This book deals with the aspirations and goals of the Chinese ethnic minority in Indonesia from 1900 to 1965. Their arrival in Indonesia and their long struggle to improve their legal status and preserve their cultural identity is documented in detail from 1900 to 1965. Political and trading organizations were formed to advance Chinese minority interests in Indonesia and Chinese schools were opened to boost the future prospects of young people. The story is told of how they eventually had some successes in coping with Dutch colonialism. However, they never actually gained complete equality with the Dutch. Then they lost many of those gains under Japanese imperialism and indigenous Indonesian administrations. Thousands of Indonesian Chinese died in massacres and thousands more were forcibly repatriated to China. Their houses and shops were often burnt during riots and their women raped but they doggedly continued to survive and some even prospered. They were often subjected to unbearably heavy taxation and discriminatory legislation forced many of their businesses to close. Half of them were never able to obtain Indonesian citizenship and their status as a largely non-Muslim minority dealt them a tremendous disadvantage. The speaking of Chinese language was even banned at one stage. The book concludes with an assessment of successes so far and future prospects. However, as the struggle for rights continues today, the possibility of Indonesia's Chinese minority gaining total equality with the indigenous majority is as remote as ever. John Oxenham Goodman, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China.
About the Author: John Oxenham Goodman was born in Australia in 1941. He is of English, German and Welsh ancestry. As a young man he worked in clerical positions in government departments but found these jobs routine and unchallenging. He studied Spanish and German and then travelled extensively in Western Europe crossing into Soviet occupied Berlin and climbing a mountain in Norway to view the midnight sun. These and other travel experiences opened his eyes to the wider world and gave him a broader perspective than that available in the geographical remoteness of Australia. Like many other Australians who have traveled overseas, he no longer felt isolated from the culture of the Western world. On returning to Australia he found employment in the Australian National University Library where he came in contact with many Asian people who worked in or frequented the university's Oriental Library. He developed an interest in Asian civilizations and in 1969 enrolled in the Asian Studies Faculty hoping to learn Asian languages and teach them. He first studied Indonesian and Japanese, as Chinese was then rarely taught in Australian schools. Eventually, in early 1973 he undertook an intensive course in spoken Chinese at the University of Canberra and then studied Classical Chinese at the National University where he began to learn the Three Character Classic and read parts of the Analects of Confucius. He finished his Indonesian and Asian Studies majors and studied Javanese and Arabic while completing a reading course in Dutch. After being awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) he went on to complete graduate diplomas in Education and Librarianship and he then majored in Japanese language at the University of New South Wales. He travelled frequently in Asia visiting Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. He worked in the University of Sydney Library in the 1980s and later taught Japanese and Indonesian in secondary schools. He studied the Teaching of English as a Second Language at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney and then taught English to migrants who came mainly from China. He attended art classes at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) College in Sydney thus enhancing his lifelong interest in art and photography. After retiring in 2010 he lived in China visiting museums and temples (Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian) all over the country and this gave him fresh understanding of China's 5000 year old civilization.