Paul Wen (71) struggles to walk even with a cane in his right hand. His eyes have lost most of his vision due to diabetes. He stops at a tea shop to take a breather and talk to people passing by. On a chilly winter morning, as a cool breeze flows through Kolkata in January, Wen says that even if with difficulty, he takes the walk every day, because he has no one left in this world to share his life with.
Being out and about on the roads of Teretti Bazaar, also known as old Chinatown in north Kolkata, is his only social life. Wen’s father had immigrated from China during the Second World War, and Wen was born in Kolkata. With no living family or many friends to count on, he lives off the food that the community members make for him.
“In my heyday, I was the Chinese cuisine chef at the Great Eastern Hotel (a luxury hotel chain) in Dalhousie. Even during the upcoming Chinese New Year in mid-February, I have no family to look forward to,” Wen adds, as he sits at a tea shop wearing his torn orange cap, a worn-down black T-shirt, and tattered beige trousers.
An equally fragile 73-year-old man passes by, struggling to take every step as he walks back to the Sea Ip (1882), a Chinese Buddhist temple, which he now calls home. He also has no family left, much like Paul.
Just about 5 kilometers from Terreti Bazaar lies another Chinese settlement in Kolkata, called Tangra or the new Chinatown, in the Eastern end of the city. The number of Chinese-origin people that straddles these has dwindled to between 1,500 and 2,000. In the 1960s the number was at an all-time high of over 50,000, say community members.
In the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, 484 people (252 men and 232 women) of Chinese origin were deleted, found an analysis by the Sabar Institute, a non-profit that uses data for social justice. Of those deleted, 389 have been categorised as untraceable or absent. Untraceable or absent voters are those who have not collected SIR enumeration forms.
Sandipan Saha, councillor of Ward 58 and local leader of the area says that the reducing numbers has become a reality of the Chinese community. “Only the older generation remains,” Sandipan says.
The reducing numbers have several causes: racism after the Indo-China War in 1962, out-migration of younger generations to find better opportunities, an ageing population, lack of amenities and development in the Chinatown area. Though it is the oldest recorded Chinese settlement in India and the only Chinatown in the country, it has lacked preservation, and the community fears that in a decade or two, their numbers will be close to zero.
Indo-China War as a rupture
“I cannot eat potatoes and gourds. I ate only that in the detention camps for over 5 years. Our whole family was picked up one day and shifted to Deoli,” says Monica Liu, one of the last living survivors of the Deoli detention camps in Rajasthan. From living in abject poverty, Monica is now a restaurant owners in Tangra.
The Indo-China War in 1962 led to hundreds of people of Chinese origin in India being taken into a detention camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, where they stayed for years. This gave way to active racism and became a point of rupture for many. A major outflux of the youth started then, with many saying that relations had soured beyond repair.
Monica was 8. Now in her 70s, she feels at home in Kolkata, where all her children stay, and she is respected as the most well-known businesswoman of Chinatown. Her employees fondly call her “Mummy” as she engages in friendly banter with them as their workday begins, and they get ready to serve customers at the restaurant.
Binny Law (55), the president of the Chinese Indian Association based in Kolkata says that the Indo-China War played a major role in the decreasing population. Many lost their homes when they came back to Kolkata after being in the detention camps; they lacked work opportunities due to the deep-seated racism after the war.
“I have held meetings with the youth to get ideas about what we can do to make them stay. But if I am honest, there were none. I even tried to start a trade here to sell traditional Chinese products in Chinatown, like all other Chinatowns across the world, but that failed within a few years,” Binny adds. He came back from America to be with his community in India, but he’s not holding his children back from leaving the country, he adds.
Lack of development and amenities
The red Chinese community houses with high-rising metal doors line the narrow streets of Tangra. The Chinese inscriptions on flags pasted on the doors remain an indicator of their ancestry and origin. However, the number of Chinese-community-owned houses has reduced in number, say residents. High rises have cropped up in every alternate corner of the neighbourhood. As the residents of the community leave, their lands are sought after by land sharks who are witnessing the rapidly rising real estate prices in the area.
Many community members live in houses surrounded by godowns and warehouses and roads leading to their houses are in poor condition, with several stretches lacking pacca roads. Garbage is piled up on many parts of the roads. Houses are crumbling and falling apart, roads are narrow, and neglect is visible in the everyday fabric of the neighbourhood.
Work took a major hit for the community when the tanneries in the Tangra area were closed down and asked to shift to the Kolkata Leather Complex, around 15 km away. These tanneries were mostly owned and operated by the Hakka Chinese community and remained a thriving business before they were moved between 1996 to the 2000s. The Supreme Court passed an order in 1996 to shift the tanneries due to extreme pollution and environmental concerns.
Just small eateries and sauce manufacturers remain. Many eateries too have permanently hung signs saying “Sorry, we are closed” on their doors. Now, many Kolkata residents do not know that a Chinatown exists in the heart of their city. Only a few social media influencers and people who used to frequent these parts to try Indo-Chinese food, come.
“They used to call us ‘momo’ and ‘chowmein’ on the road,” says a man in his 30s, requesting anonymity. Such casual forms of racism have become so normalised that many in the community have learnt to brush them aside. He adds that most of his family now lives outside India. “There isn’t much left for us here any more,” he says.
A closed down school
Some spaces that survived the community’s shrinking numbers have become inaccessible. A school that had stopped functioning as an educational institution years ago but continued as a community centre has now been closed to them after Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) camps were set up there following the R.G. Kar rape and the protests that followed.
The Supreme Court on 20 August 2024 asked the CISF to take over security at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital following a mob attack in the aftermath of a trainee doctor’s rape and murder, as police were criticised for failing to protect the campus.
“They asked for the school space for two months. Now they have been here for the past 18 months. They behave like we are outsiders here. We built this school as a community. We donated our own land and built it with our own money for our children to help them learn Chinese,” says Monica, who is also on the management body of the Pei May Chinese High School in Tangra. She has now moved the Calcutta High Court seeking an intervention into the long standing CISF camp and demanding that their community space be returned to them.
Councillor Sandipan agrees that the school must be handed back. “As this is not a government school, I cannot intervene. But if they want my support, I will help them in any way they want,” he says.
Scrambling to keep traditions alive
As community spaces shrink and access becomes more restricted, the fight to preserve identity has moved beyond buildings. It now plays out in smaller, more fragile ways, through culture, memory, and tradition. Traditions that once belonged entirely to the Chinese community are now being kept alive in unexpected ways.
The lion dance, a traditional performance of the Chinese New Year celebrations, is now performed mostly by many non-Chinese boys, trained by a Chinese community member, James Liao, one of the few remaining custodians of the art in the city.
Inside a dark alley in Tangra, James has turned an old factory into his lion dance practice studio. With vibrant red and yellow gigantic masks, the India Hong De community practise their craft every evening. Young men from the Tangra area sit down after the practice to brush the yellow hair on their lion masks. They do it with soft hands, ensuring the prop doesn’t give up before their show.
While some traditions are being passed on through such improvised spaces, others are sustained more quietly.
There are over 10 Chinese Buddhist temples and Christian churches in both the old and new Chinatown areas of Kolkata. But the custodians of these places, some of which are almost 200 years old, are all over 50. But they gather in groups of 5-7 and head to the temples every morning and evening to pay respect to gods and ancestors.
At the Fo Guang Shan Kolkata Buddhist Temple, a group of Chinese grandmothers, and two young women huddle together to make mafaa, a sweet and savoury biscuit, usually enjoyed during the Chinese New Year in mid-February.
In between rolling out the aromatic and crispy mafaa, the women take a pause at around 9 a.m. to pray to the Buddha idol on the premises. They sing hymns in synchronisation and go on to offer holy water to the visitors. They will continue to make these traditional foods for the community for the next 3-4 days, depending on the orders.
“Our children used to come back during New Year. The place was full of noise, friends, and family during this time of the year. But even that has started to fizzle out now. Last year the numbers were so low, this year also there is not much hope,” says a woman while making designs on the mafaas, before they are fried in hot oil.
As the New Year approaches, the rituals continue like clockwork, performed carefully, almost deliberately, by those who remain.
shrabana.chatterjee@thehindu.co.in
