I returned to India in December 2005 after spending over three years in China. My initial interest in the Chinese community here was a personal desire to interact with them, a way to bridge my years in China and subsequent return to India. Over time, I began to document their lives to better understand the community. Even though they had a presence in India for over 200 years, they started settling permanently after the Communists came to power in China, in 1949. In 1962, during the