Chinese Jamaican

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chinese Jamaicans refer to the small but nonetheless influential group of Jamaicans with Chinese ancestry. According to the 2000 census, they form .2% of the population of Jamaica; many have also emigrated abroad.

1 Arrival
2 Cultural Syncretism
3 Notable Chinese Jamaicans
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Arrival

Most Chinese Jamaicans are Hakka and can trace their origin to the Chinese labourers that came to Jamaica in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. 75% of all Chinese indentured labourers dispatched to the British West Indies were sent to British Guiana in the late 1800s, but many later moved to Jamaica. About 96% of the Chinese who migrated to the Americas in the 1800s came from a small region in southern Kwangtung on the Pearl River Delta near large cities like Hong Kong. [1][2] The very first Chinese-Caribbean people were the 60 women aboard the Whirlwind, which set sail from Hong Kong on March 11, 1860.[3]

[edit] Cultural Syncretism

Interracial marriages came almost immediately, and along with continued immigration the Chinese Jamaican community grew, so that it became the second-largest Chinese-Caribbean population, behind only Cuba. The 1946 Jamaica census recorded, 12,394 Chinese Jamaicans: "2,818 China-born, 4,061 local born, 5,515 Chinese coloured," with the latter referring to multiracial Blasian people. [4]

Assimilation has taken place through generations and few Chinese Jamaicans can speak Chinese today, the vast majority have anglicized names and speak English or Jamaican patois as their first language. However, the Chinese food culture have survived to a large degree among this group of people.

Since the 1970's, there have been a significant emigration of Chinese Jamaicans from the island, primarily to the United States and Toronto, Canada.