About Us

A brief history of the New England Teochew Association

Chen Zhiqiang is thirty years old. Our New England Teochew Association has been established for thirty years. Traditionally, Teochew Chinese are mostly found in Southeast Asia. Since the political turmoil in Vietnam in 1975, a large number of refugees from the three Indochinese countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have fled to the sea. Many of them were of Teochew Chinese descent. They transitioned in refugee camps in Hong Kong, Malaya, Thailand and Indonesia, and were finally taken in by governments in Europe and the United States. This situation lasted for ten years, forming a new situation in which Teochew people spread from Southeast Asia to major cities in Europe and the United States. From the 1970s to the 1990s, a large number of Chinese immigrants (including those from Chaoshan) poured into major cities in Europe and North America from Southeast Asia and mainland China. Wherever there are tides, there are Chaoshan people, and cities with Chaoshan people have also established Chaoshan Associations. We in Boston also gave birth to one - the New England Chaoshan Association of the United States. When the Chaoshan people came to the new country, they adhered to the spirit of hard work, thrift and honesty, and soon gained a foothold and grew stronger. In Boston, many businesses run by Chaoshan people emerged in the 1980s, including supermarkets, restaurants, gold jewelry, fabrics, porcelain, and real estate. In 1982, the Massachusetts Vietnamese-Laotian Chinese Association was established. It can be said to be a brother organization of the Teochew Association, and many of its members are from Teochew. Twelve years later, the New England Teochew Association was established. The New England Teochew Association of the United States was founded on February 20, 1994. Its headquarters is located in the heart of Chinatown in Boston, USA. On May 24 of the same year, the Association held its founding and inauguration ceremony, with Mr. Liu Hanrong serving as the first president; Mr. Yang Kejing, Mr. Zhong Bingnan, and Mr. Chen Zhongchao serving as vice presidents. The board members have laid a solid foundation for the organization's steady start and development. When it was first established, the association had only a handful of members, but now it has grown into a large organization with over a hundred members. As time went by, the hometown association gradually grew and became an important platform for unity and mutual assistance among Chaoshan Chinese in the Boston area of the United States. It is hard to imagine, and strange to say, that in the 1980s, the Chaozhou Associations that emerged in various European and American cities, including our Boston, were mostly organized by people who were not born in the Chaozhou area, and many of them had never even been to their hometown. However, this did not diminish their strong homesickness or their enthusiasm for establishing the association. This phenomenon is probably hard to find other examples among other ethnic groups in the world except the Jews.