culture crash

I am an Indonesian, currently I'm living in both Germany and Italy for my study. I like to observe people and cultures. This is a very interesting phase in my life; that I have the chance to observe both Italian and German cultures with my Indonesian point of view. Here I scribbled everything interesting that I found.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Chinese vs Malayan

I played quite much in the online game which is based in Malaysia lately, xdo.
The gameplay is mostly just the same as the other dance games I've played.
However, it's the community who plays the game thats interesting.
The players are mostly malaysian *duh!*,
although I often meet some immigrants from the US version of the game too like me ;P

These malaysian ppl, it's so interesting that in one sentence they can use english, chinese, and malay words all at once xD
I enjoy so much reading their forums lol.

But aside from that quirk of the language, what I want to discuss here is how they are so sensitive toward races issues.
Not just once that I'm being asked in game, "what ppl are you?"
to which of course i could only respond, "huh?"
turned out they were asking whether I am a chinese or a malayan >.>
or in another case, they asked "what race are u?"
I was kinda flabbergasted getting such a question at the first time.
Isn't that a very racist question????
I'm used to play in the US version, where I think it's a commonsense that racial issues must not come into discussion.

Since I had to respond, as an indonesian of course I answered, I'm indonesian.
To which they still insisted on asking, "yeah, but are you chinese?"
ermm...hello?

I never really remember there's any such identification of races in Indonesia.
I mean, well, indeed we have cultures, javanese, sundanese, batak-ese(?),etc, but it's not that we will ask for such a culture identification at the first time we meet someone.

Well, apparently in Malaysia, such identification matters.
What scary is, they often had arguments abt it. Chinese ppl vs Malayan ppl.
I dont know how it often started, but then it always come to associating each other with animals, mainly pig >.>

prolly because pig is considered as the worst animal evah? (aww, poor piggies >_<)
prolly because Malayan is identical with moslem ppl who dont eat pork and Chinese ppl have quite a culinary tradition using pork?
They usually mention abt that eating habit in the argument, with the chinese ppl promoting "bak kut teh" (whatever it is, I suppose its an extremely delicious chinese dish using pork?) and that everyone should eat it.

However, its scary scary scary....

Witnessing such rude arguments happening more than one occasion,
I grow my respect to the founding fathers of Indonesia.
They all were emphasizing on the unity of Indonesia.
They were not using certain religion as the base, even though its the majority religion.
They decided the use of Bahasa Indonesia, as the language of the country which unites everyone from every regionals despite each having their own regional traditional language.
I'm so proud abt this language thing also when I'm with my Indian friends.
Because they have various regional languages just like us. However, they don't have that one language which formally unites them. As a result u can get Indians talking to each other using English since they came from different regions in India.

I still have some more thoughts, but at least for now I will conclude this post with, I'm proud to be an Indonesian.

A-Ce-I, Aku Cinta Indonesia~ xD

4 Comments:

Blogger ted said...

kalo di tanyain ppl nya ya jawab asal aja mbak :D kan forum ini :D ndak usah serius2 amat .. kalo aku ditanyain gitu aku jawab jepang aja ..hihi ...

proud to be Indonesian? off course.

orang jepang sering bilang "wah hebat ya bisa banyak bahasa ...." :D jawa, indo, english :D (kok ndak nyambung...)

1:53 AM  
Blogger lite said...

hihihi, ditanyainnya in game, sand. pas lagi antara mo nge-dance gitu.

jadi waktunya mepet dan ga tau kenapa kayanya ada yg salah deh dengan wiring di kepala daku, jadi mo ngomong asal kok ya berasa ga enak hati, aduh gw boong T_T, gitu dehhh.

payah. kutukan gw rasa, ga bisa bohong T_T
bahkan di saat saat dimana bohong itu enak dibaca dan perlu seperti saat saat itu xD

hihihi, iya, ya. dulu rumpi ma temen rusia, karena dia bilang dia bisa latin, gw bilang ohh, gw bisa bahasa jawa, donk *mode pamer on*. terus dia tertarik, coba coba kaya gmn? katanya.

terus...gw baru ngeh....gw kan ngga bisa ngomong jawaaa T____T
ngerti sih bisa, ngomong itu loh.
mana, lagi lagi, gw ga bisa bohong. padahal kan kalo ngomong, "bla bla bla kuing kuing meong meong", dan gw bilang itu bahasa jawa die juga kaga tau xD
ya udah deh fail jadinya ;P

*knp gw kalo bales komen suka panjang2 ya? ^^*

4:54 AM  
Blogger Ismail Habib said...

Yang aku baca dari banyak sumber emang kayaknya seperti itu Yus. Beruntunglah kita (sebagian dari) orang Indonesia yang nggak terlalu mikirin soal ras. Mau Jawa, Sunda, Pontianak xD, dll nggak terlalu berpengaruh...

Sifat dan tingkah laku lebih penting... iya kan? xD

Soal "kutukan" nggak bisa boong... ngg, sebetulnya bukan kutukan lagi. Boong itu (kecuali white lie kali ya) kan ngga baek. Berhubung Yusi anak baek maka setiap ada kesempatan buat boong maka buru-buru hatinya protes... "don't lie!". Dalam hal ini saya jadi "sedikit" iri ;D

Last part, Yusi ga bisa ngomong Jawa? Guilty! LOL...

1:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Itu ga cm terjadi di XDO malay koq... di Audition juga kebanyakan orang Indo yang chinese juga begitu :P. Walopun ga semua siy. Pas kenalan pertama nanya FS, trus habis liat dia nanyain, eh lo muslim ya... eh besok2nya dah ga ngobrol lagi de 8-}. Benci ama orang2 racis begitu.... Dasar anak2 kecil XD

2:07 PM  

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