Dear Editor,

PLEASE refer to the editorial “Fuzhou in Georgetown” (Stabroek News November 20 Page 6). Apparently the editorial targets the Georgetown City Council’s decision-making, but the reputation of the Chinese Embassy is collaterally damaged by the comments; and this compels me to respond with the following points:

First, any person with a little knowledge about the history of Guyana understands that, as early as 1853, the Chinese immigrants were admitted on the land of Guyana. Chinese have since become one of the six ethnicities of Guyanese people. Although the Chinese population in Guyana has dwindled over the years, Chinese are not strangers on this land. Many of those early Chinese immigrants called “Fuzhou” their home. It is a “foreign name” to the editor.

Dear editor: if you don’t have a problem with many place names in Georgetown, such as “Delhi Street” and “Mandela Avenue”, why are you so bothered by “Fuzhou Street”? Are you ignorant of your country’s history, or are you discriminating against one of your ethnicities?

Second, the Chinese Embassy’s policy is to encourage and support friendly exchanges between China and Guyana at national as well as local and grassroots levels. The sister city relationship forged years ago between Georgetown and Fuzhou, now a capital city of Fujian Province in southeast China, is such an example. Through this relationship, the two sides have had opportunity to enhance mutual understanding, share their development experiences, and provide assistance to each other within their capacity, when necessary. This kind of south-south cooperation relationship model benefits both parties. So what’s your ground for the attack?
Third: when you judge the building of the Chinese Embassy as “supremely ugly”, you know nothing about what ugly means, and you bark up the wrong tree. The ugly thing is not the building; it is the small, unnamed street being full of stinky mud, rampant mosquitoes, and taken over by bushes on the one side of the Embassy compound before it was adopted as Fuzhou Street.

Now part of it has been cleaned and beautified under funding from the Embassy; for we believe this is good for the environment of our residency as well as for the whole neighbourhood and community. In consultation with the city council and other stakeholders, we will continue our efforts to help complete the beautification work of the remaining part of this street.

Thanks, and my sincere wish is that “shoot first, check facts later” is not becoming your style of journalism.

YANG CHENQI
Counsellor and Deputy Chief of Mission,
Chinese Embassy