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n alternative perspective about the history of this city mainly about the Chinese cultural identity and practices.

Lions of Stadhuis: The Speaking Silence and the Silencing Speaking
The questions about heritage and preservation of past cultural practices responded by the local government of Jakarta, through cultural heritage policy dated back to 1970. The cultural conservation zones in the area of Fatahillah square, located in the old city of Jakarta, is the result of the implementation of this policy. Walking around this square, I sensed 'nostalgia for the present' of the colonial time as passing the arrays of old building surrounding it.

Figure Stadhuis/Jakarta History Museum

Central to this square is the Stadhuis, City Hall of Batavia, which now serves as Museum Fatahillah or The Jakarta History Museum. Built in 1710, Stadhuis, had witnessed various cultural practices due to its status as the City Hall. Served as VOC and Dutch Colonial administrative headquarters, Stadhuis was the central for the Dutch authority to exercise power upon the people of Batavia. The centrality of this building continues up to current status as the Jakarta History Museum. As its name implied, the museum is the centre of the narrative for the history of Jakarta.

Built upon the old building and serving the narrative of the present, the Jakarta History Museum is more like the conjuncture of the two spatiality and temporalities. On one side, I faced the silent past confined, embedded, and carved in the architecture and the materials that construct the building. On the other side, I faced the present interpretation of the history as represented through the selection of collection it displays, the arrangement of the collections, and the division of collection rooms. Seeing from Bourdieu's perception, this suggests me to read the objective and subjective construction of realities; in this context, the objective side of the materiality constructed the building and the collections, and the subjective side of the selection, arrangement, and division.

Therefore, this leads me to analyse the narrative on history of Jakarta into two focuses. First, the narrative constructed by the structure of the building which in this context relates to the past time, and second the narrative arranged by selection, arrangement, and division of collections, which relates to the present interpretation about the past.

Built in classic baroque architectural design, the building is in dialogue with the red ceiling, the staircase, the door, the ornate stone floors, and two mythological lions which all of them constructed my perception about the visibility of Chinese cultural identity.

Pak Kasirun informed [2] me that the combination of red colour and the two lions symbolized 'the symbol of fortune because at that time a€|the building served as Batavia city halla€|.' and the ornaments of the building including 'a€|the profiles, the doors, a€|[which]were painted in red' referred to Chinese culture. And then, in response to my questions, he added that the Chinese had come long before the VOC came, and the Chinese were involved in the social orders of the city. In relation to the construction of the building, he added that the borrowing of the Chinese Culture was based on their research on Chinese culture and this relation (Chinese in Batavia and the Dutch), as I inferred