The Guyana Experience

CHAPTER 3

THE GUYANA EXPERIENCE

Marlene Kwok Crawford

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The first Chinese came to Guyana as indentured servants when there was a shortage of labour on the sugar estates due to the fact that many of the ex-slaves had left the estates when they had finally become fully free on 1st August, 1838. Slavery had been abolished in 1834 but the slaves had been mandated to serve a period of apprenticeship of four years i.e. they were obliged to work three-quarters of the day for their masters and were thus, neither fully free nor fully slaves.

The employers tried to get a cheap and dependable labour force from other sources such as Portuguese from Madeira, liberated Africans from the West Indian colonies and East Indians from India. It was only when it was difficult to get sufficient labourers from India that it was decided to bring indentured labourers from China, as this was a much more costly operation. Thus, it was not until 12th January 1853 that the first set of 262 immigrants arrived from China on the Glentanner. Most were assigned to WindsorForest, Pouderoyen and La Jalousie on the West Coast of Demerara. Two more shipments came from China in 1853 totaling 647 persons but no more came until 1859. No women came with these first immigrants and it was not until 11th March 1860 that the first female Chinese arrived on the Whirlwind. However,

not many females ever came to Guyana, only 2,075 out of a total of 13,541 Chinese immigrants when the last immigrant ship landed in 1879. . Thus, many men were forced to find wives or to cohabit with women of other races.

The period 1859-1866 was the heyday of Chinese immigration when 11,954 arrived. Chinese immigration resumed in 1873 with the Corona sailing from Whampoa with some Hakka families on board but due to the sharp fall in the price of sugar, a continuous increase in the rate of passage money of the emigrants, and a reduction in the Government’s contribution towards immigration expenses, it was decided by the Government to end Chinese immigration.

After 1879 there was a cessation of Chinese immigration to the West Indies due to the non-ratification by the British and French Governments of the Emigration Convention which included an important right of an immigrant and his family to be repatriated at the expiration of his contract, or if he remained in the colony, for the return passage to be paid to him. Nevertheless, there was one final shipment of Chinese immigrants in 1878 as a private venture of the West India Committee, i.e. without contracts, when a bounty of $26.50 a head was paid. The Dartmouth arrived in Georgetown on 17th March 1879 with 515 persons after only one man had died on board.

The recruiting centres in China were the two southernmost coastal provinces - Fukien (Fujian) and Kwangtung (Guangdong) and the ports from which they sailed to Georgetown were Amoy, Hong Kong, Canton, Swatow and Whampoa. Most of the Chinese immigrants were either “Punti” or “Hakka” and there was great enmity between these nationalities in China. The “Punti” were the original Cantonese who formed more than half of the population of Kwangtung province and considered themselves the rightful owners of the soil. The “Hakka” were the squatters and aliens who had been forced to migrate to Kwangtung and other southern provinces

from the far northern provinces of China because of persecutions and disturbances.

Since there was no right of repatriation in their contracts, most of the Chinese who remained in the colony reindentured themselves for another five years lured by the incentive of the

money given to do so and since they had become accustomed to living where they were and had gotten to know the people there.

Some of them, however, emigrated again to Trinidad, Jamaica, or Suriname with very few of them returning to China. Those who remained left some of the sugar plantations because they were dissatisfied with the low wages and poor living conditions there. Some claimed also that they had been tricked when they were recruited since instead of “garden work”, they had to work laboriously in the cane fields. They therefore turned to rice farming and various kinds of business.

Still others went to live at Hopetown on the Kamuni Creek, up the Demerara River about 30 miles from the capital, Georgetown, where they established a thriving Chinese settlement of about 170 persons in 1865 under a Chinese missionary from Singapore, O Tye Kim. The main occupations of the people in Hopetown were the making of charcoal and shingles. At first the settlement prospered but as it became increasingly difficult to get wood for their charcoal business, by 1931, many people had left for Georgetown and other large centres of population where the work was easier and the profits greater. Many became shopkeepers and since it was then easy to obtain credit from merchants there, they were able to break the monopoly in the retail trade held until then by the Portuguese.

By 1879, there had been a steep decline in the size of the Chinese community and from 1890, when according to the census figures the total Chinese population was 3,714, the total

number of Chinese has remained constant with only slight fluctuations. After the last immigrant ship came to Guyana in 1879, some Chinese still came to Guyana on their own due to population pressures in China, seeking to make a better life for themselves, making a fortune, and returning home to China as

a few had done. They still had close ties with China, unlike the Local Born Chinese, and sent remittances home, even purchasing property in China in the hope of returning home.

Some also sent for brides from their birthplaces and subsidized the passages of relatives and friends who wanted to come to Guyana.

Before World War II, sons of some Chinese were sent to China to be educated, but after this, China was no longer regarded as the best place for higher education, and their children were now sent along with those of the Local Born Chinese to pursue technical and professional studies in the U.K, the U.S.A and Jamaica.

Many of the Home Born Chinese worked for a few years as shop assistants and then opened their own businesses. During the 1940s to 1970s, many owned laundries and restaurants though most of them were shopkeepers, the most prosperous becoming owners of supermarkets and merchants in the Import and Export business.

After the 1962-1963 social upheavals in Guyana, almost all of these Chinese businesses were closed and their owners emigrated with their families mainly to Toronto, New York and the U.K. From about 1975, however, while many Home Born Chinese were leaving, others were coming in trickles on a regular basis since Guyana was the only British Caribbean country that was permitting Chinese nationals to migrate as families. From about 1980, about 700 Chinese came to Guyana seeking permanent residence. Most went into the restaurant business and in a 1983 market survey for soya sauce, it was found that there were 134 Chinese restaurants in Georgetown, most of them new, and at least one in every village of any reasonable size in Guyana.

The greatest permanent impact of Chinese in the life of Guyana has been in the introduction and acceptance of basic Chinese foods e.g. fried rice, chowmein, lowmein and pow as well as Chinese sweetmeats such as Star cake and Chinese cake which are much sought after at Fairs.

Since 1986, however, Chinese have only been allowed to come to Guyana on a temporary basis but they can apply for permanent residence after residing in Guyana for five years.

From the 1960s, the Local Born Chinese also left Guyana in the general exodus of Guyanese who emigrated. After 1980, the Chinese population has become so small that Chinese persons are no longer listed separately in the Population Census but are classified in the “Other” category with Europeans, Portuguese, Syrians and Lebanese. These now make up only 1 % of the population of which portion the majority are the Portuguese.

Inter-marriage, which had always been frowned on by the Chinese, is not now regarded with much disfavour and occurs now more frequently by both men and women. Thus, there are now very few pureblooded Chinese in Guyana except for those who are Home Born. By the first quarter of the 20th century, most of the Chinese in Guyana were Local Born and had been so for several generations. Unlike the Home Born Chinese, they had lost all contact with China. The original indentured immigrants did not keep in touch with those back home nor did they encourage relatives and friends to join them in Guyana probably because of the difficulties of the trip, the hardships on the plantations and the tremendous upheaval and dislocation in southeastern China around the time of the T’aiping Rebellion.

Their disastrous uprooting was very traumatic and their ties

with their relatives and neighbours were never restored. Instead, many of them adapted to the Guyanese way of life, adopting western dress, speech and manners, and becoming at least nominal Christians. Their descendants, except for their physical appearance, became completely westernized, identifying fully with England as their mother country rather than China. They adopted English first names and even the surnames of the priests or overseers, and did not know how to speak the Chinese language or to use chopsticks. Chinese ladies only wore the Chinese dress (cheongsam) with a high collar and long slits at the sides on special occasions sometimes. By 1925, they lived like any other Guyanese of similar socio-economic positions but nevertheless still retained a certain residium of institutions, behaviour and values which

distinguished them from other races and kept them as a somewhat closed group with a tendency to marry among themselves. They also displayed, perhaps, somewhat more of an interest in China and in things Chinese, especially food and artifacts than the average non-Chinese Guyanese. They were now law-abiding citizens who lived quiet lives and were well respected by others in the community. Through thrift, self-reliance and hard work, they were able to set themselves up in small businesses and to own property, thus having a stake in the country.

The Chinese were always interested in educating their children in the best schools possible where they did exceeding well. In 1930, Philip Chan Choong of Queen’s College was the first of 38 Chinese Guyana Scholars among whom Jocelyn Ho-A-Shu of Bishops’ High School was the first girl. In 1982, Michael Chan who was the 1976 Guyana Scholar also won the prized Rhodes Scholarship for the British Caribbean tenable at OxfordUniversity in England.

In the early 20th century, the Chinese felt the need to have their own institutions and in 1920, they established the Chinese Association in Georgetown. It housed the Sports Club Billiards Room and the Indigent Quarters on the first floor and the Dormitories for visitors from the rural areas and abroad on the third and fourth floors. The second floor was used as the general Assembly Hall. Membership of the Chinese Association was then open only to pureblooded Chinese or their descendants or to any person whose father belonged to either of the two aforementioned categories and who was sixteen years of age and upwards. However, on April 8th 2001, the rules were amended so that nowadays any person of Chinese descent and who is eighteen years of age and upwards

is eligible for membership of the Chinese Association.

In 1931, the local Chinese community formed a Chinese Sports Club to enable Chinese youths to participate in healthy indoor and outdoor games that they were not able to do as equal members of the Sports Clubs of that time. Local Chinese sportsmen were thus able to participate in alternate goodwill tours every two years with their Chinese counterparts in Trinidad. In 1963, membership of the Chinese Sports Club was opened to all races and it was decided to rename it Cosmos Sports Club in keeping with the new ideology of the country at the time. All games, but hardly any Football, were played but from 1963 to the 1970s the Cosmos Hockey Team reigned supreme in hockey in Guyana. Godfrey Chin, Gerald Wong, Perry Lee, Walter Chin (Captain), V.P. Chung and the Lee brothers - Billy, (Coach and Manager), Rollo and Gary - all represented Guyana in hockey but around 1975, many of the hockey players had emigrated and the Club never regained its prominence in hockey.

Chinese Association

Some other outstanding Chinese sportsmen and women were Doreen Chow Wah and Christopher Chung-Wee in Table Tennis, Stanley Ming in Motor Cycling, Derek Phang in Lawn Tennis, Joy Ng Yow and Beulah Wong in Hockey, Amanda Lee in Swimming and Diane Lee in Squash.

By 1984, most of the Chinese members of the Club had emigrated and it was therefore decided to merge the Club with the Guyana Motor Racing Club, to rename it the Guyana Motor Racing and Sports Club and to concentrate on Motor Racing and indoor games.

In 1907, a few Chinese men had decided to form their own Masonic Lodge that was named “SilentTemple” because silence and circumspection are significant Chinese traits and characteristics. Since 1995, however, non-Chinese have had to be admitted to membership of the Lodge due to the diminishing number of Chinese in Guyana.

In 1939, through the efforts of the Chinese community, St. Saviour’s ChineseChurch that was formerly a branch of St. Philip’s Church, was raised to the status of a parish church and is the main place of worship of Chinese Anglicans in Georgetown though the word “Chinese” is now omitted from its name.

China has rendered significant assistance to Guyana economically and commercially in many ways since 1972, most recently providing doctors, table tennis and martial arts coaches, the construction of the Guyana International Conference Centre and help in the Skeldon Sugar Factory Project.

A Guyana – China Friendship Society was formed in 1982 in order to promote friendship between the two countries. Visits of high officials are made to China and Guyana and there have also been some cultural exchanges when Chinese acrobats, dancers and singers visited and performed to enthusiastic crowds in Guyana. A Monument was erected at WindsorForest in 1986 by this Society to commemorate the coming of the first Chinese to Guyana. Ties between Guyana

and China are now cemented in the Guyana/China Joint Commission on Economic, Trade and Technical Co-operation and through a number of agreements such as on Culture and on Inter-Ministerial Consultations between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of both countries.

St Saviour’s Anglican Church

Although in the most recent 2002 Census the total number of Chinese in Guyana is only 1,395, with 646 of them being Foreign Born, the Chinese have contributed a great deal to life in Guyana during the time they were here. There have been several prominent businessmen such as John Ho-A-Shoo, Robert Evan Wong, Alexander and Joe Chin, Yong Hing, Kwang Hing, Sue Ping, Ngui Kon Sue, Andrew and Brian James, Woon Foo, and Stanley Ming. Several have qualified as professional doctors, lawyers, educators, administrators, etc., many rising to the very top of their various professions such as:

Justices of Appeal Charles Fung-A-Fat and Ian Chang; Magistrates James Too-Chung, Owen Fung-Kee-Fung, Clinton

Wong and Paul Fung-A-Fat; medical specialists H.C. (Loy) Hugh, Carlton Fung-Kee-Fung, W.I (Bud) Lee, and Walter Chin; and administrators Leslie Chin (C.E.O of the Institute of Private Enterprise Development), C.V. Too-Chung (Accountant and Deputy Controller of Income Tax), Paul Chan-a-Sue (Deputy Manager of Ansa Mc Al Trading and Honorary Consul for Belgium) and J.C. Luck (founder principal of Central High School). The Chinese have participated in every facet of Guyanese life. Margery Kirkpatrick nee Ting-A-Kee has a well known catering establishment; outstanding florist Compton Young is a former Mayor of Georgetown; Pamela Sue-A-Quan, Joan Fung, Jennifer Evan Wong and Mandy Jardim were Miss Guyana Beauty Queens; Ray Luck is a famous, international pianist; while a few also entered the political field and became Members of Parliament such as R.V. Evan Wong, W.A. Phang, Theophilus (Bob) Lee, Charles Chan-A-Sue, Allan Chin, and Stanley Ming. Guyana’s first and only titular President Arthur Chung was also a Chinese Judge who served from March 17th1970 until his retirement on March 6th1980 when Guyana’s constitution was changed to provide for an Executive President.