Chinese Influence in the Caribbean

The importation of Chinese workers to British Honduras, later renamed Belize, was in direct response to economic shifts in the mid-nineteenth century as logwood and mahogany production declined. Sugarcane plantations became of increasing importance and magnitude, and recruitment of labor from China to fill that growing need was facilitated by the then colonial governor, John Gardiner Austin, who had previously served as a labor broker in Xiamen, Fujian on China's southeast coast. Four hundred and seventy-four Chinese workers arrived in British Honduras thereby in eighteen sixty-five. They were first sent to the northern districts of the colony but were later reassigned to central and southern areas beginning in eighteen sixty-six due to the large numbers of deaths and flights to avoid indentureship. By eighteen sixty-nine, only two hundred and eleven remained accounted for, a hundred and eight had died, while another hundred and fifty-five had sought refuge with the rebellious natives of Chan Santa Cruz participating in the Caste Wars in southern Mexico. And many of the deaths were attributed to suicide in response to horrifying working conditions. The Chinese community in Belize today consists of the descendants of these immigrants, who were brought to British Honduras as indentured laborers, as well as of more recent immigrants from China and Taiwan. And more Chinese laborers migrated to Belize in the early twentieth century. The second-largest number coming just before the outbreak of World War Two, whereas they had first traveled to the United States, and from there gradually trickled southward by land into Mexico and Central America. The first Chinese were originally brought to Belize as indentured servants and slaves.

But there were only four Chinese women for every hundred men in servitude at that time. And cohabitation between the indentured and enslaved races became inevitable. In the nineteenth century, during the Caste War in neighboring Yucatan, the inevitable migration brought Chinese and Lebanese shopkeepers who began setting up businesses in Belize City and supplying war material to the feuding parties north of the border. A hardware store run by a Chinese migrant named August Quan was well known as the major supplier of certain tools, nails, and buckets for a long time. Others established restaurants, laundries, gambling houses, and the Live Draw Xiamen Lottery. Today, the Chinese community controls most of the domestic economy and has become dominant in the grocery, restaurant, fast food, and lottery trades. Belize's citizenship-by-investment program, which began in nineteen eighty-six, was a popular option among Chinese migrants in the nineteen nineties. And in response to the demand, the price rose from twenty-five thousand US dollars to fifty thousand in nineteen ninety-seven. Hong Kong migrants, who lacked legal British citizenship and only had British National (Overseas) status, sought to obtain Belizean passports as an insurance policy in case conditions in their homeland deteriorated after the nineteen ninety-seven resumption of sovereignty by China. While mainland Chinese migrants, for their part, sought to use Belize as a stepping stone to get around tough U.S. migration policy against them. The U.S., however, tightened its visa requirements for Belizeans in response. Migrants from Taiwan also took advantage of this program. And among these Taiwanese migrants, it was especially popular to bring aged relatives to settle in Belize. And not all of these migrants returned to their homeland or went on to the United States. Some settled in the Belize River Valley, on tracts of land that the government granted them in exchange for their investments, bringing in workers to build houses and schools. In the mid-nineteen nineties, there may have been as many as six or seven thousand Chinese immigrants in Belize. However, when the government tightened its work permit policies, an exodus began, and the migrants went to other Chinese communities in Costa Rica, Thailand, and the Philippines, where migration policies were more favorable. And by nineteen ninety-eight the Chinese were estimated to have fallen to about one-and-a-half percentage points of the Belizean population, or about three thousand people. Corozal, for example, was reported to have had a peak Chinese population of five hundred, which then fell to just under one-tenth of that.

The two thousand censuses found one thousand, seven hundred and sixteen Chinese people living in Belize, or less than one percent of the population. And one thousand, six hundred and seven of these were speaking Chinese as their first language. Chinese residents are an overwhelmingly urban population, with five-out-of-six living in cities or urban communities. The highest such proportion of all tabulated ethnic groups. This is a slightly higher proportion than Garifuna people and Creoles, but contrasting sharply with East Indians, of whom roughly half live in rural areas. The majority of Chinese live in Belize City, nine hundred and eighty-eight, and Cayo District, wherein lies the capital, Belmopan, three hundred and fifty-one residents. Compared to other ethnic groups, their median level of education is higher, with forty-six percent having completed secondary education. A proportion second only to Africans and Caucasians, similar to that of Spanish people, and more than double that of Creoles, Garifuna, East Indians, and other ethnic groups. However, relatively few, only twelve percent, go on to tertiary education. Despite efforts to hire Chinese interpreters for the census, the Central Statistical Office concluded in an official report that many Chinese migrants, like other foreign-born residents, did not respond to the census and thus were undercounted. The language barrier may have been compounded by the fact of illegal immigrants' unwillingness to participate in the census for fear that the information they provided could be used by law enforcement against them. This, however, may have been ameliorated somewhat by an immigration amnesty in nineteen ninety-nine. And compounding the census problems were unusual naming practices arising among Chinese people in Belize. Indentured migrants were assigned identifying numbers that were sometimes used in the place of names. And workers sometimes traded these numbers or misused those of deceased fellows, to obtain extra rations. After they had fulfilled their indenture contracts, they were obliged to register in their own names. And some used approximations of their Chinese names, while some took on English given names while keeping their Chinese surnames. Still others, especially those who had re-emigrated from Guatemala, had Spanish translations of their Chinese surnames.

The most important festival in the Chinese community is their Lunar New Year, which falls on the first day of the first lunar month. Lion dances, accompanied by cymbals, drums, gongs, and firecrackers are a common sight during these festivities. While for a majority of the Chinese, religion is a mixture of all their various Chinese philosophies. The older generation, and especially the women, continue to practice an abbreviated form of ancestor worship and Buddhism, while most of their children, born in Belize, have adopted Catholicism consequent upon their Catholic education. Community organizations including the Belize Chinese Asociation, BCA, which conduct the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities, have been speaking out against crimes committed against Chinese businesspeople and responding to accusations that these businesspeople themselves bear some responsibility for the crimes because they do not provide employment opportunities to local people. In twenty-ten, the BCA organized a nationwide shutdown of Chinese businesses in response to the murder of fourteen-year-old Hellen Yu, a locally born girl of Chinese descent, during a robbery of her parents' store. The BCA expressed disappointment at most other Belizeans' indifference to the murder. And in twenty-eleven, the BCA and the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce organized joint street protests in response to the murder of two Chinese women. Racism in Belize, as directed by the Belizean Creole people, is aimed at both the indigenous Maya people of Belize, as well as against recent migrants, such as the Chinese. Along with Mestizos, Chinese, as a visible minority, are highly vulnerable to being targeted for exclusion from society. And the Chinese themselves are often reluctant to integrate into the local society, preferring to maintain their own institutions and social circles. The prevalence of robberies against Chinese shopkeepers has also contributed to poor relations between Chinese residents and Creoles, as many of these robberies are believed to be committed by Creole gangs. Even the iron burglar bars which Chinese merchants erect to protect their businesses from burglary are seen as a symbol of their desire to remain aloof from Belizean society. Resentment at the commercial success of the Asians, both East Indians, and the Chinese, is also widespread. Especially as they run family businesses that rarely offer employment opportunities to outsiders. And few take the time to learn to speak the Belizean Creole dialect. Chinese people's extensive use of the economic citizenship program has also proven to be controversial within local communities.

When one thinks of Caribbean food choices, the last thing that might come to mind is a Chinese influence. But it is there and is most notable in the territories that utilized indentured servitude. By the mid-eighteen hundreds, after slavery was abolished throughout the West Indies, and familiar with the poor working conditions and abuse, newly freed slaves were reluctant to accept employment from their former slavemasters. Plantation owners needed a new source of cheap labor and turned to imported indentured servants from China and India. These reluctant souls brought with them their own food traditions and cooking techniques. But there were only four Chinese women for every hundred men, so the men cooked for themselves in former slave quarters, which had cramped kitchens, inadequate ventilation, and contained only the barest necessary equipment: a wok, cleaver, spatula, and cutting board. Provisions and rations that the Chinese were used to were not available during those early years. And only a few ingredients that could survive the long ship's journey, such as dried noodles, soy sauce, and spices could be found. Even the availability of rice was sporadic. Most essential ingredients were not readily available until the twentieth century. The lack of basic ingredients to prepare their recipes may be the reason the Chinese didn't make a significant impact on Caribbean cuisine at first. These men were reluctant to adapt to their new lives and change their tastes to suit available ingredients. There were, however, two exceptions. They accepted the use of rum to marinate meats, and they preferred the simplicity of yams and rice and raising livestock. And another ingredient that became increasingly available was honey, as the apiary industry established itself in the Caribbean. As the Chinese immigrants settled into their new life, some were allowed to keep small garden plots, and the variety of vegetables permitted them to make pickles. And they were allowed to sell their excess at the local market, along with foraged watercress from local streams, and oysters from the mangroves.

Indentured servitude came to an end around nineteen seventeen, when the British government prohibited the transportation of debtors from India as servants. But many of the Chinese immigrants did not return to China because they were not entitled to a free return passage, or any of the other perks promised when they were first indentured. An important festival in Trinidad is a Chinese legacy. Double Ten Day is a national holiday on the tenth day of the tenth month, that is celebrated with the preparation of southern Chinese-styled red meats from duck and/or shrimp. The holiday commemorates the Wuchang Uprising in China on October tenth, nineteen-eleven which ended the Qing Dynasty's rule, and established the Republic Of China. After the revolution, Chinese immigrants who were mostly merchants and traders came willingly to the West Indies, and the commemoration remains a part of Trinidadian culture. Chow Mein is a well-known and well-liked dish in the Caribbean. It became popular early on because of its two basic ingredients, noodles and stock, which were easily attainable. Noodles were the primary carbohydrate in the Chinese immigrant population in the area. Another common Chinese influenced dish is "bow". It is a small dumpling traditionally made with a pork filling, but these days the filling can be chicken, vegetables, or even something sweet. These tasty dumplings are labor-intensive, and take time to prepare, which suggests that they were not everyday fare. They were probably reserved for special occasions. As Frank Cass said in "Legacies of West Indian Slavery", to put it bluntly, a man or woman whose genes have given him what we call a "Chinese Physiognomy", but whose family has lived in the Caribbean for three generations without contact with China, and without the use of one of the Chinese languages, is as Caribbean as a White Barbadian who in turn is no less a Barbadian, in culture, than a Black Barbadian. It was, after all, of a White Batbadian planter that the story is told that on finding himself with his wife in London in the early twentieth century on a busy day, he was heard to remark energetically, "like Bridgetown on a Saturday morning, eh Mabel?" And so it may be for multi-racial Chinese returnees to Asia, like Belize City in the diaspora.

Howard A. Frankson -- Belize