Mauritians of Chinese origin


Mauritians of Chinese origin, also known as Sino-Mauritians or Chinese Mauritians, are Mauritians who trace their ethnic ancestry to China.

Migration history

Like members of other communities on the island, some of the earliest Chinese in Mauritius arrived involuntarily, having been "shanghaied" from Sumatra in the 1740s to work in Mauritius in a scheme hatched by the French admiral Charles Hector, comte d'Estaing; however, they soon went on strike to protest their kidnapping. Luckily for them, their refusal to work was not met by deadly force, but merely deportation back to Sumatra. In the 1780s, thousands of voluntary migrants set sail for Port Louis from Guangzhou on board British, French, and Danish ships; they found employment as blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers, and tailors, and quickly formed a small Chinatown, the camp des Chinois, in Port Louis. Even after the British takeover of the island, migration continued unabated. Between 1840 and 1843 alone, 3,000 Chinese contract workers arrived on the island; by mid-century, the total resident Chinese population reached five thousand.
The earliest migrants were largely Cantonese-speaking; but, later, Hakka-speakers from Meixian, further east in Canton, came to dominate numerically; as in other overseas Chinese communities, rivalry between Hakka and Cantonese became a common feature of the society.
By the 1860s, shops run by Sino-Mauritians could be found all over the island. Some members of the colonial government thought that further migration should be prohibited, but Governor John Pope Hennessy, recognising the role that Sino-Mauritians played in providing cheap goods to less well-off members of society, resisted the restrictionists' lobbying. I
In the late 19th to early 20th century, Chinese men in Mauritius married Indian women due to both a lack of Chinese women and the higher numbers of Indian women on the island. |url=http://arinave.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/INCORE-Paper-2001-PDF1.pdf |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140518083011/http://arinave.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/INCORE-Paper-2001-PDF1.pdf |archivedate=18 May 2014 |page=15 |accessdate=17 May 2014 |url-status=unfit

Demographics, distribution, and employment

Today, most Sino-Mauritians are businesspeople, with a "virtual monopoly" on retail trade. After the Franco-Mauritian population, they form the second-wealthiest group on the island. They own restaurants, retail and wholesale shops, and import-and-export firms. Chinese restaurants have greatly influenced Mauritian culture, and Chinese food is consumed all over the island by people of all backgrounds. Fried noodles is one of the most popular dishes. Mauritians from all ethnic origin and background also enjoy the various vegetables and meat balls which originate from the Hakka cuisine in Meixian.
In a 2001 Business Magazine survey, 10 of the 50 largest companies were Chinese owned.

Language

Most Sino-Mauritian youth are at least trilingual: they use Mauritian Creole and French orally, while English—the language of administration and education—remains primarily a written language. In the 1990 census, roughly one-third of Sino-Mauritians stated Mauritian Creole as both their ancestral language and currently spoken language. The other two-thirds indicated some form of Chinese as their ancestral language although only fewer than one-quarter of census respondents who identified Chinese as their ancestral language also indicated it as the language spoken in the home. Few Sino-Mauritian youth speak Chinese; those who do use it primarily for communication with elderly relatives, especially those who did not attend school and thus had little exposure to English or French. None use it to communicate with their siblings or cousins. Among those members of the community who do continue to speak Hakka, wide divergence with Meixian Hakka has developed in terms of vocabulary and phonology.

Chinese schools

Two Chinese-medium middle schools were established in the first half of the 20th century. The Chinese Middle School was established on 10 November 1912 as a primary school; in 1941, they expanded to include a lower middle school. Their student population exceeded 1,000. The Chung-Hwa Middle School, established by Kuomintang cadres on 20 October 1941, grew to enroll 500 students, but by the end of the 1950s, that had shrunk to just 300; they stopped classes entirely in the 1960s, although their alumni association remains prominent in the Sino-Mauritian community. The Chinese Middle School also faced the problem of falling student numbers, as more Sino-Mauritians sent their children to mainstream schools, and in the 1970s stopped their weekday classes, retaining only a weekend section. However, their student numbers began to experience some revival in the mid-1980s; in the 1990s, they established a weekday pre-school section. Most of their teachers are local Sino-Mauritians, though some are expatriates from mainland China.

Media

Four Chinese-language newspapers continued to be published in Mauritius. A monthly news magazine also began publication in 2005. The newspapers are printed in Port Louis, but not widely distributed outside the city.

''Chinese Commercial Gazette''

The Chinese Commercial Gazette was once the largest and most influential Chinese-language newspaper in Mauritius. It stopped publishing in the 1960s, and merged with the China Times.

''Chinese Daily News''

The Chinese Daily News is a pro-Kuomintang newspaper. It was founded in 1932. The rivalry between Beijing-friendly and Taipei-friendly newspapers reached its peak in the 1950s; then-editor-in-chief of the Chinese Daily News, Too Wai Man, even received death threats.

''China Times''

The China Times was founded in 1953.
The editor-in-chief, Long Siong Ah Keng, was born in 1921 in Mauritius; at age 11, he followed his parents back to their ancestral village in Meixian, Guangdong, where he graduated from high school and went on to Guangxi University. After graduation, he signed on with the Chinese Commercial Gazette and returned to Mauritius. He left Mauritius again in 1952 to work for a Chinese paper in India, but a position at the China Times enticed him back.
Originally a four-page paper, the China Times later expanded to eight full-colour pages.

''The Mirror''

The Mirror was established in 1976. It is published on a weekly basis every Saturday. At its peak, they had a staff of eight people. Their editor-in-chief, Mr. Ng Kee Siong, began his career at the Chinese Commercial Paper in 1942 at the age of 25. After 18 years there, the paper was forced to shut down. He and a team of fellow journalists founded a paper to replace it, the New Chinese Commercial Paper. It was while working there that he met Chu Vee Tow and William Lau, who would help him to establish The Mirror. Another editor and journalist, Mr. Poon Yune Lioung POON YOW TSE, who studied foreign languages at Tsinghua University, was also solicited to lend a hand. The paper is printed by Dawn Printing, which is currently run by Ng Kee Siong's son David.
Most of The Mirror's readers are in their forties or older; it has subscribers not just in Mauritius, but Réunion, Madagascar, Canada, China, Australia and Hong Kong as well. The paper's local readership has been boosted slightly by guest workers from China, but the circulation barely exceeded 1,000 copies in 2001. By 2006, that number had fallen to seven hundred. In 2010, The Mirror stopped publication.

''SinoNews''

Hua Sheng Bao, also referred to as Sinonews, was founded in 2005. With regards to its editorial line, it is a supporter of Chinese reunification. It began as a daily newspaper solely in Chinese, but then changed to an eight-page format, including one page each of English and French news. It mostly prints Xinhua newswire reports, with the last page devoted to local news.

Culture

Names

Most Sino-Mauritians use the full Chinese name of the male head of family or a respected ancestor who led the family as their legal surname, the result of an administrative procedure that had been widely used in British India and which was extended to Mauritius, including not just Indo-Mauritians but Sino-Mauritians in its ambit. This practice is not unique to Mauritius; some Chinese in the Philippines and Chinese migrants in the early Soviet Union also adopted such surnames.

Religion

The majority of the Sino-Mauritians are Catholics, a result of conversions during the colonial era. Other Sino-Mauritians are Protestant, Buddhist or Taoist; typically, some syncretism occurs among the latter two, incorporating elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and traditional ancestor worship. Sino-Mauritian Christians, especially members of the older generations, sometimes retain certain traditions from Buddhism.

Notable Mauritians of Chinese origin

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