Chinese New Year significant in Pontianak

By Edi Petebang

PONTIANAK, West Kalimantan (JP): Recently the sound of clinking cymbals accompanying the Lion Dance has become a part of afternoon life here at a newly-renovated Chinese temple on Budi Utomo Street. A number of Chinese elders are teaching youngsters to perform the Dragon and the Lion Dances, cultural pieces performed to highlight the Chinese Lunar New Year and Cap Go Meh, a festival on the 15th day of Chinese lunar new year marking the end of new year celebrations. Some temples have been freshly decorated and re-painted. What is obvious to the eye is that Chinese festivals are now openly celebrated.

The atmosphere of Chinese Lunar New Year welcomes us the moment we enter local book and stationery shops, in the same spirit as before Idul Fitri and Christmas Day. Chinese Lunar New Year cards are prominent in such shops. "These cards are in quite good demand. Mostly teenagers and youngsters buy them," said a street vendor.

The cards, predominantly red in color, are available at between Rp 800 and Rp 1,500 each. Some of them are imported from Malaysia and Singapore. They have different culturally specific motifs such as caricatures of Chinese gods, ritual symbols and calligraphy.

Other accessories are used in the celebration of the Chinese lunar new year number 2551, which falls on Feb. 5 this year. Chinese paper lanterns, miniature citrus trees and red pineapples and Chinese dolls are all traditional Chinese new year ornaments and lend a merry atmosphere to the holiday.

Fireworks are also sold. To the Chinese community, it is traditional to burn fireworks to welcome the New Year. According to Chinese legend, the agricultural harvest of one village was attacked by Nien, a sort of tiger which is now depicted as the lion in the Lion Dance. The male villagers made a fearsome noise to drive away the animal. This triumph of the villagers over evil has since been commemorated as the Chinese Lunar New Year, an occasion to express gratitude to God.

The fearsome noise is now symbolized by the fireworks, firecrackers and a red paper talisman containing a magic formula to drive away the evil Nien.

Chinese Indonesians constitute about .... percent of the population here, but in Singkawang city, Sambas regency, the ethnic Chinese residents make up 70 percent of the city's total population of 85,116. They have prepared the celebration of the new year with a number of activities such as a Festival of Mandarin Songs and Lion and Dragon Dance shows.

The hustle and bustle in welcoming the Chinese Lunar New Year is now a common sight. Ethnic Chinese residents are now free to express their arts, culture and beliefs. Since the onset of the reform, a number of Chinese shops selling items for Confucian ancestral prayer services have emerged here. Unlike during the New Order era, bookshops now freely sell accessories for Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. It is big business here -- in Pontianak municipality the ethnic Chinese residents account for 32 percent of a total population of 383,157.

"We are free now," said a vendor.

The celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year in 2000 is particularly significant to the Indonesian Chinese community. First, there is no ban on public new year celebrations. Second, this year's Chinese lunar calendar ushers in the Year of the Golden Dragon, the Chinese astrological symbol which appears once every 60 years. According to XF Asali, a Chinese community figure in West Kalimantan, the Year of the Golden Dragon is a much anticipated year.

"This is an auspicious year for your luck, business, weddings and child birth, a year marked with soil fertility and expected to result in bumper harvests," he said.

Freedom

The ethnic Chinese community has regained their freedom to profess their own religion and beliefs and to celebrate their traditional festivals following a decree by President Abdurrahman Wahid, Presidential Decree No. 6/2000 dated Jan. 17, 2000, which annuls Presidential Instruction No. 14/1967. The annulled presidential instruction restricted the ethnic Chinese community from carrying out activities based on Chinese religion, beliefs and tradition. During this period, at the occasion of the annual Chinese Lunar New Year, the central government and regional administrations restricted the Chinese community to celebrations of the lunar new year only within the family and local temples.

Although the Chinese Lunar New Year this year is special, the Chinese community in West Kalimantan has opted not to celebrate it on a grand scale or in public places. Leaders of the Bakti Suci Foundation and the Marga Bakti Association, both the largest organizations of West Kalimantan's ethnic Chinese community in charge of some 45 foundations, have called on their members to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year in a simple manner.

"We must place simplicity above everything because the Indonesian people are now being troubled with riots and economic crisis," said Halim Tredjo, chairman of the Bakti Suci Foundation.

Parades of Lion and Dragon Dances will be held only within the Chinese temples.

In West Kalimantan there are very rich Chinese as well as quite a lot of poor ones. The history and the social, economic and political conditions of ethnic Chinese in West Kalimantan are different from those of ethnic Chinese in other regions, particularly in Java. In Java many ethnic Chinese belong to the upper middle class; in West Kalimantan on average they belong to the lower middle class.

In Singkawang, most of the Chinese earn their living as manual laborers, farmers, fishermen, housemaids, porters, small-scale vendors, civil servants, members of the armed forces and legislators. To survive, not a few of them earn a living as sex workers. In Siantan Hulu and Siantan Tengah, in Pontianak municipality, it is easy to find landless Chinese farmers growing papayas, vegetables, corn and aloe.

So although the Chinese Lunar New Year this year is special, most in Singkawang will not celebrate it publicly or grandly.