watercolour.

16 December 2007 · by Tintin Wulia · in great wallpaper, hands-on thinking, jogja

My grandmother Tan Tjit Nio was born in 1912, in Pangkalpinang.

She didn’t have any birth certificate.

What she had was a acknowledgment of birth letter made in Batavia in 1940, signed by the Assistent-Resident of the Dutch India government of Batavia.

It says:
dat Tan Tjit Nio voornoemd niet in het bezit is van een geboorte-acte, sangezien er tijdens haar geboorte neg geen Burgerlijke stand voor Chineezen bestond[.]

2 Responses

Masindi 17 December 2007 at 1:27 pm ·

Wow! I wonder why so many Tans in Southeast Asia.

Tan = Cheng = Chan

am I right?
Tintin Wulia 17 December 2007 at 9:57 pm ·

Tan = No. Hehe.

I don’t really know the background of my maternal grandmother’s family name. What I know is my paternal grandmother’s family name, Kang, sounds the same with the daughter of Chinese-Balinese merchant who got married with Prince Jayapangus in the 12th (?) century – Kang Cing Wei. Their story is being told in the Barong Landung tradition.

But what’s interesting from that birth acknowledgment letter, Ndi, is that Tan Tjit Nio was practically a stateless person before 1940. I guess.

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As a result of an auction in Sarah Vanhee's The Great Public Sale of Unrealised But Brilliant Ideas, my bio has become a collective bio:

When they were thirteen, Tintin Wulia and Christiane Berndes wished that Peter Pan would lose his shadow in their neighborhood, because they thought that Peter Pan was kinda sexy. Night after night, they would think a happy thought, wishing that Peter would find them if they could fly. Nothing happened – Tintin and Christiane discovered that Peter had much preferred Wendy.

Three decades later, Tintin and Christiane are still discovering many things. One, that Peter Pan is a fictional character invented by James Matthew Barrie. Two, that the fact that Peter is fictional doesn’t mean that he’s illusory. They are also discovering that, three, it is not a happy thought that one needs to be able to fly – it is, rather, the combination of a passport and a valid visa. And also, four, that the fact that one needs a passport and a valid visa to be able to fly is just shitty.