[4][1][2] On his father’s death in 1884, Luitenant Tan Tjin Kie was passed over in the succession in favor of an older Chinese officer, befitting the established custom of the time.
[2] When the Captaincy again became vacant in 1888, Luitenant Tan Tjin Kie, aged 35, finally succeeded to the headman post of Kapitein of Cirebon, an office once occupied by his father, granduncle, grandfather and great-grandfather.
[4] In 1909, the Dutch authorities awarded the Kapitein with the Gouden Ster voor Trouw en Verdienste, the highest rank in the colonial equivalent of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
[5] In 1913, in celebration of Tan’s 25th-year jubilee as a Chinese officer and in recognition of his role in resolving the Arab-Chinese conflict of 1912, the Dutch colonial government elevated the Kapitein to the rank of Majoor-titulair der Chinezen.
[5] Majoor-titulair Tan Tjin Kie was part of this tradition, collecting Javanese masks, puppets and rare manuscripts, and maintaining private gamelan orchestras.
[3][5] Accompanied by a platoon of police officers sent by Johan Paul, Count van Limburg-Stirum, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, there was a four-horse carriage with a portrait of the deceased.
[3][5] After a procession of members of various organizations and schoolchildren under the late Majoor’s patronage, his coffin arrived in a four-horse carriage, pulled in addition by 250 coolies in uniform.
[5] De Preangerbode, a colonial newspaper, estimated the funeral and associated costs at 280,000 guilders, excluding a 300,000-guilder mausoleum built for the deceased Majoor by his children.