The Chinese of Indonesia and Their Search for Identity: The Relat ...

Preface

While I was completing my tertiary education in the United States, I decided to devote myself to researching the Chinese in Indonesia and the media. The decision was a life-defining moment that has shaped my academic career and research interests, not to mention my own identity as a Chinese Indonesian.¹

Looking back on my undergraduate years, I realized that I had always been interested in the Chinese of Indonesia. My senior theses at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, as a communications major and an Asian-Pacific studies scholar were on the organizational culture of the Indonesian club at the university and the historical and economic significance of the Chinese in Indonesia, respectively

As an undergraduate, I practiced the first lessons I learned on ethnographic research and ethnographic interviewing by delving into the roles and expectations of the Indonesian club’s members. Being thousands of miles away from home, the organization