| Eurasians: The First British Born Chinese? |
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| Saturday, 30 June 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I am a Eurasian. I am the daughter of an English mother and a Shanghai father. In traditional Chinese culture, having a Chinese father, I am regarded as being Chinese. I am part of a community that has been around for over 100 years. We pre-date by many decades what many people seem to think is the point at which Britains' Chinese community came into being. The 1950s, when people from Hong Kong's New Territories started to come to the UK. Our fathers' origins Chinese men started to settle down in Britain in the last years of the nineteenth century. Right from the start they seemed to have few problems in getting partners amongst the working class girls of the cities in which they settled. Not very surprising when up to World War Two and even beyond it marriage for a young woman could mean violence and the most desperate poverty. John Chinaman, as he was called at the time, was clean, sober, hard working and a good father. And, of course, more often than not he was quite a handsome man! But where did these men come from? For many, the answer they gave to any official who asked was ‘Hong Kong'. But that tells us little. A Chinese seaman had to take an English language test - unless he was from Hong Kong. So there were few who were prepared to say that they were not from Hong Kong unless they had confidence in their English language skills! Where they were actually from ranged from Hainan Island to Fukien and Tientsin. But since Shanghai was by far the most important commercial city in China and its major port, it seems that many were recruited there and in the nearby city of Ningbo. Liverpool and London There were always two groups of us Mark I British Chinese. One set of us in London and the other in Liverpool. And why in these two places? Simple. Because from the first half of the twentieth century they were Britain's major ports and most of our fathers were merchant seamen or ex-seamen. Now the majority of BBCs are in London. And yet for the first half of the last century, Liverpool always had the largest number of British Born Chinese - the Eurasians. And this was all due to the company that employed the most Chinese seamen, the Liverpool-based shipping company Alfred Holt. The company did have vessels trading through London, often using its Dutch subsidiary line, but Liverpool was its main port and it was generally in Liverpool that its men settled. But how many Chinese men did settle in Liverpool? In truth, up to the Second World War the numbers in Liverpool were never large. But there were enough of them marrying local girls to start a small population of we Liverpool Eurasians. According to the Liverpool papers of the early twentieth century, we were already appearing in the schools by 1906. But the population of Eurasians received a big boost with the First World War when around 6,000 Chinese mariners were serving in the British merchant fleet. Recruited to replace the British sailors drafted into the Royal Navy, some started families and a there are a number of Liverpool's present day Anglo-Chinese who can trace their roots back to this time. Sadly, in a pattern that was to repeat itself after World War II, many of the men were forced out of the country when the War ended. Even men who had been in the UK for many years had to go, leaving behind families that were never to see them again.  Assimilation At any one time the population of Eurasians seems to have been numbered in dozens rather than hundreds. Often, their parents ran the ‘Chinese' laundries spread throughout the city. This meant that the culture in which the children grew up was essentially that of their mothers' - that of Liverpool's working class. Eurasian children's contact with the culture of their fathers was generally minimal. Whilst the men may have gathered together on Sundays in the city's small Chinatown, wives and families met together only on special occasions. The Chinese community, such as it was, consisted mainly of this grouping of Chinese men and those living in Chinatown. And this existed largely to service the Chinese seamen ashore between voyages and was itself made up of Anglo-Chinese families. When the children grew, more often than not they married members of the surrounding community. Some Eurasians married other Eurasians. A few of the girls married Chinese men. But largely within one generation the first BBCs had become British in culture and language and, in varying degrees, Chinese only in the way they looked. ‘Pure Chinese' But what of those whose parents were both Chinese? Chinese women were a great rarity in Britain up to the 1950s. The Alien's Act of 1910 made it difficult for unaccompanied Chinese females to get into the country. Women travelling alone were assumed to be members of the Oldest Profession and forbidden entry. But Chinese culture of the time was an even greater barrier. Men travelled to make money. Wives stayed in the village and looked after elderly parents. And village elders were well aware that if the women left, the men would never return. Therefore, the women were not allowed to leave. It was only as China dissolved into chaos in the 1920s and 1930s that small numbers of Chinese women start to appear in the UK. Many of these seem to have been Cantonese who came in via Hong Kong. We then have a small number of all Chinese families in Liverpool at this time with their ‘pure Chinese' children. But were they ‘pure Chinese' or BBCs? If language is the determinant, then they were not ‘pure Chinese'. Like the Eurasians, it seems that they too were absorbed into the culture around them. They too were BBCs like the Eurasians - more British than Chinese. All this was taking place just as the number of Chinese seamen settling in the city fell. The Depression and its impact upon shipping saw to this. So, by the end of the 1930s we have a Eurasian population that is being assimilated but not replaced by new members and a small number of ‘pure Chinese' children. Then came World War Two. Population Explosion and Disaster At the beginning of the Second World War there were approximately 20,000 Chinese seamen based in Liverpool. Many of these were from Shanghai and Singapore. The Eurasian population rocketed. By the end of the War there were hundreds of us with Shanghai fathers. Then disaster. As had happened after the First World War, the men were forced out. Government instructions were that married men were not to be told they had a right to remain in the UK. They were not to be offered jobs ashore. The shipping lines cut their pay to little more than a third of their earnings during the War. They were offered only one-way voyages back to China. Some men were able to get ships back to the UK but the shipping lines were very selective. Any man who was considered to be a ‘troublemaker' was blackballed and Alfred Holt in particular was keen to get rid of the Shanghai men. During the War, there had been two Chinese Seamen's Unions. One backed by the Kuomintang Party the members of which were mainly Cantonese. The other, a Communist Union. It seems its membership was predominantly Shanghai and Singaporean men and it was these men who were to be kept out of the UK. The Iron Curtain had fallen and anyone with Communist connections was persona non grata. By August 1946 there were hundreds of Liverpool women whose husbands had been made to leave the city. And there were a thousand or more of us - Eurasians who would grow up with even less contact with our father's culture than the Liverpool Eurasians who had come before us. British Born Chinese - or British? Few of my generation have had any contact with China or its culture. Of the generation of Eurasians who came after me in the 1950s whose father's were seaman and who mainly came from Guandong Province, the picture is the same. Of the Liverpool Eurasians that I know, I am the only one who has lived in a Chinese city. And Hong Kong is certainly that. But I do not speak any Chinese dialect. I know only what I have learned as an adult about Chinese history and the culture of the land from where my father came. Does that make me a BBC or simply British? Genetically, I am half Chinese. Culturally I am British. But what is a BBC? Are the generations that came after me any different? Those whose parents were both Chinese. Only they can say. I would love to know. Yvonne Foley For more information about Liverpool's early Chinese Community, see http://www.halfandhalf.org.uk/
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