From Port to Chinese Shops: Lingnan Commercial Culture and Chinese Retail Localization in the Caribbean

Xiaoqi Ma; Jin Ma

doi:10.62051/ijsspa.v10n7.14

Authors

Xiaoqi Ma School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510000, China
Jin Ma School of International Studies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510000, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62051/ijsspa.v10n7.14

Keywords:

Chinese Shops, Lingnan Commercial Culture, Chinese in the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper explores how Lingnan commercial culture was transmitted and localized through Chinese retail network in the Caribbean from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. With historical materials, ethnographic records, and literary texts, it tries to sort out the movement of Guangdong migrants from planting labor to small commerce. The Chinese shop helped migrants settle and earn a living in the Caribbean. It worked as a daily mechanism, embedding migrants in local economies by providing ordinary goods, credit, long hours service, family labor, and customer contact. Kin sponsorship, native-place ties, apprenticeship, rotating credit, schools, and benevolent associations helped these retail networks to grow across different islands and generations. Therefore, the Lingnan characteristics of the shops lay in their flexible commercial practices rather than in fixed cultural symbols.

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