Whiteboard Journal had a chance to interview the man behind the work, discussing his collaboration with Indonesian photographer, Oscar Motulah, to his objective in raising the theme of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

W: Congratulations on the recent launch of the book ‘Chinese Muslim in Indonesia’, Chinese Muslims are considered a minority group in Indonesia, what drew you to raise this theme?

As a photographer, I always try to challenge myself. By 2007, I had more or less decided to do an in-depth work that would take several years. I had always wanted to do something in Indonesia. But I needed a specific topic. The Chinese in West Kalimantan intrigued me. But I had also heard about the Chinese Muslims in Indonesia. In the end, when several people stepped forward to help me get in touch with the community leaders, I decided to go along with it.

W: In Indonesia, Chinese and Islam seem to be paradoxical stereotypes, how has the general public responded to the book (Chinese Muslim in Indonesia) so far?

In terms of sales, the response has been encouraging. When I exhibited the work at Galeri CCCL Surabaya in 2008, there was quite a bit of coverage. The idea that Chinese can be Muslims is paradoxical to Indonesians, pribumi or otherwise, partly because of the colonial policies, which segregated the Chinese from the pribumi. The governments of Sukarno and Suharto perpetuated some of these policies. The arrival of non-Muslim Totoks in the last century further obscured the fact that Chinese conversion to Islam is nothing new. Let’s not forget, the oldest surviving mosque in China is the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou. It is over 1,300 years old.

W: Going through your blog, we understand that your interest in photography and research undertakes the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, could you tell us what you are trying to achieve in this regard?

I’m not trying to achieve anything. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I will never be a famous photographer because I don’t have the ability to sell or market myself. And I won’t make a lot of money with this kind of work. But if I’m prepared to spend years pursuing my photographic practice, it has to involve something that I’m fascinated and obsessed with. This is why I’m drawn to the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. As a Singaporean brought up in a Mandarin-speaking family, there are things that I pick up quite naturally when I’m in these Chinese communities. I’m an insider but I’m also an outsider, since the tendency to assimilate is ever present among the Chinese in Southeast Asia.

W: What fascinating encounters have you gathered from the observation of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Is there a common thread that links these Chinese communities in the different nations?

These are broad questions that cannot be easily answered. People like Prof. Claudine Salmon or Prof. Charles Coppel spend half their lives writing about the Chinese. And in both cases, they are known primarily as experts on the Indonesian Chinese. When we consider the fact that Indonesian Chinese account for only 1.06 percent of the country’s population, we realize that your questions, even if we limit them to Indonesia, are extremely hard to answer. In fact, I always reference the plurality of the Indonesian Chinese with the word ‘communities’. It is inaccurate to see the Indonesian Chinese as one homogenous ‘community’.

If we examine the Indonesian Chinese, we will see that their identities are informed by many things: place of residence (rural vs. urban; Java, Sumatra, Madura, Kalimantan etc; areas with significant Chinese presence vs. areas with very little Chinese presence), education (level of education; local vs. overseas; late colonial era vs. independence era), religion (religiosity; which religion), occupation (employee vs. employer), economic status, Totok vs. Peranakan, language (Dutch, English, Bahasa Indonesia, majority language of the place of residence (Balinese; Sundanese, Madurese, Javanese etc), Mandarin, Chinese dialect), affinity with “Chinese” culture (how close they are—or feel they are—with “Chinese” culture, bearing in mind that the idea of “Chinese” culture, like “Indonesian” culture, is imagined and always fluid) etc. The list goes on and on. And the permutations divide them further.

That’s why I caution against making sweeping statements. Some people like to say: “Indonesian Chinese are exclusive and they don’t mingle.” But that statement is as uninformed as saying: “Pribumi are lazy.”

For years, Edward Said spoke against those American writers who describe the Middle East as an area full of indistinguishable Islamists, when it is in fact a region of diverse religions, languages and ethnicities. These writers are no different from the people who make those aforementioned statements.

During the Ming Dynasty, for instance, there were Javanese, Malays, Arabs, Indians, Bugis, Chinese, British, Spanish and Dutch living in the cosmopolitan cities along the pasisir in Java. Southeast Asia has long been globalized, even before the term “globalization” is invented. As members of these cosmopolitan cities, the experiences of these Chinese were no different from the other communities. They brought their distinctive cultures and assimilated.This is the picture we get when we study the Chinese Muslim communities in Indonesia during the early colonial era.Across Southeast Asia, this fusion of cultures can be seen in wayang, traditional crafts, foods and architecture. For someone like me who speaks very little Bahasa, I can easily understand the names of various food ingredients in Indonesia because these Bahasa terms are in fact Hokkien in origin. Prof. Salmon has written about the loan words that Bahasa Indonesia has borrowed from Chinese dialects over the centuries. In Thailand, the pronunciation of numbers sounds almost like Teochew, the majority dialect of the Thai Chinese. Even without any knowledge of Thai, I picked up the numbers within a few minutes when I first visited Bangkok many years back.

Within Southeast Asia, elements of Chinese cultures have been localized over the centuries, until it is no longer productive to say what is local or what is Chinese. Unfortunately, in Indonesia, there has been a political will, since the 18th century, to demarcate and segregate the Chinese and the pribumi. But in Cambodia, where the Chinese have rarely been prosecuted specifically, we can see how Chinese culture has been localized by Khmer culture. Altars dedicated to various “Chinese” deities can be easily found in Khmer homes. During the annual Chinese New Year procession in Phnom Penh, the Khmers can also be seen receiving the blessings from the mediums.

I think this is the recurring theme. We can locate the experiences of the Chinese in Southeast Asia between the polarity of assimilation and their “Chineseness”. It is not one or the other. Almost always, it is located along the spectrum and is further differentiated by the factors that I have raised concerning the Indonesian Chinese: education, language, religion etc.

As a third-generation Hokkien Chinese born in Singapore, there are elements that I find familiar and alien in the Chinatowns across Southeast Asia. I’m sure the feeling is quite common among Chinese travellers whenever they visit other Chinatowns. Similarly, a Malaysian Malay will feel the same way when she or he visits Palembang, for instance.

As a photographer, I’m drawn to this conflicting sense of familiarity and alienation. But I have very little interest to play out that tension by juxtaposing, for instance, red lanterns against a statue of Colonel Sanders. This is too cliché. I prefer to dig, to look at the nuances of the Chinese experiences. Unfortunately, such images are not always literal or exotic enough for editors, curators and some viewers.

By itself, photography cannot articulate these nuances. In one of the photographs that I made in 2008 at Pancoran, Jakarta, a pribumi man is seen against a poster advertising a new Bahasa magazine titled Chinatown. This is not a strong image. But there is this juxtaposition, which is obvious enough. Some people found the image intriguing. I wonder if they felt a sense of injustice, since the Chinese in Jakarta had, not long ago, been targeted during the 1998 riots by, presumably, the pribumi. But some of the Chinese residents at Petak Sembilan, Pancoran, also recalled how the pribumi who lived beside them had defended the area and prevented it from being looted.

I didn’t get the chance to speak to the man whom I photographed. And I wonder what he did in 1998. Perhaps for some, that photograph reinforces the perception that pits the pribumi against the Chinese. I’m not pretending that nothing happened in 1998. But how does pitting one community against the other help in our understanding of the malaise in 1998? This is why I feel that photography can sometimes be quite limiting. Words are important.

At that time, I also befriended Madam Lim, a second-generation resident of Petak Sembilan and an avid follower of the Beijing Olympics on cable TV. She was obviously proud that China could host the worldwide sporting event. But she also spoke without a hint of irony about her anger with the China government for refusing to act during the 1998 riots. There is something poignant about that conversation but I have no means of translating it into a photograph. Perhaps in this sense, I am a failed photographer.