Chinese New Year in West Kalimantan: Ritual Theatre and Political Circus

Abstract

Since 2002, when Chinese New Year became a national holiday in Indonesia, spirit- medium parades on the fifteen day of the New Year (called Cap Go Meh ) have been growing in size in certain West Kalimantan towns, especially Singkawang. This parade in particular has become a major tourist draw-card. Referring to local history, Chinese popular religion and Hakka culture, this article applies a performance analysis methodology to dissect this contemporary phenomenon from religious, historical and inter-ethnic perspectives. It shows how the parades have become enmeshed in current inter-ethnic politics in West Kalimantan, as well as revealing the way that adaptations by the spirit-mediums involved demonstrate their spiritual commitment to their Indonesian homeland. Chinese communities the world over celebrate the advent of the lunar new year over fifteen days during which family reunions, and visits among family and friends, renew communal bonds. The final day is called Cap Go Meh . 3 Its night was traditionally marked by the firing of crackers and by ritual processions to scare the demons of bad luck away from the coming year. From this tradition there has arisen in Singapore, Malaysia, and other centres of diasporic Chinese life, larger-scale festivities that have become tourist draw-cards 4 . This article discusses one such processional conclusion to Chinese New Year that occurs in the West Kalimantan town of Singkawang, where spirit-mediums parade down the main streets, performing fearsome self-mortifications on sedan chairs set with knives and nails. The Singkawang spirit-medium parade has gained such national attention that, in 2008 and 2009, it featured in the official Visit Indonesia tourist calendar. Yet while this parade grew in national stature, the public celebration of Cap Go Meh 2008 was seriously restricted in Pontianak, the provincial capital. This article describes and analyses the contrasting experience of Cap Go Meh 2008 in these two West Kalimantan towns. The existence of such processions is still relatively new in Indonesia. Public celebrations of Chinese New Year, or Imlek, were banned during Suharto's New Order regime, from 1967. It was only in 2000, under President Abdurrahman Wahid, that they were allowed once more, a move that was re-affirmed in

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