The Sea

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This article was published in Westerly magazine (Australia), Edition No. 62.2 (2017)

The first time I saw the sea, I was five. My father took me to see the Indian Ocean. We lived in a small town near the southern coast of Java, so we refer to the ocean as the ‘South Sea’. The furious sea under the dusky and misty dawn emanated a mysterious, yet intense energy, which triggered an unprecedented sensation inside me, that I was very, very tiny and powerless before the nature.

With his hand around mine, my father told me the story of the Queen of the South Sea. The beautiful goddess, always wrapped in a green dress, is a mighty spirit residing at the bottom of the sea: the one who makes this sacred sea so perilous; the one who so often takes lives. And so, fishermen, sailors, swimmers, even visitors who merely put their feet on the beach sand are carried away by under-water currents, transported to her palace at the bottom of the sea.

Listening to this, I shivered. I held Father’s hand tighter.

Father laughed, called me a coward.

The mystical beliefs of Java somehow had become an essential part of my soul, even though my ancestors were not natives of this land. Both of my grandfathers and two of my great-grandfathers were born in southern China. They sailed across the sea in the twentieth century, landed in Java and settled in this southern-coast backwater town of Lumajang, which was known to the Chinese as Nanhaizhang, the ‘South Sea Current’.

For the Chinese in China, Java was simply a faraway land at the end of the world, mysterious and dangerous. Parents back there in China would use Java to frighten their naughty children: If you aren’t obedient, I’ll throw you to the Java land! But for those of us who were born here and living here, Java was our homeland. A heavenly one, as the Javanese usually say about this land: it’s so fertile that a stick or a rock thrown on the ground would grow into a plant; and the sea was a pond of milk, where fish and shrimps would come to you by themselves.

But those gods and all the magical spirits of Java that guard the jungles, seas, and mountains had to be kept happy, so that they would keep blessing our land. That’s why, every Thursday night, my mother would make an offering, consisting of three-coloured flowers placed on a banana leaf, placed it in a corner of our shop. Without the offerings, as we believed, those mighty beings would be angered and curse us with disasters: the volcanos would erupt and the South Sea would claim more victims.

There was Java in our blood. We breathed Javanese air, ate Javanese rice, consumed Javanese herbal medicines, participated in traditional Javanese rituals respecting the Javanese mighty spirits. We talked and thought and dreamed in Javanese. But, no matter what, we could never become Javanese.

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I grew up in the 1980s, in Suharto’s Indonesia, when the suspicion and hatred toward the Chinese was hard to miss. My slanted eyes and yellow skin were easy targets for bullying by the Javanese kids on the streets. ‘Cina! Slanty-eyed chinky, just go back to your country!’

My father was right: I was a coward. Those bullies made me afraid to leave my house. If I had to, I would have one of my Javanese maids take me on a bicycle. I always walked with my head bowed, as I was afraid that my slanted eyes would be seen by people.

The anti-Chinese sentiment was related to the political turmoil after the 30th of September, 1965, as several high-ranking army generals were murdered in Jakarta by mysterious groups of people. The incident was mentioned in our history books as an attempted coup d’etat plotted by the communists. After this bloody episode, in 1966, our first president, Sukarno, stepped down, replaced by Suharto. Among Suharto’s first actions was to ban and dissolve the Indonesian Communist Party. All diplomatic ties with China were also severed, as the red State was alleged of secretly supporting the Indonesian communists. Communism was officially declared as the greatest enemy of the nation, and therefore, Suharto banned anything related to communism, which for him, included anything related to China: Chinese language, Chinese names, Chinese culture, Chinese religion.

The Chinese living in Indonesia were supposed to wipe their memory of their ancestral homeland and traditions, in order to become fully Indonesian. In those days, if you were denounced as ‘un-nationalistic’, it was just as sinister as being accused of being ‘communist’ or ‘atheist’. When I was in high school, my moral education teacher taught us on the subject of nationalism, and asked me in an intimidating tone, ‘Which do you love most, Indonesia or China?’ The question was directed only at me. My teacher then announced my new label to the class, a ‘foreigner’, leading to laughter and mockery of the entire classroom, ninety percent of whom were Javanese.

At school, we learned that our state ideology, Pancasila, is ‘mighty’, and under any circumstances would be able to destroy all of our enemies, especially the communists. Pancasila is ‘mighty’, not unlike those invincible Javanese gods and spirits. On the 30th of September every year, our national television would broadcast a propaganda film depicting how the communists slaughtered our generals—our beloved ‘Revolutionary Heroes’. I will never forget one particular scene of the film, in which the communist women sing joyously, hand in hand forming a circle in the middle of the night, after they shamelessly marred the faces of the generals with small knives. The next day, October 1st, the whole country would commemorate the Day of the Mightiness of Pancasila.

That year, our high school held a writing competition to glorify the invincible Pancasila. I wrote a long article on the savage behaviour of the communists, on the miraculous power of Pancasila, and how fortunate we were to have a great hero like Suharto. I genuinely believed that Suharto was as ‘mighty’ as our Pancasila. My article won the first prize. It was my first award in my writing career. Overwhelmed with pride, I brought home a tall and glittering golden trophy. I was excited to tell my parents about my great accomplishment.

But my father wept. My strong father, whom I had never ever seen crying, was crying his heart out.

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