After the Armistice, the Chinese, each identified only by an impersonal reference number, were shipped home. Only about 2,000 to 3,000 stayed on, forming the nucleus of the later Chinese community in Paris. Most who survived returned to China in 1918. However, some were trapped in France by the 30 June 1920 collapse of the "Banque industrielle de Chine". An estimated ten thousand died in the war effort, victims of either shelling, landmines, poor treatment or the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Their remains still lie in 30 French graveyards, the largest at Noyelles-sur-Mer on the Somme, where some of the fiercest battles occurred. The cemetery contains 842 gravestones each engraved with Chinese characters, guarded by two stone lions, gifts from China.