when its harbor silted up.
Souw Beng Kong’s career reveals the expansive nature of life for some Chinese as they moved easily throughout the broader region in pursuit of opportunities. In addition to his move from Bantam to Batavia, Souw Beng Kong, who the Dutch called Bencon, left Batavia in 1635 for Zeelandia in Taiwan, a Dutch colony since 1624, where he recruited peasants from Fujian to fulfill the Dutch desire for agricultural development there. Perhaps as many as 50,000 Hokkien peasants, traders, and craftsmen made the sea journey to Taiwan by the end of Dutch rule there in 1662 (Hsu, 1980: 16–17). When Souw Beng Kong died in 1640, he was buried in the countryside outside Batavia, an area that today has been swallowed up by the city. His grave was lost until 1909 and restored in 1929, then at some point, strangely, the gravestone was incorporated into the interior of a slum dwelling. In 2008 the Souw Beng Kong Foundation removed the structure and restored the gravesite to both acknowledge and memorialize his role in supporting early Chinese migrants to Java.
No Chinese residences from the eighteenth century remain in the city, but there are some from the nineteenth century, a period when many fine Chinese-style homes were built in Glodok. Late nineteenth-century photographs provide us with glimpses of the façades of the large residences as well as shophouses that may have been built in the later part of the eighteenth century. Three mansions were built near each other along the fashionable Molenvliet West, alongside older Dutch mansions and hotels, by members of the Khouw family. Of these three, only one, which was constructed in either 1807 or 1867, survived well into the twentieth century. Its tortuous journey from being threatened with destruction multiple times to miraculous survival in a fragmented condition is detailed in Part Two (pages 172–9).
In Semarang, the grand nineteenth-century mansion of Be Ing Tjoe was called Tong Wan or “Eastern Garden” as well as Gedung Goelo or “Sugar Mansion.”
Semarang
Now the largest city in Central Java, Semarang not only once was a natural harbor like other small ports along the northern coast that vied with each other for Chinese traders, it is a location that claims to have a storied past linked to visits by Zheng He in 1406 and 1416. The often told tale is that Ong King Hong, Zheng He’s second in command, was so ill aboard ship during one of the visits that the fleet dropped anchor in the harbor. After coming ashore and locating what has since become a fabled cave, Ong King Hong was left behind with a squad of men and sufficient provisions to support them. Zheng He then sailed on while Ong and his men settled down with local women, cleared land and raised crops, in what eventually became a small Chinese village along the narrow plain. After building some small craft, the community increased its prosperity with active trading along the coast. Ong, like Zheng He, was a Muslim who committed efforts at spreading Islam while at the same time revering Zheng He, who was enshrined as Sam Po by Ong by his followers. In time, according to the well-known tale, Ong placed a small statue of Sam Po (Zheng He) in the cave to be venerated for his greatness. The isolated cave evolved into a shrine known to locals as Gedong Batu or “Stone Building.” Those of Chinese descent revere the Sam Po Kong Temple, which has expanded in recent years far beyond the cliff face, and is the focus for an annual festival that links those of Chinese descent with their illustrious forebear.
Wang Ta-Hai (Ong Tae-Hae), a Hokkien who had lived a decade in Batavia, Pekalongan, and Semarang, published a book in 1791 of his experiences in and impressions of Java that was reprinted several times in the mid-nineteenth century: “Semarang is a district subject to Batavia, but superior to it in appearance. Its territory is more extensive, and its productions more abundant. Merchant vessels are there collected and its commerce is superior... the fields are fertile and well-watered, and the people rich and affluent; whence it may be considered the crown of all those lands. With respect to climate, the air is clear and cool, and thus superior to Batavia; the inhabitants are seldom troubled with sickness, provisions are reasonable and easily obtained... the manners of the people are so inoffensive that they do not pick up things dropped in the roads; and the laws are so strictly enforced, that men have no occasion to shut their doors at night’ (1850: 7–8).
While Semarang had a Chinatown, the boundaries of life were said to have been more fluid than in other towns and cities across Java. After several centuries of immigration and intermarriage, the Peranakan Chinese community generally divided into two groups, one of which preserved its Chinese identity and used the Sam Po Kong Temple as its anchor, while the other, who had adopted Islam, became Javanese in culture. Still others blended the two approaches. These divisions can be seen in several residences lived in by successive generations of those of Chinese descent.
None of the nineteenth-century grand manors remain in Semarang. Preserved only in several photographs are the residence of Tan Tiang Tjhing, called Gedung Goelo or “Sugar Mansion,” built in 1815, and the home of Be Ing Tjioe and his son Be Biauw Tjoan, which was built around 1840 along the Semarang River. Each had a tripartite layout, with a set of three parallel buildings with a pair of perpendicular wing structures. Since it was not common for the front building of a residence to be two storeys tall, it is possible that the front building actually served commercial purposes as offices for the enterprises in which the Tan and Be families were involved. This type of dual use can be observed in structures throughout southern China. The addition of a freestanding rectangular open building with a broad eaves overhang is an unusual feature, perhaps serving as a kind of Javanese pendopo, the pavilion-like structure used to receive guests and provide sheltered space for work and relaxation.
Semarang today has wide, tree-lined boulevards with modern commercial and administrative buildings, narrow lanes with old shophouses, areas with large mansions for the wealthy, and smaller, yet comfortable homes in eclectic styles that were built in the nineteenth century. Along Besen Lane, in what once was the Chinese quarter, is an old shophouse that is now undergoing renovation as a gallery of Chinese art. Constructed late in the nineteenth century as a shophouse selling the well-known Frog brand of floor tile, the spacious brick building has Chinese brackets that extend the roof in the front. In addition to the wooden door, hinged into three leaves and divided horizontally into two sections so that the bottom could be kept shut while the upper left open, the shop has a rectangular panel on swivel hinges that once served as a display counter as well as a covering to secure the window at night. In addition to ventilation ports set high on the walls, there is a skywell in the back half of the building, which together with the front and rear windows kept the building quite airy. Chinese characters are still found above the doorways leading from room to room, but other of the applied ornamentation that once was found there is long gone. The upstairs area probably was used for sleeping space for employees. Across the lane is a similar two-storey shophouse. Elsewhere in Semarang, Peranakan Chinese sometimes live in nineteenth-century homes that evoke more Dutch Indische than Chinese styles. The eclectic residence of Tan Tiong Ie, which was built in 1850 a century after his ancestors arrived in Java, is featured in Part Two (pages 188–9).
Thonburi, Bangkok, and Songkhla
Siam, today’s Thailand, has a long history of overland migration and trade with southwest China. Maritime trade and migration, on the other hand, is of more recent origin, beginning before the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), and flourishing for more than five centuries spanning the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911). During most of this time, trade was carried out not only as part of a tributary system but also through the efforts of countless private traders who plied the waters in seagoing and coastal junks. The volume of trade was so great that many of these Chinese-style junks were actually built in Siam using locally available and superior teak timbers. Reciprocal trade between Siam and China—except for Siam’s export of necessities such as rice, sugar, pepper, and woods—historically was in high-value luxury commodities: elephants’ teeth, sapanwood (a medical plant and source of a reddish dye), deer hides, rhinoceros horns, sticklac resin, decorative birds’ feathers, and birds’ nests from Siam, in exchange for a range of chinaware and textiles, especially porcelain
