarappo 2; Tamalafba 42 Daily Telegraph Left 每日电讯 Meiri dianxun Circulation: 1.5k in 1954 c. 1954-60 Address: Pintudua 71 Supplement: Torrent (激流) Sing Chi Sin Wun (星期 Left Cirebon 新闻 Xingqi xinwen) Address: Pekalangan 10 aka Warta Mingguan 1951-1958? Xinsheng bao* Note: Coll. NLC 新生报 “New Life” ?-1960 Xin yinhua bao* Note: Coll. NLC 新印华报 “New Indonesian- Chinese Newspaper” 1953-? Zhengyi bao 正义报 “Justice” * Not original name of newspaper (i.e., my romanization) NLC National Library of China 600 === [PDF page 615] === Sources: Almanak Pers Indonesia 1954-55 Chung Kwang Shing, Yinni huaqiao baokan Fung Ai-chun, Huaqiao baoye shi Li Qing, “Bainian lai Yindunixiya huawen wenxue de fazhan” Li Xuemin and Huang Kunzhang, Yinni huaqiao huaren shi 1950-2000 Huang Xincong, Chidao cheng de gushi Paget, “Indonesian Newspapers” Qiaozong wenji (Shenghuo wenhua jijinhui pub.) Tjukrono, “Wo zai subei baoye duguo de rizi “ Zhou Taomo, Migration in the Time of Revolution Newspapers 1960-1966 This period is quite chaotic on the surface. In practice, a small number of coherent groupings of political backers, media professionals and capitalists likely underlies this dizzying succession of different publications. This table is intended to collate the available information to help to identify those particular groupings, and so includes a number of very thinly-attested publications. In generaly we can identify a set of short-lived military-backed publications from 1961, which are quite poorly-understood; a larger group of newspapers from 1963-65, which are relatively well documented in Jakarta, but not anywhere else; and a messy transition from 1965 to 1967 where newspapers were either closed or eventually merged into just two newspapers. City Newspaper Description Personnel Harian Masjarakat Right, forced to shift Wirokesuma (pub.) 社会报 Shehui bao leftwards (Chung Staff drawn from the "Society Daily" Kwang Shing) former Free Press and 1961 Commercial News Harian Manipol Bilingual Datuk rangkajo nan 政治宣言报; Zhengzhi Address: Perak Sembilan gadang (sponsor) Jakarta xuanyan bao III/21 Soehartono, Effendi “Political Manifesto Lubis, Soemanto (eds.) Daily” 1961 Zhongcheng Bao (忠诚报) Left, seen as PKI- A Karim DP (director) “Loyalty” proximate Kuo You Tao (manager) Address: Asemka 29 Ang Jan Goan, Tjan Tjoe Supplements: Som (advisors) 601 === [PDF page 616] === aka Warta Bhakti (Chinese - Sparks (火花) Li Zhuohui (de facto EIC, Edition) - Coconut Island (椰岛) unlisted) 1963-65 Successor to Xin Bao Liao Rongsheng, Huang Yurong, Yan Weizhen, Guo Wenhe (supplements) Obor Revolusi (革命火炬 Left? 日报 Geming huoju Renamed Dwikora and then ribao) Bangun in 1966 (see "Torch of Revolution" Paget) and finally 1964-66 merged into Harian Indonesia Api Revolusi (火炬报 Non-communist left, Oey Keng Tjiat 黄卿节, Huoju bao) affiliated with the PNI Pamudji, Karim M. "Fire of Revolution" Known for cultural and Doerjat (directors) aka Huo Chi Pao literary converage Surya Hadi (sponsor) 1964-65 Address: Pinangsia I No. Liang Piyun (EIC aka 24 Liang Pe Yun) Supplements: Zou Fangjin - Storm (风雷), world (supplements, unlisted) literature Zhou Yingnan - Equator (赤道线上), Shen Huizheng Indonesian and yinhua Sun Xi literature Seng Hwo Pao (生活报) Received permission to resume publication in 1965-09; does not seem to have resumed publication before coup Bangun (建设报 Jianshe PKI-affiliated bao) Attested in Zhongchengbao “Construction” 1965-09-11 Relation to renamed Obor Revolusi unclear Harian Ibukota (首都日报 Center-left, pro-Sukarno Soesito, Situ Meisen Shoudu ribao) Address: Pinangsia Raya (dirs.) "Capital City Daily" 48 Innychidmati, Justines 1963-65 Supplements: w. (editorial board) - Starfire (星火) Oen Tek Hian (de facto - Oasis (绿洲) EIC) Lin Qiongguang Merah Putih (红白报 Left Soeripto (ed.) Surabaya Hongbai bao) Successor to Tsing Kwang Wirokesuma (pub.) "Red and White" Sotardji Muljogusondo 1961 602 === [PDF page 617] === Sahabat Left, pro-Sukarno H Achmad Ismail, Trisno 友谊报 You yi bao Address: Jalan Semut 16- Djojosuwarno 1963-66 Supplements: Tio Tjik Nam (manager) - Coconut Forest (椰林) Oeij Khoen Siong (editor) - Sunflower (向阳花) Zhang Shizhong Successor to Thay Kong (consultant, unlisted) Siang Poo Renamed Dwikora in early 1966 Harian Gotong Rojong Left? Apparently both 互助合作日报 Huzhu Chinese edition of Democratic Daily hezuo ribao Indonesian center-left News and Sumatera “Mutual Aid Daily” Harian Gotong Rojong Bin Po were revived in 1963?-1965? (Oei Boen Tjoan, dir.) the mid-1960s. It is Attested in Zhongchengbao probable that the two 1965-09-11 newspapers above, which were both left, Obor Revolusi Attested in Zhongchengbao were the renamed 革命日报 1965-09-11 successors to those Relation to Jakarta paper of leftist newspapers (see same (Indonesian) name Zhu Peiguan). Medan unclear Angkatan Bersendjata Right-wing Staff drawn from New 武装部队日报 Wuzhuang Affiliated with military China Times (see budui ribao Later merged into Harian Tjukrono) "Armed Forces" Indonesia, Sumatran c. 1965-1966 edition (see Tjukrono) Harian Indonesia, Right-wing; formed from Sumatran Edition merger of Dwikora 印度尼西亚日报苏岛版 (Medan) and Angakatan aka Harian Indonesia Bersendjata (Medan), Mandala I Api Revolusi Attested in Zhongchengbao Possible links to pre-1960 火炬报 1965-09-11 Lee Ming Pau and pre- Relation to Jakarta paper of 1958 Chen Pau? same name unclear Pontianak Harian Ibukota Attested in Zhongchengbao 首都日报 1965-09-11, and in ANRI Relation to Jakarta paper of same name unclear Api Revolusi Attested in Zhongchengbao Possible links to pre-1960 Makass 火炬报 1965-09-11 Khuon Lu Yit Po, Daily Relation to Jakarta paper of Telegraph and/or presame name unclear 603 === [PDF page 618] === Obor Revolusi Relation to Jakarta paper of 1958 Chiao Sheng 革命火炬日报 same name unclear Pao? Pembangunan Military-affiliated Mardjuki (dir.)_ 建设报 Jianshe bao Address: Wotgandul Barat Soemartono Mertolojo Semarang Sources: Chung Kwang Shing, Yinni huaqiao baozhang shi Paget, “Indonesian Newspapers” Tjukrono, “Wo zai subei baoye duguo de rizi “ “Quanguo baozhi 104 jia, zhongwen bao 13 jia 全国报纸 104 家，中文报纸 13 家 [There are 104 newspapers in the country, and 13 of them are Chinese]," Zhongcheng bao, 1965-09-11, p. 2 Zhu Peiguan, “Mianlan minzhu ribao.” 604 === [PDF page 619] === Appendix F: Advice for Researchers For this project, I pored through the material remnants of this literature, reconstituting an archive: a substantial, progressive, Chinese-language corpus distributed through a complex of newspaper supplements and short-lived magazines and rare anthologies, that survived in private libraries and university collections across three continents. This informal note is intended to provide researchers seeking Chinese-language publications related to Indonesia with leads. One of the challenges and pleasures of this research has been the need to knit together—at least within the confines of this narrative—an archive that has been dispersed and displaced. The most rewarding (and pressing) tasks now involve seeking out (1) the survivors of the old yinhua literature to record their experiences; (2) personal and organizational archives; (3) scattered materials that appear in marketplaces as the elders pass away and their estates are dispersed. Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like to please reach out to me with questions. I would be happy to share any additional information or relevant files that I have. Official Libraries The most comprehensive collections of yinhua newspapers are held at the National Library of China in Beijing (see opac.nlc.cn). This collection is distributed over several subcollections. While most periodicals are easier to access, many of the newspapers are in the Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao reading room, which requires an institutional sponsor. The inconvenience is worth it since several publications (especially for the late colonial/Republican era) survive here and nowhere else. The National Library of Indonesia (Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, or Perpusnas) holds some Chinese-language materials, including a few early Chinese-type newspapers in microfiche, such as Ik Po. However, the catalogue (opac.perpusnas.go.id) cannot be navigated outside Indonesia, some holdings are missing, and romanizations of Chinese are inconsistent. Note also holdings of PRC cultural diplomacy in Indonesian—including embassy publications. This library is indispensable for research on the left in general. 605 === [PDF page 620] === The National Library Board of Singapore (nlb.gov.sg) is a good resource, and its catalogue is easy to navigate. A few scattered rare publications are held in other official libraries such as the Library of Congress (USA), and the State Library in Berlin. The holdings of these libraries are all accessible through the Worldcat system (worldcat.org). Provincial and municipal libraries in China and Indonesia should reward further investigation, if the challenges of accessibility and cataloguing, respectively, can be overcome. University Collections The collection of yinhua newspapers held by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies in Xiamen University was for me the single most important resource. These holdings are unmatched (except for the National Library of China) for the 1950-65 period, and have been digitized, though they can only be consulted onsite. The library of Beijing University also has a number of extensive runs of 1950s periodicals. Jinan University, Zhongshan University, Beijing Language and Culture University and Huaqiao University which have historically had links to the Overseas Chinese likely also have significant holdings that I have not examined. According to Worldcat, some rare books are also held at Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong and Macao University. As for Indonesian universities: the University of Indonesia was the site of Indonesia's first Sinology program. The current China Studies Program inherited an fascinating and uncatalogued mid-century collection compiled by Tjan Tjoe Som, which I visited briefly but did not make extensive use of. The successors to Ureca (Trisakti University in Jakarta; Universitas Surabaya in Surabaya; unknown in Medan), as well as other universities associated with Chinese communal institutions like Tarumanagara University and Atma Jaya University may also hold interesting documents. one should expect these to be uncatalogued or poorly catalogued. Outside of Indonesia and Greater China, there are significant holdings of yinhua publications in Leiden University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, Yale University, Stanford University, and Nanyang Technological University. Cornell and Ohio State's 606 === [PDF page 621] === microform editions of yinhua newspapers are an adequate source for those unable to access the Xiamen University collection. The George William Skinner Papers at Cornell also include extensive notes and materials collected during fieldwork in the mid-1950s, and more use can be made of them. Malaysian universities with holdings in mahua literature will often have some overlap with yinhua literature. Monash University also collects Chinese-Indonesian publications, though primarily in Indonesian. Private and Institutional Collections Wherever I went in Indonesia I asked where the old books were. There are many private collections, mostly uncatalogued, usually of books, magazines and ephemera. Lin Wanli owns the most complete set of Zamrud publications, which Ma Feng has digitized and inventoried. Redi Murti has collected an eclectic set of leftist publications, including many yinhua ones (some of which are posted on flickr.com/photos/redimurti). Azmi Abu Bakar, founder of the Peranakan Museum and Library, and Tan Suherman have both collected a considerable number of books, magazines and ephemera related to Chinese-Indonesians. The Medayu Agung Library also owns some scattered publications. The Yinhua Writers Association in Jakarta also has a respectable library, primarily of post-1980s publications, and analogous collections may exist in other large Indonesian cities. there are surely a great deal more institutional collections. I know that some school libraries have been preserved in native-place associations (such as Bandung's Hakka Association) and religious institutions (such as Muntilan's Confucian Temple). It is possible that there are still some elementary or secondary schools "nationalized" in the 1950s or 1960s that have preserved some of their older holdings. Missionary and church archives are another possible direction for research. In China, the descendants of the Southbound writers, may have inherited unpublished manuscripts and ephemera, as well as personal libraries, that would be of interest to specialists. For example, I regret not having been able to consult the Baren archive, stewarded by Wang Keping, as a result of the pandemic, to examine the manuscripts of the Indonesian Notes. (Some 607 === [PDF page 622] === of these reportedly are also entrusted to the Ningbo Municipal Archive.) Several scholars, like Shelley Chan and Zhou Taomo, have completed fieldwork in the Overseas Chinese Farms (华侨 农场); these may also preserve interesting collections. In addition to the Southbound writers, the collections of "returnees" (or refugees) and diplomats are of potential interest. Many of these would be located in Hong Kong, Macao, or Singapore. Other institutions: the International Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam does not hold Chinese-language materials, but it has many sources related to the Indonesian left, particularly in exile: see the Indonesian Pamphlets Series, Oei Tjoe Tat Papers, Go Gien Tjwan Papers, Francisca Fanggidaej Papers, and Bob Hering Papers. I also examined the collection of the HB Jassin Center for Literary Documentation, which has some uncatalogued Chineselanguage materials, but these are all easier to find elsewhere. Bookstores and Marketplaces I was first exposed to the existence of this archive while browsing second-hand book markets in Indonesia (including at Blok M in Jakarta, Taman Budaya in Yogyakarta, and near the train station in Medan). Ditto for bookstores like Little Fishing Island (小渔岛) in Xiamen. By extension, the online marketplaces Tokopedia and Kongfuzi.com are useful tools for bibliography. As the Cold War generation passes away, more and more personal collections will find their way onto these marketplaces, and it is to be hoped that institutions will consider intentionally acquiring them to prevent their further fragmentation. Databases The collection of the Shanghai Municipal Library, accessible through the National Periodicals Index (全国报刊索引) database, is an indispensable resource that is especially strong on the 1920s to 1940s. Duxiu includes most Chinese-language books published in the PRC (and is, at least as of the time of writing, now accessible through various "shadow libraries"). Many of the Chinese-language newspapers of Singapore, and to a lesser extent, of Hong Kong, are 608 === [PDF page 623] === digitized and accessible online. Given that many yinhua texts were published in those cities, deeper use could be made of them. Dutch-language newspapers are searchable on Delpher.nl. Memoirs and References Many historical details have to be gleaned from the memoir and biographical literature that has exploded since the 1980s. The following are the most important sources, and each have their own biases. In English, Leo Suryadinata's books, especially his series on Prominent Chinese, is a good starting point. In Chinese, the Encyclopedia of Overseas Chinese, edited by Zhou Nanjing, is more comprehensive. The fifty books by Li Zhuohui, mostly anthologizing articles from the various periodicals he has edited since 1998, include biographical articles on virtually all yinhua intellectuals of note. However, they are not always easy to procure and their contents are not searchable as of now. The Shenghuo Cultural Foundation (生活文化基金会) in Hong Kong, under Liang Junxiang's direction, has done invaluable work in preserving the legacy of the expatriate left, and especially of Seng Hwo Pao and (forthcoming) the Qiaozong. Some of the foundation's dozens of books are difficult to locate now, but the libraries of Hong Kong University and Xiamen University are fairly comprehensive. There is a daunting body of semiofficial memory literature (including gazetteers and party history) from Southeast China that has barely been tapped; this would be especially useful for research on the Hokkien left of the 1930s- 1940s. I believe there are some "easy pickings" available through comparison of published Chinese-language and Indonesian-language and Malaysian/Singaporean sources, beginning with memoirs. Republished Yinhua Writing The republication of early yinhua literature is very uneven. Only a handful of authors have multi-volume collected works: Baren, Huang Dongping, Li Qing. Writers with close links to the PRC, such as Baren, Heiying, Yu Dafu, Yang Sao, Wang Jinding, Gao Yunlan, Shen Zijiu, Hu Yuzhi, Sima Wensen and Xu Qiongling, are generally easiest to read in recent editions. The 609 === [PDF page 624] === Shenghuo Cultural Foundation has also republished many Indonesia-linked writers, especially those connected to Seng Hwo Pao and also, interestingly, Huazhong School. These include, in addition to some of the names already mentioned, Qianren and Liang Yingming. The same goes for several writers who left Indonesia and were successful in their new homes, such as Li Qing in Hong Kong, Zhou Yingnan in Singapore, Liang Piyun in Macao, and Lin Hanwen in the USA. The anthologies of writers who remained in Indonesia are generally harder to track down. There exist anthologies that include pre-1965 work by writers such as A Wu, Huang Yurong, Shaping, Jinmeizi, Lin Wanli, Shalihong (as Li Jing), Li Feng, and Yan Weizhen, though some of these are difficult to find. The Indonesian subseries of the Compendium of Southeast Asian Chinese Literature (东南亚华语文学大系), edited by Yan Weizhen, while focused primarily on post-1965 authors, includes some earlier writings. Some major writers from the period have not been republished in any serious way, as far as I know, and can only be studied through the periodicals/supplements and rare books. These include: Chen Shaoxin, Guan Tianlai, Li Xu, Liren, Zheng Yuanxin, Zhang Yunbing, and Xie Zuoshun. Note that some of these authors are included in the six hundred-page anthology Age of Fervor (激情年代), a very useful compilation of pre-1965 texts that is also almost impossible to track down. Official Archives Official archives are primarily useful for understanding the state’s perception of the yinhua press. The National Archives (Nationaal Archief) of the Netherlands have been relatively well-utilized by scholars. The crucial institution for the late-colonial era, charged with surveillance and translation, is the Department of Chinese Affairs (which changes name several times). This Department destroyed its archive, but copies of documents are distributed across the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2.05) and the Ministry of Colonies (2.10). For the independence struggle, the intelligence archives of NEFIS, CMI, and so on are helpful. The 610 === [PDF page 625] === regular summaries of the Chinese press are a useful source, although the holy grail is locating original documents or facsimiles confiscated by police and army. Part of the archives of the colonial state are held at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia (Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia; in inventories K70 and RA3). I have not had a chance to explore these in detail. These archives are helpful for understanding attitudes towards the Chinese press and publishing for the 1950s (inventories RA6, RA8, RA11, RA78) and 1960s (inventories RA37, RA62). The newly-catalogued photography archives may also reward scrutiny. Municipal and provincial archives likely hold Chinese-language materials, translated excerpts, or reports about them, but would require some patience. I have not examined official archives in Japan, Taiwan, and China, and have only looked cursorily at official archives in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the USA. Note that the National Archives of Singapore hold several (transcribed and searchable) oral histories on the 1940s and 1950s which make frequent mention of Indonesia. The State Department and CIA archives may have interesting information, since they were very interested in the “Chinese question.” 611 === [PDF page 626] === ProQuest Number: 32277155 INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality and completeness of this reproduction is dependent on the quality and completeness of the copy made available to ProQuest. Distributed by ProQuest LLC a part of Clarivate ( 2025 ). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author unless otherwise noted. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code and other applicable copyright laws. This work may be used in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons license or other rights statement, as indicated in the copyright statement or in the metadata associated with this work. Unless otherwise specified in the copyright statement or the metadata, all rights are reserved by the copyright holder. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway Ann Arbor, MI 48108 USA