First ever UK exhibition on the Great War’s Chinese Labour Corps: Durham University 7th April to 24th September.

I'm afraid I've missed the 7th April launch date for the Chinese Labour Corps Memorial Campaign exhibition but it runs until 24th September 2017. Nearly 100,000 Chinese men served on the European battlefields of World War I doing the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs, clearing mines and dead bodies, and transporting explosives for the allied effort and yet they remain unrecognised. Here's the score ...

Chinese Labour Corps Memorial Campaign — Remembering the 96,000 Chinese volunteers of the First World War

Major new exhibition seeks to right an historic wrong and increase public awareness of the contributions made by Chinese volunteers to the campaigns in France and Flanders.

“Smiling for the camera”. WJ Hawkings Collection, courtesy of John de Lucy.

• Durham University’s Oriental Museum stages UK’s first ever exhibition on the Great War’s Chinese Labour Corps.
• Draws on official and private collections - including diaries; rare photographs; trench art; medals; newspapers; ephemera; and original equipment.
• Recently rediscovered WJ Hawkings Photographic Collection on public display for first time.
• Exhibition challenges the traditional narrative of strained relationships between British Officers and their Chinese charges.

The Ensuring We Remember Campaign has had the pleasure of working with Durham University’s Oriental Museum for almost three years, supporting the museum to stage a major new exhibition, A Good Reputation Endures Forever: The Chinese Labour Corps on the Western Front, opening on 7th April. It explores the role of the thousands of Chinese who risked their lives alongside the British armed forces during the First World War.

During the First World War 96,000 Chinese men volunteered to work for Britain as part of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC). Although officially non-combatant, the CLC served on the Western Front and was commanded by British army officers and NCOs. They undertook essential and often dangerous work behind the lines on the Western Front and many lost their lives, whilst others won awards for courage.

Exhibition Curator, Dr Craig Barclay, said: “The exhibition’s title - A Good Reputation Endures Forever - recalls one of the inscriptions to be found on the gravestones of the men of the CLC who now rest beneath Flanders Fields.”

“Although there has been a considerable rise in interest in the story of the CLC in China, there remains little awareness in the West of the contribution of China during World War I. Since 2010, a small number of academic publications have explored the lives of the men of the CLC. No exhibition devoted to the subject has ever been staged in Britain however and the members of the CLC have rightly been described as the 'forgotten of the forgotten'.”

Drawing on official and private collections - including diaries; rare photographs; trench art; medals; newspapers; ephemera; and original equipment - this exhibition seeks to right an historic wrong and increase public awareness of the contributions made by these Chinese volunteers to the campaigns in France and Flanders.

Steve Lau, Chair of the Ensuring We Remember Campaign, observed: “This is a truly historic exhibition, not only because it is the first such exhibition in the UK, but also because the numerous personal items of British Officers on display, in many ways, challenge the traditional narrative of strained relationships between British Officers and their Chinese charges.”

A large selection of the WJ Hawkings Photographic Collection, rediscovered in 2014 by his grandson, John De Lucy, will be publically displayed for the first time. Unlike the set piece propaganda photographs taken by official photographers, the WJ Hawkings Collection gives a unique insight into the day-to-day lives of the Chinese Labour Corps; many of the photographs are believed to be unique in the subject matter they cover, including the only known extant photographs of the burial of a member f the Chinese Labour Corps.

A Good Reputation Endures Forever opens to the public on Friday 7th April 2017 and runs until 24th September. For more details visit the museum website: www.dur.ac.uk/oriental.museum

The Oriental Museum is open Monday - Friday, 10am - 5pm and Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays, 12pm - 5pm. Entry to the museum is £1.50 for adults, 75p for children (five-16) and Over 60s, and free for children under five and students.

ensuringweremember.org.uk

Chinese Labour Corps, the forgotten army: my column for the South China Morning Post

MEMBERS OF THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS CARRYOUT RIVETING WORK AT THE TANK CORPS CENTRAL WORKSHOPS, IN FRANCE, DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR.

Anna Chen's South China Morning Post magazine City Scope column on the China Labour Corps memorial campaign

31st August 2014

This month, the world commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. Notably absent in the British ceremonies was any mention of the 140,000 or more Chinese workers, including 96,000 in the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC), who provided the support system for frontline Allied troops. Thousands of these men died in service.

The Chinese did the heavy support work - digging trenches, hauling ammunition and supplies, and retrieving bodies. Yet none of Britain's 43,000 first world war memorials acknowledge the participation of the CLC, despite the battlefields of France and Belgium being littered with the remains of these men.

Redress could be in sight, however. August saw the launch of a three-year British campaign, Ensuring We Remember, aimed at establishing a permanent memorial to the Chinese who died in the war.

Steve Lau, of the Chinese In Britain Forum, one of the organisations behind the campaign, is hopeful that change is coming. His invitation to the National Service of Commemoration at Glasgow Cathedral on August 4 "was probably the first time the CLC have been recognised by a British government since the war".

"There were thousands of Chinese who worked in Britain during the war," Lau says. "At least 500 worked in munitions factories in Birmingham, and a further 1,500 are recorded as assisting in the building of various aerodromes.

"This is a narrative of the Home Front nobody wants to know about."

Its historical significance has also been missed. The mix of Chinese workers and intellectuals on the European battlefield was a catalyst for change.

In 1937, Gu Xingqing published an account of his time as a CLC interpreter in Europe and described the mixture of workers and intellectuals as a political awakening. The ideals formed during this conflict were carried back home and contributed to China's political landscape in the 20th century.

"These men were failed by everyone. Their contribution to China's journey into the modern world should be recognised and commemorated," says Lau.

"We have planned a three-year programme of grass-roots community engagement to be supported by a one-year national lecture tour aimed at the British establishment.

"Ultimately, we want a permanent memorial fitting to the men who served in the war effort."

Ensuring We Remember campaign:
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New memorial commemorates World War I Chinese Labour Corps

The Chinese in Britain Forum
1st August 2014
Steve Lau writes:

Ensuring We Remember the men of the Chinese Labour Corps

Britain recruited 96,000 Chinese workers during the First World War who worked on everything from road building to recovering the dead. After the war the contribution of these men was simply forgotten, and none of Britain’s 43,000 First World War memorials commemorates them. The Chinese community in Britain are about to change all this.

After the crushing casualties of the first days of the Somme both the French and British realised that the war was going to be a protracted one, and be as much about maintaining numbers on the battlefield as it would anything else. Both Britain and France turned to China for the solution, jointly recruiting about 140,000 Chinese labourers that in turn would release their own men to fight. Told that they would not be placed anywhere near the fighting, Britain did in fact send almost all her recruits to the Western Front, digging trenches, building roads, railways lines, unloading ships and trains. About 1,000 maintained tanks in the tank workshops. After the war they were retained to fill in trenches, clear the battlefields of live ordnance, exhume the dead and rebury them in the new Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries.

“It is sadly ironic that they undertook the most appalling tasks to help create the iconic places of remembrance that the Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries have become, and yet they themselves have been forgotten.” Said Steven Lau, Chair of the Chinese in Britain Forum,  “We believe our nation’s promise, never to forget, applies to them, as to any other.”

The Ensuring We Remember campaign launches on the 14th August 2014, the 97th anniversary of China declaring War on Germany. With the Chinese in Britain Forum of as the Lead Body, the campaign begins with seven Strategic Partners representing the largest ever coalition of Chinese community organisations, and representing the broadest cross section of the Chinese community. The aim is to unveil a national memorial to the Chinese Labour Corps on 14th August 2017 – the centenary of China joining the war as an ally.

Steve Lau,
Chair, The Chinese in Britain Forum