Kho Ping Hoo survives into digital age
Kho Ping Hoo survives into digital age
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Although Asmaraman Sukowati Kho Ping Hoo died 11 years ago, his
work has survived into the digital age.
The past three years have seen Kho Ping Hoo stories being
uploaded to the Internet, as a website or e-book, and downloaded
to people's PDAs.
On Yahoo Groups alone, there are six e-groups of Kho Ping Hoo
fans, of which kho-ping-hoo group is the most popular, with more
than 1,200 members.
Bagus Pursena, the founder of the group, said that he met
other Kho fans who sought e-books of Kho's works on various
mailing lists.
In 2002, after cyber communication with fellow fans, he
decided to create the group which now has about 20 titles of
Kho's e-book, 70 megabytes in size.
"The titles include Kho's most popular series called Bu-kek
Sian-su, which has 17 titles," Bagus, an employee at a private
company in Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post.
He said that he found some of Kho's digitalized works
scattered on a variety of Internet websites.
"But some of the files were not arranged in correct order,"
added Bagus, a Javanese whom people often suspected to be a
Chinese-Indonesian due to his fanaticism for Kho's works.
With the help of other fans, he retyped the files, improved
the scan quality and arranged the books in order. He even
rechecked the accuracy of the files using the Kho hard copies he
had.
He said that he was willing to devote time to doing that
because he really liked the stories.
Bagus, who has read Kho's works since he was in junior high
school, added that about 20 to 30 people joined his group every
day and about 40 group members who lived in Jakarta met two to
three times a year.
He said that most of the e-group members were longtime fans of
Kho's works who had read all the books.
"But we like to read them again from our PDAs in our spare
time," he said.
"I like his works because he did not merely write martial arts
stories but also focused on values of critical thinking, peaceful
ways of resolving matters and inclusiveness in racial issues,"
Bagus added.
Kho's stories were tales written by Kho himself, and are not
an adaptation or translation of Chinese tales. Most of his works
have mainland China as their background although he also wrote
stories that have Java as the setting.
Kho, a Chinese-Indonesian born in Sragen, Central Java, on
Aug. 17, 1926, wrote stories in Indonesian with Chinese-Malay
terms like suheng (teacher) inserted here and there.
His stories have kung fu (Chinese martial arts) virtuous
heroes who fought against "jai hwa cat", a group of people whom
Kho described as playboys or "flower-picking heroes" and "bo ceng
li", a group of shameless cowards.
His works emerged to popularity in the late 1950s and
prevailed for 30 years.
After his first story, Pedang Pusaka Naga Putih (White Dragon
Sword) published in the 1950s in Teratai magazine received a warm
reception, he became a full-time writer, publishing his own
pocket books through his publishing company, CV Gema, in
Surakarta, Central Java.
Leo Suryadinata, a Chinese-Indonesian literature researcher,
wrote in his book Sastra Peranakan Tionghoa Indonesia (Chinese-
Indonesian Literature) that Kho's works within his 30-year career
totaled 120 titles.
Many Kho fans consider the Bu-kek Sian-su series of 17 titles
to be Kho's masterpiece.
Besides becoming an e-book, a number of websites have also
been developed for Kho's works, including a link on newsportal
www.detik.com.
Previously, Kho's stories were also made into a TV program,
Legenda Kho Ping Hoo (Kho Ping Hoo Legend), which was aired on
commercial TV.