Tong Koei See, Place to Back Together

Hello mates! Long time no see, hehehe, to busy with several college activities and assignment is not good for my blogging activity. Well Thanks God, in this early October I could have a lots of free time and wish I could manage my time to make my blog "alive" again :)

Well in this October too, on first week, my Friends from China, named Cherry who was worked with me in ROAR Project AIESEC UNDIP last year, coming back to visit Indonesia, she said she really damn missed with all of Indonesian-thingy, hehe, well then the story goes as she arrived in this city after having a lots of amazing experience in Bromo, and suddenly contact me to meet up with her in Simpang Lima. Then while meet up, after several sharing time, they asked me to take them to the interesting place in Semarang, since Cherry bring her friends together with her Chissy, who never visit Semarang before. Then yes, we decide to Masjid Agung, but before that I rememmber that I need a chinesse to translate a historical sites named "Bong Bunder", a chinesse graveyard who the story beside it still mysterious, then they agree to help me, then yap! They got a city tour and I got a translator :D

My friend, Cherry and the grave who all
person who re-buried here have a "Ho"
surname

Then we arrived on the sites, both of Cherry and Chissy, looks so surprissed, seeing there's an ancient chinese graveyard, looks so old, even cherry said that it must be from Ming Dynasty, seeing from the shaped and letter that used in the inscription. Then they start to translate it to english, a little debates occurs between them because its really hard to translate this letter who were in Traditional Chinese, while now in daily they used Simplified Chinese. 

According to them, this graveyard are mass grave, more than one person are burried in one grave. One of the grave are grave for Cheng Ho descendant, WOW! Cherry argue it must be grave of Cheng Ho followers then their descendant since in the surname they used that name. And the others grave are mass grave, but its not written in the "bongpay" (chinese gravestone) its not contains any name. 

There's an inscription in a rectange-form stone that stood in the northern side of sites, and from that inscription can be seen, that this is was a mass grave from several grave that moved here from their old place, also the cost that spent to built this, the name of the person who burried here, and also the year. The year are in the chinesse lunar calendar, then Chissy took her i-phone and convert it into the gregorian style, and yap we got the year, its built on 1804!

Another grave which is not specificaly
mentioned the name.

Its really helpful, and now I've a clear story after it. Before they translate it, I just know its story from a local newspaper that this site are built to be a mass grave from the chinesse graveyard that demolished in the Petolongan, an Arabic settlement near China Town. Its moved because of the Dutch authority want to built a new settlement over it. But the story confusing with another story that mentioned that it was a mass grave of the victims under japanese ocupation during pacific war, anither story mentioned that it was a grave of famous chinesse tycoon that coming from Semarang city, that is Oei Tiong Ham. Everybody knows that Oei, is buried in the luxurious grave in Simongan Hills ( but now is already gone, and turn into a settlement)

Well, thanks for Cherry and Chissy, thanks for coming back! And also for helping me to translate all of this chinesse letters, zai jien! :D