The hidden half: the double lives of Chinese migrant women in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

Drawing on oral histories of first-generation migrant women, this paper explores Chinese women’s role in financing migrant households, mothering children and promoting the well-being of the British Chinese community after 1945. It argues that, with better educational attainment and wider participation in professional occupations Chinese migrant women played an increasingly essential yet unrecognised role in private and public lives. This paper expands knowledge of Chinese women’s experiences in contemporary international migration and confirms the necessity of understanding migration through the lens of gender to reveal evolving gendered family roles within migrant households and migrant women’s manifold but unrecognised merits.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-war Britain
• Chinese migrant women
• employment
• family
• voluntary organisations

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions for this paper, Dr Sumita Mukherjee for her patience and guidance throughout the publication process, Prof Pat Thane for her thoughtful suggestions on my thesis and earliest drafts of this paper, Dr Andrea Tanner for her long-term encouragement and support. Special thanks to all Chinese women and organisations involved and various funders for scholarship, conference attendance and event organisation, including Oral History Society, Social History Society, Great Britain-China Education Trust, Royal Historical Society, Universities' China Committee in London and King's College, London.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Anna Chen, ‘Suzy Wrong Human Cannon’, Anna Chen: Madam Miaow Says, https://madammiaow.blogspot.com/p/suzy-wrong-human-cannon.html (accessed June 30, 2021).

2 Office for National Statistics (ONS), ‘Male and Female Populations’, Gov.uk, https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/male-and-female-populations/latest#by-ethnicity (accessed February 20, 2023)

3 Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Post-war Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). And various publications by Colin Holmes.

4 Benton and Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 1800-present: Economy, Transnationalism, Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

5 Linda McDowell, Working Lives: Gender, Migration and Employment in Britain, 1945–2007 (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Louise Ryan, ‘Becoming nurses: Irish women, Migration and Identity through the Life Courses’, in Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain, ed. Louise Ryan and Wendy Webster (London: Routledge, 2016), 121–135. Wendy Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945–1964 (London: UCL Press, 1998). Barbara Bush, ‘Family Misfortunes?: Gendered Perspectives on West Indian Migration, Welfare Policies and Cultural Racism in post-Second World War Britain’, in Migrant Britain Histories and Historiographies: Essays in Honour of Colin Holmes, ed. Jennifer Craig-Norton, Christhard Hoffmann, and Tony Kushmer, 162–173.

6 Linda McDowell, Migrant Women’s Voices: Talking about Life and Work in the UK since 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). Joanna Herbert, Negotiating Boundaries in the City: Migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Britain (London: Routledge, 2007). Kathy Burrell, ‘Framing Polish Migration to the UK, from the Second World War to EU Expansion’, in Migrant Britain (see note 5), 272–281.

7 Bogusia Temple, ‘Constructing Polishness: researching Polish women’s lives’, Women’s Studies International Forum 17 (1994): 47–55; Temple, ‘“Gatherers of Pig-swill and Thinkers”: Gender and Community amongst British Poles’, Journal of Gender Studies 4 (1995): 63–72; Temple, ‘Diaspora, Diaspora Space and Polish Women’, Women’s Studies International Forum 22 (1999): 17–24.

8 Anne J. Kershen, ‘Jewish and Muslim Married Women Don’t Work’, Home Cultures 8 (2011): 119–132.

9 Including (used in this paper) The Chinese in Newham (TCN, audio), Such a long story (book), Whispers of Time (WT, video), London Chinatown Oral History Project (LCOHP, transcript) and two projects exclusively on Chinese women Half the Sky (HS, audio) and Half the Sky (book).

10 My interviews are labelled as LECW and interviewees are anomynised unless otherwise requested to use a real name.

11 Apart from Benton and Gomez’s (note 4) and Barclay Price’s monographs on the general history of Chinese in Britain, others focus mainly on various perceptions of Chinese labourers (including that of authorities, shipowners, trade unions and literati) and their racialised experiences in the early 20th century. J. P. May, ‘The Chinese in Britain 1869–1914’, in Immigrants and Minorities in British Society, ed. Colin Holmes (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978), 111–24. Holmes, ‘The Chinese Connection’, in Outsiders & Outcasts: Essays in Honour of William J. Fishman, ed. Geoffrey Alderman and Colin Holmes (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1993), 71–93. Jenny Clegg, Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril: The Making of a Racist Myth (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books Ltd, 1994); Sascha Auerbach, Race, Law, and ‘the Chinese Puzzle’ in Imperial Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); Anne Witchard, England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and the Great War (Melbourne: Penguin Random House Australia, 2014). John Seed, ‘Limehouse Blues: Looking for Chinatown in the London Docks, 1900–40’, History Workshop Journal 62 (2006): 58–85. Barclay Price, The Chinese in Britain: A History of Visitors and Settlers (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2019). A couple of studies examined individual women literati such as Shuhua Ling, Dymia Hsiung and others who arrived in the early 20th century. Diana Yeh, Happy Hsiungs: Performing China and the Struggle for Modernity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014). Frances Wood, ‘Mahjong in Maida Vale’, in Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950, ed. Paul Bevan, Anne Witchard, and Da Zheng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022), Sasha Su-Ling Welland, A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007). For discussion on these elite women, see my upcoming monograph on Chinese migrant women in Britain.

12 Wai-ki Luk, Chinatown in Britain: Diffusions and Concentrations of the British New Wave Chinese Immigration (New York: Cambria Press, 2008), 183.

13 Data acquired from the ONS. Bear in mind other ethnicities, such as British white, Indians, Malays were inevitably included in census calculations.

14 Data acquired from the ONS.

15 The number of entry certificates issued to dependents of Hong Kong men rose dramatically from 135 in 1962 to more than 2,000 per year by 1971, before falling to fewer than 1,000 per year after 1977. Hugh D. R. Baker, ‘Branches all over: The Hong Kong Chinese in the United Kingdom’, in Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New Overseas Chinese, ed. Ronald Skeldon and Xiaohu Wang (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), 298.

16 Frank N. Pieke and Gregor Benton, ‘The Chinese in Netherlands’, in The Chinese in Europe, ed. Gregor Benton and Frank N. Pieke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 134.

17 Charsley, Storer-Church, Benson, and Van Hear, ‘Marriage-Related Migration to the UK’, International Migration Review 46 (2012), 873.

18 An example made known by her granddaughters on national television was Lily Kwok, whose life story can be found in Helen Tse, Sweet Mandarin (London: Ebury Press, 2007) and The Best of Britsh Takeaways, BBC Two, 15 March, 2017. Two others (Yan Gu and Lai Ngor Wong) can be found in Yvonne Tse, Half the Sky: Stories and Photographs by Women of the Chinese Community (Birmingham: Women’s Unit Birmingham City Council) and Ethnic Communities Oral History, Such a Long Story: Chinese Voices in Britain (London: Ethnic Communities Oral, 1994).

19 PRO, DT 43/40 China.

20 Leslie Wong, Overseas Chinese in Britain Year Book (1965) (London: Overseas Chinese Service, 1965), 147; Wong, Overseas Chinese in Britain Year Book (1967) (London: Overseas Chinese Service, 1967), 94.

21 Ruby, Aug 29, 2018, interview LECW4; Anne, May 31, 2018, interview LECW7; Susana Chung, August 16, 2011, interview 4593/2/2/3/4, transcript, LCOHP, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), London.

22 Nursing and Midwifery Council, FOI/2018/405.

23 McDowell, Working Lives, 210.

24 This phenomenon was noted in the 1985 Home Affairs Committee report and perceivable in the 1991 census returns. Home Affairs Committee, Chinese Community in Britain (London, 1985), 11; Yuan Cheng, ‘The Chinese: Upward Mobile’, in Ethnicity in 1991 Census, ed. Ceri Peach, 2 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1996), 161–80. Jeremy Eckstein, Tariq Modood, Richard Berthoud, Jane Lakey, Sharon Beishon, James Nazroo, Patten Smith, and Satnam Virdee, Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997), 104.

25 The Council for Education in the Commonwealth and UK Council for International Education, Where the flow goes (London, 2000), 31.

26 Anni Kajanus, Chinese Student Migration, Gender and Family (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

27 Rubie S. Watson, ‘Chinese Bridal Laments: The Claims of a Dutiful Daughters’, in Village Life in Hong Kong: Politics, Gender and Ritual in the New Territories, ed. James Lee Watson and Rubie S. Watson (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), 230.

28 Tse, Half the Sky, 9.

29 Kwee Choo Ng, The Chinese in London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 81.

30 Ethnic Communities Oral History, Such a long story, 15

31 Ying Wong-Cheung, 2014, interview 4513/02/01, video, WT, LMA.

32 Tse, Half the Sky, 31.

33 Yi, June 22, 2018, interview LECW9.

34 Miri Song, ‘Between “The Front” and “The Back” Chinese Women’s Work in Family Businesses’, Women’s Studies International Forum 18 (1995): 289. Benton and Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 125.

35 Zousam, Aug 23, 2018, interview LECW15.

36 Benton and Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 124.

37 Song, ‘Between “The Front” and “The Back”’, 286.

38 Yi, LECW9. Megan, Billie and Shan, April 30, 2018, interview LECW4; Zousam, LECW 15.

39 Shan, LECW4.

40 Yi, LECW9.

41 Ciyun, June 1, 2018, interview LECW8.

42 Iris, June 4, 2018, interview LECW10.

43 Danna, May 28, 2018, interview LECW6.

44 Qing, April 20, 2018, interview LECW3.

45 Amrit Wilson, ‘Most Women Stay Indoors All the Time’, The Guardian, May 1977, 11. Mrs. Chow, 2005, interview esch_chlv, audio, TCN, University in East London.

46 Tse, 33.

47 James Lee Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: the Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1975), 120; Michael Swann, Education for All Report of the Community of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups (London, March 1985), 660. http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/swann/swann1985.html#10 (accessed February 19 2020). This practice was also found among Irish nurses. Ryan, ‘Becoming Nurses’.

48 Tse, Half the Sky, 11.

49 Rose, August 23, 2018, interview LECW16.

50 Yi, LECW9; Zousam, LECW15.

51 Yi, LECW9.

52 Danna, LECW6.

53 Iris, LECW10.

54 Kit Lee, 2014, interview 4513/2/1, video, WT, LMA.

55 The 4th national survey of ethnic minorities found 58% of Chinese with no religion, a higher percentage than any other ethnic group, with Christianity dominating. Jeremy Eckstein and others, Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997), 298. Only a few women mentioned churchgoing, and it was merely a channel to establish networks upon arrival. Megan, LECW4; Iris, LECW10.

56 Benton and Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 150–201.

57 Benton and Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 161. James Lee Watson. ‘The Chinese: Hong Kong Villagers in the British Catering Trade’, in Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain, ed. James Lee Watson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), 198–200.

58 Ying Tai Yee Pang, September 22, 2011, interview 4593/2/2/3/20, transcript, LCOHP, LMA.

59 Anthony Shang, The Chinese in Britain (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984), 35.

60 Lim Shu Pao (Shu-Pao Lim), interview by Grace Lau, July 1997, interview 98.83, audio, HS, Museum of London.

61 Lim Shu Pao (Shu-Pao Lim), 2014, interview 4513/2/1, video, WT, LMA.

62 Pui Ling Lee, December 19, 2011, interview 4593/2/2/3/77, transcript, LCOHP, LMA.

63 David Parker, ‘Chinese People in Britain: Histories, Futures, and Identities’, in The Chinese in Europe (see note 17), 85.

64 Home Affairs Committee, Chinese Community in Britain, 76–77.

65 Meeling, March 26, 2018, interview LECW2.

66 Mark Greenwood, Strong and Beautiful A history of Wai Yin Chinese Women Society 1988–2008, item 305488951GRE(828), Manchester Central Library.

67 Ibid.

68 Meeling, LECW2.

69 Library of Birmingham, MS 2192/C/D/1/1/7 Conference poster.

70 Meeling, LECW2.

71 Chris Summers, The Citizen (July 8, 1995).

72 The method of home visits was possible as the Chinese population in Gloucestershire was minimal. Gloucestershire Archive (GA), D6901 acc 7428 Gloucestershire Chinese Community Group, 1996.

73 GA, D6901/1/1/6984 Chinese Women’s Guild Society Development Report.

74 Ethnic Communities Oral History, Such a Long Story, 28.

75 Megan and Shan, LECW4.

76 Ibid.

77 Wai Yin Society, Annual Report 2017/8.

78 Meeling, LECW2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sha Zhou

Sha Zhou is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University, China, researching the migration history of Chinese women. She has recently been awarded a PhD with a thesis on the migration of Chinese women to post-war Britain by King’s College, London.