Britain began trading with China in the 1600s and a small community of Chinese sailors grew up around Limehouse over the next two centuries.
From the early 20th century, restaurants and laundries dominated this dockside Chinatown. However, owing to heavy bomb damage, the area was demolished after World War II.
The Chinese established a new and larger Chinatown in Soho, now a flourishing Chinese community. Many immigrants from Hong Kong found employment in its restaurants during the 1960s.
Since the 1990s Chinese students, economic migrants and asylum seekers have been arriving in London from mainland China.
The Chens had been living in the UK for four years, which was long enough to have lost their place in the society from which they had emigrated but not long enough to feel comfortable in the new. They were no longer missed; Lily had no living relatives anyway, apart from her sister Mui, and Chen had lost his claim to land in his ancestral village. He was remembered there in the shape of the money order he remitted to his father every month…Timothy Mo 'Sweet Sour' 1982
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Trade between Britain and China began in the 17th century and Chinese sailors had reached London on board East India Company ships by 1782. This small group lived around Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway near the docks.
In the mid 18th century imported Chinese products became fashionable, particularly tea and porcelain. Tea quickly became an English habit, but there was nothing comparable that the Chinese wished to buy from the British.
The East India Company illicitly encouraged the export of opium to China. Britain fought two wars with the Chinese, who wanted to end this drug trafficking.
Defeated in the Opium Wars, the Chinese were obliged to allow the British to trade at five ports in China and Hong Kong was leased to Britain until 1997.
By the end of the 19th century, the transient Chinese dock community in London numbered over 500. Virtually all were single men, and some married British women.
Changes to labour laws during the early 20th century meant that Chinese sailors found it increasingly difficult to find employment on ships. They turned instead to running restaurants and laundries.
During World War II, around 10,000 Chinese men enrolled in the Merchant Navy while others defended Hong Kong and undermined Japanese forces in the Far East.
The London docks, including the Chinatown area, were badly damaged by bombing, and the remains demolished by the council. Chinese hand laundries, which had flourished in this neighbourhood, were made obsolete by automatic washing machines in the 1950s.
After the war the Chinese began to move into Soho and buy up cheap property. The general public developed a taste for Chinese food during the postwar restaurant boom.
By the late 1960s the Chinese restaurants and shops around Gerrard Street, Lisle Street and Little Newport Street had evolved into ‘Tong Yan Kai’, otherwise known as Chinatown.
Most Chinese people in Britain today come from Hong Kong, particularly from the rural villages of the New Territories.
After World War II, the farmers of the New Territories faced tough competition from rice farmers in Thailand and Burma. This led to the chain migration of single men seeking employment in Chinese restaurants in London.
Most spoke Cantonese or Hakka, though written Chinese was a means of communication for the whole community. These restaurant workers sent part of their wages home to support their families.
During the 1960s, some were joined by wives and children and the number of Chinese people in London rose fivefold.
The Chinese established various organisations such as language schools, gambling houses for socialising and a Chinese Church in the West End. One notorious club was the Chi Kung Tong, the first Triad Society in Britain.
The Anglo-Chinese author Timothy Mo wrote the Booker prize-winning novel ‘Sour Sweet’ about a Chinese family running a restaurant in London who fall foul of a group of Triads.
The majority of Chinese did not integrate into mainstream society, because they did not plan on staying in London. Thus the community gained a reputation for insularity.
However, as the population has expanded, descendants of the original settlers have begun to bridge the gap between Chinese and British culture. Chinese students now attain the highest educational qualifications of all minority ethnic groups.
The profile of Chinese migrants arriving in London has changed since the 1990s. Migrants now come from mainland China where the official language is Mandarin, rather than Cantonese.
As China became wealthier during the 1990s, Chinese parents increasingly sent their children to study in the UK. An estimated 80,000 Chinese students attended UK universities in 2004-05.
Other migrants have come to London since the 1990s seeking job opportunities and sometimes political asylum. Most come from Fujian province in the south east, traditionally a place with high levels of emigration, and areas in north east China suffering large scale job losses.
Those driven to migrate in search of jobs far from their homeland may face huge risks. These have been highlighted by tragedies like the 58 Chinese people who suffocated while being smuggled from the Continent to Dover in 2000, and the deaths of Chinese cockle pickers at Morecambe Bay in 2004.
Today over 78,000 Chinese people live in London. Around half of London's Chinese population inhabits the inner London boroughs of Barnet, Southwark and Westminster.
Since the 1980s, young professional Chinese people have been moving out from central Chinatown to areas like Colindale in north west London.
There are around 70 Chinese community organisations in Greater London. These include community centres in Chinatown, Camden, Lambeth and Haringey.
Westminster Chinese Library, based at Charing Cross Library, has a collection of over 50,000 Chinese books available for loan to local readers of Chinese languages.
Apart from Chinese restaurants, other aspects of Chinese culture which attract Londoners are the annual Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown, and the traditional Chinese medicine centres proliferating on high streets.
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