China's modern history is not only the aggression of foreign powers and the resistance of the Chinese people against aggression, but also the expansion of our people abroad, but this expansion is not in the form of force, but in the form of peace, friendship, and common development.
While the people at home were unrelenting in their resistance to the foreign powers, there were some people in the south of our country who crossed mountains and mountains or crossed oceans to seek a livelihood in the Nanyang countries, and they brought Chinese culture to all parts of the Nanyang, and as a result, these places formed large and small Chinatowns.
The power of culture is enormous, the benefits of armed aggression are limited and temporary, and the effects of cultural integration are infinite and long-lasting.
In 1901, more than 1,000 Fujianese crossed the ocean to the north of Kalimantan, the third largest island in the world, and signed a treaty with the local ** to lease the land for 999 years.
And all the glory of this Chinese city today comes from Huang Naishang, a scholar from an ordinary peasant family in Fujian Province at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Huang Naishang's family was originally an authentic farmer, and Huang Naishang himself was just a literati who was studying while farming, and he was powerless.
Huang Naishang's fate really changed after the Sino-Japanese Naval War in 1895, when the Beiyang Naval Division, known as the first in Asia, was completely defeated by Japan after the First World War, and the Qing ** also paid compensation for this land, which made Huang Naishang heartbroken.
What made him even more heartbroken was that his younger brother Huang Naimo was also a member of the Beiyang Naval Division at that time, and was an officer on the Zhiyuan ship led by Deng Shichang.
The Beiyang Naval Division originally had advanced ships and artillery in Asia, but because of the corruption and incompetence of the Qing Dynasty, military expenses were deducted, which indirectly led to the fiasco of the Naval Division.
Huang Naishang was originally an ordinary scholar, but the unequal treaties signed after the First Sino-Japanese Naval War made him deeply aware of the country's abuses, so he angrily went to the capital and launched the reform reform with Kang Youwei.
Later, after the failure of the Restoration, Huang Naicheng was completely disappointed in Qing **, so he had the idea of going to Nanyang to open up a new world belonging to the Chinese.
After returning to his hometown of Fujian, Huang Naishang saw the difficult life of the people in his hometown and the oppression of the Qing Dynasty, so he angrily left Fujian to investigate various places in Nanyang.
When I walked to Kalimantan, the third largest island in the world, I found that the Sibu area in the Sarawak region in the northern part of the island was full of wasteland.
The leader of the local ** just hoped that someone would come to reclaim the land and farm, Huang Naishang inspected the local soil and water by himself, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this was a suitable place for people to live, so he saw the opportunity and immediately signed a reclamation treaty with the leader of the local **.
In order to facilitate the signing of the treaty, Huang Naishang first founded the "New Fuzhou Reclamation Company", planning to bring all the Chinese who came here together into the company's name in the future.
In the reclamation treaty, Sarawak ** used the new Pearl Mountain on the outskirts of Sibu City as a special reclamation area and handed it over to the Chinese company for reclamation.
Huang Naishang deeply realized the seriousness of the oppression of the people by the Qing Dynasty in China, so the rights and interests of the Chinese in the reclamation area were the most important to him, which was why he wanted to go to Nanyang to open up a new land.
After careful consideration with several of his peers, Huang Naishang wrote in the treaty: Chinese people have no obligation to serve in the military and pay taxes locally, but they have freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the use ......of firearms to protect their own safety
In addition, the most admirable thing is that Huang Naishang worked hard and persevered in many negotiations with the local **, and finally finalized the term of the Chinese lease of the reclamation area to 999 years.
At that time, under the bullying of foreign powers, China had repeatedly ceded land to foreigners for compensation, and the land was ceded to pieces, but Huang Naishang opened up new land for the Chinese abroad in the form of friendly negotiations, which was also a great contribution to the country.
Sun Yat-sen praised Huang Naixiang's approach at the time: "This is the first equal treaty signed between the Chinese and a foreign country since the Opium War. ”
After the treaty was signed, Huang Naishang immediately returned to Fujian, China with joy and began to look for Chinese companions to go to Nanyang to open up a new life.
In 1900, Wong recruited more than 500 people to Sibu in Kalimantan to recruit company workers.
To be on the safe side, they first led 91 Chinese to Sibu by boat via Singapore.
The first migration voyage was not smooth, and after all the hardships and dangers along the way, only 72 people remained when they arrived in Sibu.
Some people gave up halfway and returned to Fujian by boat, while others decided to stay in Singapore and other places on the way, and the 72 people who finally came to Sibu also gave Huang Nai Sheung a certain amount of self-confidence.
In the second and third groups of immigrants, Huang Naishang brought more than 500 people respectively, and since then, more than 1,100 people brought by Huang Naishang from Fujian to Sibu have taken root in a wasteland and cultivated land.
Although he migrated to live abroad, Huang Nai Shang always cared about the country, and in order to let his compatriots never forget that he was Chinese, he named the Chinese town of Sibu New Fuzhou.
In the early days of life in New Fuzhou, many difficulties tested the more than 1,000 Chinese, and when some people were sick, it was difficult to find decent doctors in the local area, and many people died of malaria because of poor environmental sanitation conditions.
In the mountains, where there are no shops in front of the village and behind the village, you have to go over the mountains and mountains to the markets in other places to buy daily necessities, and there are very few Chinese who can speak the local language, so it is also a big difficulty to do business with the locals.
So out of this kind of demand, Huang Naishang found the corresponding Chinese who are good at seeing a doctor and running a business, and opened a clinic and shop on the side of the Bujiang River.
There are many people in the local area who believe in ** religion, and the Chinese in a foreign land also follow the local customs, more and more people begin to believe in religion, Huang Naishang spent money to build five churches, in order to ensure that the children of peasant workers can receive education, primary schools, middle schools and other new schools have also begun to rise from the ground.
The hard-working and capable Chinese not only successfully established themselves in foreign countries, but also found ways to open up new industries in the local area.
Kalimantan is located in the southern part of the southern hemisphere, which is no longer suitable for the cultivation of rice in southern China.
As the planting industry slowly stabilized, everyone solved the most basic problem of food and clothing, so they began to devote themselves to creating more wealth.
First of all, the large number of trees in the local mountains attracted everyone's attention, and if the timber was cut down and transported to other places to be sold, it was often possible to earn a considerable income, so the farmers and laborers took logging as the second largest job outside of farming time.
Later, more and more trees were cut down over time, and in order to protect the green environment, the number of trees gradually decreased, and they began to develop in the direction of light industry and finance.
Since ancient times, the Chinese people have attached great importance to agriculture, and when the agriculture of the Chinese people in Sibu City has developed to saturation, they have also shown the potential wisdom of the Chinese people in the process of expanding to other fields.
At that time, because of the backwardness of the shipping industry, it was quite inconvenient to go to sea, and it was necessary to wait for several days to wait for a ship from Sarawak to China, in this case, the local Chinese decided to develop the shipbuilding and shipping industry on their own.
With his past experience in fishing in the coastal areas of Fujian and later logging and carpentry, the people of Fuzhou gradually started the shipbuilding industry in Sibu.
From the beginning of undertaking the manufacture of some small boats, to the formation of a shipbuilding company that has begun to take shape, and now to the developed shipbuilding industry, the total tonnage of ships produced each year is the first in the whole country of Malaysia.
Chinese Shipping Company not only fully meets the ship needs of Sibu City and the whole of Sarawak, but also is committed to selling ships to foreign countries, and has long occupied a place in the transportation industry of Nanyang countries.
Nowadays, you can see all the small and large ships produced by Sibu Chinese Shipping Company in various ports in Malaysia, from large cargo ships to small speedboats.
In addition to vigorously developing the shipbuilding industry, the Sibu Chinese also set up a bank in the local area, which initially provided financial support mainly for the Chinese entrepreneurs, and later developed into one of the top savings banks in Sarawak, so the influence of the Chinese in the local financial industry is also extremely strong.
In addition to the fact that the Chinese occupy a leading position in almost all industries in Sibu, the most far-reaching and proud of the Chinese are the absolute influence of the Chinese in culture.
In the first few years of our arrival in Sibu, 80 percent of Sibu's population was Chinese, and most of them were from Fuzhou.
Walking around Sibu City, you can see Chinese shops, Chinese restaurants, and social activities held by Chinese people everywhere, and the simple Chinese faces make the whole city full of Chinese national atmosphere.
Later, as the Chinese gradually developed Sibu, the city became more and more prosperous, and more Malays came to live here, and the proportion of Chinese in the local population gradually decreased, until today, the proportion of Chinese has gradually decreased to 40%.
But even so, the Chinese still have the most influence.
In this city, not only are the Chinese communicating through Chinese, but the few local Malays are also culturally influenced and gradually speak Hokkien.
Hokkien is the language that everyone is accustomed to, and the city has been sinicized for more than 100 years.
And what made this city finally become a Chinese town was undoubtedly Huang Naishang, who took everyone across the ocean to make a living.
In fact, a few years after the arrival of the Chinese, Huang Naishang handed over all kinds of business affairs to others, and he returned to China and followed Sun Yat-sen into the vigorous revolutionary cause.
After returning to China, he first met Soong Jiaoren and other revolutionaries in Shanghai, and then met Sun Yat-sen in Singapore and joined the League.
Among the several uprisings launched by Sun Yat-sen to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty, the Huanggang Uprising in Chaozhou was led by Huang Naishang.
In 1911, before the Xinhai Revolution in October, Huang Naishang and his friends promoted Fujian's separation from the jurisdiction of the Qing Dynasty in his hometown of Fujian as early as March and established the army.
But without the appropriation of the Qing Army, the financial revenue of the Fujian Army has become a huge problem, just when Huang Naishang was worried about this, he once led the Sibu overseas Chinese to extend a helping hand to their hometown, and sent donations one after another, which solved the urgent need of the Fujian Army.
Overseas Chinese compatriots not only sent donations, but also expressed their concern and greetings to Huang Naishang.
Although Wong Nai Sheung had returned to China in 1904, everyone still followed the development plan he had formulated at the beginning to reclaim the reclamation area of Sibu, and after the overseas Chinese gradually became rich, no one forgot Wong Nai Sheung's contribution to the development of everyone's livelihood.
Later, after the Chinese reclamation area and Sibu City were connected, in order to remember the exploits of Huang Nai Sheung, the overseas Chinese specially built the "Huang Nai Sheung School" and "Nai Shang Park" in the urban area, and named one of the roads "Huang Nai Sheung Road", and erected a statue of Huang Nai Sheung on the square.
Compared with the overseas Chinese in the United States who built Chinatowns in some cities, the overseas Chinese in Sibu have built a Chinatown that is far larger than it, where the Chinese enjoy all kinds of good treatment provided by the Chinese and are a Chinese world full of international atmosphere.
In fact, during the turbulent years of the last years of the Qing Dynasty and the ** period, many Chinese crossed mountains or crossed oceans to the South Seas countries to survive.
Their footprints spread all over the South Seas, from Vietnam and Laos to Myanmar and Singapore, from Malaysia to Indonesia, while foreign powers invaded China by barbaric force, these Chinese brought Han culture into Nanyang countries in a peaceful and friendly way, forming large and small cities full of Han culture.
I would like to pay tribute to the countless patriotic overseas Chinese who have broken through difficulties and obstacles to seek a livelihood, spread Han culture all over the world and always cared about the motherland!