Coming To Gloucestershire

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The earliest Chinese we can trace started in arriving in Gloucestershire in the late 50’s. The majority of them were in their 20’s when they first arrived in UK, and nearly all of them already had some relatives living elsewhere in this country, running catering business.

Most of them arrived here without any knowledge about this country or skills, and unable to speak English so language was a major problem for them. If they were ill, they used Chinese herbal medicines that they had brought with them, or when they did have a day off, they would go to London to get Chinese medicines.

Unable to speak the language, they spent most of their time working in the kitchen, some of them sleeping above the kitchen and we were told that some of them even slept in the kitchen.

In the early days they suffered a lot of racial abuses especially those who had direct contact with the English. Racial problems have not been getting any better even after the Stephen Lawrence case.

The main obstacle for the Chinese was communication, e.g. seeing doctors, buying daily food, and getting around, they had little or no involvement in the British way of life.

In the last few years cable TV has enable them to watch Hong Kong news daily, Chinese soaps and entertainment programmes.

Today’s new immigrants have not changed much, perhaps they are better educated than 30 or 40 years ago, but the new arrivals still keep themselves to themselves, and integrating fully into British society still seems as far away as ever.

For the second and third generations who are born in this country most of them do not wish to go into the catering business, because they have better education than their parents and their ancestors. Many of them go into higher education and hold senior and professional jobs, in our survey, we found that many of them go back to Hong Kong, Singapore, and East Asia.

Very few of those who are born in the UK can write Chinese, but the majority of them can speak Cantonese or Mandarin.In our survey, none of those whose parents are in mixed marriages, can speak or write Chinese at all, and for these families to preserve Chinese culture and tradition seems to be an impossible task.