Sino-Seychellois are overseas Chinese who reside in

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, ...

. In 1999, their population was estimated at 1,000 individuals, making them one of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

's smaller Chinese communities.

History

The first Chinese immigrants to Seychelles arrived from Mauritius in 1886. Until around 1940, it was common for a Sino-Mauritian to bring his relatives over from China to Mauritius for a period of apprenticeship in his business; after they had gained sufficient familiarity with commercial practises and life in a colonial society, he would send them onwards with letters of introduction, lending them his own capital to start up businesses in neighbouring regions, including Seychelles. Like in other overseas Chinese communities, rivalry between

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

- and

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

-speakers was a common feature of their social life. The two separate groups lived in different areas and even refused to marry each other, instead preferring to marry local women of African descent. They started out working on

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). Pollination is required to make the p ...

plantations, but quickly turned to shopkeeping, transport, and fishing.

Language, education, and culture

In 1945, Richard Man-Cham, the father of future Prime Minister James Mancham, requested government permission to open a Chinese school. The government responded coldly to the idea. Formal Chinese language education would not be established in Seychelles until 2007, when the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

sent a teacher to work with the adult and distance education department of Seychelles' Ministry of Education. Today, most Sino-Seychellois do not speak Chinese, though they may understand it. Sino-Seychellois are largely Christian. There are only two Buddhist

pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...

s in the Seychelles, both on Mahé.

Notable individuals

*Sir James Mancham, descendant of a Chinese immigrant grandfather *Anglican Archbishop French Chang-Him, descendant of a Chinese father * Li Huarong, Deputy Minister

References

Notes

Sources