Friday December 12, 1997

From my hotel I caught a bus towards Xiamen University (Xia Da, as it's locally known - short for Xiamen Da Xue) and went in search of the Overseas Chinese Museum mentioned in the Rough Guide. I got off the bus at what I thought was the correct street according to my map and the directions I had and went about trying to find my destination.

As I was standing on the street corner reading my map, trying to match the characters on the street signs with the characters on the map, I heard this voice say "Can I help you?" Needless to say I was somewhat surprised by this, especially when I looked up. The speaker was a middle aged Mediterranean-looking woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth grinning, no doubt, at the unusual opportunity to speak to somebody from outside of Xiamen.

Nalia wasn't much help with the map, she didn't even know there was a museum nearby, but she had some other useful information.Nalia had been living in Xiamen for the last two years teaching English. It's not a very well-paying job although she makes more than most Chinese do. For teaching 15 hours per week at Lujian University (a smaller school next to Xia Da) she makes 2,000 Yuan a month (CDN $400) and she also gives private instruction for 100 yuan per hour. I have to smile when I think of her Chinese students learning to speak English with a Jewish accent. She figures she'll spend another two years here before going back to Israel.

I walked back up the street and eventually found the museum, after asking a couple of people along the way. It was closed from 1130h to 1400h; I had an hour to kill so I went for a walk around the neighbourhood. Like most streets in the cities I've seen in Fujian, these were lined with one-room shops at ground level open to the street at the front, apartments above. Each shop specialises in a range of goods such as women's clothes or electrical or stationery or simple food cooked on the spot and by walking a few blocks you often come across the same kind of shop a couple of times. They always have about the same selection of goods so shopping around is pointless except to get an idea of prices - if you can walk away then you've bid too low. All the shops have metal doors which roll down at closing time, which varies greatly from place to place.

Likewise, all the apartments, and most other buildings, have iron grates over the windows and balconies. Apartments here generally have tile or wood floors and are much nicer on the inside than you would think from looking at the outsides of the buildings. The buildings are closely packed in a jumble of angles and shadows - no orderly rows here - and thickets of aluminium television antennae sprout from the roofs. The exteriors are painted all manner of colours or finished in tile - uniformly grimy from the dirt, smoke and pollution. Laundry is hung out the window or on the balcony to dry, adding to the colour and chaos. Narrow, stone walkways run their crooked course from the main road between the buildings; these are also named streets but I think calling them lanes is even too kind. They're too narrow for a car but pedestrians, bicycles and motorbikes all use them. I tried to stay out of them, it's too easy to get disoriented and I always seemed to arrive at a dead-end anyway.

I made my way back to the museum and sat on a low stone wall to wait for two o-clock. That's the time school kids go back to class too and since there was a school about 100 metres away lots of curious children were passing by. I always return the "Hello" and they usually know "How are you" but then their English runs out so I get to work on my Chinese - this ensures the conversations are brief. The students usually wear uniforms, most often blue and white nylon warm-up suits but some seem to get away with going in regular clothes.

Promptly at two, I bought my entrance ticket (Y5) and ventured into the museum. It provides a photographic and written record of the exploits of expatriate Chinese in foreign lands. Like all the places here, there are few English captions on the displays but there were enough that I could get the general gist of the place. The dedication plaque is the only fully translated passage in the museum and I liked it so much I had to write it down. It reads as follows:

" The history of overseas Chinese is a truthful record of the Chinese who headed for the outside world. Ever since the Qin dynasty (221 - 207 BC) and the Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD), the Chinese have left their country with one climax following another. The attainments of the overseas Chinese of modern times and those of the Chinese of our time have won more and more recognition and attention by the world.

The overseas Chinese have endured all kinds of hardships in settling abroad. This is a history of their struggle cast in blood and tears.

The overseas Chines have hacked their way through difficulties and, one stepping into the breach as another fell, have planted civilisation among the local people. This is a history of the builders cemented with wisdom.

The overseas Chinese have made selfless contributions to our motherland and exerted their utmost efforts to vigorously develop China. This is a history of patriotism filled with a keen and profound affection.

The overseas Chinese have faced the future and maintained their ego as well as mixed with the local people. The picture scroll of their history with a new grand prospect has since unfolded before our eyes.

The history of overseas Chinese - an echo that shakes the century;

The history of overseas Chinese - a monument that shines brightly over the earth!"

A few things must be lost in the translation, I think, but the flowery style is consistent with translations I've seen in other cultural buildings and elsewhere. The Chinese must consider English a pretty boring language if they're used to this kind of hyperbole. I, for one, think it's kind of fun though I do not think I should adopt the style. The rest of the displays were in Chinese with the occasional heading or caption translated into English. From these I was able to get the general gist of things.

Beginning around the second century BC Chinese established trade routes from Xi'an, in the middle of present day China, to Istanbul on the east coast of the Mediterranean using camels to carry pottery and jars of spice. By the second century AD a maritime silk road was in use and several port cities prospered. Not far north of here, Quan Zhou was home to hundreds of thousands of Arab traders up until the 13th century. In its time it was one of the largest commercial ports in the world. Chinese explorers travelled all over Asia and Africa during the middle ages and ancient Song dynasty (960-1266 AD) coins have been found as far away as Sri Lanka and Kenya while the characteristic white and blue Chinese porcelain can be found just about everywhere. Trade with Batavia (now Jakarta) and Portuguese Malacca began to boom in the 1600s.

The Chinese have been colonisers as well. In 219 BC China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sent Xu Fu across the seas in search of medicinal herbs. Xu Fu ultimately settled in Japan where he had several thousand children and achieved demigod status. Chinese settled in North Lauzon, the Philippines, in 1574 AD when Lin A Feng escaped the Ming dynasty's army with a fleet of 62 warships carrying 2,000 sailors, 2,000 soldiers and 1,500 women and children. In the 19th and 20th centuries Chinese emigrated in large numbers as the population here exploded.

During the Qing dynasty European nations used their military might to force China to open up to foreign trade. Once the dragon was defeated, ending the Opium Wars in 1842, foreign treaty concessions such as Hong Kong and Gulangyu were exacted and many Chinese were kidnapped by "HeJi" foreign firms to work as coolies overseas. A quarter of a million Chinese served foreign powers in the first world war.

Chinese have gone where the opportunities are. To Singapore with the British in 1819. To America and Canada in the 1880s to work on the railroads. Towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, overseas Chinese began to make fortunes in business in Singapore, Thailand, America, Malaysia, Brazil, all over - the museum is full of displays expounding their achievements. Communities of Chinese in foreign lands have adopted their new countries and mixed with the locals but retained a Chinese identity, sometimes developing their own dialect over the generations. Visiting Myanmar in 1956 to sign a dual citizenship agreement, Premier Zhou En Lai said, "Overseas Chinese have opted for the resident country nationality. This is like our daughter leaving home for marriage. We are still relatives." Everyone loves a rich relative, don't they?