Chinese Museum in Xiamen documents emigrant history

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Xiamen was once among the chief ports of departure for Chinese people headed overseas. Fittingly, the city has the country’s only comprehensive Overseas Chinese Museum.

Founded in 1958 by an emigrant, Tan Kah-kee, the museum highlights the hardships that our ancestors experienced when they migrated overseas.

Sculptures in the Oversea Chinese Museum in Xiamen./CGTN Photo

One of the sculptures here is called a "piglet ship". After the Opium War, many Chinese farmers were smuggled in freight ships from the southeastern coast to other continents, much like piglets.

They received harsh treatment, with many dying due to famine, water shortage, and plague. It was also known as a “floating hell.”

Decades later, another wave of emigration took place, including Wang Qikun's parents who were both originally from Xiamen. They migrated to neighboring Myanmar in the early 1940s, and took on teaching at a local Chinese school that was set up by fellow Chinese emigrants.

Wang Qikun./CGTN

”I was born in a town near Yangon. My parents at that time were deans at an elementary school. I remember almost every town in Myanmar had a Chinese language school set up by emigrants because they all wanted their children to be able to speak Chinese, which is their mother tongue, so that they would not forget their roots.“

Due to cultural differences, Chinese emigrants usually live together in a community, like the famous Chinatown, therefore creating a distinctive overseas Chinese society. Their organizations, schools, and newspapers are regarded as the three important pillars of the ethnic Chinese community.

For instance, some overseas Chinese started businesses by opening up sewing shops and selling Chinese clothing. And some intellectuals started printing newspapers to inform fellow emigrants about what was going on back in China.

Wang’s high school in Myanmar./Courtesy of Wang Qikun

Wang lived in Myanmar until he was sixteen, when the government decided to nationalize all of the Chinese schools, amid a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the country.

Some of his peers and their families decided to stay, and since then have lived in fear, doing everything they could to avoid being arrested.

“Every overseas Chinese person had their fingers crossed for a stronger China, so that they would not be bullied or taken advantage of in residing countries."

"Nowadays, China is strong enough and it makes us feel that we are never alone or have to be frightened anymore," says Wang.

The 70-year-old now organizes summer and winter camps every year for the second and third generations of Chinese emigrants who live in Myanmar. He says the purpose is to teach them about the history of overseas Chinese, as well as letting them experience the great progress China is currently making.