FILM FESTIVAL

M E M O R I E S

Mumbai Chinatown & Bitter Memories

Spring Festival Celebration 2016

"梅花_Méihuā" - ( Plum Blossom ) - SONG & DANCE

"梅花_Méihuā" by Thomas Chen 陈永康 an Indian Chinese singer from Kolkata & Fan dance group.

The song "梅花_Méihuā" in Chinese means a flower called Plum Blossom. It is an extremely famous song sung by Teresa Teng and is loved by all. "梅花_Méihuā" is also the National flower of Taiwan, and one of the very famous flowers in China. Do listen to Thomas Chen’s rendition of this iconic song along with beautiful fan dance choreographed by Thomas himself


Fan Dancers :

1. Sharon Meghani
2. Dennis Chu
3. Doris Chu
4. Vanesa Lan
5. Irene Meghani

Fa Mulan Keeps Ritual Alive

Feb 09  2016 : The Times of India (Kolkata), page 2

 
Feisty Girls Keep Chinese Ritual Alive

      Form Dance Group To Usher In New Year As Youths
       Migrate To Other Cities In Search Of Greener Pastures

 When Janice Chen slipped her tiny head into the big groove of a huge lion mask and swayed to drum beats on Monday morning, she knew she had smashed the glass ceiling and roared into a two-century old male domain.

Chinese New Year, the onset of which is believed to bring prosperity to the community , has catapulted 30-odd young Chinese girls belonging to Fa Mulan, the only girl group that performs lion dance at the new-year celebrations, to fame. Named after Chinese legend Hua Mulan, a female warrior who had replaced her father in the army and fought for over a decade, the girls on Monday performed in front of homes, eateries, shops and other Chinese establishments in central Kolkata to ward off bad luck and bring good times.

“It is a great feeling to be the lioness,“ smiled Janice, 20, before her group started from the Seaip Church, nestled in the congested central Kolkata opposite Tiratti Market, where they had been practising dance moves for the past few weeks. “We are as good as the boys. Members of the community are happy when we show up outside their homes and give us goodies. This encourages us,“ said Janice's friend Anette Chen in the group.

The group, dressed in pink T-shirts and blue denims, mounts a drum on a cycle van. Two girls board the van and start beating it. As if on cue, Janice and her friend Anette Chen slip into two giant lion masks and start swaying, sometimes doing martial arts moves. A crowd of more than 100 people follow them through the narrow serpentine lanes witnessing the girls take over what was always a “guy thing“.

 The lion dance has been a male domain since the presence of the Chinese community in the city but it is only very recently that Chinese girls have breached this territory. Members of the community attributed the trend to large-scale migration of Chinese youths from the city for jobs and education. “There are very few young Chinese men left in Kolkata.In most processions, there are people from Nepal and the Anglo-Indian community . The girls have stepped in to carry on the tradition,“ said a senior member of the community . Every performance lasts 10 to 15 mi nutes, after which the group moves onto the next house. Chinese people hang goodies from their windows which the girls lunge with agility and catch.

“Lions are known to bless the homes at the start of the New Year. People in the community were not used to an all-girl troupe coming and blessing the home.But that is changing now,“ said Dominic Lee, who played a big role in forming the all-girl group. Lee is also the founder of the Indo-Chinese Association.

Members of the Chinese community in the city recall that girls started parti cipating in lion dance almost 10 years ago but they were not organised as a group.They would be part of several other groups. Fa Mulan brought the girls together.From beating the drums to dancing the lion to fireworks, the girls are self-sufficient in every aspect of the tradition.

Each Chinese New Year is characterised by one of 12 animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac. This is the year of the `Monkey' and people born in the Year of the Monkey are believed to possess wit, mischief and charm.

Kung Hei Fat Choi (wishing you happiness and prosperity in the New Year).

 

                                                                                                                                                                              Zeeshan Jawed

Literary Landscape

A panoramic vision of the Chinese literary landscape across the twentieth century.

Award-winning literary scholar and poet Yunte Huang here gathers together an intimate and authoritative selection of significant works, in outstanding translations, from nearly fifty Chinese writers, that together express a search for the soul of modern China. From the 1912 overthrow of a millennia-long monarchy to the Cultural Revolution, to China’s rise as a global military and economic superpower, the Chinese literary imagination has encompassed an astonishing array of moods and styles―from sublime lyricism to witty surrealism, poignant documentary to the ironic, the transgressive, and the defiant.

Huang provides the requisite context for these revelatory works of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and speeches in helpful headnotes, chronologies, and brief introductions to the Republican, Revolutionary, and Post-Mao Eras. From Lu Xun’s Call to Arms (1923) to Gao Xinjiang’s Nobel Prize–winning Soul Mountain (1990), this remarkable anthology features writers both known and unknown in its celebration of the versatility of writing. From belles lettres to literary propaganda, from poetic revolution to pulp fiction, The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature is an eye-opening, mesmerizing, and indispensable portrait of China in the tumultuous twentieth century.

 THE BIG RED BOOK OF MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE

Writings From the Mainland in the Long 20th Century

Edited by Yunte Huang

Hardcover February 2016 624 pages
ISBN 978-0-393-23948-5
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

 YUNTE HUANG is a Professor of English at the University of California; he has also taught at Harvard. The author of "Charlie Chan," "Transpacific Imaginations," "Transpacific Displacement," and "CRIBS," Huang, born in China, now lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year marks the first day of the New Year in the Chinese calendar, which differs from the Gregorian calendar. It is also known as the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year. Every year is represented by a zodiac animal sign.

Chinese New Year Day is the new moon day of the first lunar month.2016 Chinese New Year Day is on  February 8, 2016. It is the Year of the Monkey according to Chinese zodiac.


Celebrations traditionally run from the evening preceding the first day, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month.

Lion Dance Display will be on  31 / 1 / 2016

Welcome to home comers will be on  8 / 2 / 2016 

 

TWTC Invites

 

 

Travails

October 13, 2015

Travails of Chinese-descent Indians

Stevan Wan, Yin Marsh & Micheal Cheng came down from various parts of the world to participate in the Kolkata programme. Photo: Special Arrangement

 Six-year-old Michael Cheng’s world changed almost overnight as he and his family was picked-up in the middle of the night and dispatched to a “godforsaken” place in south-east Rajasthan.

The family of 13 had a roaring shoe and hotel business in the bustling hill-town, Darjeeling, when they were arrested in the winter of 1962.

The Cheng family was arrested, like many others, as a precautionary measure so that the Chinese-origin Indians could not come in aid of the rival, China, during or after the war of 1962 between the two Asian giants. After more than 50 years, Mr. Cheng – who turned 59 few months ago – is on his way to Darjeeling on Wednesday to see his home town.

Sitting in a tiny but popular eating joint, known for its authentic Cantonese cuisine in central Kolkata, Mr. Cheng explained how a war changes lives. “After 22 months in detention, a lorry with a few security personnel dropped me, my seven brothers, two sisters, parents and step mother there…” he pointed to a turn that leads to a by-lane in the bustling Central Avenue, “…the security chaps cautioned us that every time we go to Darjeeling we have to get our permit-paper stamped.”

In those two years, the Cheng’s business in Darjeeling disappeared and the family started making shoes in Kolkata which they were “forced to sell at Rs. five or 10, ” said Mr. Cheng, who now runs his own restaurant in North Carolina.

“Second-class citizens”

“What was our fault, why were we displaced from Bengal when I and all my brothers were born in this State, how did the war matter to us…. I do not know but I lost more than two years of schooling and the family lost everything,” said Mr Cheng, who visited the city this week with many Chinese-descent Indians from across the world to mark 50 years of their internment. Mr. Cheng’s father came to Kolkata at the age of 14 in 1924 from Canton or today’s Guangzhou in south China. But after the war the entire family and its neighbours in central Kolkata turned in to “second-class citizens” as they were issued with “citizenship-permits.”

“Eventually all my brothers moved to the United States or Canada as many were born before 1950 and denied Indian citizenship,” Mr. Cheng said. It was not his problem as he was born in the “mid-50s.” But many Chinese-descent people, who were born in Bengal before 1950, are yet to receive their citizenship like half of Cheng family. Thousands like Mr. Cheng were huddled from their homes and sent to Deoli Detention centre at the height of India-China war.

Yin Marsh, who was 13 at the time of internment, has lot of memories of the detention camp. She describes people like her as the “last generation of the survivors of Deoli” and said that this small chapter of vast history of India needs to be told.

Ms. Marsh feels that the Chinese community in Kolkata should be more vocal about the issue. “This would help them gain trust and make them feel safer and better,” said Ms. Marsh, whose book on the subject will soon be published by an Indian publisher.

“Three months after I saluted the national flag and sang the national anthem on August 15, I was arrested on November 19, 1962 and had to stay in detention camp for two years,” said Toronto-based John Liao. Chinese-Indian Association had invited the ‘Indians’ to the city to speak about their experiences of the internment.

“This issue is very close to the heart of the Chinese Indian community. It will soon be forgotten if those who have experienced it does not talk about it,” Bean Ching (Binny) Law, president of Chinese Indian Association told The Hindu. All the detainees in the camp rue the fact that the Indian government still does not acknowledge the detention. Just an apology, even after so many years, they say, would be “very comforting.”

Shiv Sahay Singh

    Suvojit Bagchi

2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Tu Youyou, a pharmacologist with the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, working to make artemisinin, a drug therapy for malaria, in 1980s.

China's Tu Youyou, Irish-born William Campbell, and Japan's Satoshi Omura jointly won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Tu won half of the prize for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria.

Tu Youyou received 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of Artemisinin as an alternative malaria cure to the standard chloroquine, which was quickly losing ground in the 1960s due to increasingly drug-resistant parasites. 2015 Nobel Prize has gone to a researcher who spent her entire career researching traditional Chinese medicine, based at the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing (now the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences) since 1965 .

Scientific research on the pharmaceutically active properties of traditional Chinese medicinals, however, has never been a predictor for such widespread international recognition.Traditional medical knowledge anywhere in the world has not even been on the radar for Nobel Prize prospects. Until now, that is.

The antifebrile effect of the Chinese herb Artemisia annua (qinghaosu 青蒿素), or sweet wormwood, was known 1,700 years ago. Tu was the first to extract the biologically active component of the herb — called Artemisinin — and clarify how it worked. The result was a paradigm shift in the medical field that allowed for Artemisinin to be both clinically studied and produced on a large scale.

Tu has always maintained that she drew her inspiration from the medical text of a fourth-century Chinese physician and alchemist named Ge Hong 葛洪 (circa 283-343).

WANT

Barbed wire at Deoli: Indian Chinese who were interned after the 1962 war want an apology

VOICES

The Chinese-Indian Prisoners of Deoli are Here and Their Voices Need to be Heard

 

Chinese Indians ...

Kolkata’s Chinese Live In Stateless Sorrow

By Gautaman Bhaskaran on October 7, 2015 in Asia Times News & Features, China, South Asia
Asia Times 

Time was when Calcutta (later renamed Kolkata) in India’s eastern state of West Bengal was home to a bustling number of Chinese. They were shoe-makers, tanners, restaurateurs, hair-dressers or dry-cleaners.

 Shrinking Chinatown in Kolkata

In the 1950s and 1960s, Calcuttans swore by the Chinese expertise. When they needed attention for their teeth, they chose a Chinese dentist, not an Indian. When shopping for a pair of footwear, they walked into the city’s Bentinck Street where tens of Chinese shoe shops lined the pavement.

Chinese were the best hair-dressers at a time when this art was not known at all to Indians. They cleaned your suits impeccably. And they sold yummy food in restaurants in the city’s plus downtown, Chowringhee and Park Street.

Or the food could always be had in Chinatown — the only such place in all of India — where fat mummies sold hot momos and noodles, pickled olives and smoked pork in ‘mummies kitchens’.
With Chinese Indian population dwindling, business is quite dull in Chiantown

 

A medical shop in Chinatown

There were several of these and one could see the richest of Calcuttans in the swankiest of cars stop by for mummies’ goodies. These were clean, tasty and inexpensive.

Sadly, all this changed the day the Chinese army invaded in October 1962. The immediate provocation was a border dispute between the two countries, but one should not forget that Beijing was already livid because New Delhi had granted asylum to Tibet’s spiritual head, Dalai Lama — who escaped into India in 1959 after his country had been overrun by the Chinese.

The 1962 war signalled the start of hostility towards Calcutta’s Chinese — an additionally contributing factor being the then Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru’s, dejection and disappointment over Beijing’s aggression.

Only some time before 1962, Chinese Premiere Zhou Enlai had promised Nehru peaceful coexistence — which Indians had hailed as ‘Indi-Chini bhai bhai’ (Indian and China are brothers).

That October, dozens of Chinese lost their jobs at the Calcutta Port, dozens of them found themselves without a livelihood elsewhere in the city. Nothing could have been more bitter than this for a people who were loved by the  local population and who had intermingled with Indians in a wonderful sort of way.

Roadside eateries of Chinese Indians do brisk business

Calcutta, which was home to 30,000 ethnic Chinese in 1962, has just about 3,000 today. About 7,000 are scattered in other parts of India. Although Chinese cuisine continues to appeal — albeit in a highly Indianised flavor and taste — the dry-cleaners, the shoe-makers, the dentists and the tanners have all but gone.

Of the 3,000, some were born in Calcutta between 1947, when India won its independence (from Britain), and 1950, when the country got its Constitution and became a Republic.

These Chinese — close to 200 — are not welcome in China. And they are unwanted in India and are stateless today.

They do have a registration certificate, which allows them to stay in India, but it has to be renewed every year.

And what is still worse, since last year these stateless Chinese have to get a letter from their landlords that needs to be filed with the police. These men and women are old and infirm, even poor, and they have no choice but to suffer the humility and harassment from an unfeeling administration and a local population which does not care about them any more.

Members playing mahjong in the Chinese Club in Tiretta Bazaar, Kolkata

The terrible plight of these Kolkata Chinese is all the more glaring because the millions of Bengalis from the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh, and which was part of Pakistan before the 1971 split) who arrived in India in the 1940s were granted registration certificates, which later enabled them to become Indian citizens.

And these Bengalis (who speak the Bengali language, which is also what people in West Bengal converse in) were not even born in India — unlike the Chinese of Kolkata. Obviously, a deep-rooted prejudice and even hatred exist towards the community.

Ironic as it may appear, these Chinese men and women ought have been Indian citizens, says Bean Ching Law, president of the Chinese-Indian Association, over the telephone from Kolkata. Or, so say the Articles in Part II of the Indian Constitution. But as one intelligence office quipped, maybe there is a separate provision governing the Chinese in India following the 1962 conflict. We do not know.

With virtually no rights, these stateless Chinese lead depressing lives. They are sometimes viewed as spies and police question them even in the middle of the night.

But Law hopes things will improve, and he signs off with a request: “Please call us Chinese Indians — like, for instance Afro-Americans. We are Indians of Chinese descent. We were born in India. So we are not Indian Chinese”.

A sense of desperation is clearly discernible in his voice.

However, given the big challenges India faces today, these stateless men of Kolkata may not find it easy to get their voice across to New Delhi .

 Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and movie critic, who has worked with The Statesman in Kolkata and The Hindu in Chennai for 35 years. He now writes for the Hindustan Times, the Gulf Times and The Seoul Times.

Midnight Knock ...

SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA , KOLKATA
SEPTEMBER 27 , 2015 , page 6

That midnight knock on the door



As India celebrates 50 years of the 1965 war this month, the Indian Chinese who were hauled off to Rajasthan's Deoli camp remember the ordeal of another war


Meresss awalon kaaaa jawab do...!“ Ying Sheng Wong, 70, is doing a pretty good job of hollering that peremptory refrain from the hit film Maine Pyar Kiya in his somewhat disjointed Hindi, and the Indian Chinese gathering around him in Toronto erupts in laughter and applause. But the reason they have banded together is not at all cheery .

They call themselves the Deoliwallahs, 60 men and women with some really tragic stories to tell about a tumultuous phase of Indian history . The year was 1962, and between October and November, India and China were caught in a short but intense war. So acrid was the anti-Chinese sentiment in India that a whole lot of innocent Indian Chinese, mostly in the Dooars and Assam, were surprised by its savagery .Some had married local women, and most spoke only local languages. They were more Indian than Chinese with businesses and lives firmly entrenched here.

Suddenly , they became potential “traitors“. Soon, under a new ordinance, the midnight knocks began to be heard across the homes of Indian Chinese, especially those living in Darjeeling, Tinsukhia and Shillong. Entire families were bundled into trucks and transported to railway stations where began a seven-eight day train jour ney to an abandoned PoW camp at Deoli, Rajasthan. In some cases, the families were separated: the men deported to China, mother and children stuck in Deoli, the grandparents elsewhere, say accounts.

The war wrapped up in a month but many of those interned remained in the jail for up to five years. When the families returned, they found their homes and businesses confiscated and plundered. Some of them tried to cobble their lives back together but many left for the West, mostly Canada and the US. Now, 53 years later, these survivors and their families are trying to find some answers, and perhaps an apology for that painful episode that turned their world upside down.

On October 6, at Delhi's India International Centre, some of these Deoliwallahs will be participating in an event recalling the events of 1962. The dramatic story of the Deoli internment and the suffering it caused has been surfacing in many forms in recent years. The survivors have formed a very active and vocal Association of India Deoli Camp Internees 1962 (AIDCI). Earlier this year, Beyond Barbed Wires: A Distant Dawn, a documentary by Indian photojournalist Rafeeq Ellias that tells the story of the internees, was released.

 Another Deoliwallah, Yin Marsh, 66, an artist from California, wrote Doing Time With Nehru two years ago on her life in Darjeeling as a child before the war of 1962 and of her family's internment at Deoli Joy Ma, another participant at the IIC event, is writing her memoirs. And before all that, five years ago, there was `Makam' the Assamese bestseller by Rita Chowd hury on the Indian Chinese community in Tinsukhia which saw many tragedies in the wake of the war.

It may all seem very distant in history but the unfairness of being made victims of a war that wasn't theirs still rankles. “I was just six but what I do remember is the . look on my parents' faces when we were led into the train. It was a look of disbelief, hurt, grief, fear. I didn't know what it meant , then but today , it hits me really hard,“ says Michael Cheng, 59, who now runs a restau rant in North Carolina.

Cheng's father had migrated to Darjeel ing from Guangdong and set up a chain of , flourishing businesses -a shoe store, a restaurant, a lodge. He was big on the horse racing circuit and owned a horse. All that came to an end for the family of 13 in 1962. When the Cheng family was released, they were simply dropped off at Chinatown in Kolkata and ordered not to return to Darjeeling. Kind relatives took the family in and Cheng recalls sleeping on an ironing board. Slowly the Chengs put their shoe business together, and by the '70s managed to return to Darjeeling. But it was never the same again, and the Chengs migrated to the West. “My brother who still misses India often says `I wish this war never happened',“ says Cheng.

Wong was much older when he was taken to the camp along his six siblings, just a day after the war ended. At 17, he recalls the humiliation of the three years at the camp, the heat, the terrible food and the aftermath. His father, who came from the Wangchu in Canton, was running Attun and Sons, a popular shoe shop at GS Road in Shillong. He died a painful and mysterious death at the camp at age 48.

“After we were released, we got Rs 1.50 every day till we reached Shillong to feed ourselves and we would only spend 50 paise on food.“ The shoe shop reappeared as Latest Footwear in Burra Bazar but the fear of fresh hostilities never went away and the family moved to Canada.

Journalist Joy Ma, who was actually born at the Deoli camp, says the saddest aspect of the events of 1962 was how well assimilated the Chinese community in India was. “Even today, at the family shrine, some people keep paan and beedi as offerings to ancestors like they did back home in India. They were part of local communities, married to local Indian or Nepalese women; many hadn't even set foot in China,“ she says.

Her family were prosperous furniture contractors in the Dooars, and the ignominy of having to be dependent for every little thing at the camp hurt deeply. “People were told it was a short trip and they would return soon so they didn't take much along.

The camp was not ready for so many . When they first arrived, some had put out their shirts for the dal to be ladled into,“ Ma says.

The survivors and their families, still trying to make sense of the events that tore their lives apart, are hoping for a small memorial at Deoli to make sure that the episode is not forgotten. 

Malini Nair

Beyond Barbed Wires

Documentary about the Indian Chinese on NDTV 24x7

Pleased to inform you about the telecast of ‘ Beyond Barbed Wires ’, on NDTV 24x7 .

This documentary by Rafeeq Ellias of Fat Mama Films, Mumbai, is the tragic story of how several thousand Indian Chinese –men, women and children – were jailed without trial in a POW camp in Rajasthan after the India-China war of 1962 .


 Telecast timings are :

 25th September 2015, Friday, 10.30 PM ( IST )

 26th September 2015, Saturday, 7.30 PM ( IST )

 27th September 2015, Sunday, 2.30 PM ( IST )

TWTC KOLKATA – 2015 Newsletter Volume 10

 

Get in Touch

My mother was brought up in Mumbai and had a Chinese classmate in her school by the name of Yee Chian during the 1958-60 in Ratan Bhai Powdee School.

My mother wanted to get in touch with her and wondering if you'll had any way to get in touch.

 Kind Regards ,

 Savio Letiao
saviochamp@yahoo.com

Our Bonsai Man

Calcutta  Saturday  8 August 2015 ,  page 24

Bonsai man back in city

•  A Chinese born and brought up in Calcutta.

•     An IIT engineer who turned into a gardener.

•     A London resident who advised Prince Charles on how to set up a Japanese garden.

 Peter Chan wears many hats.

On Friday, he was teaching a group of Calcutta ladies and a few men how to prune plants.

The 75-year-old electrical engineer from IIT Kharagpur, who owns the Herons Bonsai, Britain's premier bonsai nursery in Surrey, travelled to England in 1963 and about two decades later converted his "hobby into a business".

"In those days people knew little about bonsai. Then at one point my career stagnated... so I said I'll change to something else," Chan said. He graduated from the IIT in 1962.

He advised Prince Charles on how to set up a Japanese garden. "I used to advise him more than 20 years ago... how to set up a Japanese garden.... I visited him twice."

On Friday, the former energy policy adviser in the British government's department of energy applied his technical training to what he felt was a "mathematical problem".

 Peter Chan at the workshop. Pic by Bishwarup Dutta

"When you look at a plant, it's like a mathematical problem and you have to find a solution," he said during a break in pruning plants at an Alipore Road address.

Chan studied at Calcutta Boys' School from 1946 to 1956, when the entire school had "only 300 students", and then science at St. Xavier's College at the intermediate level.

He followed in his father's footsteps and did engineering. "But I didn't enjoy engineering, that's why I got out of it. But I am grateful for the training IIT gave me because it trains the mind to analyse and do things. Once you get the training you can do anything."

Chan is passing through the city on his way to Kharagpur where his alma mater would present him with the most distinguished alumnus award for 2015.

NGO Jyotirmai's bonsai chapter invited him and member Parul Swarup hosted his two-hour workshop at her Alipore Road home.

Speaking about the city, Chan said: "I always like to come to Calcutta because it's my place of my birth... I have a special fondness for Calcutta."

 

Guinness World Record

China breaks Guinness World record for largest Umbrella

 A giant umbrella of around 23 meters in diameter and 14.4 meters in height made by a Chinese firm on Monday set a new Guinness World Record for the world's largest umbrella , breaking record set in India in 2010 . The umbrella weighing 5.7 tonnes (5,700 kg) and covers an area of 418 square meters .

Previous world record was held by an umbrella with 17.06 meters(56 ft) diameter and 10.97 meters(36 ft) height in India in 2010 . It weighed 2,200 kg . It was made by Max New York Life Insurance (India) and was unveiled at Ishanya Mall at Pune, India, on August 14, 2010. 

Taipei World Trade Center

TWTC KOLKATA 2015 NEWS LETTER VOLUME 9

 Taipei World Trade Center, Kolkata Office
Apeejay House, Block " C", Ground Floor,
15, Park Street Kolkata-16.
Tel: +91-33-4004-2796/97.
Fax: +91-33-4004-2798.
Email: kolkata@taitra.org.tw

IIT’s Award

Peter Chan -  IIT KHARAGPUR Distinguished Alumnus Award 2015

Peter Chan was born and brought up in Calcutta (1940 - 1963) .They were three generations in Calcutta - Grandfather and his two brothers started a carpentry factory in Calcutta in the early 1900s , with office in Chandni Chowk and factory in Chingrihatta Rd, Tangra. Thay made furniture and wooden railway carriages till about the early 60s .

Attended Calcutta Boys School and St Xaviers College and then went on to IIT Kharagpur to study Electrical Engg. 1958-62 .

Was the West Bengal Cycling champion 1960-63 and was one of five or six Chinese who studied at IIT.

This year Peter Chan was awarded the IIT’s Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2015 and have been asked to attend the Convocation in Kharagpur to receive

this award.

Peter shall be arriving Kolkata on 7th August - stay in Kharagpur 8th & 9th August and have the morning and afternoon of 10th Aug in Kolkata

Peter Chan is a self-taught Bonsai artist.  He moved to the UK in 1963 and started experimenting with bonsai in 1967 when ceramics was his main hobby. Trained originally as a professional Electrical Engineer, he worked in the UK Electricity industry and also as Energy Policy adviser in the UK Department of Energy for just over twenty years. He gave up his 9-5 job in1986 to turn his hobby of bonsai into a business venture. Today, his nursery ‘Herons Bonsai’ is the UK’s premier bonsai nursery.

Peter is known throughout the world by the many books he has written. His first book –‘Bonsai, the Art of Growing and Keeping Miniature Trees’ was published in 1985 and is still in print. His other books include ‘Bonsai Masterclass’, ‘Choosing and Growing Bonsai’ and the Readers Digest book –‘Bonsai Masterclass’. Many of his books have been translated into seven or more languages. Innumerable bonsai enthusiasts world-wide have been introduced to the art of bonsai through one or more of his books. He has also written a Japanese Garden book as he is also a Japanese garden designer and maker.

On his eight acre nursery, he grows most of the bonsai that the company sells. Maples and other deciduous trees are among his favourite species.

Herons Bonsai 

Chinese for Beginners

Chinese Churches

Chinese Churches Stand Test of Time

KOLKATA , TUESDAY , JUNE 23 , 2015 , page 2


Crumbling buildings and ilthy roads at Tiretta Bazar -or Old Chinatown -bear evidence to the depleting fortunes of the Chinese community n the city. But behind those closed doors lie a secret the community so proudly cherishes. The shabby build ngs with a `falling-apart' look and feel house some of the historic churches of Kolkata. Step inside and the regalia, incense sticks and intricate altars will give you a feel of the Chinese tradition.

The fact that KMC and the tourism department have joined hands with a Singapore-based organization to revive Old Chinatown has come as a shot in the arm for the community . They are happy hat these churches, which were originally established in the 19th century and then rebuilt in the early part of the 20th century , will get restored.

The Indian Chinese Association has appealed to the project co-ordinators hat the revival project should centre around the six churches (they were orig nally temples but later got converted to churches as most of the Chinese people embraced Christianity) that the community is guarding so dearly for so many years.

While the project so long centred around the Toong On Church and the famous Nanking restaurant that it houses, now five churches have also come into focus. A visit to the churches is an experience in itself. Take the case of the Namsoon Church, for example. It's the oldest of the six. It was established in 1820, almost immediately after the Chinese settlers abandoned Atchewpur near Budge Budge. Located at the far end of the snaky Damzen Lane, you will easily miss it. But the church, dedicated to Kwan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of War, has a magnificent altar complete with an intricately carved roof hanging. 

There are three more churches on the same lane. Choong Hee Dong Thien, built in 1859, is in a sorry state but the deity, Kwan Kun, believed to be the God of Fortune, is still maintained and worshipped by the community . The Gee Hing Church was originally built in 1888 but it reached such a dilapidated state that the community rebuilt and relocated it in 1920 to its present location on 13, Blackburn Lane. Even that is in a sad state now, though the members of the community regularly visit for prayers and offerings there.

“Times are tough and you hardly find time to hang around as regularly as you did earlier. But we still try to meet up for our board games of Chinese Pair, after prayers as frequently as possible,“ said Chang Yu Sen.

“Our tradition lives in these church es. It reminds us where we belong and the culture and tradition of that place.We cannot relate to the changes that have come over China today , so we guard these altars to remain close to our roots.Today many of us might have become Christians but we have not lost touch with Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism that bind us,“ explained Paul Chung, president of the Indian Chinese Association.

The other three churches -Sea Ip Church, Sea Voi Yune Leong Futh Church and Then Hane Miaw -too are crying for attention despite devotees' best efforts at maintaining them. 

Jhimli Mukherjeepandey

DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL

Republic Of Shame

May 22, 2015

By Omair Ahmad 

The 1962 war changed the lives of around 3,000 Chinese living in India — their only crime was that they belonged to a country that most of them had never seen

Washington DC can be quite a beautiful city, and its Mall area — not to be confused with shopping malls — is both restful and a way to learn from the museums and monuments. At the intersection of Louisiana and New Jersey Avenues and D Street, there is a quiet corner which is easy to miss. It does not tower like the Washington Monument, nor is it like the great Smithsonian Museums, and it takes a while to realise that it is a tribute to the Japanese Americans who lost their lives in defence of the US in World War II.

It is actually a little more than that, because it also pays tribute to 2,500 Japanese who were held in an incarceration camp in Texas during the war, simply for being Japanese. Actually it is even more complicated; many of these people had American citizenship, so they were not being punished for their citizenship but their origins. And lastly, the camp in Texas was only one of many. Overall the US incarcerated more than a 1,00,000 people of Japanese origin. It has never really come to terms with that, but the small quiet memorial is at least an acknowledgement of something. Countries do terrible things during the paranoia of war, often enough to their own citizens.

 Not us, just them: People of Chinese origin with Indian voter cards at an election in Kolkata, which has India’s only Chinatown. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

In India there is no such memorial, but we acted scarcely better in the one occasion that presented itself. After the 1962 war with China — we call it war, the Chinese call it a skirmish, and the world did not really care because it happened when the nuclear stand off between the US and USSR over nuclear missiles in Cuba was at its peak — India imprisoned around 3,000 people of Chinese origin in an internment camp in Deoli, Rajasthan. This large ethnic Chinese community was living in India’s northeastern states and West Bengal, among those closest to the frontline of the war. The very odd thing is that despite the high tensions before the conflict, these people had never been seen as suspects earlier. In fact, during the war, between October 10 and November 19, 1962 (the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire on November 21, 1962; the Cuban missile crisis ended in October, and the US was getting involved, vacating all areas captured by them), no action was taken against them. At the behest of BN Mullick, the head of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then home minister, signed an order allowing the IB and the state CID teams to detain all people of Chinese ethnicity under the Defence of India Act, 1962. The order was given on November, 17, 1962, and carried out with alacrity within two days, by which time the fighting had ended.

None of these people had actually been accused of doing anything wrong. Certainly no case was filed, and none heard by a court. Instead Mullick alleged in his book, The Chinese Betrayal, that these people, many of them workers in the tea estates of Kalimpong and Darjeeling, or labourers in West Bengal, “had worked in collusion with the Chinese Consulate in Calcutta till it was closed and it was noticed that there was much jubilation amongst these people over the Chinese victory at Nyamkachu and Kibithoo in the month of October.” No evidence of this assertion has ever been provided. Dragged out of their homes, dumped into trains, whole families were shifted to the Deoli internment camp used by the British to hold prisoners during World War II. After weary months, the Chinese government sent a ship to India, and about 2,500 of these internees went ‘back’ to a country most had never seen. The few hundred left mouldered in the camp until it was finally shut in 1968, and then they were sent back to houses that had been ransacked, or left to rot in their absence. They didn’t know what to expect on their return. Journalist Kai Friese told me about his meeting with two men of Chinese origin locked up in Ranchi’s mental asylum for years afterward, only because the state did not know what to do with them.

In my hometown Gorakhpur, my sister’s hairdresser was Chinese. I think her family was from Canton, now Guangzhou. I do not know why they came to India. It happened long before my birth during a time when China was torn by civil war, and when the horrors of the Maoist revolution had devoured more than 70 million lives. But I wonder sometimes, considering how we have treated these people who came to our land for refuge, what they think of us, and what memorial could be large enough to capture the scale of our shame.

Omair Ahmad was educated in Saudi Arabia, India and the US. He has worked as a political adviser on Kashmir, national and international security and legislative issues, as well as working as a journalist in the US, the UK and India.

His published work includes :


The Kingdom at the Centre of the World: Journeys into Bhutan (Aleph, travel, 2013)
  
Jimmy the Terrorist (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin India, novel, 2010)
  
The Storyteller's Tale (Penguin India, novella, 2009)
  
Sense Terra (Pages Editor, short stories, 2008)
  
Encounters (Tara Press, novel, 2007)

TWTC

Taipei World Trade Center - Kolkata Liaison Office

 EVENT IN INDIA

            

 Food & Hospitality Industry Exhibition, ( 21st -23rd August, 2015 ):

            TWTC Kolkata is happy to announce that this year we are going to participate in Food tech exhibition in Kolkata from 21st to 23rd August, 2015.We will be participating for promoting our upcoming trade show for food ,beverages, tea, coffee & other food processing machines.

                 Meeting with Business Associations and prospective buyer, June Month:

             TWTC Kolkata would like to meet with Business associations and  companies in north-east area to  discuss what are the business opportunities in Taiwan, what is your requirement, what services we can offer and how we can mutually work together.

TWTC KOLKATA 

Taipei World Trade Center, Kolkata Office
Apeejay House, Block " C", Ground Floor,
15, Park Street Kolkata-16.
Tel: +91-33-4004-2796/97.
Fax: +91-33-4004-2798.
Email: kolkata@taitra.org.tw

SCARS & Balm ...

A  wrong  Acknowledged ...

KOLKATA , FRIDAY , May 15 , 2015 , page 2

Rajnath balm on Chinese pain after 5 decades



Ming-Tung Hsieh has stoically borne the scars of internment for over half a century .

But on Wednesday , he broke down and wept unabashedly . Union Home minister Rajnath

Singh's apology to Indian Chinese for the torture, harassment and wrongs done by the

Indian government during the Sino-Indian War in 1962 had a cathartic effect on not just

Hsieh but scores of Chinese who still recoil with fear when they look back at those dark

years.


On the eve of Narendra Modi's trip to China, Singh said: "I feel sorry for those Chinese

Indian people, who were separated from their families and were tortured, harassed,

looted and who became homeless. They had already been assimilated to the Indian society

when they had to face that unfortunate state of affairs."


Speaking to TOI on Thursday , Ming-Ting, the author of   'A Lost Tribe' -part memoir,

part history of Indian Chinese and their tryst with the concentration camp in Deoli,

Rajasthan -said Singh's acknowledgement was a crucial step towards restoring the

confidence of Indian Chinese that had been dented by the inhuman treatment during the

war.


"The police arrived one day , packed our family into vans and took us to Alipore jail. A

few days later, we were put on a train and bundled to a concentration camp. Though my

parents pleaded for us, there was no forgiveness. Thousands of small traders were

caught in the border dispute and arrested because of their ethnicity .Some were taken to

the border and pushed across to China even though most had never been to the country .

Such ethnic cleansing-like measures instilled fear in the community . That fear outlived

a generation and triggered an exodus," he said.

Ming-Tung, who was born at Tiretti Bazaar in 1943, now lives mostly in Canada where his

children migrated once they grew up. Some went to Taiwan, US, UK and Australia. “In 50

years, a population goes up by twothree times. Ours has halved from 10,000 to 5,000,“

said his cousin YingHsing Hsieh, owner of Big Boss restaurant at Tangra.


Ying-Hsing was 12 when the war broke out. His family was put under house arrest. “I was

lucky as I could even go to the local school. But classrooms were empty . Some did not

have teachers. In others, many students were missing,“ the restaurateur said.The Pei May

school has no students today .


Not just Kolkata Chinese, who are living here for two centuries, were tortured, those

from Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Meghalaya were also picked up and sent to the camp. Liao

Han Shen, who was also sent to Deoli camp when he was 12, recalled how people instigated

the pro-Taiwan Chinese to fight with pro-China ones. “We spent four years in the camp

barracks. It still haunts us,“ said Liao-Han who runs the Golden City restaurant.


Paul Chung of the Indian-Chinese Association is glad that the government has finally

acknowledged a wrong but says it is only the first step to setting things right. "We were

born in India and are Indians. The government must exonerate all Indian Chinese who were

branded a spy in 1962," said Paul.

Subhro Niyogi

W E L C O M E

Contact :

Taipei World Trade Center, Kolkata Office.
Apeejay House, Block " C", Ground Floor,
15, Park Street Kolkata-16.
Tel: +91-33-4004-2796/97.
Fax: +91-33-4004-2798.
Email: kolkata@taitra.org.tw

Apple Of My Eye

Thomas Chen 陈永康 sings an iconic song, loved by the youth from a very famous Taiwanese movie called "那些年 Those By-Gone Years", referring to good old school days, fights, romance etc. The song is also popularly known as  " You Are the Apple of My Eye "

那些年 LYRICS with English Traslation :

又回到最初的起点
you hui dao zui chu de qi dian
Back to the starting point

记忆中你青涩的脸
ji yi zhong ni qing se de lian
In my memory, I see your young face

我们终于来到了这一天
wo men zhong yu lai dao le zhe yi tian
We have finally reached this day

桌垫下的老照片
zhuo dian xia de lao zhao pian
The old photographs under the table

无数回忆连结
wu shu hui yi lian jie
Linking to countless memories

今天男孩要赴女孩最后的约
jin tian nan hai yao fu nuu hai zui hou de yue
Today, a boy will keep his last date with the girl


*又回到最初的起点
you hui dao zui chu de qi dian
Back to the starting point

呆呆地站在镜子前
dai dai de zhan zai jing zi qian
Standing in front of the mirror dumbly

笨拙系上红色领带的结
ben zhuo ji shang hong se ling dai de jie
Clumsily tieing a knot on a red tie

将头发梳成大人模样
jiang tou fa shu cheng da ren mo yang
Combed hair to appear as an adult

穿上一身帅气西装
chuan shang yi shen shuai qi xi zhuang
Wearing a handsome suit

等会儿见你一定比想像美
deng hui er jian ni yi ding bi xiang xiang mei
When I see you in a while, it’ll be better looking than you expected



好想再回到那些年的时光
hao xiang zai hui dao na xie nian de shi guang
Wish that (we) could go back to those years

回到教室座位前后　
hui dao jiao shi zuo wei qian hou
When we were sitting in the classroom, in front back position

故意讨你温柔的骂
gu yi tao ni wen rou de ma
(Doing something to get) purposely scolded from you gently

黑板上排列组合　
hei ban shang pai lie zu he
Pairing arrangement written on the blackboard

你舍得解开吗
ni she de jie kai ma
Are you willing to let go/ separate it?

谁与谁坐他又爱著她
shei yu shei zuo ta you ai zhe ta
Whoever sits with whoever, he will love her


Chorus
那些年错过的大雨
na xie nian cuo guo de da yu
Those missed years of heavy rain

那些年错过的爱情
na xie nian cuo guo de ai qing
Those missed years of romance

好想拥抱你　
hao xiang yong bao ni
I really want to hug you

拥抱错过的勇气
yong bao cuo guo de yong qi
Embrace the wasted /missed courage

曾经想征服全世界
ceng jing xiang zheng fu quan shi jie
Wanted to conquer the world before

到最后回首才发现
dao zui hou hui shou cai fa xian
But looking back in the end, I realized

这世界滴滴点点全部都是你
zhe shi jie di di dian dian quan bu dou shi ni
Every little thing in this world is all you


那些年错过的大雨
na xie nian cuo guo de da yu
Those missed out days of heavy rain

那些年错过的爱情
na xie nian cuo guo de ai qing
Those missed out years of romance

好想告诉你　
hao xiang gao su ni
I really want to tell you

告诉你我没有忘记
gao su ni wo mei you wang ji
Tell you that I never forgot

那天晚上满天星星
na tian wan shang man tian xing xing
That night, when the sky was full of stars

平行时空下的约定
ping xing shi kong xia de yue ding
In parallel time and space, we made a promise

再一次相遇我会紧紧抱著你
zai yi ci xiang yu wo hui jin jin bao zhe ni
If we meet again, I’ll hug you tightly

紧紧抱著你
jin jin bao zhe ni
Hug you tightly

THOMAS  CHEN 陈永康