The Chinese community played an important role in British Guiana beginning in 1853, supplying independent Guyana its first President, Arthur Chung, from 1970 to 1980. The Chinese are one of the "" celebrated in Guyana's national anthem. The 20th century saw substantial emigration by the Chinese Guyanese professional class, a process accelerated following independence, making the Chinese Guyanese principally a diaspora community today.
History
Fourteen thousand Chinese arrived in British Guiana between 1853 and 1879 on 39 vessels bound from Hong Kong to fill the labor shortage on the sugar plantations engendered by the abolition of slavery. Smaller numbers arrived in Trinidad, Jamaica and Suriname. The Chinese achieved considerable success in the colony, a number of them having been Christians in China before the emigration. Some, particularly in the early years were "the offscourings of Canton--gaol-birds, loafers and vagabonds," who swiftly deserted the plantations and took to bootlegging, burglary and robbery and kept brothels and gambling houses. and the Hakka/Punti conflicts of Canton. Others were Christians fleeing the Tai-Ping Civil War or belonged to the Hakka minority fleeing conflicts with the dominant Punti. Most were bound under five-year indentures—civil contracts enforced by penal sanctions—to work on the sugar plantations. Eighty-five percent of these immigrants were men, and most returned to China or emigrated to other parts of the Guianas and the Caribbean after completing or escaping their indentures. Those who remained soon turned to trade, competing effectively with the Portuguese and East Indians, who had also entered as indentured laborers, in the retail sector. Look-Lai reports important Chinese import and wholesale traders by the 1880s and that the 1890s saw Chinese "druggists, butchers, hucksters, cart and boat cab owners, barbers, laundrymen and legal sellers of opium and ganja " and holding 50% of food shop licenses and 90% of liquor licenses. By the end of the 19th century, the Chinese had transcended their early reputation for criminality and come to be regarded as worthy, law-abiding, industrious citizens. Unlike other communities of overseas Chinese, the Chinese of Guyana swiftly abandoned traditional Chinese customs, religion and language. Their eager acceptance of Christianity contrasted sharply with the strong attachment of other overseas Chinese communities to their ancestral religions and to Christian missionary conversion efforts. Many of the first generation Chinese Guyanese were Christians while in China, and most others converted swiftly on arrival. They built and maintained their own Christian churches throughout the Colony and paid their own Chinese-speaking catechists. In 1860, Mr. Lough Fook, who had come from China to spread the gospel among the immigrants, established The Chinese Baptist Church of British Guiana, first at Peter's Hall and later at Leonora. An Anglican missionary, Wu Tai Kam, arrived in the colony from Singapore in 1864 and successfully proselytized among the immigrants. He was given a government stipend as missionary to the Chinese immigrants, and was instrumental in founding the Chinese settlement at Hopetown. For those who were lucky enough to marry the few Chinese women in the colony, or to have migrated as families, domestic life was characterized by a sense of good breeding in familial relations. They always hung curtains in their rooms, and decorated them with looking-glasses and little picture; their homes were regarded as models of cleanliness and comfort. The descendants of the Chinese from China spoke and wrote English fluently, so that by the 1920s there was no longer a need for Chinese-speaking pastors. In the first years of the 20th century, prosperous Guyanese Chinese began sending their sons and daughters to England for university education. By the mid-twentieth century, the descendants of the original immigrants had assimilated so completely into mainstream British colonial culture that they had become uninteresting to anthropologists. Anthropologist Morton Fried found them completely at home in European culture and its local manifestation, with no ancestral cult, no ancestral tablets, no ceremonial burial ground or permanent record of genealogy and no trace of Chinese medicine. The grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original immigrants did not even know the Chinese characters for their own names. The young anthropologist declared with exasperation, "these people are scarcely Chinese." The Chinese continued to prosper in the retail trades, and contributed substantially to the development of the colony's gold, diamond and bauxite resources, and to its professional community and its political, religious and sporting life. The three pillars of the community were the Chinese Association, the Chinese Sports Club and St. Saviour's Church, an Anglican house of worship founded, funded and pastored by the Chinese Guyanese.
