Cuba, an island country located in the northern Caribbean Sea and the western Indian Ocean, has "Tang people". They are both "immigrants" and "remnants" of the upheaval. Yet their stories are often forgotten or reduced to a tragic legend. With the passage of time and the elimination of memory, their identity and identity have become ambiguous. Will they be able to integrate into their new home, and what role does the past play in their hearts? Under the lens and brushstrokes of photographer Liu Bozhi, all this seems to have a different meaning.
The following is an excerpt from the book Cuban Tang and published with permission from the publisher.
Cuban Tang Dynasty by Liu Bozhi Edition: Nanjing University Press December 2022
"You don't see Qinghai head, and no one has collected the white bones in ancient times. The new ghosts are annoyed and the old ghosts are crying, and the rainy and wet days are chirping! ”
Originally, Du Fu's "Military Carriage Line" was for me the only two "homework" left in my memory in the middle school textbook, and since Huang Weixiong took me to Dasagua Zhonghuayi Mountain and saw the pile of bones, these two poems have always played automatically in my ears. Since then, every time I go to Cuba, it seems that it has become a habit of mine to worship in cemeteries.
In the Castro Grave National Cemetery of Santiago de Cuba, there is a Chinese man whose Spanish name is José Tolón, and there is no Chinese name on the tombstone. However, José Tolón should be remembered in history if he lived in this era, as Captain Lai Hua, one of the two Chinese who enjoyed the right to be a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Cuba!
Don Munby
Earlier, I talked about the hard labor of indentured Chinese laborers on plantations. The treatment suffered by indentured Chinese workers during the contract period is tantamount to black slaves, and after the expiration of the first eight-year contract period, they rarely succeed in becoming free, and most of them enter the second eight-year period in a pile of abduction, coercion and inducement, during which countless people died of punishment, abuse, disease and overwork. These brutal exploitations amassed feelings of resistance among the Chinese in Cuba. As described in the book "History of Chinese and Overseas Chinese in the Americas", due to the long-term development of Cuba's local economy in the 60s of the 19th century, a white aristocratic class that wanted to get rid of Spanish colonial rule was gradually formed, which was divided into three factions: one was the slave owners with ties to the southern United States, hoping to secede from Spain and annex to the United States, and this faction was devastated after the Civil War with the defeat of slave owners in the southern United States; The second faction, which hopes to achieve equal rights through reforms to win the suzerainty to remove trade restrictions and other means, failed after being fooled by the suzerainty's farce, including the establishment of an "investigation committee" and the Qing Prime Minister Yamen sent Chen Lanbin to visit Cuba, revealing that indentured Chinese laborers were "sold into slavery... Abuse... The report prompted the Qing government to abolish the domestic coolie trade, but failed to liberate the part of Chinese workers who were still in the contract period, and failed to solve Cuba's social problems at that time; The third faction, which advocated the abolition of slavery by revolutionary means and the struggle for complete independence, was mainly distributed in the eastern regions where Spanish rule was weak, and both black slaves and Chinese workers pinned their hopes on the independence faction.
From 1868 to 1878, the independence faction launched the first revolutionary war, and the rebels called themselves Mambi, and the Chinese workers responded positively, participated bravely, and achieved outstanding combat achievements. The war lasted ten years, after a group of compromisers signed the Pacto del Zanjón Agreement with the Spanish government in February 1878. However, there were still some uncompromising and anti-colonial rule, and the main force of the guerrilla fighting was Chinese laborers, who preferred to die on the battlefield rather than surrender, mainly in the three eastern provinces, known in Cuban history as the "Little War" (Guerra Chiquita, 1879-1880). The Second War of Liberation of Cuba was from 1895 to 1898, and Chinese workers, businessmen and overseas Chinese immediately responded. Among the most famous Tang Manby are more than 30 overseas Chinese fighters headed by Captain Lai Wa, the first theater troupe of the Cuban Liberation Army in Oriente Province.
Until the 90s of the 20th century, old Cubans could still count the names of 17 overseas Chinese heroes. "Irhua of Oriente, as Cubans call him, Captain José Tolón, and Captain José Bú of Las Villas, are two of the most famous. They were veterans of the insurrectionary army who participated in the First War of Liberation and who remained at the forefront of the struggle during the 30-year war of liberation in Cuba (1868-1898), devoting their lives to the war of liberation of Cuba without reservation. Thus, after Cuba's independence, the Cuban people gave them high honour. According to article 65 of the Cuban Constitution of 1901, although they were born in China, they were associated with the commander-in-chief of the Cuban Liberation Army, M. Smith, despite their outstanding service in the Cuban Liberation War. Like General Gomez, he has the right to be a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Cuba. ”
About Lai Hua's profile.
After the war, Lai Hua did not receive the army's allowance expenses, had no career of his own, had no political connections, and was not a member of the Hongmen. Even on the monument to General M. Gomez, I don't see any mention of the Chinese volunteers. I interviewed his descendant, Lai Hua's granddaughter Maria Wong, who gave me a report on Lai Hua's death, which featured his portrait and a photo of his two daughters, and wrote:
"Mr. Lai Hua: He participated in the Cuban War of Independence and made great contributions. After Cuba's independence, Lai Jun was not paid money, and the natives sang in unison. Lai Jun died in 1932, Mrs. Lai is still alive, two male sons and four female sons, both male and female sons can abide by the legacy, be loyal and peaceful, and concentrate on studying, and have won graduation honors, which is indeed the light of overseas Chinese in ancient China. ”
Lai Hua, whose ancestral home is Huili Heli, Taishan, Guangdong, and his wife is a Cuban-born Chinese, mixed-race named Eleuteria. In July 2009, I interviewed one of his daughters, Urbana Tolon Joa Villalon. Unfortunately, she was too old at the time to tell us anything about her father's homeland in China. When I visited again in 2017, I interviewed Lai Meimei's daughter, Maria Wong, who was so excited that she didn't pause. She said Mr. Lai, who probably came to Cuba before the age of 20, married Eleuteria and lived in a small town near Santiago because he heard about the War of Independence and went to participate. After the war, Lai Hua did not accept the general's offer and did not carry out other work because he died of a sudden illness. After her death, his wife did not remarry for the rest of her life. Although she said a lot about her grandfather, the truth was hazy. When did Lai Hua come to Cuba? What year is it? I heard that he was very young when he died, but it is not clear how old he was. For example, Maria Wong said that Lai Hua was only 42 years old when he died, and although it is not known how old Lai Hua participated in the War of Independence, it is clear that the other protagonists in this book, Wu Diyun and Garcia, clearly record the war in which Lai Hua crushed the Spanish army of 400 men in the province of Oriente in 1895,17 years after Lai Hua died in 1932, even for the meritorious captain, it is too far-fetched to say that he will fight a decisive battle at the age of 4.
Lai Meimei's daughter, Maria Wong.
Lai Hua was supposed to have married relatively early and had six children, some of whom had died by the time I visited his descendants. When I mentioned that Lai Hua's other daughter went to the United States, Maria said that those relatives who went to the United States were separated from their Cuban relatives, and the relationship was no longer close, and she did not know about that person.
After the famous general
When I interviewed Lai Meimei in 2009, she lived in a large house that her husband bought for 14,000 pesos. Lai Meimei became a famous general and married Fransico Wong, who had traveled alone from Guangdong to Cuba. When we did the interview, she was very old, had a vague memory, slurred language, and was constantly chanting her husband's name. Her husband came to Cuba in his 20s and met her at the grocery store. She was walking in the wine cellar, and Huang Tingyan saw her and immediately fell in love. Later, Huang Tingyan bought a shop and married her. The husband is handsome and rich, her angel, like gold, is kind and helpful to her. You can hear that she misses her husband very much and is very proud of him. "He was a very good businessman, and he sold goods to many places." As she spoke, she walked to the shrine platform at home, on which there were statues of various gods such as the Cuban African god, Saint Barbara, and Bodhisattva, as well as the portraits of her grandmother, her husband Huang Tingyan, and her son Huang Haiming, but there was no statue of Guan Gong, and no portrait of Guan Gong was seen anywhere else in the home. She pointed to the photo of her husband on the shrine and said, "He is not only handsome, but also has a good heart." We have been married for 45 years and have two sons and a daughter. ”
Maria was also present. She told me that Huang Tingyan was a good father. When he first arrived in Cuba, he washed dishes in restaurants and worked long hours every day. The Chinese have a good reputation in Cuba and are very hardworking; And Cubans always drink and are lazy. The Chinese never steal, are diligent and hardworking, even if they do business, they are never short of two pounds; And many Cubans love to steal and get something for nothing. She had never seen a Chinese go to jail in her life. Huang never taught Maria to say Chinese because he works far from home and cannot go home every day. She remembers that her father almost bought a lottery ticket, saying that if he won, he would take all his family back to China! Maria remembered the incident all the time, crying, "I almost went back to China." She told me that she loved her father more than her mother since she was a child, and that her father gave her a good education and was a role model. In Cuba, she said, daughters mostly love their fathers more. "When my dad died, I didn't even have the courage to attend his funeral." Then she went anyway, and someone suggested she get a bone back. She loved her father and loved his soul.
The altar in Lai Meimei's home.
Maria took me around Lai Meimei's home to shoot, and there was also a portrait of Huang Tingyan's favorite female star in the room, which has been hanging for more than 50 years. There are also some randomly stacked tires, which I heard Maria's husband loves. There were many bone boxes in the room, and she pointed to each box and told me that these were those of her father, brother and husband. I casually asked her: "Is your husband a good husband"? She replied yes. Then she talked about her husband's gambling addiction, sometimes not returning for three days at the casino, and she and her children were home alone. Despite this, she still trusted him and thought that as long as she didn't go to other women. "Only death can separate us." She looked at me and said firmly.
Captain Lai Hua's grave.
The even more amazing object in this room was the three bones of cotton in a small box, which turned out to be Huang Tingyan's palm bone! Maria said that once her father fell off a horse, broke his arm and had to undergo surgery to join the bone with metal inside. After her father died, she kept her father's palm bones, and the way she cherished her father was really very special!
Captain Lai Hua
There is a monument in Havana that reads: "In the Cuban War of Independence, not a single Chinese Cuba was a deserter and not a single Chinese Cuban was a traitor." "I think this is what Lai Hua's generation of Tang people bought with their own blood and lives, even if they don't get more records, even future generations are difficult to say, but as long as there are Tang people like me who have passed by and interviewed, they have the responsibility to let their deeds circulate." Together with Captain Lai Hua's great-grandson, I brought the gifts I had brought from Guangdong - sausages, tangerine plum, white flower oil, etc. - to the National Cemetery of Santiago de Cuba and paid homage to him. Their families are buried here.
In the end, I offered $50 and asked his great-grandson to engrave Chinese name on the tombstone, Lai Hua.
Author: Liu Bozhi
Editor: Yuan Chunxi
Proofreader: Chen Diyan