A portrait of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, hangs at the centre of Cheenapara Heritage Gallery, Kolkata’s first museum dedicated to the history, culture, and enduring legacy of the city’s Chinese community. Surrounding it are the intimate, slightly improvised objects from people’s homes, workshops and collections. Located in Blackburn Lane, the gallery occupies a Chinese temple building dating to 1908. “As the Chinese community dwindled over the years, this space lay empty most days, and was an opportunity to build a museum,” says Chen Yao Hua, 72, president of the All India Chinese Association.
The property belongs to the Huining Huiguans, traditional community institutions that provided financial assistance, accommodation and social spaces to migrants from China. Six such huiguans were established in Tiretta Bazaar between 1838 and 1908. By the middle of the 20th century, the area had become the centre of Kolkata’s Chinese working-class community, which numbered around 20,000 at its peak. Today, roughly 2,000 remain.
The gallery took more than a decade to put together, with the support of heritage conservationists, urban planners, historians and community members. Tansen Sen, history professor and director of the Centre for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai, was one of the driving forces behind the project. “We realised that the Chinese themselves should start preserving their stories and artefacts because they belong to the city as much as the city belongs to their history,” he says.
Many of the objects here came from the community. Ho Yuan That, along with Chen, sourced several of them. The museum showcases Chen’s collection of 15 trade tools, including moulding planes, from his carpentry days. Their wooden surfaces are darkened from years of use. “I got them all when I was 20 from Sealdah’s Chor Bazaar (flea market),” he says. Nearby are two false teeth, one gold and one silver, along with sets of artificial teeth in ceramic and plastic, belonging to Christopher Shu, a ‘teeth-setter’. There is also a wooden abacus that Chen acquired from his Sikkimese friend Tenzing. Two rare ink-blocks, or inksticks, labelled Ziying, a prized violet ink, and Qingmo, made from pine soot, sit alongside an ink-pad, pen-holder and wooden stamps. Club and temple seals, a wood-block or Fuban, and other small objects point to the everyday institutions and trades that once shaped life in the neighbourhood.
Temple objects, including an inscribed incense burner, joss sticks, gongs and a metal singing bowl, point to the religious life here. At the entrance, a thick registration book records visitors from 1908 through the 1980s.
Dominic Lee, 67, a contributor to the project, points to an old glass bottle. The word ‘Kingfisher’ is embossed on it. “My father, Lee Shih Chuan, started an eatery in 1958. He would buy recycled beer bottles to pack his sauces—green chilli, soya, and others. That’s why this bottle has a ‘Kingfisher’ embossing,” he says.
Nearby, an inked impression on paper, known as a ‘rubbing’, records the stone plaque of the neighbouring Zhongyitang temple and its account of a court case from 1908. On another wall, 18 black-and-white and 14 colour photographs by Bijoy Chowdhury show shopkeepers, families, and workers from the Chinese community.
Putting the museum together was a long process. The CHA Project, led by Rinkoo Bhowmik, had spent a decade working on Tiretta Bazaar, while INTACH, headed by GM Kapur, had been involved for longer. Sen spent three years securing a major ‘translation grant’. By late 2025, the museum received the funding. The aim, Chen says, “is to spark a renewed interest in the community.” As two teenagers, Ma Shu Lan and Thow Fa, pause to examine objects in the gallery, the past feels less like an archive than something being handed forward. In a neighbourhood where a once-thriving community has dwindled to a fraction, the gallery offers these fragments a place to remain relevant—and a younger generation a reason to look again.