The
Solo kraton remained the capital of Mataram for less than a
decade. The king's brothers were still in revolt, and his son
not only saw Mataram divided between Yogya and himself, but
also had to suffer the foundation of a new junior court, the
Mangkunegaran, under his very nose. Since the fire in Kraton
Hadiningrat, this palace has upstaged the main kraton as a tourist
attraction; sporting an imposing central pendopo of Javanese
teak with an Italian marble floor, a famous gamelan, and a museum
of topeng
masks
and wayang puppets. It was twice restored by a Dutch architect,
Thomas Karsten, before the war, and remains the best maintained
of Java's kraton. The Mangkunegaran Palace is north of the Kraton
Surakarta, across the railway tracks. Further north is an independent
cultural museum, Museum Radyapustaka, which was founded in 1890.
Indonesia's first railway line, begun in 1867, linked Solo with
Semarang. In earlier days the Solo river, Java's longest, carried
boat traffic from Solo to the Strait of Madura, about 300 kilometers
away.
In those
times, Solo's wealth derived from the fertility of its lands
and the labor of its subjects. Today, light industry is increasingly
important. Solo's batik industry is organized on a larger scale
than in Yogya. Some of the largest batik companies in Indonesia,
including Batik Keris, have their headquarters here. Traditional
Solo batik, famous for its natural, soft brown dyes against
a mellow yellowish background, is still available at Pasar Klewer,
the the main batik market.
Solo has
no great temple complex in its vicinity to match Yogya's Prambanan.
However, 36 kilometers to the east, on the slopes of Mt. Lawu,
is one of the island's most intriguing and unusual antiquities,
Candi Sukuh. Though within present-day Central Java, this temple
historically belongs to East Java and Majapahit. Built around
1430, during the declining years of the empire, Sukuh is the
end of the process of architectural and religious assimilation
which began at Dieng; still a Hindu temple of sorts, but with
the Indian elements all but overwhelmed by Javanese innovations.
The central monument is a stepped pyramid, almost like a Mexican
ruin. Some see this as a resurgence of a form of terrace used
for ancestor worship long before Indian influences ever arrived
in Java. Sukuh seems to be associated with a cult of the wayang
hero Bima; in addition, a wealth of sexual imagery suggests
a fertility cult. A realistic set of male and female genitalia
carved in stone, fragrant with recent flower offerings, adorns
the floor of one of the entrances. Despite the airy views from
910 meters and the erotic humor of the reliefs, Sukuh is an
unsettling, almost demonic place in its setting of dark pines.
With its images of animals - giant turtles, elephant men, staring
pigs - it is reminiscent of a painting by Bosch.
Candi
Ceto, built 50 years later, is also on Mt. Lawu, seven kilometers
further north and 600 meters higher. Little remains of the original
structure, but the pendopo and Balinese split gates have recently
been reconstructed on the old terraces. Near Karangpandan, on
the road to Sukuh and Ceto, is the spot which former-President
Suharto has chosen as his final resting place. He was born and
raised in the Yogya area, but Makam Suharto looks out over the
broader sawah of the Solo valley. Suharto's elaborate mausoleum
pendopo was completed in 1977, but will not be open to the public
until he lies there in state.
Beyond
Karangpandan, a road winds through misty forests to the mountain
re sorts of Tawangmangu, which has marvelous gardens, and to
Sarangan, the usual starting-point for an ascent of Mt Lawu.
Sarangan is beyond the boundaries of the Yogyakarta Special
Region and commands views over the old railway town of Madiun.
Sangiran,
15 kilometers north of Solo is an important anthropological
site that was first excavated in the 1930s. The 1.8 million-year-old
skulls found here have given rise to heated debate as to wether
they represent a link between Pithecanthropus erectus and Homo
sapiens. The Sangiran Site Museum displays replicas of these
skulls, as well as plant fossils.
THE
NORTH COAST
Tegal
and Pekalongan are the first towns on the Central Javanese coast
east of Cirebon. Tegal is a growing, light industrial center
known mainly for its ubiquitous emigrants, who sell food from
their war-teg (warung in Tegal) from Jakarta to Surabaya. Pekalongan,
however, is Kota Batik (Batik City), where the wives of generals
and diplomats order their batik. Before the war, Eliza van ZuyIen,
a Eurasian working in Pekalongan, set technical standards for
batik manufacture which have never been equalled, with her Dutch-inspired
floral patterns. During the war, Japanese models inspired the
town's famous Hokukai Batik. Today, Javanese, Arab, Chinese
and European entrepreneurs design and produce batik here and,
while there is reputedly such a thing as "traditional Pekalongan
batik," the real "tradition" is one of innovation.
The very best workshops, which take as much as eight months
to complete a single piece, are in surrounding villages like
Kedungwangi.
SEMARANG
 The
port of Semarang, not the old royal town of Solo, is the provincial
capital and biggest city in Central Java. From 1678, when it
was the first part of Mataram to be ceded to the VOC, until
1948, when it was the base for an airborne assault on Yogya,
Semarang was a Dutch beach-head on the Javanese heartland and
a conduit through which its wealth was extracted. Dutch warehouses
and offices are still much in evidence downtown. An 18th-century
church, Gereja Blenduk, with a green copper dome and an imposing
classical portico, is still in use, although the baroque organ
is no longer in working order, Much of its congregation is Chinese;
Chinese traders were here long before the Dutch made Semarang
their own, and have outlasted them as masters of Semarang's
commerce. The Sam Poo Kong Temple in the southwest of the city,
is dedicated to a sanctified Chinese Muslim said to have visited
this coast in the 15th century Chinese and Indonesians worship
together here. Klenteng Gang Lombok is a ore conventional Chinese
temple, dating from 1772.
Although
the old Chinatown is still distinguishable around the klenteng,
the richer Chinese businessmen have abandoned the blackout-ridden,
old town center to join their Indonesian patrons in the elite
suburb of Candi Baru, on the hills overlooking the city.
Because
of the massive social changes it has witnessed, Semarang's 20th
century history has been turbulent. Henk SneevIiet, the Dutchman
who introduced Marxism to the Indies in 1913, was active in
the Railway Workers' Union here; he and his Javanese comrade
Semaun made Semarang the capital of early Indonesian radicalism.
Thirty years later, 2000 nationalist rebels died here in one
of the most bizarre and tragic battles of the Indonesian revolution.
After initially allowing Indonesians to take over, Japanese
troops, on British orders, recaptured the city in October 1945.
However, six days later the Japanese were relieved by "British"
troops who were in fact Indians, themselves not-so-willing colonial
subjects. The Tugu Muda Monument in the city center commemorates
the Indonesian dead.
Every
year, Java's north coast advances imperceptibly seaward. Semarang
owes its growth partly to the fact that it has not suffered
as badly from the creeping mud as old rivals further east. When
the Europeans first arrived, the greatest trading ports of Java
were not Banten, Jakarta, Cirebon and Semarang, but obscure
places, now almost forgotten by the world, on the curve of coast
between Semarang and Surabaya.
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