Stories from Deli

W. Dharmowijono. Van koelies, klontongs en kapiteins : het beeld van de Chinezen in Indisch-Nederlands literair proza 1880-1950

A Brief review of the literature

The plantation coolies, especially the coolies in East Sumatra, are the most described of all coolies. The first-known novel about life on a tobacco plantation is the two-part Hans Tongka’s career (1898) by the writer Dé-lilah. Behind that name lies L. van Renesse, wife of a Delian tobacco planter. Hans Tongka’s career tells how Hans Tongka, an illiterate, undeveloped German young man becomes a principal administrator and how assistants relate to their superiors and his husbands. Hans Tongka’s career also tells of the abuse suffered by the Chinese coolies.

We then devote attention to the collection of short stories The Last Incarnation (1901) by Henri Borel, former civil servant for Chinese affairs in the Dutch East Indies. After his return to the Netherlands he worked as a journalist and literary critic. The story „But a Chinese …‟ tells about a simple logging coolie who, having become richer, gets a „perkara‟ with the captain Chinese, an issue he loses gloriously . By the way, Borel did not like the Indies Chinese much and in the preface to De Chineezen in the Dutch East Indies (1900) he warns his readers not to put all Chinese on the same list, after all, ‘the Chinese in the Indies are a degeneration of the real one in China ‘. 124

In 1930, the collection Stories from the Far East was published by Annie Salomons, pseudonym of AMF of Wageningen-Salomons, who lived in Medan for three years, together with her husband, who made a career with the Judiciary. One of the stories (they are not titled, but only have a number) is about a tiger capture on a plantation where Chinese coolies work. It shows the importance of the role of a head tandil as a mediator between the assistant and the coolies. In another story, one of the main characters is a city coolie, that is, a coolie who carries out his duties in the city. This rickshaw coolie develops a special relationship with a European, his favorite customer.

The panglong koelies are described in a work by LC Westenenk, Het rijk van Bittertong (1932), published two years after the death of the writer, who started his career in the Dutch East Indies as an aspiring controller in West Kalimantan and ended as a member in the council of the Indies. In between, he was, among other things, controller at Kutaraja in Aceh and governor of Sumatra’s East coast (1921-1924) .125

Madelon Székely-Lulofs, who was first married to a Dutch planter, Hendrik Doffegnies, published a number of ‘Deli novels’: Rubber (1931), Coolie (1932) and Emigrants and other stories (1933) .126 Rubber and Coolie caused quite a bit of commotion in the planting world. Rubber wasn’t just a success because of the scandal the „affair‟ between Madelon Lulofs and the Hungarian planter László Székely, but especially through the description of the interaction between the planters (and their wives) and the way in which the planters treated the coolies. Actually, that which was also discussed earlier in Dé-lilah’s novels. However, rubber is of less importance for this research because it is almost non-existent for Chinese coolies. Coolie appeared in 1932. This novel is about, among other things, the feud between the Javanese and Chinese coolies, culminating in the bloody murder of a Chinese coolie by the Javanese main character Roeki and others. Emigrants and Other Stories contains a lightly told story, „A Seng and Pieter Klaassen‟, that shows the loneliness of an assistant on a tobacco plantation and his dependence on his Chinese cook, who is not only concerned with cooking. In “The Other World:, the Chinese only play in the background. As a young boy, the main character, Pieter Pot, was terrified of the Chinese shops and restaurants near his home in a Dutch port city and of the Chinese who came there. In the Indies, the fear is revived when it is led through the city by a Chinese rickshaw tractor.

László Székely wrote in Hungarian From jungle to plantation. The Dutch translation appeared in 1935. Székely was a Jew born in Eastern Hungary who became an assistant in 1914 at a tobacco plantation in Siantar as a 22-year-old young man. Three years later he went to work on a rubber plantation. He was later appointed administrator. Székely and Madelon Lulofs married in Hungary in 1926, went back to Deli in 1927, but three years later, harassed by the white community in Sumatra, returned to Europe forever. From jungle to plantation is about a Hungarian young man who lives on a plantation. goes to work in Deli and from the first moment he arrives in Sumatra he learns how to behave as a white planter. His observations of the Chinese coolies on the plantation and in the city provide interesting character sketches.

Two years after the publication of From oerwoud tot plantation, a story by László Székely was published in the Hungarian newspaper Pesti Napló. The title is „The Career of Chaw A. Hjong‟ (1937) . The main character is one of the few coolies in the belles-lettres to become a millionaire. He does not always use fair means for this. His wealth does not lead to happiness: a Javanese woman whom he has not treated well in the past takes revenge and stabs him to death.

In addition to Dé-lilah and the Székely couple, ex-planter Hendrik Gorter also wrote stories in which Chinese people figure with a tobacco background in Deli as a background. In 1941, his Delianen, sketches of planters’ life on Sumatra’s East coast, was published. Here an unnamed assistant is followed when he turns from an ignorant twenty-year-old Frisian into a real „Deli-planter‟, after he has learned „to eat rice and drink and swear and clap and tell jokes and be cheerful‟ . In some Chinese field coolies function as the main character. 

In 1953, Tabakkers, the second collection of sketches from planters’ life on Sumatra’s East coast, was published by the same writer. Because this collection of stories falls outside the period of our research and in terms of content is not significantly different from Delians, we will not pay the same attention to Tabakkers as to Delians.

Finally, we also read De Aarde van Deli or The Earth from Deli (1948) by Willem Brandt, because it perhaps most testifies to the aforementioned ‘hard workers’ image of the tobacco pioneers. Willem Brandt, pseudonym of Willem Simon Brand Klooster, left for the Dutch East Indies in 1937 and became editor of the Deli Courant. The novel De Aarde van Deli tells about the early days of the Deli Maatschappij, which was founded in 1869.

The image of the Chinese coolie

Mining coolies have in common with plantation and panglong coolies that most of them do not make it beyond a poor existence, whether or not in their native China. It is very exceptional that they can scrape together a capital to create a new life outside the mine, plantation or panglong. Within it they can advance in careers, but the highest attainable rank for them is that of chief tootil or chief overseer. The European remains their boss. However, from city coolies we get the impression that through hard work and extremely frugal living, most can start a business and – according to the narrators usually along less honest roads – can climb even higher. Even the rank of Chinese officer is possible. The pinnacle of success, opulence and wealth seems to be stretched out „as lazily as possible‟ in a beautiful carriage drawn by fiery Sydnians to drive through the city like Liem-Ko-Hang in Nonna Doortji (1906) by C. Bijl de Vroe, the highest Dutch officials at home at splendid parties and to be able to drink with them as if they were equals like the captain-Chinese in The Last Incarnation of H. Borel, not to mention having a perkara (a lawsuit or other matter), although That also with another Chinese, like Kang Soei in the story „But a Chinese….‟ in the same book by Borel. But everyone starts at the beginning, as a poor coolie. We therefore first meet the poorest of the poor, those without hope of a better life, those who are not treated as people but as animals: the stinkers.

Good stinkers and bad stinkers in Hans Tongka’s career (Dé-lilah 1897)

In Dé-lilah’s two-part Hans Tongka’s career, the encounter with the stinkers happens immediately after the main characters in the book have been introduced to us. In the first place there is Hans Tongka himself, a German young man of 20 years with bad childhood experiences. He had heard beautiful stories about the Indies from gentlemen who came to drink beer in a beer house where he worked as a waiter. The Indies offered him a great opportunity to escape from his impoverished environment. On the journey from Europe to Sumatra, he meets Vonck, who turns out to be a planter. He can go with Vonck to his „estate‟ Goenoeng-Kidoel. When Hans Tongka arrives at Vonck’s house, he meets Vonck’s housekeeper, the beautiful Kim. She is a cross between a Javanese nonna and a Chinese njonja.130 When they are still eating after Vonck’s return home, tell the Bangladeshi keeper that a Chinese woman was arrested who, dressed as Batak, had run away.

Thus, for the first time, the reader becomes a witness to the mistreatment of a coolie. The coolie is brought before Vonck by the head mandil, who is at the head of the Chinese coolies and is the right hand of the manager of the enterprise.131 „So that the skin tore open and the blood trickled down his blue bath, which was already tattered, gudste‟ .132 At last the Chinese collapsed half unconscious. Vonck gave him another blow across the face. Elsewhere we read that Vonck is described as a person who is „really a coeur d‟ or ‟. 133 One of the assistants said:„ It’s just a stinker ‟. Stinkers, according to the narrator, are “weaker Chinese coolies, who use their powers, „T they have lost opium due to illness or ailments or„ t they have lost opium, but they are still very useful for other, less demanding work ‟.134 An important distinction is made between„ good stinkers ‟and„ bad stinkers ‟. Good stinkers are so named because they still do their job quite well, unlike bad stinkers, which are considered completely useless. The keeper has to handcuff the Chinese from Vonck and bring it under the house. The coolie is handcuffed and tied to a stake. He has to stand there for two days. It is not until the third day that he is taken to the inspector, who gives him three months of squatting (forced labor), and a month later, when this official was conducting a presentation, Vonck bought a ruler for 500 guilders.135 ,

The coolies in Dé-lilah’s novel are anything but timid. Hans Tongka often hits them because they are so cheeky. If he curses them, they swear back in Chinese. „Then our Hans was not afraid to take his fat rattan stick, because according to Vonck there was nothing better to unlearn a Chinese impudence than a good beating‟ .137 Hans, who was abused by his stepmother as a child, enjoyed to make people less than he experience and suffer what he had suffered before. His gray dull eyes began to shine; He rose up all his height, and with a masterfully crafted swing the torture device descended on the bare back of the Chinese, who, he thought he had noticed, had brutalized him. ‘

Sick coolies faced an even sadder fate. The tandil of Kongsi Two, Ah-Lee, Hans tells one day „in that beautiful Chinese-Malay‟, that a coolie „Sakit pelut‟, had a stomach ache. This one was a „good stinker‟ but now he was no longer able to work. Ah-Lee wants to have him taken to hospital, and Vonck is willing to rent a carriage for that, but Kim doesn’t like that. The stinker should just get castor oil and kajoe poetih oil on his stomach. He appears to have cholera. All that can be done is hope that he will soon be put out of his misery. That also happens. The corpse is wrapped by „two half-dead stinkers, to whom nothing was lost‟ in a pair of cut-open rice bags, a rope is put around his neck, arms and legs, a stick is put through it that is attached to two other long ropes on both sides. confirmed, and six stinkers carry the dead coolie to a hole in the woods.

On other estates the coolies, be they Chinese or Javanese, were treated even more inhumanly than is the case with Vonck. Some clerks conducted the punishment drills personally. A friend of Vonck, the administrator Brill, regarded a coolie as no more than an animal and he treated them accordingly. However, he did it in a sophisticated way. He never hit it liberally like others did, but squeezed, kicked and kicked in the most sensitive areas. One day he beat a sick coolie to death. The man had been ‘lazy’, probably because he had been weakened by his illness. The assistant wisely had not punished him himself, but had brought him to the clerk’s office. Brill had been looking forward to kicking the coolie to his heart’s content, but with the first kick it collapsed, without making any noise. Brill was not at all concerned about this, for he was sure he would not be charged because he was good friends with the inspector. He was afraid of an uproar from the coolies.

That indeed happened. When the coolies heard that their mate had died in the office, where he was alone with the tuan besar, they abandoned their work and came screaming into the main establishment, claiming the body. That had already been taken away. The coolies went to the controller’s house to indict their clerk for assassination. The inspector, startled from his afternoon nap, had his keepers take the outraged coolies into custody and drove to Brill’s estate, where he was received with a particularly warm welcome. Later they settled the matter in a friendly relationship. Ten of the biggest bellboys were detained for three months. The others had to return to the estate as they could hardly be missed at planting time. 142

One day Hans Tongka was attacked by a Chinese coolie. Tongka’s job in the cutting time was to receive and appraise tobacco that the coolies brought to the barn. It was important to him that he worked cheaper than his colleague Van Lijnden and received compliments from Vonck. Van Lijnden had already said nothing.

It was more dangerous than to cut corners or to treat a Chinese unjustly, and that they could do whatever they wanted with the Chinese, as long as they did not get their money or deprive them, because then they did not spare anyone or anything. Hans got into trouble with the coolies because he did not pay enough for the most beautiful tobacco. He received the finest tobacco for a very small price, and ignored the cheeky replies, Chinese nicknames, and hateful looks of the coolies. Veldkoelie numero 18 had the most beautiful field and the most beautiful leaves.143 Everything he brought in was of the first quality and he therefore demanded the highest price. But Hans had a tremendous dislike for this coolie and constantly appraised his tobacco below the price. He had complained to Vonck about number 18, who would not plant to size, whereupon Vonck advised him to first whip the coolie. 144 Numero 18 incited his companions against Hans to murder him. It was diced „with the greatest cold-bloodedness‟ who would attack Hans. Fate fell on a stinker who, to Hans’s luck, was not very developed physically. He was given a koepang (10c English money) from each of the 30 coolies in the plot, so he got $ 3 for the attack. Hans is only injured. 145 He was given a koepang (10c English money) from each of the 30 coolies in the plot, so he got $ 3 for the attack. Hans is only injured. 145 He received a koepang (10c English money) from each of the 30 coolies in the plot, so he got $ 3 for the attack. Hans is only injured. 145

Of course the culprit was found. Even after heavy questioning at the main establishment, he denied everything. There was enough evidence against him to find him guilty, but it took so long until his case was heard that he died of beriberi in prison before his conviction.146 After the attack, Hans Tongka was accompanied everywhere by the tandil Ah-Lee. , who was afraid that something might happen again, because now among the lau-kehs (newcomers) that Van Lijnden had engaged for the new harvest year were the great strikers and vagabonds. They were Chinese people who had already undergone punishment in China, which could be seen by their cut off ears. 147

One gets the impression that nothing could be done with the coolies if they were not punished. Punishment did not always consist of physical violence. For example, Hans made it a habit of forcing coolies who had behaved badly in his eyes to pull out the already planted trees, even after he was attacked. A colleague of his, Eddie, had a hard time getting the coolies to listen to him. They had no respect for him and planted exactly as they wanted. Eddie never hit the workers, and this was one more reason, according to his colleagues, why the coolies disrespected him,

„For a proven truth is it, that a recalcitrant Chinese can only be ruled with the rottan‟ .148 His mistress Susie, the wife of his administrator, advises him to ride through the newly planted fields on horseback, and the have saplings destroyed by the hooves of the horses. “Then those” rawdy’s “would get respect,” she says.149 He follows her advice and repeated the same procedure daily, even though the head mandil had warned him, because it inflicted a lot of bad blood on the coolies. However, Eddie laughed about it.150 Later he was found murdered in a gutter in front the shed, covered with wounds. The two killers were quickly caught. Using a logic that is difficult to follow, one of Eddie’s colleagues argues that the Chinese care little about their lives and therefore would not let themselves be starved.151 The killers sat at the edge of the forest, silently waiting for things to come, dirty, armed. and stained with blood. The entire kongsi and the main tandil were taken into custody.

The second part of Hans Tongka’s career immediately begins with the description of the execution of the two coolies who murdered Eddie. Everyone wanted to attend the scene, administrator Boieldieu’s house was full of guests. There was drinking and noisy joking. One of the guests said they should have applied the lynch law: hang the killers on the first tree the next day, because

„What is lost in such a Chinese, though he was innocently sacrificed; there are plenty of Chinese in the world, ‘and besides, a Chinese was not a person anyway.

The two Chinese wore white clothes and were bound hand and foot. As quiet as they were when they were caught, they were noisy now. They had gags in their mouths to keep them from shouting, but as soon as they were gagged they began to scold and hurl “the common Chinese and Malay expressions” at the controller and the entire Government, like

‘Babi bangsat’ (bastard pig), which was made worse when they were asked what else they wanted to say. The bravest broke out in disgraceful scornful laughter and shouted:

“Loe bangsat and itoe company bangsat, and samua olang-olang company bangsat !!! Loe misti di gantoong djoega ‘(you are a villain and so are the Government and all the officials are villains! You also had to be hanged) .154 After they got the hood back over they were trained the ladders. They climbed it willingly but very slowly. The bodies were already convulsing when they suddenly fell down. The coolies were not even unconscious and got up again sighing and yawning. The ropes had been cut by their companions.155 Later they were still hung with other ropes. This was followed by a banquet for the soldiers and for Boieldieu’s friends.

In the second part of Hans Tongka’s career it is also described here and there that a coolie is being mistreated. It seems that none of it is considered important and is an everyday way of working. When a coolie is staring straight ahead with his tjancol156 in hand, Hans Tongka immediately gives him a few welts over the back, causing the man to cringe in pain.157 Kicking, hitting and kicking were simply part of the way the assistants treated their inferiors. If Hans Tongka becomes an administrator, it does not mean that he has become more human. Deathly ill coolies with half-broken eyes, skin and bone, „creatures that had almost nothing human left on them‟, he sends away by train, so that they do not die on the estate and the company does not have to pay the funeral costs.

Rudy Kousbroek describes a survival strategy in East Indies camp syndrome that he saw in prisoners of the Japanese, which he believed was also used by the Deli coolies: fiddling, moving slowly, being deliberately clumsy, acting submissive, keeping you stupid, acting like you have not understood an assignment, in short, „act as if you are retarded‟ . But that is of no use to the Chinese plantation coolies in Hans Tongka’s career. They were hard workers, recalcitrant, turbulent and rowdy, they did not allow themselves to be told just like that, they revolted when they felt that they were not getting what they were entitled to and made it clear. Of course they cried for forgiveness when they were mistreated, but they could also scold their European tuan. When swear words did not help, they resorted to concerted action: they took their complaints higher and mounted a rally. And if that didn’t work either (it never worked, as the system didn’t allow it), they killed the person who had harmed them if necessary. They didn’t do that in a fit of frenzy, but they played dice coldly for it. Whoever was chosen by lot to carry out the attack knew very well that he could not escape punishment, but did not protest.

The only coolies that correspond somewhat to the image of the Deli coolies as sketched by Kousbroek are the Chinese who have to be hanged. After much swearing and clamor at the European bosses and the government, they climbed the ladder to the scaffold deliberately slowly. That, of course, is not a survival strategy, for they knew they could not escape punishment, and in the whole of the picture of the Chinese coolies portrayed in Dé-lilah’s novel, there was no resignation either; it was silent resistance. And it helped, because the narrator says that at that time it was precisely the Europeans who had to drink ‘courageous water’ to be able to handle it.

In Hans Tongka’s carrière schetst Dé-lilah een tragisch beeld van de Chinese koelies, die ondanks hun belangrijke bijdrage aan het succes van de Deli-tabak als beesten behandeld werden, maar steeds strijdbaar bleven.

De gambierhandelaar en zijn perkara in De laatste incarnatie (H. Borel 1905)

In het verhaal „Maar een Chinees … ‟ in de bundel De laatse incarnatie voert H. Borel

„A stupid, uncivilized taukeh negri‟ , Kang Soei, a former coolie, who had made a little money, but had never invited Dutch tuan besar into his house. He was a poor singkeh from China to the residence Riau came over, and as a sampan rower had earned his first savings. Thanks to all kinds of activities (Borel does not fail to mention his skill in smuggling) Kang Soei had come into possession of capital. He had permits from the Malay Viceroy of Riau to cultivate gambir- and pepper gardens, and was now a planter and trader. Until one bad day he walked „the endless field of Indian civil proceedings‟. One of his bosses (taukeh kebon) was taken to the Land Council by the captain Chinese for an alleged debt of several thousand dollars. However, the permit to develop the garden turned out not to be on Kang Soei ‟s own name, but on that of his manager. Kang Soei was advised by friends to put the case to rest and pay the fictitious managerial debt, as no one could beat the capitals Chinese. It was to do the gambier garden, because he was a large gambier trader himself. “But Kang Soei was a stupid, humble man, and in his thick, primitive brain there was only room for the blunt,” unwieldy truth of reality, ‘164 says the narrator, and according to that truth neither his manager nor he himself owed the money. He was also proud that he was finally going to have a perkara, because that was the first sign of notability in Riau. He had complete confidence in the Dutch judges, but did not know which hornet’s nest he had stung.

The Chinese captain had hired a ‘procurur blanda’, and Kang Soei thought it necessary to have an Arab attorney, Mohammed ben Said, do his business. A power of attorney was signed before the notary, although Kang Soei did not understand it. The „smart Arab‟ drew Kang Soei hundreds of dollars as an advance (which he would never see again, according to a footnote). Kang Soei lost his garden to the captain, although it was not allowed by law.

The Landraad session is described in detail. It is a beautiful, momentous session that Kang Soei sits admiringly, it involves all kinds of witnesses that he had never seen in his life, a Chinese oath is taken from him by the lieutenant Chinese, and the end of the song is Kang Soei loses, although the Arab prosecutor continues to insist that everything is going very well, because „if you lose it to the Landraad, you simply win it somewhere else, in Batavia, […] where even higher tangerines live than here ‘.165 Kang Soei has to pay an advance of five hundred guilders. But his gambier garden is sold to the public. Of course the captain is the one who buys the garden, for less than a quarter of its true value, because no one dares to bid against him.

Then Kang Soei receives a message that he has won the case. However, the captain lodges an appeal and Kang Soei loses so much money to a lawyer. After months („but the patience of a Chinese is tough‟) 166 Kang Soei is told that the process was won again. However, he did not get his garden back.

Meanwhile, major changes had taken place in the region, there was a new resident, a different secretary, and a notary who no longer had to divide himself ‘into five’.167 Mohammed, the attorney, had fled to Singapore. And Kang Soei, that one wanted to revive his business, heard that an official had come who understood Chinese and was willing to help him. That official was the I person, who made him do the whole story of the trial over and over again because he thought it was so precious. “I really like to talk to such rude Chinese from the people, because with all their sleepiness and deceitfulness they still have simple, natural things that a European has long lost,” he confesses. 169 During Kang Soei, ” During his visits the I-person began to love him more and more, „as far as one can love a Chinese – and that is not far‟. 170 Kang Soei brought small baskets of fruit for the daughter of the I-person. , thereby showing his affection, “with a kindness that immediately wrapped up the child, he managed to offer it”. When he came to visit, he wore his coarse work suit, ‘like an ordinary coolie who owns nothing’, but he felt surprisingly important, according to his benefactor, ‘that he could relate his experiences to a tuan blanda in this way, and so amiably. sat smoking a cigar with him as if he was already a mandarin too ‘.

The whole thing became a cause célèbre, which prompted a bet. The end of it all comes in an unexpected way, when Kang Soei is found dead in a gambier garden, with a gaping lance wound, the abdomen ripped open. The Chinese captain receives a compliment from the resident for the diligence with which he had the case investigated, because within a month the murderer was arrested, a poor bum no one had ever seen who claimed he had been a coolie at Kang Soei and on He had been treated in such an inhuman manner that he had murdered his master in a fit of anger. He was sentenced to ten years of forced labor outside the chain and “the law was met.” 172

Two months after the death of Kang Soei, the captain has a party, as his daughter marries an influential opium leaseholder from Singapore. The I person is invited but prefers not to be present, and while walking lonely outside, he thinks of his protégé Kang Soei. “How foolish and rash it suddenly seemed to me that a poor wretch’s fights against the mighty Lord in that luxurious palace of bright light, where the Company officials came as guests to drink his champagne and eat his pies!”

 Borel’s portrait of the Chinese, Kang Soei in particular, reflects his opinion  the Indian Chinese. On the one hand, they are Chinese, and Borel was very admired  for Chinese. On the other hand, they are the Indian Chinese, who have to lose it in everything  against the „real‟ Chinese. Chinese manners and customs have been corrupted in India and  degenerated, as Borel wrote in De Chineezen in Nederlandsch-Indië (1900). He blamed the  Indian Chinese, and then the Chinese officers in particular, not a shred of respect often also president of the Landraad, and even resident, when the resident was on tour. So in Kang Soei ‘s eyes a’ five-fold, white mandarin ‘.

Dankbaarheid en toewijding in Verhalen uit het verre Oosten (Annie Salomons 1930)

Besides klontongs, Chinese rickshaw coolies were also a striking phenomenon in the streets. Annie Salomons writes about one of them in Stories from the Far East (1930). She has given the rickshaw tractor a name: Ah Lim. The European with whom he builds a relationship that goes beyond that between an accidental rickshaw tractor and an accidental customer has just not been given a name.

Every Saturday night at seven, Ah Lim came to pick up the European, although no one had ever ordered him. He regarded himself as the young man’s crew, who traveled with him to the club every week and also regularly had himself taken home in the same way. They had short conversations on the way to the club. The Chinese, who was talkative but still struggling with Malay, brightened up because the European understood him quickly. Walking with springy steps at a moderate trot on the asphalt, he kept his attention tense to listen for the voice. behind him would also say something, „willing to burst into exuberant laughter at the slightest joke‟ .175 When that happened, he neighed with laughter, trotting and repeating the joke to a colleague, who responded equally loudly. Ah Lim received half a guilder for a ride to the club. When he had brought the European, he would be there again five hours later, and sitting on his pole while smoking, he darted forward again from the line of waiting and dicing rickshaw tractors. On the way home, Ah Lim ventured, “like all Chinese people love to gamble ‘, to ask if his customer won or lost, although he was not sure if he could talk about it.176 The European then said he had lost, and Ah Lim said that he had received the proceeds from the entire week. When the European wanted to pay Ah Lim, it turned out that he only had one guilder and Ah Lim had no change.177 When the European had returned after five months in Europe and had decided not to go to the club, he heard at seven o’clock promptly, the famous shuffling of bare feet and a discreet cough at the front porch. As he walked forward, he looked into Ah Lim’s thin face, grinning under his large straw hat. 178 Ah Lim said he had regularly walked by the house to see if the European was already there and the other tuan (the observer ) from the house. The European was moved. He had the feeling that someone had been waiting for him.

When they arrived at the club, the European wanted to pay him half a guilder, but Ah Lim refused, because he had already given him a guilder last time (five months ago). . His table mates in the club, to whom he told the story of the rickshaw driver who is more honest than any European, did not understand his enthusiasm. Since then, the friendship between the rickshaw driver and his customer has been closer than ever.180 Rain or shine, Ah Lim was always ready to take the European to a concert, to the office or home.

In the rainy season there was a lot to be made for Ah Lim. And just then he was picked up because he had shot forward out of the queue of waiting rickshaw tractors when a European approached. The police, who had been annoyed by the cheeky, casual guy for a while, had unceremoniously taken away his ‘driver’s license’. As an embarrassed supplicant, he reported in the backyard of the house of his friend the European. And the European thought with a sigh, “It must be a bum. But what would this fellow, stranger in a foreign country, do if he had lost his livelihood? ‟181 He telephoned the inspector and Ah Lim was allowed to get his cart from the inspectors office.

Two evenings later, the European was working so hard that he didn’t notice the weather turning. Not a single rickshaw Chinese stopped for him, they were all taken. But then suddenly Ah Lim emerged from the dark before him,

“Flowing and shining under his rainy hat. His clothes were heavy with water, but he laughed like an angel with his crook chin. ”He had seen the European when he passed with a load, and he turned immediately to see if he was still waiting. „And if I had been away?‟ „Well, then you would already have been helped.‟ „He did not even mention all the customers he had rejected on his way, he did not even mention his loss of time,‟ the young man thought. He wanted to give Ah Lim two guilders, but when he arrived under the pendoppo, the Chinese held both his hands triumphantly around his towel. He did not want to take the money, because this was a present for the gentleman, because he had helped him so well with the police.

Gratitude and friendship of a Chinese are also the themes of another story in the same collection of stories by Annie Salomons. The narrator is a former controller who is now governor. It is not very clear whether the grateful Chinese the story is about was plantation coolie or something else. Maybe he was panglong coolie, because there are some caimans who injured him. The inspector says that often men with deep wounds (“so deep that you could put your whole hand in”) were brought to him (when he was a controller) because the nearest doctor lived 26 hours away from there. He was the only European among the Chinese. One day very early in the morning he waited for the arrival of the boat from Singapore that brought the letters, when a Chinese approached his house with a basket in his hand. He fell to his knees at the bottom of the stairs and bent into the dust. When the inspector asked who he was and what he wanted, the inspector tore open his coat and showed the inspector a back full of deep scars. The Chinese recognized him as the man he had bandaged weeks ago and had boarded to the doctor „in quite deplorable state‟. The Chinese now brought wine, beer, fireworks and red candles to thank him. 

On the comment of his interlocutor, who said that the Chinese intended red candles only for a deity, the controller said that he was indeed considered a kind of deity, because he was not afraid of the caimans, in which the Chinese always saw evil spirits, and because he made the Chinese better. 

They respected that, and so „they loved him in all kinds of ways‟ . They always brought him a present from their travels, for example a fresh cabbage, because there was no vegetable at all. On New Year’s Eve he once received thirteen ox carts full of gifts. When asked by the other what he had done with them, he said that he went past all the carts, expressed his admiration for the champagne, the pewter, the brandy and the cigars, and only took out those packages around which a piece of red paper was wrapped. , because they were more specially intended as gifts, and they were the little things that „maintain the friendship‟ .186 They were satisfied with that, and they quietly took the cart loads back with them.

When the inspector got married with the gauntlet, he had said so to the Chinese. They then ate a supper of noodles and champagne. The attendees were the postal committees (the only European guest), the Chinese of the salt director who was a great friend of the bridegroom, and the opium’s landlord, a “godforsaken scoundrel”. The tenant’s proposal to prepare the noodles was not accepted because the others were afraid that he would poison them. The nicest thing, according to the inspector, was that the Chinese had decorated the entire kampong with red banners and lit two large red candles in the tepekong. If they both burned long, the bride and groom would both have a long life.

In Piong Pan Ho (1894), a novel by J. Dermoût that is discussed in another subchapter, the protagonist is a grateful Chinese, who is helpful in all kinds of ways to his Dutch benefactor, much to his surprise, because he had never thought a Chinese would be capable of such gratitude. Still, gratitude turns out not to be that uncommon among Chinese. We see this with the rickshaw kulie Ah Lim and the Chinese injured by a caiman.

Ah Lim provides the European with an exemplary service. Anyone who has experienced telling a joke whose humor passes others by will understand the service Ah Lim renders to his customer by laughing out loud at every joke. And anyone who has ever waited for a taxi in the pouring rain can imagine the joy of the European when he sees Ah Lim.

Ah Lim is completely honest. He only accepts as much money as he deems appropriate and if he has no refund, his customer will get it back next time. This dedication and loyalty makes the loneliness more tolerable for the European. A friendship even develops, although the men are of course not on the same level. That difference becomes even more evident when Ah Lim’s ‘driver’s license’ is taken away and he visits the European and begs him for help. Help he also receives from the European, who is depicted very sympathetically. He sees Ah Lim as „a stranger in a foreign land‟, exactly like himself.

The relationship between the controller and the Chinese who was attacked by caimans is of the same disparity. The Chinese even considers the controller to be a deity, or so the controller interprets the gifts of the Chinese. The gifts offered to the inspector out of gratitude are not always expensive. Sometimes there are also simple ones such as fresh cabbage, because the Chinese know that there are no vegetables to be found where he lives. The Chinese are not only generous, but also considerate. The thirteen bullock carts full of gifts should be seen in that sense too. As for the small red paper parcels, one of the best known Chinese traditions is to give money or other small gifts in red paper or in a red envelope (hence the name ‘ang bao’, red parcel) to children or less fortunate people. to give. This is done not only on Chinese New Year and other holidays, but also on other occasions. The controller explains this gesture correctly: they are trifles that sustain friendship. The way in which the controller’s wedding is celebrated shows that the Chinese have completely included him in their circle: the kampong is decorated with red banners (red is a lucky color for the Chinese) and just like a Chinese wedding, two red candles lit in the prayer house. That they were afraid of being poisoned by the tenant is half a joke. The controller appreciates the friendship of the Chinese, but still thinks his wife would lose heart if she could see the scene. Perhaps because of the strangeness of the situation, or because of the „God-forgetfulness‟ of not only the tenant but also the others. In any case, Chinese remain strange people.

The panglong koelies in Het rijk van Bittertong (Westenenk 1932)

The kingdom of Bittertong is a mixture of ego document and report presented as a novel189 and is about panglong Chinese, among other things. Panglongs were, as already logging and charcoal distilleries. They were all managed and run by Chinese, they were ‘chunks of China on Dutch East Indies territory’. 190 The beams and the charcoal were exported to Singapore. These exports were very important. The panglong wood annually exceeded the total output of Java ‟s jati wood in cubic meter capacity. The center of this panglong area was Selat Panjang in SOK. The regional administration in Medan had known for some time that those panglongs were in need of improvement, but the governor was not sufficiently informed, the administrative officer did not have enough staff and no fast-moving vessels available to exercise sufficient supervision. Moreover, he had relied too much on the Chinese officers, who, according to the author, were driven by self-interest,

Panglong Coolies Fighting a Crocodile

On a visit by the governor in 1921 to the hospital in Selat Pandjang, he found a strongly built Chinese man lying in a crib with a splinted leg, and the Javanese doctor said he had an ugly leg wound from the bite of a crocodile. With the help of an interpreter, the Chinese said that he had been attacked by a large crocodile at night while he was lugging beams. When asked if he’s for that night work consists partly of a manuscript revised and corrected by the author and the rest is verbatim from an initial draft, which could no longer be revised or corrected by the author.

was paid extra by the head of the panglong, the Chinese interpreter did not immediately answer. The governor decided to conduct a personal investigation.

The Chinese officers stated that there was a lot of scum among the panglong coolies: not only starving plebs from Chinese port cities, but also the scum of Singapore crooks, who were recruited for the panglongs to escape the police. These workers had to be treated very harshly. But there was also talk of real abuse, which, however, was condoned by the Chinese bosses as expressions of necessary rigor. So it was urgent to determine what abuses were occurring on the panglongs. According to the writer, the Indian government has taken measures that have softened the plight of thousands of coolies in subsequent years. ‘For here and there in the center, where race prevailed over race, terrible conditions were attested.’

The Chinese bosses tried to tie the coolies to the panglong for as long as possible. The most effective means, better than forging their debt books and making them play dice, was to make them addicted to opium. The panglong boss was the only one who could buy his panglong opium at the government sales point. He also mixed direct opium with cheap smuggling opium. This was obtained in an easy way: on the timber boats returning from Singapore there was still plenty of room for cans of opium. The sliders became deeply in debt, often having to do the hard work on the panglongs for years longer than their plan, while their strength was gradually being demolished.196

Their task was to plow the heavy tree trunks from the forest over the sleepers of the primitive wood tracks laid out on the silt ground, the ropes slung over their bare shoulders, jerking at each step on the round sleepers. Yet they did not run away quickly. As reported, there were no Chinese living outside the grounds of the panglongs, only shy indigenous people, ancient tribes of black origin, as indicated by their thick frizzy hair. Coolies could not expect shelter from these people. Further in the forests and swamps, only crocodiles awaited them in silty creeks and clouds of mosquitoes. In addition, if they were opium addicts, their cravings for opium in most cases drove them back to the boss, who then had them beaten and tortured. One of the torments was without food and drink for several days, bareheaded and naked, having to sit in a squatting position, a pole under the knees, the hands under it and then tied tightly together, ‘at night a defenseless prey of mosquitoes, during the day put on display in the blazing sun as a terrifying example’ . Every now and then a rebellious coolie disappeared, but „that was a mild punishment because crocodiles do not torture‟ .197

The empire of Bittertong tells that a Malay hamlet existed on an island at the mouth of the Kampar. The cruising Chinese buyer of copra, Lim Hok Soei, built a shop house on the beach, between the village and the sea, after discussions with the owners of the largest flapper gardens. The natives were happy with it, because now they had no longer with their copra and other forest products that they wanted to sell by sea to Selat Pandjang, or wait a long time for a buyer to visit the island. They could arrange everything with Lim Hok Soei.

After a while everyone on the island did business with him, he even won the trust of „the half-wild tribes on the mainland‟. Lim was very handy

„Manipulations with scales, measure and stick‟, and the „natives‟ knew that very well, but „they accepted those handles as inevitable and self-evident cleverness; After all, in the East there is a wide margin between fair and unfair, and all kinds of shades of dexterity move in that orbit. ‘He was not a villain, according to the narrator; he readily made new advances when dealing with people who regularly came to sell their products to him, and he also had no objection that they never fully paid off their debt. 198 Lim Hok Soei lived very simply in a house made of wild wood and other simple materials.

A lot of opium was shoved on the islands. So an opium sales place was built on the island with a mantri opium and his family, plus a police station with two armed police officers, all Javanese. It brought a lot of entertainment, and Lim Hok Soei also benefited, although he was able to sell less smuggling opium.

One morning, two Chinese canoes came to the island with 15 Chinese passengers, who said they wanted to go to a newly opened logging shop, but waited for the evening breeze. These people shot the mantri opium and robbed the opium house. After they attacked Lim and got him two heels in his right arm, they ran off with the money in the store. They left the mantri’s wife untouched. She returned to Java with her children. The Government took good care of her, but „years passed before she had the courage to visit toko’s, where Chinese faces are grinning‟

Madelon Székely-Lulofs Coolie

Madelon Székely-Lulofs describes the Chinese coolies as hard workers, but also states that the Chinese suffer the least from the scalding heat compared to the Javanese and the Dutch. Even the country suffers more from the sun than the Chinese.

The Chinese hacked into the earth with their tjankol, tormented it deeply with this cruel tool. In endless repetition, all the blazing day long, they raised their arms, arched their bare yellow backs along which the sweat drifted in streams. It was as if the stinging rays of the sun, which did torment the naked, drying land, did roast the brown bodies of the Javanese coolies black and burned the white of the Europeans to a dark red … it was as if they were slipping off these uniform yellow life moved, more cruel and stubborn and merciless than the horrific heat, which fell from heaven and rose again from earth, and hung like a trembling mist over this inhuman labor.202

The cruel, stubborn and merciless life that stirred the bodies of the Chinese coolies was probably the life they had left behind in China, which was considered so much more difficult than life on the plantation.

Székely-Lulofs turns the feud between the Javanese and the Chinese into a bloody conflict. Even before that, the narrator foreshadows what is to come, not only by presenting the tjankol as a cruel tool (see the above fragment) but also by the distance between the pondoks of the Javanese and Sundanese coolies on the one hand and the kongsis of the Chinese coolies on the other hand can be compared to a deep chasm, symbol of „the irreconcilable feud of two different Eastern religions …‟ 203 The Muslims look down on the Chinese, who are unclean in their eyes for eating pork, something that Muslims strictly forbid. is.

The conflict comes to a head when an argument is made about a woman. Saïma was assigned to the Javanese Parman. She had a bad reputation. A beautiful young woman who „hooked up with every man who paid her‟ .204 The last month she also went to the Chinese, because they paid more. She did not give Parman any of the money she received, but bought beautiful things herself. Saïma was a big ‘solend’, a slut. Three times a man had been stabbed around her, two of them were dead.

Roeki, a young Javanese coolie, is also sexually attracted to Saïma. However, he is critical of her. According to him, she should be ashamed, a Sundanese woman who gives herself to Chinese, who eat pork, and calls her

‘Soendel tjina’. Saïma gets angry about this, but says that the Chinese are much better men than the Javanese, they treat women better, they love a woman, and they also pay with gold. Roeki says he can also pay with gold that he has earned from gambling. Saïma is interested in that. Later it turns out that Roeki has no gold at all. Saïma is furious and becomes hysterical. People come to watch and listen. When Roeki says that she has eaten pork with the Chinese and the devil has entered her, she does not deny the former. She even points the finger at the other contract women, who sleep with the white tuan who are Kafirs and infidels. At that moment the manduress Minah steps forward, who will not tolerate the tuan being insulted. She attacks Saima, who screams that she doesn’t care. “Let me be a soendel tjina! Whenever I feel like it, I go to the kongsi. Where else would I earn my gold? ‘

One night, when Saïma goes to the kongsi, something happens. Men who lust for Saïma – Nur, Roeki, Sentono – feel the hatred arise, „The fierce hatred the man of the other race who took away their wives bound them together. ”205 They attack the Chinese with whom Saïma had an appointment, the three of them. Dull beats and the screams of the Chinese resound in the evening. The people come like ants out of every little room. They join in, provoked by shouts of “Krojok! Babi tjina! ‟206 It is further told how the Javanese behave like beasts and indulge in a„ fierce bloodlust ‟, emitting„ terrifying, rough, beastly sounds ‟, while they

“Screamed and screamed and laughed like madmen.”

Winding like a snake, the Chinese lay on the ground with both hands protecting his head. Noer and Sentono stood bent over him. In blind frenzy, Noer, without knowing where he hit, struck drunk with murder, with hatred. All the resentment, all the stifled resistance broke loose in a raw flood of destructiveness. A flood that also carried the other. A wild intoxication of power, of being stronger all at once, clouded Sentono’s thinking, turned this primitive good man into an animal savage in one second.208

The Javanese coolies continue to hack into the Chinese with their tools, even when he is already dead. In the next fragment we see why the Chinese has not been given a name.

Now the others also crowded in on the Chinese. Crying and laughing, they struck, cut with their tjankols, their parangs, slaughtered him like an surrounded wild beast. […] The Chinese had long been silent, but still they, insatiable, screaming and shouting, were caught in a perverse lust for power. She wanted to kill… that one with all of them… Not him, but that one who belonged to that other race, which was different, was stronger, was richer, than she. They wanted not only to kill, but to maim, destroy: that yellow body in their brown hands … And they dug their hands in the lively flesh, calling on the name of Allah, putting their God above that of their victim.209

The mandur, Amat, joins. “In the shadow of the raging crowd, he had watched this murder, and his blood had flowed for a while at this destruction! A Chinese! Just a Chinese! Came to him! ‟210 Naur and Roeki go to sleep that night,„ as an animal sleeps: satisfied, unaware, ignorant of their own gruesome cruelty, ‟the narrator says.211 It turns out that beating a Chinese to death is almost a habit:„ [ Kromoredjo] was in contract a year longer than Roeki and that year they had beaten seven Chinese to death. That was nothing like that! ‘212

The clerk is just annoyed by the whole situation. „Everything about one such a touching Chinese! As if China didn’t get rid of the Chinese! Millions died there of starvation and because one had been lynched by his coolies, he now had all this nagging with the government and the court. ‘

The relationship of the Javanese to the Chinese is reduced in Coolie to the conflict between the Javanese coolies and one Chinese coolie, who in the eyes of the Javanese coolies represented his entire race. It was not about the individual. Not that one Chinese coolie, but all Chinese were more powerful and stronger, and this was the revenge on all Chinese. In their daily work and in the rivalry for women, the Chinese were more powerful, they could pay more than the Javanese. The fact that the women (here also represented by only one woman, namely Saïma) preferred to go to the Chinese than to the men of their own people, struck the Javanese men in their most sensitive place. But at that moment the Javanese were many and experienced „a wild rush of power, of being stronger at once” than the Chinese. That the Chinese were considered unclean was all the more a justification for killing the Chinese coolie in the name of Allah. Perhaps hatred for the Chinese was also fueled by the powerlessness against the white tuan. The suppressed rancor and stifled resistance mentioned in any of the above excerpts will not be directed against the Chinese alone. But they did become victims and targets of the „raw flood of destruction‟ among the Javanese coolies.

In one of Kousbroek’s essays, the reaction of the Indonesian philologist Achadiati Ikram to the image of the Javanese in Coolie sketched by Székely-Lulofs is examined.214 Ikram, as can be read in one of her articles, objects to the negative image of the Javanese as docile, subdued and obtuse and moreover selfish and cruel to their own people.215 Ikram’s article does not say whether she has anything against the Javanese in Coolie being portrayed as cruel to the Chinese. In any case, Coolie says more about the Javanese than about the Chinese. The Chinese themselves, in addition to being hard workers, are depicted as men who trick the Javanese from their wives with money, gold and jewelry. That is what their power consists of. That’s exactly where the shoe pinches, for the Javanese do not have much money and cannot prevent their wives – here embodied by Saïma – from going to the Chinese. Saïma also says that the Chinese are more pleasant with the women. In that respect, too, the Javanese, to whom the women belong, have to give up on the Chinese. That is one more reason why the Javanese coolies have such hatred on their Chinese colleagues, so much so that they retaliate by murdering them. In Coolie it becomes very clear that the Chinese are stuck with a stereotype. That stereotype is not in itself unfavorable: they have money and therefore power. But in a society where there are others who have no money and therefore no power, but who own what money can buy, that stereotype becomes a cause for envy and hatred.

The Head Tandil

Chinese people could also make a career within the hierarchy of the plantation. In the collection of stories Tabakkers by H. Gorter (1953) is a story about how Lim Ang Kau, who was kidnapped from Swatow quay and brought to Deli, made it from kongsikang to head tandil. In Deli-planter (1936) by J. Kleian the head tandil is called A Poh.

A Poh is „the type of the real old-fashioned tobacco coolie, who had risen from poor émigré, through diligence and devotion, to the head of an 800 to 1,000 soul-strong coolie population, which usually resides in a decent tobacco company.‟ He had worked for 35 years. on the same venture, and enjoyed the confidence of all Europeans, as well as his subordinates.217 When two assistants, one of whom has hurt his foot (his name is Huug), come and ask if they can borrow his cart, A Poh is there immediately willing and tells the seice (driver) to make an effort. When he sees that his visitors are cold, he takes out a bottle of cognac and two glasses. He asks if he can pour them a brandy, otherwise they will get sick turn into. The drink turns out to be of excellent quality, „three stars‟. The gentlemen say to each other that „the old man‟ can afford to lose it: a head mandil receives 20 to 25 thousand guilders in bonuses per year. But most of them gamble everything they earn, and only a few go back to China with a decent amount. A Poh says he is over 60 and would not be able to get used to it in China. He hopes to be allowed to continue working at the company and to be buried on the kebon when he is dead.

“The coolies are my children, the gentlemen are my friends,” he says.

This brief, seemingly innocent visit to A Poh has major consequences. Morain, another assistant, came by as Huug, the injured assistant, was helped into the cart. Morain, not knowing exactly what was going on, concluded that Huug was drunk. After an anonymous letter to the head office and on the basis of the accounts of A Poh and the narrator, Huug was given a sentence transfer to a small, remote rubber receipt, because “an assistant, who, accompanied by a younger colleague, spent his evenings with the drinking alcohol with Chinese could now and never be entrusted with the management of a company ‟. Huug then commits suicide.

It is typical of the segregated, racially-based structure of the plantation society that a European assistant was allowed to drink alcohol with other Europeans, but not with a Chinese, even though the Chinese was the main toothil that the gentlemen called his ‘friends’.

Annie Salomons in the collection Stories from the Far East (1930) is also told that the head tandil was an important man to whom European bosses often appealed. The story is about a tiger capture, but above all shows the vanity of a chief administrator and the ingenuity and practical ingenuity of the Chinese, especially the main toothil. The captive tiger, or at least his skin, would be for the chief clerk, who had already lined up at the front porch steps, as if to greet his future robe with dignity. But suddenly something happened. The clerk, who knew what special power the Chinese attach to the tiger’s whiskers, jumped down the stairs, he stood amid „the wriggling heap of Chinese‟ and tried to push them away, but the dead animal had no mustache more. The chief clerk was furious and demanded the mustache back. The clerk knew it would cost his job if he did not properly resolve this problem. In turn, he called for the head toothil. “The well-tended head of all the company’s Chinese workforce [stood] next to his writing desk, helmet hat and planter’s stick in hand, his shrewd eyes gleaming with reverent condolences.” 221 The clerk said that if the hair did not fall, it the tandil could cost his job. He would place two sheets of paper in the reception room (that is the room where the tobacco is handed in) and the whiskers would be placed between those sheets. The tandil gathered his men around him and spoke to them „with fierce gestures and chirping sounds‟. Then he stepped away with a shrug, leaving it to his men to find a solution to the problem.222 Later, the chief tandil reported that the matter was done. The clerk saw a “forest so thick like a sink scrubber ‘between the two sheets of paper. The tandil took the bunch of bamboo fibers, for they were, in his hand, chose the twenty most beautiful and handed them to the clerk. He said: ‘After all, nobody sees that, only you and I know that. We will never get the real whiskers back anyway ‘.223 Years later, the administrator, now also principal administrator, came to visit his former boss in Wassenaar and saw the skin, of which the host was particularly proud:’ he was a boy of a dude, just look, what mustaches ”.224

In From jungle to plantation (László Székely 1935) a portrait of the tandil Lim-A-Hjong is sketched, an important man on the plantation. He has a long braid in which a red thread has been braided and he has wrapped the braid around his neck. He wears the pith helmet „dandy-like crooked‟ on his head, and there is an intelligent look in his „cunning, tilted eyes‟. He has been working there for ten years and knows everyone: faces he has once seen are forever etched in his memory. He is the ‘best mathematician in this world’ and calculates the most complicated arithmetic problems from memory within a minute. He does not write down anything but knows exactly how much debt the coolies have, how much they have paid off, how much the interest is, how much the arrears are and when the payment terms are due.

“Of course” in an incomprehensible way, and he can even list the names of all the njais of the touans in chronological order. A-Hjong „is the memory of the Society‟. He knows what the tuan do not know, also because of the effect of the kabar-angin (literally: wind messages). They are wonderfully fast and accurate.

It is the job of the chief tandil to keep his bosses informed about what is stirring among the coolies. The main tooth in the story „Service above self‟ in the collection Delianen by H. Gorter (1941) does the same. In this story, the reception assistant received a scolding from the chief clerk in front of all the workers in the barn. This demanded a perfect bundle of tobacco leaves. The assistant swore that from now on he would have all batches cut open and oversorted, if there was even one wrong leaf in a bundle. This meant that the coolie who sorted the bundle would not be paid for his work. The head tandil reported that the coolies were very dissatisfied and “couldn’t live off the wind.” The dreaded thing happened: a Chinese sorter stabbed the assistant to death with a long dagger.

In Delianen by H. Gorter we see that the main tandil has a dual role. He has ascendancy over his coolies and tandils, he knows his worth but remains reverent to his bosses. He is at the same time a representative of his team of workers and Confidant of his superiors. In Delian, the head tandil warns the assistant that there is danger on the part of the coolies, but he also says that those coolies are rebellious because they cannot live „of the wind‟. The main tandil is seen as diligent and dedicated, someone who can adjust himself ‘upwards’ as well as ‘downwards’. He is held responsible for the behavior of his coolies, at the risk of being fired. A tandil is smart and intelligent, sometimes even a math genius, he is helpful and is immediately ready to assist the assistants if they need his help. Unfortunately, head tandils are also human, and they are addicted to the game of dice, like all other Chinese. Although he has made enough money to repatriate to China, A Poh would not want to return. He wants to be buried in the country where he feels at home. The main tooth in Annie Salomon’s story is clever: he is resourceful and practical, and has a great predominance over his men. The European staff seems to have a lot of appreciation for the main tusks. From Jungle to Plantation is the only novel in which the tandil is described as „cunning‟ („cunning‟ is also attributed to the Europeans), although the narrator appreciates his intelligence and his phenomenal memory. Assistants rely on the chief tandil to keep them informed of what is happening on the plantation. Even if only kabar-angin, they are wonderfully accurate.

De staartkerels in Van oerwoud tot plantage (Székely 1935)

In László Székely’s novel, From jungle to plantation, story of a planter’s life (1935), there are more Chinese urban coolies than Chinese plantation coolies. The role of the latter is, as it were, not recognized, it seems as if only the Europeans, and more specifically the Dutch, made Deli what it was. The Netherlands is described as „a country […] of seven million inhabitants, a small country, whose sons with unyielding willpower, bold contempt for death and inhuman toil have created all this prosperity‟ .

When the protagonist arrives in Medan, he sees native and Chinese coolies lugging luggage and almost naked Chinese coolies pulling ‘feather-light’ rickshaws. The coolies run fast, they catch up and rush past each other „as if they are merely playing a horse for pleasure‟ .229 The narrator is a singkeh, a novice, but he already manages to adapt well. He is aware of his dignity as a planter; he’s stuck with „Imperious self-confidence and tougher pride‟ in the first-class compartment and hands his card „with arrogant contempt‟ to the native conductor. With all the changes brought about by the colonization of Deli and also after the arrival of civil servants, police and judges, the planter remained number one. “Deli remained his land, the land he discovered and made what it had become. […] The great lord is the planter ‟. Each time the narrator emphasizes the heroic contribution of the Europeans. It looks like their existence is not much more pleasant than that of the plantation coolies. The European too labors hard and suffers from moisture, swamp vapors and solar glow, he ‘toils as hard as the coolie and his organism suffers just as much as that of the coolie’.

The rickshaw coolie works especially in the evening and at night, when it has become a little cooler. But also during the day he keeps a close eye on whether he cannot get a load somewhere, because he wants to put money aside as soon as possible and go back to China as a taukeh (chief, boss). But it is not only the Chinese who are here only temporarily. Everyone wants to earn money and then leave, including Europeans and other Archipelago residents.

The city streets, especially the Chinese Quarter, are full of animals and people of all races. The buffalo are pack animals, the Chinese too. There are Malays who hate the Chinese.

Chinese, wearing large braided bamboo headgear, jostle in noisy and noisy ways. Like ants in an anthill, the yellow sons of the Heavenly Kingdom – deeply hated by the quiet, clumsy and good-natured Malays – teem here. Here everything breathes life. Feverish, hurried life. Life pulsates here at such a fierce tempo that the White man, already somewhat accustomed to the tropical melancholy, who gets lost here, becomes dizzy. Great buffaloes pull load wagons, loaded with boxes and bales, Rickshaw koelies run and trot everywhere. Chinese porters, bent almost to the ground, carry incomprehensibly heavy loads.

This is not the only description of the Chinese quarter with its narrow streets and filthy workshops, where there is an indescribable atmosphere of all kinds of stench and fumes. In a second description the comparison is again made with a teeming, smelly, noisy anthill, lit by shrill carbide lamps, where half-naked, yellow fellows sit on low benches bent over their work and work like madmen, hammering, throbbing, gobbling “as teeming, toiling ants, fanatic, in breathless and breathtaking surrender ‘. The Chinese neighborhood is located in the middle of the quiet, wide, neat European neighborhoods like an Asian island in a European sea. In all respects, the Chinese quarter is the opposite of the European neighborhood.

Not only the Chinese are hated by the Malays – the Malays also feel anger and hatred towards Europeans. After a dispute between a Malay coachman and the main character, in which a Swiss intervenes, the coachman runs off, but „there had been something threatening in his eyes, anger and hatred lay on his face […] but against the cunning and force majeure of the Whites nothing can be done! ‘

If the contractually appointed worker from Java and China has signed the contract with a cross, he cannot flee from work. He must do everything he is told without a word of objection. He must not refuse or run away at all. In addition to the Orang-Kontrak, which has no rights, there are also self-recruited coolies, such as the „lazy‟ Bataks. Yet they are not so lazy that they have the chance to earn a silver dollar by catching runaway coolies. to let pass. They simply hunt down Chinese and Javanese fleeing to the forest, and sometimes grab a coolie walking peacefully over the road.

There are all kinds of ‘toucangs’ (craftsmen) working on such a plantation, but not all of them are real craftsmen. Except for the water bearer or toucang ajer, which is a species butler (he has to take care of his boss’s bath water and ice box and accompany the tuan with a flickering kerosene lamp when it is still or already dark and carry the basket containing his breakfast) there is a toucan tea, the tea master, whose job is to provide tea to the group of coolies residing under his mandur. During work, the coolies drink as much tea as they can. They sweat and that relieves the tired body and makes it more elastic. Each mandur has its own tea coolie. The Chinese also have a toucang rambut, the barber. Wearing a braid is strictly prohibited in China, according to the narrator, but still very fashionable in Medan, and taking care of these tails requires a lot of effort. The barber is semi-naked, but always wears a braided hat. He sets up a large Chinese parasol, unwraps his barber chest and that’s the barber shop.

There is also a „kedeh‟, a shop on the plantation. One day the main character is bullied by his boss and has to walk home in the dark for two hours. On the way he passes the kedeh. The owner sits in front of the wooden building, „a fat Chinese man, naked up to his belt. His yellow skin stretches over his fat belly. ‘ Although the European finds it a ghastly atmosphere in the kedeh, with “rusty tins and old wine, beer and whiskey bottles with half-decayed and moldy labels, […] a box of terribly smelly dried fish and all kinds of other foodstuffs, made from dried lobsters, spreading an indescribable stench, unknown spices, filth and mold heap on the plank floor, ‘while big black flies buzz around in the putrid, hot atmosphere, running over the beams of fat black rats and crawling from half-empty bags dozens of cockroaches, he decides to go inside anyway. He orders something to drink from the taukeh and drinks three coconuts in that little-smelling environment.238

The narrator pays a lot of attention to the less harmonious relationship between Javanese and Chinese:

The Chinese live strictly separated from the Javanese. The Javanese are gullible, childlike, primitive. They have no ambition whatsoever, and they do not know the value of the money at all. At home, in their village, they have never had a hard struggle for survival. They’ve always had everything they need. But the Chinese have lived in poverty and misery for thousands of years. In their overcrowded country it is difficult to make a living and every plate of rice has to be conquered with hard and hard battle. As a result, their greed, longing for money is in the blood, they work like animals, cheat wherever they can and are willing to sell their own father for money if necessary. The Javanese are Mohammedans, the Chinese Buddhists. The Javanese will always remain poor, the Chinese will be rich. At least many of them. The Chinese work an awful lot, an inhuman amount, the Javanese do no more than they have to do. […] The Javanese hate, loathe and despise the Chinese, and the Chinese are more or less afraid of the irascible Javanese and despise him for his indolence.

The narrator acknowledges that this tense relationship between the two peoples is very beneficial to the European planters. They therefore make full use of it. The Chinese betray the Javanese and the Javanese, who by the way “do not exaggerate sincerity, ‘ensure that the Chinese do not deceive their European bosses. In this portrait, the Javanese are fiery, thoughtless and incalculable in their anger, while the Chinese are cunning, calculating, closed, and limitless in their revenge.

The Chinese are portrayed as secretive, mysterious and, as said before, vengeful:

A White person never gains insight into the mysterious life of the Chinese. Their connections are inexplicable, their secret conspiracies complicated, and their laws are an impenetrable darkness. The threads of their intrigues run to the farthest corners of the world. And everything Chinese is involved, Mandarins, millionaires, coolies, assassins and beggars. And whoever lets go of something about these things must pay it heavily. And atone in such a way that an uninitiated, that is to say, a European, never finds out whether the person concerned was the victim of revenge, or actually ended up accidentally, when felling the forest, under a falling tree. The Chinese all know that, but they are silent

Although Chinese workers are ambitious and work until they drop exhausted, “sometimes this happens at four in the morning, sometimes or five in the afternoon, as fatigue overwhelms him” and are always in a hurry because they are in a hurry as soon as possible. want to have something together with which they can start their own business and be taukeh, there is no jealousy among them. Both the coolies and the taukehs are satisfied with things as they are. They all know that the coolie has to work eighteen hours of the day, and that the taukeh can lounge and have a big belly and long fingernails. Because whoever has money also has power. As soon as the coolie has enough money, he also wants to be taukeh and then he will let his coolies toil for eighteen hours a day. Also the rickshaw coolies, who take their customers to the Japanese prostitutes in the evening, or even better, to the fat ones. tjabohs – because „fat is for the skinny, emaciated coolie the pinnacle of all bliss, the fulfilment of all ideals.‟ – want to become taukeh, „Before, in this eternal frolic, his lungs are completely broken …”

Although the narrator in From jungle to plantation with a kind of appreciation for the Chinese seems to speak diligence and endurance, he also shows disdain for their „greed‟: „The most industrious and toughest people in this world toil here sweating, walking without mercy under the foot of the weaker, sucking rampantly primitive, fatalistic Natives from ‘.

Here too there is the stereotypical contrast between the tough, toiling, rampant Chinese and the weak Natives who have nothing otherwise be able to surrender to their fate. According to the narrator it is not exceptional that a field coolie becomes rich, strong and powerful. He learns the language of the indigenous people and soon discovers their weak sides in order to exploit them afterwards. So within a short time he becomes a powerful „taukeh‟ himself, bringing coolies from China and has a big belly and fingernails four to six inches long, as proof that he is a wealthy man and does not need to lift a finger to enjoy life.246 The Malay, on the other hand, is getting poorer and poorer “and considers the greedy, unmerciful Chinese with the impotent hatred of the weaker, but when sometimes that hatred flares up in him, the Amok flares up in him and he stabs some of those tail guys. ‘

It seems as if the Chinese coolies are showing off for pleasure as rickshaw coolies. The Chinese are omnipresent, they perform the most exhausting tasks (as rickshaw cooler that keeps on running) but also work as hotel servants. The Chinese always wants to earn money, because as a taukeh, as a boss (that means that he does not work among others) he wants to return to China. Incidentally, this is not a negative image, because Europeans have also come to Deli with the same goal. What is negative about the Chinese is their greed. However, a good explanation is given for this: in China they have lived in poverty and misery for thousands of years and they had to conquer every plate of rice with hard struggle.

The Chinese have been compared to pack animals, which carry incredibly heavy loads, and to ants because there are so many of them that they are swarming with each other. They are tough and diligent, but also selfish, so that they have no eye for the weak, and in this case they are the fatalistic Natives. In fact, they exploit the Natives in a merciless way. Over the backs of those weak natives, they become rich taukehs.

The narrator looks at the Chinese from the Malaysian point of view, and according to the Malays, the Chinese has only bad qualities. A good reason, then, for the Malay, when his impotent hatred becomes too powerful for him, to stab a few Chinese. It is not that the indigenous people are portrayed so positively, but the Chinese are described at their worst when compared to the Javanese. Then the Chinese are greedy cheaters, willing to do anything as long as they can make money with it. Although they work very hard, they are cunning, calculating and closed, secretive and mysterious. They are also vindictive. But they are not jealous of each other, because they realize that everyone just gets their own opportunities and has their own happiness. There is a togetherness among them.

Their shops, houses and neighborhood are incredibly dirty and smelly. The kedeh is depicted even more repulsively than the opium den in Baboe Dalima by Perelaer. The submissive owner is not exactly attractive with his naked torso, fat stomach and smelly Chinese tobacco.

In Van oerwoud tot plantation, the reader gets an extensive picture of the society of the plantation Chinese with their various toucans, each of which has its own task to fulfill.

 Chaw A. Hjong, de kabajaverhuurder (L. Székely 1937)

Five years after the publication of Coolie, the Hungarian newspaper Pesti Napló records a story by László Székely. The title is „The career of Chaw A. Hjong‟ (1937) . The main character is a coolie who makes it a millionaire, but at the height of wealth is stabbed to death by a Javanese woman he has mistreated in the past and thus takes revenge.

Chaw A. Hjong’s career began when the assistant, a singkeh (newcomer), required the coolies to wear a kabaya when they received their wages. Coolies who did not wear kabaya were not paid their wages. Most of the coolies did not have a kabaya, and the few who did had one had left it in their barracks, which was too far from the assistant house.249 The payment of wages was to begin in five minutes. Chaw A. Hjong then came up with the idea to rent out his kabaya for ten Singapore cents per man. At the time, a coolie was given a Singapore dollar and seventy-four cents. There were 49 tenants. For the money he had earned in this way, Chaw A. Hjong bought cooking utensils and all kinds of ingredients from the Chinese kedeh and the Chinese butcher. After receiving their wages, the coolies and a few orang contracts from an adjacent company dice for the barracks. The winners quickly bought a portion of noodles or meat with ginger or fish fried in coconut oil. Chaw A. Hjong bought more meat and spices and was soon nearly five times as rich as at the beginning. At first he buried his money under a large stone by the river, but then he came up with the idea of ​​taking an old Javanese coolie woman, Ju-Imah, as his wife. She was already so shriveled that even the Javanese coolies no longer wanted her. They made an agreement: Ju-Imah cooked and Chaw A. Hjong brought the food to the customers in beautiful green banana leaves. Chaw also began lending money to players who lost their money in the dice, but never more than a dollar. It had to be repaid with fifty percent interest on the next payday. Chaw A. Hjong once lent $ 5 to a Chinese coolie who had dice debt, believing he could pay it back. That was not the case and the coolie hanged herself in shame.

With his money, Chaw bought gold coins, which he hung on Ju-Imah’s bath. At one point he had so many gold coins that they couldn’t all be hung on her bath. Everyone was in debt to Chaw A. Hjong, even the head mandil wanted to borrow money from him. Chaw loaned him $ 500, and at the end of the month, the main tooth had to pay him back $ 750. He borrowed more and more from him, returned everything on Chaw’s terms, and eventually invited Chaw to a game of dice.250 Chaw played so well that he won $ 11,400 the next morning. He took from Ju-Imah all the coins still pinned to her bathrobe plus her bathrobe and sarong and chased her out of the house. Then he went back to work on the exploitation. When his contract expired, he disappeared from the plantation and did mysterious business, he had junks sailing all the seas of the earth, but always in the dark, and “Chinese, looking like pirates, quickly got rid of the suspect and disappeared again into the dense, warm misses ‟. Chaw had a huge house built, but on one day he was stabbed to death by the old beggar who was waiting outside the gate of his immense house. That beggar was Ju-Imah.

The nameless coolies in Delianen (H. Gorter 1941)

Delians; sketches from planters’ life on Sumatra’s East coast by former assistant and former administrator Hendrik Gorter is about the situation on a tobacco plantation in the first decade of the twentieth century. In his introduction, Gorter explains how things were going on at the plantation in that period.

Gorter says that the principal administrator was supreme. The European workers (the assistants) were, according to him, disenfranchised and unprotected. The fear of being fired or ineligible for promotion controlled them from day to day. When they were treated unjustly, they took their anger out on the coolies. Still, according to the narrator in Tabakkers, the sequel of Delianen, the planters felt completely at home in Deli, „that land of strength, hubris, humor and tragedy where the Song of Labor was so loud‟ .

When new coolies came from China, with their long, shiny hairtails up to the waist down, “a distant, mysterious land,” they had to sign a contract. The drawing was done in a way as described by László Székely in From jungle to plantation (1935). The aspiring coolie had to touch the end of the pen holder, which the assistant marked with a cross after his name. As a result, a coolie was detained for three years. Gorter’s stories hardly tell of abuse, although he acknowledges in his preface that much blameworthy has taken place.253 The impression is given that the coolies are ordinary workers and not slaves. They are treated harshly by the assistants who grew up in the „Deli-matjam‟ (the way of Deli). That was the attitude of the chief clerk to an administrator and his assistant to his assistants, who put this system into practice against the mandoers and the Chinese tandils, who applied it again to the coolies, so that the latter finally had to bear their full weight. Nothing was condoned and the most rigorous action was taken towards everyone who was a step lower on the social ladder, but according to this image everyone worked together to achieve a common goal. Together they throw themselves on the tall grass when a fire has to be extinguished – Javanese, Chinese, Klingaleese – in the story „Fire‟ and together they pray, each in his own way, to induce the gods to cause rain to descend on the plants in the story „Drought‟ .

They also prayed together when a tiger was spotted on the estate, but not because everyone was so afraid of the beast. The chief clerk immediately saw the event as a good opportunity to work his way up. If the tiger were shipped to Artis, a copper plaque with his name on it would certainly be hung there. A trap was made, with a small enclosed space in the back in which a white goat was placed, which could be fed from the outside. The one who was given the task was a crippled kongsikang. Many days passed without anything happening, to the chagrin of everyone. One day the trap door was shut. When, after a series of precautions to prevent the captive tiger from escaping, the trap was finally opened, it turned out that there was not a tiger but a Chinese trapped, the “disastrous little man of the congsican”, who was very hungry and fed up with bringing food again and again. In his attempt to catch the kid, he had stepped onto the landing board, causing the door to drop down. The head tandil had another interview with him

‘As was the custom in Deli at the time’, after which he was given shelter in hospital for a few weeks

Gorter also explains what tasks a field cooler has to perform. A Dutch farmer is „an easy living rentier‟ compared to the Chinese field coolie and the Javanese and other auxiliary workers, Gorter concludes. The removal of caterpillars is an important part of the work. After picking the leaves, they should be taken to the drying sheds, where they are fermented and finally sorted into different qualities, according to the color and length of the leaves. The sorting time offers the assistant a ‘more or less cozy life’ on the yard.258 During the time that the field coolies are sorting, the fields are worked once by the auxiliary workers. These people do not sit still during field time, but are used throughout the enterprise, especially to help with the many activities that the field coolies cannot do on their own. The field coolies must honor this help („what kind of help the field cools are charged‟).

The field coolies perish due to the heavy work and it shows them physically. A nice story is ‘The Unknown Soldier’, which tells of the Chinese congsican from field 224 who lies dead in his field, probably the victim of cholera. Just on the day that Tuan Maatskepy, the Principal Administrator, or „the god‟, comes for an inspection. The assistant has the dead coolie quickly removed from the field before the top boss sees him, because if that happens he will be seriously upset. Tandil Ong Kie and djaga bangsal (the pilot overseer) manage to take the corpse to a shed without the chief administrator seeing it. When he has left, the assistant comes to look at the corpse and feels emotion and a feeling of guilt about what he has done with the coolie:

The dead man’s strong cheekbones tighten the brownish-yellow skin, the mouth is tightened into a gruesome grin, on the thin trunk all the ribs can be counted, the abdominal cavity has sunk in, on the shoulders the thick callus pads of the swishing staff are visible. has transported the heavy loads. The hands are like claws on the wiry arms, the inside is completely callused, the nails have virtually disappeared and become crooked. The muscular legs are full of scars from wounds and ulcers, the pads of the feet and the widely set toes are like thick leather.261

The assistant learns from the tandil that the coolie in question was sick that morning and wanted to stay at home, but the tandil had driven him out of the kongsi to pour and pick. After all, when tuan maatskepy came, all fields had to be occupied.262 When the coolie is buried, the assistant sees to it that the pit is deep enough so that no wild animal can touch it. The coolie is called the ‘slave of labor’, and ‘the unknown soldier’. It seems that Gorter wants to show that assistants were indeed people with compassion, who appreciated the coolies. In the late evening „the thing‟ (quotation marks from the writer) is buried. 263

The coolie in „The Mighty One‟, who is called Lim Ang Kau, just like all other field coolies in Gorter’s stories that are mentioned by name, looks very different from the unknown soldier: he has a „beautifully built, brown burnt body, like cushions and cables lay the strong muscles on his shoulders and arms, on his legs and thighs. ”264 This Lim Ang Kau from field 224 is a great worker, but he misses a lot when looking for caterpillars. That’s not good because the caterpillars make holes in the leaves, while Deli produces cigar wrapper that must be absolutely neat. The tuan assistant has him eat a handful of caterpillars. The tandil forces the coolie to do so, because the tuan has said that if caterpillars are still found, the tandil itself will have to eat caterpillars. If the tuan leaves, he threatens the coolie that lightning will strike him, if he does not better keep his plantings free of caterpillars. In a thunderstorm, Lim Ang Kau is indeed struck by lightning. This has established the tuan’s reputation: he is indeed omnipotent.

Gorter’s stories bear witness to the great zeal of the Chinese field coolies. Still, a period without work seemed welcome. That happens in the story „Cholera‟. It tells how ‘the intrepid tobaccos’ worked on the company when cholera was reported. In this story we are also given a look at the interior of a barrack in which Chinese coolies lived: paltry, but above all dirty.265 After all the coolies with their meager possessions had been immersed in a carbohydrate bath, including those with “the usual leg ulcers and pustules and other impurities’, which burned violently in the strong carbolic solution, they moved to the drying sheds on a remote planting road. There they had to stay until the danger passed. The coolie hospitals, which were probably more solidly built than the sleeping sheds, were used as internment camps during the Japanese occupation. At that time, as a prisoner of the Japanese, Kousbroek heard fellow prisoners say in full seriousness: “If we had known that we would end up here ourselves, we would have made sure that these buildings were not so bad and unhygienic”. 

narrator says they enjoyed lounging around for a few weeks, 266 but also tried every way to escape and get back to the estate’s yard so that there was a strong guard on the bridge over the river , which they had to pass, had to be placed.

The Chinese weren’t just coolies. Some were plank sawers (toucan papan) whose job it was to saw planks from logs. The logs were taken from the neighboring old-growth forest and towed to the cutting site and placed on two blocks. One Chinese would stand on top of the trunk, another under it, and they would pull the long pull saw up and down all day long. “Rice and ikan kring [dried fish] and opium were their necessities of life, and no people in the world, except Chinese, could do that hard work under such unfavorable conditions,” says Gorter’s narrator.267

Naturally, the assistants also needed helpers in the household. One of the most important was the „boy‟ or „the Chinese factotum‟ . A boy has the task of taking care of the household effects, ensuring that there is always food and – more importantly – drink ready, and burned beetles from the lamp.All boys in Gorter’s stories are called A Seng.

At the very lowest level among the domestic servants was the water carrier or toucan ajer. In „First aid‟ we read that the toucan ajer was someone who was mainly responsible for filling the wine barrel of the assistants, not with wine but with water. He was also tasked with replenishing the ice box so that the tuan could drink cold beer at all times. Water carriers are always Chinese in Gorter’s sketches. This water carrier was found to be too lazy. It took him all morning to get the ice off the yard, with the result that it almost melted before it got into the ice box. So he was fired. When he left the estate, the assistant discovered that he had some things with him that were not his own. The water carrier was taken to his room and the assistant began writing a report on the case for the tuan inspector until A Seng, the Chinese boy, came to report that the water carrier had ingested an overdose of opium to commit suicide because he was so embarrassed . A life was in danger, and „even if only that of a toucan ajer‟, the boss would not let him die anyway. After all, the man was also human. The lukewarm milk he made the water bearer drink had no effect. A Seng then asked for a guilder from the tuan and hurried to kongsi Seven. He came back with a white duck. A Seng chopped off the duck’s neck by the body, pulled back the skin of the neck as far as possible, opened the poisoned man’s mouth and pushed the red, bleeding duck’s neck deep into the esophagus. This helped: in an unstoppable stream the stomach contents rippled over the helpers.271 With the sentence „Even if only that of a toucan ajer‟ it is made clear that the death of a water carrier was actually not something that people normally feel about fussed about it. The story also shows how much concern was with the fate of the coolies entrusted to him. The same picture of the kongsi tandil we already saw in Dé-lilahs Hans Tongka’s career with the tandil of kongsi Two, Ah-Lee.

In „Prestige‟ it is told how an assistant with courage and bluff managed to prevent an uproar among the coolies. It is not clearly stated, but it appears that the event took place on Chinese New Year, a day on which the Chinese have not worked „since time immemorial‟ in the afternoon. The coolies had worked extra diligently in anticipation of the afternoon off. But this time it could not continue. The chief clerk said no release was allowed, the coolies had to be kept working in view of the backlog of plantings. The assistant understood that there was no other option but to carry out the orders, although he knew the coolies would not just accept it. He was right: the tandil of kongsi Acht came with the message that his coolies were en masse on their way to the emplacement, to the toean besar and the main toothil. This had to be avoided at all costs, otherwise the assistant would have to pay for it. He chased the coolies with his buggy. When he caught up with them, he roared for them to sit. They did. He invited three men to approach. They were three heavy fellows, brazen rascals, whose crimes in China were visible through some branding. 272 ​​Before they could open their mouths, they had already caught canes and kicks. By overwhelming them, the assistant managed to get the coolies to obey. He invited three men to approach. They were three heavy fellows, brazen rascals, whose crimes in China were visible through some branding. 272 ​​Before they could open their mouths, they had already caught canes and kicks. By overwhelming them, the assistant managed to get the coolies to obey. He invited three men to approach. They were three heavy fellows, brazen rascals, whose crimes in China were visible through some branding. 272 ​​Before they could open their mouths, they had already caught canes and kicks. By overwhelming them, the assistant managed to get the coolies to obey.

The eccentric guys in Deli Earth (Willem Brandt 1948)

The narrator in Deli Earth calls the Chinese eccentric guys because they sometimes hang themselves in the tobacco shed, „by their tails, three or four neatly next to each other. And they still get a decent wage ‘. The nonchalance with which the despair of the coolies that drove them to suicide is described is characteristic of the tone of the novel. That is not to say that there is no violence described in the novel. Violence is perpetrated by Chinese against each other and by the local population on anyone who can get hold of them. The plantation, more specifically the densely populated, stuffy Chinese shed, is a „hell of sweat and loneliness‟, sometimes running amok and someone grabs a knife screaming, „To drill it deep into the yellow wiry back of another‟. The dead person is then put underground, the next day there is one less coolie at roll call, but it doesn’t hurt anyone. “Dead or runaway, they don’t know, whatever it matters. Human lives are only worth something and important when they can handle the ax and knock down the jungle. ‘ And you can buy Chinese coolies in Penang as much as you want.278 It says elsewhere that hanging yourself like that is kind of a habit; the narrator speaks of ‘the noisy Chinese, [with] their yellow complexion and their dancing black tails, which they hanged themselves on when the company went wrong’ .279 what does it matter. Human lives are only worth something and important when they can handle the ax and knock down the jungle. ‘ And you can buy Chinese coolies in Penang as much as you want.278 It says elsewhere that hanging yourself like that is kind of a habit; the narrator speaks of ‘the noisy Chinese, [with] their yellow complexion and their dancing black tails, which they hanged themselves on when the company went wrong’ .279 what does it matter. Human lives are only worth something and important when they can handle the ax and knock down the jungle. ‘ And you can buy Chinese coolies in Penang as much as you want.278 It says elsewhere that hanging yourself like that is kind of a habit; the narrator speaks of ‘the noisy Chinese, [with] their yellow complexion and their dancing black tails, which they hanged themselves on when the company went wrong’ .279

Yet there is a kind of appreciation for the coolie in Deli’s Earth. Tobacco, „the noble pleasure-giving herb‟, grows „from the sweat of hard, ceaseless labor, it grows from the sacrifice of a crude and primitive existence, which must be without any hint of the pleasure that its product will provide‟ . It is said to grow “from the raw hands of the pioneers,” 280 but it is not immediately clear who those pioneers are. Only later, when we talk about the tobacco crisis that struck as a result of improper care and sloppy speculation, are called „the heavy callused hands of the white and brown and yellow pioneers‟ who built the plantation.281 The coolies are also called „soldiers for the fight against the jungle‟ and „mercenaries for the army of the pioneers‟. 282

It seems as if the coolies are given the privilege of doing something their heart desires and are paid royally for it. To describe the love with which the Chinese coolie takes care of his plants, the narrator uses a comparison that is completely flawed: ‘the Chinese coolie loves his field with tobacco, he loves it like a Dutch rentier’s flowerbed’ .283 He becomes for his „passion‟ also paid with „round shiny dollars‟, so complaining about the labor or wages would be out of place.

The Chinese coolies murder each other “with the knife between the ribs or a cord around the low wiry neck”, especially if they belong to other societies. In addition to murders between themselves, very many Chinese die from diseases such as cholera and beri-beri.284 The Europeans seem to be especially afraid of the ‘primitive urge’ of the primitive population and not of the coolies, because although it is quite common that Europeans live let „because a raging coolie has chopped them to pieces with an ax‟, 285 the true murderers are the robbery and murderous Bataks. The picture presented of them is terrifying. The narrator describes them as a ‘adrift mountain people, who burn and kill foaming mouth, out of nothing but a desire to burn and kill, out of nothing but primitive uninhibited urge to destroy’. They perform wild dances around the lively bodies of their victims, which are both white and colored. 286 By comparison, mistreatment of a coolie by a white boss, if that was mentioned, would, of course, sink into insignificance. Later in the novel the Bataks are portrayed much more positively and are called ‘industrious’.

 Summary

The plantation coolies in Dé-lilahs Hans Tongka’s career are by no means easy going, easy lambs who do everything they are told to do. They give the impression of being strong people who dare to stand up for what is important to them. The runaway Chinese only confesses after he was literally beaten half to death that he ran away. He survives the beating and kicking, plus being tied to a stake for two days. Coolies give the assistants cheeky answers and Chinese nicknames when cursed, though they know they’ll be hit even worse. Even the coolies who have committed murder quietly resist as they climb very slowly up the steps to the scaffold, after they have also gone out of their way and scolded everyone, including the Government.290

The assistants therefore warn each other against the Chinese coolies, such as Van Lijnden who tells Hans Tongka that there is nothing more dangerous than skimping or treating a Chinese unjustly. They could do whatever they wanted with the Chinese, as long as they did not get their money or deprive them, so then they would spare nothing and no one. In such a situation we see that the Chinese coolies always consult each other first and dice over who, for example, would commit a murder. The Chinese coolies are therefore characterized as „cold-blooded‟. This is in contrast to the Javanese coolies, who, at least where Coolie is concerned with killing a Chinese coolie, to work purely emotionally. László Székely also indicates this when it comes to Malays, without it being clear whether he also means Javanese coolies: „if that hatred flares up in him, then the Amok flares up in him and he stabs a few of those tail guys.”

The Chinese coolies do not immediately go to the utmost, but often try to show their dissatisfaction in a different way. In addition to verbal protest (even though the assistants often did not understand what they said), they also do this by arguing together and looking for it higher. This happens, for example, in Hans Tongka’s career of Dé-lilah, when they flock to the inspector’s house to denounce their clerk after a colleague died in the clerk’s office, and in Delianen van Gorter, as the coolies have to work on their only free afternoon and want to protest against this to the clerk and the head mandil.

At the time described by Dé-lilah, there seemed to be a great need for Chinese coolies, and that for old-timers (although Breman reports that beginners were preferred precisely because they were more calm) . Among the Chinese there were already those in China. were punished for their crimes. This could be seen in their cut off ears. In Delianen van Gorter, which dates to roughly the same period around the turn of the century, it is said that such people wore branding. This detail was probably mentioned to highlight the courage of the assistants. were who dared to take on them. It also serves to justify the touans’ treatment of the coolies: the coolies were of such a low quality that they deserved to be given a suit coat. 

In fact, L. Székely’s narrator in From Jungle to Plantation (1935) on the one hand appreciates the zeal of the Chinese coolies (he compares them to beasts of burden and teeming ants), but disdains their ‘greed’. He has an explanation for this and that is also what distinguishes them from the gullible, childlike, primitive Javanese coolies, who have no ambition and do not know the value of money because they never struggle for survival at home in their village. had to deliver. However, the Chinese have lived in poverty and misery for thousands of years. In their overcrowded country it is difficult to make a living and every plate of rice must be conquered with hard and hard battle. According to the narrator, this is why their greed and longing for money is in their blood: “They work like animals, cheat, wherever they can and are willing to sell their own father for money if necessary ‘. So it is that the Javanese always remain poor and many of the Chinese become rich. The Chinese work an awful lot and the Javanese don’t do more than they have to. The Javanese hate, loathe and despise the Chinese and the Chinese are more or less afraid of the short-tempered Javanese and despise him for his indolence. This explains the feud between the Chinese and the Javanese, a feud that, the narrator admits, plays in favor of the European planters. loathe and despise the Chinese and the Chinese are more or less afraid of the short-tempered Javanese and despise him for his indolence. This explains the feud between the Chinese and the Javanese, a feud that, the narrator admits, plays in favor of the European planters. loathe and despise the Chinese and the Chinese are more or less afraid of the short-tempered Javanese and despise him for his indolence. This explains the feud between the Chinese and the Javanese, a feud that, the narrator acknowledges, plays in favor of the European planters.

Coolie does not so much give a picture of the Chinese coolies as of the relationship between the Chinese coolies and the Javanese coolies. The feud between the two groups is explained as a conflict between two different religions. But later we see that the hostile rivalry takes place in the area where the interests of both groups conflicted. That area was neither the religion nor the work, for Chinese and Javanese coolies had largely different duties and responsibilities (although the fact that the Javanese coolies depended in part on the Chinese workers for their wages may have contributed to the conflict), but the women. The Javanese coolies had women assigned to them and no money, the Chinese coolies had money but no wives of their own.

What is striking is that in the conflict described in Coolie, the Chinese coolie who is attacked and killed is not given a name and is not considered an individual. It shows the keen eye of Madelon Székely-Lulofs: the murder of the Chinese as a representative of his race stems from a sense of powerlessness among the Javanese, not only towards the Chinese who are said to be richer and therefore more powerful than them, but also against the white rulers who don’t give them what they are entitled to. It confirms what Breman says: that the relationships on the plantations were primarily based on racial discrimination. That gave the limited planter community the structure on which the plantation community was based.

While the coolies in Dé-lilah’s novel are sometimes only given a number and only the tandil and the Chinese njais, the field coolies in H. Gorter’s novel Delianen, sketches from planters’ life on Sumatra’s East coast (1941), are, although not always, named by name. But when we read further Tabakkers, second collection of sketches from the planters life on Sumatra’s east coast (1953), we notice that the field coolies and boys keep getting the same name. This confirms that no matter how positively the Chinese coolie and Chinese boy are portrayed in Gorter’s stories, they are always not individuals. Even the tandils cannot be distinguished from each other, because they always receive the same name. 295 It could also be that the writer avoids too many Chinese names because they are more difficult for Dutch readers to remember than European ones. Javanese names sound more familiar, which is why it may be that in MH Székely-Lulofs’ Coolie the Javanese and Sundanese coolies are given names and the Chinese coolies are not.

Using the same names or numbers for the coolies shows their anonymity. When such a person dies, he disappears into nothingness and then immediately there are others who replace him. “A coolie more or less in the world did not matter,” says administrator Brill in Hans Tongka’s career, after a coolie, whom he has beaten, dies in his office. “Only a Chinese,” says the mandur in Coolie, after a Chinese coolie has been murdered. He thinks it’s nothing special that seven Chinese coolies were beaten to death in a year. The administrator doesn’t like it that he should do so much about such a bad Chinese.

The novels and stories that tell about these poor coolies without exception paint a picture of noisy but hard-working people who, even without being beaten, do their work with dedication. Even stubborn coolies are still open to reason. Reason seemed to be a plus for all Chinese coolies, whether they work on plantations or in the mine.

The Chinese tandils and main tandils are, in all stories, good mediators between their white boss and the coolies entrusted to them. It was the head toothil that warned Eddie not to break the saplings of the field coolies. Vonck, the manager of the company where Hans Tongka is assistant, therefore has unlimited confidence in his main tooth. If there is a tandil mistreating a coolie (for example by letting him eat caterpillars) it is every time that he is put under pressure from above. Everyone who works on a plantation must receive the Comply with „Deli-matjam‟, whereby the lower in rank must conform to the higher – and the coolies have to carry the heaviest weight in the end.

Where the writers, mostly from their own experience (and here we also come back to some of the writers who wrote about the mining coolies – JC Mollema, H. Borel and H. Gorter – about the cases they have experienced resounds respect for the Chinese who they are talking about. These are portrayed as grateful, generous people who are not afraid to bury their benefactors with their gifts if they have the means to do so. Even those who are unable to express their gratitude materially show it with their service and devotion.

Willem Brandt was a journalist. Its Deli Earth is not born of personal experience, but is a second or third hand story. He will probably have paid a few visits to a plantation, but he will have only heard beautiful stories. The Deli Courant was in the past an ‘organ of the residents of the East Coast’296 and will have remained so in later years. Naturally, Brandt did not want to spread a negative image of the ins and outs of the rubber and tobacco plantations (in Deli’s Earth, he only talks about the tobacco plantations). In that image, reports of the mistreatment of coolies by European bosses did not belong, but a representation of a harmonious society consisting of people of all kinds who all work together to build up the earth of Deli.

Suicide appears to be quite common, not only on a plantation but also in the mine, and happens for a variety of reasons.297 First, out of shame. An example of this is the Chinese to whom Chaw A. Hjong in Székely’s ‘The Career of Chaw A. Hjong’ lent more than a dollar. He could not pay it back and so he committed suicide. The toucan ajer in Gorter’s story „First Aid‟, who has stolen from his boss and is fired, decides to take his own life with an overdose of opium. Second, a coolie could also kill himself in revenge, like the coolie in Gorter’s Tabakkers, who hangs himself in front of the assistant’s house, so that his spirit will keep wandering in and around the house of the assistant who falsely accused him. Third, it also happens that someone takes his own life to be to prove innocence, such as „Sigh on a rope‟ alias Lim-bung-sen in Loten of the same tribe of JC Mollema (discussed in the sub-chapter on the gold and tin mine coolies). The latter case is interesting because the Chinese mind is explained by a European, who is the supreme boss of the first person. Does this refute the fact that the Chinese are too enigmatic for a European to understand? The coolies who commit suicide in Deli Earth, three or four neatly hanging next to each other, did so “when the company went wrong,” out of despair. Incidentally, it is not clear what is meant by „the company‟ – it is difficult to imagine that the involvement of the coolies with the plantation was so great that they would kill themselves when things went less well.

Friendship between Chinese and Europeans did exist, but mainly came from the Chinese. It is noticeable that the Chinese like to make friends with the Europeans. Perhaps this can be explained as a tendency for importance – after all, the importance of European touans reflects on those who have close ties with them, but Europeans prefer to keep their distance. A Poh, the main toothil in J. Kleian’s Deli-Planter, calls the ‘gentlemen’, by which he means the European bosses, his friends. Conversely, a head toothil is just the right hand of the Europeans. Friendship also existed between the rickshaw coolie Ah Lim and his client, the nameless European whom he served so faithfully in Annie Salomon’s Far Eastern Stories. But his friends did not share his admiration for Ah Lim. The clerk in Mollema’s Lots of the same tribe is idolized by Liem-boen-seng, and they almost become friends: „I would like to admit that something like friendship grew between us, but she was more from his side than that. mine, ‘says the clerk.298 However, in the eyes of his boss, Limboen-seng is a’ loyal friend ‘of the clerk. The „Dutch mandarin‟ in Borel’s story „But a Chinese….‟ Says it even more clearly: one can „not keep far‟ from a Chinese.

We learn very little about the appearance of the coolies. The coolies in Gorter’s stories have long, shiny hairtails, but otherwise quite different in appearance. There is a skinny coolie with hands like claws and legs scarred from wounds and ulcers. He’s going to die of cholera. Another coolie has a beautiful muscular body. This coolie also dies, not because of illness, but because he is struck by the lightning that has been called upon him by the boss. The stinkers are probably not attractive people to see, with their leg wounds and signs of opium addiction. The congsicang stuck in the tiger trap is also crippled. Rickshaw tractors look better. Ah Lim has a thin face and a “crook-chin” but can also laugh like an angel. Tandils can afford to dress better. Lim-A-Hjong, the clever tandil in From jungle to plantation, has a common thread in his long braid.

The novels and stories featuring Chinese coolies bear two characteristics. The first is that the events took place in Sumatra, where few Europeans lived, especially near the mines, and few or no Javanese worked. Where Javanese did work, for example in the society of From jungle to plantation of L. Székely, conflicts quickly arise. The presence of natives provides the Chinese in accordance with the image, there are greater opportunities to exploit them, and that makes that the Chinese are also depicted less positively, which does not mean that the representation of the Javanese is so positive. Moreover, poor Chinese, especially Chinese who were devoted to their bosses or customers (Tjong-njoen-tjan and Lim-bung-sen in Mollema’s Lots of the same tribe, Ah Lim in Solomons’ Stories from the Far East and even Kang Soei in Borels (The Last Incarnation) outlined more favorably than rich ones. The impression of the latter is that they have become rich mainly by exploiting the indigenous people. This view can be found in László Székely, who depicts the Chinese the least positively, as can be seen with Chaw A. Hjong and the owner of the kedeh (and the Chinese in general for that matter) in From jungle to plantation.

The second characteristic is that most writers tell from their own experience. They all occupied a position in their real life that brought them into contact with the Chinese. Some were planters or planters wives, others had climbed higher and were administrators or even governors. From that position they viewed their Chinese characters as writers. It is noticeable that the I characters who fulfill a higher function in the novels and stories have a more positive view of the Chinese than those who have a lower position. This will have to do with the importance of the me character.

The image of the Chinese coolies and ex-coolies is thus determined by their relationship with the indigenous population, mainly Javanese (the more frequent the contacts, the more negative the image), and the degree of devotion to their European superiors, more specifically the I- storytellers (the greater the dedication, the more positive the perception).

W. Dharmowijono. Van koelies, klontongs en kapiteins : het beeld van de Chinezen in Indisch-Nederlands literair proza 1880-1950