‘We are not Chinese from China, we are Indians’

*Kolkata’s Chinese community feeds the poor during lockdown

*Lockdown brings business in Chinatown to a halt

*Future of Chinatown uncertain after lockdown

It’s not easy being Chinese now — even if you are an Indian. The other day, some young men in Kolkata’s Chinatown learnt this, to their dismay.

They had gone to a distant market to buy provisions, so that we could continue distributing food among the poor going hungry because of the lockdown in and around Chinatown, which is in Tangra — a crowded area in east Kolkata, dotted with slums, where people of different communities live. As soon as the young men arrived at the market, rumours started spreading that “Chinese men had come with the Chinese virus”.

The crowd became agitated, even hostile. Things could have turned ugly but for the police’s intervention.

And this was not the only occasion when our boys faced hostility. Ever since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China and its spread to the rest of the world, attitudes to ordinary Chinese people have changed in many countries. Things are no different here. This is a new reality we are waking up to.

But remember, we are not Chinese from China. We are Indians. This is our country.

Call it what you want, but this virus has hit us hard in Chinatown — not any less than other Indians in other parts of the country. The hotels and restaurants that Kolkata’s Chinatown is famous for have all shut down. We have lost our livelihood just as thousands of other Indians have.

Not very far from the busy Eastern Metropolitan Bypass highway, Chinatown was once home to a large Chinese community. When I was a child, studying at St Paul’s Boarding and Day School in Kolkata’s Khidirpur, there were 40,000-50,000 Chinese living here. But the number has now dwindled to a few hundred.

With no benefits (economic or otherwise) coming to us from successive governments, most Chinese families have over the years migrated to the West, mainly to the US, Canada and Australia. Many have even gone to live in Hong Kong and mainland China. There is a pervasive feeling that the community has no future in Kolkata.

I have stayed on because I love Kolkata; I am unwilling to leave my home.

As I stand on the doorstep of becoming a senior citizen — I am 59 years old — I sometimes wonder how this once-bustling Chinatown has become a shadow of its former self. And now with the lockdown, it vaguely resembles a ghost town.

Chinatown once housed many of Kolkata’s famous leather tanneries, the trade most Chinese families were at one time engaged in. But with the court ordering them shut for causing pollution, most were shifted to faraway Bantala in South 24 Paraganas district more than a decade ago.

My father was a leather tanner, as was I. In 2010, I converted my leather tannery in Chinatown into a Chinese restaurant called Golden Joy. I had refused to leave for Bantala much the same way I had refused to leave for North America years ago. Today, Golden Joy is one of the 40-odd restaurants in Chinatown. Among our clients are the city’s top businessmen, writers, journalists and artists — anyone who loves good Chinese food.

When the lockdown came into effect a month ago, my employees tried to go back home to their families. Not all of them were lucky enough to find buses or trains, though. Twelve of them (mostly cooks and waiters) couldn’t make it and they have since been living with us.

We have put them up in the staff quarters abutting my restaurant. Thanks to our vendors who supply us year-round, we are getting rice, flour and vegetables for them to cook and eat. No matter how long the lockdown continues, we will look after them.

Yes, our businesses are shut and there is a fund crunch. But we are giving them some money too.

At the moment, our priority is to feed the hundreds of poor people living in Tangra. Many of them are Muslim and labourers from Bihar living in slums. They have no money, and are starving.

Chinese youngsters are risking their lives, and those of their families, going all the way to the wholesale markets nearly 20km away, on their motorcycles, to pick up rice, potatoes and edible oil. They leave in the morning and get back in the evening, despite the lockdown. Then, they go around Tangra, visiting slums and distributing coupons, which can be exchanged for food on certain days at a Chinese school in Chinatown. The local Chinese temple is also doing its bit in serving the poor. We have already fed more than 4,000 people.

The numbers of those starving are rising by the day. We are trying hard to raise funds. Every Chinese family in Kolkata is donating money — anything from ₹1,000 to ₹20,000.

But all the credit goes to our young men who have come out at this crucial time and are doing everything they can to feed the hungry.

They are our heroes and I salute these boys. True, doom and gloom are all around us. We don’t know if, and when our restaurants will reopen. Each restaurant with a bar has to pay ₹5 lakh a year for renewing its bar licence. We don’t know how we are going to pay this to the Bengal government. We don’t know how many Chinatown restaurants will survive the Covid-19 pandemic.

But it’s no time to mourn our financial losses. Human lives are way too precious and we need to save them at any cost.

Desperate times: “This virus has hit us hard in Chinatown,” says restarateur Robert Liao.

Robert Liao is a restaurateur in Kolkata; as told to Debaashish Bhattacharya, a Kolkata-based journalist