Ep. 301 | The History of the Chinese Jamaicans

The China History Podcast

Laszlo Montgomery

History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For this 301st CHP episode, we cover some more great Overseas Chinese history. Rather than biting off more than I could chew by taking on the bigger story of Chinese emigration to the Caribbean, the focus will be on the island nation of Jamaica. The Chinese Jamaican story is another Hakka story. Contained in this episode is just one sliver of the history of this great and musical nation. I hope this episode piques your interest. If you want to learn more about Jamaica you're in luck. Lots of great resources out there. I hope I can visit there one day and see it for myself. I flipped a coin to decide what pronunciation of "Caribbean" I would use for the episode. Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all fellow Yanks. Roifield Brown's "How Jamaica Conquered the World": https://open.spotify.com/show/53GxTOmpv0VLsIY426KYa8?si=f6eacb5b996a40d8&nd=1 Byron Lee and the Dragonaires: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1akUOJhf77cbKJveLHgxpy?si=7vj-VPKAQMyBj0GYXMtPKg&nd=1 VP Records: https://www.vprecords.com/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back everyone, China History Podcast Episode 301.
0:04.4	Lausanne Montgomery here, as always.
0:07.5	Today I want to, once again, if no one has any strong objections,
0:12.6	look at one of my favorite subjects. The many histories of the Chinese diaspora.
0:18.4	Aside from that one on the Chinese Mexicans, CHP 123, and of course all the ones covering
0:25.2	Chinese American history, I've mostly stuck to the good old tried and true,
0:30.0	Southeast Asian overseas Chinese. The gift that keeps on giving, never disappoints as far
0:36.0	as history is concerned. But this time I'd like to discuss the great nation of Jamaica.
0:42.2	We go from Alchemy last time to Reggae in this episode, and as far as the linkage between
0:47.7	the worldwide popularity of Reggae and other Caribbean music and the Chinese Jamaicans,
0:54.0	we'll get to that later on. The history of Jamaica's ethnic Chinese population might seem
0:59.6	familiar to many of us who have studied or experienced Chinese American history,
1:04.7	and of other places as well. As the story unfolds, you might find the words often attributed to
1:10.5	Mark Twain about history rhyming to be the case here. The number of permutations involving
1:18.5	all the five main non-mander and speaking linguistic groups and all the countries in the world
1:23.8	where they immigrated to and significant numbers leads to a historical tapestry where
1:30.5	when you observe it, you see familiar patterns, but the individual experiences these overseas
1:37.6	Chinese ended up having really depended on where it was overseas that they ended up.
1:45.4	The story of the Chinese Jamaicans is another Haka story. Just as it was in the US where
1:52.5	mostly the Haysanis made up the bulk of the Chinese who came for gold or to build the railroads.
2:00.7	In Jamaica, it was overwhelmingly the Haka Chinese who wrote this story. And when they weren't
2:06.3	speaking the local Jamaican Patois, they communicated in the Haka language.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Laszlo Montgomery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Laszlo Montgomery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.