Situated in the Caribbean Sea, with 350,000 inhabitants and covering an area of 1,100 square km, the Island of Martinique is the smallest of the four French overseas departments. Living on this island, which is almost as far from Metropolitan France as from China, are over 400 Chinese immigrants as well as their offspring of mixed blood, of which the He family is the biggest and most well-known clan.
The first batch of Chinese immigrants set foot on the island at the end of the 19th century. As far back as 1935, He Xuehong from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province went by ship to French Guyana, another French overseas department on the South American mainland, to seek refuge with his uncle who lived there then. On the voyage, the penniless youth was forced to work to pay his passage. Later, He Xuehong moved alone to Martinique to make a living. At the outset, he ran a grocery store on the island. A year later, however, his wife, who had been left behind in China, came to this remote island to join him. The couple endured no end of hardships, struggling to bring up twelve children. After more than half a century of endeavor, today He Xuehong’s family firm has become the fourth biggest economic entity on the island, with nearly 800 employers and an annual turnover of 220 million Euros, occupying a pivotal position on Martinique.
Speaking of He Xuehong’s early business activities, local inhabitants are quite familiar with the widely circulated story. He Xuehong’s initial grocery became famous very soon due to a profuse variety of goods of high quality, low prices, backed by excellent service. When He and his wife went out to a ship to deal with the cargo, their children at home took the responsibility for minding the shop. As a rule, they kept the money on the shelves where the sold goods had stood until their parents came back to collect it. Thus, He Xuehong’s children were brought up in the simple and unsophisticated folkways of the island combined with the Chinese tradition of hard work and frugality.
Once the children grew up, He Xuehong asked all of them to attend university, for which his offspring are still grateful today. Doctors, professors and businessmen have been produced among He Xuehong’s offspring spread all over the world, although most still work for the family firm. With the old generation now gone, now He Xuehong’s eldest son A-Lan is in charge of the enterprise group, whose business ranges from a supermarket chain developed from the original grocery to specialist stores for the sale of auto spare parts and computers, and whose sales extended beyond the Island of Martinique long ago.
Michel Cadot, prefect of Martinique, ascribed the success of He Xuehong’s family firm to Chinese immigrants’ identifying themselves with the original inhabitants. Black-skinned, locally born and bred aborigines are the main inhabitants. In addition, there live over 3,000 whites and their offspring who, originally migrating from Metropolitan France in the beginning of the 19th century, move within their own circle, refusing to intermarry with outsiders. The total number of first and second-generation Chinese immigrants is no more than several dozen. In contrast, almost all of their descendants have been united in wedlock with the local aboriginal people. They had no alternative but to change their lifestyle completely. However, it is this sheer localization that brought about their success. As a result, the enterprise whose administrative personnel include a great number of aborigines is not rigidly stratified. A-Lan and his subordinates address each other as brothers.
In regard to the future development of the enterprise, A-Lan jutted his lips at the present executive manager of the enterprise group, an aboriginal offspring: “It is something they have to be concerned with.”
(光明日报 [Guangming Daily], translated by Shao Da for china.org.cn, July 20, 2002)
