A brief history of the Chinese community in Newham
by Newham Chinese Association

Introduction

I. Migration to the UK

  1. Arriving for work & family reunion
  2. Nursing staff recruitment
  3. Arriving as refugees
  4. Arriving for a life changing prospect

II. Life in the adopted homeland

  1. First impression of Britain
  2. Cultural & Language barriers
  3. Livelihood Strategies
  4. Long working hours

III. History in retrospect

  1. NCA: the community centre
  2. Service, activities & volunteering
  3. Attainments & achievements
  4. A journey of transformation

Postface

Appendixes
Further reading
Acknowledgements

Introduction

In the 19th century, the Royal Docks in east London were home to the largest and deepest enclosed docks in the world. Created by the entrepreneurs to provide for Britain’s growing international trades, the docks brought a new world of commerce to the greatest city of the British Empire, attracting people from across the globe to do business, creating jobs and generating wealth. With the increase in trade, China’s cheap labour became a source for British shipping companies and in the early 1880s, a small number of seafarers from southern China first appeared in Liverpool and London, some of whom later left ship to settle in the UK. The first laundry run by a Chinese migrant opened in London in 1901. By 1913, some 30 or so Chinese shops such as eateries and green grocers were operating in the Pennyfields and Causeway area; and a sizable Chinese community was beginning to take shape. By the early 1900s, the British media began to refer to the settlement in Limehouse as “Chinatown”.

During the Second World War (1939-45), shipping activities were disrupted so that many Chinese seafarers lost their jobs yet could not return home. They stayed put to find work. Subsequently in the 1950s and 1960s, a larger wave of Chinese migrants arrived from Hong Kong and Guangdong. The increased popularity of Chinese food in the UK provided the soil for the growth of the Chinese food industry. Among the growing number of Chinese settlers, the majority found work in restaurants and takeaway shops.

Over the past half a century or so, more Chinese have entered the UK for various reasons. They came from different countries and regions, including Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, as well as Hong Kong and Mainland China. Since China’s opening up in the early1980s, with new channels of migration developed, arrivals from Mainland China have increased rapidly. The newcomers included students and visa holders of various types. Besides, assisted by human traffickers and organized gangs, a considerable number of people have also been able to make their way into the UK, without official documents and records. Currently London houses the bulk of the Chinese population, accommodating well over one third of the country’s ethnic Chinese residents. Although the Limehouse Chinatown has declined since the late 1960s, the East End remains a popular place for Chinese people to work and live in. Official records show that in 2020, there are 5984 Chinese residents in Newham, making it roughly 1.6% of the total population in the borough, close to the 1.7% average for all London boroughs.

Part I: Reasons for migration

1. Work & family reunion

The present Chinese population in the UK consists of migrants or descendants of migrants of the 20th century arrivals, plus the more recent arrivals since 2000. Beginning in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Hong Kong witnessed a period of rapid industrialization, commercial activities flourished in the then British Crown Colony where famers from the rural New Territories left their home in large numbers to seek cash earning opportunities in the urban centre. At the same time, Britain was also experiencing labour shortages owing to post-war economic reconstruction. Relaxed visa restrictions paved the way for men and women from overseas to come and find work here. The high exchange rate of the Pound caught the eye of the Hong Kong job-seekers. Mr WHT, 82, arriving from Hong Kong in 1962, recalls:

“For every Pound you’d get 16 Hong Kong Dollars. People came here to work to earn money and send it back to Hong Kong. It was a lot of money for the folks back home”.

The arrivals from Hong Kong continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Mr YKY, now 58, was one of them:

“I grew up in the countryside. My family was poor so I began to work early. I worked to support my family. In 1988, at the age of 24, I immigrated to the UK. It was my first time travelling by aeroplane. I entered the UK with a Work Permit of Second Level Overseas Labour”.

Having got a foothold in the UK, the Chinese arrivals would apply for their relatives to come over for family reunion; those still single would return to Hong Kong to marry someone and then bring the bride over:

2. Nursing staff recruitment

The UK’s labour shortage in the 1960s was manifested in the nursing profession as well as other sectors to which the government had to respond by recruiting nurses from abroad:

“In the late 60s and early 70s, Enoch Powell was sent round to the ex-colonies to recruit nurses, because the NHS was facing a labour crisis in nursing”, says Ms GT, 65, who came from Malaysia in 1976. The recruitment campaign in some ways opened the door to people who otherwise could not make it to further education in their home country, as explained by Mr SBF, 71, arriving in 1967:

“I left school when I was 17… I had no chance of getting into further education in Hong Kong because competition was very high; so the nursing route was a very, very good way to come, and also that because in those days, England was very, very keen to recruit workers from the Commonwealth or the colonies”.

The recruited nurses would later receive training and subsequently serve in NHS institutions, as witnessed by Ms GT, herself a trainee nurse back then:

“Particularly in east London [which] was like the slums of London…[because of] this and that… even more difficult to get nurses,…like Newham General Hospital, St Andrew’s before in Bromley-by-Bow, part of the Newham Hospital Group… Quite a lot [of them] came to St Andrew’s Hospital. That’s why if you go to St Andrews, you feel like you’re walking into a Malaysian town”.

3. Arriving as refugees

The end of the Vietnam War in 1975, followed by the brief Sino-Vietnam border conflicts in 1979, resulted in large numbers of Vietnamese escaping their homeland by boat to neighbouring countries. After a brief stay in the refugee camps, more than 10 thousand of these displaced persons, many of whom ethnic Chinese, were accepted by the UK to start life anew in the country. Mrs TM, 82, and her family were offered a Council flat in East London:

“We used to fish at sea for a living. We had a small fishing boat. We left Vietnam in 1978 on that boat and reached Beihai”.

And from this Chinese coastal city, the fishermen sailed again to reach Hong Kong, where they would later arrive in the UK in the early 1980s. Mrs HC, her fellow-countrywoman, also 82, arrived around the same period:

“I was born in Haiphong City. I went to school and was growing up there… I later worked as a teacher in a primary school in Haiphong… In 1979, I went to Hong Kong and then in 1980, I arrived in the UK”.

4. Arriving for a better prospect

The British education system is often seen as the envy of the world. For many, pursuing education and further training in the UK would mean a life changing move. Mr GM, 62, who arrived here in 1972, explains what it meant for him:

“Hong Kong doesn’t have…free education. [It] was only up to primary school… From secondary school onwards you have to pay for it”. Since he was in a family with four siblings whilst his father was “in a low paid job, there was no way he could afford education for all”, says Mr GM.

In the meanwhile, for Mr SBF, coming to the UK “was one way out of the ghettoes in Hong Kong”. Citing his own experience, he gives further details:

“I left with my family from China to Hong Kong at the back end of 1949. So we were not Hong Kong citizens and we were not the People Republic of China citizens; we were stateless and we lived in a shanty town for a long time, from 1949 until the shanty town burned down in 1963. Then we lived in a cardboard shelter in a disused football field… In the shanty town there were absolutely no facilities, no sanitary stuff, no electricity, no water, no law and order, and so on.

Living in a tenement block in Hong Kong, I was the first one in the whole estate to leave for England, so it was quite a big deal when I left”.

Part II: Life in the adopted homeland

1. First impression of Britain

Upon setting foot on British soil, the UK was new to the Chinese arrivals. Half a century ago, London looked rather different from what can be seen today. Mr WK, 82, arriving from Hong Kong in 1961, still remembers that he was landing at Southend Airport rather than Heathrow; whereas Mrs MF, 66, from Malaysia and arriving in here 1974, can still visualize what she saw:

“When I first came, I saw East London at St. Andrews. [I] came out of Bromley-by-Bow station, walked down the…pathway, into the- I thought, my god, is London like this, all drab [laughing] and old, really old?”

And according to Mrs JJL, 67, who arrived from Malaysia in 1972, then in London “everything was different; the people, the places, the weather, the food”. So “when I first came I was homesick. I’d been crying for months”, she confesses.

Homesickness was mainly caused by unfamiliarity to the place and the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Mrs WWS, 71, originally from Mainland China, describes how she felt then:

“I had no friends or relatives here. I was alone. I stayed home day after day, looking out of the window, feeling bored. The surroundings were so unfamiliar to me. I looked out the window, watching birds fly in the sky, cars passing by. And I asked myself: how on earth did I get myself into this strange world?”

2. Cultural & Language barriers

One of the major hurdles the Chinese faced upon arriving in the UK was the language barriers. Whilst the nurses were able to manage some level of English, most of the arrivals were poorly prepared for the world which they entered. Asked if he spoke English on arrival, Mr GM replies:

“Literally nothing! Well, you’d understand what’s Thank You and Please; but that’s not enough to take you to live in the UK. The first time I went to the refectory to buy something to eat, I didn’t even know the name of the food they were serving there. I didn’t know what a sausage was, I didn’t know what a cauliflower or pudding was… I just pointed”.
Lack of English caused enormous inconveniences to the migrants’ daily lives. To demonstrate the scale of the problem he encountered, Mr YKY tells a story of his early days in the UK:

“I remember, for the first few months, because my English was poor, I was too shy to order food in any place except McDonald’s. I saw the menus but I couldn’t read it…. But in a McDonalds’, things would be more straightforward for me; a hamburger and a drink is all I want. Why always a hamburger and a drink? Because I couldn’t order anything else! All I could manage was saying “Hem-Burg-Gar”. I couldn’t even get a chicken-burger, or a fillet-o-fish, or a Big Mac”.

3. Livelihood strategies

When the late 19th Century arrivals left their ship, many would find work on the docks as potters or cooks for a living. “Later on when the docks went downhill, some of them went to launderette businesses”, as commented by Ms GT. Working in the laundry was “because you don’t need to speak a lot of English; you just collect the clothes and you wash them and give it back. But then after washing machines were mass-produced, they were all displaced, and they moved into catering, because after the War, the British have come back from the ex-colonies; they acquired the tastes of oriental food”.

Except for the nurses who were purpose-recruited, most of the 1960s and 1970s arrivals had to find work in the labour intensive sectors, with catering absorbing the bulk of the labour force. Mr WHT found his first job in the East End:

“There were laundrettes, bean-sprouts shops and so on. Some restaurants even produced bean-sprouts for their own consumption. They took care of demands for bean-sprouts themselves. The restaurant where I worked needed 18 buckets of bean-sprouts each week”. But catering workers were often not well paid. Their “wages were peanuts”, as he puts it.

Low pay for kitchen jobs and the urge to earn money pushed people to move forward to become business owners. And without sufficient resources, it was common for a starter to operate their business by subcontracting. This is how 84 year old Mrs ML’s late husband started theirs:

“You basically hire the venture and run it, rather than owning it. It’s just like you borrow money to do something, then you pay them back when you’ve made profit”.

4. Long working hours

The Chinese catering sector is known for its notorious long hour working practices, where 60 to 70 hours a working week is almost a norm. “There’s no time for leisure, no time to learn English”, noted Ms GT, a long time community activist. And the example given by Mrs ML, arriving in 1964, illustrates this:

“Our shop was open six and a-half-days a week. There wasn’t a lot of time for rest. We only had half a day’s rest each week. We had no holiday whatsoever”.

And a normal daily routine for shop-keeper Mr YKY would look like this:

“I’d get up at around 6 O’clock, and start working at seven. I’d then work until very late. In those days, takeaways closed very late around 11pm… But I’d still be working alone after that. Normally I’d go to bed around 2 or 3 O’clock. What do I do after the shop is closed? I’d prepare things for deep fry the next day, like slicing meat and things like that”.
Even a small business demands a huge amount of energy and determination. Mrs WWS ran their family shop with her late husband for over 20 years in Plaistow and knows full well the level of stress they were under:

“It was hard work and long hours. Sometimes there wasn’t even a single customer showing up; other times orders suddenly flooded in. Sometimes what you’ve prepared is too little too late; other times you’d end up with lots of leftovers…You have to prepare things overnight….That would keep you working through the night….. If you have too much leftovers, they may go off quickly and you’d have to bin them. There are lots of details to worry you”.
Running a business also means risk taking and sacrifices. Mr YKY borrowed money to start his business but what was to follow was disappointing:

“Business was poor in the beginning. I still remember very clearly that we only made £52 for the first week… Earlier I was working in a big hotel in Gatwick with an annual salary of £23,000 that earned me well over £300 a week. Now though, for a whole week, my own business got just £52 turnover! What was I doing, I asked myself? As I was the only breadwinner in a family of four, with a small wage, plus various bills to pay, we were merely able to keep our head above water”.

Part III. History in retrospect

1. NCA: The community Centre

Landing in an unfamiliar destination, the Chinese arrivals in the 1960s and 70s were confronted with difficulties in their efforts to settle; and there were no civic organizations to give them support and advice. Ms GT, who once worked in a hospital, says she therefore “found there was a lot of suffering” endured by the migrants, especially the “elderly and women”:

“A lot of them had difficulties in accessing mainstream services, health services or just anything under the sun really. I still remember there was a Chinese lady who had a total hysterectomy, for four-five years she didn’t understand [why] she couldn’t conceive. Nobody told her that her womb had been taken away”.

The migrants’ need for help was obvious and in many ways, urgent, prompting spontaneous responses by a small group of younger Chinese who decided to act. Mr JL, 64, was one of the volunteers in this group:

“I was a student in 1976… I worked in a big restaurant in Chinatown as a waiter on weekends… I was in touch with the waiters and waitresses and chefs…. I started by helping my colleagues. I got to get child benefit, look for school, and housing. With a group of friends we started the first free advice services”.

This was how the first Chinese Advice & Information Centre was set up in Chinatown, followed by several others of similar functions in various parts of London, including the Newham Chinese Association (NCA).

2. Services, activities and volunteering

Lack of resources was the first hurdle the newly founded NCA encountered. In the beginning activities were managed by volunteers. Later, when some funding eventually came through, paid workers were appointed and services became more regular. Besides health exercises such as Tai Chi and fan dance, the NCA also holds the “Four Big Events” every year: the Chinese New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Autumn Festival and Christmas. These are popular with local residents. Mr WK, a retired chef, is one such enthusiast:

“I’m 82 years old now… I joined the Chinese Association to learn dancing and play table tennis. I can’t sing Cantonese opera songs; I am here to learn Dancing. I may have two left feet, but I do dancing of any steps! I learn all sorts of dances”.
Apart from giving practical assistance, the NCA is also a place for volunteering. Mr GM has been a volunteer since long ago:

“I was always a member of the Chinese communities, always. I even helped to set up the first Chinese school in Harlow town, not far from here. When they first set up a Chinese school there, I was the school headmaster”.

With a background in the Hong Kong police force, 68 year-old Mrs EC who arrived in 2006, feels happy that she can use her skill and knowledge to help people at the NCA:

“In 2013 my husband died; then I made up my mind and started a new way of living. Somebody introduced me to this place. I interpret, because it seems [this is] the kind of service I used [to do] in the police force”.

Volunteering is also seen as a win-win opportunity by the volunteers. Mrs KH, 63, who had once hit a low point in life due to losing her husband in an unsuccessful surgery, is a long time volunteer with the NCA. She shares:

“You feel that you are being cared for by others here. You feel you now have an entire family from your mother’s side to be with you. You feel you can express yourself…. I got to know many other volunteers; it allowed me to expand my social horizons… The world has now opened up for me… I learned a lot of things that I hadn’t known previously. I get to know many new friends here. When I first came to the UK, I didn’t have a single person whom I could call “friend”.

3. Attainments & Achievements

Coming from different backgrounds and living and working for the most part of their adult life in the land where they now call home, how to assess the achievements they made over the past years is different from person to person among the Chinese. Here Mr YKY offers his views:

“I started from nothing. I came to the UK with a mere 10 thousand HK Dollars (equivalent roughly to £900 at the time) on me. I arrived without friends or possessions; I didn’t inherit any ancestral property or assets. I basically started from scratch. Now, although I haven’t made a fortune, I do have two properties, a house and a shop in Leyton”.

Meanwhile, for Mrs KH, volunteering and bringing up children singlehandedly has been her proudest achievement:

“For me the biggest achievement is that I was involved in setting up the Chinese Association. Also I’ve brought up two lovely children; they both have got a Master’s Degree”.

Similarly, Mr WHT is also very proud to have been involved in activities supporting victims of natural disasters and hence being honoured in big occasions:

“I’ve met Charles. I’ve met several Chinese Ambassadors. And on the 60th Anniversary of China’s Founding, I was invited to join the celebrations held in the Great Hall of the People [China Parliament House]”.

Mrs HC has never been able to find work in the UK, so her achievement rests with the younger generations:

“Had we been kept in Vietnam, our children would not have been able to see the Western world, the lifestyle, the scientific advancement and so on in the West. Now I have brought my children here, so that they are able to see the advanced civilization in the West, the society, the welfare, the culture, how politics works and so on and so forth”.

4. A journey of transformation

Notwithstanding what achievements were made, for the Chinese, their migration has been an eventful and in many cases, difficult journey; yet it is also one that was worth making. Mrs WWS admits that it was because she “felt some mental pressure” at home that she decided to “cross the border to Hong Kong”, even though the trekking was tough and dangerous:

“I climbed over five mountains at night. I walked and walked, eventually I had to take my shoes off [and] walk barefoot… My toes would run into hard grass roots and hurt, bleeding; they looked like damaged bananas”.

Even living on social welfare is thought to be in a better place. Looking back to the past, Mrs HC is feeling thankful for what little she has got in the UK.

“I have been a refugee myself. I know what the experience of being a refugee is like.… It’s a horrible experience. When in a boat travelling in the rough sea, you never know where you may end up. You may end up in the stomach of a big shack. So you’d be lucky to have survived the journey and get your life back”.

And, reminiscing the days gone by, Mrs WWS feels contented to have come such a long way:

”It feels very comfortable here. The surroundings can make you happy. …You have more freedom here… How long I can live doesn’t matter to me now. I constantly remind myself that I should live each and every day happily…I’m feeling vigorous”.

Postface

In conclusion, the Chinese migrants had come from some rather deprived backgrounds, looking for a better life in the new homeland. In this regard, most of them have achieved their goals. On reflection, Mr YKY is jubilant and thankful:

“Looking back, my wife and I are feeling fulfilled. One can only earn a living by one’s own hands. One needs to look around to find out what society needs, what is missing and what should be improved, in order to place oneself in society and adapt to it. Only so can you overcome the difficulties. Things move and move fast… rather fast… It’s important to be positive and optimistic. Don’t always blame yourself on the low-points in life. Who knows, in the future you may face even lower points. Be strong, be brave in meeting challenges and move forward. The most important thing is to live happily, to live a colourful and meaningful life. Leave no regrets in your life.

And the account given by Mr SBF, who had lived in a cardboard shelter in Hong Kong before moving to the UK, has in some way concluded it for all:

“I studied part-time to get my MA in Social and Public Administration…Just at that time, there was a change in law about regulating residential homes for people, so I became an inspector…. I wanted to go up the ladder a little bit, go sideways. So I went to work in Oxford, as the Head of Elders Services in one half of Oxford city. Next, I got a job back in Newham, where we lived, and became the Head of Inspection and Quality Assurance. I stayed there until 1996. Then I left for the much bigger social services department in Hertfordshire, I became Head of Inspection for the whole of the county of Hertfordshire. I completed my law degree in 1997. I run my own company, doing registration inspection work for different local governments. At one stage, I was working for four local authorities, contracting my time out. In 2002, I became an inspector for the national body called the Healthcare Commission which now becomes the CQC, Care Quality Commission. And from 2002 onwards, I always had a part-time job as a member of the Mental Health Tribunal, which is a first-tier judicial office. So basically, my motto is ‘from shanty town to London town; from hospital ward to judicial office’. That is my life story.”

Appendixes – A sketchy timeline of Chinese migration to the UK

18 Century

The first Chinese to immigrate to Britain, settling in Scotland, was William Macao who lived in Edinburgh from 1779.

1800s to World War II

In 1839, John Hochee became the first Chinese to be naturalized and inherited the property of John Elphinstone for whom he had worked.

By the mid-1880s, small Chinatowns started to form in London and Liverpool with grocery stores, eating houses and meeting places and, in the East End, Chinese street names.

In 1877, Kuo Sung-tao, the first Chinese minister to Britain, opened the country’s legation in London.

By 1890, there were two distinct, if small, Chinese communities living in east London. Chinese from Shanghai settled in East London.

From the early 1900s, due to being blocked from any other employment, many Chinese established small laundries.

By 1918, the number of Chinese living in Pennyfields, Poplar totaled less that 200; all were men and nine of them had English wives. The number of settled Chinese immigrants before the 1950s remained relatively small.

Post-World War II

The 1951 Census recorded a big increase in Britain’s Chinese population, then standing at 12,523, of whom over 4,000 were from Malaysia and 3,459 single males from Hong Kong.

The 1950s and 1960s saw the largest wave of Chinese immigration, consisting predominantly of male agricultural labourers from Hong Kong’s New Territories. The majority were employed in the then growing Chinese catering industry.

The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act restricted immigration from current and British colonies. The Act included a voucher system, so some Chinese migrants did still continue for family reunion to join family members based in the UK.

The Soho district grew further in the 1970s to become London’s new Chinatown. In 1976, Britain’s Chinese population included approximately 6,000 full-time students and 2,000 nurses.

From 1980s onwards

China opened its door to the outside world, with the Chinese government relaxed restrictions on emigration in 1981, the Census recorded Britain’s Chinese population as 154,363.

In the 1990s, with new channels of migration developed, there was an increase in illegal immigrants from China into the United Kingdom, some with the help of human traffickers known as snakeheads.

Since the 2000, as Hong Kong and China became wealthier, Chinese parents increasingly sent their children to study in the UK. An estimated 80,000 Hong Kong and Chinese students attended UK universities in the academic year of 2004–05.

According to the Chinese embassy in London, as of 2020, there are 600,000 British citizens of Chinese extraction living in the UK. In addition to a further 410,000 who are Chinese nationals and of these, 220,000 are students.

Further reading

“Chinese restaurants 1950.” British Library. Retrieved on 26 November 2016.

Baker, Hugh D. R. (1994) “Branches All Over: The Hong Kong Chinese in the United Kingdom.” Reluctant Exiles?: Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese. Ed. Ronald Skeldon. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. 291-307.

Lam T & Martin C (1997) “The Settlement Of The Vietnamese In London: Official Policy And Refugee Responses”, Allsop J (Editor), South Bank University, 1 June 1997.

Price, Barclay (2019) “The Chinese in Britain – A History of Visitors and Settlers”. UK: Amberley Books.

Robinson, V. (1985) ‘The Vietnamese reception and resettlement programme in the UK rhetoric and reality’, Ethnic Groups, 6, 305-30.

Seed, John (2006) ‘”Limehouse Blues”: Looking for Chinatown in the London Docks,1900–1940’, History Workshop Journal, No. 62 (Autumn 2006), pp. 58–85.

Zhang S S (2015) “Refugees Who Fled Mainland China for Hong Kong in the 1960’s Told Their Stories” https://samanthasuhanzhang.wordpress.com 2015-12-16

Acknowledgements

Our thanks go to the following organizations and individuals: