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At the old age of 84, writer and Chinese literature expert Myra Sidharta’s passion for studying Chinese-Indonesian communities hasn’t faded over the years.

A third-generation Chinese-Indonesian, Myra’s most recognized essay is “In Search of My Ancestral Home,” her story of discovering her roots in Guaizitu, a small town in the province of Guangdong, China.

“A lot of people think that essay is my biography, but it’s not, I don’t have a biography yet,” Myra said with a laugh.

She was born as Ew Yong Tjhoen Moy in 1927 in Tanjung Pandan, a small town on Belitung Island. But a government ban on the use of Chinese names forced her to change her name to Myra Sidharta. The policy was a part of Suharto’s attempt to assimilate ethnic Chinese into broader Indonesian culture.

Despite her Chinese heritage, Myra said her family values were colored by Dutch culture because she and her five sisters attended Dutch schools in Belitung.

“I didn’t have many friends in school, because the Dutch school I went into in Belitung was not big and many students came and left,” Myra said.

However, her schooling enabled her to become fluent in English, Dutch, French, Indonesian and Mandarin.

Myra has been interested in her Chinese roots ever since she was a child when her grandfather told her stories of the country.

She remembers best his tales of hardship: for instance, when he had to give up his younger brother for adoption, or the story of his treacherous journey to Indonesia, when he nearly drowned in a storm at sea.

She majored in psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, but when Myra returned to Indonesia after graduating in 1958, she realized that Indonesian society at the time was not ready for psychologists.

“At that time, when people were stressed, they went to beauty parlors and talked to their hair stylist,” said Myra. “The idea of paying a psychologist to listen to your problems was unimaginable.”

Realizing that she would not be able to work in the field she studied, Myra turned to writing, contributing to publications such as Intisari, Femina, Tempo and Kompas.

She became intrigued at the lack of discourse about Chinese-Indonesians at local universities, and so decided to begin studying the issue.

At first, a professor told her not to pursue the topic because in the wake of the 1965 coup, which Suharto blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party, it was a politically sensitive issue.

But, Myra continued her research, traveling to far-flung areas of the Indonesia archipelago, including Sumatra, Timor, West Kalimantan and Bali. In 1982, she finally traveled to China to meet her grandfather’s family.

Over the years, Myra noticed that Chinese-Indonesians tended to live together in the same neighborhoods. In Jakarta, for example, their populations are centered in Pluit, Kota and Bintaro.

“The tendency to live together was spurred on by a shared need for familiar cuisine,” Myra said.

“At Pluit and BSD [Bumi Serpong Damai], you could find any kind of Chinese food, from typical Medan cuisine to Pontianak’s crab noodles,” she said, referring to food brought to Indonesia by early Chinese migrants.

However, when asked about her favorite meal, Myra said she preferred Western food to Peranakan (Chinese-Indonesian) fare.

She said she is the only one in her family who cannot cook. Myra regrets the fact that she cannot cook, an ability she views as “a gift.”

Besides a necessity, food for Myra is something to enjoy – with friends, family or even alone.

And even though she rarely ventures into the kitchen, she certainly knows a great deal about Chinese cuisine.

One of her published essays, “The Silent Invasion of Tofu,” looks at the long history of tofu in China and how the Javanese in Kediri, East Java, have had a taste for it ever since it was introduced by the invading troops of Kublai Khan in 1292.

Although Myra lived through many political upheavals in Indonesia, she said as a Chinese-Indonesian she rarely felt discriminated against.

“However, my husband, Priguna Sidharta, was often discriminated against [because many patients preferred him to other doctors because he was Chinese.] Mostly it was due to the jealousy of the other doctors,” she said.

Over the years, Myra has seen a great deal of changes within the Chinese-Indonesian community.

Unlike the situation decades ago, Myra sees that Chinese-Indonesians today play a vital role in politics.

However, she said, it would be difficult to unite all Chinese-Indonesians in a political party, because each one has different ideas of what the ethnic group should be. Some like to speak to one another in Mandarin and keep their culture alive, while others don’t place so much emphasis on that and prefer to blend in with the mainstream.

Chinese-Indonesian culture has changed in some ways. In the past, wealthy housewives in the community were not allowed to work, but today many own fancy boutiques, she said.

“Although they may lack customers, they feel the need to open the shop so they have something to do,” Myra said. “And even if they don’t make a profit, they are still able to get money from their husbands.”

As for Indonesians in general, Myra has seen a growing interest in the lives of Chinese-Indonesians.

“They feel that they haven’t got enough knowledge about Chinese-Indonesians and they often ask me about our customs,” she said.

Myra, currently researching the lives of Chinese-Indonesians in Chinese temples, says she has no other plans in mind.

“When you’re old, you don’t make plans anymore.”