British director telling story of Chinese Titanic survivors

Six Chinese survived the legendary tragedy of the RMS Titanic, but disappeared soon after. Now a British documentarian, Arthur Jones, will uncover their stories and histories of discrimination.

There were eight Chinese between the ages of 24 and 37 on the Titanic, boiler workers sharing one 59-pound third-class ticket, according to the record of Titanic Cruise Line, but only six survived from its sinking. When they arrived in the United States, they were not helped, like the other 705 survivors. Instead they were forced to leave the country within 24 hours, because of the Chinese Exclusion Act signed in 1882.

Some westerners questioned the six Chinese survivors as stowaways and claimed that they survived because they secretly climbed on the lifeboat or dressed as women to board lifeboats.

But Jones believes they did not do anything disgraceful in order to survive the disaster after visiting foreign archives, museums and cooperating with American and Chinese historians. This is not only a story about the survivors of Titanic, but also a story of a group of brave Chinese people exploring the outside world at that time, he said.