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When the luxurious passenger ship Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912, thousands of people found themselves in the icy waters of the sea.
Only one of the lifeboats that managed to escape from the wreckage returned to search for possible survivors. In the dark, they found a young Chinese man hanging from a wooden door, shivering with cold but still alive.
This man was Fang Lang, one of the six Chinese survivors of the Titanic, and his rescue was to inspire a famous scene (that of lovers Rose and Jack) in the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster Titanic.
But the miraculous survival of these six Chinese did not mark the end of their ordeal.
Within 24 hours of arriving at the Ellis Island, New York Immigration Inspection Station, they were expelled from the country due to the China Exclusion Act, a controversial law that prohibits the immigration of Chinese citizens to the United States.
All six have disappeared from history – until now. A new documentary which has just been released in China, “The six“highlights their identity and their lives, 109 years after the fateful journey.
It reveals a story beyond the Titanic, a story forged by racial discrimination and anti-immigration policy that has taken on special resonance today after the recent acts of violence against Asians in the United States.
Who were the six Chinese survivors?
The men have been identified as Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Chung Foo, and Ling Hee. We think they were sailors traveling to the Caribbean for work.
“As a collective of people, they are only unknown,” Arthur Jones, a British filmmaker and director of “The Six”, told the BBC.
The names of the Chinese survivors were on the ship’s passenger list and the articles dealing with the sinking of the Titanic mentioned them in passing.
However, unlike other disaster survivors who were praised in the press, the rescued Chinese were vilified because of the anti-Chinese tide in the West at the beginning of the 20th century, according to historians and researchers.
For example, in a report broadcast a few days after the sinking, the newspaper The Brooklyn Daily Eagle He called the Chinese survivors “creatures” who jumped into lifeboats “at the first sign of danger” and hid under the seats.
But the documentary production team’s investigation proved that claim to be false.
They built a replica of the Titanic’s lifeboat and found that it would have been impossible for the Chinese to hide without being seen. “I think it’s the same thing we’re seeing now. We found that immigrants were being used as scapegoats by the press,” Jones says.
Other contemporary newspaper articles accused the Chinese of having disguised as women to have priority access to lifeboats.
Tim Maltin, a historian specializing in the Titanic, says there is no evidence that the Chinese survivors were stowaways or disguised themselves as women.
“These were stories made up by the press and the public after the event,” he told the BBC.
Rumors can come from stigma attached to many surviving men shipwreck, because at that time, the general public believed that women and children should have priority in the rescue.
According to Maltin, the Chinese tried to help other survivors. Fang Lang, the man who clung to a floating door, then row in the boat that saves him and helped get everyone on board to safety.
What happened to them after the disaster?
Rejected by the United States, the six men were sent to Cuba. Soon after, they went to the United Kingdom, where there was a shortage of sailors, as much of the British naval personnel were enlisted in the army during World War I.
Chang Chip suffered from constant health problems after the fateful night, finally dying of lung disease in 1914. He was buried in an unmarked grave in a London cemetery.
The others worked jointly in the UK until 1920, when the country suffered from a post-war recession and anti-immigrant sentiments erupted.
Some of these Chinese men they married british women in the UK and had children. But an anti-immigration policy forced them to leave the country without warning, leaving their loved ones behind.
“It wasn’t their fault. All of these families were separated by politics, which they had no control over, ”Jones says.
Ah Lam was deported to Hong Kong, while Ling Hee boarded a steamboat bound for Calcutta, India.
Lee Bing emigrated to Canada, while Fang Lang, after sailing between the UK and Hong Kong for years, became a citizen of the previously rejected country, the United States.
Parallels of history and today
Tom Fong, son of Fang Lang, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin almost half a century after the sinking of the Titanic. The last name is spelled differently in English.
For decades, knew absolutely nothing about his father’s experience in the “unsinkable”.
“He (Fang Lang) never talked about it. At least I didn’t like my mother,” Fong told the BBC.
Fang died in 1985, at the age of 90. It wasn’t until 20 years after his death that his son Fong learned from a family member that his father had survived the wreckage of the peak.
Fong believes his father may have kept his survival a secret for a while. mixture of trauma and stigma.
“There have been numerous reports that they were hiding in the boat and disguising themselves as women…” he said. “These kinds of stories were circulating at the time.”
When the “The Six” research team tracked down the descendants of the survivors, many were still reluctant to share their family stories because of the stigma suffered by their ancestors a century ago.
During his upbringing in Wisconsin, Fong witnessed many incidents in which his father had to take action against racism, including hitting a man who called him derogatory terms.
“He (Fang Lang) was a gentleman, until he felt discriminated against because of his ethnicity,” Fong says.
Over 100 years later, the hostility facing the six Chinese survivors has Unusual parallels to today’s anti-Asian racism which is fueled by the pandemic.
In the United States alone, thousands of cases of abuse have been reported in the past few months, ranging from spitting and cursing to violent assault.
Fong decided to share his family story in the hopes that the audience could learn the true story of Chinese Titanic survivors and reflect on the news.
“Because if you don’t know history, it will repeat itself,” Fong says.
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