Dear Editor,
Wednesday, Jan 12, will mark the 169th anniversary of the arrival of Chinese to Guyana as indentured labourers. By the time Immigration from China was discontinued in 1879, 39 ships had brought a total of 13,541 Indentureds but with only 17% women, and few from agricultural backgrounds. Many of them were Christians and urbanized. The Chinese were very diligent workers, but because of higher transportation costs, reluctance to reindenture, low birth rates and some returning to China, their numbers in the colony were never very high. Many of those who remained generally intermarried with the local African Guyanese because of the paucity of Chinese women. After completing their indentitureship, they gradually opened up groceries, or rum-shops, on the plantations, or in Georgetown. In one remarkable experiment, a Chinese missionary was facilitated by the government to start a settlement – Hopetown – on the Kaimuni Creek (near what is now CJIA) with time-expired Chinese immigrants. They felled timber in the area to produce coal for the fast growing Georgetown urban population, and soon replaced the Portuguese merchants who had dominated the trade, and moved into the Charlestown area. The settlement, unfortunately, collapsed after the missionary absconded with the settlement funds, and the settlers relocated to Georgetown where they went into commerce. They soon joined the Portuguese in Guyana’s nascent middle class as they rose in business, entered the professions and the Civil Service. By intermarrying and integrating with the local African Guyanese Creole populace, the Chinese Guyanese success never provoked any sustained hostilities against themselves.
In the modern era, JC Luck founded Central High School, in 1928, which became the largest private high school for decades. Several Chinese Guyanese, including JC’s son Rudy Luck, were prominent in the early PPP and participated in the struggle for independence. The first President of Guyana, of course, was Arthur Chung, who fittingly hailed from Windsor Forest, where the first Chinese had been bound. It was an apt trope for the journey they had travelled in their new country. So it is important that we commemorate the arrival of the Chinese in Guyana as a national event, since they played a key role in every facet of our national development, starting with sugar. As New Zealand has noted, “Commemo-ration means marking an important historical event on or around a meaningful anniversary. Commemoration brings people together in physical and virtual spaces to reflect on the past and its relevance to the present. There doesn’t have to be a formal remembrance ceremony or a physical monument – commemoration could involve sharing historical information etc.” And it is in this spirit that this letter is written.
When a public holiday to commemorate the arrival of Indian indentureds was lobbied for, and finally granted in 2004, I maintained it was unfortunate that the arrival commemorations of the Portu-guese, Chinese and other immigrants from Africa and the West Indies, was conflated into May 5th – the day the Indians first arrived. The public holiday was dubbed “Arrival Day”. This had to be somewhat infra dig for these other groups, and it was therefore quite positive when in 2017, President David Granger declared by Executive Order, that Jan 12 and June 3rd – the days the Chinese and Portuguese respectively arrived – be duly given public recognition. This tradition must continue and be expanded for the other immigrant groups. Our Indigenous Peoples have “Amerindian Heritage Month” and African Guyanese have Emancipation Day to acknowledge their role in constituting our national mosaic. This will help to build a unified national narrative that is so vital in holding us together,
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev
