CELEBRATING A MEANINGFUL LIFE OF A MOTHER IN MEMORIAM JEANNE MARIE SETIATI (THE HONG SIAN) 25 DEC 1928 – 17 JUN 2021
My mother was born in a small village Grabag in Central Java, Indonesia, on December 25, 1928, during the Dutch colonial period, a historic year of the awakening for an independent nation among young Indonesians. She is the youngest child, the ninth, among four brothers and four sisters. On the earliest photo of her that I have, she sat at the left end of the middle row. Her father and mother (The Kong Liang and Theng Gwat Nio) sat at the centre table. The photo was taken in September 1941 at her family house in Grabag, just before the Japanese occupation (1942‐1945). 1 1
I wrote the story about her father and grandfather (The Hwan Poo) in “The Life of the First and Second Generation of a Chinese Immigrant Family in Central Java, Indonesia (Mid‐19th Century to Mid‐20th Century), published in the special issue “Social History of Colonial Cities in the Netherlands Indies: Europeans, Eurasians, and Boemipoetera” of the journal of the Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No 1, June 1997, pp 55‐76. The pdf copy is accessible here: https://www.academia.edu/28215623/The_Life_of_the_First_and_Second_Generations_of_a_Chinese_Immigrant _Family_in_Central_Java_Indonesia_Mid_19th_Century_to_Mid_20th_Century_
