Indian holiday in a very Chinese way

I stayed in Kolkata, an old port city in eastern India, for a few days during my vacation over Christmas and New Year. There, I came across many things Chinese, from advertisements of phone companies, fusion food and colorful lights to a glimpse of Chinatown.

Since I came to Beijing from New Delhi nearly four years ago, I have wanted to visit Tangra, Kolkata’s de facto Chinatown. Formerly called Calcutta, the city drew people in waves in the last century from Canton, which is the present-day name of South China’s Guangdong province.

But I couldn’t include Tangra in my itinerary this time. My two-week holiday had ended soon after it began. At least that’s how I felt.

As I was leaving Kolkata, I was briefly stuck by the sharp smell of tanneries along an overpass I was taking to the airport. Through the widows of the car, I could see Tangra on either side underneath. It was once a hub of leather business in Kolkata, from where the material was produced for local traders and those outside the Indian state of West Bengal.

In recent times, dozens of such units have been moved to suburban Kolkata. And while many members of the ethnic Chinese community continue to work in their leather businesses, others run dental clinics, beauty salons and dry-cleaning shops. Still others, especially from the newer generations, are engaged in various professions. But most speak Bengali, the main local language.

In the early days of my vacation, I went for lunch at the Waldorf, among the oldest establishments in the city for the so-called Indian-Chinese dishes. With no apparent connection to the USbased Waldorf Astoria hotels, the restaurant serves an Indian version of fried noodles accompanied by equally interesting sauces.

In India, or perhaps across South Asia, such noodles are referred to as chow mein or simply chow instead of the more authentic Chinese description chao mian (fried flour).

Park Street, on which the restaurant stands, is Kolkata’s melting pot, with popular eateries, bars, nightclubs and bookstores crisscrossing its many branches. By night, especially during the weeklong festivities of Christmas and New Year, the street is decorated in lights that seem to have been produced in China.

Indian traders buy lights and other Christmas accessories in bulk from the small-commodity markets of Yiwu, as I noticed during an earlier trip of East China’s Zhejiang province.

While Christmas is celebrated in many parts of India, it has grown in prominence in Kolkata over the decades owing to the presence of the Anglo-Indian people, who are the descendants from marriages or liaisons between Indians and Britons. The city was the capital of British India until India gained independence in 1947.

I saw the logos of two Chinese smartphone companies throughout my vacation in the city. Vivo Communication Technology Co and Oppo Electronic Corp appear to have taken up parts of the Hoogly landscape with their advertisements. Many “Calcuttans” are said to be using the easypriced products of both companies. Kolkata is on the banks of the river.

At the moment, business is seen as leading Sino-Indian relations.