page_title: Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel)
section_title: Performances and adaptations
hierarchical_section_title: Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel) / Performances and adaptations
caption_attribution_description: Bahasa Indonesia: Iklan untuk penampilan sandiwara Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang oleh Dardanella di Royal Bioscoop, Medan tahun 1930. English: Ad for a performance by Dardanella of Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang in Royal Bioscoop, Medan, 1930.
context_page_description: Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang 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 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 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.
context_section_description: Stage performances and adaptations of Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang began before the novel was completed, beginning with the Union Dalia performance in 1927. By 1930 numerous native and ethnic-Chinese troupes had performed the story; some received direct help from Kwee.  Though these stage performances were sometimes credited for the novel's success, Kwee discounted the idea, writing that the two mediums were different and, in adaptations, changes were necessary. He noted the tendency of native troupes to emphasise Marsiti's role as one such change and considered most such adaptations – excepting those performed by Dardanella – to be of poor quality. He also found wrote that Native troupes generally did not pay him for the right to use the story, and in the 1930 edition Kwee asked readers to help him enforce his copyright by informing Panorama of any illegal performances. Stage performances have continued into the 2000s.
  The novel has twice been adapted for film. The first adaptation, released in 1931, was directed by The Teng Chun. The sinologist Leo Suryadinata lists it as the first domestically produced sound film in the Dutch East Indies, although the film historian Misbach Yusa Biran suggests that there was already a domestic talkie released in 1930. In 1975 an adaptation was made by Fred Young and Rempo Urip under the title Bunga Roos dari Cikembang. Although the main points of the story remained the same, several of the Chinese names were Indonesianised. Oh Aij Cheng, for example, was renamed Wiranta, while Gwat Nio's name was changed to Salmah.
caption: An advertisement for a performance of Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang in Medan by Dardanella, 1930
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