The Kelenteng and Annual Rituals: Hokkien Community in Batavia

Abstract: This paper mainly focuses on the mechanisms used by Hokkien, one the most prominent ethnic Chinese groups, to embed themselves in Batavia in premodern Southeast Asia. An embedding mechanism is an institutionalized inserting of social structure and systematic intertwinement and thereby reshapes the spatial landscape or social outlook of a host society. This paper provides a history of the emergence of Chinese temple complexes, which developed in many diasporic Chinese communities, and explains their particular importance as an embedding mechanism in Batavia, where Chinese temples were referred to as kelenteng . It goes on to profile six different kinds of kelenteng , with each one telling us something about the categories of official authority, funeral supply, commercial promotion, family competition, hygienic and guild practices, and Islamic local accommodation. I argue that the kelenteng and the annual rituals conducted at them were the central embedding mechanisms on which the Hokkien relied.