by Irene Wibawa
The first time I saw our family tree, one branch stood out for me because unlike her 11 siblings, Tan Tjien Nio did not marry nor had children, so she stood there by herself. Born in 1920, She was the 8th child in a family of 14. My grandmother, Tan Sioe Nio was the 2nd child, the first daughter, and Tjien Nio’s oldest sister. Tan Sam Tjing and Tjoa Tien Nio were their parents, my great grandparents. They all lived in Dutch East Indies, which became, in 1945, as Republic of Indonesia.
In 2016 I found old photos in my mom’s house that hadn’t been opened since we left Indonesia in 1983. I scanned them all in, so that we can zoom in and identify the people in the photos. In July 2017, my mom and two of her sisters had a small reunion in Canada. We went through the photos together and identified the people in them. We also went through the family tree and we got to Tjien Nio’s story. My aunt recalled her story: Tjien Nio saw a man walk by their house everyday. She got in her head that she was going to marry him. But my grandfather found out that the man did not know her and that he was already engaged to someone else. She was then put in a mental institution. The end.
My family had a reunion in July, 2018 and as many descendants from Tan Sam Tjing and Tjoa Tien Nio gathered in Jakarta, Indonesia. Since the reunion, we formed a WhatsApp group, where the third and fourth generation descendants of Tan Sam Tjing from Canada, United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Indonesia could participate. Last July some old photos resurfaced. In trying to identify who the people are in the some of the photos, Tjien Nio’s name came up. The same person who brought out her name also said that it wasn’t her and that besides that, they weren’t supposed to talk about her.
In the same group I was able to obtain a photo of a document my great grandmother (=Tjien Nio’s mother =Tjoa Tien Nio) used to change her name to a less Chinese sounding name, as was mandated by the Indonesian government in 1967. I made an art piece about her in October 2018.
In February 2019, I attended a dance / ritual performance called Dangkuel by Dohee Lee, as a sort of cleansing ritual. As part of the performance, we were invited to write the name(s) of our ancestors and invoke them into the space. I wrote down Tjoa Tien Nio’s name since I had just made an art piece about her. Immediately after the performance I felt compelled to make a bird and that it was about Tjien Nio.
Through some more conversations with my mother, and my uncles, and even my cousin’s daughter (=”niece”) who heard another story from my grandmother, I was able to gather that: she checked in and out of Rumah Sakit Jiwa in Sumper Porong district of the city of Lawang, in eastern Java. Rumah = House. Sakit = Sick. Jiwa = soul. Put together it’s translated as a hospital for the soul. Some people remember visiting her in the hospital. She was known as a quiet person who stared into space. Another story was that the family decided to put Tjien Nio in the hospital when her mother was praying one day on her knees, Tjien Nio grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out and beat her, screaming because she wouldn’t let her marry that guy. In the hospital she was subjected to “shock therapy” which involved electrocution when it first came out.
A story that didn’t float around as much even though it was written was that she was an introvert, a prolific reader, and the man who she wanted marry knew her well and was kind to her, but the man who she wanted to marry was gay and she entered in and out of the hospital and eventually died of a weak heart. Even the year of her death is questionable. She may have died in 1955 or in 1962, depending on whose memory is deemed more reliable. I have not found anyone who knows where she was buried, if she was buried, or if she was cremated.
I don’t know what is true or what isn’t, but I wish healing for her.
I dedicate this to Tjien Nio and to all the people who were confined cages. May the cages unravel, may they be set free, and may they heal from this trauma.
