Colonial Umpires and Laundrymen
So how come the Chinese in Guiana(in the days of cork hats, Phensic and quiet Sunday afternoons) didn't develop an aggrieved sense of being marginalized despite being at one stage poor and oppressed? How do we explain the absence of a heritage group with academic spokespersons and cymbals of oppression and martyrs exhumed for cultural rehabilitation? One simple answer might be that they were too busy taking care of business, the laundry & grocery business; or too preoccupied with educating their children; or maybe they were just too few in number to matter.
And when the political climate turned inhospitable and the daily demands placed on life seemed no longer endurable, many simply packed their entrepreneurial skills, memories and family photos in boxes and fled to North America. Not entirely in the spirit of 'We done wid allyuh'. Men and women still without a country.
For our ethnic argumentalists this might be too facile an explanation, but Trev Sue-A-Quan's Cane Ripples: The Chinese in Guyana (2003) confirms and explodes some of the myths we still hold about the Chinese. They were perceived, for instance, as blessed with a sense of fair play and race-blind impartiality which made them eminently suitable as cricket umpires. They ran the laundry business for the privileged class who needed neatly pressed shirts, trousers and suits. Sue-A-Quan's book suggests, however, that the lives of the Chinese were in many ways more humanly complex and less self-absorbed than we might think.
Cane Ripplestaps into the memories of the Chinese community now dispersed around the globe. Their personal histories are presented in the form of 39 'short stories', essentially oral accounts based on interviews that cover the Chinese experience in Guiana from the 1860s to the 1960s (a neat, if somewhat arbitrary time frame).
The author Dr. Sue-A-Quan went to Queens College in the 60s, studied in England and Beijing and has academic degrees in Chemical Engineering. He has published an earlier book based on research, Cane Reapers: Chinese Indentured Immigrants in Guyana (1999) so these 'stories' are not the extraneous material from some unfinished academic enterprise.
On face value they offer insights into the fabric of colonial life that might resonate with the experience of other ethnic groups aging in diasporas elsewhere: how they adapted and compromised old beliefs, how they struggled with each other and with themselves, and given the vagaries of chance how they survived and prospered in the city, on the plantations and in far flung villages.
"In the period between 1853 and 1879", Sue-A-Quan, the researcher tells us, "There were 13,541 immigrants from China who landed in British Guiana, many of them obtained by deception and false promises."After they'd served their term of indenture most chose to remain. By the end of World War II their descendants were joined by "new" Chinese immigrants but their numbers never exceeded 2% of the Guianese population. (Current estimates put that number down to 1% of the population in Guyana.)
A concentration of Chinese on Crown land along the Demerara river led to proposals in 1865 that they be allowed to establish a colony within a colony. The village of Hopetown became the 'Chinatown' of the day. "Hopetown continued to grow and the 1871 census showed 567 Chinese men, women and children living there. By 1874, the number of residents reached about 800. While there was some cultivation of rice and vegetables, and the raising of poultry and livestock, the Chinese were later involved in the production of charcoal." (p. 7)
Younger generations, less enthused about agriculture and charcoal, eventually moved away from Hopetown and started new concentrations in and around the big city, Georgetown. They opened new business ventures in jewelry, tailoring, baking, cookshops & cakeshops and merchandising. It is the descendants of these Chinese entrepreneurs, many now retired in Canada, whom Sue-A-Quan contacted. Their memories and stories have been shaped into a book that makes compelling reading. (A book, one might add, that is thank-goodness free of cultural high-mindedness.)
Throughout the monologues there runs the thread of persistent struggle and family networking, of individuals taking gambles and eventually overcoming odds. There are so many "success" stories you wonder at times if matters considered too unpleasant weren't perhaps subconsciously censored out of these recollections. (A sequel about their newly transplanted lives overseas might be interesting. Did entrepreneurial "success" and contentment follow them in the diaspora?)
There is little comment, for instance, on the imperial context back then; or what Chinese businessmen thought of Jagan's prepubescent Marxism; or how early they noticed Burnham's authoritarianism coming. You could put this down if you like to the Chinese wish to maintain a courteous distance from others (as those "others" kept their distance from them.) Or the Chinese "characteristics" (mentioned below) of "reticence" and "circumspection."
But as Dr Vibart Cambridge in his brief, gracious introduction points out, "Contributors [to this book] take us into their homes, share family histories, and tell us about the creation of some of Guyana's most successful institutions and enterprises such as Central High school, Tangs' Bakery, Lee Bros. Funeral parlor, Wing Lee Laundry, Ace Advertising Agency and Sheila's Restaurant." Readers can look forward to accounts of the lives of "successful" Guyanese like Vivien Lee, Ada Akai, J.C. Luck and Emmanuel "Sonny" Chan-A-Sue of the North West.
Their daily lives weren't buttressed by prayerful allegiance to any of today's populous religions, though here and there a story teller reveals abiding faith in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Nor for that matter was the adoption of English names at the time a cause for populist alarm and personal distress. Over generations, editor Sue-A-Quan tell us, unions with people of African, Indian, Amerindian and Portuguese origin resulted in descendants with the names Van Couten, Prabhu-Das, Denny, Singh, Saunders, Rayman, Joseph, Wellington, Maloney and Laurent.
Issues of Chinese identity were dealt with by the setting up in 1908 of the Silent Temple Lodge ("aptly named to represent the Chinese characteristics of silence and circumspection" p. 143), then later the Chinese Sports Club in Thomas Lands (which held the Chinatown Fair in October) and the Chinese Benevolent Association opposite St Stanislaus College in Brickdam where the Chinese New Year was ushered in with the traditional dragon dance, though no fireworks.
Portraits emerge of the lives and significant contributions of, for example, Dr I. N. "Dick" Luck (who served as GMO in all three counties), Ralph Lee, the funeral parlour entrepreneur (whose wife constantly reminded him to enter the house walking backward to prevent the spirits of the dead from coming in); fellas at the Sue-A-Quan radio stores who were capable of building transformers and amplifier systems, who installed new speakers in Georgetown cinemas when Cinemascope arrived in the mid-1950s.
The dentist, the shopkeeper, optometrist, barber, nurse, rice miller, tennis player each has a story to tell; though, curiously, there was no Guyanese equivalent among them of a music maker like Jamaica's Byron Lee.
At times an intriguing revelation jumps out at you. For instance, a narrator speaking of the profit to be made from tree cultivation in the North West says: "A quicker return could be obtained from a tree known as the CongoPump. This produced a softwood that made an excellent brown paper commonly used for wrapping groceries and making paper bags. Attempts to grow the Congopump from seed were in vain but the trees would spring up naturally in an area cleared from the forest by burning. Apparently the seeds needed to pass through the digestive system of toucans and bats in order to get started, and in 10 years the trees were large enough to produce an economically worthwhile harvest." (p.63)
Some books seem written for our national archives (assuming that institution survives our belated attempts at respect and rehabilitation). Sue-A-Quan's Cane Ripples should fit well in school libraries and into any school program that encourages student research and independent study. On a certain level it reads as a modest attempt at anecdotal sociology. The editor is at pains to explain local terms that might puzzle world readers, and at the same time fill in gaps in knowledge for so many uninformed adults in Guyana.
Given the nation's current mood to put right post-Independence wrongs, to open up brand new political highways, Cane Ripples might feel like a pleasant exercise in nostalgia, intended for the self-appreciative delight of Chinese in the diaspora (and their curious North American offspring.) Trev Sue-A-Quan, the professional engineer, manages to convey his enthusiasm about an ethnic group and its quiet evolution through generations. Enthusiasm about anything in these debt-relieved, conflict-weary Guyana days is reason for good cheer and is certainly welcome.
Book Reviewed: Cane Ripples: the Chinese in Guyana: Trev Sue-A-Quan, PH.D. Cane Press, Vancouver, British Columbia (1999, 2003) -W.W.
