Chinese who helped allies in first world war commemorated in Britain
Ceremony held for five members of the 100,000-strong Chinese Labour Corps, who grew food, built roads and dug trenches during the conflict
One hundred years after they died, five Chinese labourers who went to Europe to serve on the battlefields of the first world war were given a military send off in the northern English city of Liverpool on Friday.
A representative of Queen Elizabeth paid tribute to the men, who all died of contagious diseases in Liverpool hospitals, and to the rest of the 100,000-strong Chinese Labour Corps (CLC), as part of Britain’s centenary commemorations of the war.
The CLC was largely made up of peasants from Shandong, mainly recruited in 1917 – a year before the war ended – to reinforce the British and French army who lost thousands of troops.
Hoping to make some money, they crossed the Pacific on overcrowded ships, were transported secretly across Canada and then the Atlantic to avoid German gunboats in the Mediterranean.
Between April and May that year, 27 ships arrived in Liverpool carrying 65,000 Chinese labourers.
Their jobs included digging trenches, building hospitals and growing food for the troops fighting in Belgium and France the Chinese workers did not stay in the city long. They were quickly moved to the coastal town of Folkestone where they then set sail across the English Channel to the killing fields of France and Belgium.
“The Chinese labourers shall not remain forgotten,” said Mark Blundell, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of Merseyside at the memorial ceremony. “Theirs was a civilian army which deserves as much respect and recognition as our armies of soldiers.”
Blundell said his grandfather was a junior officer in the first world war and organised cabbage planting using Chinese labour.