Nio was born on 29 December 1904 in Batavia,
Dutch East Indies (now
Jakarta, Indonesia), the son of a rich
batik merchant and his wife. Other sources state that he was born in
Paalmerah,
Djambi Residency. He had a varied education, doing elementary school at a
Hollandsch Chineesche School, home-schooling in the Chinese language, and intermediate schooling in a Bible School and at the ; as a teenager Nio began studying to become an
aircraft maintenance engineer, a trade rare in the
Dutch East Indies. Although he completed his studies in 1924, Nio was unable to enter the field; his father had died recently and his mother had been cheated out of the factory. Instead Nio, with the help of
Lauw Giok Lan, his classmate's father, became a journalist with the newspaper
Keng Po and the magazine
Penghiboer. From 1928 to 1935 he served as
Keng Po's editor before a reorganization in 1935 when he left for
Sin Po, a competing paper. After transferring to
Sin Po, Nio generally avoided mixing politics with his journalism, focusing instead on culture. Meanwhile, he wrote articles on various topics, including
Chinese Malay literature, in Dutch journals such as
De Indische Gids as well as English ones such as
The China Journal. He was considered to be one of the main Malay-language writers about Chinese culture in his time; he also published a now-classic Dutch-language piece about Sino-Malay literature in in 1937. By this time he had become active in
social work with the
Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan, serving as its secretary. In 1939 Nio was part of a team which wrote a book commemorating the Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan's 40th anniversary. Sensing the cultural shift, by 1940 he stopped writing in English and Dutch and wrote almost exclusively in Indonesian. When the
Japanese occupied the Indies in February 1942, Nio was one of at least 542 ethnic Chinese from
Java and
Madura who were arrested and detained. He was held in Bukit Duri, then Serang, and then Cimahi, before ultimately being released in 1945 after the
Japanese surrender and
Indonesian proclamation of independence. A written account of his experiences while an internee was published in 1946, with the title
Dalem Tawanan Djepang. Sinologist
Myra Sidharta describes it as valuable account of history, as other former prisoners did not write such detailed memoirs. Following his release Nio returned to Batavia (since renamed Jakarta) and
Sin Po (which had recently restarted publication after three years of inactivity), heading that newspaper until 1958. At the same time he established the family-magazine
Pantja Warna (1947–56). In the late 1950s Nio enrolled himself at the Jakarta Teachers' College, studying history. By 1963 he was a lecturer there, teaching history, while working freelance to translate works of Chinese literature, including parts of the
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the
Ballad of Hua Mulan, and
The Creation of the Gods. After 1965 he began writing more on the ethnic Dutch of the Indies. Nio continued writing until 1972, dying on 13 February of the following year. According to Sidharta, during his life Nio produced almost 200 written works; nearly all were about the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. ==Partial bibliography==