|
This paper discusses the intricate relation between culture and identity in a web of large ower structure of politics and the market by looking at the ways in which the Indonesian Chinese attach themselves to a lical performing arts tradition. The paper focuses on the history of the wayang orang amateur club called Ang Hien Hoo in Malang, East Java, which emerged from a Chinese diaspora burial assocation, to attract national limelight in the 1950s and 1960s. In this paper, in see the amateur club as a site, not only for cultural assimilation, but also as a meeting space for the diverse migrant Chinese population residing at a host country. The space is user to negitiate their positiaon as citizens responsible to promote and to become patrons of local raditional performing arts. The paper examines how this amateur club ws swept by the cold war politcs and national political turnmol of 1965, and how if fought to survive under the pressures of the global capitalist era. What emerges from the findings is the contradictory fact that the identification of the chinese with the Javanes tradtional performing arts us afirmed precisely as it is marked by Chineseness. Thus, despite the cultural is affirmed precisely as it is marked by Chineseness. Thus, despite the cultural blending, the Chinese Indonesian's patronage of local traditionl art continuously resproduces the double bind of aking home in the culture not seen as their own. |
