Image Migration

A Visual Story of the Zee Family Diaspora & Katendrecht Chinatown

Artist Vera Yijun Zhou
& Community Historian David Zee
Location: Verhalenhuis Belvédère

Mutual Office Initiation

Team exhibition: David Zee, Vera Zhou, Laura Schalkwijk, Meroen Klarenbeek, Joop Reijngoud, Linda Malherbe.
Supported by Gemeente Rotterdam & creative industries fund NL

David Zee, a third-generation Dutch-Chinese immigrant, was born in 1962 in Katendrecht, at a time when the area was still shaped by its maritime and immigrant past. Struggling with his hybrid identity—called “peanut” by his Dutch peers and “gwai zai” (foreigner) by the Chinese community—he embarked on a decades-long journey to collect and preserve his family’s untold history. His archive, spanning over a century, includes photographs, letters, government records, and newspaper clippings documenting the lives of Chinese immigrants in Rotterdam.

In 2022, artist Vera Yijun Zhou encountered David Zee’s archive while grappling with her own questions of migration and identity. A first-generation Chinese immigrant to the Netherlands, she stood at a personal crossroads: whether to remain in the country or return to China after completing her studies. Bureaucratic limbo, endless paperwork, and the existential weight of belonging transformed migration from an abstract concept into a lived experience. This moment of uncertainty led to her collaboration with David Zee, not just as a research inquiry but as an embodied process of understanding her own status in the Netherlands.

The story of David begins in 19th-century Ningbo, China, where Davids grandfather Che Chai Zee was born in 1894. After losing his father at a young age, he decided to became a sailor. At fourteen in Shanghai he embarked on voyages that would eventually lead him to Rotterdam. In 1911, amid a major sailors’ strike, Dutch shipping companies recruited Chinese laborers from England to break the strike. Under the cover of night on June 17th Chinese sailors arrived in Rotterdam, marking the beginning of Chinese immigration to the European continent. By the early 20th century, Rotterdam’s Katendrecht district had become the largest and most significant Chinatown in the European continent. Che Chai Zee settled there in 1920, marrying Dutch woman Neeltje Kraaijeveld. However, Dutch policies at the time actively discouraged racial integration—Neeltje lost her Dutch nationality due to her marriage, rendering her and her children stateless in their own homeland. It was only after decades of bureaucratic struggle that their descendants reclaimed citizenship, reflecting the broader exclusion faced by the Chinese community. Beyond the Zee family, Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands endured systemic discrimination. From immigration restrictions and economic hardships to forced labor of Chinese workers, Chinese migrants remained marginalized despite their essential role in Dutch society. Even so, Rotterdam persisted as a crucial hub in the Chinese diaspora.

At the end of 2024, Vera Zhou and David Zee together with his daughter Charlie, retraced grandfather Che Chai Zee’s migration route in reverse—departing from Rotterdam, traveling through Shanghai, and finally arriving in Ningbo. These three port cities, historically linked through maritime trade and migration, form the geographic anchors of a century-old diaspora narrative.

As the project evolved, Vera shifted her focus toward her role as an artist— conducting extensive research, documenting oral histories, and undertaking fieldwork that reconnected fragmented narratives across the Netherlands and China. Her deep immersion allowed her to embody the “absent” voice initially missing from the archive, transforming the project from a purely editorial compilation into a living narrative of displacement, return, and reinterpretation. This cyclical process of research and storytelling has produced multiple interconnected outcomes: a photobook, a series of installations, and a video essay Living in Limbo (4k, 49’00). Centered on the Zee family’s migrantion journey from Ningbo to Rotterdam over the past century, the book interlaces archival photographs, field research, and visual interventions across three port cities between the NL and China —Rotterdam, Shanghai, and Ningbo. By pairing historical materials with contemporary imagery, the project becomes both a personal reckoning and a visual archive of migration—inviting viewers to reconsider how belonging is constructed across time, borders, and generations.

The exhibition provides a necessary reflection on the long-overlooked histories that have shaped Dutch and Rotterdam society today. The project challenges the nation’s self-image by revealing how immigration policies, labor history and racialized citizenship laws continue to shape the lived experiences of generations of Rotterdammers. Storyhouse Belvédère added a podcast with David telling his story to the exhibition. By bringing all these narratives into public discourse, the project wants to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of Dutch and Rotterdam history.

Photos by Rafeal Roncato