Doi Moi<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJamaica was no different in pursuing what the previous prime minister termed a \u201cmorally bankrupt way of life\u201d in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chinese came back after the election of a new government in 1980 who created the Free Zone which brought Chinese workers into Jamaica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It helped that Jamaica had special trade terms with the United States under the Caribbean Basin Initiative in 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of garment companies, based in Hong Kong, would send their managers and skilled workers to Jamaica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinese staff primarily came from mainland China provinces such as Sichuan, Jiangsu and Lanzhou.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey would rent a house and they will have all of these Chinese packed in the house and in the morning they\u2019ll have a bus to truck them to the factory and in the evening they\u2019ll send them back and they\u2019ll use the same bus to take them shopping on a Saturday or Sunday. They\u2019re tightly monitored,\u201d Dalton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More importantly, this marked the first time Chinese migration to Jamaica was not primarily Hakka, unlike the shiploads of Hakka people that came in the 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those favourable trade terms with the United States ended with the passing of NAFTA, which caused manufacturing to go to Mexico and a lot of workers returned to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some remained and started what Dalton called the \u201cthird wave\u201d of Chinese migration to Jamaica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cycle begins where these remainers (not a Brexit pun) who have established their homes, businesses and work in Jamaica brought their families from their villages from China to Jamaica to join their businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJamaica is very much where my heart is\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s talk about Dalton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dalton was born in Hong Kong and spent 12 years there before moving to Jamaica. He considers himself a third-generation Chinese Jamaican. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His grandfather moved to Jamaica in 1918 following his grandfather\u2019s uncle who did very well in Jamaica and started \u201cbandwagon immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou do well, you start to ask your family to come,\u201d he said. This started from immediate family, then extended family, then people from the same village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dalton family members came, worked for the grandfather\u2019s uncle for a while and then started their own businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dalton\u2019s father was born in Jamaica in 1924 and was sent back to China for education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLike most of the Chinese boys \u2026 they were sent back for education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, his father did return to Jamaica for a while but fell out with Dalton\u2019s grandfather and returned to China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dalton\u2019s father lived through Mao\u2019s China and that was when he migrated to Hong Kong in the late 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1960, Dalton was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 1968, his father took the first steps to return to Jamaica by making an exploratory trip to speak to Dalton\u2019s grandfather\u2019s uncle (the first person in the Yap family to move to Jamaica). His father received a promise that he would receive assistance if he wanted to move to Jamaica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was curious to know why his father would move to Jamaica. Were the opportunities in Jamaica better than in Hong Kong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turns out, there\u2019s a whole host of reasons. His father had no formal qualifications and would have hit a glass ceiling at the cargo department of Pan Am airlines. He also wanted to start a business and saw the opportunity Jamaica presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also pointed to Hong Kong\u2019s return to China in 1997, which was about 30 years in the future at that time. Dalton sarcastically commented that his father was \u201cway ahead of his time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this started a few batches of familial migration in the Yap family. His siblings and mother went first. Then, Dalton arrived in Jamaica in the last batch on Sept. 9, 1972 with a sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJamaica is very much where my heart is. I grew up here, I have a lot of network and I am still with the CBA, and I am very deep in working in the community,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I am very comfortable with what I do here and what I have established here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When things are going bad, we become scapegoats,” says Chinese Jamaican Dalton Yap in an interview about growing up in Jamaica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}