Chinatown of Port Louis and its Chinese Pagodas路易港唐人街与华人庙宇群

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Mauritius · Port Louis · Port Louis · Chinatown, Port Louis; includes the Kwan Tee Pagoda at Les Salines and the twin pagodas of the Nam Shun Fooy Koon

First built

From the 1780s · Established by more than 3,000 immigrants who crossed the sea from Guangzhou; today houses a China Heritage Museum.

Overview

The Chinatown of Port Louis was established by more than 3,000 immigrants who crossed the sea from Guangzhou between the 1780s and the early nineteenth century, and is one of the oldest Chinese settlements in the Indian Ocean region. Several pagodas are distributed within and around the district: the Kwan Tee Pagoda at Les Salines (1842, generally recognized as the oldest Chinese temple in the Southern Hemisphere and in Africa), the Kwan Tee Pagoda (1895) and the Tin Hao Pagoda (1896) within the compound of the Nam Shun Fooy Koon, as well as temple-halls belonging to the Hakka community. The religious practice of Mauritian Chinese displays a marked "religious parallelism": most ethnic Chinese are registered as Catholics, while at the same time continuing to observe Chinese popular religion, ancestor worship and traditional festivals, a dual religious system that the Catholic Church itself acknowledges and respects — an important case study in how Chinese belief has persisted within a Catholic colonial society. The district houses a China Heritage Museum, which sets out the history of the two founding communities, Hakka and Cantonese; Chinese New Year is a statutory public holiday in Mauritius.

Highlights

• Established by immigrants from Guangzhou in the 1780s
• Comprises three principal temples built in 1842, 1895 and 1896
• Most ethnic Chinese are registered Catholics who also practice popular religion in parallel
• The Catholic Church acknowledges this dual religious system
• Chinese New Year is a statutory public holiday in Mauritius