Ah Beng's house in Padang, Indonesia

Ah Beng is an Indonesian Chinese operating a sundry shop in Padang, Sumatra Barat, Indonesia. I often go over to his shop together with the estate managers whenever I visit Padang. If you see his sundry shop from the outside, you would think that it is just an ordinary shop, no difference with any other shops operated by the Indonesian. The reason why my friends like to go over there is because Ah Beng sells some Chinese herbs and other Chinese foods that he brought over from Malaysia or Singapore. Apart from that, my friends also take the opportunity to exchange money as Ah Beng offers slightly better rates as compared to money changer.

So, what so fantastic about Ah Beng’s house? Hey, if you walk pass the shop into the living hall of his house, you will really impress with how Ah Beng furnishes up his house. Beautiful furniture, modern electrical appliances, classy decorations and so on which you can’t really imagine if you see from outside his rather mean looking shop. They say don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess that’s right. So I asked Ah Beng why not building a beautiful house instead, rather than big renovation on the inside but rather run down looking from the outside of an old shop house. Ah Beng heaved a sigh, since the Jakarta riot of anti Chinese in 1998, the Chinese learned their lesson. At that time, shops owned by ethnic Chinese were looted and burned and worst still, Chinese women were reportedly raped and killed. Since then, ethnic Chinese become more preserved in showing off their wealth. Ah Beng tried to put the black incident behind him. It was fortunate that no major incident happened on his family during the 1998 riot except that his shop was rooted, not once but many times.

We are in fact pretty lucky as compared to ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. At least, there is no major riot since the May 13, 1969 incident. At least we don’t have to hide how rich we are unlike Ah Beng who could only do a massive renovation inside his house while keeping a rather old and weary appearance of his house from the outside. Just look at the Istana Zakaria and another Balinese mansion in the making, you would wonder how rich our politicians are, and how pridefully they show off their wealth.