No Ordinary Housemaids

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

VICTORIA Park in Hong Kong is both a sad and happy portrait of Indonesian migrant workers living in a foreign land. Each Sunday hundreds of Indonesian housemaids gather at the park to play and listen to dangdut music or just to chat in their native Javanese dialect.

More than just housemaids, the Javanese domestics publish a magazine and organize plays. Tempo reporter Dewi Anggraeni has written their stories based on extensive research, to be published in a book in March. Maria Hasugian, who visited Hong Kong last month, complements Anggraenis research with a report of her own.

. tempo : 178043298325.

ON any working day, Hong Kong, the famous international trading port, may remind a visitor of places in China. In the main central business district on Victoria Island, Shanghai may momentarily overwhelm the ambiance more often saturated with Guangzhou. Shanghai touching with Guangzhou? How could that be? You ask. Well, Hong Kong indeed, is full of contradictions.

Cross the bay and step onto Kowloon, and keep going to the New Territories, along t

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