[7] In the 1780s, thousands of voluntary Chinese migrants (estimated to be more than 3,000[8]: 22 ) set sail for Port Louis from Guangzhou on board British, French, and Danish ships; they found employment as blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers, and tailors, and quickly formed a small Chinatown, the camp des Chinois, in Port Louis.
[10] Most of these migrants from Fujian were merchants and therefore according to the law they were not allowed to bring their families with them, were not allowed to buy lands unless they abandoned their Chinese citizenship and adopted British citizenship; therefore, this led to many intermarriages with women of the Creole and Indian communities in order to build their own families or buy land under the name of their spouses.
[10] The earliest migrants were largely Cantonese-speaking; but, later, Hakka-speakers from Meixian, further east in Canton (modern-day Guangdong), came to dominate numerically; as in other overseas Chinese communities, rivalry between Hakka and Cantonese became a common feature of the society.
[19] Until the 1930s, Chinese migrants continued to arrive in Port Louis, but with the strain on the local economy's ability to absorb them, many found that Mauritius would only be their first stop; they went on to the African mainland (especially South Africa), as well as to Madagascar, Réunion, and Seychelles.
[10] Sino-Mauritians continued to maintain the personal ethnic networks connecting them to relatives in greater China, which would play an important role in the 1980s, with the rise of the export-processing zones.
Foreign investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the factories they built in the EPZs, helped Mauritius to become the third-largest exporter of woollen knitwear in the world.
[10] Simultaneously, Chinese women migrant workers who came to work in textile factories came from all regions of China and some of them decided to remain in Mauritius instead of returning to China after the completion of their work contract; these Chinese women married Sino-Mauritian men and settled with their families in Mauritius.
[10] Nowadays, most Sino-Mauritians living in Mauritius are Hakka (客家) who can trace their ancestry back to Meixian, Guangdong province.
[10][note 1] The Sino-creoles community in Mauritius can include: Historically, most Sino-Mauritians became businesspeople, with a once "virtual monopoly" on retail trade.
[30] Few Sino-Mauritian youth speak Chinese; those who do use it primarily for communication with elderly relatives, especially those who did not attend school and thus had little exposure to English or French.
[34] The Chung-Hwa Middle School (中华中学), established by Kuomintang cadres on 20 October 1941, grew to enroll 500 students, but by the end of the 1950s, that had shrunk to just 300; they stopped classes entirely in the 1960s, although their alumni association remains prominent in the Sino-Mauritian community.
[40] The rivalry between Beijing-friendly and Taipei-friendly newspapers reached its peak in the 1950s; then-editor-in-chief of the Chinese Daily News, Too Wai Man (杜蔚文), even received death threats.
[38][42] The editor-in-chief, Long Siong Ah Keng (吴隆祥), was born in 1921 in Mauritius; at age 11, he followed his parents back to their ancestral village in Meixian, Guangdong, where he graduated from high school and went on to Guangxi University.
[39] Most of The Mirror's readers are in their forties or older; it has subscribers not just in Mauritius, but Réunion, Madagascar, Canada, China, Australia and Hong Kong as well.
[36][39] The paper's local readership has been boosted slightly by guest workers from China, but the circulation barely exceeded 1,000 copies in 2001.
It began as a daily newspaper solely in Chinese, but then changed to an eight-page format, including one page each of English and French news.
[43] Some Chinese legends and stories continue to persist and to be transmitted in the Sino-Mauritian community due to their associations with the major festivals in which they partake in.
[50] In the 19th century, Chinese men living in Mauritius working as shopkeepers wore shanku and braided their hair in a queue.
When they walked on streets however, they would wear European shoes and large umbrellas; the wealthy Chinese merchants would carry leather bags.
[46]: 817 They also follow some Traditional Chinese festival and holidays: The majority of the Sino-Mauritians are Catholics, a result of conversions during the colonial era.
[14]: 165 In this form of interethnic marriage, boys born of Chinese men could be baptized but they would still follow the traditions of their fathers; however, daughters were usually raised as Catholics.
[14]: 167 From the 1940s to 1960s, there were also many Catholic missionaries who worked on converting the Chinese and Sino-Mauritians to Catholicism, leading to a significant impact on the increase in the conversion speed.
[14]: 171 The Catholic Church of Mauritius also recognise the dual religion system practice by the Sino-Mauritians to preserve their distinct traditions, including ancestral worship which remains a significant aspect of their everyday life.
[52][55] The goddess Mazu is usually prayed by Sino-Mauritians to seek for protection for their relatives who travel abroad and to wish for their safe and good return home.
[55] For the one-month-old celebration of a Sino-Mauritian baby, the parents and the grandparents of the child make offerings to the Yudi (god of Heaven) and to Guan Yin.
[14]: 154 The early Chinese graves in Mauritius (e.g. those dating from the late 1830s) were made of stones; each gravestone would 3 perpendicular rows of characters engraved on them and coloured in red.
[45] Significant cultural landmarks of the Sino-Mauritian include: the Chinatown of Mauritius in Port Louis[67] and the presence of Chinese pagoda throughout the island.
[47] Nowadays, many Sino-Mauritians have Catholic weddings and their wedding celebrations are almost similar to those of the Mauritian Creoles, but they also fuses some form of traditional Confucian or Buddhist traditions involving gift exchange between families and dowry, processions between each other's houses and performing prayers and rites at their family altars.
[60][48]: 97 Traditionally, the parents of the bride throw a dinner party approximately one week before the wedding for her close relatives and friends.
Their bridal bed needs to be made by 2 women who are considered having a successful and fortunate marriage and who have a son and a daughter; this is followed by a young boy who performs a somersault.