Wandering into the Past in Old Surabaya

Surabaya's historic quarters

Originally published in Venture magazine, January 2011

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venture-Travel-Magazine/110370632349708 

I pick my way through the puddles, step lightly over broken packing cases, and dodge a passing becak. The street is wet after the recent rain. Century-old shop-houses rise on either side with arched windows and narrow balconies. Shutters stand open to dark interiors full of bulging sacks. The red splash of a Chinese calendar shows in the gloom on a back wall.

I have made my way along this same street many times, camera and notebook in hand, hunting out historical relics and colorful photo opportunities, but there is always some side alley still to be explored. I duck down a likely one, and there right in front of me is a magnificent building that I have never seen before – two storeys raised on columns with intricate ironwork balustrades. A century ago it would have been the home of a wealthy Chinese trader. Today it is slowly crumbling; decades of traffic fumes have left a grey patina on the walls, and a ramshackle food-stall has sprouted from the façade. A limp “for sale” banner hangs over the entranceway. This is Old Surabaya, the historic quarter of what was once the most important city in the Dutch East Indies, and on every alleyway there are forgotten treasures like this, slowly giving way to dereliction with each passing wet season. This is why it’s a place where I love to wander, hunting out these melancholy reminders of a bygone age…

***

Surabaya, capital of East Java, Indonesia’s second largest city, and a swirling metropolitan mass of congestion and construction, is better known for traffic jams and shopping malls than for tangible history. But three kilometers north of the modern downtown is an area forgotten by more recent developments. This was the heart of the original city, a trading port that grew up on the banks of the Kalimas River. On the west bank a European quarter sprouted from the 17th Century, with Dutch-style, hipped roofs and sturdy walls. Across the water was Chinatown, a warren of steamy alleyways and red temples; to the north lay the Arab Quarter, built around the city’s oldest mosque, and along the river was the port, with its white schooners from Sulawesi and beyond. Though the whole place is slowly falling to pieces today, this is still one of the most extensive historical areas of any Indonesian city, with endless opportunities for wandering street photographers and history buffs.

***

Old Surabaya starts in Chinatown. The names of the roads here – Rubber Street, Tea Street, Chocolate Street – hint at past imports, and tucked between old shops and homes there are Chinese clan-houses with bowed rooflines, and temples built by the first settlers from the Chinese mainland, many centuries ago. The oldest – the Hok An Kiong – stands on the corner of Chocolate Street. It is dedicated to the Goddess of Seafarers. There is always a gaggle of old men hanging around here whenever I wander by, and they always call me in for a chat and a drink.

The biggest temple lies further north, on an alleyway of mechanics’ shops. The Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong is a complex of dark, smoky chambers where three-meter-high candles flicker in the incense-scented gloom and old women go quietly through their prayers. Dragons writhe on the roofs, and bug-eyed lions guard the gateways.

North of Chinatown there is a great maze of alleyways around Pasar Pabean, the biggest traditional market in Surabaya. Here ramshackle residential quarters sit cheek by jowl with ranks of fruit and vegetable stalls, and a massive, bustling fish market. But above the dust and noise and the Madurese women in bright bandanas hawking garlic and onions, there are the upper storeys of fine commercial buildings from the days when wealthy people did their shopping here.

***

I often pause here to take a photo or scribble a note, before hopping into a becak to carry me out to some other quarter. Becaks, the three-wheeled Indonesian version of the cycle-rickshaw, are the workhorses of Old Surabaya. Peddled by men with iron calf muscles, they carry both people and great bundles of produce. Many are spectacularly decorated, with metalwork painted in colorful patterns. A becak ride along narrow, potholed streets is the best ways to wend your way through the old city.

A becak often carries me to Ampel, the Arab Quarter. From the 16th Century onwards traders from the hard brown hills of Yemen settled here, opening shops to sell the produce of their homeland – dates, cloth, perfume and religious books. Their descendants are still here, and the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern Souk still lingers in the street that leads to the grand Ampel Mosque.

***

Much of the palpable history in Old Surabaya is fading slowly from the scene. Elsewhere – especially in Singapore and Malaysia – old quarters have been saved from collapse; Chinese-style buildings have been repainted in bright pastel colors, and one-time time colonial shop-houses have been turned into boutique hotels. As I wander through these alleyways, however, that kind of thing seems like a distant dream – though I hope that one day the authorities will realize the value of all this heritage before it is gone forever. For now, however, there is a gritty authenticity in these old streets, and the ever-present chance to stumble on some fresh surprise, some grand mansion abandoned to the ghosts, or some quiet family scene played out in halls that once must have echoed to the sound of accumulating coin, when Surabaya was a wealthy port mentioned in the same breath as Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore…

And there is one part of the Old City where a direct link to that past still remains strong. Once I have toured the Chinese temples, ridden a becak, and bought a bag of dates from the great-grandson of an immigrant Yemeni, I cut west through quiet lanes until I reach the sluggish channel of the Kalimas. It is still a place for ships from other places to drop anchor, and on its final reaches, before the city gives way to the sea, I wander along a dockside lined with magnificent white schooners, still built to the lines of the original Bugis phinisi from Sulawesi. Here, a world away from the air-conditioned chain stores of the downtown shopping malls, barefoot sailors are padding up bouncing gangplanks, and tossing wrapped bundles down into dark holds, cargoes set for far off places beyond the Java Sea. Here, with the sun slanting away to the west and the becaks trundling homewards, the trade and the connections that first made this place a city continues – the original heart of Old Surabaya is still beating…  

© Tim Hannigan 2011

The Fast Track to Tianjin's Roots

By High-speed Train to Tianjin, China

Originally Published in the Jakarta Globe, 18/03/10

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/the-fast-track-to-tianjins-roots/364266

The sleek white train slips smoothly out from under the arched roofs of Beijing’s South Train Station. Speed, time and the outside air temperature are registered on a digital display at the front of the carriage – within seconds we are doing 60kmph, then 70, and upwards, past 100. Outside it is just 3C, but the carriage is warm as we streak through the outer suburbs of the Chinese capital past smokestacks and factories. Wintery sunlight slants in from the right and soon we are passing farmsteads, electricity pylons, flat brown fields and ponds scaled with ice. Six minutes into the journey and we are already out of the city and doing 325kmph. I am riding what is reportedly the fastest conventional twin-track train in the world between Beijing and the neighboring city of Tianjin.

 China, covering half a continent, is a land of long rail journeys, and the trains that make these transcontinental trips are exceptionally well-run. But none of the long-haulers have the wow-factor of the speed-machines that make the short run from Beijing to Tianjin. Until recently the 114 kilometer trip took an hour and a half, but in August 2008 a new line was opened and the journey time was slashed by two-thirds. The trains that shuttle back and forth every half-hour have an average top speed of 330kmph – though the record is an eye-watering 394.3kmph.
 I have barely settled into my seat when the smooth transition from suburbs to fields repeats in reverse: smokestacks, factories, then a river and a forest of glass skyscrapers. Exactly 29 minutes after slipping out of Beijing we slide to a halt in the echoing cavern of Tianjin Station...

***

 But is there actually anything at the end of the line to make this turbo-charged trip from Beijing worthwhile? On this chilly winter’s day I step out of the cozy cocoon of the carriage, pull on my hat and gloves, and set out to see what Tianjin has to offer.
 Lying near the mouth of the Hai River, Tianjin has always been the key maritime gateway to Beijing. Britain’s first official mission to the Manchu court arrived through Tianjin in 1793, and by the end of the 19th Century various foreign powers had been granted trading concessions in the city.

 Shivering in the sharp sunlight I dodge the taxis that crowd the station forecourt, skip over a steel bridge across the Hai River, and seek out what remains of the concession era architecture. The streets are neat and orderly, and here and there a bank, church or hotel in unmistakably European style looms over the pavement – all balconies and colonnades. But as so often in 21st Century China it can be hard to sift the authentic from the fake. What I think is a hundred-year-old French townhouse reveals itself as a cunning concrete construction, the frontispiece of a new housing development.

 There is more of the new as I double back north to the riverside. Here enormous glass towers rocket into a pale sky. Tianjin might be overshadowed by Beijing, but it is still China’s sixth largest city, close to the forefront of recent economic growth. I hurry along the walkway beside the wind-ruffled river, passing old men in flat caps, fishing in the icy water.
 Crossing the neoclassical Bei’an Bridge – with golden Venuses on the parapets – I continue until I reach the Monastery of Deep Compassion, a 17th Century temple where enormous Buddhas stand in smoky halls. The forecourt is busy with old women, lighting incense sticks and bowing before the images, but it’s too cold to linger so I follow the river back to the south.
 The original walled garrison city of Tianjin stood on the west bank of the Hai River, guarding one of the most important junctions for waterborne traffic in China. To the east trading junks charted the coastal waters and plotted courses to more distant lands – Japan, Vietnam, and even Indonesia. Meanwhile the river gave access to the Grand Canal, the inland waterway that linked Beijing to the southern Yangzi Delta.
 Traces of this centuries-old city still stand. One road in from the riverside is Guwenhua Jie – “Ancient Culture Street”. Once again it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake, but the pedestrian street is a mass of red lanterns, dragon-chased roofs and kitsch Chinese trinkets. Through a narrow arched gateway between the souvenir stalls is the Temple of the Goddess of Seafarers. I’ve visited temples dedicated to this same deity in Indonesia, and curiosity draws me inside. Much is familiar, though in wintery Tianjin there is no soft tropical heat; here the incense smoke coils into cold, dry air.
 At the end of Ancient Culture Street I take a break from the chill for delicate cups of green tea and a plate of steamed meat dumplings – baozi, a Tianjin specialty – then pull my gloves back on and head for the heart of the old city. The Drum Tower, a double-tiered pavilion atop a cube of gray stone, is the last remnant of the old fortifications. The walls of old Tianjin were destroyed, not by bulldozing modern developers, but by vengeful European soldiers. In 1900 a peasant uprising, known as the Boxer Rebellion, saw attacks on foreigners across northern China. When the crumbling Manchu dynasty offered its support to the rebellion a multinational European army attacked in response. The victorious Europeans leveled the old walls when they captured Tianjin.

***

 Heading south from the Drum Tower – pausing in a covered arcade to buy manhua, another Tianjin specialty, a twist of sweet, crispy fried dough – I return to shining streets and towering office-blocks. It will be dark before long; temperatures will plummet far below freezing, and it will be time for a 330kmph ride back to Beijing.
 Tianjin is far more manageable in size than the capital. In a chilly afternoon I have made my way through its sights – and with that 29-minute train ride it has been easier to reach than many outlying suburbs of Beijing itself. And there are plenty of traces of the old here to make the trip worthwhile – though as so often in China the boundary between restoration and recreation, between heritage and theme park, is hard to pinpoint.
 But as the sky pales in the west, I stumble into a completely different quarter of Tianjin. Taking a side road in the direction of the river I find myself amongst bare, black-branched trees. The road becomes a dirt track, plied by old men on bicycles. This, it seems, is the plot for some new development; the narrow alleyways are only just being cleared.
 Out on the wasteland I see men in heavy coats and peaked caps. Their bicycles are propped against nearby trees and each man holds a small yellow-beaked bird. As the sun sets behind the skyscrapers, the men fling the birds skywards. They rocket up and up vertically in the cold air, and then, at a whistled command, turn summersault and plummet in a long sweeping dive to their master’s hand and a pinch of grain. It is a simple, timeless sport, and watching them as dusk falls I realize that for all the high-speed trains and skyscrapers the old China is always there to be found, not in “Ancient Culture Streets” or over-restored temples, but in places like this...

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Exploring China's Wild West

Xinjiang, China's restive Central Asian province

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 15/12/09

http://thejakartaglobe.com/culture/exploring-chinas-wild-west/347563

There is a smell of goats, fresh bread and melons. A cacophony of bleating animals rises, mixed with conversations full of hard-edged Turkic gutturals. A small boy clambers deftly onto the back of an unbroken, barrel-bellied pony, and reining it back sharply he somehow stays in place as it gallops wildly over the stony ground. Horse-trading elders with beards and skull caps look on with approval and begin to count wads of tattered money. Above everything arches a vast Central Asian sky.
I am in China, but here, in the Sunday livestock bazaar on the outskirts of Kashgar, an ancient city in the southwest corner of Xinjiang, I have to keep reminding myself of that fact.

Xinjiang is China’s Wild West, a state of deserts and mountains peopled by Muslim Uighurs, and leaning more to Bokhara than Beijing. It has long had a troubled relationship with the rest of the country, slipping in and out of effective Chinese control as imperial power waxed and waned over the centuries. Today the tensions continue. In July this year protests by Uighurs in Urumqi, the state capital, turned violent and a government crackdown followed. But unlike in neighbouring Tibet the government has kept Xinjiang open to tourists. As I arrive in Kashgar on a long-distance train, rolling though vineyards and pomegranate orchards, there has been a state-wide telecommunications shutdown for over four months and army trucks bearing anti-separatist slogans are rolling on the streets. But I am free to go wherever I like, and the first place I head is Kashgar’s famous Sunday Market.

Kashgar stands astride the ancient Silk Road, the much-mythologized trade route that once linked China with Europe. From here trails led east along the fringes of the desert, and west over mountain passes. For centuries people, religions and ideas passed along the caravan routes. The Uighurs’ Turkic ancestors dropped out of the mountains in the 6th Century. Before them Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity had travelled west; a few centuries later Islam arrived.
Today a hint of this old romance survives – the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kirghizstan lie within 150 kilometres of Kashgar, and trade goes on in weekly markets across the region. In the Kashgar Sunday Market I see carpets, fruits, and embroidered cloth, mixed in with everyday metals and plastics. Women in sparkling headscarves jostle with old men in embroidered pillbox hats.
But the Chinese government is determinedly dragging Xinjiang into the mainstream. The market has now been corralled into a modern complex, and beyond it new high-rises tower over the remnants of the old mud-walled city. In recent years swathes of the Uighur old town have been bulldozed, and immigration from other parts of China has been encouraged. These moves – and the dominance of immigrant Han Chinese in the job market – have only increased tensions. English-speaking Uighurs I meet on my journey whisper their disquiet in hushed, paranoid tones. One man at the Sunday Market explains the resentment at the destruction of old Kashgar. “There is no privacy in a Chinese apartment,” he says; “our traditional houses are built around a courtyard so we all live together, but with privacy. We don’t want to live in apartments.”

Looking for something a little more authentic I head to the livestock bazaar. It is a glorious chaos of goats, donkeys, horses and sheep and haggling men in fabulous hats. I am hoping to see a camel or two – real evidence that I am on the Silk Road – but to my disappointment there are none. I console myself with a plate of greasy kebabs and plot my onward journey.

From Kashgar I head east. Human habitation in Xinjiang has long been squeezed into the narrow margin between the mountains and the desert. A string of oases runs along what was once the southern branch of the Silk Road. My first stop is Yarkand – a place once as fabled as Samarkand or Xanadu. During Xinjiang’s periods of independence from Chinese rule Yarkand was usually the capital city. It was also the terminus of skeleton-strewn caravan trails over the mountains from India.
Today it is a backwater. A Uighur old town of mud alleyways remains, and a dusty graveyard of royal tombs studded with the faded flags of mystic Sufi cults sprawls behind a medieval mosque with a vine-shaded courtyard. A modern Chinese town of arrow-straight boulevards dominates, but away to the south I can pick out the faint white line of the Kun Lun mountains, the back wall of the entire Himalayan mountain system.
From the next oasis, Karghilik, I take a taxi into those hills along a road that leads, eventually, to Tibet. An army check-post by the chilly banks of the Tiznaf River is as far as I can go, but I scramble up a steep brown slope to take in the view. A mass of brown mountains, ribbed and scored with dark shadow, spreads east and west. Behind them, rising in a glittering white line is the backbone of the Kun Lun. This was the barrier that Silk Road traders from India once had to cross en route to Kashgar, Yarkand, and my own final destination – Hotan.

The road to Hotan blazes across stony desert, the mountains floating to the south. The vast void that surrounds it makes arrival in Hotan a strange experience, for here, at the very limit of China’s vastness, is another large, modern town. As a Uighur heartland the Chinese government has been particularly keen to integrate Hotan with the rest of the country. Roads from the north now plough straight across the Taklamakan Desert, and from next year a railway line will link it to Kashgar. A Uighur man I meet at a kebab stall hisses “When the railway is ready we will be finished – Hotan will be all Chinese...”
But something remains here: a week has passed; it is time for Hotan’s own Sunday Market. Nothing has been regimented here; the bazaar sprawls over a vast area, filling all the lanes and alleys of the old quarter with a mass of colour and commerce. There are sections given over to cloth and carpets, to the jade mined from the banks of nearby rivers, to animals and even tractors! Donkey carts clatter through the crowds, the drivers calling out “Bosh! Bosh!” – coming through! – and when I am tired of wandering I feast on laghman (Uighur noodles) and slices of fresh watermelon.
And as I leave the market I spot something – it is what I had hoped to see a week earlier in Kashgar. A small boy is leading a pair of shaggy, twin-humped Bactrian camels through the crowd. They are enormous, lumbering beasts, and they pass through the chaos unperturbed, noses held arrogantly high, and disappear amongst the trucks and buses. I stare after them as they go, now sure, despite the political tensions and the heavy-handed Chinese modernisation, that I am in Central Asia, and on the Silk Road...

© Tim Hannigan 2009

Surabaya's Chinatown

The history and architecture of Surabaya's Chinese quarter

Originally published in The Jakarta Globe, 09/02/09

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/life-times/article/8988.html

The chaos of urban Indonesia withdraws respectfully at the threshold of the Boen Bio temple. Jalan Kapasan, an arrow-straight thoroughfare that cuts across the north of Surabaya, is a maelstrom of bikes, becaks and bemos, but as I step from the cracked pavement through a lion-flanked gateway beneath a heavy, double-tiered roof, all that seems to fall away. Inside there is an air of cool, quiet calm.

Surabaya, the capital of East Java Province and Indonesia’s second biggest city, is well known as a place of gargantuan shopping malls and chronic gridlock. But a couple of kilometers north of all that stressful modernity is a crumbling old quarter, thick with the history of what was once the most important port of the Dutch East Indies. The biggest, and most architecturally rich, part of the old city is its Chinatown.

This hot morning, I have chosen to start my tour through Chinese Surabaya here at Boen Bio, because it is not your average Chinese temple. The difference is obvious as soon as I enter. The familiar dark, smoky fog and imposing statues are absent. This place, with its shuttered Dutch windows and shining expanse of tiled floor, is simple, almost austere.

An elderly man with a wispy white beard and gray eyes shuffles from the shadows. His name is Bio Kong; he looks after this place. Bio Kong explains just what is so unusual about Boen Bio. Most Chinese temples offer a deep red brew of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and ancestor worship. But this place is a purely Confucian temple, the largest in Southeast Asia, Bio Kong proudly tells me. Here the usual painted scenery and deity statues are replaced by simple carved tablets. Rows of delicate china cups filled with offerings of green tea are lined along the altar.

The temple was built in 1906 to serve Hokkien immigrants from Fujian, replacing an earlier building nearby. The floor tiles, Bio Kong tells me, were imported from Holland. He says that his own father came to Surabaya in the early years of the 20th century, and that Hokkien is his first language.
“But not many people here speak Hokkien these days,” he says sadly. And not many people come to Boen Bio. Confucianism, more a system of philosophy than a religion, came under suspicion in Indonesia in the past and many followers drifted away to join other faiths. But around 40 worshipers still come to the temple each Sunday. Bio Kong motions to a stack of folding chairs in a corner that will be arranged in rows for the sermon. A ceremony here, it seems, has a good deal in common with a Christian church service.

I leave Bio Kong carefully brushing the dust from between candles and teacups, and step back out into the rising heat of the morning. A hundred meters west of Boen Bio, a great red Chinese gateway spans the street, with a white guard lion at each corner and a pair of dragons writhing along the top. This marks the start of Jalan Kembang Jepun. The name means “Street of the Japanese Flowers,” a coy reference to the days when this road was lined with brothels staffed by pale beauties from Japan. It is still the center of Chinatown, but today it is lined with hardware shops and bakeries, and the Japanese flowers have all gone. So I make a right turn, dodging between rattling becaks, and walk north along an alleyway of dusty sunlight and dark workshops.

The smell of incense hits me before I see the Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong. This 18th century temple, hemmed in by decaying shophouses, is the largest in the old city, with a plethora of altars heavy with gilded Buddhas. Huge red candles, taller than a grown man, stand in flickering columns and fearsome guardian deities watch the doorways. Offerings of fruit stand in the patches of soft light and joss sticks leach steady coils of fragrant smoke. Strips of Chinese script hang from the walls and the ceilings are black with centuries of candle grease.
The temple is quiet this morning, with just one old woman praying in the smoky darkness. Many of Surabaya’s ethnic Chinese population have long since abandoned this quarter and its temples for the suburbs and Christianity. But as I head along a shady alley beyond the temple I glance through an open doorway and catch a glimpse of a family shrine marked with red and gold, indicating old traditions are still kept here.

Picking my way through ever narrower lanes I hear the sound of hammering and come across a workshop where stonemasons are etching gravestones with Chinese lettering.
Until 1994, the public display of Chinese writing was banned in Indonesia, part of a raft of anti-Chinese regulations from the early years of Suharto’s New Order — the same rules that saw the congregation of Boen Bio dwindle, and that by 1968 alone had seen some 160,000 Surabaya Chinese bow to official pressure to change their original Chinese name to something more “Indonesian.” These laws have been dropped now though, and signs in Mandarin mark these workshops.
I stop to speak to one of the stonemasons, working on an elaborate headstone. He is Javanese, he tells me, and cannot read Chinese. He shows me the scrap of paper from which he is copying the characters. I ask if he ever makes a mistake and he grins: “Never!”

I return to the western end of Jalan Kembang Jepun, marked by another dragon-capped gateway. Just beyond the gateway is the Kalimas River, the crooked spine of the city, sluggish and brown, here in its final reaches.
The river is spanned by Jembatan Merah, the Red Bridge. This bridge — clogged with traffic today — is a key location in Surabaya folklore as the claimed site of the mythical battle between a shark and a crocodile, a sura and a buaya, that gave the city its name. It was here too, in October 1945, that the British Brig. Mallaby was assassinated, opening the ferocious Battle of Surabaya and ensuring that the area became a key place in the story of Indonesia’s independence.
The bridge also marks one of the key divisions of the old city — the boundary between Chinatown and the Dutch colonial district.

The oldest records of a settlement at the mouth of the Kalimas River actually come from the chronicles of wandering Chinese seafarers in the 13th century, and there were Chinese trading communities in the vicinity from the city’s earliest years. Until Surabaya came under Dutch control in the 17th century the main Chinese settlement was along the coast at Gresik. But as Surabaya grew, more Chinese traders arrived, settling on the east bank of the Kalimas, across the water from the Dutch. Official hostility during the New Order years had long-established precedents.
During the colonial era Chinese were considered “foreign Orientals,” a step up the legal and social ladder from mere “natives.” But allegations of clannishness and financial acumen made the colonial authorities nervous. In Surabaya and other cities the Chinese were confined to specific quarters, banned from owning property elsewhere. Until 1918 Surabaya’s Chinese were not allowed to live or work outside the network of teeming alleyways east of the Red Bridge. This restrictive policy actually helped create Surabaya’s distinctive Chinatown.

I pick my way south from the Red Bridge, sweating in the heat. This area was the real heart of the old Chinese trading quarter, and there are many fine buildings with heavy columns and sagging rooflines. There are Chinese clan-houses as old as Surabaya itself here, and peering through dark doorways I see piles of rough sacks and red candles flickering in the gloom. Twenty years ago there were tentative plans to restore this part of the city — perhaps with the sanitized tourist markets of Singapore’s Chinatown in mind. But the idea was forgotten in the economic collapse of the late 1990s, and today arched windows and delicate balconies are crumbling under a century of grime. The names of the alleyways here hint at a past when goods were unloaded straight from the river — Rubber Street, Tea Street, Sugar Street and Chocolate Street.

On the corner of Chocolate Street stands another temple — the Hok An Kiong. Smoke wafts from incense braziers outside, and a pair of ferocious looking warrior statues flank the imposing red doorway. In the inner chamber elderly women in loose cotton blouses bustle around the altar, lighting great bunches of joss sticks, bowing and kneeling.
An old man named Budi offers me a place to sit and a much-needed glass of water. This temple, he tells me, is the oldest in Surabaya, dating from the early 18th century. Like the names of the surrounding streets, the Hok An Kiong has its roots in ocean-going trade: the temple is dedicated to the guardian goddess of seafarers.
After chatting with Budi and catching my breath in the shady interior of the temple I hop into a waiting becak and rattle through the last of the narrow streets to Pasar Atom. This decidedly unglamorous warren of hole-in-the-wall shops is at the bottom of Surabaya’s shopping mall hierarchy. It is a favorite haunt of lower-middle-class Chinese Indonesians, and its top floor food court has some of the best Chinese food in the city. It also marks the southern boundary of the historic Chinatown. But there is one more place I want to see before my tour of Surabaya’s Chinese history is over.

From Pasar Atom I head south by motorbike, pausing on Jalan Jagalan, a little secondary Chinatown with its temple and traditional apothecaries. Rising above the rooftops in a quiet suburb nearby I see my final destination.
The architecture is unmistakably Chinese — three tiers of green tiles and red buttresses rising into a hot sky. It is a new building — not unusual; there are other modern Chinese temples in Surabaya. But it is only when you get close enough to see the object at the very top of the pagoda roof that you realize what this place actually is. The triple-arched outline of shining brass at the crown of the building reminds me for a moment of the dragons on the gates of Chinatown. But it is not a dragon; it is the Name of God — in Arabic. This is a mosque.
The Mesjid Cheng Hoo was built in 2002 by the Chinese Muslim Association of Indonesia as a radical expression of a fact once almost taboo: that there have long been Chinese Muslims in the archipelago.
Chinese connections with Indonesia predate the coming of Islam — at least as far back as the 7th century Sriwijaya Empire — and the earliest references to many Indonesian cities come from Chinese archives. Later, some Chinese settlers married into local Muslim aristocracies. And Chinese travelers may actually have played a significant role in bringing Islam to Indonesia. The Cheng Ho Mosque is named after the famous Chinese Muslim admiral who sailed through the archipelago in the 15th century. There is even a theory — a controversial one — that Sunan Ampel, one of the legendary early emissaries of Islam in Java, and unofficial patron saint of Surabaya’s Muslims, was actually from China.

The courtyard is completely deserted in the midday heat. Clouds are beginning to gather to the west of the city.I pause in the shade of the mosque, relishing the ghost of a cooling breeze that passes through its open archways. Everything about the design of the place reminds me of the temples I have visited earlier in the morning — the colors, the columns and the bowed rooflines. But the circular windows are filled with intricate Arabic tracery. I decide that this is the perfect place to end my journey through the architecture of Surabaya’s Chinese past — with a reminder that the Chinese connection in the history of this city, and this country, extends far beyond the confines of Chinatown.

© Tim Hannigan 2008

Melting Pot of East Java

The old quarters of Surabaya, Java, Indonesia

Originally published in Bali and Beyond Magazine, November 2007

Indonesia’s second biggest city, the capital of East Java, and the closest major urban centre to Bali (just a 30 minute flight away), Surabaya stands on the north coast of Java between the towering green volcanoes of the interior, and the long, low island of Madura offshore. Originally an outpost of the great Majapahit Empire, and later the principal trading port of the Dutch East Indies, Surabaya was only eclipsed by Jakarta as Indonesia’s premier city in the 20th Century. A place with such an illustrious past should have something to show for it, and Surabaya certainly does. But the city is endlessly bad-mouthed by tourist guidebooks, and few visitors bother to stop there. This is a real shame, for those who take the time to go beyond the bustling downtown area with its plethora of shopping malls, banks and international hotels will find another city altogether where the pulse of the old world still beats.

The backbone of Surabaya is the Kalimas River, (“River if Gold” in Indonesian). It snakes through the city from south to north finally emerging into the Madura channel in the great port at the head of Surabaya. The modern heart of the city is the network of wide avenues around Jalan Pemuda. It’s here that you will find the malls and the hotels, but the original settlement lay some two kilometres further north, an area which still oozes with history.

As a port city Surabaya was always a melting pot, and even today its diversity is obvious in the faces of the people. Immigrants flocked to Surabaya over the centuries, as traders, manual labourers and fortune-seekers. The biggest minority has always been the Chinese and today Surabaya’s old Chinatown sprawls into quiet alleyways around the thoroughfare of Jalan Kembang Jepun. The main street is marked by great red and green Chinese gates, guarded by lion statues. Turn right or left here and you will find rows of quietly decaying shop-houses. They are not restored or prettified for tourists like in Singapore, but peer through the dark doorways and you will catch glimpses of candles burning before family alters, and sacks piled against walls in the warehouses of old-style traders. Here and there a bowed roof of heavy ceramic tiles marks a Chinese clan house.
Most of Surabaya’s huge Chinese population is Christian now, but Chinatown is the heart of the old Chinese religion, a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The aromatic smell of incense hits you long before you reach the centuries-old Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong temple on a narrow alleyway north of Jalan Kembang Jepun. Here huge, three-metre high candles burn in the darkness, and worshippers kneel and bow before bronze statues. Offerings of fruit stand on the alters, and joss sticks leach thin coils of sweet smoke. Not far away another temple, the Hok An Kiong is full of bright red and gold colour. This area has some of the finest examples of old Chinese architecture, and the street names hint at the old import-export trade of the area: Rubber Street, Chocolate Street, Sugar Street and Tea Street.
Further north from Chinatown is the vast Pasar Pabean market, one of the biggest traditional markets in Indonesia. At its heart is a huge covered area full of vegetables. The ground underfoot is thick with onions skins and the air is rich with the smells of garlic and spices. Tiny, cheerful women in bright clothes dash about the market carrying huge loads on their heads. At the western end of Pasar Pabean is a bustling fish market where every afternoon the freshest catches from the Java Sea are sold. Wander through this area and you will see everything from tiny prawns to huge tuna fish and even sharks. North and south the market sprawls on through tiny alleyways where everything imaginable is sold.

The streets of Old Surabaya are far removed from the traffic chaos of downtown. Walking is a pleasure here, but an even better option is to travel by becak. This is the heartland of the old-style pedicab, a human-powered passenger tricycle. becak drivers loiter on every street corner, their vehicles often spectacularly decorated. For a few thousand rupiah you can travel at a leisurely pace through the alleyways.

Beyond Pasar Pabean is another area full of echoes of Surabaya’s trading past. The Arab Quarter is a warren of narrow streets knotted around the great Ampel Mosque, the oldest and most sacred in Surabaya.
Like the Chinese, the Arabs – most originally from Yemen – arrived in the city over many centuries, drawn by the trade routes that carried spice and other goods across the Indian Ocean. The area, known as Ampel, became their ghetto, and even today it has all the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern bazaar. Hole-in-the-wall shops are presided over by tall, hawk-nosed men selling Tunisian dates, pistachios and sultanas. Brightly coloured prayer beads and embroidered rugs hang from the awnings, and the scent of rosewater and perfume cuts the air. The heart of the Arab Quarter is the narrow pedestrian alleyway that leads to the mosque. Covered in like the souks of Damascus and Marrakech, and hung about with bright cloths, batiks and beads, it eventually opens to the courtyard of the Ampel Mosque, built by Sunan Ampel, one of the venerated holy-men of Java. Sunan Ampel’s grave is next to the mosque, and the garden with its low frangipani trees is always busy with pilgrims.

If Surabaya is famous for one thing, it’s food. And though the modern city offers plenty of opportunities for fine dining, the old quarter gives a chance to sample more traditional cuisine. There is mouth-watering Arab-style roast lamb on sizzling hotplates from simple cafes in Ampel; on any street in early evening the delicious scent of sate (skewered chicken, beef or lamb) sizzling over charcoal whets the appetite, and all manner of sweet concoctions are available. But the ultimate in al-fresco dining can be had every night back in Chinatown. Jalan Kembang Jepun is closed to traffic and as the sun sets the street takes on a new name: Kya-Kya. After dark Kya-Kya bursts into action as a huge spread of food stalls and outdoor cafes. Take a seat at any of the tables laid out on the tarmac to try traditional Chinese, Indonesian, and even Western food. Seafood is a speciality. Street entertainers wind their way between the tables and you can reflect on your day of wandering amid the history of the old city.
There is no doubt that Surabaya is a rewarding stop for culture vultures, photographers and inquisitive wanderers, and when you’re done with old city, there are some great shopping opportunities in all those malls!

© Tim Hannigan 2008