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.
The Chinese corner at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
People rarely look for these graves. The Chinese community in Belgium is small and fragmented, and it is local Flemings who have recovered this unique episode from historical oblivion. One such local pioneer was Dominiek Dendooven, historian and curator of the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres – an award-winning museum dedicated to the history of the Western Front. Dendooven’s two decades of research on Chinese and Indian workers in Europe has formed the basis of groundbreaking exhibitions at the museum, most notably the 2010 exhibition “Toiling for War” (Sjouwers voor de Oorlog). In 2018, Dendooven successfully defended a Ph.D. dissertation on the experiences of wartime Asian migrant workers.
Aspirations and Disillusionment
The first Chinese workers to disembark in Europe did so before China was even formally at war with Germany. By supporting the Allied cause in this way, the government of the young Chinese republic hoped to secure the retrocession to China of Shandong Province, which was under the control of imperial Germany.
The Chinese indentured laborers – mostly illiterate peasants from that same province – were above all fortune-seekers. The lucrative contracts they were offered promised a unique opportunity to earn quick money to support their families. The bitter reality was that they remained on foreign soil much longer than expected and faced unimaginable hardship in life-threatening conditions as they worked to construct roads and railways, dig and provision trenches, and lug the bodies of the sick and dead near the front. As aliens from a distant land, these Chinese men often aroused suspicion among the local populace. Dendooven uncovered several incidents, some involving fatalities.
The longer these foreign men in the British and French service stayed in Europe, Dendooven found, the more they began to see themselves as striving for a greater cause. In 1919, Chinese workers engraved “You aided the motherland and spread its reputation overseas” on a monument to their fallen brothers at the Chinese section of the Saint-Étienne-au-Mont cemetery. The government in Beijing gradually also came to regard them as patriots abroad. In an inscription on the archway of the Chinese cemetery in Noyelles, the Chinese minister to London memorialized his fallen compatriots as martyrs for the national cause.
The Chinese corner at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
Recognition and Remembrance
In 2017, a local group in Poperinge took the initiative to erect a modest memorial to the 13 Chinese workers who had died in a nearby camp at Busseboom 100 years earlier, during German aerial bombardments. A Flemish artist designed a shelter in which a statue of a Chinese porter, crafted by an Antwerp sculptor, was placed. The municipality of Poperinge made land available and managed the construction of a path and some greenery. The Chinese embassy appreciated the initiative but apparently did not consider the memorial sufficient: it commissioned a Chinese-Belgian artist to design a second memorial on the site, consisting of an imposing bronze sculpture of three determined and valiant-looking Chinese workers.
The Chinese monument at Busseboom, with the Belgian memorial in the background. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
In recent years, commemorations have occasionally taken place at the monument, such as during major anniversaries of the Armistice of November 11, 1918 (notably in 2018). Chinese diplomats and local administrators have occasionally also gathered here on Qingming – a holiday in early April when Chinese people honor their ancestors and deceased loved ones – to honor the Chinese workers with flowers.
This year, however, there were no signs of such a memorial service. The Chinese in Belgium apparently do not have an intrinsic urge to commemorate these early migrants, and not every Chinese ambassador appears equally interested in honoring this aspect of the transnational past.
In contrast, commemorations in France have taken place annually for several years. On April 6, as in previous years, hundreds of people gathered at the Chinese cemetery of Nolette in the commune of Noyelles-sur-Mer, where 841 Chinese workers are buried and another 41 are commemorated. More than 40 Sino-French associations and institutions presented flowers, with the largest three flower arrangements coming from the Association of Chinese in France, the Shandong Chamber of Commerce in France and the Chinese Embassy in Paris.
Qingming memorial service at Noyelles-sur-Mer, April 6, 2025. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
Creating a New Tradition and Ritual
Following a minute’s silence in tribute to the fallen workers, representatives of these and several other groups delivered speeches praising the Chinese workers and their contribution to “justice” and “peace.” In their own way, each speaker urged continued reflection on this past as a reminder to present generations to continue to serve as a bridge between China and France and contribute to bilateral ties.
The president of the Association of Chinese Veterans of the French Foreign Legion referred to the laborers as heroes who would never be forgotten and whose spirit continues to inspire. The president of the Chinese Youth Association of France spoke about the exclusion and discrimination that these early migrants faced over a hundred years ago and that continues to this day. The mayor of Noyelles promoted a message of peace and unity. The Chinese embassy representative – a deputy director of the Consular Affairs Office – recalled how the Chinese men had struggled side-by-side with the French people in extremely difficult circumstances. In view of the uncertainties in today’s world, she proposed, this shared memory should inspire the Chinese and French people to advance their bilateral relations for the well-being of the two peoples and the world at large.
Concluding the ceremony, pupils from a Chinese school in France recited the text of a song called “Thinking of My Hometown.” Led by these youngsters, presumably representing the hope of future generations (there were no French schoolchildren present), and escorted by a guard of honor of the French Foreign Legion, representatives of the embassy and the other organizations presented flowers at the tombs.
Global “Chineseness” and Internationalism
Commemorations reveal more about the contemporary identities, values, and aspirations of the commemorators than the fates of those commemorated. The annual Qingming ceremony at Noyelles is best understood as a new ritual by and for the Chinese community, the dual aim of which is to promote internal cohesion and “Chineseness” while at the same time articulating a deep and timeless affinity with France and its people.
This ritual thus embodies the paradox that characterizes many overseas diasporic communities: on the one hand, a desire for integration and recognition in the new homeland; on the other, an equally strong wish to preserve and express a distinct identity. The Chinese laborers of World War I can serve both these ends. Despite the tribute paid to them during the ceremony in Noyelles, I did not see a single visitor or flower offering on the days around Qingming at any of the other major Chinese cemeteries in France, including those in Saint-Étienne-au-Mont (163 tombs), Ruminghem (75 tombs), and Ayette (34 tombs).
The Chinese cemetery at Ruminghem. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
Meanwhile, local authorities and institutions in Belgium and France seem happy to facilitate the Chinese commemorations. For decades, countless visitors from England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States have toured the Remembrance Trail of the Somme and the major battlefields and cemeteries in Flanders, often to connect with a past that older family members had imparted on them as they grew up. That Chinese communities are now constructing monuments and holding commemorations of their own is seen by local heritage workers as a testament to the global character of the war and of war remembrance, and not as a legacy of Europe’s imperialist past.
Transnational Travel
Recent years have seen a growing interest from China in the restoration of this forgotten past. In 2019, 15 Chinese students from Shanghai University spent a month in Flanders tracing the footsteps of the Chinese workers. Last February, a Chinese professor of archaeology with four students searched for traces of the Chinese Labor Corps in a field near Ypres. They discovered the foundation of a brick house, metal buckles of ammunition boxes, unexploded shells, and workers’ boots. The university hailed the event as marking the first time that Chinese archaeologists had led an archaeological project in a developed Western country.
New heritage is being created in China as well. In 2018, Asia’s first (and to date only) World War I museum opened its doors in Qingdao, a major seaport in Shandong province. This was followed in 2020 by the establishment of a memorial hall for the Chinese laborers in nearby Weihai, the port city where many of these men embarked on ships to Europe over a century ago. Early this year, Shanghai University hosted an exhibition, jointly organized with the Weihai Museum, on the history of the Chinese laborers in World War I.
The Chinese cemetery at Saint-Étienne-au-Mont. Photo by Vincent K. L. Chang.
Honoring the Heroes of an Unjust War
These developments are remarkable in signifying a creative turn away from Beijing’s prevailing Marxist-Leninist historiography, which depicts World War I as an “unjust” war fought between European imperial powers at the expense of oppressed peoples worldwide. Without discarding this foundational logic, Chinese state actors have found a way to nevertheless commemorate and commend the “important contributions to the victory of World War I and world peace” made by the Chinese laborers of World War I.
These carefully crafted narratives align with a broader official discourse that portrays China as a responsible stakeholder and its global rise as peaceful. While state officials are careful not to publicly label the Chinese workers as “heroes” or “martyrs” who risked and sacrificed their lives for a “just” cause, the state-controlled Chinese media work hard to convey precisely this image through extensive reporting on the war’s “forgotten” and “unsung” heroes.
This shows that, under certain conditions, “bottom-up” remembering can survive and secure a place in China’s closely guarded memory ecosystem. If current trends continue, it is likely that the global peace narrative will gradually prevail over the traditional class-struggle rhetoric, thereby enabling further transregional memory convergence. With tensions between China and Europe rising, this is a positive sign. Despite their status aparte, physically and discursively, these once forgotten Chinese laborers may yet serve again as brokers for peace.