By Raymond Zhou and Huang Yiming (China Daily)
Farm played crucial role for overseas Chinese forced to flee, Raymond Zhou and Huang Yiming report in Hainan.
That was in the early 1960s when Xinglong was the farm where thousands of overseas Chinese settled down after being driven out of their adopted countries. When the first 756 settlers arrived on Oct 13, 1951, things were even worse.
Today, Xinglong has a population of 25,000 and covers an area of 110 square kilometers. Many of the pioneers have retired or passed away. Du, 71, recently opened an Indonesian restaurant which is managed by his children and attracts busloads of tourists who want a taste of Southeast Asia.
Driving around Xinglong, half way on the south-north expressway on Hainan Island, one gets a perfect picture of a tropical paradise, with wide, clean boulevards and colorful buildings, and of course all kinds of tropical plants that provide economic value or simply visual splendor.
In early 1954, Li Qingquan decided to forgo the relative comfort of metropolitan Guangzhou and volunteered to "go to the place with the most hardship". Unlike Du, he was not deterred by what he saw in Xinglong. Instead, he was determined to make it his home and turn it into a better place.
He had been living in Malaya (now Malaysia) until he was arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison for communist political activities. After serving two years, during which time he says he made "endless trouble for prison authorities", he and dozens of other prisoners of Chinese ethnicity were deported.
"They told me life was so hard in Xinglong that people were dropping like flies. But I insisted on coming here," said Li, 88, who despite his years is still robust and spirited. He chose to work at a brickyard, and a year after arriving was married.
Most of the first to arrive were blue-collar workers from Malaya, and the reasons for their being expelled were mostly ideological subversion. The second wave of 1,400 immigrants was like Du, small proprietors from Indonesia, slightly wealthier and less politically driven. The third surge did not happen until the late 1970s when Vietnam forced out hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese who had been living there for generations. Some 6,000 ended up in Xinglong, although roughly half later left.
"The Chinese word huaqiao, meaning overseas Chinese, is a misnomer when applied here," Du said. "We were huaqiao while we were in Southeast Asia, but as soon as we came back to China we were refugees, or returned huaqiao."
Perhaps for the sake of simplicity, Xinglong is known as a "huaqiao farm". Nationwide, there are 84 such farms, including five in Hainan province. Xinglong is one of the largest and best known.
But what is in a name? Xinglong started as a collective farm and later came under State ownership. For some time it took on the title of a "people's commune" or "People's Liberation Army Production and Construction Corp" to go with political winds. It also fell under various offices of jurisdiction, for the most time supervised by the provincial-level Overseas Chinese Office, and most recently the local government.
"There is a government fund for huaqiao on our farm, which disburses 1 million to 2 million yuan ($158,000 to $315,000) each year," said Chen You, vice-president of Xinglong Huaqiao Farm. "Other than that, we're on our own."
He said the people who arrived from Vietnam also received financial assistance from the United Nations for the first five years.
Like all trailblazers, the first generation suffered the biggest setbacks. But it was not the physical hardship or the material scarcity that struck them the hardest; it was the political upheavals.
"When I was tortured in Malaya, I didn't shed a tear," Li said. "But I couldn't control myself when I was accused of being a Kuomintang spy in the late 1960s."
Having prized himself on being a model worker on the farm, "I believed my name would be cleared", he said. When his father returned to China for a visit in 1970, Li convinced him to stay on so people would realize the whole family had been nothing but unadulterated material for Communism.
Du remembers leaders from the top would also visit. "Liao Chengzhi, who was in charge of overseas Chinese affairs, would have his secretary call the farm to inquire about our living conditions," said the former vice-president of the farm and now president of the Xinglong Indonesian Huaqiao Association.
Legacy
Rubber trees have been a staple enterprise for Xinglong. "The seeds brought back by huaqiao were of superior quality, and together with their technical know-how, the first generation was able to plant high-grade rubber trees and harvest top-quality latex," Chen said.
A rubber tree can yield an average of 240 yuan per year, and Xinglong turns the sap over to a local processor that manages the next link in the manufacturing chain.
Aside from a rubber plantation, the farm thrives on its Chinese fruits, such as lychee and longan. Xinglong coffee also has such a good name there is simply not enough to supply the local market, Du said. "Our old president used to say, 'Xinglong is a good place and we should build it into another Hong Kong'."
If he was referring to tourism, it's already taking shape.
Unlike popular destinations such as Haikou and Sanya, the central part of Hainan Island, including Xinglong, is still relatively underdeveloped, although the travel industry accounts for an increasingly large share of the local economy.
"We're reserving west of the Sun River for agriculture, but east of the river is seeing the sprouting of tourism," Chen said. Part of the reason is the east area used to be hit the hardest by typhoons and other natural disasters. "Bananas planted there were destroyed most years," he added.
The east has hot springs, too. As a matter of fact, Chen doubles as the general manager of Xinglong Hot Spring Hotel, one of dozens of such facilities that offer a total of 6,000 beds and receive an annual 1.2 million visitors.
Integration
Despite suspicion by some veteran staff, the integration into the local administration has been a boon for the farm. Not only are projects of infrastructure more readily funded but squabbles with native residents over land use have been dramatically reduced.
As integration with the local economy goes forward, the line between huaqiao and native farmers is becoming blurred. The first generation has largely retired, and their children have more freedom to choose jobs and locations. Today, there are some 6,000 huaqiao in Xinglong, and their ratio in the population has dropped from a high of 80 to 90 percent to 35 to 40 percent.
"Do you still call it a huaqiao farm if it's not predominantly staffed by huaqiao?" asked Lei Yuanyan, who returned to China in 1958 at the age of 12. He said he believes that more huaqiao should be in management positions on the farm, as well as in farm-owned or farm-operated businesses.
"Huaqiao are an asset to China," Du said. After being back in the country for half a century, he and other first-generation returnees from Indonesia can still speak fluent Indonesian, a language that very few Chinese have bothered to learn but is useful when it comes to trade. Even an army language school once sent its students to Xinglong to practice their Bahasa Indonesia.
Old huaqiao have infused the local scene with a flavor of Southeast Asia; their habits of drinking coffee and eating exotic foods or cuisine have enlivened Xinglong. They also organize parties that feature singing and dancing styles from the countries where they grew up, and their contact with relatives and friends in those faraway places has been exemplary grassroots diplomacy and effective in spreading goodwill.
However, their fear of a diminishing identity is not unfounded. They are being marginalized. The ground for their uniqueness no longer exists.
Take daily language, for example. In the 1950s and 60s, the dialects most spoken in Xinglong were Hakka and Cantonese. People on the farm rarely interacted with those outside. Now, everyone speaks Mandarin and few reveal their backgrounds by how they speak. You can hardly tell who is a farmhand on the official huaqiao farm and who is a native or a migrant from another part of China.
"We have always cherished the label of huaqiao," Du said. "It's hard for early settlers to plant trees, but easier for late-comers to enjoy the shade."
Lei concurs: "We have enormous pride in our status as huaqiao. The central government has always treated us with preferential policies. But Xinglong no longer belongs to huaqiao alone. It's the homeland of huaqiao, natives and demobilized soldiers.
"We just want our children to remember that Xinglong is the result of their parents' hard work."
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