The Chinese In Britain
A History Of Visitors And Settlers
This engaging history tells the story of Chinese people in the UK since the first visitor in 1687.
Liverpool had the largest Chinese community in the 19th century, fed by the Blue Funnel Shipping Line’s steamer direct from the port to China. However, at the end of the century Liverpool’s Chinatown was still barely developed and London’s, at Limehouse, was tiny. It was a single street with rooms for seamen, stewards, cooks and carpenters who served on ships. Cardiff’s emergence as a place of Chinese settlement was even slower.
The author quotes journalists’ accounts culled from local papers and such magazines as the Illustrated
London News. They went to Chinatown as if they were entering a foreign land, observing such curiosities as oriental cooking, a Chinese almanac for calculating lucky days, China tea and chopsticks. The Chinese opium habit was described as curious, but less offensive than British working-class drunkenness.
Barclay Price has done excellent work in the census records tracking Chinese owners of shops and lodging houses from 1891. He notes the increasing range of occupations and cross-cultural relationships, which usually involved Chinese men with British women since the Chinese tended to come as seamen. The book lacks references, which limits its use to a family historian, but it gives a valuable background to the history of the forebears of the UK’s Chinese community, which now numbers 400,000. Jad Adams is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and writes Behind The Headlines – see page 75