Tan Tjin Kie

Tan Tjin Kie, Majoor-titulair der Chinezen (January 25, 1853 – February 13, 1919) was a high-ranking bureaucrat, courtier, sugar baron and head of the prominent Tan family of Cirebon, part of the ‘Cabang Atas’ or Chinese gentry of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He is best remembered today for his lavish, 40-day-long funeral ceremony of 1919, reputedly the most expensive ever held in Java.

Family background Tan Tjin Kie was born in Cirebon to the Peranakan couple Oey Te Nio and Luitenant Tan Tiang Keng (1826–1884), later raised to the post of Kapitein der Chinezen of Cirebon – Chinese headman – in 1882.

Within the local Chinese community, he continued the long association between the Chinese officership and , Cirebon’s most important Chinese temple. In 1889, he inaugurated a plaque to celebrate the temple’s renovation under his patronage, noting that an earlier renovation was completed in 1830 under the auspices of his great-grandfather, Kapitein Tan Kong Djan. The Majoor was President of Kong Djoe Koan, a funeral service foundation, and Bechermheer (Patron) of Hok Sioe Hwee, a Chinese funeral trust. Similarly, he was also the founder and Bechermheer of the Confucian revival and educational organization Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan in Cirebon.

Death, funeral and posterity Majoor-titulair Tan Tjin Kie died in office in 1919. By his wife, Ong Hwie Nio, Tan had two sons, Tan Gin Ho and Tan Gin Han, and a daughter, Tan Ho Lie Nio. His eldest son, Tan Gin Ho, and his son-in-law, Kwee Tjiong In, served as Luitenants der Chinezen, the former from 1898 until 1913, and the latter from 1907 until 1910, then again from 1913 until 1920. His younger son, Tan Gin Han, married Phoa Kiat Liang, a grandniece of the community leader Phoa Keng Hek, and a great-granddaughter of Phoa Tjeng Tjoan, Kapitein der Chinezen of Buitenzorg.

The late Majoor’s magnificent, 40-day-long funeral ceremony was reputed to have been the most expensive ever to have been held in Java. Preceded by eight military bands from Batavia and Bandung, the procession itself was divided into nine sections. Accompanied by a platoon of police officers sent by Johan Paul, Count van Limburg-Stirum, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, there was a four-horse carriage with a portrait of the deceased. After a procession of members of various organizations and schoolchildren under the late Majoor’s patronage, his coffin arrived in a four-horse carriage, pulled in addition by 250 coolies in uniform. The funeral service itself was presided by Tibetan Buddhist Lamas, brought over from Tibet.

De Preangerbode, a colonial newspaper, estimated the funeral and associated costs at 280,000 guilders, excluding a 300,000-guilder mausoleum built for the deceased Majoor by his children. In today’s currency (2019), the combined sum of the funeral and mausoleum amounted to a multimillion-US dollar fortune.