In Jawa people who identify themselves as Chinese , and who are identified by others as being a part of the Chinese community have absorbed a very large part of Javanese culture, which they tend to identify not as Javanese culture, but as their own culture. This applies to native born Javanese Chinese, most particularly to those who come from a family that has been in Jawa for a lengthy period of time.
Yes, some elements of original Chinese culture are in evidence, but there are beliefs and practices that are not Chinese, but rather Javanese, that the Chinese-Javanese ( and I guess, the Chinese-Indonesian) person will claim to be a part of Chinese culture that can be positively identified as being borrowed from Javanese or some other local culture ( in the case of Chinese -Indonesian).
This particularly applies to those Chinese communities that are located in the old seats of Javanese power, such as Surakarta and Jogjakarta. In these places it is often quite difficult to determine exactly where Javanese culture stops and Chinese culture starts. For example , the Chinese businessman and art connoisseur, Go Tik Swan, rose to an elevated position in the Karaton Surakarta with the designation of Panembahan Harjonegoro. In these old Karaton cities the Chinese and Javanese communities are so interwoven that it is difficult to view them as separate entities, rather it is perhaps easier to view them as slightly different threads of the same culture.
During the upheavals of the 1960's, many Chinese people fled from other locations in Jawa, notably in East Jawa, to Central Jawa, because they had the perception that this was a safer environment for them. This does not mean that there is no anti-Chinese feeling in these Central Javanese locations. Of course there is. The burnings, riots and rapes of only a few years ago are ample evidence of this. However, upon analysis this recent violence can perhaps be identified as situational violence directed at people identified as Chinese, rather than as a culturally based violence.
In Jawa it is not unusual to find people living and accepted as Javanese, who are in fact of Chinese descent and who at a different period in their lives had lived as members of a Chinese community.
In respect of weaponry, we should be careful not to accept a practice noted in an individual family, or a group of families, as being a general practice that can be applied across an entire community upon the basis of a cultural division that is often quite difficult to identify.
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