A young Indonesian man turns his back to a crowd, flexing his oiled-up muscles before picking up a stack of roof tiles, holding as many as he can in a pose reminiscent of Mr. Olympia.

This is a bodybuilding battle of a different kind — one where competitors are roof tile factory workers who pump clay instead of iron to bring attention to their dwindling trade.

In Java’s Jatiwangi city, an Indonesian hub for clay roof tile production nearly 200 kilometres from the capital, Jakarta, dozens of men have been lathering on oil to pose for crowds since 2015 to show they are not going anywhere.

The clay industry in Jatiwangi is more than a century old, when terracotta tiles drawing on local heritage were first made by hand to replace thatched house roofs.

They are now mostly used for housing,

See Full Page