While my friends were buying duty free rum, perfume and tee-shirts in Charlotte Amalie, I was busy negotiating a price with an antique dealer for this Chinese sleeve weight on a silk string. These sleeve weights were sewn inside the long, loose sleeves of the robes designed during the Han Period (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE). The weights enabled the sleeves to hang properly down without bunching up. These robes were worn for four thousand years and influenced the Japanese Kimono. Today, of course, you can see them at historical reenactments and festivals. So how did an antique sleeve weight end up in the Virgin Islands?
When Great Britain emancipated the African slaves in the 1800's, near panic ensued on the Caribbean plantations. In order to satisfy labor requirements for this huge agricultural complex, Chinese laborers were recruited to fill the void. Waves of Chinese immigrants came to the West Indies and what did they bring with them? Cuisine! Fried fish over rice became a popular dish in the Caribbean and barracuda was plentiful and widely eaten. Unfortuneately, today it is rarely eaten because of their high levels of cadmium and mercury, but curried fish is found in all the Chinese Caribbean restaurants and it's delicious.
We swam among the barracudas below our boat. They are scary looking critters with fang-like teeth, but rarely bite. Even so, I was careful to take off my earrings in case a lobe was mistaken for a midday snack!
For someone with an overactive imagination, there's a story here--about a young Chinese immigrant filled with hope for a better future, bringing everything he owned with him, including his ancestors' sleeve weights. But when he got to the plantation . . . . I think I need to finish this tale with a bottle of rum, a plate of curried fish and the distant, yet audible, beating of steel drums. Stay tuned!
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