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Havana's Chinatown struggles
By Vanessa Arrington, Associated
Press. The
Boston Globe, November 26, 2004.
HAVANA -- At first glance, Havana's Chinatown
seems a misnomer. Restaurants serve pizza,
and actual Chinese are vastly outnumbered
by tourists and Hispanics.
But behind the walls of aging buildings,
the prayer shrines and tai chi classes endure,
going back to an era when a Chinese merchant
community thrived in Havana and culture
from the mainland dominated daily life.
Leaders of the 2,000-strong Chinese-Cuban
community, who are struggling to maintain
the capital's Chinatown, hope a visit by
President Hu Jintao of China on Monday will
serve as the cue to revive their dwindling
ancestral culture.
It was not clear whether Jintao, on his
first trip to the island since taking office
in March 2003, would visit Chinatown. But
presidents of the community's 13 associations
were scheduled to meet with him Monday at
Havana's Hotel Nacional.
''The president is coming, and our expectations
are high," said Alejandro Chiu, head
of Cuba's Lung Kg Association and one of
fewer than 300 Chinese natives on the island.
''We are content."
Chiu, 78, arrived in Cuba in the early
1950s, after his family fled communism in
China. He was not yet 30 years old and already
a successful merchant when Fidel Castro
propelled the island into communism in 1961.
The Chinese community, then estimated in
the tens of thousands, had worked hard to
carve out its space in Cuban society. The
vast majority decided to leave rather than
hand over their businesses to the Cuban
government, which is what Chiu did.
The first Chinese immigrants to Cuba landed
here in 1847, a group of 200 brought over
from Canton province on a Spanish frigate
to work as contract laborers on Cuba's sugarcane
plantations.
Tens of thousands of Chinese eventually
arrived during the mid- to late-1800s as
contract laborers, many working for years
in virtual slavery for a few pesos a month.
Slavery in Cuba was abolished in 1886,
and with time, the Chinese learned to make
their own living with restaurants, laundries,
and vegetable gardens. In those years, many
Chinese brought their entire families to
live with them on the Caribbean island.
Before Castro's revolution, Chinatown bustled
with activity. But as top merchants and
community leaders began leaving for places
like San Francisco, Toronto, and Caracas,
the neighborhood went downhill. ''There
was total decadence," said Leandro
Chiu, a second-generation Chinese who has
lived in Havana's Chinatown all his 73 years.
''This place was abandoned and became really
poor."
Those who stayed kept busy working for
the new Cuban government, but decades later,
as these men and women began to retire,
they focused their energies on re-creating
a strong Chinese-Cuban community.
''We decided to unite those who had stayed
behind," said Leandro Chiu, who directs
a day center that feeds and entertains Chinese
senior citizens. ''We started teaching the
children [our traditions] and giving more
life to the neighborhood."
Kung fu, tai chi, and Chinese-language
classes were launched, and old customs brought
back to life. In the mid-1990s, support
even came from the Cuban government.
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Cuba
was forced to embrace tourism to bring in
revenue lost when aid from the Soviet bloc
dried up. An attractive Chinatown became
part of the process to draw tourists to
Havana.
State resources were channeled to help
revive a Chinese ''look" for the neighborhood.
Street names were posted on clean white
signs showing a red dragon, and a huge cement
arch, with a sign saying ''Barrio Chino"
in Spanish as well as in Chinese characters,
was built to decorate the neighborhood's
entrance. As part of modest economic changes,
Chinese societies were permitted to operate
restaurants collectively and charge customers
for meals in US dollars as long as they
paid taxes on the profits.
''We were given certain liberties so that
Chinatown could flourish," Leandro
Chiu said. ''It might not seem like much,
but there are more businesses here and there
is more life now. We've been making improvements,
bit by bit."
Today, the subtle lingering of Chinese
traditions blends in with the touristy facade
and Cuban culture.
A young Chinese-Cuban woman teaches tai
chi to the neighborhood's children on a
patio, underneath paintings of dragons and
the yin and yang symbol. Nearby, lively
Cuban dance music booms from a car stereo,
and a wall facing the street says, ''Martial
arts: another weapon of the revolution."
Cubans fill a Chinese restaurant, ordering
pepperoni pizza and sugary sodas, while
Chinese descendants one floor up ask for
advice from deceased ancestors at an elaborate
wood altar.
Leandro Chiu, who married a Cuban woman,
maintains ties to his heritage with the
daily contact with the community's elderly.
But his children are not fluent in Chinese,
and he has never traveled to the mainland.
''Now it's mainly Cubans here and very
few Chinese people," he said. ''But
for those of us left, this is home."
© Copyright
2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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