Stories from Deli

X L 2. Workers and Employers The core of the workforce continues to be formed by the Chinese population. It remains, even now, a cherished hope to see the Chinese come to Deli of their own accord, and still the planters must themselves provide the means for recruiting new labourers. True, considerable improvement has been…

17 December 1896 Before the end of the year I should still like to settle my debt to you, and therefore I shall begin my letter at once. It is evening, for during the day there is no chance of writing, and I am once again sitting on the veranda. The first thing I shall…

A unique phenomenon in DelLC. F. HAGEE. (With illustrations based on photographs by amateur photographer J. J. H. Soeteman.) Deli possesses an institution whose equivalent one would search in vain throughout the Indies. I mean the Immigrant Asylum in Medan, which stands there as proof in stone that, whatever some may have claimed, in Deli…

Residentie Oostkust van Sumatra as one of the most important outer territories of the Dutch East Indies, its prominence driven largely by the rapid expansion of the Deli tobacco plantations after 1865. Although Medan quickly became the economic and political centre, it was only in 1886 that the residency’s administrative seat formally moved there from…

Sumatra’s East Coast (S.O.K.) Like a large pleasure yacht, the luxurious passenger ship “Op ten Noort” lay less than a ten-minute walk from where the d’Artagnan had just departed. The white color of the boat, so well suited to the tropics, conveyed a feeling of coolness and Dutch cleanliness. Although the “Op ten Noort” is…

They write us from MEDAN: I promised to tell you something about Medan. That it is a shadow of its former self, you will surely believe. The well-kept houses, the neatly trimmed lawns—no longer there. Everywhere that dirty gray war color instead of the bright white of earlier times. Here and there a front gallery…

By Gesiena Andreae On Easter Monday, March 28, the remains of the Chinese Major, Mr. Tjong A Fie, were laid to rest near Medan entirely according to Chinese ritual, as one would expect of a good Chinese, which the deceased certainly was. Already one and a half months had passed since his death—time that the…

TO MEDAN So far, the history of Medan. But we must now turn to modern Medan, which has earned the reputation of being the most European-like city in the Dutch East Indies. Medan can be approached from various directions. The most common route, naturally, is the one taken by foreigners and tourists arriving by ship…

17 Dec. 1896. I would like to pay off my debt to you before the end of the year and that is why I am already starting my epistle. It is evening, because I cannot write during the day, and I am sitting on the verandah again. The first thing I am going to tell…

The care for health in a region like the Delishehe, where thousands of immigrants from Ghina, Java, Borneo, Bawean, British India, etc. arrive annually to work in a climate that is more or less foreign to them, is naturally of the utmost importance. There, where forests are cut down, roads and drainages dug, swamps drained,…