endures forever

Khaled Diab calls for remembrance to extend beyond the frontiers of Europe. As is the way of these things, he forgets something himself.

France has rediscovered 140,000 forgotten Chinese labourers who helped win World War One for the Allies by clearing mines, repairing roads, unloading ships, but whose contribution went unsung for decades.

Ten thousand never went home. Their remains lie in 30 French graveyards, each headstone marked in Chinese characters, silent witnesses to a shamefully neglected sacrifice.

Between 1915 and 1916, with the conflict at its height between the Allies and the Central Powers Germany and Austro-Hungary, the British recruited more than 100,000 Chinese and their French allies some 38,000, and shipped them to the western front as desperately needed labour to relieve an acute manpower shortage.

Aged between 20 and 35 and hailing from the south northeastern Chinese provinces of Hebei, Jiangsu and particularly Shandong, they served as labour in the rear echelons or helped build munitions depots, repair railways and roads, and unloaded ships at Allied ports.

Here are some eminently predictable contemporary accounts. After the war was over, the Chinese Labour Corps also recovered the bodies of the dead and cleared minefields. Two thousand of those in British service died, 800 of whom are buried at Noyelles-sur-Mer. Their tombstones usually bear the rubric “a good reputation endures forever.”

They were recruited with the permission of the Chinese government, which hoped to recover German possessions in China, notably Qingdao. Instead, these were given to the Japanese, an act which confirmed the legitimacy of Japan’s ongoing landgrab on the Chinese mainland.

A lot of the men in French service stayed on in Paris, where some fell under the influence of the French communists, inspiring later travelers from China in the same direction – one notable example being a certain Deng Xiaoping. Chiang Kai-shek later adopted German military advisers. Otto Braun served as the Comintern’s representative with the Communists. For a while the sinified version of Mauser was a synonym for gun. But now the most prominent sign of enduring German historical influence in China is Qingdao beer. So raise a glass to An Lung-hsin and his comrades.

Comments

[ajay]

Meanwhile, the European wars are often taken, well, not entirely seriously in the colonies and former colonies - witness the almost unbelievable "Final Solution" advertising campaign launched by
ATV in Hong Kong on Remembrance Sunday 1994.

http://adage.com/archive-date?date=1994-11-21

[Sujan Patricia]

180,000 Chinese peasants were hired by the Allied Forces in WW1 as laborers in the war effort. Most of them had no idea-not a clue-where England, Germany or France was, they didn't know what they were being hired to do, and didn't even know what a war was!