THE KIM HOK (Cigar Company in Temanggung-Central Java)

Staying in another city is always to be a fascinating moment for me since It can evoke my desire to explore every single historical value in that city. Thursday, 22 March 2018, I had a chance to stay for several days in Temanggung – one of the essential city during dutch east indie era which produce a cigarette and this city also noted as one of the places that produce the best quality of tobacco in this country. I stayed in my friend’s house, his name is Steve, he has a house located in the main road of the city centre of Temanggung. At the first day in this city, another friend of mine from Magelang came to Temanggung, His name is Johan. Steve and Johan are actually my friends from Satya Wacana Senior highschool in Salatiga.

Steve Ryan

Johan Indrawan

Before I explain more about my trip in Temanggung, it is better for me to tell you about my story when Johan explained to me about the history of his family several years ago. It because Johan’s story is the main topic of this article actually, therefore it is better to tell it firstly. In that moment, He explained to me that his grandpa in the past was one of the successfull businessman in Temanggung who manufactured cigarette, the name of his grandpa is THE KIM HOK.

When he delivered this story to me, I directly remembered about a book “KRETEK JAWA: Gaya Hidup Lintas Budaya” which explain about the history of the cigarette in Indonesia. This book showed me about the big  logo of THE KIM HOK brand, however there was no further explanation about this brand.  Thereby, johan’s story was really surprising me at that moment, I directly asked many question for him relating to his grandpa. He knew that I really love history so that he told this story for me, and he promised to me that he want to bring me up to his grandpa’s house in Temanggung.

The book "Kretek of Java"

The second day in Temanggung was the best time for us to visit the house of Johan’s grandpa, because the sky was bright and the weather so good. We started to ride our motorcycle at 13.00 pm, then we directly visited the THE KIM HOK factory that only took 5 minutes from Steve’s house. Seeing the front door of this factory can directly give me a clue that this place was belongs to the Chinese. It is reasonable because the ornament of the door was symbolize as the Chinese culture with the combination between red and gold colour. We had to pass the lane before entering the area of the factory.

The gate of THE KIM HOK factory

Looking the area of this factory for the first time was amazed me because the look of this factory was far from my expectation. There were several buildings that utilized to process the tobacco and to make a cigarette  in the past. All of the tools, equipments, and machines that were used for production from the past were still situated in this factory. Through this exploration I can imagine how crowded this factory was when the workers operated the machine to produce cigarette.

The area of the factory

After we explored the factory, Johan brought us up to the private house of THE KIM HOK that was located in the other side of the city centre of Temanggung.  We took a walk to reach this location that took 5 minutes from the location of the THE KIM HOK factory. In this house we meet with Johan’s grandma- the youngest grandchild of THE KIM HOK. Entering the house of THE KIM HOK was really amazed me since I though that it was the bigest private house that i ever visited. This house is really unique because the architecture is original that showed about the combination between Chinese and Western culture. I can explore the whole part of this house, passing every single room can give me the true atmosphere of colonial era. Every single part of this building represented the strong influence of western culture.  

The centre of the private house of THE KIM HOK

The private house of THE KIM HOK

In this moment I got some stories from  Johan’s grandma about the history of THE KIM HOK. She explained that THE KIM HOK actually did not have a family when the first time he arrived in Temanggung. He actually came from Purworedjo-Central java when he still under five years old because there was a chaos in purworedjo that forced the local inhabitant to move to find the saver places. During this evacuation THE KIM HOK lost his family, and he was brought by the local people to Temanggung.

The full story of THE KIM HOK life after staying in Temanggung will be explained by me in the next article in this blog. Therefore keep looking on this blog to find a fascinating story of local history in Indonesia. Thanks for being a reader of my blog.

Thank you for being a reader of my blog.

BIG HUG

Abel Jatayu Prakosa

SALATIGA- a cup of Nusantara, 27 March 2018.