My name is Amadea Mouskouri Da Leo and I am usually called Dea or Amadea. What comes first into your mind when you hear my name? I bet you will assume that I am a half-blood girl. I bet you will assume that I am French or Portuguesse or Spanish descent. Many people have that kind of assumption. That is absolutely wrong anyway. I am an Indonesian born Chinese. My father and my mother are Chinese descent. My father is Hakka-Hokkien descent and my mother is Hokkien descent. Both of them were born in Indonesia. Only my grand-grandfather who was born in China.
I would like to explain a little about my family. I will explain from my father descent because as a Chinese family, the line descent is from my father since. My father’s Indonesian name is Leo Yuda Fattah and he has Chinese name Lioe Ye Fat. His clan or family name is Lioe, so are his two daughters.
My grand-grandfather from my father was born in China. He was Hokkienese and his hometown was Fujian, South China. He went to Indonesia following his uncle to do the trade. He could not write nor read. He had lack education. He spoke Chinese and Hokkienese but ever since he came to Indonesia, he had spoken both Chinese-Hokkienese and Indonesian. He was not Indonesian citizen at the time, he only went to Indonesia for trade business. As the time flew, his arrival to Indonesia became often and often until one day he met an Indonesian born Chinese woman in Jakarta. He married that woman although he had married to a woman in China. I do not know whether I should say luckily or unluckily, but the fact is his first wife had not given birth any children.
My grand-grandfather lived in Jakarta and finally became Indonesian citizen until he died. In the rest of his life he spoke Indonesian quite fluently. He has 4 children. His only daughter is my grandmother. Because she was born in Indonesia, she speaks Indonesian and a little Hokkienese only. She was raised up in Jakarta but moved to Purwokerto when she married to my grandfather. My grandfather was not from Jakarta, he was from Cilacap and he has passed away. My grandfather owned many ships and did the trade. Besides Hokkienese, my grandfather had Hakka descent but in all his life, he was just same as my grandmother; he spoke Indonesian, a little Hokkienese and Hakkanese (khek/kelang).
They have 4 children; 1 daughter and 3 sons. My father is the second child. And as Chinese, they all have been given their Chinese names. But do you know what happened with the 4 children’s spoken language? Since the children all were born and grew up in Java, they did not speak Chinese or Hokkienese as their daily language anymore. Instead, they spoke Indonesian and sometimes they put Hokkienese in their conversation. Even though their spoken language and written language is Indonesian, they still call and teach their children (my father also teaches me) to call the relatives in Chinese like Apho (phopho) for grandmother, Akung (kung-kung) for grandfather, Khukhu for aunt, Shushu for uncle, Kujong for aunt’s husband, Cici and Koko for the older cousins, brother and sister. In addition, my father’s family still hold the Chinese culture quite tight. That’s all a little information about my father’s family.
It’s quite different from my mother’s family. In this case, I will not explain about my grandfather because he had died before I was born, so I can only explain about my grandmother. My mother, even though comes from Chinese family and also a Hokkienese, she and her family do not hold the Chinese culture tightly anymore. She cannot speak Chinese or Hokkienese, but my grandmother can. She speaks both Indonesian and Chinese fluently. Not only in speaking Chinese, in written language, she is expert. Besides those languages, she also speaks Javanese quite often in the daily conversation. But unfortunately, my mother and grandmother never teach me to call our relatives in Chinese, like calling my uncle Shushu or Qiuqiu, calling grandmother Apho or Emak, because they have forgotten the rule of calling the relatives. Instead, I call my uncle Om, call my aunt Tante and call my grandmother Oma. But I still call my aunt’s daughter and son Cici and Ooh. I am also called Cici by my sister, my cousin, nephew and niece.
Growing up in an Indonesian born Chinese family, my family and I cannot confute there are so many life values and Chinese culture which have been faded in our family generation. We cannot speak Hokkienese as fluent as Hakka (Khek/Kelang) people speak their own language until now even though they do not live in China anymore. We have to learn Chinese in order to be able to speak Chinese. We do celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year but in our own version, not in the real one. We do not believe in Fengshui but we still accept that we have shio (like zodiak and horoscop but it is based on the year of birth and the symbol is animal). We do not do chengbeng, cap go meh, etc.
Another thing, we are living in Java and that’s why I do believe that Chinese in Java (including my family, of course) are more integrated with Javanese culture that makes them different from Borneo’s Chinese or Sumatera’s Chinese. Although we are integrated with Javanese, we still keep one thing; Chinese should marry Chinese, especially for the women. Not to be racist, but in Chinese tradition, Chinese women should marry Chinese men to defend the purity of our descent and the clan. But for the men, they can marry non-chinese women since the men is the ones who hand on the clan to the children (patrilineal).
Living in Java for a long time and has not spoken our own language from generation to generation does not mean that my family and I can speak Javanese fluently. My family and I speak Indonesian as our daily language. Of course, we can speak Javanese but only ngoko. If people asks us in krama alus, both of us cannot reply in krama alus. Then, the Javanese that we know is Ngapak Javanese or Banyumasan which has some differences from Jogjakarta Javanese.
In my generation, my sister and I speak Indonesian in our daily conversation. My parents teach us to speak Indonesian since we were kids, whether for formal situation or not. They do not teach us to speak Hokkienese anymore but I do learn some Hokkienese vocabularies by myself by listening and paying attention when mother, father, grandmother are talking. My grandmother does the same thing. She is expert in Chinese but does not teach my sister and I to speak Chinese since we were kids. Parents never teach my sister and I how to speak Javanese but we learn this from our neighborhood, school and friends. Now, we used to speak Indonesian mixed with Javanese and mixed with Hokkienese.
The differences in using spoken language in my family can happen because of some factors. First, the grown-ups who came from China and lived in Java never taught the Hokkienese to their children. Instead, they switch off their language, and switch on the Indonesian even Javanese in order to be easy to integrate with the indigenous. Second, there has been no curiosity and effort of the children (including me) to learn or ask to be taught. Third, the different era. This means that every generation lives in one level which is more modern than their grown-ups and this makes the difference of society, attitude, the way of thinking, education, entertainment, etc. What I feel in my society now is that they require the Chinese to learn and speak Indonesian in order to be able to integrate, socialize, etc. In education system now, I hardly find a Chinese School like in the past, in my grandmother era. Fourth, the number of Chinese in Java are not as much as in Borneo or Sumatera, we do not dominate here and we do not keep our culture or tradition as tight as they do. That’s why, we as Chinese in Java have forgotten our own language.
Sometimes and somehow, I’m sad because I am a Chinese but I cannot speak Chinese nor Hokkienese. I’m sad because there are some even many life values and traditions that have been forgotten by my family. But I want to learn what I do not know, keep and hand on some of those that I hold still to my generations.
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