Ban on Chinese letters leaves language void

By Hyginus Hardoyo

JAKARTA (JP): University of Indonesia senior lecturer Gondomono believes there is an apt adage to describe the result of the New Order government's systematic ban on the use of Chinese characters.

"The evil done to others comes back to the perpetrator," he said during a recent symposium on the Role of Language and Culture in Improving Indonesia-China Relations.

He said the government now found itself without any qualified experts on Chinese language and culture, skills it desperately needed in diplomatic relations with Beijing.

"Because of the absence of Indonesians mastering the Han (Mandarin) language, official meetings between Indonesia and China frequently use interpreters from China who are fluent in Bahasa Indonesia," he said during the symposium at Hotel Santika in Central Jakarta.

Gondomono acknowledged there were Indonesian interpreters for tourism and travel purposes between several destinations in China and Taiwan, but said their service was far from enough.

"We are badly in need of people who are fluent in the Han language for any necessity and field -- the economy, politics, culture, tourism, education, etc."

The other speakers at the symposium were Hermina Sutami, also of the University of Indonesia, and Huang Chenfang and Liang Liji of Peking University.

The symposium was held in conjunction with the launching of Kamus Lengkap Indonesia-Tionghoa (A Comprehensive Dictionary of Indonesian-Chinese) published by PT Elex Media Komputindo of the Gramedia Group.

The launching coincided with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China.

The ties were frozen in 1967, two years after an abortive communist coup in which Indonesia charged China with involvement. Beijing denied the accusation.

In the aftermath of the coup, Indonesia closed Chinese schools and banned the public exposure of Chinese arts and culture, including use of Chinese languages.

The only university officially allowed to provide study of the Han language was the University of Indonesia. Privately run Darma Persada University was permitted in 1986 to teach the language, Gondomono said.

Gondomono disclosed the inadequacy of the language study classes. Han was taught by local lecturers for only between five hours and 10 hours per week over three years to four years. No native speakers were involved.

"Moreover, most books and other publications available at the library were already out of date."

The distribution of all Chinese-character publications, such as books, magazines and newspapers, was not permitted, except the government-controlled newspaper Harian Indonesia. Today there are several Chinese newspapers available in the city.

Gondomono said some of the restrictions were so petty they would be laughable but for the seriousness of the discrimination.

English-language magazines like Time, the Asian edition of Newsweek (Asian edition), Far Eastern Economic Review and AsiaWeek were withheld from distribution if they contained advertisements with Han language characters.

The officials in charge of censoring the publications could not read the language and resorted to summarily blacking out the text. In fact, the advertisements were usually for medicines or beverages, and had nothing to do with communism.

Despite the authorities' zeal, Gondomono said they sometimes missed use of the language right before their eyes. He said in one case a Japanese restaurant was allowed to open in Jakarta even though it used Kanji characters on its door and name plate. Kanji means Han or Hanzi in Japanese pronunciation.

Proficiency in the Han language will not only help in the corridors of power, the speaker said, but also in the halls of science and medicine.

"How can we ignore the culture of a neighbor which has a population of over one billion? Like it or not, we have to acknowledge that we can learn much from the Tiongkok (Chinese) culture, which includes philosophy, history, literature, pharmacy, fine arts, martial arts and many other things," he said.

Liang Liji, who is director of Indonesia-Malaysia studies at Peking University, said language functioned as a cultural means apart from its role in communication. Mastering a language also allows one to understand a culture; cultural exchange has to be done through language.

"The culture of a nation will not steadily grow without the ability to grasp beneficial and valued elements from the other culture."

He said not a single culture of a nation was 100 percent pure or without the influence of beneficial elements from other cultures, including their languages.

"Chinese culture is known as one of the oldest cultures in the world and has a tradition rooted over thousands of years. However, is the Chinese culture pure? Of course not," said Liang, who was born in 1927 in Bandung, West Java.

"We as two big developing nations have many common interests which force us to expand cooperation fields for the sake of faster achievements, for both the two nations themselves and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole."

Hembing Wijayakusuma, an expert on Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicine who attended the symposium, said the Chinese language was the "warehouse" of sciences.

He believed that much could be learned from the Chinese approach to treating both common and unusual ailments.

"We Indonesians usually eat peanuts and throw away their shells. The Chinese are different. They eat the peanuts, and later boil the shells and drink the water to reduce cholesterol."

Dictionary

Prepared by a joint team of experts from the University of Indonesia and Peking University over six years, this 1,256-page dictionary contains 40,497 entries and 26,932 subentries, which are equipped with phrases, idioms and proverbs.

The publication of the dictionary was the realization of a memorandum of understanding signed in 1992 by Peking University president Wu Shuqing and the then rector of the University of Indonesia, Sujudi, on the importance of cooperation for the formulation of bilingual dictionary programs between the two universities.

Gramedia Group president Jakob Utama believes the Chinese language has a great role in the world.

"English is used by about 1.5 billion people worldwide. Chinese is no less important, as in China alone the language is used by 1.2 billion people," said Jakob, adding that this number did not include Chinese living outside of mainland China, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and other nations.