Junks to steamships: how people actually came

A young woman stands on a wooden pier in Swatow in the 1920s. Her husband went to Malaya three years ago, and now she is following. The steamer is huge, noisy and packed. In about a week she will see the coast of Penang.

The story

For hundreds of years, Chinese traders sailed to Southeast Asia in junks. These were Chinese sailing ships. They followed the monsoon winds: south with the south-west wind, home with the north-east wind. A round trip took many months, and a junk could carry merchants, craftsmen, labourers and cargo together. By the 12th century some of them were large enough to carry over a thousand passengers.

In 1830, nearly 7,000 Chinese labourers arrived in Singapore in a single junk season. Junk traffic there peaked in 1841 and 1842, then fell quickly. By 1865 and 1866 it had shrunk to a small part of what it had been.

Three changes ended the age of the junk. China lifted its ban on emigration in 1858. Treaty ports opened. The steamship arrived. After the Suez Canal opened in 1869, second-hand steamers could be bought or chartered in Singapore and Hong Kong. They cost more than a junk, but they could make more voyages in a year, and they did not depend on the wind.

By the early 1900s, steamers ran regularly from Amoy (Xiamen), Swatow (Shantou), Hong Kong and Hoihow (Haikou, on Hainan). A trip to Southeast Asia took about a week to ten days. In 1896 the British consul at Amoy reported that about 100,000 passengers left that port each year, and about half of them were poor labourers whose fares were advanced by clan agents and worked off later. The other half paid for themselves and often went home within months.

The hard part, told plainly. Most migrants travelled as deck passengers. They slept on wooden boards, often cooked their own food, and sometimes the ship carried more people than the licence allowed. Passage brokers in the Chinese ports arranged the trips, and the poorest travellers started their new lives owing money. This is the credit-ticket system, told on the next page, "The coolie trade and credit-ticket system". It was a harsh part of a global age of steam and cheap labour.

Where you can still see it today

Old harbour streets in George Town, Port Klang and Singapore, near the wharves where passengers landed.
Temples, clan shrines and clan associations that merchants of the junk trade helped to found.
Family stories of a grandparent who "came on the boat", and the paper tickets and letters some families still keep.
Today's ferries and cargo ships on the same sea lanes of the Strait of Malacca.

What DNA can tell, and what it cannot

DNA does not record how a person travelled. It cannot tell you whether a great-grandmother came by junk, by steamer or not at all.

A region estimate can show that part of your DNA looks most like southern China. Mother lines and father lines can point to East Asia. They cannot tell you which port your family left, which year, or whether they owed money for their ticket.

DNA does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status. The ship tells a story of movement. Family and culture tell the rest.