This is just the opening of “The Trail Of The Dragon” series that has just been decided to be created.
I think I made wrong approach to how to make the English Edition. After almost one year of blogging, I found it that it has been quite difficult to interpret the idea to introduce this city, the culture, the society to foreigners.
I thought by providing translated writings from Indonesian versions, I could transfer the idea to non-Indonesian readers. However, I admitted it was likely a wrong way.
The first and the original idea was to provide the information about my hometown from many aspects such as culture, society and others. Finally I ended up with only talking about building, statue, places. There was no touch about what lays deep inside.
So, I decided to try another angle. I am still, actually, unsure but at least, I should give it a try.
The series of “The Trail of The Dragon” is to show to anyone, especially non-Indonesian speakers that the life in this city has been formed by many ethnics, societies, and cultures.
The reason behind this is because it seems there has been misunderstanding about how foreigners seeing this country, including Bogor. Overseas people may only know Indonesia as moslem country, so the culture inside is considered to be single aka Islamic culture.
In fact, it is not. There are many aspects and culture that have contributed. One of them is Chinese ethnics and c its culture. This ethnic has been an inseparable part of the life in Bogor since long time ago.
So, this series will talk about what Chinese people and society has actively played their part in forming the city. What has been inherited by Bogor from the ethnics that has become the city’s pride.
There will be some other series related to any other ethnics and cultures as well. As I said before, the city has been formed by the contribution of lots of people coming from different ethnics and culture. So each one of them deserves to have equal treatment, including in my site, Lovely Bogor.
As the opening writing of the series, I present to you a picture, a gate picture. It symbolizes that you enter a phase where you can find the traces of Chinese culture that was inherited and adopted as Bogor’s heritage.
It is not just simply a gate. This gate picture is the one from one of the oldest shrine, temple in the city, Mahacetya Dhanagun or Hok Tek Bio. It is 300 years old.
I have written a short story about the place before. You can take a look at Hok Tek Bio Temple – The Oldest Temple to know a bit about the place.
I believe it is worth to welcome you to the series.