Back in time: The Chinese community in Kolkata creating an identity with food

Years before Chinese as a cuisine became a state-of-the-art presentation for the gastronomes in the city, Kolkata had more than its fair share of introduction to the world of Chinese food in the most authentic manner possible, thanks to the bustling Chinese community residing in Tyangra’s Chinatown area.

Dotted with authentic outlets, both big and small, serving Chinese delicacies, Chinatown is a holy pilgrimage for gourmands craving Chinese that’s both filling and affordable. It was more than 250 years back when the first Chinese traveller, Tong chew, made Kolkata his home, establishing a sugar mill where fellow Chinese settlers started working. They started settling in small numbers in the Tiretti Bazaar area in Central Kolkata, with the numbers swelling post Japanese invasion during World War, famine, and the Chinese communist revolution. The men started working in mills and sold leather products, and the women, especially from Hakka region, took up jobs as house helps or nannies and workers in tanneries.

“Even our previous generations struggled a lot for a living. Instead of rice, they fed porridge to their children,” says Monica Liu, a Hakka Chinese, who now owns restaurants like Tung Nam, Beijing, Kim Ling and more. “It was friends, who were fans of my version of the chilli chicken, who pushed me to open these restaurants. It was not an easy job to sustain in the food business, but my sons and still run it,” adds Liu, who is often referred to as the ‘Don of Chinatown’.

“It was always easy for us to make a livelihood out of feeding people, the reason why our forefathers started this eating house,” says Michael Hsieh, third generation owner of popular eating house, Tung am, located behind Chattawala Gully near Tiretti Bazaar. The place houses around 10 tables, and can be spotted easily during lunch hours, thanks to the long queues outside. “I wouldn’t say that it is purely authentic, because all ingredients aren’t available here, but a fellow Chinese-run condiment and sauce brand, Pou Chong Kim, makes our job a little easier,” Michael says.

We visited Pou Chong Kim too next door, to get a look at their incredible variety of sauces. The 37-year-old Janice Lee now runs this business that started in 1958. Pou Chong also has a restaurant in Kasba, run by Janice’s aunt. “We are the inventors of green chilli sauce, soy sauce, and hakka noodles that you see here, and they are used in Chinese restaurants. With time, we have become more Indian than Chinese. We don’t even speak Mandarin, though can speak my mother tongue, Hakka,” says Janice. We were eager to know from Janice how much the local Chinese community has soaked in the cultural and culinary flavours of Kolkata. “My mom loves shukto, she makes it too. She also makes begun bhaja, dal and even biryani. When we dine outside, we usually go to Bengali restaurants and order in big Bengali thalis,” says Janice.

But both Janice and Walter Chen, the second generation owner of Kafulok, object to typecasting the Chinese community. “Food became an easy reckoner because it was easy to run even from a home kitchen during initial days. But it would be wrong to put out that the community only thrives on the food business here,” says Janice. “You will still find dentists, leathersmith, big laundry houses, carpenters, and salons run by the Chinese. Though the shoe-making business is dwindling, it’s there. But we end up identifying the Chinese with the food they make mainly because we do believe in sitting together and eating with family or friends like any other community,” adds Kafulok’s Walter.

However, the sad part is that the once-thriving Chinese population in the city is now declining with only about 2,000 of them residing here, according to available records.