Singkawang's Minutes of Rhapsody

We had been on the road for four hours now. After a while, things started to grasp in. This was Indonesia indeed, yet it always felt like this for me: familiar yet so different. Darwin, the driver, took no turn. It had been straight all along from Pontianak up to the north. The road was okay with slight bump every now and then. But it was only a two way road, yet trucks, minivans, motorcycle, pedestrians, took turn to utilize them. Going 80 km/h, he didn't even seem to step on the break, so it was hard to take pictures of houses that cramped with the lushes of trees - some of the house's backyards were swamped like forest. But Darwin would have been a good Metromini driver in Jakarta, if he could survive the traffic. Here, the challenge was long drivings, bumpy road, and mystical roundabouts.

My Chinese New Year celebration this year took peak in Singkawang, Kalimantan for Cap Go Meh. Cap Go Meh - the fifteenth days after Chinese New Year - had always been celebrated extravagantly there. Eighty percent of the city's population is Chinese descendants with Hakka background. The Hakka dialect, also known as Khek, is used widely among the Chinese, making it the most used language after Indonesian - which sounded so different than the regular Jakartanians' Indonesian. 

This year they have a 15 days fair with long dragon lanterns and a miniature of the Chinese Great Wall (made out of woods and digital printed mock of the wall). On the last of the 15th day, the city was literally closed down from early in the morning to give ways for Tatung parade. It was one surreal parade, involving 700 temples from the surrounding cities and even some from Medan and Thailand. It was huge.

In Tatung parade, one or two appointed men or women would deliberately gave in to be possessed by ancient gods, goddesses, and or legends. It's a way to  Only chosen people could take part as Tatungs. Prior to the day, you must indulge yourselves to fast and pray before the gods, or else when you perform those self hurting actions - sitting on blades, cutting yourselves, piercing your skin with metal pole - your human body would expect the agony of torture. They were indeed torturing themselves, only they didn't feel the slightest pain.

The experience watching Tatung parade was surreal and mind blasting. Being in the middle of thousands of people waiting for the parade, walking around the city to catch the next intersection where the groups of Tatung would enter an auction arena field with neon pink pig (meant to be sold along with other Chinese traditional items to gather money for the organizing auction committee), or even hanging out at the sidewalk with some Tatung parade as they had their break before the Generals inside the shamans instruct to go further to the town. It was a new finding at every turn as I find myself watching a possessed old man drinking the blood straight from the freshly cut neck of a chicken and chilling out with a previously trance man with pole metals going through his cheeks - as he asked for cigarette to smoke. And, no, the smoke didn't come out of the pole's hole. I'd checked. This is indeed the Indonesia that keeps the unexpected stories at every corner.

Images were taken in Singkawang, West Kalimantan, February 2012.