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Critical Reading

The Dragons Trail in Chinese Indonesian Foodways Review

Nowadays, as we know, Chinese heritages, its foods, have been conquered around the
world, especially in Indonesia. The reason why Chinese foods can spread around the world is
related with its history. Looking back to the history, Chinese traders have traveled around the
world to open trading agreement with some countries around the world. Indonesia, as the biggest
archipelago in the world, also became their prospect destination to trade because it kept many
rich nature resources such as pala, cengkeh, coffee, and etc. However, there were also many
Chinese merchants who decided to live in Indonesia and married by local-citizens. Mor eover,
their descendants inherit recipes of Chinese foods. As a time goes on, the Chinese culinary are
developing and assimilated with local recipes. This is also supported by Myra Sidharta in her
article, The Dragons Trail in Chinese Indonesia.
In the beginning of her article, Sidharta explains about the history how Chinese traders
landed and spread its heritage, especially recipes and foods, to local people in some regions in
Indonesia. Not only mentioning about that, she also tells about the population developing of
Chinese people since Majapahit kingdom era till 20th century. Also, she mentions the two types
of Chinese ethnic communities in Indonesia. There are Peranakans, who is acculturated with
local people, and Totoks, who keep their Chinese culture. Moreover, talking about the food itself,
she mentions that many local foods in different regions in Indonesia have been adapted with
Chinese style. For instance, on Capgomeh(the Chinese celebration of 15th day of the lunar
month), Chinese Indonesians in Central Java serve similar food like ketupat, named lontong
capgomeh. However, there are some differences between ketupat and lontong capgomeh.
Ketupat which is served by Muslims in Lebaran (the celebration at the end of fasting month of
Ramadhan) is made by rice wrapped in artistically braided coconut leaves. However, lontong
capgomeh is braided by banana leaves. Not only lontong capgomeh, there is also some dishes

which brought from Chinese such as kuluyuk, rujak Shanghai, fuyung hai, and so on. In addition,
she also tells about the development of Chinese restaurants in Indonesia especially in Jakarta.
There are some restaurants that inherit Chinese cultures such as Bakmi Gajah Mada 77, Yun
Nyan Seafood Restaurant. Besides, there are also some popular restaurants which held by
Peranakans in Jakarta such as Dapur Baba (Baba Kitchen), Kedai Tiga Nyonya (The Shop of
Three Ladies), Mira Delima (Red Pomegrenate).
In conclusion, in my opinion, this article is quite interesting to read because it tells about
the history about Chinese culture that adapted to Indonesian culture, especially recipes and
foods. However, the author only tells about the history of Chinese foods that acculturated with
Indonesian foods. Before I read this article, I expect that this article contains about author
perspectives to Chinese-Indonesian foods. In addition, I think this article will become more
interesting to read if the author put some arguments and also critics from experts.