National Museums Liverpool Blog - chinatown

How much do you know about your parents and grandparents?

Bernie, Denise and Sun Yui worked with us to find out more about their families who feature in a new interactive Family Tree displayed in East meets west – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool, part of the new Museum of Liverpool opening on July 19th.

Copies of marriage certificates, passenger lists and trade directories have been put together in a visual log that will provide visitors with plenty of ideas on how to track down family members past and present. These personal stories took us to archives in Shanghai where researchers tried to trace the participants’ Grandfathers – Sow Loo, Ching Ming and Leung Ngau.

For Bernie Gibson (nee Loo), the project meant exploring the family she never knew and celebrating the Chinese heritage she is proud of. Bernie’s search for her birth family began with a letter to Social Services in 1995 and the reply confirmed what she was always vaguely aware of – that her Mother’s father was Chinese, and Bernie’s surname Loo came from him.

Liverpool has one of the longest established Chinese communities in Europe, all thanks to Alfred Holt and Co’s momentous launch of the first direct steamship from Liverpool to China in 1866. Recruiting men from across Shanghai and Hong Kong, the Blue Funnel Line, as it became known, brought thousands of Chinese seamen to Liverpool, and many made the city their home. Sow Loo, Bernie’s Grandfather, was one such seafarer who arrived in Liverpool on board a Blue Funnel Ship in the late 1910s.

From looking at their marriage certificate from Liverpool’s Registry Office, we know Sow Loo married Catherine Johnson in 1922, and that he was working in a laundry at the time. By checking trade directories in the Liverpool Record Office we found out the business was actually his, and that the Sow Loo Laundry also housed the family at 230 County Road, Walton. The laundry disappears from the directories in 1928, the same year that the story of the family moving to China emerges. Passengers lists for the Kashima Maru in 1929 records Catherine returning to Liverpool with two of her four children, without Sow Loo, in time for the birth of Bernie’s mother – pictured kneeling down to the right of the photograph. Very little is known about the family at this time (1950s) and this is the only photo Bernie has of her mother.

These family trees show how documents, old photographs and oral testimonies can unlock the secrets of family members past, and show us the many ways Liverpool has grown as a Global city.

Do you recognise anyone at this Christmas party in Stanhope Street? Courtesy of Bernadette Gibson

Global Families – Discovering our roots, appears in East meets west – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool for the Global City Gallery, part of the new Museum of Liverpool opening on 19 July.

Francesca Aiken, Assistant Exhibition Curator for the Global City Gallery in the new Museum of Liverpool writes:

Seventy years since the May Blitz, the spirit of Pitt Street lives on.

Seventy years ago this month, a devastating aerial bombardment struck Liverpool, ending lives, demolishing homes and displacing whole communities. It is in tribute to “the spirit of an unconquered people” that Liverpool’s Anglo-Chinese community were part of the effort to keep calm and carry on, piecing back together not just buildings but homes and livelihoods.

Pitt Street, 1915, shaped by tall converted warehouse buildings and cobbled streets, stretches out under the constant watch of St Michaels Church spire, busy with dozens of Chinese businesses, from boarding houses to grocers and tobacconists. This was the birthplace of Liverpool’s Chinese community, the destination for seamen from all over the world including Spain, the Philippines, Italy, the West Indies and Scandinavia – to name just a few. To the people who lived and grew up there, this was ‘world’s end.’ Pitt Street was the place to go, bustling with shops and cafes all within easy reach of the docks. Kwong Shang Lung was one of the city’s earliest grocers to specialise in Chinese food, trading from 1915 until the bombs fell in 1941.

During the Second World War the local population swelled to take on thousands of seamen working for Britain’s war effort, including up to 20,000 Chinese seafarers – risking their lives on Merchant Navy convoys. Pitt Street became a comfort zone for thousands of transient seamen to while away their two weeks of shore leave, and for the many resident Chinese to manage Liverpool life with their partners and children.

Elsie Kuloi was just six years old when Edward Chambré Hardman stopped to photograph her as she perched on an anonymous Pitt Street step. The family lived on Dickinson Street, and when the war came, their top floor flat was less than desirable when the sirens sounded. Elsie and sister Lan, then in their teens, were not evacuated but would go with their parents to stay at a neighbours on the ground floor. Out of curiosity Lan stayed behind, only to witness St Michaels Church take a direct hit from an incendiary bomb. She watched it fall, streaking down to earth and was terrified by what she saw. Hundreds were killed in Pitt Street and Cleveland Square alone, including 30 people at 14 Pitt Street, next door to where Kwong Shang Lung served his customers.

Pitt Street during the 1941 May Blitz. Image Courtesy of Maria Lin Wong

At the end of Pitt Street was a large open area called Cleveland Square where the RAF would inflate an enormous barrage balloon to ward off dive bombers and force enemy aircraft to fly higher into anti-aircraft fire. By 1940 there were 1400 similar balloons across the UK and the spectacle of watching it being lifted above its tether of thick metal cable was something the whole street came out to see. Barrage balloons however could not prevent bombs falling from higher up in the sky and in May 1941 Cleveland Square and Pitt Street were levelled to the ground. Merseyside was stunned by the loss of life and the enormous fissures of wasteland now riddling the city centre.

Similar to the famous “bombed out church” just round the corner, the spire of St Michaels survived a direct hit on the surrounding buildings and, what took German bombers minutes to destroy, took the City Council days to pull down completely. To many this was an even greater tragedy for the community. Built in 1816 at a cost to local parishioners, St Michaels was a part of local life which dominated the Pitt Street skyline. Today the congregation survives, meeting regularly at St Michael in the City, on the spot where Pitt Street once thrived. The whole area is now given over to quiet residential streets, semis and bungalows.

Instead of dispersal, the old Anglo-Chinese community shifted, making Nelson Street the new centre of activity. As early as 1944 proposals began to surface for a new Chinatown development, as architect C Z Chen stated regarding a permanent focal point for the 486 Chinese born residents: “The idea behind it was to express the community spirit – one big family. It would not mean the segregation of the Chinese, for an attractive Chinatown would encourage visits from their English friends and would help strengthen Anglo-Chinese friendship”.

This early Anglo-Chinese community, probably the oldest of its kind in Europe, was rocked further by repatriation events in 1946, where a combination of slashed wages and Home Office trickery forced or coerced many Chinese seamen to leave. Some, not knowing they had the right to stay, had homes, partners and children in Liverpool. At least 200 were ‘rounded up’ in night time raids. In the ‘50s, it was their children who played in the ruins of old Pitt Street. In the 1970s, despite the arrival of families from Hong Kong, the area was again unsettled by City Council demolition programmes and many early 19th century buildings that had survived the war turned to rubble.

What exists today in Nelson Street is the legacy of that early community, with the children of those first Anglo-Chinese families still meeting round the corner in what would have been Pitt Street. The strong Chinese character of that early global community is now firmly established within Liverpool with the regeneration of a Chinatown district in the 1990s after decades of slow decline. The Chinese Imperial Arch, the largest of its kind outside mainland China, is a proud symbol of the growth of the Liverpool Chinese community from those uncertain days in May 1941 and marks the entrance to an area once home to seafarers from all over the world.

East meets West – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool opens in the Global City Gallery, in the new Museum of Liverpool, on 19 July.

Francesca Aiken, assistant exhibition curator for the Museum of Liverpool's Global City Gallery writes:

David Yip narrated 'Where has my father gone?' for East meets West – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool. With special thanks to David Yip and Lisa O’Neil for providing these images.

“How could it happen? How could I not know about this?” was David Yip’s response when he heard for the first time about the enforced repatriation of hundreds of seamen from Liverpool’s Chinese community that took place in 1946.

For many of those directly affected, the wives and children of Chinese seamen who worked for the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, the truth about their sudden disappearance wasn’t known until decades later – many thought they had been abandoned. Now, 65 years later, more and more are discovering the truth.

After the war ended, the Home Office took steps to reduce the number of Chinese seamen in the citiy to pre-war levels while at the same time shipping companies slashed wages. Over 200 were forcibly removed during night raids; some were tricked onto ships that would never return - leaving many children without fathers, and wives without husbands.

Championing the truth behind these hushed up events, David recorded the narration for Where has my father gone? in a studio in London today. Displayed in East meets West – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool, this film will feature new recordings of personal stories that explore the affects on those families torn apart in 1946.

East meets West – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool will feature as a special exhibition in the Global City Gallery for the new Museum of Liverpool which will open on July 19th of this year.

Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

I like the way Chinese artists have depicted the West over the centuries, particularly on ceramics and canvas.

Their work shows a fine delicacy which is charming as well as inspirational. Chinese marine art perhaps lacks the sense of movement captured by European artists but I am drawn in by the incredible technical detail.

A number of Chinese artists worked in Far East ports specialising in ship portraits for Western captains.

Several fine examples from the period 1850 to 1910 are on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Art & the Sea gallery.

The artists generally painted on linen canvases which gave their works a very smooth appearance. Unfortunately the paint has often cracked over the years.

Most will be featured in the China, Shanghai and Liverpool exhibition at the new Museum of Liverpool opening later this year.

The sailing ship Maiden Queen is depicted by an unknown artist with a traditional junk cargo ship in the background. The painting is in its original lacquer frame.

Owned by T & J Brocklebank, Maiden Queen was employed in the tea trade sailing mainly to Hong Kong. She is seen off the Chinese coast. 

The Elizabeth Nicholson is another British ship painted by an unknown artist. She was built in 1863 in Dumfriesshire for the tea trade. She did one of the fastest runs from China in 1867-8 when she sailed from Foochow (Fuzhou) to London in 92 days.

Elizabeth Nicholson is pictured under full sail with a junk visible beneath the bowsprit.

The Scawfell off Hong Kong was painted by an artist in the Lai Sung studio active between 1850 and 1885. This tea clipper was constructed in 1858 for Rathbone Brothers of Liverpool who were involved in the China Trade.

Seen at anchor off Hong Kong, Scawfell made several record voyages. In 1861 she sailed from Whampoa (Huangpu) to Liverpool in 88 days.

Lai Sung was one of a handful of Hong Kong art studios producing ship portraits.

Anjer Head (artist unknown) is depicted at sea under full sail and steam. She was made in 1881 for Angier Brothers of London.

The Kwong Sang studio was active between 1890 and 1894, selling commissioned paintings in Calcutta. There has been a thriving Chinese community in the city since the late 18th century.

A Kwong Sang artist portrayed the four-masted iron barque Windermere (pictured) which voyaged from London or Hamburg to India, Australia and the Pacific. She was built in 1893 for Fisher and Sprott of London.

Some of the crew can be seen including the officer of the watch holding his telescope.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents and bookshops.

With China Through the lens of John Thomson 1868 - 1872 closing at Merseyside Maritime Museum this Sunday, our Liverpool's Chinatown Through the lens Flickr competition has now also come to an end and it is time to reveal the winners.

We had a really interesting range of entries and exhibition curator and competition judge Betty Yao found it difficult to choose the winner from nearly 200 photos. However after much deliberation Betty chose three images, which have all also been blogged about over the course of the competition, with the overall winner being 'Chinese New Year - People' by Lee Carus, an image she says she 'returned again and again to' because '...there is so much there - capturing the people, the colours'. Congratulations to Lee, who wins a banquet meal for two at Yuet Ben.

The two lucky runners-up are Graham Morgan, whose enigmatic shot Betty praised 'for capturing the moment', and Mark McGowan, whose Chinese arch photo reminded her of two atmospheric images from the exhibition; of the pagoda reflected on the lake, and the hazy shot of a man standing by the River Min.

Congratulations to all our entrants, and one final reminder to visit the Maritime Museum this weekend for your last chance to see John Thomson's fascinating images.

The Liverpool's Chinatown through the lens photo competition has ended today, and there is a fantastic range of interesting photos in the competition pool on Flickr. Thanks to all those people who submitted photographs - the images make for fascinating browsing! The winner will receive a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues.

China Through the lens of John Thomson 1868-72 is only on at Merseyside Maritime Museum until 6 June, so get yourself down there and don't miss this stunning exhibition.

The winner and runners-up will be announced shortly - watch this space!

Complex and complicated are not quite the same thing, a distinction which I think is captured in this week's highlight from our Liverpool's Chinatown through the lens Flickr competition, by Flickr user Lee Carus; the scene is busy with detail but not over-crowded, and carefully shot - the photographer waited patiently for some time before snapping this image.

Chinese New Year - People © www.leecarus-photography.net

Quite a few different subjects that I have blogged about over the past few weeks appear here - the buildings in Chinatown, the crowds, the flags - but most prominent is the saturation in vivid colour. Practically no two areas use quite the same colour or hue, and the jostling of a brilliant orange jacket to a pearlescent green flag, shimmering gold surrounded by whites, pinks and blues, mirrors the heaving crowds.

Despite the level of detail, the composition is spacious: the cream buildings in the background and the smoke whiting-out the centre is effective in both throwing the more sharply defined foreground figures into relief and receding the background crowds and buildings, a depth enhanced by the stolid black railings to the right leading into the image. Also interesting is the fact that although the crowds are the ostensible subject, those figures in the background left comprise a fairly abstract mass of curves and shapes, the effect being like a painter suggesting a figure or object with a few simple flicks of a paintbrush - they become real as the viewer steps away. See the photo in a large size.

To celebrate our photography exhibition China: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-72 at the Merseyside Maritime Museum we want you to submit your photos of Liverpool's Chinatown to our Flickr pool - our favourite photo submitted by 24 May will win a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues. Find out more on the competition page.

Older buildings have often outlived most of the people who set inside them, but their meaning and significance is usually defined by the way they are used by those same people. This week's highlight from our Liverpool's Chinatown through the lens Flickr competition, by Flickr user diaryof70steen, is an attractive composition which, though it consists of two buildings and nothing else, says much about different cultures and communities over time.

old and light © diaryof70steen

Visually the image creates a striking parallel between the vibrancy of the Chinese arch, its curved roofs and intricate patterns, and the stoic grandeur of the Black-E centre, with its magnificent dome and Corinthian columns. With a whited-out sky the many shapes and patterns of the buildings stand out crisply in an almost abstract way.

More than the architecture however, the photo tells of a long history of different Liverpudlian communities. The Black-E - taking its name from its smoke-stained stonework that was cleaned in the 1980s - combines a contemporary arts centre with a community centre (the UK's first community arts project), and is based in the former Great George Street Chapel, which closed in 1967. This in turn had been the centre for a programme of artistic, educational and social welfare activities as well as worship, and was itself the second Chapel on the site, opening in 1841 after the 1811 original was destroyed by fire. It seems appropriate that a building so long the hub of many community activities is captured here next to a great symbol of Liverpool's long-established Chinese community, itself also dating from the 19th century. See the photo in a large size.

To celebrate our photography exhibition China: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-72 at the Merseyside Maritime Museum we want you to submit your photos of Liverpool's Chinatown to our Flickr pool - our favourite photo submitted by 24 May will win a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues. Find out more on the competition page.

While holiday snaps are often intended to record a static memory of a place and mood - think of all those posed pictures of your family on the beach with fixed smiles - the more artistic photograph can often capture a whole narrative in a single image. I think in this week's highlight from our Liverpool's Chinatown through the lens Flickr competition, by Flickr user Graham Morgan (greybeats), something of both approaches is captured.

Chinese New Year © Graham Morgan

More familiar as a writhing, twisting creature, the Chinese dragon here is seen as a massive, still block of colours, occupying the whole right side of the image: the lack of body makes it hard to imagine its full size, and it certainly looks like it is towering menacingly over the people on the left. However what is especially interesting about the dragon and the people are their positions and their masks: all of the figures are to some extent covering their faces and none appear to directly acknowledge the others; instead all are facing different directions in a curious, almost posed manner.

The viewer knows that there are really people inside the dragon, hidden under the costume - similarly the man in the foreground half-covers his face, presumably against smoke and noise, the figure behind is half-masked (or half-unmasked?), and those further back still are almost gone completely behind the smoke; everyone is only half-revealed, as though hovering between two personalities, or emerging from a chrysalis. Though it is Chinese New Year, it seems apt that this reminds me of the Roman god Janus (from whom we get the name January), often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions: back to the old year and forward to the new. This image captures that idea of uncertain but exciting transition, change and ambiguity. See the photo in a large size.

To celebrate our photography exhibition China: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-72 at the Merseyside Maritime Museum we want you to submit your photos of Liverpool's Chinatown to our Flickr pool - our favourite photo submitted by 24 May will win a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues. Find out more on the competition page.

Sometimes a minimalist approach can achieve dramatic effects: I think this is the case with this week's highlight from the Liverpool's Chinatown: Through the lens Flickr competition, by Flickr user Abi :), in which a black and white photograph is tinted with a powerful yellow with captivating results.

Yellow Flag © Abi :)

I don't know if the photographer chose yellow for a particular reason, but the symbolism of the colour in Chinese culture makes it an interesting choice. Yellow represents, amongst many other things, earth, the balance of yin and yang, and stability, making it an apt colour for a photo mostly comprised of shades of two opposites, black and white, and with so volatile a subject as smoking firecrackers.

Visually it is a very arresting colour to use, but though the flag draping dramatically on the left is one of the first things the eye is drawn to, there are spots of the colour discreetly added throughout the rest of the image - a coat or hat, the firecrackers, the sun-like decoration above the doorway - as though the warmth and joy of the colour is seeping into the pores of the photo.

There is more to the image than just this immediate colour element however. The flag and smoke make a neat vertical symmetry which frames the doorway in the background: the crowds and upstairs windows have a similar effect on the horizontal; this makes a complete frame which concentrates the gaze to the partially-obscured doorway, making it a subtle third subject for the viewer after the yellow flag and the firecrackers, which are the main focus of attention for the crowd. See the photo in a large size.

To celebrate our photography exhibition China: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-72 at the Merseyside Maritime Museum we want you to submit your photos of Liverpool's Chinatown to our Flickr pool - our favourite photo submitted by 24 May will win a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues. Find out more on the competition page.