Archival Research

To answer question (1), ‘How is the development of Liverpool’s Chinatown situated within the wider, Western-dominated culture of the city?’, archival research was carried out. Similar to many studies on Chinatowns throughout the world, the approach that was adopted was analysing archival records. This historical analysis will contextualise the research. It is essential to grasp an awareness of the history of the Chinese community in the UK – from when the first immigrants set foot in Liverpool in the 1800s (Wong, 1989) and more specifically, the global political, economic and social situations prior to 1997 – a significant consideration as 1997 was the year that Hong Kong’s sovereignty was handed over to PRC – and seek out their motivations for leaving home as well as for settling in Britain and the trades they entered.

In addition to scrutinising actors’ agency, it is pertinent to appreciate the evolution of Britain’s policies towards immigrants to understand Chinese immigrants’ perceived racial discrimination which would also have a contributory impact on their survival strategies and acculturative behaviour (Ward, 1996). Exploring the identification of actors’ motivations as well as the external controls on social action, the research hopes to paint a more holistic picture. As Latour (1993) posits, society is a network of social actors and abstractions and reality are constructed out of constructivist processes of translation. Therefore, to carry out structure-agency analyses, it is necessary to have an awareness of the Chinese value-system in terms of the Chinese traditions, customs, practices and beliefs. These historical and cultural

70 underpinnings provide a robust context within which the researcher will be better able to interpret and explain the findings. These undertakings are essential to understand the intricate and inter-linking mechanisms and processes which explain how the observed regularities are brought about (Bhaskar, 1998).

For the empirical research, I have scoured and analysed national and local (Liverpool) English newspapers from 1785 to 2009, Council proceedings and documents retrieved from the Liverpool Record Office and consulted internet and museum sources. Recognising the potential bias of relying solely upon English sources which are largely intended for an English audience, I have studied relevant Chinese newspapers, newsletters and magazines in Liverpool from 1947 to 2012. The year 1947 was the earliest Chinese source because that was the year the first Chinese paper – handwritten version – was launched. Seeing the experiences from a Chinese perspective ensures a more holistic analysis. Earlier local Chinese archival sources are unavailable and English print sources for this period would have to suffice as an alternative to highlight the reported Chinese passive and / or active8 reactions to key events. These responses help to flesh out the interactionist dynamics between majority and minority groups within specific contexts of the day.

Following the Chinese conventional system, Chinese names are written by their family names followed by their forenames, except for those with English names. Most of the Chinese materials were written in traditional Chinese characters and although I am educated in simplified Chinese script, I am able to read and translate traditional Chinese characters. All translations of Chinese materials as well as Chinese translations from the Wade-Giles system9

8 _{Passive reaction is a response that is reactive to events while an active reaction is a response that is not inert}

but is pro-active to events.

9 _{The Wade-Giles romanisation system for Mandarin is the product of British scholars, Sir Thomas Wade and}

71 into Hanyu Pinyin10 and English are mine and are performed where applicable. However, translations in themselves are another layer of hermeneutics. Furthermore, my positionality as an ethnic Chinese researcher runs the risk of taking certain observations for granted or missing blind spots. Therefore, to avoid misrepresenting Chinese texts, I consciously bear the particular time specific and circumstantial contexts in mind when translating and analysing the materials.

I spent lengthy periods of time in the Liverpool Record Office. The archival research process being arduous aside, returning home to type out the numerous hand-written pages of notes and ensuring correct referencing were time-consuming. After all the notes and translations had been typed out, I grouped the materials chronologically – with dates of the article / material, summary of the article / material, and source of the article / material in different columns. Key observations were highlighted and synthesised. Main and sub-themes were subsequently coded accordingly to distinguish the various phases of Liverpool’s Chinatown. The research questions (2), ‘What are the roles of ‘traditional’ Chinese activities (e.g. Chinese community centres, catering industry) based in and around Liverpool’s Chinatown in Liverpool’s contemporary Chinese community?’, and (3), ‘Given Liverpool’s changing relationship to the People’s Republic of China, how are these patterns changing over time?’, are addressed by primary qualitative research which entailed gaining entry into the community.

10 _{For example, referring to the same place in the People’s Republic of China, ‘Canton / Kwang-tung’ is Wade-}

72 3.5 Securing a Voice

Before one can conduct research and thus accord a voice to the researcher as well as the researched, the researcher must first be able to get a foot into the research setting (Coy, 2001). Prior to starting this research, I was completing my Masters in Research Methodology (Sociology and Social Policy) at the University of Liverpool. From February – August 2008, I also worked part-time as a clerical worker at a wholesaler of food and drink products from the Far East. It is worthwhile elaborating my experience there, as this proved a significant factor in enabling me to get a foot into one segment of the Chinese population in Liverpool – those in the catering industry. Similar to the core factor of Guevarra’s (2006) ethnic status as a Filipina American easily opening doors for her to conduct a study on Filipino labour brokers, I was recruited primarily because of my language ability.

The position of an accounts assistant was advertised and, although I had no knowledge of accounting or the use of accounting software the company used, I was recruited. The successful application was due to the fact that I could speak Mandarin and Cantonese. In the beginning, I handled sales orders for clients in Merseyside. That expanded to liaising with clients in the UK as well as liaising with suppliers in the Far East. However, the difference with Guevarra’s (2006) experience is that the idea of using the business as a site for recruiting my participants did not arise until much later after I had already been working part-time in the organisation. In other words, I had the added advantage of time to establish relationships and build rapport with participants even before fieldwork began – rapport being a salient factor for the success of fieldwork as many researchers have observed.

73 Cultivating rapport is important and sharing a similar ethnic / racial identity with the participants is insufficient to guarantee unproblematic and automatic inclusion into the community (Kusenbach, 2003). Wearing an office suit and bringing along a folder holding my resume and qualifications, I knew I had been overdressed for the interview when I found myself standing outside a neglected-looking Victorian period factory with huge metal shutters and interviewed by a finance manager dressed in jeans. Throughout the interview, the recruiter did not ask to see the documents I had brought along and the process was more an informal chat about my nationality and purpose in Liverpool. Having learnt the embarrassing lesson of my incongruous attire for the environment, I turned up for work in more casual clothes. Although dressing down was done to blend in at the workplace, the “ability to first recognise and then strategically work within the socially constructed meanings that define all her physical and social characteristics deemed relevant by her particular field setting” (Mazzei and O’Brien, 2009: 359-360) were essential to gain access and establish rapport with the research participants. As with Masselot’s (2008) encounter in interviewing male scientists, dressing to ‘fit in’ with the crowd was crucial to connect with the participants.

Attire is only one of several variables in the field that affected rapport and relationship fostering. The multitude of situations and tasks that unfolded meant that I had to be flexible and adaptable to new encounters and experiences. The demands of fieldwork cannot be stressed enough (Sharp, 2005) and fieldwork for my research was not restricted to merely the interviewing phase. Fieldwork for me, extended much earlier to the period of forming, establishing and concretising relationships. To provide a brief example of the ‘demands’ of fieldwork, I had expected to be given a brief induction to the company’s operations and an

74 overview of my duties as well as some training on how to use the accounting software. Contrarily, I was practically thrown into the deep end and informed of my duties, task by task.

In the beginning, my primary responsibility was to handle sales orders for clients in Merseyside. The task entailed calling up clients and taking down their orders. The orders were then entered into the accounting system for the goods to be despatched. Fluctuating prices and inventories for which I did not have control or knowledge of prior to carrying out my task did not make the job easy. Gradually, sales duties expanded to liaising with clients in the UK as well as liaising with suppliers in the Far East. Duties also included handling marketing, public complaints, legal affairs, health and safety issues, human resource matters etc. I was not happy with the amorphous job description but I did not voice my displeasure for fear of spoiling the relationships. After a few months, I was ‘promoted’ to Sales Manager without any pay rise and attended meetings with potential clients, networking sessions as well as running publicity road shows tending stalls and selling food and drink products. I was also asked to help out in the mass production of Chinese dim sum. Although I was quite averse to wearing someone else’s butcher’s coat and hairnet and being in a room filled with the smells of raw meat, complicity to avoid losing rapport, in this instance and in some of the other tasks, prevailed.

Since starting my research degree in February 2009, I was given an opportunity to work as a waitress when the job was offered to me by my former wholesale employer. It was deemed another good opportunity to expand my contacts in the community whom I could later approach for participating in my research. The waitressing job lasted from October – November 2009 and I encountered similar experiences of a vague job description as with the wholesaler stint. Being adaptable in handling varied duties aside, the demands were more

75 physically draining this time. However, the waiting job was aborted when risk concerns were significant arising from the process of ethics and risk assessment considerations that I detailed earlier in this chapter.

From August 2009, I also started volunteering with the Merseyside Chinese Community Development Association (MCCDA). However, this was not a commitment that I engaged in for the sake of penetrating the Chinese community. This endeavour was undertaken purely for altruistic reasons because I genuinely wanted to reach out to older persons, especially lone elders, given my own personal experiences and greater empathy for senior citizens. Nevertheless, seniors became a very likely potential group of research participants. Additionally, I was asked to set up a Women’s Group within MCCDA. The prospect of being able to reach out to a wider group of people in the community was the impetus for me to volunteer as secretary for the committee. Attending monthly meetings and frequent social events, I bonded with the members of the Women’s Group whom I was able to turn to for participating in my research.

Furthermore, since February 2009, I co-incidentally got acquainted with an asylum seeker from China. The interactions that have taken place as well as the relationship that has formed gave me much insight into her worldview and life journey. I was welcomed into her circle of friends from the same province in China and who all share similar migration journeys and experiences. Cementing the friendship was not done with the a priori aim of utilising them as research participants, although I kept personal diary notes of my interactions, especially with this ‘interesting’ acquaintance from the very beginning. Throughout, I was approached by them to assist with requests for interpretations, applications for state benefits, communications with job agencies, their landlords and with immigration officers. Although I

76 was genuine and more than happy to help in all instances, it can always be argued that underscoring the relationships is an element of selfish ‘mutual help’ – they utilise me for their objectives and vice versa.

Due to the fact that I am ethnically Chinese, it was often the case that work life (research in this case) and personal life are inseparable although I recognise that this is a trend that is common to many other researchers. However, because of a similar cultural background, there may be a propensity for a greater merging of work and social lives. For example, I was invited to participants’ birthday parties, weddings and get-togethers and at these events, interactions that took place as well as observations made were inevitably factored into my interviews. Together with life experiences in Liverpool’s Chinese community, it was only after the archival research was completed that the new research questions came to be formulated. The evolving research objectives and research design proved that data collection and analyses is an iterative process. Particularly for this relatively lesser-studied community, it was useful to begin with archival data as part of the initial exploratory and inductive research process because they helped to clarify and narrow the focus of the research. In the next section, the primary qualitative research that I conducted is outlined.