Brazil--Taiwan Immigrants' "Paradise Lost"

One feature of Chinese Brazilians is their way of settling in groups to offer mutual assistance in setting up in business. Like the Japanese immigrants, many have gone into agriculture; but the Chinese arrived much later--mostly coming over from Taiwan only in the last 30 years.

Chinese immigration to Brazil is far out- weighed by the Japanese.

Newly arrived at Sao Paulo airport, many Taiwanese travelers are slightly surprised to see oriental faces everywhere, from luggage porters to customs inspectors. But you needn't fall over yourself to say hello since these I million oriental immigrants aren't of Chinese stock, they're Japanese.

With over 1 million people of Japanese descent, some 6 million of Portuguese and Italian, 3 million of Spanish, nearly 1 million of German, and 500,000 of Russian descent, not to mention Indians, Negroes, and mixed races of unfathomable origins, Brazil has always been proud to be an ethnic melting pot totally devoid of racial discrimination.

In this great melting pot, the Chinese of course have their place. They number merely 100,000 or so, mostly hidden away in the southern hemisphere's largest city of greater San Paulo with its population of 18 million. They may not be as wealthy as Chinese tycoons in Southeast Asia, nor as academically distinguished as Chinese American scholars, but they have a moving story of their own to tell.

The history of Chinese immigration to Brazil goes back to tea plantation workers in 1810. Some Chinese fled mainland China in the 1950s to escape communism by settling in Brazil, but not many (see our article "Chiao-tsai" and Suitcases--A Century of Chinese Immigration to Brazil.") Seventy percent of the Chinese currently in Brazil have arrived from Taiwan since the 1960s. They, still speak their local dialects, and keep up close contacts with Taiwan.

Some may remember how Spanish and Portuguese language schools sprouted all over Taipei 20 or 30 years ago (Brazil is Latin America's only Portuguese-speaking country); every month a Dutch run lines steamship would leave Hong Kong carrying one or two dozen Taiwanese passengers among a crowd of Japanese immigrants, their rosy dreams of the future sustaining them through the 45-day sea voyage to South America.

With ample land and few people, Brazil had adopted a liberal immigration policy of welcoming farmers and technicians with open arms; all you needed was a certificate of competence and an offer of employment from a Brazilian firm. "The Japanese set up companies in Brazil just to issue employment documents! They charged their own compatriots US$25, but stung the Taiwanese for US$50!" Thus recalls Father Hsiao Chin- ming, a Sao Paulo Catholic priest who came to Brazil from Europe in 1955, speaks fluent Portuguese and has done a lot for the immigrant community from Taiwan.

Brazil was an attractive enough place for immigrants then. With excellent public facilities, a free open economy and plentiful natural resources, it was a paradise offering unlimited opportunities for the immigrant with energy to spare.

"Back then Taiwan was struggling and its economic development had only just got off the ground." Hsu Tieh, sometime chairman of the Brazilian Taiwanese Association and currently owner of a textile plant, notes that economic necessity compelled him to emigrate: "I worked hard as a ready-made clothing wholesaler, but barely made enough to feed and clothe my seven children. When a friend mentioned you could make an easy living in Brazil, I jumped at the chance ...."

Arriving alone in Brazil in 1963 with US$200 in his pocket, Hsu Tieh first took a casual job in a "chiao-tzu" eatery (many early Chinese immigrants ran shops of this sort), and also work ed as a farm watchman. He thought of giving it all up, but he didn't even have the money to pay his fare home. Today Hsu Tieh owns a huge luxury home in Sao Paulo.

In the boom decades of the 1950s to 1970s, Brazil was a risk-taker's paradise. Chen Lung- chi, a practicing engineer with over 20 years' experience with a multinational company, recalls with amazement: "As an only slightly experienced technical expert you could easily find a job with a big multinational paying US$2,000-3,000 a month, no sweat, and vastly attractive compared to earning just NT$10,000 a month in Taiwan."

Liu Chen-sheng, chairman of National Taiwan University Alumni in Brazil and a design engineer at the world's largest hydroelectric power station--Itaipu--typifies another sort of immigrant. His ultimate goal was the United States: "People told me Brazil was so near America you could drive there (in fact, Sao Paulo is an 11-hour flight from Los Angeles), so like an idiot I came."

Many others like Liu Chen-sheng first came to Brazil as a stepping-stone to the United States, but were happy enough to stay. "To me, Brazil seemed just great; weather and scenery apart, the people were so kind, you could find a highly paid job without knowing a word of Portuguese, your workmates would offer to teach you Portuguese and show you a good time," enthuses Liu.

Just as most older Cantonese immigrants opened "chiao-tzu" eateries, most Taiwanese immigrants became suitcase salesmen--buying Swatow silk or Yentai handmade silk flowers in Hong Kong or mainland China and hawking them door to door. In time they expanded into jewelry and wrist watches.

"Fine, delicate tablecloths are a must when Brazilian daughters are married off," says Father Hsiao Chin-ming, "and Brazilian women are optimistic by nature, they don't haggle, and if they see the salesman is a Chinese who doesn't speak Portuguese and has an honest face, they'll ask him in for a cup of coffee. Old clients will buy without fail, and even offer to introduce you to family and friends!"

According to old Brazil hand Chien Han- sheng, head of the Taipei City chapter of the Kuomintang, Taiwanese traveling salesmen were diligent and good at doing business, often promoting sales through popular easy-payment schemes, whereby the first installment often covered their costs and the rest was pure profit; and settling the next monthly bill gave an opportunity to bring around new wares to hawk.

"In the heyday of the traveling salesman you could earn a good living just by selling a handful of embroidered tablecloths a month; and a bit of extra effort easily guaranteed you several hundred customers," muses Father Hsiao.

Good money and the nice people drew in wave after wave of immigrants, and since Brazil permitted mass immigration a lot of Taiwanese teamed up with friends and relatives, even whole clans of 100 or more, and came over to put down their roots here together.

Li Jung-pin, a Hakka from Chungli who is now deputy director of the Chinese Journal of the Americas in Sao Paulo, provides one such example. "It would never have occurred to me to emigrate, but around 1961 my paternal aunt and her husband went to Brazil, and when my grandmother went to visit them she saw how nice the climate was and decided to stay," Li recounts. "My grandfather had already passed away and we Hakkas have a strong sense of family, so since my grandmother liked this place my three younger uncles and four other aunts came over to join her." Counting the four households of his father's male cousins there are now four generations of the Li family here, totaling well over 100 persons.

Though far from home, they still observe traditional Hakka convention. As the eldest son, Li Jung-pin's father had to look after the ancestral tombs and lands at home, so he stayed on in Taiwan. As eldest grandson, Li Jung-pin himself fulfilled his filial duty to his father by being at his grandmother's side. While his grandmother was alive, the entire clan would gather round at Chinese New Year; now she has passed away and lies buried in Brazil, everyone still gets together once a year to sweep her tomb.

The Li clan's en masse immigration is far from being a unique case; the Chang clan from Yang- mei and the Yeh clan from Hsinwu are two other Hakka immigrant families numbering over 100 persons. Bela Vista, close to Sao Paulo city center, has the main concentration of Hakka immigrants.

"Taiwanese and Hakkas each make up 50 percent of the immigrant community from Taiwan, and each has their own separate stronghold; it's an interesting phenomenon, and one you don't find among other foreign communities," notes Chien Han-sheng.

Bela Vista is home to the Taiwan Hakka community, while the city of Mogi, near Sao Paulo and the location of distinguished artist Chang Ta-chien's Eight Virtues Garden, is where the Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese immigrants are based. But rather than clan solidarity, this mass immigration was inspired by religious ties through the Presbyterian Church.

"Like the Bible story of Abraham's journey to the Promised Land of Canaan, we really do thank the Lord for leading us to Brazil where our community has settled down and grown," says Mogi Presbyterian church pastor Chi Tsung-nan.

This story goes back to the early 1960s, when Presbyterian congregations in Yuantou and Chichou rural districts of Changhua county happened to hear about Brazil's life of plenty and its liberal immigration policy, and bearing in mind Taiwan's limited land, high population density and poor prospects for farmers, they decided without hesitation. Rev. Chi Tsung-nan's uncle Chi Ching-cheng, an elder of the Yuantou Presbyterian church, made all the arrangements and gathered together six families from the congregation to apply for immigration as farmers, and the group of 32 set off for Brazil taking their farmers' spades, steaming baskets and grinding stones along with them.

Five days after arriving in Brazil, Chi Ching- cheng and his six farming families jointly bought a farm alongside the highway from Sao Paulo to Rio. This six-hectare farm, bought for US$4,000, became home to the six families and the base of the now roughly 86-household Taiwanese Presbyterian community around Mogi. The tiny church the original six families erected with their own hands still stands there today.

These Presbyterians not only identify with one another as members of a single church, they also share a common business interest--cooperative mushroom farming. The 65 Presbyterian mushroom-farming families in the locality have made the area Brazil's main source of mushrooms. Their mushroom growers' association, set up seven years ago, meets twice or three times a year to negotiate mushroom prices. "This eliminates the hostile competition and wildly fluctuating prices we used to get, to the benefit of all," is how Chi Tsung-nan sums up the key points of this rare example of solidarity within the overseas Chinese community.

The sound of spoken Hakka in Bela Vista and Hokkien preaching in Mogi are important sheet- anchors for two local overseas Chinese communities, but individual immigrants from Taiwan, not part of any mass immigration, have also settled down in their own way. Brazil's comfort- able, friendly environment has provided them too with the nourishment they need to flourish. "Those were the golden days ...", Li Jung-pin fondly recalls: "When you went home to see your folks you were a big man! It was generous presents and big handouts all round ..."

Golden days are always quick to pass. In the late 1970s the overseas Chinese community was racked by internecine strife, and Brazil's economy took a turn for the worse. Those with the means to do so sought safety in the United States; many with no alternative returned back home to Taiwan.

"Brazil's establishment of diplomatic relations with Peking in 1974 was a major turning point," says one Chinese resident. After that, "political partisanship heated up, and struggles broke out between left-wing and right-wing groups, and between supporters and opponents of Taiwan independence. And when Taiwan carried out an anti-crime sweep in 1984 a number of underworld figures and economic criminals fled to Brazil, adding to the complexity of the problem."

It was in 1984 that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission's local adviser Liao Chun-ming and the deputy chairman of the Brazilian Chinese Association Chien Tang-chiang were both assassinated. After that the community was plagued with rumors and everyone feared for their own safety.

Fortunately these violent elements in the community wiped each other out, dialogue was established between those with different political ideas, and chilly relations across the Taiwan Straits were gradually normalized. The overseas Chinese community has quietened down, and although there are still many small cliques--for a community numbering only 100,000 there are nearly 100 Chinese associations of all kinds--in general the established overseas Chinese, the Taiwanese immigrants and the new arrivals from mainland China over the past decade are all getting on well enough.

Outside influences have had a more serious effect. Brazil's economy rapidly deteriorated after the first energy crisis in the 1970s, and the overseas Chinese saw all the fruits of 20 years' hard work eaten away in a decade by economic decline, inflation and deteriorating social order. The golden days lost their luster, the immigrants' paradise altered for the worse. It was a process too painful to look back on.

According to Chen Lung-chi, who only plucked up courage two years ago to resign from the post he had held for more than 20 years, the multinational company he worked for started to go downhill after 1978 and won fewer and fewer engineering contracts, while those it did win were hampered by government procedures and delay. Originally a simple engineer, Chen Lung-chi was now compelled to negotiate repayment claims and budget allocations with the Ministry of Finance, a hopeless task for an outsider to Brazil like himself, lacking in personal clout.

"My salary was steadily cut back from US$3,000 until by 1982 it was difficult for me to earn US$1,000. And I couldn't afford to live on my capital." Chen Lung-chi's quiet voice takes on a tone of self-mockery and hopelessness: "Everyone said just wait a while, things will soon look up. But they never did...."

As the owner of a six-hectare coffee plantation employing Japanese and Brazilian laborers, Li Jung-pin is one of the better-off members of the overseas Chinese community. But comparing himself to Taiwan's nouveau riche he can't help sighing: "The wheel has turned, and today we're poor cousins compared to our relations back in Taiwan."

Individual efforts are almost useless against a large-scale change in circumstances. For years Brazil's inflation rate has been in the 300-400 percent range, and supermarket goods marked at CZ$10 in the morning are often relabeled with a higher price of CZ$12 by the afternoon. Faced with the threat of currency devaluation, the overseas Chinese have dropped their traditional savings habits in favor of exchanging their Brazilian cruzados for US dollars or gold. But with no foreign currency accounts allowed in Brazil, there's all the added worry of hoarding dollars and gold at home.

"Robberies frequently occur in the areas populated by Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, since burglars are well aware there's plenty of dollars and gold in oriental people's homes, and they know what they like!" deadpans Yuan Kuo- sheng, deputy editor of the Chinese Journal of the Americas.

Orientals are fatted calves to robbers, and a popular topic of conversation among the overseas Chinese community is who's home has been robbed lately. Luckily Brazilians are kind-hearted, and even robbers have their soft spot. The GIO's representative in Brazil, Li Shao-hua, who has been there for two years, offers a good tip: If you're held up by a robber, just raise your hands and let him search you. Never make any suspicious movements such as reaching into your pocket as if for a gun, or running off or screaming to alert the police, and you'll be unlikely to come to any harm.

Still, "in Brazil thirty or forty years ago you could leave your door open at night!" sighs a Chinese restaurateur at how times have changed.

Economic decline, inflation and deteriorating social order ... taken all in all, most Taiwanese immigrants still live quietly, but hints of social instability have spurred many to think about more than just earning as much as they can. Third and fourth generation Japanese immigrants are packing their bags and leaving in droves, and many Taiwanese immigrants are saying under their breath "maybe it's time to go back home."

How hard it is, though, to say goodbye to a fine phase of your life which fills you with gratitude. Many Taiwanese immigrants aren't willing to turn their backs on Brazil, which took them in and where they've built up their lives from scratch, or to kiss goodbye to their initial desire to carve out a new paradise for themselves. They are providing for their children to attend the top schools in Brazil so that they can establish themselves here, but are also forcing them to speak Mandarin and spend regular holidays in Taiwan, and encouraging them to date opposite-sex friends within the Chinese community ... all in the interests of providing them with more choice.

This all smacks of contradiction and inner struggle. But as first-generation immigrants who've tasted the fruits and disappointments of settling down in a distant land, what sort of future are they hoping to give their children? This is maybe the most nagging question for Brazil's immigrants from Taiwan!

[Picture Caption]

To what kind of future does the long road of immigration lead? This is the problem that most concerns many Taiwan immigrants.

Establishing all these mushroom sheds in a foreign land is a worthy testimony to the toughness and survival capability of Taiwan immigrants.

Six families from the same congregation in Changhua built this Presbyterian church with their bare hands brick by brick, and it still stands today.

Mainland and Taiwanese children alike enjoy having a good time playing ball at the Catholic church.

One major feature of immigrants to Brazil is that they arrived in groups bringing friends and family along too. Li Jung-pin, who came with his grandmother, typifies Hakka clan immigration.

Several Catholic priests from Hopeh travelled to Europe long ago, acquired fluent Portuguese and were of considerable assistance to early Taiwan immigrants to Brazil. Shown here is Fr. Ho Yen-chao.

Robberies are frequent in the oriental quarter, even the temple is fitted with metal doors.

The Kuan-yin Temple in the inner city's oriental quarter is a busy place of worship dedicated to Taiwan folk deities.

The Chi family are photographed together as a memento of the happy occasion. Pastor Chi Tsung-nan is seen at top Left.

At his eldest grandson's wedding, Presbyterian elder Chi Ching-cheng not only provides one of the barbecues for which Brazil is famous, but also serves homemade Chinese dishes such as glutinous fried rice and meatballs.

Will this Sino-Brazilian marriage mean putting down permanent roots here? Perhaps the older relatives look on with some regrets.

Establishing all these mushroom sheds in a foreign land is a worthy testimony to the toughness and survival capability of Taiwan immigrants.

Six families from the same congregation in Changhua built this Presbyterian church with their bare hands brick by brick, and it still stands today.

Mainland and Taiwanese children alike enjoy having a good time playing ball at the Catholic church.

One major feature of immigrants to Brazil is that they arrived in groups bringing friends and family along too. Li Jung-pin, who came with his grandmother, typifies Hakka clan immigration.

Several Catholic priests from Hopeh travelled to Europe long ago, acquired fluent Portuguese and were of considerable assistance to early Taiwan immigrants to Brazil. Shown here is Fr. Ho Yen-chao.

Robberies are frequent in the oriental quarter, even the temple is fitted with metal doors.

The Kuan-yin Temple in the inner city's oriental quarter is a busy place of worship dedicated to Taiwan folk deities.

The Chi family are photographed together as a memento of the happy occasion. Pastor Chi Tsung-nan is seen at top Left.

At his eldest grandson's wedding, Presbyterian elder Chi Ching-cheng not only provides one of the barbecues for which Brazil is famous, but also serves homemade Chinese dishes such as glutinous fried rice and meatballs.

Will this Sino-Brazilian marriage mean putting down permanent roots here? Perhaps the older relatives look on with some regrets.