I found this observation on the internet of Chinese being recruited to go to France. The orange text says it all. Brenda
On my first war-time crossing of the Channel, among the ships of the convoy were two steamers from whose upper decks multitudes of strange folk looked across at us. They were all dressed alike in long, loose-fitting cloaks of ruddy brown material, and they wore little caps with cat-flaps not unlike those donned by our airmen when aloft. Their hair was jet black, their strange, expressionless' faces berry brown. They were Manchurians nearing the land of war to give their labour to the cause of Britain—for a sound, commercial consideration be it premised.
At that time one had heard vaguely about "Chinese labour," but here was its embodiment in these two shiploads of grinning Orientals, who looked so curiously alike that one seemed to see the same man a hundred times over. ... I was to see more of these far-travelled Children of the Dawn in my next day's journey, as I had arranged to visit the main camp, where they are received and whence they are drafted to the sectors where their labour or their craftsmanship is most required.
Few things that I have seen in the British zone impressed me more favourably with the British genius for organisation than the handling and bestowal of these Chinese labourers...Figure what it means to sign a contract for three years' work at a place over six thousand miles away from your home !...
By extraordinary good luck, when I arrived at the labour camp the two boat-loads I had seen the day before were just detraining, and were going through the preliminaries of their reception. In long files they slowly moved up to the finger-printing huts, each man carrying two large paper forms on which his name was written in Chinese characters and in English. Various, personal details were already entered, such as his native town, date of engagement, state of health at embarkation, and the like.
But most interesting were the twelve spaces for his finger-prints.
In the sheds were rows of finger-printers, Chinese trained to the work, each of whom stood at a bench beside a lithographic stone which he frequently inked from a printer's roller, and as each new arrival came up the printer swiftly took hold of his right hand, pressed the tip of the little finger on the inked stone, then upon the space reserved for it on the paper, and so with each finger of both hands in turn, finally bunching the five fingers together and printing the group as one. This was repeated on the duplicate sheet, the whole process involving no fewer than forty- eight inkings and impressions, and yet was it accomplished with such celerity that I have taken longer to describe it than these dexterous Chinamen took to effect it.
One of the papers would be filed for reference—a work involving a large staff of Army clerks and an extensive equipment of vertical filing apparatus—the other kept by the labourer as his identity certificate. ...
THE FULL WEBPAGE: http://www.cairogang.com/other-people/british/castle-intelligence/lees/chinese-labourers/chinese-labourers.html
On my first war-time crossing of the Channel, among the ships of the convoy were two steamers from whose upper decks multitudes of strange folk looked across at us. They were all dressed alike in long, loose-fitting cloaks of ruddy brown material, and they wore little caps with cat-flaps not unlike those donned by our airmen when aloft. Their hair was jet black, their strange, expressionless' faces berry brown. They were Manchurians nearing the land of war to give their labour to the cause of Britain—for a sound, commercial consideration be it premised.
At that time one had heard vaguely about "Chinese labour," but here was its embodiment in these two shiploads of grinning Orientals, who looked so curiously alike that one seemed to see the same man a hundred times over. ... I was to see more of these far-travelled Children of the Dawn in my next day's journey, as I had arranged to visit the main camp, where they are received and whence they are drafted to the sectors where their labour or their craftsmanship is most required.
Few things that I have seen in the British zone impressed me more favourably with the British genius for organisation than the handling and bestowal of these Chinese labourers...Figure what it means to sign a contract for three years' work at a place over six thousand miles away from your home !...
By extraordinary good luck, when I arrived at the labour camp the two boat-loads I had seen the day before were just detraining, and were going through the preliminaries of their reception. In long files they slowly moved up to the finger-printing huts, each man carrying two large paper forms on which his name was written in Chinese characters and in English. Various, personal details were already entered, such as his native town, date of engagement, state of health at embarkation, and the like.
But most interesting were the twelve spaces for his finger-prints.
In the sheds were rows of finger-printers, Chinese trained to the work, each of whom stood at a bench beside a lithographic stone which he frequently inked from a printer's roller, and as each new arrival came up the printer swiftly took hold of his right hand, pressed the tip of the little finger on the inked stone, then upon the space reserved for it on the paper, and so with each finger of both hands in turn, finally bunching the five fingers together and printing the group as one. This was repeated on the duplicate sheet, the whole process involving no fewer than forty- eight inkings and impressions, and yet was it accomplished with such celerity that I have taken longer to describe it than these dexterous Chinamen took to effect it.
One of the papers would be filed for reference—a work involving a large staff of Army clerks and an extensive equipment of vertical filing apparatus—the other kept by the labourer as his identity certificate. ...
THE FULL WEBPAGE: http://www.cairogang.com/other-people/british/castle-intelligence/lees/chinese-labourers/chinese-labourers.html
