Talking Chinese

Abstract

The highly visible base of the Chinese in Britain, in the form of their restaurants and fast-food outlets, belies the near invisibility of the community itself. Those who run the restaurants work night and day, seven days a week; only the waiters learn English and then only as much as they need to do the job. The community is not concentrated in any one town or region, and has little time to set up community associations, or lobby on their own behalf. Nor, unlike other immigrant communities, are they linked by ready-made religious institutions; religion is a family affair largely concerned with appeasing the ancestors. The women, in particular, are cut off from the host community. Many never work in the restaurants but stay at home looking after children or grandchildren; many grannies, as in the cases below, have been brought over in later life for precisely that purpose. They have no chance to learn English, let alone adapt to English society and its strange cuisine. Their problems are compounded by age when, with the breakdown of the extended family, many are abandoned to their fate. The case of Mrs Wong is quite atypical. There is little provision for them in the host community: sheltered housing schemes such as that below are rare and, in this case at least, happened almost incidentally. This is a community hiding behind its stoicism and unwillingness to complain — even when communication is possible. Mrs Lee No 1, for instance, was chosen to talk to me because her community worker saw her as cheerful and communicative; he had no idea that she had been abandoned by most of her children and grandchildren, or of the pain this caused her. Tales of neglect and of literal abandonment abound. All the women here are from Hong Kong not from the Cantonese-speaking cities, however, but from the rural New Territory where they were small farmers living in extended family compounds. The isolation they encounter in Britain feels especially acute. Their families operate the lower end of the Chinese catering business — takeaways and fish-and-chip shops.