The Barbados Museum & Historical Society in partnership with the Chinese community in Barbados is designing and developing a digital exhibition which chronicles the experience of Chinese people in Barbados and the relationship which has developed between the two nations.
His Excellency Yan Xiusheng, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Barbados visited the Museum and made a generous contribution on behalf of the Chinese Embassy in support of the project.
While visiting the Museum Ambassador Yan also took the time to view the Road to Republic: Exploring 400 years of a Political Experiment exhibition and was presented with the latest copy of the Journal of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society.
From Beijing to Bridgetown’s main concept and emphasis will be on the relationship between Barbados and China through community stories. While there are many secondary themes within the exhibition, the main highlight will be the workplace and the home, as these would be seen as the main areas of interaction between both communities.
The intention is to recreate a space that can feel uniquely Chinese Caribbean utilising different symbols and items that would represent home and work life for the Chinese communities in Barbados. It is proposed that a sample of stories that will be featured in a physical exhibition be created within one webpage on a digital platform.
Chinese-Barbadians make up a small percentage of the country’s Asian population, most of whom arrived during World War II from Canton in modern-day Guangzhou. Ambassador Yan indicated during his visit and presentation that the support was another step towards “working together to foster a community with shared future for mankind” as our people would be becoming more “connected, interconnected together for a better future” and noted that he was looking forward to the digital content form the local Chinese community which he was sure would be very interesting.
In the wider Anglophone Caribbean, it is generally considered that Han ethnic communities migrated to Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago from as early as the beginning of the 1800s, but the largest migration period was between the 1850s-1880s as part of indentured labour schemes on post-emancipation plantation sites.
Given the relative invisibility of Chinese communities in the perception of Barbadian (and wider Caribbean) cultural identity, there is a desire from organisations such as the Barbados-Chinese Association to share their stories of migration and identity. An exhibition focused on digital media such as video oral histories, has the potential to showcase the diversity and impact of Chinese-Caribbean identity, and could be easily transportable across the region and to China.
Director Alissandra Cummins in response to Ambassador Yan’s comments acknowledged that the support of the embassy over the years has been much appreciated and that the museum was very excited to be a part of the project which would “tell the story of the Chinese migrants in Barbados which differed from the typical migration path of Chinese persons in the Caribbean.”
Updates about the progress of the “From Beijing to Bridgetown” project will be featured on the Museum’s social media, thus persons interested can follow @BarbadosMuseum on its social media platforms. In addition, persons wishing to support the project can email finance@barbmuse.org.bb with Support for Beijing to Bridgetown in the subject line of the mail. (PR)
