Jaundiced Pigs Spitting

In May 1998, a series of riots took Jakarta by storm. Our eyes, flooded by tears, witnessed the violent abuse of the pribumi towards the ethnic Chinese, as Suharto’s regime came to its ultimate demise. In our metropolis, solace was nowhere to be found, as the rancid stench of grim suffering and odium poisoned the arid minds of the victimized. Our great Jakarta, past its façade of glass and steel, was reduced to social debris, as discord between the ethnic Chinese and the native Indonesians disjointed our people in an infinite void of grudge.

My people, yellow-skinned public spitters of horrid artistic tastes, pride ourselves for our cunning wit, perseverance, and willingness to do anything to achieve success. This is who we are, and for being who we are, we have achieved much in this archipelago of seemingly endless opportunities.

In our short time of living here, we, who constitute for just about two percent of the Indonesian population, have grown to dominate the Indonesian aristocracy, with over eighty percent of Indonesia’s wealthiest being of Chinese race.

Funny how the minority comprises for the majority of the privileged. They hate us, but it’s certainly understandable. Envy, after all, is among the most effective catalysts for strife. Throw in obese Italians and you have yourself an opera.

We whine about how we are not given equal rights – how Indonesia will never have a Chinese president; how we are viewed as treasure houses for which we are to be exploited with bribery and corruption. Taxation is targeted at Chinese people and we complain. Sure, it’s irritating, but it is only logical that they tax the people who actually have money to be taxed for.

The reason the Chinese people are so wealthy in this country is that we are selfish and devious enough to exploit the naïve pribumi. Our industriousness doesn’t purely owe to our natural intelligence and determination – it’s more about how fortunate we are that these people are gullible enough to tolerate THEIR underpayment; THEIR mistreatment; the harvesting of THEIR natural resources for our capitalist mindsets. Take a look at America, the capitalist haven where WE are the used ones – mere chefs, butchers, maids, and takeout boys confined to ghetto Chinatowns.

A chauvinistic Chinese idiot keeps on saying how we are the superior race; how CHINESE people are better at designing AMERICAN furniture than AMERICANS are; how sleazy and faulty every non-Chinese person is; how we strive while others fail. True, such is the case in Indonesia, where the natives are not fully acquainted with capitalist evil. But if his bigoted remarks are so true, then why does he continue admitting that he would not be able to do business in Australia – a land of capitalist Caucasians?

Our successes are based on their failures. We took hold of Singapore – Malayan land – and converted it into a thriving Chinese metropolis while its neighbors, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, remain overshadowed by the merlion. Worst of all, they didn’t even realize that we stole their land, and they remain kind and naïve enough to supply Singapore with water.

We ought to stop complaining that they’re not giving us enough rights or that they treat us as the filthy exploiters that we are. We ought to stop viewing ourselves as the finer people and realize that our cousins in Western Chinatowns aren’t doing as well as we are. We ought to realize that though we dwarf the Indonesians here, we remain overshadowed by Caucasians in their lands. We ought to end our parade of social superiority, sympathize, and help, rather than shrilly whining about the poverty and hunger that we – jaundiced, ravenous, conceited, spitting gluttons – have brought unto them.