Kho Ping Hoo

Kho Ping Hoo (192622 July 1994), also known as Asmaraman Sukowati, was a Chinese Indonesian author of fiction. He mostly wrote martial arts stories inspired by the wuxia genre and set in historical China and Indonesia, but also produced romances and detective stories.

Born in Sragen to a sugar broker, Kho spent much of his early life as an itinerant worker. In the 1950s, following some time at a refugee camp, Kho settled in Tasikmalaya. Having read extensively, he began writing short stories and established a literary magazine. For the latter, he began work on his first serial, Pek Liong Po Kiam: Pedang Pusaka Naga Putih ('The Heirloom Sword White Dragon', 1959). As Kho continued to write, he purchased a printing press and, after moving to Surakarta in 1963, established the Gema Publishing House. Kho continued to write, producing several volumes per month, which were distributed to lending libraries and book stalls throughout Indonesia. Having experienced racially motivated violence on several occasions, he promoted the assimilation of Chinese Indonesians and their intermarriage with the indigenous population.

By the time of his death, Kho had produced more than 130 titles. Most were published in monthly installments, with an average of thirty-five volumes per title. Kho wrote almost exclusively in Indonesian, though he used Hokkien loan words and published one title in Javanese. Aside from one, his stories were original works that drew on the corpus of Indonesian-language translations of Chinese wuxia novels as well as imported films from Hong Kong and Taiwan. His martial arts fiction was mostly set in historical China and Indonesia, with their main characters primarily warrior aristocrats who left the court in search of excitement, knowledge, or vengeance. His novels were adapted to comics, film, radio, stage, and television, and influenced numerous writers both within and without the martial arts genre.

Biography Early life Kho was born in Sragen, Dutch East Indies, in 1926 to a peranakan Chinese family. He was the second of twelve children born to Kho Kiem Po, a sugar broker, and Sri Welas Asih. Several of his ancestors, including his maternal great-grandmother and paternal grandmother, were of Javanese heritage. From a young age, Kho learned the Javanese language and script, and was exposed to Javanese mysticism. Kho's mother was a practiced storyteller who instilled in him a love for stories, and from others he heard Javanese poetry. Meanwhile, Kho's father practised and taught Shaolin kung fu. As such, Kho became familiar with it despite never becoming a martial artist himself.

Kho attended a Dutch-run school for his primary education, where he began to read extensively. Afterwards, he was accepted at a junior secondary school run by missionaries. However, after a few months, his family was unable to afford further schooling. and Kho became an itinerant worker at the age of fourteen. He travelled to several cities, including Kudus and Surabaya, looking for work, with which he helped support his brothers and sisters. He was in Surabaya selling medicines when the Empire of Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies in 1941. During the ensuing occupation, he remained in the city, where he received some military training through the Japanese Kaibotai civil defence programme.

After the Battle of Surabaya in November 1945, Kho moved back to Sragen. During the next four years, amidst the Indonesian National Revolution, Kho alternated between Sragen and Kudus, selling cigarettes to earn money while also fighting alongside the . After Operation Kraai resulted in Sragen falling to the returning Dutch forces, in 1949 Kho evacuated to a refugee camp near Surakarta. After the war, Kho settled in Tasikmalaya, West Java, where he spent some time working for a construction crew before joining a transportation company. Eventually, he led the local council governing truck transportation. Around this time, he began learning Mandarin Chinese to converse with his totok Chinese peers, many of whom remained culturally closer to China, and was fluent in Dutch, Javanese, and Sundanese.

Following the ratification of the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty in 1955, Kho was required to choose between Chinese and Indonesian citizenship. Kho chose Chinese citizenship and, after a law passed in 1959 prohibited merchants of Chinese heritage from working in rural areas, made plans to leave the archipelago. His travel arrangements fell through, and he remained in Indonesia. Having already learned some English from radio broadcasts, he began to study the language formally. He received certification from the British Council, and spent time as a teacher.

Literary beginnings In the 1950s, Kho began writing. He was primarily self-taught, learning how to write from his reading. His first published story, was included in Star Weekly in 1958. He subsequently published works in magazines such as and . In 1959, Kho established the literary magazine ('Lotus') with some friends. They initially sought to have Oey Kim Tiang, a popular translator of Chinese stories, become a regular contributor, but Oey refused. Kho thus began work on his first novel Pek Liong Po Kiam ('The Heirloom Sword White Dragon'). The first instalments of this martial arts story were published in Teratai. When the magazine collapsed after four issues, the serial was picked up by the Jakarta-based . The serial was an immediate success.

Kho capitalized on his new-found popularity with new serials such as ('The Statue of the Goddess Guanyin', 1960) and ('Blood Flows at Borobudur', 1961). At the same time, he continued to publish short stories, with Symasudin Lubisthe director of the groupasking him to become a regular contributor to his magazines. Kho also became a regular correspondent for the daily Keng Po and contributed to the newspaper Pikiran Rakyat. Four of his stories were included in ('Meeting'), a collection published by Djelita .

During a wave of violence against Chinese Indonesians in West Java in 1963, stones were cast at Kho, his home was razed, and his printing press destroyed. He thus relocated to Surakarta in 1964, where he settled in the Mertokusuman district. Further violence against Chinese Indonesians erupted in Surakarta during the widespread violence that followed the failed 30 September Movement coup in 1965, and Kho again considered moving to China. Ultimately, as his children were still young, he remained in Indonesia.

Gema and later life Soon after arriving in Surakarta, Kho established the Gema Publishing House and a printing house to publish his works. He continued to write, variously using the names Kho Ping Hoo, Asmaraman S., and Asmaraman S. Kho Ping Hoo. He focused primarily on the genre, with works in the genre including ('Storm in the Southern Sea', 1969), ('The Super-Sacred Warrior', 1969), and ('Maiden from the Green Valley', 1970). At the same time, he continued to serialize in magazines such as Selecta, Roman Detektip, and Monalisa. By November 1980, Gema employed approximately 100 people.

In the 1970s, Kho renounced his Chinese citizenship and became an Indonesian citizen. He began to promote the assimilation of Chinese Indonesians, arguing that intermarriage between persons of Chinese and indigenous heritage would facilitate racial harmony; by 1980, two of his daughters had married indigenous men. When racialized violence erupted in Surakarta in November 1980, Kho's printing press and home were defended by his predominantly indigenous staff. Covering the incident, the magazine Tempo cited it as evidence that Kho had successfully integrated himself into indigenous society.

Reader interest in Kho's stories had dwindled by the 1990s, partly due to the proliferation of television, and partly due to increased access to imported materials. Although stories remained popular, especially in cinemas,, first-run printings of Kho's novels decreased from a peak of 15,000 copies in the 1970s to 5,000. For additional income, Gema began printing tickets and invitations, though by this point the company was run primarily by Kho's son-in-law Bunawan SW. As revenues decreased, Kho continued to write every day. He spent five days per week at his villa in Tawangmangu, a village on the slopes of Mount Lawu approximately east of Surakarta.

Working based off detailed synopses written at the beginning of each project, Kho produced two to three manuscripts per month. He worked on up to four texts simultaneously, often starting work on new volumes for ongoing series after earlier volumes had been published. After each volume was written, Kho and his family then handled the editing and layouting before sending the books for setting and publication. Works were then sent to agents in Indonesia's major cities, and then were made available to readers through lending libraries and small bookstalls. Only in the 1990s did Gramedia, the largest book retailer in Indonesia, stock Kho's works.

In 1985, Kho was diagnosed with a heart condition but refused long-term care. On 21 July 1994, he complained of chest pain and collapsed at his villa. Kho was brought to Surakarta, where he was treated at Kasih Ibu Hospital. He regained consciousness in the afternoon, but died the following morning of complications from heart and kidney disease. After a period of lying in repose, during which his body was viewed by thousands, Kho was cremated at the Tiong Ting Crematorium. His ashes were scattered in the Indian Ocean. He left behind two wives, Rosita (born Ong Ros Hwa) and Hartini, and twelve children. with each illustrated volume averaging 60 pages in length. Many stories went through multiple reprints, which were handled by Kho's publishing house Gema. Works by Kho included stand-alone stories and stories published as part of a series; some works were initially published on their own, but later incorporated into a series. Kho's longest series, ('Zen Master Bu Kek', 1968), consisted of 17 titles.

Mostly, Kho did not translate existing works Chinese literature. He had a limited command of oral Mandarin and he could not read the script. His ('The Golden Lotus', 1980), a translation of Jin Ping Mei, was the sole exception; it was not translated directly from the original, but from an extant English-language translation. Nonetheless, according to the sinologist Leo Suryadinata, Kho showed great familiarity with the wuxia genre, with elements of works by Jin Yong, Ni Kuang, and Liang Yusheng identifiable in his output. Many such works were available in Indonesian translations, with noted examples by Oey Kim Tiang and .

Social impact According to Suryadinata, Kho popularized the martial arts genre amongst Indonesians, and the anthropologist Bill Watson describes Kho as the first name to come into Indonesians' minds when discussing the genre. Kho had thousands of readers of varied cultural, geographic, and socio-economic backgrounds, with the poet Emha Ainun Nadjib, Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, politicians Soeharto and Joko Widodo, and religious leaders Abdurrahman Wahid and Ma'ruf Amin all identifying themselves as fans of his work. In its obituary, the newspaper Kompas wrote that Kho was better known to readers than most members of the Indonesian literary canon, and many youths sought to emulate Kho's heroes. Several indigenous writers, including and Arswendo Atmowiloto, were inspired by Kho's output to produce their own literature; outside the genre, the novelist Eka Kurniawan has cited Kho as an influence. Despite his popularity, Kho has been marginalized in the history of Indonesian literature.

Many of Kho's works were adapted to the stage, the Siswo Budoyo group being one of the most frequent performers. Adaptations were also broadcast by Radio Republik Indonesia, and several of his novels were made into comics. Puppetry performances, including examples of wayang potehi (glove puppetry) and wacinwa (JavaneseChinese fusion puppetry), have been based on his novels. Five of Kho's stories have been adapted to film: ('The Bastard's Revenge', 1972), ('Blood and Flesh', 1977), ('Drunk on Love', adapted as ['My Love, Sold', 1977]), ('Storm in the Southern Sea', 1991), and ('Maiden from the Green Valley', 1993). Kho was displeased with the film adaptations of his work, feeling that they had distorted his vision and become almost pornographic. Several stories have been adapted to television. , Kho's books continue to be published by Gema, which distributes them to bookstores and has collaborated with outside party in making animated adaptations.

Kho posthumously received several awards for his contributions to Indonesian literature, including from the regent of Sragen in 2005 and the Surakartan People's Association in 2012. In 2014, he was awarded the Satya Lencana Kebudayaan by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In December 2013, the first volume of Kho's ('The Golden Flute', 1968) was translated into Mandarin; sponsored by Imron Cotan, Indonesia's ambassador to China, this translation was handled by an Indonesian before being edited by a Chinese expert in wuxia stories. A museum dedicated to Kho has been planned for Sragen, though it had not been realized.

Analysis Language Aside from the Javanese-language ('The Stars Bear Witness', 1961), all of Kho's works were written in Indonesian. His early publications, including Pek Liong Po Kiam: Pedang Pusaka Naga Putih and Ang Coa Kiam: Pedang Ular Merah ('Sword of the Red Snake', 1962), were given Hokkien titles and Indonesian subtitles; and commonly used in the colonial Southeast Asia later works solely carried Indonesian-language titles. Kho often used Hokkien loanwords, generally those commonly understood by readers. which was unusual among contemporary writers.

Watson writes that, in his early works, Kho used a mainstream style similar to indigenous writers such as and Idrus. In his later works, according to the journalist and curator Ardus M. Sawega, Kho employed a simple and communicative style that followed the proscriptions of the Indonesian language, distinguishing him from the vernacular Malay used by earlier Chinese Indonesian writers. The author Seno Gumira Ajidarma likewise describes Kho's language as fluent, drawing readers into the fictional universe and keeping them enticed throughout. He argues that, through accessible language, Kho was readily able to create strong plots and characters. In their biography of Kho, Imada Imba Saraswati and Siti Maziyah of Diponegoro University argue that his language continued to evolve over time, influenced by the works of contemporaries such as Marga T, , and Motinggo Busye.

Setting and characterization The majority of Kho's works were set in China and used Chinese names for characters. Having only travelled to mainland China in 1985, he drew his inspiration predominantly from maps of the country, English- and Dutch-language texts on its history, and imported works of Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema. Kho sought to integrate historical facts into his stories; for instance, according to the Indonesian literary critic Myra Sidharta, he was meticulous in detailing the fashions and hairstyles that were used as markers of social position. Nonetheless, he did make some errors in presenting the nation's history and geography.

For many Indonesian readers, Kho's novels were their primary source of information on Chinese culture, geography, and values, and this helped frame their understanding both of China and of Chinese Indonesians. At the time, the Suharto government was using legislative frameworks to repress Chinese culture while members of the diaspora were negotiating a collective identity. Consequently, the Indonesianist Abidin Kusno describes Kho's use of fantastical Chinese settings as an "appropriation of and collaboration with popular cultures from East Asia as a way to cope with the state's erasure of Chinese cultures from the public life".

Dozens of Kho's stories were set in the Malay Archipelago, including not only his stories but also works of realist fiction. In accordance with genre conventions, his stories were primarily set in historical times, prior to the arrival of European colonialism. Where stories were set during the colonial era, they were mostly in its early years. Kurniawan, exploring Kho's use of history in Kompas, notes that the novelist drew from diverse areas and eras in Indonesian history, including the Mataram and Singhasari Kingdoms. Likewise, various historical events featured in Kho's novels, including the building of Borobudur Temple, the arrival of Admiral Zheng He, and the military campaigns of Gajah Mada. According to Kurniawan, these well-known events provided a real-life context for fictional deeds.

Generally, Kho's stories dealt with members of the nobility, ksatria (warrior aristocrats) who leave the comforts of their palaces in search of excitement, knowledge, or vengeance. For example, the female protagonist in Bu Kek Siansu is a princess named Han Swat Hong who hunts her stepmother, The Kwat Ling, whom she blames for the collapse of her kingdom. A minority of characters were religious leaders, with the main character of being a Buddhist monk. Kurniawan argues that, despite this emphasis on the elites of society, Kho drew his characters into the realms of the lower classes, be they rural communities or natural environments, and thus associated his historical fiction with the common people.

Themes Although Kho was best known for his martial arts stories, he also published historical fiction as well as detective, spy, and love stories. His early short stories such as "" ('The Great Philanthropist', ) highlighted the injustices of 1950s Indonesia and provided social criticism, and his later stories continued to show solidarity with the oppressed while condemning corruption. Sidharta, for instance, notes that included segments exploring the suffering of the labourers who built the temple. Some stories set in Indonesia, such as ('The Solo Incident', 1966), explored the effects of contemporary events on their characters.

Buddhism and Hinduism, which were the primary religions of pre-colonial Indonesia, are prominent in Kho's archipelago-set stories. Several used religious themes as part of their conflict. In ('A Pair of White Garuda', 1988), for instance, a village's temple to the Trimurti is replaced by the Shivite antagonist with individual temples to Shiva, Durga, and Kala. Kurniawan notes that, despite these conflicts, Kho was careful to attribute the misdeeds of antagonists to their abuse of power rather than religious teachings. Confucian values are incorporated into works set in China, and Kusno notes several works with extensive discussion of Taoist philosophies. Nonetheless, according to Sawega these stories too were framed through an Indonesian mindset.

Kho used several of his novels to emphasize that the ethnic Chinese have long been part of Indonesian society, presenting values of acculturation and assimilation. According to Sidharta, his ('The Flashing Sword Defends Love', 1982), which featured Admiral Zheng He and his companion Ma Huan, showed that the Chinese were familiar with Islamthe majority religion of the modern archipelago. Other stories highlighted Chinese Indonesians' contributions to the defense of indigenous kingdoms and opposition to colonial oppression. She surmises that, through his writings, Kho sought to challenge stereotypes that Chinese Indonesians were dishonest brokers seeking only self-enrichment. Similarly, she finds that that . Kusno identifies resistance to dominant Indonesian narratives about Chineseness in Kho's writing.

In his novels, Kho also presented intermarriages between ethnic Chinese characters and indigenous elites as common. For example, Suryadinata notes that features a love-based intermarriage between the Chinese martial artist Ong Cun and the indigenous woman Damini. The novel concludes with a discussion that emphasizes Kho's belief in the benefits of such marriages. Similarly, several of Kho's stories set in contemporary Indonesia depicted romantic relationships between Chinese and non-Chinese characters. The romance Siane (1981), for example, followed a peranakan girl and Javanese boy. According to Kho's daughter Tina Asmaraman, he believed that love conquered all, and thus could provide a solution to many of society's woes.