Liverpool’s Chinatown occupies a stretch of Nelson Street and the surrounding blocks just west of Liverpool Cathedral, within the Great George ward in the south of the city centre. The area is home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe, with roots going back to 1834 when the first vessel sailing directly from China docked at Liverpool’s ports, carrying silk and cotton wool.
Origins and the Blue Funnel Line
The community grew substantially from the late 1860s onwards, when Alfred Holt and Company began recruiting large numbers of Chinese seamen for the Blue Funnel Shipping Line. That line built direct trade connections between Liverpool, Shanghai and Hong Kong, with silk, cotton and tea among the main imports. From the 1890s, small numbers of Chinese men began opening businesses to serve sailors working those routes. Some settled permanently, married local women and started families, producing a generation of British-born Eurasian Chinese children in Liverpool.
World War II and Its Aftermath
By the start of the Second World War, as many as 20,000 Chinese mariners were working in the city. In 1942 they staged a four-month strike for pay and rights equal to those of white mariners. The British Government and shipowners labelled the strikers as troublemakers. When the war ended, these men were barred from shore jobs, had their pay cut by two-thirds and were offered only one-way passages back to China. Hundreds were forcibly separated from their families; many of their locally born children continued to live in and around Chinatown. The original Chinatown had been in the docklands, but wartime bombing destroyed that area and the community relocated to its current position.
Architecture and Ongoing Regeneration
The most recognisable feature of the area is the Chinese Arch on Nelson Street – a paifang that is the largest multiple-span arch of its kind outside China. It was assembled in 2000, having been built in Shanghai, one of Liverpool’s twin cities, as a symbol of the area’s redevelopment. Chinese-style architecture extends throughout the surrounding streets, alongside Chinese restaurants, supermarkets and businesses. Regeneration plans announced in 2010 and 2012 include a proposed China Square, incorporating a Chinese Cultural Museum and a hotel in the former Scandinavian Hotel building, and a Shanghai Square development on the southern edge of Chinatown that would include a 23,000 square metre trade centre with space for up to 100 businesses, student accommodation and a large Asian Pacific food market.