Global InformationKho Ping Hoo information
Kho Ping Hoo | |||||||
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| Born | 1926 Sragen, Dutch East Indies | ||||||
| Died | 22 July 1994 (aged 67–68) Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia | ||||||
| Other names | Asmaraman Sukowati | ||||||
| Occupation | Writer | ||||||
| Years active | 1950s–1994 | ||||||
| Known for | Martial arts novels | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Chinese | 李杰登 | ||||||
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Kho Ping Hoo (1926 – 22 July 1994), also known by his pen name Asmaraman Sukowati, was a Chinese Indonesian author of fiction. He mostly wrote martial arts stories inspired by the wuxia genre and set in historical China and Indonesia, but also produced romances and disaster stories.
Born in Sragen to a sugar broker, Kho spent much of his early life as an iterant worker. In the 1950s, following some time at a refugee camp, Kho settled in Tasikmalaya. Having read extensively, he began writing short stories and established a literary magazine. For the latter, he began work on his first serial, Pek Liong Po Kiam ("The Heirloom Sword White Dragon", 1959). As Kho continued to write, he purchased a printing press and, after moving to Surakarta in 1963, established the Gema Publishing House. Having experienced racially motivated violence on several occasions, he promoted the assimilation of Chinese Indonesians and their and intermarriage with the indigenous population.
By the time of his death, Kho had produced more than 130 titles. Most were published in monthly instalments, with an average of thirty-five volumes per title. Kho wrote almost exclusively in Indonesian, though he used Hokkien loan words and published one title in Javanese. Aside from one, his stories were original works that drew on the corpus of Indonesian-language translations of Chinese wuxia novels. In his martial arts fiction, his characters were primarily ksatria (warrior aristocrats) who left the court in search of excitement, knowledge, or vengeance. His novels were adapted to stage, radio, and film.