An opium den in Chinatown, Kolkata, 1945
The first record of travel from China is provided in the travelogue of Fa-Hien who visited Tampralipta, in what is now Tamluk in the Fifth Century A.D. Records of immigration for the next sixteen centuries are not reliable although many words in Bengali can be attributed to Chinese influences. [1] For example chini, the Bengali word for “sugar” comes from the word for China, and words like Chinamati for porcelain china hint at Chinese influences.[4]
Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, was the capital of British India from 1772 to 1911. It was also geographically the easiest accessible metropolitan area from China by land. The first person of Chinese origin to arrive in Calcutta was Yang Tai Chow who arrived in 1778. He worked in a sugar mill with the eventual goal of saving enough to start a tea trade.[2] Many of the earliest immigrants worked on the Khidderpore docks. A police report in 1788 mentions a sizeable Chinese population settled in the vicinity of Bow Bazaar Street. [1]
During the time of Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of British India, a businessman by the name of Tong Achi established a steel mill at Achipur, 33 km from Calcutta, on the bank of the Hooghly River near Budge Budge.[5] A temple and the grave of Tong Achi still remain and are visited by many Chinese who come from the city during the Chinese New Year.[5]
A certain C. Alabaster mentions in 1849 that Cantonese carpenters congregated in the Bow Bazar Street area. [1]. As late as 2006, Bow Bazar is still noted for carpentry, but few of the workers or owners are now Chinese.
According to Alabaster there were lard manufacturers and shoemakers in addition to carpenters. Running tanneries and working with leather was traditionally not considered a respectable profession among upper-caste Hindus, and work was relegated to lower caste muchis and chamars. There was a high demand, however, for high quality leather goods in colonial India, one that the Chinese were able to fulfill. Alabaster also mentions licensed opium dens run by native Chinese and a Cheena Bazaar where contraband was readily available. Opium, however, was not illegal until after India’s Independence from Great Britain in 1947. Immigration continued unabated through the turn of the century and during World War I partly due to the fact that China was undergoing political upheavals such as the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion. Around the time of the First World War, the first Chinese-owned tanneries sprung up