Keris (or not ?) with chinese handle

[A. G. Maisey]

I'd say almost certainly a Chinese deity Anthony, but which one? Chinese deities can be very difficult to identify from their attributes, firstly because there are so many Chinese deities, and secondly because each deity can be represented in various ways.

In Jawa, particularly along the North coast, the Ming admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He, or in Jawa, Sam Po Kong) is particularly revered, apart from being in command of a 15th century Ming Treasure Fleet, sent to make tributary states of kingdoms bordering the southern seas he also helped to bring Islam to Jawa. There is a temple in Semarang named after him, I don't know if he had it built, or it was built in his honour.

The Ming Treasure Fleets?

Well, that was an early Chinese attempt at exactly what China is doing now with Belt & Road:- turn the world into Chinese tributary states. This attempt failed because China got a new emperor who had Buddhist advisors and they thought that there were already more than enough problems running the country without generating more problems by putting tributary states on the books. So the "tribute or else" policy stopped.

Anyway, Sam Po Kong is sometimes shown with a fly whisk in one hand and scroll in the other, maybe if we swap the scroll for fortune sticks (kau cim) we might have good old Cheng Ho here.

Or maybe somebody else.