0 XF Asali: Learning for life

At the age of 81, or even 82 based on the Chinese calendar, Lie Sau Fat, who later changed his name to XF Asali as instructed by the New Order regime, remains fit and vigorous. With steady steps, he climbs the stairs to his office on the second floor of a building in the commercial complex of Kapuas Besar, on the banks of the Kapuas River in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. “I continue to work the way most people do. Reading is my hobby, while taking important notes on teachings and sayings. 

For health maintenance, the brain and mind should remain active despite advanced age. In this way, the likelihood of senility can be reduced,” Asali with a laugh, adding that he keeps his body fit by jogging. The father of five and grandfather of 11 is known as a Chinese cultural expert in West Kalimantan. He has close relations with various circles in the region and is well versed in the culture of his predecessors, which makes him a frequent speaker at different seminars. 

“My father used to advise me to make as many friends as possible and avoid having any foes,” recalled the author of Aneka Budaya Tionghoa Kalimantan Barat (West Kalimantan Ethnic Chinese Cultural Miscellany). Asali’s great grandfather, Lie Kiem, made his journey from Kwang Tung Sheng, China, to West Kalimantan in the middle of the 18th century. He worked as a blacksmith and settled in Koelor village, Singkawang, a majority Chinese town north of Pontianak. Asali is the fifth of 10 siblings born on the 18th day of the sixth month of 1932 according to the lunar calendar. 

Before national independence, he received an education in Chinese at the Ai Chiun School from 1938 to 1941 in Pemangkat (now Sambas regency) and later attended Nan Hoa School from 1942 to 1945 in Koelor.    He has an active command of two foreign languages — Chinese and Dutch. Both languages were also spoken when he attended the Dutch-Chinese school known as HCS for six years in Singkawang, and the Dutch Business School for four years in Pontianak. 

In the business school, which was the equivalent of the economics senior high school (SMEA) of later years, subjects were taught in Dutch in the morning and in Chinese in the afternoon. “At the time, we attended school throughout the day. I stayed in the dormitory and was educated by Dutch Catholic missionaries. We also spoke Dutch with fellow students and that’s why I’m fluent in Dutch,” Asali told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview. According to Asali, reading Dutch books is easier than English texts, but Dutch grammar is more difficult to learn. “Speaking Dutch is also easier than English. 

I only have a passive command of English,” added Asali, who has traveled extensively throughout the globe. After finishing the Dutch business school in 1954 at the age of 22, Asali discovered that his lack of fluency in Indonesian was a challenge as he began looking for work. The Dutch school only offered two Indonesian lessons a week, each lasting for 30 minutes, that mostly consisted of reading practice. “No Indonesian grammar was taught. When we were assigned to compose a text, I was only able to write saya pergi ke pasar (I go to the market),” Asali recalled with a hearty laugh. 

In daily conversation, he spoke the regional Chinese language of Hakka, as did his ethnic Dayak friends. Therefore, when he began to work with a rubber company, Asali still had the big task of learning Indonesian. As suggested by a Dutch priest, he studied Indonesian on his own by reading newspapers every day, recording important things and retyping corporate letters for further review. It wasn’t a simple process and only 10 years later did Asali become truly fluent in Indonesian. 

Even in his 80s, he hasn’t abandoned his activities in his office, handling export and import as well as forestry and agribusiness operations, which he set up in 1971. What spare time he does manage to find away from work, he dedicates to a non-profit body as chairman of Yayasan Asali, a funeral foundation for members of the Lie clan. The name the New Order regime forced him to take up has an interesting origin. “My Muslim friend proposed Fuad because it’s like my Chinese nickname, Afat. Fuad in Arabic, according to my friend, means heart. 

The Chinese generally followed this pattern when changing their names, like Bunadi for Abun,” Asali said. For his surname, he consulted a pre-war Chinese-Indonesian dictionary and found a word that literally meant “handed down through generations”. So he made it an acronym of the Indonesian phrase asal dari Lie (originating from the Lie family). With his baptismal name, he was officially called Xaverius Fuad Asali, or more popularly, XF Asali. As a learned man, he has practiced what the Chinese maxim, Huak tau lau, siek tau lau, which translates as “never stop learning as long as one lives”. 

Talking to the Post, he turned the pages of several thick notebooks with his own handwritten notes. Now and again, Dutch phrases slipped out of his speech, particularly as he reminisced about his school years. The walls and shelves of his 4-by-7-meter office are decorated with several awards, including the 2010 Pluralism Award from the organizing committee of the Cap Go Meh Festival 2561 (a celebration on the 15th day of the Chinese New Year) and a plaque of appreciation for his achievements as a cultural figure from the governor of West Kalimantan in the same year. After launching his book in 2008, Asali plans to write another, this time an autobiography. Asali thinks this book will take longer to finish because he intends to recollect his earliest experiences from the period when he was 5 years old.

source : the jakarta post