Pizza delivery leads to discovery of 320-year-old tombstone and this Indonesian’s bid to help others find ancestors

WHY MANY INDONESIAN CHINESE “DON’T KNOW WHERE FAMILY IS FROM”

“Semarang is rich in history. Unfortunately, the history of its Chinese community is not well-studied … there has not been much attention given to these graves,” said Pippo.

Much of this history was lost in the mid 1960s, when anti-communist – and by extension, anti-Chinese – sentiments swept across the country.

In response to these sentiments, then-president Suharto, who ruled the country with an iron fist for the next three decades, ordered a ban on Chinese literature, culture and characters and forced the country’s Chinese population to adopt Indonesian-sounding names. 

“A lot of Chinese people, particularly in my generation, no longer know what their Chinese surnames are. They don’t speak a word of Chinese,” said Bram Luska, 38, Pippo’s friend and the pizzeria owner who stumbled on Semarang’s oldest tombstone.

“They don’t know where their family is from or when their ancestors first came to Indonesia,” said Bram, who knows little about his ancestors other than that their surname was either Ng or Huang.

“That is unfortunate. Because this is our history, heritage and identity,” he said.