Chinese Brazilians
Chinese Brazilians (Portuguese: Sino-brasileiro or Chinês-brasileiro; Chinese: 巴西華人 / 巴西华人 or 巴西華裔 / 巴西华裔) are Brazilians of Chinese ancestry or birth. The ethnic Chinese population in Brazil was estimated to be approximately 250,000 in 2007.
Sino-brasileiro 巴西華人 巴西华人 | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| c. 250,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| São Paulo City, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro | |
| Languages | |
Portuguese
| |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly: Christianity (mainly Roman Catholicism) Others:
| |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Asian Brazilians, Macanese people, Overseas Chinese |
The first Chinese people came to Brazil in 1814, when Chinese tea planters were sent from Portugal to the Royal Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro. Following the end of transatlantic slave trade in 1850, there was a growing labor shortage in the booming coffee plantations of southwestern Brazil during the second half of the 19th century, which led the Brazilian government to look for alternative sources of labor elsewhere. The main sources of replacement labor were Europe and, later on, Japan, but small numbers of Chinese immigrants are said to have reached Brazil during the 19th century (less than 3 thousand total). There are reports of Chinese laborers arriving in Brazil exist as early as the 1870s, but those early flows were limited due to restrictions imposed by the Chinese government; therefore, the vast majority of the contemporary population of Chinese ancestry in Brazil is descended of much later flows of immigrants into the country, starting in the 1900s.
São Paulo now has the largest Chinese Brazilian population, in particular in the district of Liberdade. The majority of the Chinese immigrants settle in São Paulo. Some Chinese immigrants work as merchants for international trade, lawyers, member of the parliament and the house of representatives and doctors. Chinese immigrants have integrated into the Brazilian society by building inter-cultural exchange in the communities. Besides being an area famous for its strong Japanese presence, a significant number of Taiwanese immigrants out of 70,000 in total, have settled in Liberdade, and many Chinese immigrants have come to Liberdade following the Communist revolution in 1949. These Macau immigrants can usually speak and understand Portuguese (its Creole, Macanese or Patuá, is also spoken), allowing them to adjust more easily to life in Brazil. In the 1950s, there was also a wave of Chinese immigrants belonging to the country's ethnic Russian community.
Today, the majority of Chinese Brazilians only speak Portuguese, although some may be bilingual, speaking Portuguese and Chinese.