OK, with the help of my Hong Kong educated friend, Rebecca Wong, I am able to provide a corrected list of the Chinese passengers. Many thanks to Rebecca for her knowledge of Chinese tradition.
We looked at two primary sources. The oldest is the list of alien passengers who boarded at Southampton. (BT27/780B). This was hand-written and the clerk used a single column containing both surnames and given names. He put the surnames last, as in, for example,
Rosa Abbott, so western names appear normal. This is the reverse of Chinese practice, in which surnames are placed first, but the clerk did not know this. He therefore listed the Chinese incorrectly, considered from a western point of view. In six cases, he put the surname first, Chinese style, making the passenger's given name appear to be the surname. In two cases (both called Lam) he put the surname second, making these names appear incorrect from a Chinese point of view. In one case, he gives a given name that does not exist in Chinese, as I'll explain.
The other source used was the List or Manifest of Alien Passengers ((NWCTB-85-T715-VOL4183-CARPALIEN) prepared by the US immigration authorities in New York. This includes, of course, only the six Chinese who survived. The American clerk wrote most the names with the surname first, as he did for the westerners. He made a few spelling errors and he gave one man the wrong surname.
A special error was made by both British and American clerks and by later authors. This is the case of the man usually recorded as Ali Lam (western style). Ali is not a Chinese name. We examined both records and found that both record the name as Ah. In the case of the British clerk, we checked two cases in which he deliberately wrote the name Ali, as in Ali Ahmed. In both cases, he clearly dotted the i, making it clear that Ah was intended in the case of Lam.
We now have a new problem. Ah is not a Chinese name either, though many Chinese in the west were labelled with it, to the confusion of records. What happened is that when Chinese were recorded in western records, a clerk would ask, "What is his name?" A Chinese would reply, for example, "Ah Wong." In this context, "Ah" means "that one is". So the person, whose name might have been Wong Hee, would be listed as Ah Wong forever more.
Using the records and Rebecca's knowledge of Chinese surnames, we arrived at the following corrected list of Chinese passengers. They are given Chinese style, with the surname first.
Lam (given name unknown)
Fang Lang
Lam Len
Cheong Foo
Chang Chip
Ling Hee
Lee Bing
Lee Ling
The alphabetical list on ET appears to have been based on the British list. Therefore, only Lam Len is correctly listed (western style) as Lam, Mr Len. The other Lam is given the non-existent given name of Ali. All the others are reversed.
Very little is known about these men. The survivors each had only $25 in cash, probably an advance on their pay. Only two gave any next of kin and the names are not clear. Chang Chip had his mother in Trot Street, Hong Kong and Lee Bing's wife lived in Tuckfort St, Hong Kong.
