Chinese of Calcutta
Encyclopedia
The Chinese community in India are a community of immigrants and their descendants that emigrated from China
starting in the late 18th century to work at the Calcutta port. Unofficial estimates put the number of Chinese in Kolkata anywhere from 5,000 to 200,000, most of whom live in or near Chinatown
in Tangra
.
The ethnic Chinese
have contributed to many areas of the social and economic life of Kolkata. Today a majority are engaged in business with a major segment involved in the manufacturing and trade of leather
products. A sizeable number are also owners and workers in Chinese restaurants. Kolkata is the only city in India to have a Chinatown
, the only other Chinatown to exist (in Mumbai
) has disappeared.
in the Fifth Century A.D. Records of immigration for the next sixteen centuries are not reliable although many words in Bengali
can be attributed to Chinese influences. For example chini, the Bengali word for "sugar" comes from the word for China, and words like Chinamati for porcelain
china hint at Chinese influences.
Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, was the capital of British India from 1772 to 1911. It was also geographically the easiest accessible metropolitan area from China by land. The first person of Chinese origin to arrive in Calcutta was Yang Tai Chow who arrived in 1778. He worked in a sugar mill with the eventual goal of saving enough to start a tea trade. Many of the earliest immigrants worked on the Khidderpore docks. A police report in 1788 mentions a sizeable Chinese population settled in the vicinity of Bow Bazaar Street.
During the time of Warren Hastings
, the first governor-general of British India, a businessman by the name of Tong Achi established a steel mill at Achipur, 33 km from Calcutta, on the bank of the Hooghly River near Budge Budge. A temple and the grave of Tong Achi still remain and are visited by many Chinese who come from the city during the Chinese New Year
.
One of the earliest records of immigration from China can be found in a short treatise from 1820. This records hints that the first wave of immigration was of Hakkas
but does not elaborate on the professions of these immigrants. According to a later police census, there were 362 in Calcutta in 1837. A common meeting place was the Temple of Guan Yu, the god of war, located in the Chinese quarter near Dharmatolla. A certain C. Alabaster mentions in 1849 that Cantonese carpenters congregated in the Bow Bazar Street area. As late as 2006, Bow Bazar is still noted for carpentry, but few of the workers or owners are now Chinese.
According to Alabaster there were lard manufacturers and shoemakers in addition to carpenters. Running tanneries and working with leather
was traditionally not considered a respectable profession among upper-caste Hindus, and work was relegated to lower caste muchis and chamar
s. There was a high demand, however, for high quality leather goods in colonial India
, one that the Chinese were able to fulfill. Alabaster also mentions licensed opium
dens run by native Chinese and a Cheena Bazaar where contraband was readily available. Opium, however, was not illegal until after India's Independence from Great Britain
in 1947. Immigration continued unabated through the turn of the century and during World War I
partly due to the fact that China was undergoing political upheavals such as the Opium Wars
, First Sino-Japanese War
and the Boxer Rebellion
. Around the time of the First World War, the first Chinese-owned tanneries sprung up.
the Indian National Congress
-dominated government. Chinese businesses were investigated for links to the Chinese government and many people of
Chinese origin were interned in prisons in North India.
India's Independence from Britain did not hinder the influx of Chinese into Kolkata. In 1961, there were close to 7,000. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 ended further immigration from communist
China. An unknown number left (most for Australia
, Canada
, and the United States
). Further, those that remained were often suspected of collaboration with an enemy nation. According to a 2005 documentary, some were sent to an internment camp in Rajasthan
The situation was alleviated when India and China resumed diplomatic relations in 1976. However, it was not until 1998 that ethnic Chinese were allowed naturalized Indian citizenship. In 2005, the first road sign in Chinese characters was put up in Chinatown, Tangra.
) and Indian culinary traditions have given rise to a widely available form, Indian Chinese cuisine
.
There is one Chinese newspaper published in the city, The Overseas Chinese Commerce in India but figures from 2005 show that sales have dwindled from 500 to 300 copies sold.
At one time, 90% of the students of the Grace Ling Liang English School
were ethnic Chinese. In 2003, they comprised only about 15% of the 1500 students.
Many of the Chinese of Calcutta are Christians. A large number of the younger generations became Christians due to the influence of missionary schools they studied in. The Chinese New Year remains widely observed. Hakka Chinese of Calcutta tend to be endogamous.
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
starting in the late 18th century to work at the Calcutta port. Unofficial estimates put the number of Chinese in Kolkata anywhere from 5,000 to 200,000, most of whom live in or near Chinatown
Chinatown, Kolkata
Chinatown in the eastern part of the city of Kolkata is the only Chinatown in India. The locality was once home to 20,000 ethnic Chinese, now the population has dropped to 2,000 or so. The traditional occupation of the Chinese community here had been working in the nearby tanning industry and the...
in Tangra
Tangra, Calcutta
Tangra is a region in east Kolkata that traditionally housed a large number of tanneries owned by people of Hakka Chinese origin. "47 South Tangra Road", may be the most confusing postal address, as it used to cover the whole of Chinatown Tangra with over 350 tanneries...
.
The ethnic Chinese
Ethnic Chinese
Ethnic Chinese may refer to:*Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macao, the Republic of China and Singapore....
have contributed to many areas of the social and economic life of Kolkata. Today a majority are engaged in business with a major segment involved in the manufacturing and trade of leather
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
products. A sizeable number are also owners and workers in Chinese restaurants. Kolkata is the only city in India to have a Chinatown
Chinatown
A Chinatown is an ethnic enclave of overseas Chinese people, although it is often generalized to include various Southeast Asian people. Chinatowns exist throughout the world, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, and Europe. Binondo's Chinatown located in Manila,...
, the only other Chinatown to exist (in Mumbai
Chinatown, Mumbai
Up to the 1960s Mumbai had a small Chinatown in Mazagaon. After the 1962 Sino-Indian War, most Chinese were viewed as traitors, and left the town. Currently, Mumbai has a small ethnic Chinese population of 400 families. The Chinese temple and cemetery are both located at Mazagaon....
) has disappeared.
Immigration
The first record of travel from China is provided in the travelogue of Fa-Hien who visited Tampralipta, in what is now TamlukTamluk
Tamluk is the district headquarters of Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal, India. Though there is some controversy, scholars have generally agreed that present day Tamluk is the site of the ancient city variously known as Tamralipta or Tamralipti...
in the Fifth Century A.D. Records of immigration for the next sixteen centuries are not reliable although many words in Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
can be attributed to Chinese influences. For example chini, the Bengali word for "sugar" comes from the word for China, and words like Chinamati for porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
china hint at Chinese influences.
Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, was the capital of British India from 1772 to 1911. It was also geographically the easiest accessible metropolitan area from China by land. The first person of Chinese origin to arrive in Calcutta was Yang Tai Chow who arrived in 1778. He worked in a sugar mill with the eventual goal of saving enough to start a tea trade. Many of the earliest immigrants worked on the Khidderpore docks. A police report in 1788 mentions a sizeable Chinese population settled in the vicinity of Bow Bazaar Street.
During the time of Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...
, the first governor-general of British India, a businessman by the name of Tong Achi established a steel mill at Achipur, 33 km from Calcutta, on the bank of the Hooghly River near Budge Budge. A temple and the grave of Tong Achi still remain and are visited by many Chinese who come from the city during the Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year – often called Chinese Lunar New Year although it actually is lunisolar – is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is an all East and South-East-Asia celebration...
.
One of the earliest records of immigration from China can be found in a short treatise from 1820. This records hints that the first wave of immigration was of Hakkas
Hakka people
The Hakka , sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and have links to the provincial areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian in China....
but does not elaborate on the professions of these immigrants. According to a later police census, there were 362 in Calcutta in 1837. A common meeting place was the Temple of Guan Yu, the god of war, located in the Chinese quarter near Dharmatolla. A certain C. Alabaster mentions in 1849 that Cantonese carpenters congregated in the Bow Bazar Street area. As late as 2006, Bow Bazar is still noted for carpentry, but few of the workers or owners are now Chinese.
Leather
Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...
was traditionally not considered a respectable profession among upper-caste Hindus, and work was relegated to lower caste muchis and chamar
Chamar
Chamar |tanner]]"; from the Sanskrit Charmakara) is a prominent occupational caste in India, Pakistan and Nepal. Chamar is a Dalit sub-caste mainly found in the northern states, such as Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi and in Nepal at least north to the Himalayas...
s. There was a high demand, however, for high quality leather goods in colonial India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
, one that the Chinese were able to fulfill. Alabaster also mentions licensed opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
dens run by native Chinese and a Cheena Bazaar where contraband was readily available. Opium, however, was not illegal until after India's Independence from Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
in 1947. Immigration continued unabated through the turn of the century and during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
partly due to the fact that China was undergoing political upheavals such as the Opium Wars
Opium Wars
The Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, divided into the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, were the climax of disputes over trade and diplomatic relations between China under the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire...
, First Sino-Japanese War
First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea...
and the Boxer Rebellion
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...
. Around the time of the First World War, the first Chinese-owned tanneries sprung up.
Sino-Indian War of 1962
During the Sino-Indian conflict, the Chinese faced anti-national sentiment unleashed bythe Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
-dominated government. Chinese businesses were investigated for links to the Chinese government and many people of
Chinese origin were interned in prisons in North India.
India's Independence from Britain did not hinder the influx of Chinese into Kolkata. In 1961, there were close to 7,000. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 ended further immigration from communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
China. An unknown number left (most for Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
). Further, those that remained were often suspected of collaboration with an enemy nation. According to a 2005 documentary, some were sent to an internment camp in Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
The situation was alleviated when India and China resumed diplomatic relations in 1976. However, it was not until 1998 that ethnic Chinese were allowed naturalized Indian citizenship. In 2005, the first road sign in Chinese characters was put up in Chinatown, Tangra.
Today
The Chinese today work as tannery-owners, sauce manufacturers, shoeshop owners, and restaurateurs. A number of them run beauty parlours in the city. Among services, dentistry is a traditional occupation that is being welcomed by the new generation. Many of the shoe shops lining Bentick Street, near Dharmatolla, are owned and operated by Chinese. A number of restaurants dotting the city are also owned by the Chinese. Fusions of Chinese (especially HakkaHakka cuisine
Hakka cuisine is the cooking style of the Hakka people, who are primarily found in southeastern China , but also may be found in many other parts of China, as well as in the Chinese diaspora...
) and Indian culinary traditions have given rise to a widely available form, Indian Chinese cuisine
Indian Chinese cuisine
Indian Chinese cuisine is the adaptation of Chinese seasoning and cooking techniques to Indian tastes. It is said to have been developed by the small Chinese community that has lived in Kolkata for over a century...
.
There is one Chinese newspaper published in the city, The Overseas Chinese Commerce in India but figures from 2005 show that sales have dwindled from 500 to 300 copies sold.
At one time, 90% of the students of the Grace Ling Liang English School
Grace Ling Liang English School
Grace Ling Liang English School is a school in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.-History:The Rev. Dr. and Mrs. T. David Lamb, a missionary couple that came to India from Shanghai, China in 1949, founded the Grace Ling Liang English School in January 1974...
were ethnic Chinese. In 2003, they comprised only about 15% of the 1500 students.
Many of the Chinese of Calcutta are Christians. A large number of the younger generations became Christians due to the influence of missionary schools they studied in. The Chinese New Year remains widely observed. Hakka Chinese of Calcutta tend to be endogamous.
Notable Indian people of Chinese descent
- Meiyang ChаngMeiyang ChаngMeiyang Chang is an Indian actor, television host, singer and qualified dentist.- Personal life :Meiyang Chang studied in Dhanbad, Dehradun, Mussoorie, and Bangalore. He attended Colonel Brown Cambridge School in Dehradun and Wynberg Allen School in Mussoorie...
- Indian actor and singer. Finalist for Indian Idol 3 - Jwala Gutta - Indian badminton player
- Lawrence LiangLawrence LiangLawrence Liang is an Indian Chinese legal researcher and lawyer based in the city of Bangalore, who is known for his legal campaigns on issues of public concern...
- Indian legal researcher and lawyer - Nelson WangNelson WangNelson Wang is a restaurateur in India, founder of the famous China Garden restaurant in Mumbai's Kemps Corner neighbourhood. Various sources credit him with the invention of the popular Indian/Chinese dish "Chicken Manchurian".-Personal life:...
- Indian restaurateur
See also
- Indian Chinese cuisineIndian Chinese cuisineIndian Chinese cuisine is the adaptation of Chinese seasoning and cooking techniques to Indian tastes. It is said to have been developed by the small Chinese community that has lived in Kolkata for over a century...
- Tangra, CalcuttaTangra, CalcuttaTangra is a region in east Kolkata that traditionally housed a large number of tanneries owned by people of Hakka Chinese origin. "47 South Tangra Road", may be the most confusing postal address, as it used to cover the whole of Chinatown Tangra with over 350 tanneries...
- Chinatown, Calcutta
- Indians in ChinaIndians in ChinaIndians in China consist of migrants from India to the People's Republic of China and their descendants. A large majority of them live in Hong Kong while there are smaller populations living in other parts of China....
- Chinese influences on Bengali cuisine
External links
- Kolkata Chinese Community Blog
- 'Legend of Fat Mama', a 23 minute documentary on Chinatown by Rafeeq Illiyas
- Interview with the Principal of Grace Ling Liang English School
- Travel article on Achipur
- Photos of Chinese New Year Celebration, Calcutta & Achipur
- Photos of Chinese Temples in Old China Town, Calcutta (Kolkata)