Mobility and Medicine in Calcutta’s Chinatowns, 1920-1960 by Rishav Chatterjee A thesis accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Thesis Committee: Arafaat Valiani, Chair Ina Asim, Member Julie Weise, Member University of Oregon Spring 2025 2 © 2025 Rishav Chatterjee This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ 3 THESIS ABSTRACT Rishav Chatterjee Master of Arts in History Title: Mobility and Medicine in Calcutta’s Chinatowns, 1920-1960 This thesis examines the migratory and medical history of the Chinese community that moved to the city of Calcutta between the 1920s and the 1960s. By focusing on the quantification of Chinese bodies, Chinese dietetics, and the network of mobile Chinese dentists in Calcutta and the districts of Bengal, I explore how, over the course of three decades, the Chinese in Calcutta adopted Chinese medical traditions and engaged with biomedicine in creative and strategic ways. Drawing on oral histories, archival materials, and British writings on Calcutta’s Chinatown, I argue that the Chinese community not only carved out distinct occupational spaces, as historiography has noted, but also established distinct medical spaces. The emergence of these spaces was marked by a high degree of mobility and complex interactions with western biomedicine, the policing apparatuses of both the colonial and post-colonial state, and other Indian communities. Keywords: Chinatown, Calcutta, Chinese-Indian community, Migration, Biomedicine, Race, Dietetics, Dentists. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.” - John Donne Like Donne suggests, this thesis is, above all, a culmination of a long collaborative project. It is not a product of solitary labor on my part. As much as the idea of an expert going into the archives, searching for truths, and then coherently compiling them might seem alluring, the reality is far from it. As I finish my thesis, a flurry of names, incidents, and memories occupy my mind, each of which has been crucial to this thesis in one way or the other. In the following paragraphs, I will try my best to account for the roles they played in shaping, molding, and sustaining me and this project from its inception to its conclusion. Any success that this project might fetch belongs to all who were involved in it. The shortcomings, however, are mine alone. I want to begin by thanking my advisor, Dr. Arafaat Valiani, for his support and guidance throughout this project. When I started my thesis, I was apprehensive about my sources, theories, and concepts, and whether they would hold up to scholarly scrutiny. Through our time together in the course ‘Postcolonial Science’ and the Field Readings seminar, Dr. Valiani helped me situate my thesis within broader conversations among historians and anthropologists engaged in a growing body of critical scholarship. As I worked through multiple drafts of this thesis, his feedback was instrumental in highlighting where my arguments needed further development, where deeper engagement with secondary scholarship was necessary, and where a more critical interpretation of sources was required. Beyond intellectual engagement, Dr. Valiani’s active role in helping me move and adjust to the United States was a crucial form of support that helped me immensely. 5 Dr. Julie Weise and her course ‘Migration and Mobility’ helped me think about the phenomenon of people, practices, and cultures in motion in critical ways that were unfamiliar to me. Through our discussions, I was introduced to more nuanced ways of interpreting mobility as well as immobility in history. Her valuable advice was also crucial in helping me get my first book review published. My conversations with Dr. Ina Asim enabled me to sharpen my focus on Chinese culinary practices and the many medical meanings that might be associated with such practices. Her critical reading of the second chapter and her patience in listening to me talk through my intentions for it contributed to the development of this thesis in meaningful ways. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Valiani, Dr. Weise, and Dr. Asim for generously giving their time and for being on my thesis committee. My time as a graduate student at the University of Oregon has been formative in the development of this thesis in many ways. It provided me with an intellectually stimulating cohort that read my work, critiqued it, and in the process became friends and colleagues. I will miss the companionship of Ravinder, Griffin, Audrey, Lara, and Jake. I could share my experiences as an immigrant with Ravinder and Lara, who were always kind enough to check up on me. Griffin, Audrey, and Jake familiarized me with the city of Eugene and became close friends whose advice and presence greatly aided me in my academic and social journey here. Lastly, it would be a disservice to my time at the University of Oregon not to acknowledge the many ways Dr. Julie Hessler has supported my academic journey. She backed this project at every stage—through tangible means such as conference funding and summer fellowships, and invaluable intellectual guidance on my chapters and the overall direction of the thesis. I look back fondly on our time working together on the course ‘Food in World History’. During those ten weeks, I found myself teaching, grading, and eagerly taking notes on Yuan Mei’s cookbook, all of which helped further refine my writing and thinking. 6 In Kolkata, the authorities of the West Bengal State Archives at Shakespeare Sarani, especially Smt. Rina Rani Roy, or as we called her, “Rani Maashi”, was crucial in guiding me through the arduous bureaucratic loops of the archive. She was extremely patient when I went to her multiple times a day, asking for different files. Seeing that I was in Kolkata for only a few months, she was extremely cooperative with me, waiting for me to finish at the last minute before five in the evening, before turning off the computers and locking the archives. I am also forever indebted to the members of the Chinese community in Kolkata, especially Tony Lo, James Lee, Dr. Mao Chi Wei, Kam Ching, and Michael, for dedicating the time to talk to me for hours, in the middle of their work days, and being very honest with their experiences. I still remember when Michael and his wife invited me for lunch, seeing that I was out in the heat for hours. I admire James Lee and the candid nature with which he talked to me while giving me a tour of the Sei Vu complex. Tony Lo was definitely the funniest and most charming man I interviewed. This thesis is in many ways a testament to their spirits and an honest effort to preserve their voices. I hope that I can keep on returning to Blackburn Lane and Tangra to meet them. My family has been the biggest supporter in all of my endeavors and eccentricities since college. Their memory keeps me intellectually alive and grounded. They offered their understanding and solidarity in this journey in quiet yet deeply felt ways. They believed in me even when I struggled to believe in myself. That quiet, unwavering faith kept me grounded, accountable, and motivated throughout this journey. Thank you Maa, Baba, and Aniya. I do it all for you. Lastly, the site of this thesis might be in Kolkata, but the roots of it are located in Delhi. This idea would not have come to fruition today in the form of this thesis if not for the conversations and engagements with friends and professors back in Ramjas College and the University of Delhi. Teachers like Mukul Mangalik and Pooja Thakur deepened my love for 7 history and contributed greatly to my pedagogy. I am both grateful and remorseful that I was able to come in contact with them during my time in Delhi. I am grateful because I got to see them engage passionately with students in classes, corridors, lawns, demonstrations, and seminars. I am remorseful and at times infuriated because I witnessed the systematic ways in which their efforts in building an equal classroom in a deeply unequal society were dismantled by the university. The relationships that I forged in Delhi, namely with Deep, Richik, Rayan, Suyog, Mehal, Udisha, Diyasha, and Rhea, have been instrumental in this project in direct and indirect ways. They were always in cahoots with me, not only in our adventures together but also in ideation. In many ways, shared moments and conversations with them helped me mold a kernel of an idea into a thesis. I still remember Deep and I being awake during the wee hours of the morning, fueled by coffee, re-reading, and refining our materials during our application process. Diyasha’s guardian-like advice, from Delhi to her apartment in Ohio, often helped me take stock of my personal and professional life when I needed it the most. In Kolkata, Richik and I debriefed over my findings in the archives every weekend. I have not seen another student of STEM being so invested in his time and attention to surveillance reports from the 1930s. Rhea’s dedication to waking up at the oddest of hours to keep up with my day and empathize with me provided me with strategic and purposeful distractions that allowed me to get back to writing or reading with replenished intellectual ammunition. All of them, at some point or the other, were audiences to various ideas and themes that have been discussed in this thesis. This wouldn’t have been possible without you guys. 8 DEDICATION To friends, family, teachers and The city of Calcutta. 9 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 10 Lost Voices in a Limited Scholarship ............................................................................................... 14 Conducting Research in a Fragmented Archive................................................................................ 20 Setting the Scene: One City, Multiple Chinatowns. ......................................................................... 27 Organization of Thesis ...................................................................................................................... 33 CHAPTER ONE - Quantifying Chinese Bodies and Establishing Difference in Calcutta’s Chinatowns, 1850-1960 ........................................................................................................................ 37 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 37 A British Man in Calcutta’s Chinatown ............................................................................................ 42 An English Lady's Ruminations on Chinese Migrants ..................................................................... 46 A War of Territories and Categories ................................................................................................. 48 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 59 CHAPTER TWO - Food, Medicine, and Dietetics in Calcuttas Chinatown, 1920-1960 ..................... 61 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 61 Interventions ..................................................................................................................................... 64 Food and Chinese Medicine: Qi, Yin-Yang, and Balance ................................................................. 67 Food, Medicine, and Stimulants in the Archive ................................................................................ 69 Practical Pluralities: Strategically Engaging with Biomedicine ....................................................... 78 Food, Medicine, and Stimulants in Memory ..................................................................................... 81 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 87 CHAPTER 3 - Chinese Migrant Dentistry in Transition, 1930-1960 ................................................... 88 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 88 Hubei Dentists in the 1930s: Origins ................................................................................................ 95 Hubei Dentists in 1930-1940: Mobile Dentists, Mobile Practices .................................................... 98 Politicizing the Clinic, 1930-1950 .................................................................................................. 102 Biomedical Exchanges since 1947 .................................................................................................. 106 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 109 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 112 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 124 10 INTRODUCTION On a hot and humid July day in Calcutta, I took the metro to Central Metro Station, the nearest station to the old Chinatown in the Bowbazar area.1 The neighborhood, along with its houses, shops, and streets in the areas surrounding Blackburn Lane and Chattawalla Gully, does not visually resemble the Chinatowns of New York City, San Francisco, London, Singapore, or other global counterparts. The Chinese population in Calcutta has steadily declined since the Sino-Indian War, and a recent estimate in 2023 suggested that approximately two thousand individuals of Chinese origin remain in the city. Thus, Chinese- owned churches, restaurants, sauce shops, and other establishments are few in number and do not distinguish themselves as ‘Chinese’ to outsiders. There is no presence of traditional Chinese architecture, such as red lanterns or ornate gateways, nor are the streets littered with Chinese characters, signage, gods and goddesses, or proverbs. One might expect to stumble upon old dilapidated Chinese churches such as that of Toong-On or Sea-IP, or old Chinese eateries like Tung Nam or Sei-Vu after crossing multiple small shops, butchering stations, and local fast food stalls in a fairly congested and chaotic neighborhood with unregulated traffic and the crowds of various daily wage laborers. Thus, to the unaware wanderer in Blackburn Lane and Chattawalla Gully, vestiges of Chinese presence in the city remain hidden until they are actively sought out. 1 At this juncture, I find it necessary to describe the sights, sounds and smells that I encountered, fully aware that in doing so, I risk employing tropes and language similar to those used by other ‘outsiders’ to this neighborhood, namely British officials writing about their observation of Calcutta’s Chinatowns such as Bradley Shelland, Augustus Somerville, and Chaloner Alabaster. However, I aim to proceed with caution, striving for a nuanced and holistic representation of my observations. I refer to myself as an ‘outsider’ in this context because this neighborhood is perhaps one of the few areas in the city where ethnic Bengalis like myself may be regarded as outsiders. For the purposes of this thesis, I will refer to the city as Calcutta, its name prior to 2001, rather than Kolkata, which has been its name since that year. This choice is made to avoid confusion and also because the majority of the sources utilized in this study are from the chronological range of the 1920s to the 1950s, a period that is also reflected in the interview and the memories of the interviewee. 11 After I made my way through this noisy and chaotic neighborhood in the middle of a hectic workday in Calcutta, I found my path through the lanes and by lanes to end up at 17 Blackburn Lane to reach Sei-Vu. This popular Chinese-owned eatery had undergone renovations recently and immediately looked comparatively brighter with its fresh new coat of paint in comparison to other buildings and godowns in the lane. The Sei-Vu building had glowing red walls interspersed with bright green windows. It had two stories and a Chinese church attached to it. Presently, the restaurant is located on the first floor. I grabbed a late afternoon lunch to familiarize myself with the local setup and the people. Later, I made my outsider status more apparent by turning to the man behind the register in the hope that he might introduce me to someone who could share insights into the history of the place. It was at this moment that I met James Lee, a man of short stature and medium build with thinning hair. James and I conversed for four hours that day, during which he proceeded to tell me his personal history, the story of Sei-Vu, and the larger Chinese settlement in Calcutta. James Lee is one of the owners of the famous restaurant in Blackburn Lane by the name of Sei Vu. He is in his fifties, and his father migrated from South China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). His father was a wealthy landowner in China, but after he came to India, he learned carpentry and became a carpenter like many other Chinese who had settled in Calcutta. James first took me through the history of Sei-Vu and the building. Sei Vu is a part of a building that was constructed in the 1890s, but the Sei-Vu club was built in 1908 for all of fifteen hundred rupees. This club/association of overseas Chinese today has several branches in Singapore and other places. Originally, the building was a boarding house for Chinese immigrants. The bachelors would occupy the dormitory-like space on the first floor (where the restaurant is situated now), while the rooms upstairs were reserved for family. James even recalls seeing men smoking opium on the first floor when he was young, but since he was a child, he was not allowed to enter. 12 We continued conversing, and I asked James about his memories of the times when his family members, friends, and others in the neighborhood fell sick or contracted diseases. James then pointed towards one of his fingers and said that when he was young, his finger got cut, and he remembers his family not using biomedicine or allopathic medicine. He recalled a mixture of ginseng roots being applied to his fingers, which later cured him. By this time, it looked like James was getting a bit more comfortable with me. He asked me if I had time, and I instantly said yes. He then led me out of Sei-Vu to go to the temple area of the building. He showed me around and took me to the Huigang area, the central socializing space in the Chinese compound, to chat more. He asked if he could smoke a cigarette, and I indicated I had no issues. I could feel that he was attempting to sift through his memories with heightened effort. He said that this mixture was mainly used for cuts and bone fractures. This root mixture was added to traditional Chinese liquor and applied to the concerned area. He compared it to the commercially available pain reliever balm but only more effective. In addition to this, he also mentioned a solution made from red petals - Hung Hua Yao, which was applied to bones to strengthen them. Bai Hua Yao was a similar solution, but it was made from white petals, which were traditionally used for stomach cramps and headaches. James recalled that it was usually used to bring in a lot of perspiration, which would have also relieved any fever that one might have. On asking him how he and others like him were able to source these solutions, he said that there used to be locally run medicine dispensaries in the neighborhoods - ones that ran without any licenses, compounders, or degrees. The most famous of these dispensaries was run by a woman who passed away, but her dispensary used to be very popular among locals in the neighborhood. According to James, there is also a shop called Sing Chong just beside Pou Chong, which still sells these medicines. He also said that he and others asked people visiting China to bring medicines on their way back. 13 After expressing interest in my research, James began to recall various home remedies that were commonly practiced. He recounted an instance in which he experienced severe shoulder pain, which he attributed to gas traveling from his gut to his shoulders. Rather than seeking treatment at a clinic, as he initially considered, his neighbor advised against it and instead applied a traditional remedy. Using a long cylindrical piece of beth (a small thin branch of a tree), the neighbor oiled it and massaged James’s shoulder, providing him with immediate relief. James also noted that most families prioritized maintaining a relatively clean diet to minimize the need for visits to local clinics, which were often expensive. To achieve this, they primarily relied on steamed, poached, or boiled dishes, incorporating minimal spices and irritants. Additionally, barley water was commonly consumed to aid digestion. He recalled encouraging the cooks in his restaurant to adopt similar dietary habits; however, they largely disregarded his advice. Ironically, when one of them later fell ill and consulted a doctor, the physician recommended the same dietary adjustments, prompting the cook to follow the advice without hesitation. I also asked James about a certain Dr. Mao and his dentistry practice, which I came by on my way to Sei-Vu, and he said that Dr. Mao is still a very prominent doctor in the community. James went on to say that Dr. Mao was the first person in his family to get a proper license and degree before starting his practice. Dr.Mao’s father, before him, was also a dentist but did not have a degree. James then went on to say that among Chinese dentists, a caste-like structure exists whereby a dentist’s offspring is expected to learn the craft and eventually become a dentist. This does not seem to have changed since Dr. Mao’s son is currently a prominent surgeon in Australia. After my four-hour conversation with James, it became evident that, in times of illness, the Chinese community in Calcutta employed a range of therapeutic approaches, including home remedies, herbal treatments, and biomedicine. According to James, 14 consulting a doctor was typically reserved for instances of severe fever; only under such circumstances would a family consider seeking biomedical intervention. It appears that for a Chinese family settled in Caclutta during the 1960s, visiting a doctor was regarded as a last resort. Instead, they prioritized the use of home remedies and lifestyle regulation as preventive measures against illness. James’s conversation provides but a few rich vignettes for the central question of my thesis–What does it mean to be ‘healthy’ in a transnational community with a rich history of migration and settlement? The Chinese community in Calcutta, from the 1920s to the 1960s, found themselves to be at the intersection of multiple medical traditions such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, western biomedicine, as well as Indian indigenous medical traditions like that of Ayurveda. As migrants in the city of Calcutta, the Chinese both followed their traditions and continuously adapted them as per the changing historical conditions. The process of adaptation evolved across different decades, with successive generations of Chinese migrants in Calcutta exhibiting varying degrees of adherence to traditional Chinese medicine as they engaged with and assimilated aspects of western biomedical practices. As a result, the Chinese community in Calcutta, over three decades, developed creative and strategic approaches to engaging with, assimilating into, or, in some instances, subverting dominant medical traditions. From operating unregulated medical pharmacies in Blackburn Lane to developing distinctive culinary practices for health maintenance and establishing a network of highly mobile dental practitioners across Calcutta, the Chinese community made significant contributions to the city's alternative medical cultures. Lost Voices in a Limited Scholarship 15 Among the many migrant communities that gave meaning to the city of Calcutta, the Chinese were the ones who provided a lot in terms of tangible wealth and intangible culture. One cannot imagine the city of Calcutta without hand-pulled rickshaws, Indo-Chinese food, and leather tanneries–all of which were made possible due to Chinese settlement in Calcutta. For a substantial period during the 18th century, the sugar supply in Calcutta was controlled by the Chinese. The first film to be banned in independent India was a film titled “Neel Akasher Neeche” (Under the Blue Sky). Directed by Mrinal Sen, it was a film about a Chinese hawker by the name of Wang Lu. It was banned because the portrayal of a Chinese character under unequal socio-political conditions became contentious after the political climate following the Sino-Indian War of 1962. India’s premier foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was established due to the failure of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to gather information about the Chinese socio-political movement during the Sino-Indian War. Thus, from their initial arrival in 1778, the Chinese community in Calcutta and, later, in India occupied a paradoxical position—both historically significant and yet frequently overlooked. Despite their contributions, the role of Chinese migrants in shaping the alternative medical cultures in Calcutta remains under-examined in the limited scholarship dealing with Chinese migrants in Calcutta. Aspects explored in this thesis, such as the quantification of bodies, merging health with food, and mobile Chinese dentists interacting with biomedicine, find cursory mention in this literature, often analyzed through non-medical lenses of caste, culture, society, and economic activities. Zhang Xing and Tansen Sen’s co-written article “The Chinese in South Asia” traces the patterns of Chinese immigration to India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. They provide a detailed overview of the Chinese immigrant experiences in these countries and look for patterns of continuity in their economic activities as well as the 16 various social and cultural institutions that they established.2 In their analysis, the Chinese dentists from Hubei have not been overlooked. However, Xing and Sen analyze the activities of these wandering dentists through the lens of economic activities. They trace their emergence in various South Asian countries after the Second World War. Focusing on the Chinese dentists in India, they identify two major turning points in their profession–1947 and 1962. After Indian independence in 1947, the government established a set of new laws for dentists, which required them to procure certification from hospitals. This affected Chinese dentists who did not have proper training or medical facilities. However, according to Sen and Xing, the “biggest blow” to Hubeinese dentists came after the Sino-Indian War of 1962. They believe “the restrictions placed on the movement of the Chinese in India forced the roaming teeth setters to pick a place to settle down. Most of them decided to choose Calcutta, and others chose Lucknow, Jamshedpur, Gorakhpur, Vishakhapatnam, Shillong, and Imphal.”3 Jennifer Liang’s work titled “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese: An Insider’s History” is yet another overview of the origins and evolution of Chinese settlements in Calcutta, but much more detailed and informative owing to the multiple interviews she conducted with the members of the community as part of her fieldwork. She identifies three major waves of migration that took place in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the post-Second World War period.4 Her section on “The teeth setters from Hubei” tries to situate the Hubei dentists in Calcutta not only through their economic activities but also on account of their mobility. Much of this became evident because of her interviews with Dr. Mao Chi Wei. She says, “The Hubeinese teeth setters 2 Tansen Sen and Zhang Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia,” in Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, ed. Chee-Beng Tan, Routledge Handbooks (London ; New York: Routledge, 2013). 3 Sen and Xing, 210. 4 Jennifer Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese: An Insider’s History,” China Report 43, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 397–410, https://doi.org/10.1177/000944550704300402. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lk27tg https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lk27tg https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lk27tg https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lk27tg https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?sX19RJ https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?U3tyOw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?U3tyOw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?U3tyOw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?U3tyOw 17 continued this practice of wandering after they arrived in India, a reason why they are found residing in remote and far-flung places in India. Mao’s family is an example of these wandering Hubeinese dentists. The family traveled all over India, including Delhi and Mumbai.”5 She also concludes that it was the aftermath of 1962 that finally forced the Hubei dentists to settle down, improve their skills, and increase their prosperity since they no longer had to travel. While immensely informative, Sen and Xing structure their narrative around a clear trajectory of emergence, boom, and decline. Since the analysis is also an economic one, details regarding the nature of the Hubei dentists' medical practices and makeshift clinics are also not present. Liang’s analysis also overlooks how the wandering Chinese dentists contributed to alternative therapeutic practices in Calcutta. She also does not account for the forces that led to the later professionalization of these practitioners. I argue through my chapter on Chinese dentists that in each decade, the Chinese dentists faced new challenges and adapted to them by being highly mobile and later merging their practical knowledge with the more formal training that they were made to pick up. I also suggest that the decade following the passage of The Dentists Act was marked not only by the professionalization of Chinese dentists but also by their gradual Indianization, as they shared medical spaces and adopted similar practices alongside their Indian counterparts. This allows me to show how the very profession of dentistry among Hubei Chinese was able to continuously morph and reconfigure itself to engage with the socio-nationalist conditions of each decade. Similarly, Ellen Oxfeld’s book, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong, mentions how food was used as a tool for establishing ethnic boundaries between Bengali locals and Chinese migrants. Her work mixes anthropological fieldwork, sociology, and historical analysis to assess the relationship between family and enterprise among Hakka tanners in Calcutta. She 5 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 408. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?TxBAIJ 18 argues that Hakka tanners were “pariah capitalists” who were relatively prosperous but politically powerless. In her discussion of the conflicts and interactions of Chinese and Bengali diets, she says, In India, diet is an especially significant marker of caste, ethnic, and/or religious affiliation. Chinese are set apart from both Hindus, who generally abstain from beef, and Muslims, who abstain from pork. Where diet is such a critical concern and symbol, it is not surprising that it is one of the most frequently mentioned items when ethnic groups discuss and define one another. The apparent willingness of the Chinese to eat almost anything was often cited by Bengalis as proof of their peculiarity.6 Her analysis of diet being a significant marker of distinction between Bengalis and Chinese does hold true to a certain degree. Indeed, Chinese eateries did operate in ethnically segregated neighborhoods, and their food practices were viewed as “dirty” and “impure” by Hindus and Muslims who avoid beef and pork, respectively. However, it does not explain the reason behind the popularity of Chinese restaurants among Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta. It also does not sufficiently explain why the Hakka Chinese would eventually transform their tanneries into thriving restaurants frequented by people from diverse caste backgrounds. What is overlooked in this analysis is the multiple rationales for being suspicious of Chinese culinary practices in the first place. In my chapter on food and dietetics in Calcutta’s Chinatowns, I demonstrate that the Chinese community in Calcutta exhibited a strong commitment to establishing clandestine food supply networks. These efforts, which often conflicted with traditional Hindu and Muslim sensibilities, were driven by the necessity of maintaining bodily balance and overall health. While food served as a significant marker of ethnic identity for the Chinese community, I suggest that it also played a pivotal role in establishing an alternative therapeutic approach. As I describe in my second chapter, this 6 Ellen Oxfeld, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community, Anthropology of Contemporary Issues (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 49. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Qrl1np https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Qrl1np https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Qrl1np https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Qrl1np 19 approach integrated traditional Chinese culinary practices focused on healthy eating with the phenomenological realities of life in Calcutta, aiming to prevent and cure diseases. Apart from this, the works of Ramakrishna Chatterji and Zhang Xing help to provide a general context of the history of Chinese migration in India.7 Both works begin with the arrival of Tong Atchew in Calcutta in 1778 and subsequently chart the historical trajectory of Chinese settlement in the city. In the course of their accounts, they examine the professional niches occupied by different Chinese ethnic communities, alongside the establishment of various cultural institutions, including temples and huigangs (the covered veranda around a courtyard used for socializing between the prayer halls of temple complexes). The studies conclude by analyzing the consequences of the Sino-Indian War for the Chinese community in Calcutta, particularly the dislocation and resettlement of many community members in the West. Ramakrishna Chatterji’s “The Chinese Community in Calcutta” relies on a reading of articles, newspapers, magazines, and census reports to show the rise and fall in the Chinese population in Calcutta from 1876 to the 1960s. Zhang Xing’s article titled “The Bowbazar Chinatown” provides a critical evaluation of what she calls the “the golden period” of Chinatowns in Calcutta characterized by “new schools, businesses, and associations”.8 This scholarship is important in that it enables me to historically situate the various developments that took place in Calcutta’s Chinatown from the 1920s to the 1960s. The relatively small body of scholarship on Chinese migration to Calcutta tends to follow, at times, a route of a linear narrative of progression beginning with the arrival of Tong Atchew in 1778, setting up a thriving Chinatown in the following decades, which attracted migrants up until the Second World War. The singular moment of crisis in this long history is the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the deportation that followed afterward. Each of 7 See Ramakrishna Chatterjee, “The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their Early Settlement and Migration.,” in India and China in the Colonial World, ed. Madhavi Thampi, 1st edition (London: Routledge, 2017); Zhang Xing, “The Bowbazar Chinatown,” India International Centre Quarterly 36, no. 3/4 (2009): 396–413. 8Xing, “The Bowbazar Chinatown,” 405. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?9EIRWx https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?eyfMlG 20 these periods of historical experience within the community provides enough details about the various economic activities of different Chinese ethnic groups in Calcutta however, they are subsections and additions within articles dealing with the larger stories of Chinese migration and deportation. While this scholarship is significant to establishing a historiography on the experiences of the Chinese in Bengal, I strive to build on it by contributing an analysis of how their history of migration to Calcutta, as well as their high degrees of mobility within India, affected how they confronted diseases, defined health, and went about curing themselves through creative and strategic methods. This thesis fills a gap in the historiography of Chinese migrants in Calcutta by foregrounding the manners in which community members developed a dynamic system of alternative therapeutics to navigate dominant medical practices. By doing so, I aim to provide novel and more complex explanations for why Chinese dentists traveled across the districts of Bengal, why and where they chose to settle after India’s independence, and why Chinese culinary practices were subjected to suspicion. In all this, the thesis contributes a perspective that complicates and expands upon how these issues have been discussed in existing scholarship. Conducting Research in a Fragmented Archive It has been forty-five years since the publication of Bernard S. Cohn’s “History and Anthropology: The State of Play”, where he charts out the disciplinary similarities between “Historyland” and “Anthropologyland” and paves the path towards a more nuanced anthropological history. He believes that historians and anthropologists are both engaged in a process of constructing “otherness” in time and space, respectively. In combining the subject matter and epistemologies common to both fields, Cohn believes “that history can become 21 more historical by being anthropological, that anthropology can become more anthropological by becoming more historical.”9 In many ways, Cohn is interested in the study of fragments which involves studying marginalized and dispossessed groups in societies that escape the purview of conventional sources. After bringing to notice this problem, Cohn also provides several strategies and analytical tools for historians interested in the study of excluded groups to deal with the issues of a complicated archive. He suggests developing newer sources such as oral histories, songs, folklore, rituals, celebrations, and other records to understand the characteristic features and life patterns of these groups. He also cautions against entirely negating conventional sources to culturally isolate and reify these groups when he says, “The dispossessed have to be put into the same contextual and analytical framework as the elites and ruling groups who are engaged in the maintenance and representation of social order.”10 Indeed, in archives maintained by the elite for elite interests, where marginal voices and lives are represented for the sake of maintaining surveillance and order, one must pay attention to the relationship between the elites and the excluded to get a sense of the entire range of processes that leads to the construction and modifications of social categories. Under conditions of colonialism, the colonizer, as well as the colonized, are engaged in a constant act of representing and responding to each other. The colonizer imparts foreign logic, models, symbols, and knowledge, while the colonized either responds, adapts, or restructures their worlds under the context of domination and powerlessness. In this vein, Cohn argues, To study Australian aborigines, or American Indians, or Indian villagers without locating them in relation to the colonial structures which were or are the central social fact of their 9 Bernard S. Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 2 (1980): 216. 10 Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” 215. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Re8kq6 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Re8kq6 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Re8kq6 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Re8kq6 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aoqfic 22 lives without paying attention to the traders, the missionaries and administrators, and to the whole process by which the indigenous peoples become incorporated in various fashions into the capitalist and socialist economies-is to trivialize the experience of the natives.11 Engaging with such histories requires transcending rigid chronologies and fixed spatial boundaries, which often assume the homogenization of social and cultural systems that may not be fully integrated. Obsession with dates and sites denies the space of cultural transformations that go against the grain of the assumed coherent pattern of a chronological period. This is not to suggest that a sense of time and place is absent from such historical anthropologies, but that the questions asked by the anthropological historian produce the time and space of their study. According to Cohn, “One studies these in a particular place and over time, but the study is about the construction of cultural categories and the process of that construction, not about place and time.”12 To conduct such dynamic research, the concerned historian should have engagements outside the archives as well to look for the past not just in archives but in people, buildings, language, and material cultures to understand the processes of construction of culture categories that Cohn endorses. Since Cohn’s intervention, there has been much discussion about combining the practices of history and anthropology, as well as the problematic nature of archives in South Asia. Gyanendra Pandey in his “In Defence of the Fragment” talks about the aberration and absence that characterizes the history of violence in the historiography of modern India. He pays attention to the “fragments” of Indian society–minority cultures and practices–that are expected to fall in line with the “mainstream”, that is, the Hindu Brahminical national culture, which itself is a very small section of Indian society. Attention to these fragments is purposeful according to Pandey because “it resists the drive for a shallow homogenisation 11 Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” 218. 12 Cohn, “History and Anthropology: The State of Play,” 220. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jov4Jn https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?RpyEQt 23 and struggles for other potentially richer definition of ‘nationalism’ and future political community.”13 More recently, Ruby Lal in her “The Lure of the Archive” synthesizes the methodologies from three books to critically probe the issues of silence and invisibility of the archives and what it means for historians who are interested in subjects that are lost or are interlopers in these archives.14 She builds on the Foucauldian frameworks of the “sayable” in The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discourse on Language, where the archive is not a body but a practice that enables the survival and regular modification of statements. She argues that “the official archive will continue to erase certain kinds of subjects and magnify others in the name of its ‘civilizing mission’”.15 This allows her to probe into the very logic of appearance and disappearance in the archives and inquire what specific characteristics about the colonized subject makes the colonial archive record them. According to Arunabh Ghosh, Tansen Sen, and Adhira Mangalagiri, “For a long time, historical scholarship on China and India has been dominated by two self-limiting approaches: intellectual history and foreign policy/geopolitics.”16 Indeed, for the longest time, the vast bulk of China-India studies have focused on Buddhist exchanges during the colonial period following the Opium Wars. This changed during the first half of the twentieth century when Pan-Asianism influenced the writings on India-China relations. Finally, the pre-and post-1962 period witnessed numerous border studies providing linear and causal explanations of the war. Only recently has there been recognized the need to adopt a unique methodology that is both interdisciplinary as well transcends fixed temporalities and 13 Gyanendra Pandey, “In Defence of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today,” Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 11/12 (1991): 559. 14 Ruby Lal, “The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia,” ed. Anjali Arondekar, Michael Fisher, and Rochona Majumdar, Feminist Studies 37, no. 1 (2011): 93–110. 15 Lal, “The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia,” 97. 16 See Arunabh Ghosh, Tansen Sen, and Adhira Mangalagiri, “China and India in the Age of Decolonization: An Introduction to the Nehru Papers Project, 1947–1964,” China and Asia 3, no. 2 (2022): 177-182. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ENhX00 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ENhX00 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ENhX00 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ENhX00 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?rVylFf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?rVylFf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?rVylFf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?rVylFf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?m0laOK 24 geographies. This “Intra-Asian” method, sometimes referred to as the “China-India” method, has been advocated by a growing number of scholars such as Tansen Sen, Prasenjit Duara, as well as Kuan-Hsing Chen. This methodology advocates to understand China-India connections, comparisons, and contradictions through non-western (although not anti- western) and non-nation-state focused analytical perspectives.17 Chinese people, their practices, and their traditions often do not enter traditional archives which are maintained for state interests. This is why the “China-India” methodology becomes important for this thesis. I have also paid attention to the processes of “convergent compressions” as articulated by Duara, who believes that “Circulatory processes, ideas, and forms may develop in Society A and travel to Societies B and C where they are reshaped and travel elsewhere in those forms. They may sometimes even return to Society A, though they may be recognized as something else”.18 My study goes beyond the confines of nation-states and strictly linear chronologies to show how Chinese medical practices were historically understood and embodied in the city of Calcutta. It is also interdisciplinary, combining the interpretation of both archival sources and the memories of the individuals I interviewed for my study. This thesis is similarly interested in fragmentary subjects and practices. The official sources on the Chinese in Calcutta only allow me to go so far in answering the questions this thesis is interested in. The sources by themselves are clunky and compiled around certain chronological periods and often do not flow linearly. However, much like Cohn’s observations, the questions I am interested in have produced a rudimentary time and place for my study but the study itself is not restricted to these temporal and spatial silos. My thesis is in many ways centered around Calcutta but also other districts of Bengal where Chinese 17 For an overview of the field of China-India see Tansen Sen, “China–India Studies: Emergence, Development, and State of the Field,” The Journal of Asian Studies 80 no.2 (2021): 363–387. 18 See Prasenjit Duara and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Beyond Regimes: China and India Compared, 1st ed., vol. 19 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), 464-65. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?broken=jnUVNl https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?broken=jnUVNl https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?broken=jnUVNl https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?broken=jnUVNl 25 presence was felt. My chronology roughly spans from the 1920s to the 1960s but is also influenced by writings and developments that took place in 1778 and the 1860s. The earliest official source on the Chinese presence in Calcutta begins with a letter exchange between Governor General Warren Hastings and a Chinese trader by the name of Tong Atchew in 1778. 19 Since then, the Calcutta Gazette, an English newspaper in Bengal, published a number of advertisements about various facets of Chinese life in Calcutta from 1784.20 At the same time, individuals like H. Beverly and F.J.T. Maguire, in their census records, enumerated Chinese populations in Calcutta that were making their presence felt in increasing numbers. After this, we find an English lady by the name of Emily Eden describing her interactions with Chinese individuals in Calcutta through her letters in 1836.21 Shortly after this, a British official by the name of Chaloner Alabaster published the earliest report on the Chinese colony in Calcutta in 1858.22 These are the bulk of sources that I have used for this thesis, which pertains to the early nineteenth century. While they do not belong to the period under examination of this thesis, they provide much of the context of what follows in the twentieth century. The trail of official evidence on Chinese migrants in Calcutta is few and in most cases absent up until the 1920s, when two British individuals by the name of Bradley Shelland and Augustus Somerville produced writings similar to Chaloner Alabaster in 1924 and 1929, respectively.23 It was only in the 1930s that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) started paying close 19 Recorded in Basanta Kumar Bose, “A Bygone Chinese Colony in Bengal,” Bengal Past and Present 47, no. 120 (1934): 22. 20 Found in W.S. Seton-Karr, Selections from Calcutta Gazettes of the Years 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788: Showing the Political and Social Condition of the English in India Eighty Years Ago (O.T. Cutter, Military Orphan Press, 1864), https://books.google.co.in/books?id=f0gOAAAAQAAJ. 21 Found in E. Eden and E. Eden, Letters from India, Letters from India (Richard Bentley and son, 1872), https://books.google.co.in/books?id=S2oOAAAAQAAJ. 22 Chaloner Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” Calcutta Review 31, no. 62 (1858): 368–89. 23 See Bradley Shelland, “Calcutta’s Chinatown,” Cornhill Magazine 57, no. September (1924): 277–85; Augustus Somerville, Crime and Religious Beliefs in India (Asian Publication Services, 1996). https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?X3Ohbf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?X3Ohbf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?X3Ohbf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?X3Ohbf https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Ql5Iq4 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Ql5Iq4 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Ql5Iq4 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Ql5Iq4 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Ql5Iq4 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?wVYlnW https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?wVYlnW https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?wVYlnW https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?wVYlnW https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?bFgaBO https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?bFgaBO https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?bFgaBO https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?cMk6E5 26 attention to “Chinese Foreigners” and “Chinese Nationals”.24 They parcelled Chinese migrants arriving in Calcutta after the Second Sino-Japanese War into these two categories and produced multiple lookout notices, history sheets with information, confidential reports, letter interceptions, and interrogation transcripts of apprehended Chinese individuals. The suspicion over Chinese presence in Calcutta in the form of spies only increased in the context of the Second World War and the Japanese invasion of Burma. During this time, the allied soldiers stationed in Calcutta were also provided with a series of comic strips that entailed graphic instructions on how to distinguish Chinese from Japanese spies.25 The bulk of these official archives from the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries enable an analysis of the evolving representations of Chinese culinary and medical practices within these writings and records. They also show how Chinese bodies were quantified through a keen attention to their physical features. These themes are addressed and situated as individual chapters comprising this thesis. In addition to these official archives, I have also traveled and spent considerable time in the Chinatowns of Calcutta to curate an unofficial archive. I was a non-participant observer of contemporary Chinese life in Calcutta and, as a way to collect oral histories from within the community, I conducted oral interviews lasting several hours with eight members of the Chinese community in Calcutta. One of these individuals is not of Chinese origin but provided his memories of interacting with Chinese migrants. The subjects of these interviews are varied in age and profession. Among them are dental professionals, restaurateurs, temple officials, workers, and entrepreneurs, ranging in age from thirty to eighty years. The focus of such anthropological, historical, and ethnographic endeavors on my part is to etch out details about the Chinese daily lives in Calcutta and how it has changed over time. 24Collections found in Foreigners, Shakespeare Sarani, Kolkata: West Bengal State Archives. 25Milton Caniff, A Pocket Guide to China., 64 p. (Washington: War and Navy Depts, 1943), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008522517. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EErhWu https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EErhWu https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EErhWu https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EErhWu 27 Methodologically, oral histories provide a number of challenges such as selective recollection, cultural biases, as well as a general confusion with chronology. The people I have interviewed often recalled instances in their lives or their parent's lives that occurred decades ago and they might have unconsciously exaggerated their memories or confused them chronologically. However, I have tried to treat oral histories in independent sections within the chapters and have corroborated them with archival materials wherever possible. Most importantly, such oral histories allow me to connect the archives to the locality to include facets of Chinese mobility and medical lives that are absent from the archives. Setting the Scene: One City, Multiple Chinatowns. Shortly after it was declared to be the capital of colonial India, Calcutta became an important port between Britain and China. Tea, silk, cotton, indigo, and opium were some of the major items that were exchanged in this established colonial trade network. The earliest evidence of Chinese presence in Kolkata comes from the letters of Yang Dazhao, whose nickname was Tong Atchew.26 The records inform us that in 1778, Governor General Warren Hastings granted “650 bighas in area in the district of 24 Parganas which was situated nearly 6 miles south-west of Budge-Budge at the yearly rent of Rs. 45 /- .”27 Atchew used this land, approximately four hundred acres in a district of Bengal near the river Budge Budge, to set up a sugar mill with the help of indentured labor that he later brought with him. The land granted to Tong Atchew would later come to be known as Achipur in his honor. 26 See Xing, “The Bowbazar Chinatown”; Sen and Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia.” Both these article claim that the real name of the “legenderary first Chinese settler in South Asia” was a man named Yang Dazhao who was also known as Tong Atchew. 27 This letter can be found in Bose, “A Bygone Chinese Colony in Bengal.” https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?huMz5u https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?TO5ALP 28 Figure 1. Map of Calcutta and its environs showing the three Chinatowns. John Murray, Environs of Calcutta, in A Handbook for Travellers in India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon, 20th ed., ed. L. F. Rushbrook Williams and Sir Arthur C. Lothian (London: John Murray, 1965), map, AbeBooks, https://www.abebooks.com/maps/Environs-Calcutta-Murray-John/31106590877/bd. However, we know that Chinese migrants were living in Calcutta even before the arrival of Tong Atchew. In Atchew’s memorial to the British Supreme Board in 1781, we see his frustration about the “Chinese who have deserted from the ships and remain in Calcutta without any apparent means of subsistence” and how they were responsible for luring his indentured labor away from their duties in the sugar mill.28 Based on this petition, both Ellen Oxfeld as well as Zhang Xing believed that the first Chinese settlers in Kolkata may have 28 Bose, “A Bygone Chinese Colony in Bengal”,121. https://www.abebooks.com/maps/Environs-Calcutta-Murray-John/31106590877/bd https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EPwgcW https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?tUXiYE https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EPwgcW 29 been runaway sailors and indentured servants .29 Tansen Sen suggests, “It is likely that these Chinese came to Calcutta on ships frequenting between Calcutta and Canton.”30 Tong Atchew died shortly after this in 1783, and his estate was sold according to an advertisement that appeared in 1804.31 Thus, until Atchew’s death and the subsequent sale of his sugar mill, there were two distinct Chinatowns, one centered in Achipur and the other in Calcutta around the Bowbazar area. Consequently, after the death of Tong Atchew in 1783, several advertisements in the Calcutta Gazette suggest that Atchew’s indentured laborers were quick to desert Achipur and settle in the Bowbazar area of Calcutta. As early as 1784, we find an individual by the name of Tom Fatt offering his services to clean water tanks through the help of a specialized China Pump that “can finish the work quicker than any Bengali people”.32 In addition to this, he also owned a rum distillery, made loaf sugar, as well did all sorts of cabinet work. As Bowbazar received more Chinese settlers, we see advertisements of Chinese people who “keep a shop in China Bazar” in 1785.33 Threatened by this development and informed by the cultural notion that the Chinese are deviant in general, we also see the colonial administration establishing several police stations in the neighborhood after this advertisement.34 These advertisements give us an idea about what life was like for the “First Migrants,” as termed by Jennifer Liang.35 In her extensive fieldwork, she also came across Chen Tung Fong, a retired Hubeinese dentist who has remained in the Bowbazar Chinatown 29 See Xing, “The Bowbazar Chinatown,” 398; Oxfeld, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong, 78. 30 Sen and Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia,” 206. 31 Bose, “A Bygone Chinese Colony in Bengal,” 122. 32 Tom Fatt’s advertisement can be found in W.S. Seton-Karr, Selections from Calcutta Gazettes of the Years 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788: Showing the Political and Social Condition of the English in India Eighty Years Ago (O.T. Cutter, Military Orphan Press, 1864), 34, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=f0gOAAAAQAAJ. 33 Seton-Karr, Selections from Calcutta Gazettes of the Years 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788: Showing the Political and Social Condition of the English in India Eighty Years Ago, 91. 34 Seton-Karr, Selections from Calcutta Gazettes of the Years 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788: Showing the Political and Social Condition of the English in India Eighty Years Ago, 116. 35 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 397. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jpmOMS https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jpmOMS https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jpmOMS https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jra02j https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?EaZ7Uq https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?zkplbT https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?0oPufi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?0oPufi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?0oPufi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?0oPufi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lFZ6C9 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lFZ6C9 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lFZ6C9 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lFZ6C9 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?fUEaYB 30 throughout his life. Asserting the reasons for the heavy Chinese presence in Calcutta in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he says, “India at that time was governed by the British and had a reputation of being a rich country with good governance and plenty of work opportunities.”36 Thus, for the Chinese settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the economic opportunities that Calcutta provided were the main reason behind their migration. Consequently, the multi-ethnic communities of Cantonese, Hunan, Hakka, and Hubei Chinese were able to carve out a variety of occupational niches for themselves, which included working in tanneries, shoemaking, dentistry, hairdressing, carpentry, as well as establishing restaurants.37 Ellen Oxfeld, as well as Jennifer Liang, highlight how the Hakka Chinese were able to take up shoemaking and working in tanneries as their primary occupation because it was considered impure by caste Hindus and Muslims.38 A distinctive feature of the eighteenth-century Bowbazar Chinatown was the predominant presence of male workers and the absence of women, as crudely indicated by Chaloner Alabaster. It seems strange that importing as they do cooks, priests, barbers, and doctors, they have not imported some of the fair sex….the only Chinese women known to have set foot in Calcutta were two poor girls from Australia .39 This was to change in the early twentieth century when the collapse of the Manchu empire, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the following Chinese Civil War would trigger a second wave of migration where most of the immigrants were women, unskilled workers, and 36 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 398. 37 Sen and Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia,” 212. 38 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 397. 39 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 374. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?uq0HgK https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?IoUeXz https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LmOtte https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?1R85SU https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?tefri4 31 children who did not possess any specialized skills like the Cantonese, Hubeinese, Hunan, and Hakka Chinese that migrated before them.40 Jennifer Liang gives us an idea about why the migrations in the early twentieth century took place through one of her interviews with Ng Yee Tung, a Cantonese carpenter who migrated to India in 1939. Ng Yee Tung recalls, “It was very dangerous living under Chiang Kai-shek. Anyone even remotely suspected of having Communist affiliation was arrested. Thousands disappeared, never to be seen again. It was a terrible time, and we could not even open our mouths for fear of being misunderstood and arrested for the wrong reasons.”41 The civil war between the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and the KMT (Kuomintang) led by Chiang Kai-shek destabilized the civil order in China, especially in the countryside, which led people like Ng Yee Tung to migrate to Calcutta. Life for this new wave of migrants was complicated because the Bowbazar Chinatown lacked dwelling spaces suitable for women and children, as it mostly had dormitories for single men. In addition to this, there was a dearth of economic opportunities for the unskilled workers and their families, and going back to China was not an option. In such a situation, these early twentieth-century Chinese migrants resorted to selling liquor, washing clothes, tailoring, and working in the vegetable market to make ends meet.42 Simultaneously, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the more enterprising members of the Hakka shoemaking communities moved to Tangra, another part of town, to explore the possibilities of tanning leather. Working with animal skin was seen to be “impure” and “dirty” according to Hindu caste logic and was often relegated to “untouchables” who lay outside the four-fold Hindu caste structure.43 Hakka Chinese tanners 40 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 401. 41 Ng Yee Tung’s interview can be found in Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 401. 42 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 402. 43 Caste is a four-fold structure of hierarchical social stratification in Hindu-society. It is divided into Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), Shudras (loborers) in order of their hierarchies within the https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?fdS2ce https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?YqZKCn https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?YqZKCn https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?tRyZoi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kFZIOC https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?wJEDsO 32 were able to maneuver these politics of purity and impurity associated with tanning leather among the caste Hindus to establish themselves in this occupational niche. After an initial period of struggle and economic hardship, the Hakka community experienced significant economic gains due to the increased demand for leather during the Second World War and the subsequent expansion of exports to the Soviet Union in the 1970s. These conditions led to the development of a third Chinatown in Kolkata around Tangra. The tanneries of Tangra prospered until the 1980s, after which they declined due to a number of reasons. The twin events of the Soviet collapse and globalization in India during 1991 meant that the tanneries had to compete in a free market. In addition to this, stringent environmental measures enacted by the local government led to many of these tanneries closing down, relocating, or, in most cases, being converted to restaurants. Lim Tse Yee, an owner of a shoe store and a resident of Chinatown, explains, There was no competition. But, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have lost that market entirely and now have to compete in the free market. While other producers improved and innovated, we are still using outdated machines. Because of the declining profits, many Dhapa Chinese have sold their business and left India.44 Furthermore, the conditions for Chinese-Indians worsened following the Sino-Indian War of 1962. During this period, the Indian state enacted the Defence of India Act, which resulted in the deportation of approximately three thousand ethnic Chinese individuals to a former prisoner-of-war camp in Deoli, Rajasthan. Even after they were released in 1967, Chinese- Indians continued to face discrimination, property losses, and business vandalizations. As noted by Lim, the steady out-migration of the Chinese community was triggered by a combination of economic hardship, discrimination, and the hostile environment that emerged caste structures. Communities that fell outside of this structures were deemed to be ‘Untouchables as they were associated with occupations which were considered impure according to Hindu casteist logic. 44 Lim Tse Yee’s interview can be found in Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese,” 407. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?mWJGdt https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?mWJGdt 33 following the Sino-Indian War. This process resulted in the gradual abandonment of the three major Chinatowns in Calcutta—Achipur, Bowbazar, and Tangra—as members of the community relocated to countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Organization of Thesis This thesis is organized into three chapters. The first chapter is an exploratory genealogy of how Chinese bodies were measured, quantified, and written about from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. I rely on a comparative reading of the writings of Chaloner Alabaster and Emily Eden to show how these colonial actors always paid attention to corporeal characteristics and phenotypical features of Chinese bodies, such as height, hair, complexion, and eyes, to distinguish Chinese migrants in Calcutta from the British as well as other Indians. By doing so, Alabaster and Eden strived to establish a stable racial category and ascribe certain meanings to those categories in terms of social attitudes, sanitary conditions, proclivity to gambling, drinking, violence, etc. In the twentieth century, these categories were operationalized in a more robust form. To arrive at this conclusion, I have analyzed a comic strip issued to Allied soldiers stationed in Calcutta during the Second World War, which instructed soldiers how to differentiate between Chinese civilians and Japanese spies in Calcutta through differences in their feet, stride, and eyes. I have also examined the confidential reports and intelligence files produced by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to demonstrate that contemporary British intelligence practices similarly employed methods of quantification based on corporeal characteristics to gather information on the social and political dimensions of Chinese migrants in Calcutta. Lastly, I have drawn upon the oral interviews conducted by Joy Ma and Kwai Yun-Li in their works to illustrate how these racial categories adapted within a postcolonial context, becoming entwined with state 34 policies, citizenship, border defense, and national security. In the aftermath of the Sino-Indian War of 1962, these categories served as mechanisms for exclusion, incarceration, and violence against the Chinese community in India. Overall, Chapter 1 argues that the Chinese community settled in Calcutta was racially reified through keen attention to their phenotypic and corporeal features from 1850 to 1960. In doing so, this chapter traces the racial logic deployed on the Chinese community in Kolkata in the colonial period and how they reproduced themselves in the post-colonial period. Chapter 2 aims to analyze how the Chinese community in Calcutta regulated their bodies and diets to prevent and cure diseases. Drawing upon the established conventions of traditional Chinese medicine and adapting it to the phenomenological reality of their settlement in Calcutta, they carved out a unique world of dietetics and therapeutics to carefully navigate around the institutions of biomedicine. In this chapter, I rely on the writings of two British officials by the name of Bradley Shelland and Augustus Somerville, along with intelligence reports from the West Bengal State Archives, to find elements of Chinese dietary tradition, such as Qi and Yin-Yang, when they describe the culinary landscape of Calcutta’s Chinatowns. Their writings also help illustrate the central tension between the western biomedical worldview and alternative therapeutic traditions. By examining how Chinese consumption practices, such as drinking liquor and smoking opium, were consistently associated with moral decay and degeneracy - rather than being recognized for their medicinal uses - these accounts underscore the western biomedical framework’s inability to accommodate alternative healing systems. I also suggest in this chapter that the Chinese in Calcutta, in some instances, engaged with biomedicine in strategic and creative ways to not only cure the body but also secure the interests of their community by addressing the asymmetrical power hierarchies between Chinese migrants and the state, along with its policing authorities. Furthermore, I have also provided an analysis of one of my oral 35 interviews with Tony Lo, a member of the Chinese community in Calcutta, to show how food, drinks, and tonics were used in a therapeutic manner in the community. Overall, this chapter suggests that when the Chinese first arrived in Calcutta, they brought their own understanding of health and wellness. This worldview often came into conflict with the dominant biomedical worldviews of the colonial administration and later the post-colonial Indian state informed by British concepts. As a result of these tensions, traditional practices often either resisted dominant biomedical attitudes or appropriated them when necessary. These tensions were instrumental in establishing and giving way to a more hybridized therapeutic approach that opposed, subverted as well as adapted biomedical practices with traditional ones. Chapter 3 examines how Chinese migrants from Hubei practiced and developed dentistry in Calcutta from the 1920s to the 1960s. In this chapter, I look at the trajectory of this profession and how it evolved from being an unregulated, heterogeneous branch of medicine operating with its own logic to a vernacularized tradition that blended biomedical knowledge and practices with indigenous ones. In this evolution, I pay attention to the multiple transformations that occurred within this branch of medical practice that allowed the services offered by the Hubei Chinese to be popular, affordable, and accessible. I argue that the hypermobility practiced by Chinese dentists as wandering teeth setters in various districts of West Bengal allowed them to be competitive in the therapeutic marketplace. Since they were not restricted by any western or Chinese classical texts, the Hubei dentists were able to transform their medical spaces and practices in multiple instances. I also suggest that the Hubei dentists were able to politicize their clinics and their status as doctors in the community to advocate for domestic politics in China through their interactions with the KMT and the CCP. Finally, with the passage of The Dentists Act in 1948, the Hubei dentists were put in the same discursive and medical fields as other Indians. This allowed the 36 professionalization of their occupation as well as the Indianization of their identities. Even at this juncture, the Hubei dentists were able to preserve their uniqueness by blending institutional biomedical practices with indigenous ones. Relying on multiple interrogation transcripts, surveillance reports, and interviews with two practicing Chinese dentists in Calcutta, as well as one of their clients, this chapter argues that Chinese dentists were highly mobile, aspirational, and entrepreneurial in their efforts to maintain a balance between embracing change and maintaining a degree of autonomy in their practices. 37 CHAPTER ONE - Quantifying Chinese Bodies and Establishing Difference in Calcutta’s Chinatowns, 1850-1960 Introduction “The Chinese are largely a closed community, so there is little exposure to the locals. Then there is always this ‘special’ thing about our features – the eyes, the nose, etc. And that feeling of difference is present on both sides.”45 These were the words spoken by Paul Chung in an interview with Sipra Mukherjee and Sarvani Gooptu in 2009. Paul Chung was a member of the Chinese Indian Association, which is a community-based in the city of Calcutta dedicated to preserving and promoting the culture, heritage, and interests of the Chinese community in India. The above comments reflected how Paul Chung confronted the characteristics that differentiated his community from others. Eleven years later, a newspaper report appeared in 2020 that shed light on how people from Calcutta’s Chinatown were discriminated against based on their looks. Under the context of the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the Chinese community settled in Calcutta was very often subjected to derogatory slurs such as “Chinese men have come with Chinese virus”.46 Paul Chung’s observations were still widely relevant after 2009. 45 Quoted in H. Banerjee, N. Gupta, and S. Mukherjee, Calcutta Mosaic: Essays and Interviews on the Minority Communities of Calcutta, Anthem South Asian Studies (Anthem Press, 2009), 139, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=cSTEOx_Lw9MC. 46 Debaashish Bhattacharya, “‘We Are Not Chinese from China, We Are Indians,’” The Hindu Business Lines, April 24, 2020, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/know/covid-19-a-threat-for-kolkatas-chinese- community/article31422692.ece. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcdKvr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcdKvr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcdKvr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcdKvr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcdKvr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?yjC0zM https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?yjC0zM https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?yjC0zM https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?yjC0zM https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?yjC0zM 38 Since then, there have been many efforts to support establishments in Calcutta’s Chinatown in the middle of a mass exodus of Chinese Indians leaving for Canada, Australia, and North America. Despite these efforts made by journalists, historians, and local heritage tour guides, the residents of Kolkata’s Chinatown have historically been regarded as "special," as Paul Chuing describes. Since their initial migration in 1778, the Chinese migrants in Calcutta have always been viewed as the unchanging other–different, and alien. Central to their distinction from the colonial and later postcolonial contexts was the emphasis placed on their phenotypical and corporeal attributes. This present chapter seeks to provide a century-long exploratory genealogy of how the Indo-Chinese community was racially profiled by phenotypic features spanning from 1850 to 1960. In doing so, it tries to trace the emergence of a racialized view of Chinese immigrants in Calcutta, how it was intricately tied to the specific political context of the period, and, lastly, how these attitudes polymorphously adapted themselves in the post- colonial condition. In its effort to show the continuity of racial logic from a colonial state to a post-colonial one, this chapter relies on a comparative analysis of chronicles, letters, intelligence reports, and oral interviews. In tracing this century-long historical exploratory genealogy, I have relied on several archival as well as oral sources. These include Chaloner Alabaster’s 1858 account in the Calcutta Review, Emily Eden’s letters and journals, a pamphlet issued to American soldiers stationed in Kolkata during the Second World War, several intelligence reports from the “Chinese Nationals” files housed at the West Bengal State Archives as well as the rich repository of oral testimonies by the survivors of the deportations following the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Since this chapter is interested in racial categories dependent on phenotypic features being used to initiate difference and stigmatization of communities, oftentimes leading to their exclusion, I use a number of analytical frameworks used by historians of science and 39 feminist theorists. An analysis of “The Feralness of Race” is extensively discussed by Projit Bihari Mukharji in his book Brown Skin, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 where Mukharji puts forth an analysis of how racial differences can constantly adapt to a variety of disciplinary formations including “comparative linguistics, ethnology, craniometry, medical jurisprudence and comparative anatomy ” and how “each of these new formations mobilized new research tools, new methods, and new ways of defining race.”47 Differences established through distinct physical features also find a presence in the postcolonial democratic state with its unique ramifications. Mukharji asserts that racial logic and racial thought are often asserted in a condition where newly emerging nations are primarily defined by the existence of powerful elites along with a lasting influence of colonialism as well as the inequalities it created.48 This is also in line with Srirupa Roy's discussion of the “ethnicization of a nation” where blood and race are used to define who belongs to the nation and who does not.49 I also rely on the material-semiotic framework put forth by historian of consciousness and feminist theorist Donna Haraway, which is used in a number of studies in diverse disciplines such as cultural studies, medical anthropology, and history. She defines semiosis as “the process of meaning-making in the discipline called semiotics”.50 In defining the interrelatedness of the material world and the symbolic explanation for it, she is interested in the “simultaneity of both the facts and explanatory theoretical power and also the relentlessly tropic, historically contingent, practical materiality” in objects of knowledge.51 Put simply, material-semiosis is a set of analytical tools to understand how social practices, as well as categories, are both material (tangible) and semiotic (carrying meaning). It does not suggest 47 For a dicussion of the ‘Feralness of Race’ see Projit Bihari Mukharji, Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023), 6–12. 48 Mukharji, 2. 49 See Roy, Srirupa. 2007. Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism. N.p.: Duke University Press. 50 See Donna Jeanne Haraway, The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004), 201. 51 Haraway, The Haraway Reader, 204. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vH61Rw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vH61Rw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vH61Rw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vH61Rw https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?NpeuG2 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?RhRQXi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?RhRQXi https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?RhRQXi 40 that one linearly comes before the other, that is to say, that the category emerged first and then its meaning, but rather how both the category and the meaning lend themselves to each other to create social realities. In this chapter, I hope to show that the racial categorization of the Chinese community was material-semiotic, whereby tangible and observable differences expressed through physical markers gave way to a set of social meanings, judgments, and values that were attached to them. The long history of the Chinese migration to India and the subsequent establishment of the first Chinatown in South Asia has received scant academic contributions.52 Ellen Oxfeld’s book, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong, is the only full-length academic book about the condition of the Chinese community settled in the city of Calcutta.53 Oxfeld’s anthropological study draws on extensive fieldwork conducted among the Hakka community settled in Calcutta, as well as the others who have out-migrated to Toronto. She defines the Chinese community settled in Kolkata as “pariah capitalists” - a class of individuals who had the economic capital but were chronically politically powerless. Apart from this, there are a few articles that roughly lay out the demographic pattern as well as the spatial layout of the community, such as Ramakrishna Chatterjee’s article titled “The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their Early Settlement and Migration”.54 It would also be appropriate to mention here several articles written by Tansen Sen as well as Zhang Xing, who have collaborated in a few instances to provide a much more detailed analysis of the migrant Chinese communities in Calcutta. Their co-written article 52 Few notable scholarly articles on the Chinese community of Calcutta are Sen and Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia”; Xing, “The Bowbazar Chinatown”; Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese”; Chatterjee, “The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their Early Settlement and Migration.”; Aparna Chatterjee Sen, “Education, Occupational Aspiration and Religious Orientation: A Case Study of the Chinese Community of North Bengal,” China Report 45, no. 1 (January 2009): 65–73, https://doi.org/10.1177/000944550904500106; Chatterjee, “The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their Early Settlement and Migration.” While Sen, Xing, and Liang offer historically grounded analyses Chatterjee and others anthropological studies on the community. 53 See Oxfeld, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong. 54 See Chatterjee, “The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their Early Settlement and Migration.” https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aewbpN https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?b2QUpR https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?b2QUpR https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?b2QUpR https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?i3byfd 41 “The Chinese in South Asia” traces the historical developments in Calcutta’s Chinatown, providing a detailed history of the Bengali-Chinese cultural interactions, the occupational niches of the various communities that lived in Calcutta related to the diverse origins of these communities while also providing a glimpse into the inner lives of Calcutta’s Chinese migrants.55 Joy Ma’s book Deolliwallahs is a rich repository of oral narratives of the experiences of various individuals who were racially profiled and incarcerated after the Sino- Indian War of 1962.56 Another resourceful oral repository can be found in Jennifer Liang’s work, where she provides “An Insider’s History” of Chinatown through several interviews that she took as part of her fieldwork there. She identifies three major waves of migration that took place in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the post-Second World War period.57 Xing’s academic publications focused more on how a mixture of Chinese- Indian religious practices in temples and course curricula in primary schools in Calcutta’s Chinatown led to a distinct identity creation for the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Kwai- Yun Li’s MA thesis, made accessible online by the University of Toronto, also has transcripts of her interview with four members of the Chinese-Indian community who recount their memories of the Sino-Indian War of 1962.58 These works successfully articulate the condition of life and the cultural significance of the communities of Chinese Indians in India. However, an analysis of how they were perceived by the colonial power and what specific attitudes were deployed toward this community often remains unexplored. Also absent from these works is how these attitudes reproduced themselves in the post-colonial context. 55 Sen and Xing, “The Chinese in South Asia.” 56 See Joy Ma and Dilip D’Souza, The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Internment (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2020). Although Ma and D’Souza’s work is not specifically concerned with the Chinese community of Calcutta, many of their interviewees were from Calcutta and for the purposes of this chapter, I have analyzed the inteeviews that reflect the Sinophobic attitudes of the Indian state towards Chinese migrants. 57 Liang, “Migration Patterns and Occupational Specialisations of Kolkata Chinese.” 58 Kwai Yun Li’s thesis can be accessed at Kwai Yun Li, “Deoli Camp: An Oral History of the Chinese Indians from 1962 to 1966” (University of Torronto, 2011), http://hdl.handle.net/1807/29477. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?stRF4m https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aBZKnU https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aBZKnU https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aBZKnU https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?aBZKnU https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ef7ngg https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?7GfHFr https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?7GfHFr 42 A British Man in Calcutta’s Chinatown Chaloner Alabaster's 1858 accounts of “Cossitallah” and “Durramtollah”–two districts surrounding Calcutta’s Chinatown–are some of the earliest descriptions that exist about the Bowbazar Chinatown. Alabaster's account provides a very detailed description of what he saw, smelt, and heard in Chinatown while he was accompanying an anti-British Chinese official by the name of Ye Mingchen to his exile in Calcutta. His account has been instrumental in every academic contribution that has been made to understand the condition of the Chinese migrants in Calcutta because he described the neighborhood, opium dens, and what he perceived to be the lifestyle of the Chinese community living in Calcutta. His descriptions open with the following lines, Among the communities which constitute the patchwork called Calcutta, there is a little one coloured whity-brown, which utterly distinct from all others, different in speech, in language, colour, dress, character, and institution, has almost escaped observation.59 From the very beginning of his account, we observe an attempt to differentiate the Chinese migrants settled in Calcutta due to their distinct characteristics. He finds this distinctiveness in their height, complexion, speech, language, and more. It almost makes Alabaster question how this community has escaped the attention of the British colonial apparatus. Throughout his description of the opium dens, hog lard manufacturing sites, and Chinese temples of the Bowbazar Chinatown, we see Alabaster paying keen attention to all elements that he finds gross, grotesque, strange, offensive, and most importantly, different. Among the five hundred Chinese men and women he saw, he provides a detailed account of 59 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 368. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?keWFAs 43 how different they are based on their physical features. His text is riddled with an appreciation of the uniqueness of the Chinese community in Calcutta, but this appreciation itself was rooted in an effort to try to make sense of a non-European community and their lifestyle as he was accounting for their differences while reifying them racially. One can find a note of how the Chinese were a cheap source of labor compared to British workers when he says “A Chinese carpenter works as neatly as, and far more cheaply than, an Englishman”.60 He also appreciates the general honesty of the Chinese community in who had migrated exclusively for the sake of economic mobility when he remarks “The Chinaman is the more honest, he says he likes his own country better, far better than other; but he wants to make rupees, and here he makes them quicker.”61 Such statements notwithstanding, his texts are littered with a constant representation of Chinese men as “copper brothers” after noticing their distinct complexion.62 Alabaster’s chronicles also expressed a continuous emphasis on the Chinese being categorized as a race who are wholly different from the “Britishers” as well as the “dirty Hindoos”.63 Alabaster establishes a peculiar set of “new offensive race” in his account.64 He simultaneously isolates the younger members of the community from the older ones. He also segregates “two distinct colonies, belonging to two distinct races” based on their occupation of shoe-making and ship-carpenting. Interestingly, he also shares an anxiety that the perceived differences between these two races are at risk of being annihilated as they continue to marry outside of their community.65 This shows Alabaster’s efforts to attempt to isolate, categorize, segregate, and stabilize communities that were not meant to be stable in the first place. 60 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 384. 61Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 382. 62Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 371. 63Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 384. 64Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 375. 65Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 369. 44 Alabaster sets out to identify his categorized races based on their physical features. He portrays a particular disdain for the older members of the community as he finds no apparent reasons for them to be present in Calcutta. He goes so far as to draw a direct line of correlation between their bodies and their brains when he says “These old men are most Chinesy…their brains seems shrunk like their bodies.” He again draws this parallel when he says “Unlike Confucius, who at ten knew all things, they at sixty-five know nothing”.66 Alabaster found them to be “A framework of bones covered with some dried up muscle and clothes in a shrivelled skin! An Old Chinaman is an awful sight”.67 This suggests that Alabaster had a normative definition of a particular set of traits and characteristics that he considered to be “Chinese” which he never explicitly declares and the older members of the Chinese community were the one who conformed the most to that category. If the older members of the community were an “awful sight” in Alabaster’s constructed categories, one would naturally assume that the younger members would be more appealing to Alabaster as they would have been far away from what Alabaster considered “an awful sight”. However, even the younger working members of the community are mocked on the basis of their physical features when Alabaster says of the carpenters,“they walk sturdily, their little straw hat is cocked jauntily, and their brawny arms look as if they could knock a man down on occasion.”68 Perhaps not surprisingly, just like the older members of the community, the younger Chinese migrants of Calcutta distinguished themselves to Alabaster on account of their unique corporeal features that he observed. If bone framework was the distinguishing factor for older members, the Chinese way of braiding hair on top of the scalp while leaving the rest of the head shaved was the distinguishing feature for younger members. Alabaster’s attitude toward the Chinese races that he encountered in Calcutta being 66Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 381-382. 67Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 381. 68Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 380. 45 meek, obedient, dirty, and unintelligent are reflected when he refers to the Chinese “tail” and how it could be used to whip workers, clean tables, polish boots, or even hang people.69 Alabaster was not the only one who held such views, nor did he act in an insulated manner. His attitudes were reflective of how the colonial government perceived differences and made an effort to quantify them in fixed, stable categories. The register in which Alabaster mocked the English dialect of the Chinese men and women he encountered in Chinatown is similarly reflected in another Calcutta Gazette advertisement from 1817, which declares the following, A Hoy teacher of foreign tongue, too much chin chins every stranger Gentleman, very too much late come from Europe have and begs leave to acquaint them that he can talkee lesson everyday, in the Canton dialect, at his house in Mo. 4 Old China Street have got, from two o’clock ten minutes till four o’clock everyday…etc. etc.70 In his discussion of what he saw in Bowbazar Chinatown, sight remains a powerful lens through which he quantifies and racially reifies the Chinese community. There are extensive descriptions of places, people, and practices that are “dirty” and filled with “grotesqueries”. For example, the opium dens of Chinatown were to Alabaster, a “nasal inconvenience”71, the people were an “awful sight”, the temples were “ill-smelling lanes”72, and the confusion that his eyes and nose were subjected to found a justification as he argued that the Chinese are generally opposed to any sort of “municipal reform” and by extension cleanliness.73 He believes this is the case because Confucius said nothing about it. He goes further to suggest 69Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 384. 70 For the advertisement see Hugh David Sandeman, Selections from Calcutta Gazettes Vol.1 (1816-1823) (Calcutta: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1869), 190, https://southasiacommons.net/artifacts/4350319/selections-from-calcutta-gazettes-vol1-1816-1823/. 71 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 377. 72 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 372. 73 Alabaster, “The Chinese Colony in Calcutta,” 380,384,377,372. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LVTq4f https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LVTq4f https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LVTq4f https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LVTq4f https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?LVTq4f https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?qwPIRp 46 that because of this, they like to be surrounded by what Alabaster considered “ill-smells”.74 In his account, it seems that this general condition of dirt and deficiency was all- encompassing and apparent in ev