第八位中國商人與消失嘅海員

Dual language edition (Cantonese/English 粵文/英文) of a biographical fiction relating the life of a Cantonese immigrant in the UK (1911-1963) and the story of the forced repatriation of Chinese seamen 1945-1946 from the UK to China based on Home Office archives. Chan Chin Lee, a ‘Chinese merchant’, left Canton in the early 1910s for the United Kingdom. Having traversed the anti-Chinese racism of 1920s and 1930s Britain, during World War Two he would open a café-cum-gambling house frequented by Chinese sailors. Counting on the seamen’s patriotism, he collected funds through the gambling house to support the anti-Japanese war effort back in China. In 1945–1946, a combined operation of the then Labour government, the Home Office, the police force and a shipping company sought to forcefully repatriate all Chinese seamen from the UK. This anti-Chinese action was concealed for over half a century. Based on personal memories of his grandfather Chan Chin Lee and relying on government documents relating to the repatriation, Gregory Lee raises provocative questions in this biographical novella about the long-neglected history of the diasporic Chinese in the UK.