Cuba’s Chinatown bears the ghosts of the past, and hope for the future

Cuba's Chinatown bears the ghosts of the past, and hope for the future
UPDATED : Thursday, 07 January, 2016, 5:31pm
Robin Fall

Louis Chan, 61, works in Havana as a painter and designer. His parents
emigrated from Guangdong, China seeking fortune and to escape hardship.

The Chinese community in Havana prospered and grew until the Cuban
Revolution in 1959. What was one of the largest Chinatowns in the
Americas has since been in sharp decline, with very few Chinese left.

Why Chinese people came to Havana

Barrio Chino De Havana (Havana's Chinatown) is one of the oldest and
largest Chinatowns in Latin America.

Chinese were initially brought to Cuba in 1847 to replace and/or work
alongside African slaves. After completing their work contracts, some
Chinese immigrants settled permanently in Cuba. Other significant
migrations include around 5,000 Chinese Americans in the late 19th
century escaping discrimination and a wave of Chinese immigrants
escaping political chaos in China in the early 20th century.

"The Chinese colony in Cuba increased and grew until 1959 when
immigration started to fall… we can say that there is neither a
flourishing Chinatown nor a significant population of Chinese in Cuba.
What is left is the essence, 1 per cent Chinese in the Cuban race," Chan
says

The Chinese-Cuban Community

As of 2008 there were 114,240 Chinese-Cubans and only 300 pure Chinese
according to the CIA world fact book. There were almost no women among
the initial immigrants and thus the Chinese population integrated with
other ethnicities.

"They are Chinese that hardly speak any Chinese: they have adopted
Spanish and from Spanish to Cuban — because it is a hybrid language — a
bit of Chinese, a bit of Spanish, but they understand each other. The
few old Chinese left who speak Spanish have a unique language that is
understood only among us," says Chan

"What could one ask for? The return of the prosperous times with the
aromas of food with the natural fragrances of an Asian place, and with
the customs… but I have already said that to get everything back we need
the boots of Chinese coming to Havana," he says.

The Chinese Cemetery

'There was not one Cuban-Chinese deserter, not one Cuban-Chinese
traitor,' states the inscription on a war memorial in Havana, which
honours the 2,000 Cuban Chinese who died during Cuba's Ten Years' War.

The Chinese cemetery, which opened its doors in the late 1800s, is one
of the oldest Chinese cemeteries in the Americas.

"Chinatown has a place that almost nobody talks about, the Chinese
cemetery. Many memories are kept there, many secrets and who knows what
else… We need a lot of people to come here to see that in Cuba there was
a prosperous Chinese colony and now it is almost forgotten," Chan says.

Source: Cuba's Chinatown bears the ghosts of the past, and hope for the
future | South China Morning Post -
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1898433/cubas-chinatown-bears-ghosts-past-and-hope-future