The beauty of the Tangra/Kolkotta (India) Chinese

yanxiuhong

Welcome, learn and enjoy the beauty of the Tangra/Kolkotta (India) Chinese.

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Tangra is a distinct and unique Chinese suburbs in Kolkotta India. They are a group of Chinese people with great pride and tradition. This web page is to honor those in and from tangra who have earned their freedom and liberty through sweat and blood. The Chinese in Kolkotta(Calcutta) have always faced political ,social and economic insecurities and challenges.

Let us learn more from their lives, have some fun and also have the eye to see things in better way.

The Tangra Tale...
The tale of Tong Yan Pak Kung...
There is a temple 2 hours south east of Tangra. This is a place where all Chinese visit at least a year especially during Chinese New Year. Long ago a King summoned a Chinese scholar from China to India during the English rule. He wrote a script for the King. The King found it so beautiful that he commanded the Chinese scholar to take a horse and ride it as far as he can, and whatever distance he can cover shall be his. The Chinese scholar was able to ride a great distance amazing the King. These become all his land. However through time this land has become unrecognized by the Indians. Now, only the temple remains to mark his place in Chinese-Indian history.
About 47 South Tangra Road...
There is also a Hakka Chinese community in Calcutta known as Tangra. Tangra is an Industrial/ residential area, dominated by Leather Tanneries and Chinese Restaurants. There are over three hundred Leather Tanneries in Tangra. While daily life has modernized, the closeness of the community has stood the test of time, preserving its strong Chinese tradition and culture.
. There is also a Hakka Chinese community in Calcutta known as Tangra. Tangra is an Industrial/ residential area, dominated by Leather Tanneries and Chinese Restaurants. There are over three hundred Leather Tanneries in Tangra. While daily life has modernized, the closeness of the community has stood the test of time, preserving its strong Chinese tradition and culture.
　



The Sing Cheung Company, maker of chilli, garlic and soysauce, is responsible for the sweet smell of molasses wafting into the street.

It helps because otherwise the overpowering odor in the Tangra neighborhood is a mix of stagnant water and rotting eggs, the product of chemicals used in the area's tanneries.

"So many chemicals, there is no malaria here because it kills all the germs," joked one resident.

Tangra, on the eastern side of Kolkata, the port city in east India once known as Calcutta, the capital of British India, has long been home to most of the city's Chinese.

It is a corner of the Chinese diaspora that is fast disappearing. Children have moved on to other opportunities. The tannery business is threatened with displacement and soon, it seems, India's only Chinatown could be just a memory.

Cows, motorbikes and bicycle- rickshaws give Tangra the appearance of any crowded Indian district. Rivers of black and fetid water flow along channels by the roadside as leather goods are transported on open carts.

Yet most of the signs are in Chinese and behind the high-walled factories, the Chinese owners and their families live comfortably.

The tanneries, their corrugated roof tops crammed with hides laid out to dry, represent one of the main  
industries that the Chinese, mainly Hakkas, started soon after arriving in the early 20th century. But from a community of more than 50,000 in the 1950s, it has now dwindled to under 6,000.

Most of the immigrants' descendants have left for Canada, Australia, or the United States - some to Hong Kong or Taiwan, a few to China. Most of the hundreds of tanneries have closed - some converted into restaurants.

The few that are left were ordered by the Supreme Court last year to move to a new industrial area with proper treatment plants to curb water and air pollution. The owners say the local government wants to develop the land in this lucrative part of the city. For now, the tannery owners are sitting tight but once they are forced out it could effectively close down Chinatown.

There are parts of Tangra in which little has changed in generations.

The office of the 50-year-old Overseas Chinese Commerce of India, the last remaining Chinese-language newspaper in the city, stubbornly clings to life. Its editor, CJ Chen, 81, peers from behind thick glasses, and methodically cuts out articles and glues them to the page for a photocopied print run of 300.

The eight-page weekly consists of news articles largely translated from the local press. But even that is something of a recent development.

"Until three years ago I used to handwrite every article," Chen said. "Now we have computers so I can type them out. But I still handwrite the engagement and birth announcements."

Arriving in Tangra in 1949 from Guangdong, Chen's parents ran a tannery business and he remembers the good life, especially the years between 1960 and 1980, when business was thriving.

"But most of the Chinese are gone now and it is difficult to earn a decent income," he said.

One man determined to preserve Tangra's heritage is Paul Chung, 72, who established the Indian Chinese Association five years ago. He wants Chinese to be proud of Tangra. One of his recent developments was putting up a decorated road sign for "Tangra Chinatown."

"This area has not been acknowledged by the government. I put up the sign to tell people that there were a lot of restaurants here and to improve the status of Tangra. For years, no one did anything. Now something is being done and we have some recognition."

A retired college principal, he wants to strengthen Chinese culture and give young people reasons to stay.

"The ideology of my parents was just to come and work and make money. I want to emphasize that we are a part of this city - politically we are Indian but culturally we are Chinese and we are proud of both these identities."

Chung sees opportunity in places like Sun Yat Sen Street, where a Chinese food market opens each day at 6am with food stalls offering vats of freshly cooked pork buns, fried momos and wanton for Indian diners.

Around the corner is the 150-year- old Sea Ip Temple, and the Yin Sin club where Sunday mornings are given over to the unmistakable rattle of mahjong tiles.

Chung is also spearheading Putonghua classes, which have drawn interest from Indian businessmen trading with China. He will soon be running a second Chinese language and culture course for employees of Tata Iron and Steel Company, following its new operations in Shanghai. But he has a long way to go.

Down the road at the Pei May Chinese School, principal Pauline Liang sees the decline in student numbers and worries about the future. "It's like the Titanic - old, slow and sinking. But I don't want to desert it. I will work for as long as the work is here." Her two daughters have gone to live in Taiwan but she is reluctant to join them.

Like much of the Chinese population in Tangra, her one-room home with her retired husband is inside a tannery. "The first tanneries were shacks, but as the industry developed they grew more lucrative and more people arrived. Conditions in China were bad so we had more immigrants," she said. "When tanneries became concrete buildings, the owners were able to live with their families inside."

The English-medium school also teaches Hindi. Most of the children, all from Tangra, are aged three to 10 and speak Hakka at home. "Their forefathers left school early and never learned English, so the next generation realized the importance of giving their children a decent education and want to send them to a decent English school," said Liang.

Once booming businesses meant parents contributed generous school fees. Now the school suffers declining numbers and dwindling income.

The handful of five-year-olds in a bare classroom recited 1 to 10 in English, led by Benazir, a young Bengali teacher. A couple of the older boys chased each other around the huge deserted courtyard during recess. Most of the rooms are empty.

Like many young people, Christopher Fang, 28, whose parents came from Guangdong, is itching to leave. Born and raised in Tangra, he worked for several years in Sweden as a cook. Multilingual - but not in Putonghua - and possessing a college education, he sees little future for himself in Tangra. "I am waiting for another visa for Sweden, then I will return there to live. Tangra has changed a lot but there are fewer opportunities and most other young people like me are leaving."

What about the prospects of work in a newly prosperous China?

"I could go to live in China and get a job through my contacts, but I have no interest there. I love the way of life in Sweden, mixing with people of all nationalities, and that's where I want to be. I guess I'm not desperate to cling on to my Chinese identity," he said.

Indeed, there seem to be few Tangra residents who want to return to China - the older ones saw their property taken over under communism and would be returning to very little. For the young, China is a distant place.

Another remnant of the community is found in shoe shops owned by Chinese. With leather work a traditionally lower caste occupation in India, Hakkas were free to take up the trade, becoming renowned shoemakers.

Their shoe shops and factories along Bentinck Street, in the thriving center of the city, formed an area of vibrant commerce.

Sandy Au's shoe shop no longer makes shoes but, like the other 50-odd outlets on the street, sells manufactured footwear.

"My father came over here to set up a business - it was his dream but not mine. All my family members have since left Kolkata, even my mother is now in Canada. I am left to carry on the shop whether I like it or not."

Next door, David Chen's shop was founded by his grandfather more than 80 years ago and is one of the only remaining shops still making footwear by hand.

His family has also long since left India.

"I am trapped," he said wearily, "in my own family commitments."

With his father and siblings gone, Chen carries on but does not expect his three children to stay in the business. "Let them have a free choice," he said.

So it is among Kolkata's Chinese. Some are content to remain, others just want to leave and some are still mired in old questions from another time. "How is it that my family were here for three generations and I cannot get an Indian passport?" complained one man, who did not want to be named. "Many times they refused to give me citizenship. I was born in India under British rule and I have only just been granted permission to get a British passport."

Like many Chinese, he feels let down by the Indian government, and is angry that he has to keep applying and paying for a resident's visa every year in order to run his business.

There is also deep-rooted fear that dates back to the Sino-Indian war in 1962, when surveillance of Chinese increased and hundreds were charged with anti-Indian activities and detained or deported. For years after, those that remained were perceived as the enemy, deprived of the right to free movement and dismissed from jobs.

Politically Kolkata is still out on a limb. There is no Chinese consulate and no direct flights to the mainland or Hong Kong. When premier Wen Jiabao made his first trip to India earlier this year, he bypassed the country's only Chinatown, which is governed by a communist party.

Sandie Au lays some of the blame with the Chinese community itself.

"In most places in the world where the Chinese go, we are not political, we don't get involved. In that respect we are losing lots of ground.

"Most people who came here from China were not educated or intellectual, so we had no proper leader. If you don't have a proper education then you can't lead and can't fight for your rights."

Chung hopes his Indian Chinese Association is an answer for revitalizing the community and taking advantage of the surging economies of both countries. His big dream is to get rid of the tanneries and turn Tangra into a business hub.

"My ambition," he said. "is to have a beautiful Chinese garden, a Chinese medicine center and housing. I will tell everyone in China, if you want to do business with India, do it through us."

He has already had talks with the Chinese embassy in Delhi and he wants to bring a brick from the Great Wall of China to exhibit in Tangra.

"Whenever we need it, we will look at the brick and know we are Chinese," he said. "We should be proud here."

                                 Tangra...There goes the signboard

　

This road sign was different because it had Chinese characters on it-- besides the usual English, Hindi and Bengal scripts to indicate 'Tangra', Kolkata's two-century-old 'China Town'.

This move, initiated by the Indian Chinese Association (ICA), is an indication of the local Chinese community's desire to come out of its cocooned existence from behind the walls of Tangra--where people now venture mostly to flavor authentic Chinese cuisine.

Kolkata has the highest concentration of Chinese people in India. Though a part of the city's population for more than two centuries, its people have traditionally shied away from merging with the mainstream.

And now migration to new lands by the younger generation, along with other adventurous Indian citizens is threatening its very existence.

Says Paul Chung, president of the ICA : ''Things are changing and we at ICA always try to emphasize that we are a part of this city-- politically we are Indian, but culturally we are Chinese and we are proud of both these identities''.

Chung says there have been misunderstandings about the community that go back to 1962, when a border dispute between India and China flared into a declared war, which soured relations between Asia's two giants for decades afterwards.

The war resulted in restrictions being put on the community. Those still holding Chinese passports had to register themselves in the law office and had to take permission to travel outside the city.

These restrictions eased subsequently, especially with the thawing of relations between the two countries, but meantime it encouraged the younger generation to seek greener pastures, mainly in Australia, Canada and the United States in droves.

Today, the population has dwindled to about 5000, says Peter Chen, vice- president of the ICA. During the Second World War, Kolkata's Chinese community was about 10,000 strong with many more streaming in to join their relatives during and after the communist 'cultural revolution', and at one point Kolkata had as many as 30,000 people of Chinese origin.

The award-winning BBC documentary 'The Legend of Fat Mama', by Rafeeq Ellias , traces the trauma of the years after the 1962 war and the subsequent migration to third countries, as also the memories of the Chinese in their Indian home.

Though most of the local Chinese are Christians, they celebrate the traditional Chinese New Year with gusto and many who emigrated from Kolkata make it a point to return at this time.

According to Chung many return out of nostalgia for the good and easy life they knew in Kolkata. ''They don't like to talk about their life abroad and if there is any hardship or disillusionment, they don't want to reveal it''.

While many Chinese in Kolkata have their own businesses and are relatively well-off, most of those who have emigrated to the West now live the life of wage-slaves.

The Chinese in Kolkata are mostly from the Hakka community which specializes in shoe-making and leather-tanning. The others are Cantonese who are mostly carpenters and restaurant owners.

The Chinese first came to India to work at the Calcutta port (not accounting for travelers and traders in the middle ages) when Kolkata (Calcutta) was the capital of British Indian empire. The first Chinese to arrive (1778) is said to be one Yang Tai Chow who came to start a sugar mill and undertake tea trade. Over the years, the Chinese added an interesting dimension to the city's socio-cultural scenario. Kolkata earned a reputation for custom-made Chinese shoes and Chinese hairdressing saloons were patronized by the city's rich and famous. But what truly set Tangra apart was the Chinese cuisine offered at its many fine restaurants and even the ‘chow mien' and noodles on street corner food carts that anyone could afford. Lately, there has been a growth in the number of Chinese restaurants in Tangra partly because it brings in more money and partly because the government banished the polluting leather industry to a remoter part of the city. But many among younger generation are also taking up modern professional courses, although some manage to continue with the family trade too.

Dentistry is one example where a modern course in a medical college has helped to keep up a reputation for mending teeth, long enjoyed by the Hupek Chinese.

Kolkata's old-timers still swear by the expertise of traditional Chinese Hupek dentists and will still seek them out to get their teeth extracted, or order dentures.

There is now hope among young people that improved relations between India and China and the increasing establishment of Indian software companies and other enterprises in cities like Shanghai would create new situations in interpretation and liaison work.

But according to Chung, Chinese youth are too used to the freedoms they enjoy in India to actively seek out work on the Chinese mainland and prefer to take up jobs in India itself.

Tangra's Chinese language school run by the ICA, in the doldrums till recently, is now suddenly picking up in enrolments an there is a demand for teachers.

With Tata Iron and Steel Company's (Tisco) acquiring the Singapore-based NatSteel Asia, which has operations in China, the ICA has actually opened Chinese language classes in Jamshedpur, Tisco's headquarters.

India's IT giant, Infosys Technologies, too asked for help and two women from Kolkata are now working in the company's office in the city as coordinators.

Infosys has set up development centers in several cities in China and has taken up a program of training 100 students from China at its Global Education Center in Mysore.

Two years ago, the Association also ran courses for Indian army personnel at Kolkata's Fort William, headquarters of the Eastern Command, Indian Army. This was basically to enable communication, if necessary, with their counterpart on the international border between the two countries in the north and north-east.

In October, China and India plan to revive trade over the high Himalayan passes, which came to a standstill as a result of the 1962 war. One of these passes is in Nathu La in Sikkim while the other falls in West Bengal's Darjeeling district.

The ICA plans to turn Tangra into full-fledged 'Chinatown' that might attract tourists to its rich and, so far, lost heritage. ''Keeping to themselves did not help the Chinese community,'' says Chung.

''Besides if the people find good jobs here they won't go away,'' he said optimistically.

　
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