During World War One around 140,000 Chinese labourers were recruited by the Allied Powers to carry out war-related work behind the battlefields of the Western Front. The tremendous losses suffered during the British offensives of 1915 meant that men who had previously worked behind the lines were now required to fight. The ever-escalating casualties had left factories, arms depots, railways and ports desperately short of manpower. Realising that a massive effort would be required to prepare for ‘the Great Offensive’ of 1917, the British Authorities agreed upon a scheme to enlist labourers from China to serve as non-military personnel – forming the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC). Recruitment was carried out in the more temperate northern provinces as it was recognised that the men would be more likely to withstand the cold climate of northern France than those from Hong Kong. Some of these men came from such remote rural villages that when they reached the tall buildings and bustling waterfront of Shanghai, they thought they had already arrived in Europe (as dramatised in Act One, Scene 7 of Forgotten, p. 50). This was of course only the start of a long and gruelling journey halfway around the world on which many would perish.  

When the Chinese reached France they were allocated to various units and put to work unloading ships and trains, laying tracks and building roads, repairing tanks, assembling shells, digging trenches, transporting the wounded and burying the dead. How aware the British public were of China’s part in the war one can only surmise. The recruitment of Chinese labour to the Allied battlefront was a plan that had to be kept secret as British trade unions vehemently opposed the employment of Chinese labourers, wartime or not. Until very recently the crucial role played by these men was pretty much erased, both in Western and Chinese historiography. In the former case this was, broadly speaking, the result of an overtly Eurocentric approach to World War One. In the latter, this was because the recruitment was seen as yet another example of China’s exploitation at the hands of foreign imperialists. Only now, after a century of neglect, is the contribution of the Chinese Labour Corps to the success of the Allied war effort being assessed. Much of this attention has been concerned with debates over numbers, how many men recruited and how many killed, and how and where the fallen should be commemorated. There are approximately 2,000 Chinese Labour Corps graves in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in northern Europe, but historians assert there were many thousands more Chinese ‘dead or missing’. Research continues to unearth the names of labourers who are known to have died in service but have no memorial.  

Forgotten opens on a muddy battlefield to the sound of exploding shells. Old Six, both of whose legs are broken, is cradling his friend Big Dog whose ‘guts have spilled out all over this trench and all over this battlefield’ (p. 9). An apparition from the annals of traditional Chinese opera, The Miraculous Traveller, enters the stage and walks around them, reciting lines of poetic drama from The Tale of the Marsh. Old Six recognises his wife Second Moon in costume, ‘wearing a false beard on her face to denote she is playing a man’ (p. 10). She does not acknowledge her husband, addressing him instead as Pilgrim Wu Song, ‘gallant warrior of the marsh’, the character he used to play back home when they were both members of the Magical Chinese Variety Troupe of Horse Shoe Village (p. 10). As the stage is rocked by further explosions, Old Six, with his final breath, responds to her in character: ‘You have that marvellous ability to travel quickly, brother’ (p. 11). The Miraculous Traveller has come to spirit the dead and dying Chinese – and we the audience – back to Horse Shoe Village. The next scene reveals a makeshift stage in the village square the previous year. The Tale of The Marsh performed by Old Six, Big Dog, Second Moon and Eunuch Lin, the other member of their small troupe, is being watched (and rudely heckled) by Headman Zhang and his sycophantic sidekick, Longevity Lin. 

The decision to make the four central characters members of an amateur acting troupe is an effective plot device as it works on a number of levels. Loh recalls reading a Yuan dynasty book on theatre, The Register of Ghosts (c. 1330), in which the author states ‘the purpose of theatre is to preserve the ghosts of the past’. He also discovered that the stage exit/entrance was referred to as the ‘Gate of Ghosts’. Loh’s rustic players are caught up in the seismic clash of age-old cultural tradition and contemporary global politics that would dictate China’s war policy in 1917.  

Act One: motivations for joining the war 

Times are tough in China’s rural hinterland. As Big Dog states, ‘There’s no work to be done. The fields are either arid or flooded into oblivion’ (p. 21). Old Six and Second Moon struggle to feed themselves and their small child. Big Dog is mired in opium addiction and Eunuch Lin is particularly unfortunate. Castrated as a boy for a potentially secure life of service in the emperor’s court, his father had expected him to ‘return home with the riches of the Great Qing and be celebrated far and wide’. All for nothing, he tells his friends: ‘I bled so much… and he sewed me up with a goose feather’ (p. 53). With the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 the Manchu Qing dynasty had come to an end and with it the archaic eunuch system. China was making every effort to assert herself as a modern nation state while hampered by factional infighting among rival warlords and the punitive financial indemnities exhorted by the colonial powers as reparation for past wars of their own making: these ‘foreign powers […] gnaw away at us like caterpillars on a great leaf’, describes the Professor (p. 42). 

Loh’s main characters are illiterate peasants with a creative line in lewd obscenities (for example, ‘You lousy son of a goblin’s whore’), but they are also steeped in the ancient lore, music-making and storytelling kept alive in China by itinerant performers (p. 15). An article in the Illustrated War News, published towards the close of the war, features photographs of members of the Chinese Labour Corps celebrating the Lunar New Year (11 February 1918) in army camps across France. The entertainments include juggling and stilt-walking, acrobatic stunts and theatrical pieces. Loh was struck by the elaborate costumes, props and musical instruments, surmising that the workers would have carried these with them from faraway China. He reflected,  

these men were story-tellers and artists. ‘Art’ is so often seen as the preserve of privileged education. These labourers were the polar opposite of ‘privilege’. But art coursed through them like an unstoppable river. 

In the play, the incongruity of such a fanciful scenario in a dangerous war zone also illustrates the naivety of the men who were signed up. Eunuch Lin is excited and dreams of the future: ‘We’re a magical theatre troupe. The foreign devils will be entranced by our music and performance and line our path back to Shandong with gold and cherry blossoms’ (p. 29). 

Act Two: Armistice and the Peace Treaty 

Act Two opens in the ‘“Chink Camp”’. China’s political inferiority is brought starkly home by official Allied signs such as ‘“ON NO ACCOUNT TALK TO THE CHINESE”’, which is accompanied by droll graffiti: ‘“WHO CAN TALK TO CHINKS?”’ (p. 65). China’s involvement in the war had been prompted by diplomatic attempts to forge a new identity as an equal member of the international community. When Armistice Day is announced the Professor is optimistic: ‘They’re convening the Peace Conference already. And we have a place there!’ (p. 97). The Allied win was seen as an opportunity for China to recover German colonial concessions in Shandong (these had been taken over by Japan during the war). We see the final performance of Big Dog and Old Six who then exit the stage ‘through the gate of ghosts’ while the Professor, having survived the conflict, sets off for Paris. Here he will learn of his country’s betrayal (p. 101). Rather than treating China as an equal, the powers gathered at Versailles proved unwilling to antagonize Japan, seeing them as the more important ally in East Asia. The play concludes with a conversation between the Professor and a young woman, Emilie Tscheng, who is one of the overseas students gathered in Paris to protest the decision to gift Shandong to Japan, ‘like a wedding dinner of roast hog’ (p. 101). ‘Things will change’, she assures him: ‘Radical thought is spreading like fire across our land’ (p. 104).  

It would be thanks to pressure from the students’ activism that the Chinese delegation to the conference at Versailles refused to sign the Peace Treaty. Despite China having been treated as a third-rate country, historians credit the delegates with projecting a united image of a strong China, setting the stage for the later recovery of the Shandong concessions at the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921–1922. Forgotten reminds us of the decisive part played by China’s involvement in the Great War, not just in helping the Allied Powers to win, but in forging China's modern identity on the international stage. 

All page references are from Daniel York Loh, Forgotten 遗忘 (London: Oberon Books, 2018). 

Dr Anne Witchard, University of Westminster.