The Rs 1-crore project aims to build a 50-ft high tower and a traditional Chinese gate on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass.

Besides, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation has announced that streetlights will be replaced with a Chinese touch. Billboards in Chinese will be put up on the EM Bypass as well.

“It will take one year to complete the Chinese tower and the gate. The tower — the originals were once used as landmarks — will have medieval Chinese architecture,” said architect Partho Das who, along with Chinese architect Zhang Bo from Kunming, will work on the project.

Mao Sewei, China’s Consul General in Kolkata, lauded the initiative. Kolkata, he said, was the only city in India with a sizeable Chinese population living with their cultural uniqueness. But the state government’s attempt, feels the Chinese community, is a case of too little, too late: their numbers are shrinking by the day.

“Before 1962, over 10,000 Chinese lived in the area. Now the figure has come down to 1,500,” said Paul Chung, the president of the Indian Chinese Association of Culture Welfare and Development. “The members of the Chinese community cannot raise slogans and take to the streets. They just leave.”

Chung, who retired as a teacher of Don Bosco School in Liluah, said a few decades ago, the Chinese school Pei May (the name means “nurturing” in Chinese) had over 1,000 students. Now the school has only 10.

Earlier, the Chinese community was involved in the tannery business. After the tanneries were moved out of the city, they shifted to restaurants. At present there are about 32 eateries in China Town, which provide a flavour of Chinese cuisine in the city.

Jonathan Ching, a resident of China Town who has an engineering unit manufacturing blades for tanneries, said: “My whole family has settled abroad. I am running the business here. I know in a few years the business will die down. I will have to move out.” Ching, who was born in Kolkata about 53 years ago, says people in China Town are facing deteriorating law and order along with a lack in basic amenities — hence the exodus.