I did not have high hopes for yesterday’s tour of two slaveowners’ “Great Houses” from Jamaica’s plantation era. Yet it proved to be the most interesting—if not the most memorable—experience of our trip to Jamaica.

The British Empire abolished slavery in the 1830s, following a massive slave revolt in Jamaica that destroyed the vast majority of the island’s seven hundred Great Houses.  The two we visited — Greenwood and Rose Hall (Fig 1)— survived for entirely different reasons. Greenwood’s owner, Richard Barrett, was said to treat his slaves with uncommon humanity. Rose Hall, our guide told us, endured because of the fear inspired by its mistress, Annie Palmer (Fig. 2), the notorious “White Witch.”

We were told that Annie was born in Haiti to an English father and Irish mother, orphaned by yellow fever at a young age, and taught witchcraft (voodoo) by her nanny. She later moved to Jamaica and married John Palmer, the owner of Rose Hall Plantation, in the early 19th century. The guide led us through bedrooms where Annie allegedly killed her first, second, and third husbands—by poisoning, stabbing, and strangulation, respectively—and her own lavish bedroom, where she was supposedly murdered by her slave lover in a violent love triangle.

The lurid tales smelt like urban legend.  A quick Google search afterward revealed that they were invented by a novelist in the 1920s. The real Annie Palmer killed no one and died of natural causes. That the guide told the story as history seemed strange for a place calling itself a museum. Perhaps the myths endure because Annie was indeed cruel to her slaves — the guide claimed she enjoyed watching flogging from her balcony.  Or, more likely, she gained notoriety simply for being a female property owner in a patriarchal society. Powerful women of that era were often vilified for cruelty, promiscuity, or violence.

Both houses have been meticulously restored, furnished in the style of their eras. Greenwood is stuffed with antiques from the 1700s and 1800s, including a polyphon disk music box (Fig. 3), a Broadwood piano once owned by Queen Alexandra of Denmark (Fig. 4), and a silk Persian rug.

As the guides — both Black women — walked us through, they urged us to imagine the grandeur of the rooms in their heyday.  Grand as they remain even today, these old structures now stand as poignant caricatures of their past, bearing witness to an empire — glorious or disgraceful, depending on one’s perspective — long gone with the wind.

The irony was not lost on me: both houses are still owned by white families (Greenwood by English and Rose Hall by American) and staffed by Black workers.  Perhaps institutions are indeed easier to change than the power structures that undergird them.

The most important lesson of the day was actually offered by our driver Willie, a stocky and good-humored Black Jamaican in his forties.  He had worked in tourism for 15 years but had never left the island—suggesting he was probably never a tourist himself. Hearing I was from China, he grinned: “The Chinese are everywhere here.”  I was puzzled — we had yet to encounter another Chinese couple in our resort.

“Chinese are here for business, not tourism,” Willie explained. “We call ourselves ‘Jamchina’ these days because Chinese have invested so much in Jamaica.” He listed examples: Chinese “own every supermarket here,” operate most auto shops whose timely services his company relies on, built the highway from Montego Bay to Kingston — the very one we were driving on, are constructing new resorts (we passed one under construction on our way to the great houses), and have signed mining contracts promising immense wealth.

“Chinese contractors always deliver,” he said, adding with a shake of head that Jamaican counterparts are not nearly as reliable.

It startled me. I’d heard that “Chinese businessmen are everywhere,” but mostly in reference to Africa, not the Caribbean — the United States’ self-declared backyard under the Monroe Doctrine. The Cuban Missile Crisis, after all, was sparked by a breach of that doctrine, and Jamaica lies just 90 miles from Cuba. When I asked what would happen if the U.S. objected to China’s omnipresence, Willie shot back, “To hell the U.S. should go. So too the British. They’ve done nothing for Jamaicans.”  I was at loss of words, as a Chinese who now permanently lives in the U.S.

We left Greenwood along an unpaved road in appalling condition — perhaps explaining the trickle of tourists we’d seen there. Willie apologized profusely for the bone-rattling ride, then added with a smile, “No worries, the Chinese will fix it one day, my friend.”

That sentence has stayed with me. Both the subject — “the Chinese” rather than “we” — and the quiet certainty in the word “will” were striking enough that I suspect I’ll remember them decades from now. In it, I caught a glimpse of history’s long arc bending away from the ruins of one empire and toward the rising confidence of another. What this tectonic shift will mean for Jamaica, or for the world, remains uncertain. But like the myths of Annie Palmer, the stories we choose to tell — and to believe — will shape the answer.