Oey Tiang Tjoei, legend of family and country

Last 17 August 2008 was the independence day of Indonesia. I usually skipped the assembly for long time ago except this year as I involve in the education institution.
I missed those days where my friends and I used to assembly in the field every Monday morning and on August 17th sang the national song, honor the national flag while it flutter. I was also the former color bearer when I was in junior school.


On the contrary, my mum and dad never missed out the school assembly; yeah right… they’re teachers. They also never absent to watch the assemblage-live show from the president palace on television. On that day, every year, my mum nostalgia about his father, yup who also entitled to be my grand father. A very old story yet I never experience how it feels like to have a grand father like him. My mum always said that my grand father, Oey Tiang Tjoe, was a legend of Oey family.

For some of you, maybe legend is a lie that has attained the dignity age. For Voltaire, historians are gossips who tease the dead. However for me, if you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. And I’m doing it.


I’m barely knew him. He passed away before my mother got married. All I know is he was an old man, Holland speaker, who has white hair with loud voice, ferocious plus hard hitting and has 3 wives. Ouch! I never thought my grandfather was the polygamy-adherent. Until the end of his life, he lived with my grandmother, his 2nd wife, the devoted wife, who has raised 8 children with care and gentle. They have through all the rough and blissful days together.


My curiosity leads me, so I took a research of my grandfather, searching in the internet and look what I’ve found from my research.. I type Oey Tiang Tjoe – search..

Damn! I never knew that he was one of the Chinese highborn descendants and one of the members who took a part in preparing the Independence Day A.K.A BPUPKI (Badan Penyelidik Usaha-Usaha Kemerdekaan Indonesia) http://www.library.ohiou.edu/indopubs/1998/08/30/0000.html

Oey Tiang Tjoei adalah pimpinan surat kabar Hong Po dan ketua Hua Ch'iao Chung-hui (HCCH) (bahasa Jepang Kakyo Sokai) di Jakarta pada masa pendudukan Jepang di Indonesia. Pemerintah Jepang melebur berbagai organisasi dagang Tionghoa jaman Belanda ke dalam badan HCCH ini. Pada tahun 1945 ia dipilih menjadi anggota BPUPKI. http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oey_Tiang_Tjoe

Although my cousin told me, “let the history be the history!” I think my mother is right, My grandfather may not a man of success, yet he was a man of value and I proud of him After all, in a certain sense all men are historians, aren’t u?


Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus



Longevity Indonesia!