Abstract
Kho ping Hoo (1926-1994) is the most well-know of all Indonesian writers of popular silat stories, largely set inChina, which describe the adventures and romance of legenday hereos famed for their skill in martial arts. It is less well-know that he began his career writing critical stories about socio-economics condition in the llate 50s and early 60s. This paper discusses one of these stories. It place the story in the context of political development of the time, in particular as they affected the Chinese Indonesia community. The paper argues that this story and or two other like it come a the end of a radition of sino-Indonesian literature which had flourished from the end of the nineteenth century until the mid 1950s. After 1960, Chinese-Indonesian writer cease writing realist fiction of any kind and write either silat stories or romantic stories set in middle class urban envirnments.
