Why a new Chinese heritage gallery in Kolkata holds deep, personal significance to the community

This year, ‘Hungry Ghost Festival’ was celebrated on August 27, while ‘Ghost Month’ stretched from August 13 to September 10.

Over two centuries since the first Chinese settlers in Bengal made Kolkata their home, the period continues to hold significance for the community here.

“Places like the Choong Ye Thong Cemetery and Nam-Soon Cemetery in Tangra [Kolkata] see many families walk in with new robes to offer to the dead. We also believe that they visit us and bless us during this time of the year. We clean the tombs and paint them as well. The children are also taught the importance of these customs,” explains Jasmine Chen, a 50-year-old homemaker, resident of the city’s Maheshtala Road.

It is significant then that it was during this period that Kolkata got its first heritage spot dedicated to preserving the history of the Chinese community in India. Jasmine agrees. “The fact that they decided to open the gallery to the public on September 5 is quite symbolic. It is, after all, a homage to our ancestors,” she says.

The Cheenapara Heritage Gallery, on Black Burn Lane, in the Tiretta Bazaar neighbourhood of Kolkata, has been set up as a collaboration between The Cha Project — a design and creative placemaking studio based in Singapore — and the Kolkata chapter of The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). But beyond the gallery, Black Burn Lane in its entirety seems a relic of a community whose presence in the city had once been far more extensive.

Entering Black Burn Lane, on the right is the Gee Hing Church and Club of the Congregation Hingia, built in 1888 and relocated to its present address on 13, Blackburn Lane in 1920. Sharing a mossy wall with the church is the Chooney Thong Club, a community centre. This too was set up in the first decade of the 20th century and over the years has remained a common platform for social and religious gatherings for the Chinese community. As the street makes its first bend towards the right, in the corner diagonally across the church is the 117-year-old Sea Voi Yune Leong Futh Church and Voiling Club. On the ground floor is the Sei Vui Restaurant, which shares a wall with the newly-inaugurated Cheenapara Heritage Gallery. The building used to be a boarding house for Chinese labourers who came into Kolkata from 1910 onwards for trade and commerce and was later turned into the Sei Vui Restaurant by Chen Yao Hua, the 72-year-old president of Voiling Club.

It is believed the Chinese settlers in Bengal first came sometime in the late 18th century. If Tiretta Bazaar became one of their ghettos, Tangra, where Chinese tanneries and restaurants flourished, was another. From ship-building, to leather goods manufacturing, dentistry and the beauty industry (read salons), many professions have benefited from their skills. Long before high-end, fine-dining restaurants introduced Asian cuisine to the rest of India, Kolkata was already relishing its chimney soup, noodles, chilli chicken and sweet and sour prawn at the restaurants in Tangra and Tiretta Bazaar. Indeed, the Chinese breakfast at Tiretta Bazaar remains a constant mention in any food guide on the city’s culinary classics and ‘Calcutta Chinese’, that special flavour served up by the Chinese-owned restaurants in the city today, finds a place in the menu of many Asian cuisine restaurants across the country.

Somewhere this restrictive identity, however, might have stopped the city from appreciating how deep and wide the roots of the community are spread here.

Also read: Why Manipuri singer’s death from ‘assault’ highlights problem of linking identity, freedom with noise

“It is a myth that the Chinese community in Kolkata lives only in Tangra and Tiretta Bazar. There are several other Chinese hubs in the city such as CIT Road, Park Circus, Bentinck Street, Kayani Market and lately New Town [near Salt Lake] as well. These families have been living in these places right from the World War I era,” says Hua.

The comparatively limited knowledge that many in the city have about the community’s way of life is especially significant since the Chinese seem to have largely embraced the culture of their adopted land. “Every time we have guests from abroad, they want to try authentic Bengali cuisine. We order from local home chefs and also Bengali restaurants. Shopping for saris from Gariahat [market] and mishti [sweets] from KC Nag and Nakur [iconic Bengali sweet shops] are also on our to-do list," says 36-year-old Shirley Yong, a resident of Tangra whose family is in the leather business. She adds: “We go pandal hopping like everyone in the city during Durga Puja and burst crackers on Diwali.”

Part of the city’s limited interaction with the community might have been a result of the community's preference to keep their private life private. “The people in Chinatown get noticed during the Chinese New Year when we have the dragon dance, the carnival and New Year celebrations in the school grounds in Tangra. But apart from that the community likes to keep things quiet,” admits Monica Liu, owner of several restaurants in the city.

And so while Bengalis relished their food and bought customised leather shoes and bags from the Chinese, the curtain remained drawn at the door of the restaurants and leather goods shops, giving little peek into what lay behind. On festivals — Bengali and Chinese — the city trooped to Chinatown to eat, cheer and celebrate, but the culture still remained largely alien.

“For a long time people did not know much about the Chinese people and their culture. Even now we don't know much about them. Integration has to happen at a more basic level, not just going and eating in Tangra during Durga Puja,” agrees Dr Udita Mitra, associate professor, department of sociology, Shri Shikshayatan College, Kolkata.

In recent years, even exchange has been changing.

If newer, fine-dining Asian cuisine restaurants have been giving the wholesome fare of Chinatown competition, Vanessa Chen, a sixty-year-old hairdresser based in Kolkata, talks about the changes in the beauty industry. “I have worked in some of the best salons and beauty parlours in the Park Street and Camac Street areas [among Kolkata’s upmarket neighbourhoods]. Earlier, my customers just came in and sat down on the chair. There was no internet and they just trusted me blindly. I styled their hair in whatever style I thought would suit their personality. And, at the end of it all, they went home extremely happy and tipped me heavily. Now things are different; they come to us with a video they have seen on Instagram,” rues Vanessa, who claims to have “done the hair of some famous Bengali actors”.

The biggest change, of course, has been in the leather industry, dealing a heavy blow to the community. In the ‘90s, as environmental concerns from the chemical wastes released by the Tangra tanneries mounted, many closed down or were relocated. It was also the time when, faced with income loss, many among the community started migrating outside India. From a population of more than 50,000 in the 1980s, as per community estimates, their number is now down to about 2000.

Fifty-year-old Patricia Chung, who lives with her family in Canada, once lived in Tangra with a family of 12 cousins and their parents. “We all lived close by so that we could help each other. Most of the men were in the leather business. I had a few uncles who also owned shoe shops on Bentinck Street. The children were sent to boarding schools in Kurseong, Darjeeling and Kalimpong because our parents were caught up with the business. Even in boarding school, we were enrolled as a group who came from the same family,” she recalls. “But gradually people moved abroad. Some went to study and never came back. Others wanted a better life in places like North America, Europe or even Australia. Slowly businesses shut down as well. We still have a house in Tangra and visit our extended family whenever we can.”

Many among Kolkata’s Chinese remember how marriages outside the community were frowned upon even as recently as the 1990s. That has changed in the new millennium.

And as for the rest of India, globalisation too has played a role in the cultural shift within the community, exposing the youth to influences from across the world.

“Most of the youngsters who have grown up in Kolkata are more inclined towards Bollywood music and dance. Even though they do enjoy the routine dragon dance during the Chinese New Year, their preferences in clothing, food and music are heavily influenced by their surroundings. Some even enjoy listening to Bengali music bands like Fossils and Cactus. Whenever there is a gathering or a party, we play English songs along with Bollywood and Bangla band music. Chinese folk songs are mostly played during festivals or weddings,” says 45-year-old Robert Chung, a resident of Maheshtala Road, who deals in car rentals. K-Pop has them as hooked as the rest of India.

Even the Chinese they speak at home has undergone a change. The community in Kolkata have come from Canton and Hakka, among other regions. “Over the years, the dialect, which differs from province to province in China, has undergone various changes. Many Mandarin words have been adapted into the Hakka and Cantonese dialects. So the Chinese that we speak now is an evolved version of Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka,” explains Robert. Most community members also speak English, Hindi and fluent Bangla.

Now, the heritage gallery hopes to protect a way of life that is as distinctly Kolkata-Chinese as the food that we have come to associate the community with.

On display are personal belongings donated by members of the community — a set of carpentry tools, alongside dentistry items. There are bottles of sauces donated by a Kolkata-based Chinese brand, a menu card from a local eatery dating back to the 1950s and a 117-year-old membership register of the Sihui Ruan-Liang Temple.

In that the gallery is similar to the Partition Museum in Amritsar, where many of the items on display are personal or household items donated by survivors — phulkari dupattas, utensils, letters...

Also read: Why for many of India’s youth the first adulting in an alien city is winning the accommodation battle

“My children and the children of my friends have all settled abroad in places like Australia and Canada. So, the next generation is not going to be living here anymore. That is why I decided to be part of this project, so that people in this city and also visitors to this city get to know about this community who have been living here for so long,” Hua mused.

It wasn’t easy to convince community members to part with family belongings. “It is an uphill task to make our people talk or reveal insights about themselves,” admits Hua. He adds: “We had a newspaper that used to be published from a printing press in Macabre Street (Robinson Street). But even that was stopped in 2020. All the money that comes into the church as donations has been used to set up this heritage gallery.”

Perhaps, in a quiet corner of his heart, and the hearts of other community elders like him, is the hope that in coming years, the gallery will not only give those outside the community a glimpse into a way of life that had once thrived in Kolkata, but also draw future generations of Chinese in the city here every ‘Hungry Ghost Festival’ as homage to ancestors who made Kolkata home.