The Vicissitudes of London’s Old Chinatown and Its Mass Cultural Myths

The Hong Kong Museum of History’s ‘Multifaceted Hong Kong’ Exhibition Series currently features the theme ‘Sojourn in Gold Mountain — Hong Kong and the Lives of Overseas Chinese in California.’ For over a century, Hong Kong has been one of the key hubs for Chinese workers departing overseas and returning home. Stories and memories about California and the whole of North America are relatively abundant. By contrast, Britain — as the major global empire of the time — has had less of its Chinese Londoner history widely circulated in Hong Kong. Yet, various legendary tales about it have persisted, and even today, their influence still lingers in mass culture. This article begins with London’s first Chinatown, offering a modest reflection on the real lives and cultural myths of Chinese in Britain.

The 2021 Hollywood blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, starring Hong Kong’s world-class actor Tony Leung, was a global hit. His character Xu Wenwu in the original comic was in fact based on the notorious villain Fu Manchu from classic novels. Created more than a century ago, this supervillain originated from London’s old Chinatown. According to the author Sax Rohmer, the inspiration came from a murder in the East London docklands — precisely where London’s first Chinatown was located (including Pennyfields and Limehouse). Rumour linked the crime to Chinese gangs. As American historian Jeffrey Crean (2024) notes, Rohmer seized upon the ‘Yellow Peril’ panic in the West, which had been stirred up by the Boxer Rebellion in late Qing China, and broke from the usual Western media portrayal of Chinese as victims. In 1912, he created the first Chinese villain who proactively threatened the Western world. Rohmer’s gamble paid off spectacularly — the Fu Manchu series became wildly popular, and, unfortunately, has remained enduring.

Chinese sailors working in Liverpool docks as loaders and unloaders were already a familiar sight by the mid-18th century, making Liverpool home to Britain’s — and perhaps Europe’s — first Chinatown. However, Chinese sailors employed by the East India Company were more ‘observable’ in East London’s docklands from the late 19th to early 20th century. By the late 1910s, Pennyfields had fewer than 200 Chinese residents. Many saw Chinatown as a temporary stopover before moving to more permanent homes elsewhere (London Museum, n.d.). To claim that a hidden devilized force there was powerful enough to threaten the Western world is clearly a stretch. The University of London historian Virginia Berridge’s research shows that Chinese living in Limehouse were among London’s most law-abiding minorities (Adrian, 1998). An illustration from the Illustrated London News published on 10 November 1920 vividly portrays a typical Chinese restaurant. Among the customers were sailors, stokers, students, clerks and stewards, with a caption noting the place was “very clean” — far from the sordid opium-gambling-brothel stereotype. Could the academic and professional journalists’ depictions be closer to the historical truth?

Not all novelists intentionally vilified Chinatown or the Chinese. Thomas Burke, a contemporary of Rohmer, disapproved of Rohmer’s racism. His Limehouse Nights: Tales of Chinatown depicted romances between Chinese men and white women. Unfortunately, in the disorderly cultural climate of Edwardian Britain, the public fixated on Chinatown’s ‘exotic’ lifestyle and opium dens (Witchard, 2007), rather than fairly acknowledging that opium dens’ main clientele were locals, and the majority of Chinatown’s businesses were laundries, grocery stores, and small restaurants — partly because London authorities imposed heavy restrictions on Chinese opening other types of shops.

The exaggerated portrayals in mass culture harmed Chinese people’s real lives. In the 1930s, the renowned journalist Xiao Qian, teaching at the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London, lamented: ‘It’s hard to find a barber willing to cut an Oriental’s hair, and renting a flat is almost impossible’ (Witchard, 2012). Jiang Yi, another well-known Chinese intellectual in Britain in the 1930s, recalled with deeper melancholy: ‘Some of us kept our distance in a dull way; some refused to mingle because they would be asked awkward questions based on popular books and films about China’ (安妮・維查德, n.d.). No wonder Anne Witchard of the University of Westminster described the Chinese at the time as living under hostility and social exclusion. Chinese hard work is supposedly a virtue but paradoxically often brought London locals’ resentment. In 1909, anti-Chinese riots by British sailors broke out in London to stop Chinese from signing contracts with shipping companies because they accepted low wages — reportedly lower than half that of British sailors. Police had to escort Chinese workers back to Chinatown, and similar incidents continued to occur even after the First World War.

While Burke’s tales of Chinese–white romances may have been fictional, the oral history of Connie Hoe, preserved in the London Museum and BBC archives (BBC, n.d.), offers some comfort for those interested in the lives of old Chinatown’s Chinese residents. Born in 1922 to a Chinese father and English mother, Connie was orphaned young — her father left for Hong Kong when she was eight and never returned, and her mother died soon after. A kind neighbour raised her. In Connie’s memories, Chinatown, though one of London’s poorest districts, had a warm community spirit. Children played freely in the streets; at dinnertime, they could wander into any neighbour’s home for a meal. Everyone knew one another and helped each other out. Community organisations assisted newcomers in settling in while connecting to Chinese culture. One notable example was the Chung Hwa School, founded in Pennyfields in 1934 by Irene Ho, daughter of Hong Kong tycoon Sir Robert Ho Tung. Ho grew up in Hong Kong, graduated from the University of London, and — perhaps because of her Hong Kong background — the school, despite being in a mainly Shanghainese area, taught in Cantonese (Topfoto, 1947).

London’s old Chinatown began to decline during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was further devastated by the Nazi Blitz during the Second World War. The rise of the new Chinatown in Soho in the 1960s marked a new chapter for Chinese culture in London.

Thanks go to Mr Li Hin Wah, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Chu Hai College of Higher Education, for offering personal photographic works used as illustrations in this essay.