A Study of the Chinese Immigrants Housing Heritage at Gedong Village, Bangka Island - Indonesia

Abstract

Bangka Island in Indonesia is recognized by the Chinese as mentioned in old documents as early as the 3’rd Century. Around the 17 th Century there were large migrations from mainland China into Bangka Island, which was known as one of the largest tin deposits in the world. They came to open tin mining both as owners and also workers, and brought the technology to process the tin. At the time the demand for tin was very high as it is used for incense paper in China and tea packaging in Europe. The Chinese immigrants built their settlements with their own architecture knowledge and skill. These is supported with a very tolerate environment from local residence, where the Chinese are free to conduct their traditions, resulted in a nearly original Chinese architecture. Some of assimilations with local culture did happen. In some cases, there are influences from Dutch colonizer who build houses for Chinese people, who were politically given responsibility as the supervisor of other Chinese worker. One of this type of settlement is Gedong Village, located in Belinyu district which is still exist today, and is being assigned by local government as one of tourist attraction. However, there are no clear business scheme nor subsidized fund from the local government of how to operate and maintain the village and its houses as a tourist attraction. Hence the residence who wants to have better economy conditions left the village to move to bigger cities and most of them the start to sell the houses since the maintenance cost is too high. The purpose of this research is to study the remaining houses as of what cultures influenced the architecture of the residential buildings, and to document to preserve one legacy of Indonesian intangible diaspora culture