Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel)
Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (; translated to English as The Rose of Cikembang) is a 1927 vernacular Malay-language novel written by Kwee Tek Hoay. The seventeen-chapter book follows a plantation manager, Aij Tjeng, who must leave his beloved njai (concubine) Marsiti so that he can be married. Eighteen years later, after Aij Tjeng's daughter Lily dies, her fiancé Bian Koen discovers that Marsiti had a daughter with Aij Tjeng, Roosminah, who greatly resembles Lily. In the end Bian Koen and Roosminah are married. Inspired by the lyrics to the song "If Those Lips Could Only Speak" and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang was initially written as an outline for the stage drama troupe Union Dalia. Kwee intermixed several languages other than Malay, particularly Dutch, Sundanese, and English; he included two quotes from English poems and another from an English song. The novel has been interpreted variously as a promotion of theosophy, a treatise on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, a call for education, an ode to njais, and a condemnation of how such women are treated. The novel was initially published as a serial in Kwee's magazine Panorama; it proved to be his most popular work. By 1930 there had been a number of stage adaptations, not all of which were authorised, leading Kwee to ask readers to help him enforce his copyright. The work was filmed in 1931 by The Teng Chun and then in 1975 by Fred Young and Rempo Urip. Though not considered part of the Indonesian literary canon, the book ranks amongst the most reprinted works of Chinese Malay literature. It has been translated into Dutch and English. Plot Oh Aij Tjeng is a young ethnic Chinese man who runs a plantation in West Java. He lives there with his njai (concubine), a Sundanese woman named Marsiti. The two are deeply in love and promise to be faithful forever. However, not long afterwards Aij Tjeng's father Oh Pin Loh comes to tell Aij Tjeng that he has been betrothed to Gwat Nio, the daughter of the plantation's owner Liok Keng Djim. Marsiti is sent away by the elder Oh and, after Aij Tjeng orders his manservant Tirta to find her, Tirta disappears as well. After the marriage, Aij Tjeng finds in Gwat Nio all of the same traits which made him fall in love with Marsiti, but even more polished owing to her better education. He falls in love with her and begins to forget Marsiti, and the couple have a daughter, Lily. One day Keng Djim calls Aij Tjeng and Gwat Nio to his deathbed, where he confesses that he has recently learned that Marsiti was his daughter from a native njai he had taken as a youth, and that Marsiti had died. He greatly regrets that he and Pin Loh had her chased away from the plantation. Keng Djim hints that there is another secret to be shared, but dies before he can reveal it. Aij Tjeng calls for