Unsung Heroes of World War I Bring Together Chinese and Europeans

In the military cemeteries of World War I in West Flanders and northwest France there are clusters of tombs invariably separated from the others. Usually, such as at the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in West Flanders, they are situated near the cemetery boundary or in a dedicated corner of the site; occasionally, such as in Noyelles-sur-Mer in France, they are placed in a separate cemetery.

These tombs hold the remains of more than 2,000 Chinese young men who died in Europe as part of the corps of 140,000 Chinese indentured laborers who supplied and supported the Western Front between 1917 and 1919. Their physical separation reflects the distinct status of these Chinese laborers in the globalized memory landscape of World War I. Forgotten for decades, they have recently been rediscovered and are now honored both in Europe and China as transnational agents for global peace.

In Flanders Fields

In Belgium, the commemorations have been incidental, small-scale and predominantly local. There are less than a hundred Chinese graves scattered throughout West Flanders, mostly around the Ypres Salient. Thirty-five of these tombstones stand next to a willow in the southwest corner of the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Poperinge. Another seven are in a back corner of the nearby military cemetery of the village of Reningelst. Further south, 31 Chinese tombstones stand on the edge of an extension of the communal cemetery of Bailleul (Belle); although this is French territory, most of the Chinese buried there perished a few kilometers north in Belgium.