Newspaper articles are invaluable sources through which historians can gain a sense of popular opinion and perceptions. However, due to their commercial nature, they can also often sensationalise these opinions and present them in an affected light. Laura Victoir and Victor Zatsepine examine the perceptions of public space in Hanoi in the French colonial period through the writings in the newspaper l’Avenir du Tonkin. In this blog post I will examine their investigation of perceptions of Hanoi’s public spaces, and argue that the commentary in their chapter presents a discourse that demonstrates only the coloniser’s perspective, denying the agency of the Vietnamese people who were also living there and experiencing these spaces.

 

Colonial urban commentary made up a large part of the writings in l’Avenir du Tonkin, the first French language newspaper of the European communities in Hanoi. The newspaper was used by editors to “voice criticism and confidence in the growing city and its rapidly developing landscape.”[1] Victoir and Zatsepine’s chapter aims to explore the various discourses about Hanoi’s public spaces as presented in the colonial news media. Through this, they discuss attempts made by French colonial authorities to respond to Hanoi’s urban practices and transform it into a modern ‘desirable’ city. This was juxtaposed with the portrayal of Hanoi’s streets as dangerous and unsanitary in the more sensationalist newspaper pieces. These streets were portrayed through writings in l’Avenir as “spaces in which vigilance was ever-required,” and the dangers outlined by the editors were “given a specific and thus avoidable location – the public spaces of the city.”[2] For example, the editor responds to proposed plans for rubbish disposal and sewage management in 1888:

 

             “This contract, if given to the right people, will be a real benefit to the population, because a number of quarters have become, due to Vietnamese carelessness and the dirtiness, hotbeds of infection presenting grave dangers in a time of epidemics. [The large area between the route du Hue, the Camp des Lettrés, and the palace of the kinh luoc] serves as a depository for coolies paid to empty the boxes which serve as tinettes; when the deposits are full enough, swarms of women come from the countryside to take them away in the small pails and baskets that we know. People often bury their dead [there]. As there is no decree forbidding inhumations in the very heart of the city, the police can do nothing.”[3]

 

Although in response to plans for a sanitation contract, there is an underlying commentary concerning the coloniser’s perception of Vietnamese people as lacking hygiene in this excerpt, specifically regarding how and where they buried their dead. Victoir and Zatsepine fail to acknowledge or investigate the actuality of Vietnamese death practices in their analysis of excerpts such as this, or explore why these practices may have not correlated with colonial sanitation attempts. Thus, we are forced to read against the grain of their chapter to gain any semblance of Vietnamese spatial practices, and in this the colonised peoples are relegated solely to their ‘unsanitary’ representations in this colonial newspaper.

 

Michael G. Vann similarly investigates colonial sanitation attempts in Hanoi during the colonial period. He argues that in attempting to modernise the urban built environment of Hanoi by building sewers, the French created a prime breeding environment for rats, which carried diseases such as the bubonic plague.[4] Due to the uneven distribution of sanitation infrastructure which had privileged the European areas, the overwhelming rat infestations became an almost exclusively European issue. Vann allows for Vietnamese agency increasingly more so than Victoir and Zatsepine do, detailing how Vietnamese sewer workers and rat catchers attempted to form collective labour action against their French employers.[5] Ultimately, however, colonial efforts at modernisation became tied to the spread of disease in urban Vietnam, and the colonisers became deeply dependent on employing the colonised people as rat catchers.

 

Alongside the discourse that Hanoi’s public spaces were dangerous or repulsive, there was simultaneously emphasis in this newspaper literature that Hanoi was to be the location for the materialisation of colonial urban desires.[6] In order to achieve these civilising aims, French colonial powers would have emphasised the oppositionality of Vietnamese spatial practices in the popular press which they exerted influence over, l’Avenir being included in this. Nonetheless, as the city evolved in the later colonial period, and the French Concession expanded, how both the colonised peoples and the colonising force navigated Hanoi’s public spaces became more complex. It is important to account for this complexity and for the interplay of actors when discussing colonial public space in Hanoi. Giving agency to the Vietnamese forcibly navigating the colonial in histories of the urban environment is one way of attempting this.

 

---

[1] Victoir, Laura & Zatsepine, Victor (2013) Harbin to Hanoi: The Colonial Built Environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940, p. 207

[2] Ibid, p. 209

[3] l’Avenir du Tonkin, June 30 (1888)

[4] Vann, Michael G. (2003) ‘Of Rats, Rice, and Race: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, an Episode in French Colonial History,’ French Colonial History, 4: 194

[5] Ibid, p. 197

[6] Victoir & Zatsepine (2013) p. 219

In her chapter on the new police and urban reform, Kate Stapleton argues that the creation of a reforming, and above all, dignified police force in Chengdu was an important component in the programme to modernise China. She discusses the reforms of politician Cen Chunxuan in the creation of such a force, establishing a police academy and a training camp for constables.[1] The new police force was to be highly bureaucratic, recruited from “upright families”, literate, and follow specific rules of behaviour.[2] Constables were required to not laugh, to walk in a dignified way, to speak politely, and no not smoke, eat, drink, or purchase things while on duty.[3]

Looking at William Greener’s 1905 book “A Secret Agent in Port Arthur”, it is possible to see that these rules of Chengdu’s new police force were based on expectations of the behaviour of soldiers in imperial armies. Greener notes his impressions of the Chinese soldiers of the viceroy Yuan-shi-kai in contrast to Russian officers and troops. Of Yuan-shi-kai’s soldiers, he writes that ‘they are fine men in clean, neat uniforms; they carry Mauser magazine rifles…have plenty of ammunition and get their pay regularly’.[4] His extensive discussion of their appearance and equipment conveys the sense that the soldiers are a symbol of Chinese authority in the area. Chinese control is clearly strong and their soldiers reflect this in looking dignified and authoritative. Greener was much less impressed by Russian soldier in China, writing that ‘they drank freely, lived as well as their means permitted, and enjoyed themselves as far as circumstances allowed…they lack seriousness, refinement and education’.[5] In Greener’s eyes, the Russian soldiers clearly have no discipline, and so Russian presence in China seems weak in Greener’s writing. The soldiers represent a foreign presence in a local space—a reflection of foreign power.

Thus, it is unsurprising that in creating the new police force to reform Chengdu, Cen Chunxuan and his team placed a huge emphasis on the appearance and behaviour of their police force. The officers and constables were to be symbols of higher authority operating within the local community.

This move in Chengdu to modernise the police form seems to be part of a greater trend in early 20^th c. China to create change and instigate reform from the ground up. Zhou Shanpei, the man Cen Chunxuan assigned the job of drafting regulations for police and training personnel, not only drafted a document outlining the regulations for his police bureau, but also ensured these regulations were publicised and distributed to citizens, encouraging them to report abuses by the police to the bureau.[6] In encouraging an increase in community involvement, Zhou played an important role in enforcing the idea of the new police force as a symbol of nationhood: both civilians and police played a role in enforcing the laws of their new community.

The view that true change must emerge from the people of the community, not just their leaders, is echoed in the writings of Putnam Weale, a British author and translator working in China. In Weale’s chapter on ‘Cleansing the Augean Stables’ in Sir Robert Brendon’s Three Essays on the Value of Foreign Advice in the Internal Development of China, published in 1915, he argues that true change in China must come from the bottom up. ‘Until changes enter into the very lifeblood of the people’, he writes, ‘and are the result of conviction and not of compulsion, they will have no more significance than freckles or mumps or any other minor ailment on a healthy body’.[7] Weale means this in the context of international interference in China’s development—however, his argument can be extended to the context of an actively involved local police force. Not only does true change come from within China itself, but also it must come from ‘the common man’.[8] By involving the “common men” in upholding laws and regulations alongside the police force of Chengdu, Zhou Shanpei and Cen Chunxuan reflected the broader concerns about China both internally and internationally to modernise from the ground up and to create a stronger sense of local and national identity.

[1] Kristin Stapleton, “The Key to Urban Reform: The New Police Force,” in Civilising Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform 1895-1937 (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 82.

[2] Ibid, 83.

[3] Ibid.

[4] William Greener, A Secret Agent in Port Arthur (London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd., 1905),159.

[5] Ibid, 234.

[6] Stapleton, “New Police”, 83.

[7] Putnam Weale, “The Cleansing of the Augean Stables,” in Advice and Advisers: Three Essays on the Value of Foreign Advice in the Internal Development of China, by Sir Robert Brendon (Peking: Peking Gazette, 1915), 17.

[8] Ibid, 21.

 

Bibliography:

Greener, William. A Secret Agent in Port Arthur. London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd., 1905.

Stapleton, Kristin. “The Key to Urban Reform: The New Police Force.” In Civilising Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform 1895-1937. Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Weale, Putnam. “The Cleansing of the Augean Stables.” In Advice and Advisers: Three Essays on the Value of Foreign Advice in the Internal Development of China, by Sir Robert Brendon. Peking: Peking Gazette, 1915.

 

How do we separate the unified to create division? For Georg Simmel, this began with the mental, whereby the perception of unity or division served to provide operational definitions for human activity, writing that ‘whether… connectedness or… separation is felt to be what was naturally ordained and the respective alternative is felt to be our task, is something that can guide all our activity.’[1] This understanding of human action being the result of either a push for division or fight for inclusion can help to enlighten our approach to underline some of the spatial driving forces of history.

 

For instance, one of the first governmental institutions established by the British in the colony of Rangoon was a lunatic asylum, which the British intended to be a place to exclude the colonially classified neurodivergent from society. To reify such a conception of separation, one of the first requests from the asylum’s superintendents in their annual reports to the Burmese government was for the construction of a wall around the currently unenclosed compound for the asylum’s civil inmates.[2] The wall’s desired effect of separating between the compound’s “inside” and “outside” was represented in the superintendent’s report a few years later[3]:

However, despite the existence of the wall as a delineation between “inside” and “outside” within the minds of the asylum’s planners, there was already a recognition that this illusion was being troubled in reality.

The attempt to nominate the asylum as an exclusionary space had failed since the authorities’ response to the superintendent’s initial request for a wall was the cheaper alternative of planting a bamboo hedge around the asylum’s perimeter.[4] By 1882, the superintendent raised the issue again as the bamboo was failing ‘to protect the patients from the gaze and impertinent curiosity of visitors and from… their presence.’[5] This posed an issue for the superintendent as he could not rigidly impose the labour routines, the moral education, and strict diets that the asylum’s staff believed were necessary to manage or cure the patients’ mental illnesses, since relatives from the town offered alternative sources for, or distractions from, all of these.[6] As family members continued to visit their relatives within the asylum despite the presence of the bamboo, the more significant issue of increasing numbers of escapes from the asylum led to renewed requests to improve the compound’s security, the existing lack thereof being reflected by a change in mapped representations of the asylum featuring a dashed rather than solid line around the civil compound[7]:

What is perhaps more notable is the representation of the asylum by J. C. Clancey from his visit to the town which depicts the asylum as a loose collection of buildings, as opposed to the clearly segregated space of the Rangoon Central Jail sitting opposite[8]:

What this map suggests is that the physical presence of a wall greatly influenced the perception of the purpose for its liminality as existing in the minds of the people walking by the institution; the jail is separated by a wall and the concept of a person’s criminality is understood to warrant their exclusion, while a person’s perceived neurodivergence does not necessitate their exclusion, especially if this is supposedly facilitated by a bamboo hedge.

 

This is not to say that the construction of a wall would have altered how the people of Rangoon viewed neurodivergence overnight, but when the British did commit greater effort into making this an exclusionary institution, the effects on the differences between the town and the asylum’s inmates increased. This intensification was seen in 1929 when the inmates were moved to the town’s new mental hospital, as the asylum was renamed, at Tadagale where barbed wire fencing surrounded the entire compound.[9] Before this movement, while the medical approaches to treating various mental illness had changed to variable degrees and the issue of overcrowding had resulted in a growing proportion of the hospital’s population being criminal, there were still few reported incidents of escapees or released patients causing harm to the wider population. However, the new institution, with its more defined liminality and distance from the town’s general population, allowed for a greater securitisation of the inmates’ bodies and facilitated their increased subjection to new medical regimes. In comparison to the previous relative lack of violence enacted on the population of the town considered to be neuroconforming by the hospital’s inmates, when Fielding Hall issued an order to release the hospital’s population after a false alarm of a Japanese invasion, the town experienced repeated acts of violence and destruction as the British authorities lost all control over the activities of the released inmates.[10] What the causes of this destruction were deserves greater analysis, but the increased violence of the inmates on those not considered neurodivergent after the transition from the old asylum to the new hospital’s more exclusionary space is worth investigating.

 

This blog posting is not meant to present a complete history. However, it shows that Simmel’s suggestion of liminality as a driver for action and a framework for mentalities could provide us with new ways of viewing the effects of such liminality on historical events. As the history of Rangoon’s lunatic asylum suggests, rather than just dismissing the violence enacted after Fielding Hall’s actions as being the result of “madness”, it would be better to explain how this “madness” was constructed, what it meant, and how it became violent, with one possible explanation to all of these questions being the creation of exclusion through the erection of a wall by the British.

[1] Georg Simmel, Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, (eds.) David Frisby & Mike Featherstone (London, 1997), 171.

[2] Report on the Rangoon Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1878 (Rangoon, 1879), 1.

[3] The Report on the Rangoon Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1882 (Rangoon, 1883).

[4] Report on the Rangoon Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1880 (Rangoon, 1881), 2.

[5] The Report on the Rangoon Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1882, 2.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Report on the Rangoon Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1893 (Rangoon, 1894).

[8] J. C. Clancey, Aid to Land-Surveying (Calcutta, 1882).

[9] Note on the Mental Hospitals in Burma for the Year 1929 (Rangoon, 1930), 1.

[10] Noel F. Singer, Old Rangoon: City of the Shwedagon (Stirling, 1995), 207.

As I start to think about my long essay, I believe an intriguing space to focus on is cemeteries. The direction I want to go in, however, is unclear at this point. At the top of my head, cemeteries are sacred spaces: places of mourning, worship, connection. They are also spaces of memory. I would like to discuss two articles about cemeteries as a sacred space and as a space/place of rhetorical memory and then decide how I would like to proceed with the direction of my essay.

The first article that will be discussed is Sarkawi Husain’s article Chinese Cemeteries as a Symbol of Sacred Space: Control, Conflict, and Negotiation in Surabaya, Indonesia. This article firstly discussed how Chinese cemeteries in Surabaya, Indonesia, were closing in the 1950s due to urban development and to ‘modernise’ the city – building houses on the land or to “give the city a modern appearance,” especially to emphasise the new independence gained by the country.¹ The closure upset the Chinese community, who saw cemeteries as not only a resting point for the deceased but a place of ancestor worship.² This article highlights how modernisation threatened Chinese cemeteries and practices of Chinese worship. Although this article is an excellent case study into Chinese cemeteries in Indonesia. I believe the article would benefit more from the discussion of sacred spaces and sacred practices more. However, the author does discuss the political repercussions and discussions of the space well. Nonetheless, if I were to discuss what a sacred space was, I would say it is a dynamic space where spirituality and practices of worship ensue.³

Cemeteries as spaces or places of rhetorical memory is another potential direction I could follow for my long essay. An article entitled ‘Rhetorical Spaces in Memorial Places: The Cemetery as a Rhetorical Memory Place/Space’ by Elizabethada Wright focuses on an African American burial ground in New Hampshire, USA and discusses the “essential nature” of a cemetery as a “usual and unusual memory place.”⁴ Wright notes that cemeteries as a physical and spiritual place blur the lines between symbolic and physical to allow public memory that is otherwise forgotten to be remembered.⁵ Her article successfully analyses the connections between memory, space and rhetoric, highlighting the history and other ideas. Her inclusion of gender memory and rhetoric and how women were excluded within public spaces and only could speak within the “correct rhetorical space:” domestic spaces.⁶ Using Foucault’s theory of heterotopia, Wright notes that cemeteries are not usually rhetorical spaces but definitely spaces of memory. She notes that cemeteries are sacred spaces that are “real and unreal,” simultaneously a material space and a symbolic place.⁷ Additionally, she writes that “the cemetery is allowed to exist because it is perceived as not really existing. When bodies are covered over and they as well as their headstones decay, the cemetery will appear to be as if it never existed.”⁸ I believe this is an interesting point because the re-discovery of graves (such as the rediscovered African American graveyard in the article) allows memories to be saved and interpreted. Therefore, it begs the very personal question and uncertainty of how does your memory survive when you die, if not through a grave? Besides that brief existential crisis, I believe this topic is riveting.

Therefore, the direction I would go for my long essay this spring would be cemeteries as spaces of rhetorical memory. However, more research would need to go into the theoretical concepts and finding a case study. Despite this, I believe this is a good starting point.

1. Sarkawi B. Husain, ‘Chinese Cemeteries as a Symbol of Sacred Space: Control, Conflict, and Negotiation in Surabaya, Indonesia’, in Freek Colombijn and Joost Coté (eds), Cars, Conduits, and Kampongs: The Modernization of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960 (ebook, 2015), p. 323. [↩]
2. Ibid., p. 234. [↩]
3. Kim Knott, ‘Spatial Theory and Spatial Methodology, Their Relationship and Application: A Transatlantic Engagement’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 77: 2 (June 2009), p. 420. [↩]
4. Elizabethada A. Wright, ‘Rhetorical Spaces in Memorial Places: The Cemetery as Rhetorical Memory Place/Space’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 35: 4 (2005), p. 51. [↩]
5. Ibid. [↩]
6. Ibid., pp. 52-53. [↩]
7. Ibid., p. 54 [↩]
8. Ibid., pp. 54-55. [↩]

“If the door speaks where the wall is mute, the bridge speaks louder than both. It is more prone to symbolization.” –Harrison[1]

 

In his essay on the “Bridge and Door”, Simmel argues that bridges, roads, doors and windows all perform the function of both connecting spaces and keeping them separate.[2] Of these, the bridge, in its ability to contain multitudes of meanings and functions, is the most symbolically rich. Inspired by Simmel’s writings, Harrison argues that not only does a bridge connect a ‘place of origin to a destination’, as a road does; but that a bridge is even more psychologically impressive- it emphasizes human victory over nature, space and time.[3] Harrison writes about bridges as spaces of living and of commerce; of execution, suicide and war; as transitional spaces, and also as ‘third spaces of union’.[4] Because of its liminality, Harrison argues, the bridge makes it impossible to ‘achieve the appurtenances of social identity’ – in other words, the identity one creates on a bridge is only ever transient, temporary.[5]

However, the opposite can be seen in the example of Hong Kong’s Little Manila. Little Manila is a social gathering that appears every Sunday, spanning a large area beneath the arches and in the overhead walkways of Norman Foster’s HSBC building, as well as in Statue Square and Chater Garden.[6] Just like the bridges discussed in Harrison’s chapter, Little Manila transforms the office buildings, walkways, and squares it occupies into spaces of separation, and of difference between the office workers who use the space during the week, and the domestic workers who occupy it on Sundays. As seen from Tomas Laurenzo’s photograph, the cardboard walls and the blankets that transform the walkway from a transient space to one filled with activity are only temporary. However, Little Manila also represents a wish for transition and bridging, for creating a more permanent identity of the migrant domestic worker from the Philippines in Hong Kong.

Daisy Tam summarizes that from the 1970s onwards, when Hong Kong shifted from an industry based economy to one that was service based, the demand for domestic workers increased.[7] As of 2016, the time of Tam’s article publication, 300,000 migrant workers from the Philippines worked in Hong Kong as domestic helpers.[8] As Tam argues, Little Manila represents a space of resistance where Filipina women can re-appropriate the very architecture that represents the capitalist system by which they are oppressed.[9]

Little Manila becomes a space where women can reinforce their Philippine identities through sharing conversation, food, magazines, and time, as seen in the photo above. These identities are not liminal, even if the space they are practiced in is temporary, occurring only every Sunday. In creating this space of resistance, the women who use the space in this way also create a bridge. Little Manila becomes a third space: not Manila, not Hong Kong. Though it spans various types of physical spaces, from walkways to squares, Little Manila in itself becomes a bridge –a symbol of Philippine identity in Hong Kong.

 

Bibliography

Harrison, Thomas. 2021. Of Bridges: A Poetic and Philosophical Account. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Laurenzo, Tomás. “Foreign Helpers.” Tomás Laurenzo: New Media Art & Research (blog), 2015. https://laurenzo.net/foreign-helpers.

Simmel, Georg, David Frisby, and Mike Featherstone. 1997. Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings. California: SAGE.

Tam, Daisy. 2016. “Little Manila: The Other Central of Hong Kong.” In Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia, by Manish Chalana. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

 

[1] Thomas Harrison, Of Bridges: A Poetic and Philosophical Account (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 7.

[2] Georg Simmel, David Frisby, and Mike Featherstone, Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (California: SAGE, 1997), 171.

[3] Harrison, Of Bridges, 5.

[4] Ibid, 1.

[5] Ibid, 58.

[6] Daisy Tam, “Little Manila: The Other Central of Hong Kong,” in Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia, by Manish Chalana (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), 1.

[7] Ibid, 119.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid, 124.

‘Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon – a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire… Under what new god, thought I, are we irrepressible English sitting now?’[1]

 

These words and their following remarks, written by Rudyard Kipling regarding his three-day visit to Rangoon, emphasise the role which the Shwedagon Pagoda played in the mind of the European in defining the Burmese and their landscape. Such a defining role is reflected in the prominence which the pagoda tends to take in the town’s postcards which I have seen, but the importance of the pagoda in defining Rangoon was not just a European construction but was also held by the Burmese themselves. For instance, it was at the Shwedagon that the rebellious students at Rangoon University set up a counter higher educational institution, simultaneously protesting the attempts by the British colonial government to impose imperialist ideas onto Burmese education and also their military occupation of this prominent Burmese symbol.[2]

 

However, reading Arthur Waldron’s “The Problem of the Great Wall of China”, his use of alternative historical narratives to question both the European construction and nationalist adoption of such architectural symbols influenced me to take another look at the history of the Shwedagon.[3] It is the South Entrance to the complex that intrigued me because it undertook such vast changes in appearance over the course of British rule, transforming from a traditional gate structure in the 1850s to a much more expressive representation of Mount Neru with a tower covered by a façade of nat figures and flanked either side by chinthes in the 1890s.[4] In the modern day, this sense of movement and life in the structure has been replaced by a more ordered and geometric representation of the pagoda’s mandala.[5] My readings following up on this matter have suggested that the dramatic changes to this entrance over its lifetime reflects more than just the changing nature of Burmese architecture or the political impact of British colonial rule.

 

Instead, an alternative explanation for this evolution was the introduction of the Shwedagon into a wider transnational culture of Buddhist architecture under British rule as more pilgrims from South and East Asia were able to travel, and donate, to the pagoda. It is this transnational nature that has granted the pagoda UNESCO World Heritage status, but the development of the South Entrance is a physical manifestation of this.[6] As Elizabeth Howard-Moore argues, the architecture of the south entrance, as well as the rest of the pagoda, diverged from the original traditional Burmese style as it began to reflect wider Buddhist architectural styles, the introduction of the chinthes and the Bengali roofing between the 1850s-1890s being a part of this new artistic input.[7] Such a narrative of this site cannot be found in Burmese or British sources at the time, as both of them claim that the Shwedagon represented the Burmese people in one way or another, but it is only through analysing the photographs of structures such as the south entrance that allows us to see that a more complicated history of cultural input is at play here, and by identifying the transnational nature of the site’s architecture we can start to look at other transnational connections between Burma and the rest of the Buddhist world.

[1] Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (New York, 1899; 2010), <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32977/32977-h/32977-h.htm> [accessed: 27/02/22], 203.

[2] Carol Ann Boshier, Mapping Cultural Nationalism: The Scholars of the Burma Research Society, 1910-1935 (Copenhagen, 2018), 233-234.

[3] Arthur N. Waldron, “The Problem of the Great Wall of China”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 43: 2 (1983), 643-663.

[4] “Shwedagon, South Entrance”, Yangon Time Machine, <https://www.yangontimemachine.com/en/index?id=6&art=shwe_south> [accessed: 27/02/22].

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Shwedagon Pagoda on Singuttara Hill”, UNESCO, <https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6367/> [accessed: 27/02/22].

[7] Elizabeth Howard-Moore, “Patronage and Place: The Shwedagon in Times of Change”, Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange, Vol. 1, ed. Tansen Sen (Singapore, 2014), 386.

A dish that bears little resemblance to many of the Hakka dishes found throughout East and South East Asia. A symbol of cultural fusion. The Hakka Noodle. This dish is commonly found throughout India as representative of Indo-Chinese and indeed Chinese cuisine. Despite its name, Hakka Noodles don’t actually exist anywhere else outside of India. Recipes for Hakka Noodle are also strangely devoid of any particular “Hakka” characteristic. Featuring soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic and ginger; this dish appears more to be a facsimile of what people thought was Chinese food.

The namesake of the dish “Hakka” (Kè Jiā, 客家), refers to a linguistic and cultural diasporic group that internally migrated throughout China in 5 major migrational waves from the 5th Century AD to the second half of the 19th Century. [1] The Hakka mostly settled throughout Southern China, most notably in Guangdong and Fujian. The history of Hakka is inherently tied to that of migration and movement. Large numbers of Hakka migrants emigrated from mainland China to South East Asia, Taiwan. India, especially Kolkota, saw smaller waves of Chinese Immigrants that arrived in smaller numbers compared to the SEA region, to curious effect. [2] The Chinese in Kolkata are most commonly found in two areas, Tiretta Bazaar and Tangra. “Chinatowns” are typically formed as giant, open enclaves where Chinese businesses and communities resided. The vast majority of these settlements formed in the 18th to 19th Centuries when Chinese migrants first arrived and settled in places as far off as Liverpool (1830). [3] Kolkata’s experience with Chinese communities began around the late 18th Century, centred around the tanning industry, in the district of Tangra and the surrounding areas of central Kolkata. [4]

Tanning was typically seen as an undesirable occupation that was fulfilled by lower caste individuals. This was due to the smelly and often dirty nature of the trade. In what Shivani Kapoor calls ‘Sensory Politics’, he describes the literal stench of the leatherworker and the industry as a whole influencing how society treated the profession. [5] Although this concept for Shivani was applied to the Untouchable caste tanners in Uttar Pradesh. Parallels can be drawn to tanners in Kolkata. As Vernon Briggs notes, it has long been understood that immigrants take the unwanted and often “dirty” jobs in their host country. [6] This was especially true in Kolkata, where Hakka migrants flocked to the tanning industry not because there weren’t any jobs available for them, but because they were willing to take on the jobs that no one else wanted. There was a massive demand for the luxury of leather goods, but very few were willing to supply that demand. Apparently free from the social dynamics of caste, the Hakka could take up these jobs that paid very well.

Kolkata’s Chinatown has many of the distinct elements that most others do, with Chinese style gates, businesses, and temples. What is most curious is the incredibly central location that this particular Chinatown occupies. In comparison to San Francisco, London and Tokyo’s Chinatown, which is relatively central but occupies only a small part of the city. Tangra occupies a comparatively large area in the Eastern part of Kolkata, in close proximity to important landmarks such as the Victoria memorial hall and central railway station. [7] There are assertions that Tangra was not the ‘original’ space that the Chinese occupied in Kolkata. Various other central districts such as Dharamtallah and Kasoitollah also featured important Chinese temples and businesses. Which indicates that the Chinese presence in Kolkata was even more important in centuries past.

The curious case of the Chinese tanner raises certain questions about how the Chinese immigrant community occupied such a prominent social and spatial position in the city. One could very well accept an application of Kapoor’s assertion of the politics of smell in the tanning trade, combine it with Brigg’s understanding of immigrant “dirty labour” and assume that the Chinese in Kolkata was a community that faced marginalisation and discrimination. [8] However, this did not seem to be the case. The earliest sources on the Chinese immigrant community to Kolkata pointed to a small number of Hakka migrants that occupied a central part of the city and appeared to be well established under the East India Company’s purview. [9] Did the supposed “otherness” of the Chinese allow them to avoid the restrictions of caste? Or were caste associations with the profession of tanning so strong that the social status of the Chinese community was impacted? These are some of the interesting questions that arise from this particular case study that don’t have answers at the moment, but that I hope to find through my research. These kinds of questions are not limited to just a study of social structure in India. It raises a whole host of further questions on how significant Diaspora populations integrated or found a place in the social structure of a particular state or even urban space. It questions the relationship between professions and social status. In the particular case of Chinatowns, it even questions the social and spatial fabric of a city’s present and historical reality.

The leather tanning industry in Tangra is still alive today and although the community has dwindled due to the Sino-Indian War of 1965 and the redevelopment of Tangra itself. Tiretti Bazaar and Tangra are still the heart of a vibrant Chinese food market. On the street, you can get momos shaomai (烧卖) and Baozi (包子). In restaurants, Pork with Mustard Greens, fish ball soup and sweet and sour pork. The Hakka have left their mark on Kolkata, in their profession, their culture and most of all, in their noodles.

 

Sources

[1] Hsieh Ting Yu, ‘Origin and Migration of the Hakkas’, 1929, <https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/HsiehHakkaHistory.html>[accessed 26 February 2022]

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Map of Tangra, Google Maps

[5] Shivani Kapoor, ‘The Violence of Odors: The Sensory Politics of Caste’, The Senses and Society, p. 164-176. 

[6] Vernon M. Briggs Jr., ‘Immigrant Labor and the Issue of “Dirty Work” in Advanced Industrial Societies’, Population and Environment, 14:6 (July, 1993), p. 503.

[7] Umang Sharma, ‘Open at 5am, Tiretti Bazaar In Kolkata Is A Paradise For Every Authentic Chinese Food Lover’, India Times, 2nd July 2017, <https://www.indiatimes.com/culture/food/open-at-5am-tiretti-bazaar-in-kolkata-is-a-paradise-for-every-authentic-chinese-food-lover-321337.html> [accessed 2 February 2022].

[9] Ibid

The emphasis of a space’s represented centre reveals how the author of that representation creates a hierarchisation of certain spatial practices in governmental discourses, although these discourses may be normative and fail to reflect the reality of the cityscape. However, the effect which this can have on an urban environment can be explored through Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift’s concept of the distanciated economy, where ‘work on urban economies has been framed in terms of points, lines and boundaries… cities have been seen as entities that can be cut up into centres and peripheries,’[1] and while their argument was to deconstruct the ways in which some urban cities are defined against others, this can equally be applied to how an individual city’s areas are defined against one another.

 

In the case of Rangoon, one of the most cited histories of the town from the colonial period, B. R. Pearn’s A History of Rangoon, was commissioned by the town’s municipal authorities and mostly relied upon municipal reports and first-hand testimonies from members of the municipal establishment to construct its history.[2] Due to this, the way in which Pearn’s history approaches matters of public transport emphasises the role in which the municipal authorities’ intended for it to fulfil. This end goal was for the town’s public transport networks to link areas of industrial production to suburbs further afield in order to depopulate the centre, the overcrowding of which was impeding the flow of traffic and worsening disease spread.[3] Due to this, the actions of the suburban in Pearn’s history have already become peripheral to the town’s economic centre and such a representation of the town’s history creates an operational definition which reinforces the municipal authorities’ actions: that the town is primarily a space for economic production,  which suburbanisation would help intensify, and the town’s inhabitants are economic units that can be rationalised for these ends. This can be understood by Pearn’s suggestion that the public transport networks were consistent failures because their establishment did not decentralise the town’s labour pool away from their places of production.[4] Such portrayals of the town’s history were ultimately designed to build up to Pearn’s justification of the municipal authorities’ exceptional expenditure of over Rs. 14,000,000 in creating this idealised delineation between the suburban and spaces of economic production at the end of his critique of the towns’ transport networks.[5]

However, what is missing from Pearn’s history of Rangoon’s transport networks are the circles of social activity that existed outside of the intended suburbanising effect. For instance, when the town’s tramlines were extended to the Burmese village of Kemmendine, the services saw a massive increase in usage from 3,433,540 annual passengers to 6,026,915, despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that many of the Burmese in Kemmendine worked in the town’s industrial sectors since they were based in the furthest and least accessible quarters from Kemmendine.[6] Indeed, the purpose of the trams were to decentralise the Indian workers living around the industrial centre, not to bring in new workers from further afield. Instead, the trams enabled new transportation options for other socio-cultural activities, such as the pilgrimage to the Shwedagon Pagoda, as suggested by representations such as a postcard of the pagoda line’s terminus depicting a tram being filled with Buddhist monks.[7] Similarly, the Burmese were also brought closer to their spaces of socio-cultural interaction by the trams with their extension to the newly established racecourse in Kyaikkasan and Kandawgale’s Burma Athletic Association playing fields, which saw the lines experience great popularity when events were being held in that area.[8] Additionally, the significance which the trams held for the suburban Burmese was emphasised by the fact that in death it was the wealthy Burmese and the Buddhist monks who used the tramway’s funeral service, carrying their bodies through their communities to be celebrated in public before alighting at the cemetery.[9] On the one hand, this was good business on the part of the tram company to tailor their services around the needs of the already suburban population who were most likely to use the trams’ services, but simultaneously this undermined the political objectives of the municipal authorities as these people were not using the trams to further the town’s economic functions, but rather used them to create new spaces for cultural interaction outside of the town’s centre.

 

The use of sources such as Pearn’s history reveals where the planner’s gaze saw the focal points of Rangoon. However, by reading between the lines of sources such as postcards, newspaper clippings, or the frustrated language of municipal reports, all productions of the colonialist, the actual centres of activity which created the experience of the cityscape for those who inhabited it can be unveiled.

[1] Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift, Cities: Reimagining the Urban (Cambridge, 2002), 51.

[2] B. R. Pearn, A History of Rangoon (Rangoon, 1939).

[3] Ibid., 278-282.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 282.

[6] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality for the Year 1907-1908 (Rangoon, 1908), 20.

[7] Tilman Frasch, “Tracks in the City: Technology, Mobility and Society in Colonial Rangoon and Singapore”, Modern Asian Studies, 46: 1 (2012), 106.

[8] Ibid.; Pearn, A History of Rangoon, 281.

[9] Frasch, “Tracks in the City”, 107; “New Departure in Burmese Funerals”, Straits Echo, Singapore (26/04/1907), 5, <https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitsecho19070426-1.2.23?ST=1&AT=search&k=rangoon%20tram&QT=rangoon,tram&oref=article> [accessed: 20/02/22].

One of the most prominent themes when encountering colonial literature is the notion of ‘modernity’. Whether it is a self-congratulatory remark on western-derived actions or the assertion of native ‘barbarism’, the language of modernity is a consistent tool utilised within primary source text. Elizabeth LaCouture, in her talk with the School of Transnational and Spatial History about her book, At Home in the World: Family, House and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860-1960, stated how modernity was constructed only in relation to the traditional¹ In the examples of Tianjin domestic space, the western object was assumed as modern because of the ‘unmodern’ status applied to the Chinese object. LaCouture emphasises this concept in her description of the sofa in Chinese homes that distinguished Chinese living space from a traditional Chinese home from a ‘modern’ sitting room.² By buying and placing a modern western object in a Chinese domestic space, the space had itself become ‘modern’. This definition of modernity is constructed in contrast to existing Chinese sitting furniture, where the sofa was established as modern in comparison to the unmodern Chinese alternatives, including the upholstered armchair or rattan chair.³ In her example, LaCouture emphasises that modernity in style is only constructed in contrast to traditional or unmodern other. I would argue that this understanding of modernity is also applicable to architecture in colonised spaces where the modernity of design was imposed by primarily establishing an unmodern traditional ‘other’ to contrast. This idea is exemplary in the British introduction of Indo-Saracenic architectural styles in Kuala Lumpur, where the style’s modernity was constructed by asserting the ‘simplicity’ of Malay-style domestic spaces. 

The establishment of an ‘unmodern’ other was the first step in establishing the modernity of British architectural styles. Common amongst officers in the Malayan Federated States were descriptions of the everyday life of the Malay people, especially their domestic space. A common term frequently used within the primary sources is ‘simple’. Malay dwellings are commonly described as primitive domestic spaces, simple in functionality, architectural style, and material usage. In its material composition, Richard Winstedt, a colonial administrator of British Malaya in the 1920s, heightens the modernity of European and Chinese dwellings based on the material composition of Malay houses.⁴ He emphasises their simplicity because the floors are constructed from split coconut trees fastened by rattan, or roofs made of palm leaves or wood could be imagined as ‘tents’.³ Under the pretence of the consistent urban fire outbreaks in wooden housing districts, wood as a material for housing construction is deemed an unmodern feature.⁵ In contrast, Winstedt highlights the modernity of Chinese and European housing due to their materiality, as both style housings used brick, tiles and glass, fireproof and sturdier materials.⁶ In addition, the multifunctionality of the Malay dwelling further emphasises the ‘simplicity’ of the Malay space as Winstedt asserts how one room is used for eating, sleeping and working, which contrasts to European domestic spaces, which were much larger and held separate spaces for each purpose. The limited size and multifunctionality constructed a less grandiose and unimposing structure within the urban environment, unlike Western-designed buildings. These descriptions highlight attempts to construct a narrative of ‘simplicity’ that emphasises the unmodern standard of Malay spaces, which is later used to support British architectural styles. 

It is evident that the modernity of the Indo-Saracenic architectural style was established by contrasting it with the Malay architectural styles under the pretence of functionality and material composition. In their article on the completion of the newly constructed Government Offices built in the Indo-Saracenic style, the Selangor Journal attributed the modernity of the building to the consistent use of brick, cement and steel as the primary material of construction.⁷ The materials are proudly described as fireproof that prevents the potential hazard of a fire breaking out in the complex like in Malay districts built entirely from wood.⁸ The emphasis on the fireproof nature of the building not only supports the style’s modernity but also contrasts it to Malay style dwellings, which have consistently been prone to fire outbreaks. In addition, the style’s modernity is also attributed to the functionality of the Offices as a grandiose space that appropriately supports the functions of the British colonial administration.⁹ Its functionality is defined not in terms of practicality, but its ability to represent British colonial power. As described above, the ‘functionality’ of the Malay dwelling was limited due to its small size ‘primitive’ use of space. Thus, the Malay dwelling is viewed as unmodern based on the parameters to support and represent colonial authority, which establishes the modernity of the British style.

It becomes clear that ‘modernity’ is not only the representation of what the object is, but it is also a representation of what the object is not. In relation to architectural styles, the British constructed Indo-Saracenic architectural style was deemed ‘modern’ by primarily establishing an unmodern ‘other’. LaCouture’s application of modernity raises interesting questions of how it speaks to wider discussions of how colonial power and authority is represented in colonised spaces. 

 

1. Elizabeth LaCouture, At Home in the World: Family, House and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860-1960.(New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), p. 174. [↩]
2. Ibid. [↩]
3. Ibid. [↩] [↩]
4. Richard O. Winstedt, Malaya: The Straits Settlements and the Federated and Unfederated Malay States (London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1923), pp. 91-92. [↩]
5. Shapiza Sharif and Arba’iyah Mohd Noor, ‘The Brick-making Industry in Kuala Lumpur in the Late Nineteenth Century.’ Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 90, Part 1, No. 312 (June 2017), p. 62. [↩]
6. Winstedt, Federated and Unfederated Malay States, p. 92. [↩]
7. Selangor Journal: Jottings Past and Present, Volume V (Kuala Lumpur: Selangor Government Printing Office, 1897), pp. 219-222. [↩]
8. Ibid., p. 222. [↩]
9. Ibid., p. 222-234. [↩]