Heroes: Tragic and Comic This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, chilling in a shopping mall coffee shop half the temperature that bathes the city outside its sliding glass doors guarded by a pair of goons in blue and white pressed uniforms, until you take a closer look. The products and prices are western, made in China, Korea, Japan, western as it’s come to be known, lipsticks, yoga mats, silk blouses, skin creams, cappucinnos, handbags, donuts. The shoppers are Chinese, an affluent minority constituting roughly a fifth of Surabaya, the highest density of Chinese in the country. Many of them live in concrete mansions towering above the floodline, drive luxury sedans and tinted SUVs, employ a half dozen housekeepers, a cook, a driver, a gardener, wander the air-conditioned mall in their best clothes, eat western food and
... read more