Speech at a Reception for the Irish Community of Shanghai
Pudong Shangri-La Hotel, Shanghai, China, 11th December 2014
A chairde na hÉireann agus na Síne,
Dear friends of Ireland and China,
Tá áthas orm a bheith anseo libh i gcathar íontach Shang-hai le linn an dara céim de mo Chuairt Stáit ar an tSín.
May I express my appreciation to you, Consul General, and to you, Mrs. Krassimira Gormley, for the warm and gracious hospitality you are extending to my wife Sabina and I, to Minister Michael Noonan, to our Irish delegation, and indeed to all the members of Ireland’s extended family here in Shanghai.
This includes, of course, Dr. Sha Hai Lin, whom I am delighted to see among us tonight as China’s former Ambassador to Ireland, and one of the architects of the solid friendship that unites our two countries.
Like all first-time visitors, I am very struck by the vibrancy and dramatic scale of Shanghai. This city is truly a window on China for the rest of the world; it is one of the great urban incubators of our contemporary globalisation, to which the citizens of so many countries and from all continents converge to live, work, trade, study, or simply watch in amazement.
We live in an era of unprecedented mobility. People are moving to and fro between the countryside and the city, between cities, between countries, between continents and, let us never forget, between cultures.
Today the Chinese community is one of the largest migrants’ groups in Ireland, one who greatly contributes to enriching contemporary Irish life, and I do not need to remind this particular audience of how China, and this city in particular, is home to a very dynamic Irish community.
All of you here, each in your own particular way, be it through your endeavours in the economic and commercial spheres, or in the academic and cultural fields – all of you contribute to the profusion of mutually beneficial exchanges which, taken together, are the living base of Chinese-Irish relations.
May I, then, avail of this occasion to salute the achievements of organisations such as Le Chéile, the GAA, the Shanghai Ireland Association for the St. Patrick’s Ball, and the Irish Chamber of Commerce. All of these groups play an important role in giving life to Irish culture in these Eastern lands, and in providing appropriate support to the individuals, families, and businesses who are willing to establish themselves in Shanghai, whether temporarily or on a long-term basis.
In one of those singular developments brought about by our cultural globalisation, the GAA has been met with a warm welcome in many parts of Asia – not least here in Shanghai, where, I understand, “the Saints and Sirens” have made a name for themselves in All Asia and All China games and where they have extended a hand of friendship to both locals and modern-times Shanghailanders.[1]
Of course this is not Shanghai’s first experience of internationalisation, nor is our era unprecedented in witnessing large-scale encounters between the Irish and the Chinese. Indeed Ireland’s history of emigration means that few kinds of cross-cultural encounters are really new to the Irish. One of the essays[2] written for RTÉ’s 2008 Thomas Davis Series, published with the title of China and the Irish, shows how the Irish were involved alongside the Chinese in one of the key projects in the emergence of global modernity – namely the building of the first transcontinental railway linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the US.
This essay also notes how the period – often referred to as the world’s first “globalisation” – saw frequent intermarriages between Irish and Chinese emigrants in the US: by the late 1870s, for example, a quarter of all Chinese men in New York City were married to Irish women.
During the same time, Shanghai – as the most important seaport for trade between the West and China’s Yangtze Delta region – was witnessing an influx of foreign traders, labourers, soldiers, diplomats, administrators, missionaries and adventurers. The Irish, of course, were part of that history.
For example, one of the most influential foreigners in late 19th century China, was, as many of you know, Robert Hart, from county Armagh, who substantially contributed to reorganising the Chinese Customs Service (it was he who chose the Gothic design of Shanghai’s new Customs House, in the early 1860s). Hart lived in China for many decades, until his death in 1911, and he was held in great esteem by both the British and his Chinese employers.
The visit to Shanghai of George Bernard Shaw, in February 1933, marks the comet’s tail of that first period of internationalisation, and perhaps the best version of it, infused as it was by a spirit of cross-border intellectual exchange and internationalist solidarity. It was for me a special experience to visit, earlier today, the home of Sun Yat Sen where Shaw was received by Song Qingling and other notable public intellectuals and writers of the time.
Reflecting back on those times past – both that first era of globalisation, and the subsequent fragmentation and devastation which the decade of the 1930s brought to the world – it occurred to me that they provide some valuable lessons for our contemporary moment. My wish, then, would be that international exchanges between continents and nations continue to expand, devoid of any aggressive mercantilism or non-cooperative protectionism, but underpinned, instead, by genuine mutual understanding, respect for our differences, and above all else, by friendship between our peoples.
The space for deeper engagement at political, economic and cultural levels is growing; the opportunities for mutually beneficial exchanges are exciting, and I would like to thank all of you here this evening who are playing such an important part in realising these opportunities. Your on-the-ground experience of Shanghai and China, the time you take to understand other ways of thinking, living, working and trading – these are invaluable resources in giving life and strength to the wider Irish-Chinese relationship.
These people-to-people connections are being deployed in a myriad of ways, including, for example, through twinning partnerships, such as that between Shanghai and Cork. I know that next year the two cities will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their twinning agreement, and so I would like to leave you with the words of a Cork-born poet, Colm Breathnach, who writes in the Irish language.
Three years ago, Colm had a residency in Shanghai, and these words, taken from his poem “Zhongshan Park”, capture the many possibilities, the hopes and aspirations, that this city embodies:
Ach sonraím fós os cionn an mhéid sin go léir
cleitearnach eadarbhuasach na heiteoige a chonac inné
dá chur ar foluain ag fear óg i bPáirc Zhongshan
go hard os cionn na dtithe spéire,
nó ab í an chleitearnach dhochloiste a dhein a chroí í.
but I can still distinguish above it all
the lofty fluttering of that kite I saw
a young man yesterday in Zhongshan Park
send hovering high above the skyscrapers,
or is it the inaudible fluttering his heart made.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh – Xie Xie dajia.
[1] “Shanghailanders” were foreign – principally Western – settlers in the “extraterritorial areas” of Shanghai between the end of the first opium war (1842) and the mid-20th century.
[2] Fintan O’Toole. 2009. “From Patsy O’Wang to Fu Manchu: Ireland, China and Racism.” In China and the Irish, edited by Jerusha McCormack, RTE’s Thomas Davis Lecture Series 2008, New Island.