JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Second Chinatown arch to be erected Tuesday

by

Charles Kong Soo
2086 days ago
20191027

The Chi­na­town arch at the cor­ner of Park Street, Port-of-Spain, is now an un­mis­tak­able land­mark and is recog­nis­able from a dis­tance.

The sec­ond Chi­na­town arch is sched­uled to be erect­ed on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day.

But the first struc­ture has had a po­lar­is­ing ef­fect on cit­i­zens, busi­ness­men, ven­dors and passers-by alike, some with xeno­pho­bic com­ments and those who care for its con­struc­tion.

Guardian Me­dia did some re­search and took a look at the his­to­ry of Chi­nese in the cap­i­tal city.

The Chi­nese are not new­com­ers to the coun­try or Char­lotte Street. They have been in T&T for 213 years, the first ship­ment of 192 Chi­nese im­mi­grants ar­rived on a ship named For­ti­tude on Oc­to­ber 12, 1806, 39 years be­fore the Fa­tel Raza­ck ar­rived in Trinidad bring­ing with it the first In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers from a port in Cal­cut­ta, on May 30, 1845.

There were Chi­nese mer­chants on Char­lotte Street since the 19th cen­tu­ry.

John Lee Lum, a pi­o­neer in the lo­cal oil in­dus­try came to Trinidad in 1885 and set up a pro­vi­sion shop on Char­lotte Street. It was a pros­per­ous en­ter­prise since there was a boom in the price of co­coa and he trad­ed pro­vi­sions for dried co­coa beans which were then ex­port­ed.

Hum­ming Bird medal re­cip­i­ent Carlisle Chang, who de­signed the na­tion’s coat of arms and na­tion­al flag, his works of sculp­ture, ‘Con­quer­abia’, is out­side the Port-of-Spain City Hall, and the in­her­ent No­bil­i­ty of Man was lo­cat­ed at the Pi­ar­co Air­port but was de­mol­ished dur­ing the air­port’s ex­pan­sion.

Willi Chen’s “So­lar Mari­no­ra­ma” mur­al is on dis­play at the Cen­tral Bank.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the arch, sev­er­al Chi­nese work­ers from the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group were back­fill­ing the base of the columns with con­crete and they were done in less than an hour.

Some cit­i­zens made their feel­ings known about the arch and what it rep­re­sents.

A man de­scrib­ing him­self as a “passer­by civ­il en­gi­neer” said, “Peo­ple are afraid of change, they want de­vel­op­ment with­out change. There was an up­roar over the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, now every­one wants to be part of it and the wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment. It is some­thing in­evitable and will im­prove the lives of cit­i­zens one way or an­oth­er.”

He­len Houl­der said, “It’s long over­due. I know when Ling Nam was one of the best Chi­nese restau­rants on Char­lotte Street. A lot of peo­ple don’t know the his­to­ry that al­most the whole of Char­lotte Street was owned by Chi­nese.”

A fe­male ven­dor added, “Whole day Fri­day no one was pleased with it. There were more neg­a­tive re­spons­es than pos­i­tive. Some peo­ple said they had no in­put in the mat­ter, they said they felt they were be­ing pushed out of ei­ther their her­itage or the coun­try.”

A male ven­dor said “I like the sign, it’s very good but I want the au­thor­i­ties to com­pen­sate me for my rent Thurs­day and Fri­day when they locked off the road and I couldn’t sell. They didn’t even in­form the busi­ness­men. The Chi­nese give them 200 bikes, now they’re ow­ing the Chi­nese.”

Busi­ness­man Ay­oub Kabli said, “I like it. It’s very nice for the city. Every ma­jor city in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca has a Chi­na­town. It will def­i­nite­ly gen­er­ate an in­ter­est but they must solve the ven­dor prob­lem, reg­u­late it, bring or­der to the city; it’s chaos with the ob­struc­tion in front of busi­ness­es. The arch is a very, very good idea, it’s part of the cul­ture. You will get the ob­vi­ous stereo­types; some peo­ple are ill-in­formed to a cer­tain point, I would say ig­no­rance.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored