diary of tan living

  In Jakarta, where the air hums with the eternal promise of rain and the rumble of traffic, the red of Imlek burns soft against the grey of the concrete. I walk through the narrow alleyways of Glodok, the city's old Chinatown, my senses alight. I stop at a stall selling kue keranjang, the sticky rice cakes stacked high, each one round and dark as polished mahogany. I reach out and touch one gently, and the history I learned in school suddenly feels different. It feels personal. My mind drifts to the decades of silence, the years when the barongsai—the lions—could only be whispered about, their dances confined to memory, their vibrant manes painted only behind our closed eyelids. But tonight, the silence is a ghost. Now, the drums are so loud they vibrate in my chest, a liberated heartbeat for the city. The lion dancers leap and tumble, their movements a defiant blur of color, while children from every background shriek with delight as they dart forward to touch the lion's head...