easy2chinese.com

 Similar in many respects to London’s original Chinatown in its origins and the inter-marriage between local women and Chinese men, Liverpool’s Chinatown never had the glamour of that of the nation’s capital - London.

At the beginning of World War Two, however, there were 20,000 Chinese seamen based in the city and London’s Chinatown was reduced to insignificance. Hundreds of Chinese sailors settled down with local women and in the war years the city’s Eurasian population grew rapidly. By the end of the conflict it numbered around 1,000. With the end of the War the men were forcibly repatriated leaving behind them their wives and their children. Few were ever to see their families again. see: [1]

With the Communist victory in China 1949, men were no longer recruited from the Mainland. Rather they came from Hong Kong and Singapore. Some did settle and marry local women but Liverpool’s Chinese or rather Eurasian population had reached its peak and was in decline as they married into the local community.

In the late 1950s a new group of Chinese began to arrive in significant numbers from Hong Kong’s New Territories. For the first time Liverpool and London had Chinese Chinatowns. Their mixed race past became forgotten.