Kolkata and China

Abstract

The articles and book reviews included in this issue of China Report resulted from symposiums held in New York and Kolkata in 2006–07.1 The theme of these symposiums was the Chinese Indian community in Kolkata and featured Rafeeq Ellias's moving documentary on the Chinese Indians called The Legend of Fat Mama. Two issues were evident to the participants and audiences of these symposiums. First, very few people knew about the history and experiences of the Chinese community in India. Second, although exchanges between Kolkata, which was named the capital of British India in 1772, and China seem to have started in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and flourished during nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, little attempt has been made to study these interactions. This issue is the first step in redressing some of these deficiencies. Only two aspects related to the ‘unexplored’ links between Kolkata and China are highlighted in this collection. The first three articles and the two book reviews focus on the Chinese Indian community in Kolkata. The fourth and fifth articles examine the travelogues of Bengalis who visited China during the first half of the twentieth century.