A Pharmacist in the Heart of National Politics
Yap Tjwan Bing opposed the Dutch occupation of Indonesia since his youth. He studied in Amsterdam so that he could read more books about politics. He was close with Bung Hatta and Indonesian university students who were active in the struggle for Indonesian independence while studying in the Netherlands.
Tempo
August 17, 2019
One day sometime around 1924, some Dutch merchants from the Jacobson Borsumij company in Semarang (now in Central Java), went to the home of Yap Yoe Dhiam, a Dutch Indies merchant of Chinese heritage, in Madiun (East Java), for trade negotiations. When entering the house, those merchants did not want to take off their hats. They also sat while putting their feet up on the table.
Yap Yoe Dhiam took no offense with this behavior, as he con
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