Chinese Settlement in NSW

A thematic history

A repo1i for the NSW Heritage Office of NSW

by

Michael Williams

September 1999

Chinese Settlement in NSW

A thematic history

Table of Contents

Introduction

A brief clu·onology 4

Migration 9

Social Institutions 15

Conunerce 20

Law & Order 28

Labour 35

Agriculture 41

Mining 45

Leisure 51

Persons 55

Conclusion 61

Appendices

I Table of potential heritage sites and items 63

II Chinese language considerations 85

III District proportions in Sydney 90

IV Demographic tables - population, locations, occupations 93

Bibliography 98

The contribution of Chinese settlement to the heritage of NSW is unique. Features of this

settlement such as the value placed on maintaining links with the villages and districts of

origin, the predominance in early migration of men over women and the experience of

prejudice and anti-Chinese legislation, combined to ensure this uniqueness. Continuous and

substantial links with villages and districts in south China greatly influenced the nature of

Chinese settlement in NSW until at least the middle of the 20th century. Non-Chinese are

more likely to be aware of the involuntaiy role played by Chinese settlers in the evolution of

Aush·alian national identity tlu-ough racism and the White Aush·alia Policy. The impact of

anti-Chinese laws and discriminatmy behaviour, particularly regarding issues of labour, on

Chinese people has often been told. Less researched is the basis in Chinese culture and

histmy of such practices as work habits, the non-emigration of women, opium smoking and

returns to China that were often the pretexts for anti-Chinese prejudice and actions.

With these and other features of Chinese settlement in mind, it is proposed to exan1ine the

histo1y of Chinese people in NSW through nine themes. The first of these themes,

Migration, describes the cultural and social background to Chinese migration with emphasis

on how significant elements of this background have conh·ibuted to a unique pattern of

settlement, including the location of NSW heritage items in the villages of south China. The

themes Social Institutions and Commerce utilise this background to demonstrate the

impo1tance of the dish·icts of origin in China to the organisation, suppmt and business

relations of Chinese people in NSW. Law and Order and Labour focus on the role played by

racism, the mechanisms of the White Australia Policy and Chinese people's responses in

shaping the pattern of Chinese settlement. Agriculture and Mining describe two of the most

significant areas in which Chinese people contributed to the heritage of NSW, while Leisure

examines the role of opium and gambling, two images popularly associated with Chinese

people in NSW. Finally, Persons depicts some representative families and individuals in

order to reveal the diversity of lives led by people of Chinese origin tlu·oughout NSW

hist01y.

1

( /1i1!1. '< .\1i!/111/l'll! Iii•\'.\\\· l11i111ri111'ilr II

Chinese settlement covers nearly the entire history of both the colony and state of NSW.

Un.like most other groups, this settlement is not a pattern of small beginnings and gradual

expansion, rather it is one of rapid population growth and slow declines, of periods of

interaction followed by periods of strong discrimination mixed with acceptance of

individuals. From the China-bound ships of the First Fleet to the indentured shepherds of the

Australian Agricultural Company in the 1840s, the relationship of an isolated British

settlement with the relatively nearby Chinese Empire was a significant factor in its early

growth. The lure of gold in the 1850s to the 1870s made this factor a major issue which

soon raised questions of identity, inm1igration and labour. These questions continued in the

1880s and 1890s as more Chinese people arrived not to seek gold but to work in a range of

occupations around NSW. Federation imposed a 'white' answer to these questions and in

doing so transformed tens of thousands of Chinese residents into ' domiciles' with restricted

rights. The result was a steady decline in the numbers of Chinese people in NSW until an

influx of refugees due to Japanese aggression in China and the Pacific in the 1930s and

1940s combined with a new generation of Australian-born people of Chinese origin to

transform matters once again.

The post-war period and its strong 'assimilationist' outlook brought a gradual extension of

citizenship rights to Chinese people, while the 'Chinese cafes' of a new generation replaced

market gardeners as the predominant image of Chinese people in NSW. Te1tiary students

from various Asian nations in the 1960s, nearly all of ethnic Chinese origin, marked a period

of both increasing Chinese inunigration as the White Australia Policy was gradually

dismantled and the begi1ming of a ' remigration' of the Chinese diaspora. 1 A diaspora that

NSW had always been part of, if unwittingly , and one which Aush·alians of Chinese

background increasingly acknowledged by the 1980s. The replacement of 'assin1ilation' with .·

'multiculturalism' in the 1970s and 1980s saw numbers of Chinese people once again reach

1 The term 'Chinese Diaspora' has become a common way of denoting the widespread migration of Chinese people. See for example, Wang Gungwu, ' Upgrading the Migrant: Neither Huaqiao nor Huaren', Chinese America: History and Perspectives, 1996, pp.1-18 & Pan Lynn, 'Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A Hist01)1 of the Chinese diaspora', Boston, Little Brown, 1990.

2

Ciw1c'\·, Sei!ie,11en1 in \'Si\ ln!rodu( r1n11

historic levels, if not proportions, as non-Cantonese speaking background people settled for

the first time in significant numbers in NSW.

Just as Chinese settlement in NSW is unique among migrant groups so too are the sources

from which its h.istmy can be gathered. Antagonism, complemented by resh·ictive legislation,

meant that the activities and movements of Chinese people have been particularly recorded

tlu-oughout NSW's histmy. While often ignorant and nearly always prejudiced, th.is material

is plentiful. Of a rare level of credibility is the report of the Chinese speaking and

comparatively dispassionate J. Dundas Crawford who, in 'accordance with the instructions

of Her Majesty 's Charge d' Affaires at Peking,' in 1877 prepared a report on Chinese people

in the Australian colonies. Some records even allow Chinese people to speak for themselves,

as does the 'Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling' with its many Chinese

witnesses.2 Chinese people were also, along with Aboriginal people, especially identified in

statistics and after 1881, were required to obtain special re-enhy certificates each time they

travelled outside NSW and later the Commonwealth. As NSW Chinese residents made many

such trips over the years, the result is the existence of a wealth of systematically collected

material. Finally, NSW has nwnerous people of Chinese descent who are generous in their

willingness to recount the doings and contributions of their parents, grandparents and in

many cases remoter ancestors, to the history and heritage ofNSW.

2 'Notes by Mr. Crm1iford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian Colonies' , Acting Consul Davenport to Lord Tenterdon, September 1877, Great Britain Foreign Office Confidential Prints, F.O. 3742 and Report of the Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality and Charges of Bribe I)' Against Members of the Police Force. Appointed August 20•• 189 1. Government Printer, Sydney, 1892. (Hereafter Royal Commission.).

3

('/uill'\r' 'kflf, :11.'111111 \S\\" ( /ir1111,)

Earliest arrivals - 1788 to 1848

From the ve1y begining of the colony, links with China were established when several

ships of the First Fleet, after dropping off their convict load, sailing for Canton to pick up

goods for the return to England. The Bigge Report attributed the high level of tea drinking

to 'the existence of an intercourse with China from the foundation of the Colony .. .' 1 That

the ships canying such cargo had Chinese crew members is likely and that some of the

crew and possibly passengers embarked at the port of Sydney is probable. Certainly by

1818, Mak Sai Ying or Jolm Shying had arrived and after a period farming became, in

1829, the publican of The Lion in Parramatta. Jolm Macarthur employed tlu·ee Chinese

people on his properties in the 1820s and the records may well have neglected others.2

Indentured Labour - 1848 to 1853

Individuals such as Macarthur's employees were part of the varied mix that was early

Sydney Town. It was the increasing demand for labour after transp01iation ceased in the

1840s that led to much larger numbers of Chinese people arriving as indentured labourers

to work as shepherds and inigation experts for private landowners and the Australian

Agricultural Company. These workers seemingly all came from Fujian province via the

port then known as Amoy (Xiamen) and some may have been brought involuntarily as

kidnapping or the 'sale of pigs' as it was called, was conunon.3

Between 1848 and 1853, over 3,000 Chinese workers on contracts arrived via the Port of

Sydney for employment in the NSW countryside.4 Resistance to this cheap labour

occurred as soon as it arrived and like such protests later in the century was heavily mixed

1 'Bigge Report, Remarks on Distillation, 28/1/182 1. See also, 'Chinese export porcelain from the wreck of the Sydney Cove (1797)' Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology, Special Publication No.12, 1998, pp.7-9.

1 Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors, State Library of NSW Press, Sydney, 1997, pp. 13-18. ) Persia Crawford Campbell, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries Within the British Empire, P.S.

King & Sons, Westminster, 1923; Kay Saunders (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire 1834-1920, Croom Helm, Canberra, 1984 and Darnell , Maxine, The Chinese Labour Trade to New South Wales 1783-1853, PhD thesis, University of New England, 1997 and Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.22.

4 Darnell, Maxine, Responses and Reactions to the Importation of Indentured Chinese Labourers. Paper presented to 'The River' Australian Historical Association Conference, Newcastle, 28-30 September 1997, p.1, n.5 & Fitzgerald, op. cit. p. 19.

4

with racism. 5 Little is known of the habits of such men or their relations with other NSW

residents except for those that appear in the records of the courts and asylums.6 Some

stayed for the term of their contracts and then left for home, but there is evidence that

others spent the rest of their lives in NSW. A Gulgong resident who died at age 105 in

1911 had been in NSW since 1841 while in 1871 the 'Keeper of Ltmacy' still required the

Amoy dialect from his interpreters. 7

Gold Rushes - 1853 to 1877

Attempts at importing contracted labour ended with the discovery of gold as those

contracted at minimal wages could and did simply head for the diggings. 8 Large numbers

of Chinese people were working on the Victorian goldfields and fewer on the smaller

NSW fields in the mid 1850s, when major gold finds in NSW and the passing of more

restrictive anti-Chinese legislation in Victoria resulted in thousands of miners moving

across the border in 1859.9 Many more Chinese goldseekers came by ship tlu·ough

Twofold Bay and Sydney and onto the various diggings. Fish curing, stores and

dormitories in places such as the Rocks, soon developed to support the miners on the

fields as well as on their way to the diggings and to China. 10 The presence of numerous

Chinese on the diggings led to anti-Chinese agitation, including violent clashes such a

those on Lambing Flat, the inunediate result of which was the passing of an Act in 1861

designed to reduce the number of Chinese people entering the colony. 11

s 'the very scum of hell ' was one description of Chinese 'coolies', Darnell, op. cit., p.5. 6 Fitzgerald, op. c it. p.64-66. ' Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901-1912, No.6. 19 13, 'Death of Centenarians

19 11 ', p.217 and Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.66. 8 C. A. Price, The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and

Australasia, 1836-1888, Australian Institute of International Affairs with ANU Press, Canberra, 1974. p.77, refers to an attempt to include in the Goldfields Management Bill of 1852 a check that Chinese people applying for gold licences had discharged their contracts & Fitzgerald, op. c it., p.22-23.

9 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p .23, Barry McGowan, Conservation and Heritage overview of the Araluen catchment area, Canberra, August, 1998, pp.13-27 and Lindsay Smith, The Chinese of Kiandra, New South Wales. A report to the NSW Heritage Office, October 1997, pp.3 1-37.

1° Fisheries Inquily Commission, Report of the Royal Commission, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879-80, Vol. III , line 144 1 & Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.68.

11 The 'Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act,' repealed in 1867 when numbers fell.

5

C '/iines1' Sertlemenl 111 VS\.\· - C/1m110/ogr

From miners to artisans - 1877 to 1901

The last gold rush in the eastern colonies of Australia occurred in 1873 in the far north of

Queensland at the Palmer River and by 1877 there were 20,000 Chinese there. 12 After the

ending of this Queensland rush people either returned to China or dispersed, including a

significant number coming into NSW either inunediately or in subsequent years. This

openness of the land borders and the rise in Chinese numbers after a period of decline

again raised anti-Chinese fears in NSW resulting in restrictive Acts in 1881 and 1888. 13

Gold was always a risky endeavour and very soon after arrival Chinese people began

trying other ways of earning a living. People opened stores and became merchants and

hawkers, while a fishing and fish curing industiy operating north and south of Sydney

supplied dried fish in the 1860s and 1870s to Chinese people tlu·oughout NSW as well as

Sydney and Melbourne.14 By the 1890s Chinese people were represented in a wide variety

of occupations including scrub cutters, interpreters, cooks, tobacco farmers, market

gardeners, cabinet-makers, storekeepers and drapers, though by this time the fishing

industry seems to have disappeared, and at the same time Sydney's proportion of the

Chinese residents of NSW had steadily increased. 15

Domiciles & ABCs - 1901to1936

By Federation, Chinese people in NSW were a significant group, running numerous stores,

an import trade, societies and several Chinese language newspapers. They were also part

of an international community involved in political events in China such as sending

delegates to a Peking Parliament or making donations at times of natural disaster.16 The

1888 restrictions had not had a great impact on total numbers and a continued inflow from

Queensland mitigated even this. The passing of the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901,

however, froze the Chinese conmmnities of the late 19111 centmy into a slow decline.

12 Crawford, op. cit. pp.20-21. 13 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.28. See theme, law & Order. 14 Fisheries lnquily Commission, op. cit., lines 1444 and 3595. 15 Royal Commission, op. cit. p,27 and Appendix IV, Table 2. 16 C. F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain: the Chinese in Australia, 1901-1921, Raphael Arts, Richmond,

South Australia, 1977, p.84-94.

6

Continued discrimination, both legal and social, reduced the occupational range of Chinese

people w1til market gardening, always a major occupation, became far and away the

representative role of 'Jolm Chinaman'.17 It was as gardeners that most pre-1901

'domiciles' visited their villages and established families tlu·oughout the first 30 years or so

of the 20111 centmy, relying on the minority of merchants to assist them to negotiate with

the Inunigration Restriction Act bureaucracy. Only the rise of a new generation of

Australian-born Chinese people, combined with new migrants that the merchants and

others sponsored, both legally and illegally, prevented the Chinese population of NSW

disappearing entirely.

War & Refugees - 1936 to 1949

By the war period numbers had neve11heless fallen greatly and Australian-born people of

Chinese background began to predominate over China-born people for the first time.

Numbers increased rapidly again when refugees began to enter Australia as the result of

Japan's war in China and the Pacific. Some were Chinese crew members who refused to

return to Japanese-held areas and others were residents of the many Pacific islands

evacuated in the face of the Japanese advance. Still others included those with Australian

birth who were able to leave Hong Kong and the villages on the approach of the

Japanese. 18 At the same time the anti-Japanese War helped inspire the development of

organisations focused on China rather than the districts of origin and aimed at \naking

Australia aware of the danger of Japan and the need to assist China.19

11 See Appendix IV, Table 4. '"Fitzgerald, op. cit., pp.41 -42, on Chinese seamen deserting their ships. Interview with Victor Gow, 30

October 1997 (7) and AA (NSW), SP ! 122/1 ; N67/4101, Kwok Pearl (Mrs) (Pearl Lock Lee). '''For details of such organisations see theme, Social Institutions.

7

Cafes to Citizens - 1949 to 1958

In the post-war period, assimilation became the dominant policy and this led to some

extension of rights with gradual changes to citizenship laws.20 At the same time cafes

began to replace market gardens as the major source of employment and avenue for

bringing in new migrants, both legal and illegal. These changes, combined with the

increased number of Australian-born Chinese, the final return of the last of the domiciles

who still wished to do so and the arrival of Chinese background students under the

Colombo Plan from various parts of Asia, brought about the end of the link between

Sydney and south China as it had existed for nearly 100 years.21

Re-migration & Multiculturalism - 1958 to the present

The final death of the White Australia Policy saw new aITivals from the Chinese diaspora

and for the first time significant numbers from non-Cantonese speaking parts of China.22

New institutions were established for these arrivals and old ones such as the Chinese

Chamber of Commerce revived.23 Chinese language newspapers were once again

published while the equality of citizenship laws and family reunion immigration after 1972

meant that an imbalance of the sexes was not an issue in these later migrations. The 1980s

saw a significant reverse of the traditional migration pattern with many families settling in

NSW while the breadwinner returned to Hong Kong to continue earning an income.

This brief clu·onological overview of Chinese settlement history in NSW is intended to

provide a frame of reference. Chinese settlement will be explored in greater depth tlu·ough

nine themes. Each theme will explore an aspect of Chinese settlement while providing

background to surviving heritage sites and items.

20 See theme laiv & Order. 11 Wilton, Janis, Chinese Voices, Australian Lives: Oral history and the Chinese contribution to Glen

Innes, Inverell, Tenterfield and surrounding districts during the first half of the twentieth century, PhD thesis, University New England, August, 1996, pp.229-230, on the lessening of the sense of China as home and p.232, on the effects of Australia becoming Jess racist & Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.148.

12 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.49 and Kee Poo-Kong, Chinese /111111igra11ts in Australia: Co11str11ctio11 of a Socio­Eco110111ic Profile, Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, September, 1988, pp.1 -3, Figure 1 and Table I.

23 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.158.

8

C!i111C\C' )<'/ffl'J//('l/i Ill .\S\I \.ft!{l(l//l//J

To understand how the unique patterns of Chinese settlement in NSW arose, including the

location of NSW heritage items in the villages of south China, it is essential to understand

the cultural and social background of the migration. This understanding includes not only

the motivation for that migration but also the significance of the districts and dialects of

those who migrated, the traditional culhll'e of the migrants and the organisation of this

migration. In the case of Chinese people in NSW these elements are not only important in

understanding why they came to NSW and what they did on arrival, but to an appreciation

of their settlement patterns over time including why so many Chinese residents returned to

their villages, either temporarily or at the end of a working life in NSW.

The Pearl River Delta districts, from which most Chinese migrants to NSW originated

before the 1950s, provided ample motivation for emigration, including famines, floods and

civil disturbances that ranged from bandit attacks to open warfare. 1 But such motivations do

not explain why the emigration to NSW was largely limited to this handful of districts, nor

why it was of nearly all men. 2 A prime reason for the narrow range of the districts of origin

is that leaving the family to earn money overseas for long periods was a concept with a long

history in these districts, one going back to the 12'11 century.3 The spread of news about the

Californian and later the Victoria goldfields tlu·ough Hong Kong combined with the recently

imposed proximity of European shipping in the waterways of the Pearl River Delta simply

opened up new prospects.

' Chi-cheung Choi, Descent Group unification and segmentation in the coastal area of southern China. University of Tokyo, PhD, 1987, p.60, refers to secret society revolts in the 1842-55 period; p.61, the Taiping rebellion in 1854; pp.142-3, to inter-family feuds as late as 1898-9; and Appendix 1, pp.490-92, gives a table of disasters throughout the 19th century, including floods, famines and bandit attacks. Similar reasons are also recorded in ancestor records about clan members who emigrated, see, XI) rl I ::Iii Zheng Shanyu, $ ·ifr ..!:j M l: ~r WiJ Z lti! - ~~ 1} flf -~ fr'.k -m if' (t~ M 9~ ft ~ ~~ f:j. 1}1

4~r 'Chinese yu hai shang sichou zhi lu - bufen qiaoxiang zupu zhong de haiwai yimin ziliao fenxi' (Huaqiao and the Silk Road of the Sea - An analysis of overseas migration information of clan records in part of the emmigrant communities),$ flf $.A JJi .~ .fiJf lJ't:: Chinese huaren lishi yanjiu (Overseas Chinese History Researches) , no.I, 199 1, pp.23-30 and in Zo Kil Young, 'Emigrant Communities in China, Sze-Yap', Asian Profile, vol.5, no.4, August, 1977, pp.3 13-23. In the 1930s, economic pressure was given as the principle cause of emigration in 70% of cases, Chen Ta, op. cit., pp.259-261 , Table 26.

2 The districts of the Pearl River Delta were a small number of the Chinese Empire's 1,500 districts. Chang Chung-Ii , The Income of the Chinese Ge11t1y, University of Washington, Seattle, 1962, p.69.

3 This emigration was usually to South-East Asian countries. Crawford, op. cit., p.2, contrasts the attitudes of northern and southern Chinese people to emigration. See also, ;M:. ~{~Lin Qinzhi, JA ~ ~'"-'f 1(ff ~'if B l!Jij ~· .A W ft )~ if:j: ~I, 1'10 lfli f)J Jfz Jt ~~· #.. -~ H~ :1Jt 1\R 'Cong zupu ziliao kan 111 in yue re nm in yiju haiwai de huodong ji qi duijiaxiang de gongxian' (A look at clan records to see the overseas activities of Fujian and Guangdong people and their contribution to their hometowns), A~ ·(:fi: A~ .A. Ui * filf' ~; Huaqiao huaren lishi yanjiu (Overseas Chinese Histo1J1 Researche:.), l , 199 1, pp.16-23.

9

C/iinl'\<' .'wttf,,n1t•111 111 :VS\\·· - \.J1~rat1n11

A significant factor for the newly arrived migrant was the family left behind. Strong

attaclunent to parents, along with that to the ancestral village, meant that emigration did not

occur lightly, even among families with a history of such movement.4 The family and

particularly parents were the focus of life in traditional Chinese culture and so the majority

of those coming to NSW did so not as individuals seeking their fortune but as family

representatives entrusted with the role of providing supplementary and possibly essential

income.5 As to marriage, it was considered that a woman not only married, but that as a

wife, her primary role was to suppo1t her husband's parents more than it was to take care of

that husband.6 These attitudes of traditional Chinese culture to parents and related ideas

about the function of marriage help to explain why Chinese emigration before the 20th

century was overwhelmingly male. If this pattern did not occur in every case, such attitudes

neve1theless provided the ideals around which most Chinese residents in NSW in the 19th

and the early 20th cenh.ny operated.

Despite poverty, war and other problems, the movement of thousands of villagers around

the Pacific was not a disorganised stampede of the impoverished and dispossessed. 7 Rather,

emigration involved a range of co-operative methods and commercial transactions among

villagers, family members and brokers that has perhaps too readily been summarised under

the rubric 'credit-ticket' system.8 In order for most Pearl River Delta villagers to get to

NSW, it was necessaiy to 'form themselves into co-operative bands' or ' individually to

enter into unwritten bonds with a labour agent' or a relative who had sufficient money after

'When Chang Yet, who had lived in NSW since 1898, was preparing to bring his son, Chang Gar Lock, to Australia in 1933, he took him to the village temple, where a promise was made to the local goddess that his son would return to the vi llage. Interview with Arthur Chang, NSW, 7 March 1998. (Tape 1, B, 9.00).

~Max Weber, The Religion of China, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1964, p.123, considers children 's education in traditional China to consist largely to encourage, 'piety and awe towards parents.' Chen Ta, Emigrant Communities in Sowh China: A St11dy of Overseas Migration and its influence 011 standards of living and social change, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1940 (1939), Table 5, pp.82-85, shows among a survey of emigrant fami lies that 75% to 85% of family income was from remittances.

• C. Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in A11stralia, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1975, p. 13, and Price, op. ci t. , p.55 also discuss this aspect; Wilton, op. cit., pp.172-4, mentions the tradition of male migration and a preference to leave wives in China. Crawford, op. cit., p.31 is more cynical when he says, ' it is difficult [for a migrant] to persuade his family to part with his wife, and thus break the chain which binds him and the money he may make to his ancestral home. '

7 See Chen Yong, 'The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to California Reconsidered', Westem Historical Quarterly, 28 (Winter 1997), pp.52 1-546, for a discussion of this aspect.

8 See Arthur Huck, The Chinese in A11stralia, Longmans, Melbourne, 1963, pp.3-4; Choi, Chinese Migration, op. cit. , p.14; Price, op. cit. , p.58; Yong, op. cit., p. l, quotes a 1857 Victorian parliamentary committee report that estimated two-thirds of the Chinese migrants of the time had arrived by this method.

10

( 'litnl'.\<' 'wt!Lemc111 111 .\'SW· ,\-11~mf11111

their own sojourn.9 Regardless of the methods used, the majority of Chinese men in NSW

tlu·oughout the 19th century arrived indebted. This factor determined much about the habits

and activities of Chinese settlers of both the goldseeker and subsequent generations.

A prominent characteristic of people from the Pearl River Delta districts was their strong

identification by district and dialect. 1° From the time of the first Chinese goldseekers in the

1850s it was on the basis of dialect, district and village that Chinese people organised their

migration, local societies, businesses and presumably their diggings. Most NSW Chinese

people spoke the Yue dialect of Chinese (Cantonese), but with variations that made the

members of the different districts readily distinguishable. Some groups, such as the Hakka

(~*) and people from the Long Dou (~ 1\'i) area within Zhongshan district, spoke a non­

Yue dialect that was unintelligible to the majority of Cantonese speakers. 11 Up to half of the

Zhongshan people of NSW were reported to be from this single Long Dou area and the

people of this district felt an affinity with each other that extended beyond that of village

and family. 12

This affinity of district helps to explain the differing dish·ict representation in NSW from

that of Victoria. 13 While limited evidence is available for the goldseeker generation in NSW,

what there is would indicate a wider range of dish·icts was represented than that contained

in the Royal Conm1ission of the 1890s, while an analysis of dish·ict dish·ibutions in NSW

from the 1960s gave a narrower range again. 14 The narrowing of district representation over

time could be explained by the fact that subsequent ' chain migration' was greatly influenced

by who had successfully established businesses and suppmt mechanisms, thereby enabling

• Crawford, op. cit., p.2. 'Some said that they did not even have the half dollar to pay the boat fare from the mainland to Hong Kong.' Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.26, and a discussion of ticket arrangements in the 1880s.

'0 See, Leo J. Moser, The Chinese Mosaic. The Peoples and Provinces of China, Westview, London, 1985,

pp.203-5 & 215, for a general discussion of Pearl River Delta dialects; David Faure & Helen Siu, Down to Earth. The Territorial Bond in South China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1995, Introduction, p.11, discusses the complexity of South China's dialects; J. M. Rhoads, China's Republican Revolution - The Case of Kwang111ng, 1895-1913, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975, pp.12-14, discusses the tensions created by dialect differences; Choy op. cit., pp.90-1, discusses the importance of dialect in unifying groups and Somers Heidhues, op. cit. , pp.49-51, refers to the, 'natural division of overseas Chinese along speech groups'.

11 Moser, op. cit., p.208, on Hakka in South China, p.216, dialect enclaves and p.199, the dialect enclave of Long Dou; Choy op. cit., p.95, mentions six Zhongshan dialects and p.114, Longhua (Longdu dialect).

12 Interview with D. Young, NSW, 11October1997 (6) & Arthur Chang, 7 March 1998 (Tape I, B, 0.84). 11 Victoria was dominated by people from the Sze Yap districts. Choi, Chinese migration, op. cit., p.78.

11

Chinese .'·ldt/eme111111 Y\'\I" - M1g1 ati1111

some to sponsor and/or to give credit to fellow district members. Members of less

'successful' districts thus gradually disappeared from NSW.

Stores and societies set up were always organised around districts of origin. Stores remitted

money and sent letters only for fellow district members, while societies provided support

and guaranteed the return of bones only of those who came from the same or partnered

dish·icts.15 Life in NSW for those with such organisational support must have looked more

attractive for those leaving the village for the first time. The strength of such family and

district links, combined with continuing umest in China, also helps explain the assistance

given to people to migrate, regardless of legal and other barriers. 16

The significance of fan1ily , district and debts have been identified. These factors combined

to make Chinese settlement in NSW a well-organised, close community of hard-working

men. With a heavy debt, no immediate family with him and the aim to supp011 his family in

China, habits such as living in dormitories, accepting board as part payment for work and

being willing to do just about anything, must have seemed natural to most Chinese workers

in NSW. Perhaps just as naturally these habits were despised by European workers,

ignorant of their origins and intent on better wages and conditions, and so were used as

pretexts for anti-Chinese prejudice and agitation.17

The link to the family in China also meant trips home once the period of indebtedness had

passed and the regular remittance of money when in NSW. 18 Such returns, even at the end

of an entire working life spent in NSW, was not unconm1on nor were returns after death

with over 1500 exhmnations from Rookwood cemetery alone between 187 5 and 193 9. 19

"Price, op. cit., p.220, n.12, Zhongshan (40%), Gao Yao (24%), Dong Goon (20%), Sze Yap (1 0%), Sam Yap (3%) and non-Cantonese (2%); Royal Co111111 issio11, op. cit., p.119, line, 4784 and p.145, line 5805 and Crawford. op. cit., p.7-8. See Appendix llI, District proportions in NSW.

·~ See theme, Social Institutions. 16 See theme, Law and Order. 11 Discussed further in the theme Labour. 18 Such journeys to China were officially recognised as early as 1861, see SP 11 511 O; Certificates Exempting

from the provisions of the Influx of Chinese Restrictions Act of 188 1, 1862-1888. 19 See theme, Social !11stit11tio11s.

12

Clunese Se1tle111cni in NS\\:' - .\,fi<.;mfrn11

The regular flow of remittances, donations and gifts brought on trips to the villages means

that much NSW heritage material is in such villages. Items range from birds cages built to

hold 'Arnott's' rosellas to safes purchased at Anthony Hordens, as well as bridges, schools

and roads constructed with money sent from NSW. Most visually conspicuous was the

building of new and bigger houses often including a defensive 'tower' built as an addition to

a more traditional house, or a totally 'foreign' house built by wealthier merchants. Children,

usually of Chinese fathers and Europeans mothers, were often taken back at a young age to

be brought up by their grandparents and other family. Not all of these children returned to

Australia and their descendants presumably reside in south China today.

The role of Hong Kong in NSW Chinese histmy can not be neglected. Hong Kong was a

conduit between Chinese people overseas and their villages and a base for buying passage

on European ships, sending and receiving remittances, and the return of bones to the

villages. In the development of this role for Hong Kong, overseas Chinese, including those

in NSW, played a major pait.20 Hong Kong also played the role of ' safehaven'. Despite the

many improvements remittai1ces could bring, village life was not always safe, particularly

for those who had grown used to something different.21 For those who could afford to and

for the increasing number of Australian-born Chinese who felt at home in (or alienated

from) both European and Chinese culture, Hong Kong was ideal. Regardless of district, for

those with wealth to protect, Hong Kong was a refuge from both the poverty and

corruption of the home villages, ai1d the discrimination and foreignness of Australia.

The anti-Japanese war brought about two major changes in the migration background of

Chinese people in NSW. The growth of Chinese nationalism lead to more ' Chinese' and less

district identification, including many new organisations, while the tlU'eat to the villages and

Hong Kong forced many to make a choice as to where their families should make their

homes. The impact of the new government in Beijing ai1d the effective cutting off of former

contacts with the villages and districts completed this change.

20 Elizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity The Early HistOIJ' of the Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. I 00 & 111-2, and p.163, on the role of educated overseas merchants and p.169, on the role of an Australian born Chinese specifically. See also, John H. C. Sleeman, White China. An Austral-Asian Sensation, Ultimo Sydney, 1933, pp.1 37- 142.

21 Chen Ta, op. cit. , p.202, 'Returned emigrants from Australia and America sometimes were able to found

new communities.'

13

Cf1111l'S(' Set!lemcni 111 NS\F - \,/nu m1r111

By the 1960s the settlement patterns of Chinese in NSW had been completely transformed.

Citizenship and the possibility of family migration ended the imbalance of the sexes while

the migration of Chinese people from places other than southern China began for the first

time. Many of these migrants were ' re-migrations' from areas of the Chinese diaspora such

as Malaysia or, after the 1970s, from a more diverse range of areas within China itself.22

The elements of the background to Chinese migration in NSW has included the motivations

of the migrants, the organisation of that migration, the nature of the traditional family and

the identification of the individual on the basis of village, district and/or dialect. The direct

result of these elements have included the migration of an overwhelming proportion of men,

the continuation of strong links with the families in the villages, the organisation of societies

and businesses on the basis of district identification and a high level of eventual return to the

village. This background also helps to explain the efforts that were made, both legal and

illegal, to bring other family and village members to Australia, as well as some of the

pretexts on which anti-Chinese prejudice and discrimination were based.

22 See Kee, op. cit., pp.1-5, Table 4, pp.8-9, and Table 5, p.1 2 for summaries of these wider origins.

14

Cli/11£'\c' .)< t1/c'll1<'llt 111 :\'.\'\\· .)n<'ial 1.nilfl /11111,

Unlike Chinese cities, whose workers were organised around occupational guilds, those of

the Chinese diaspora relied on regional associations for social and political organisation. 1

These tongxian (fllJ!l-), or 'same place' societies, were 'benevolent institutions, formed on

the basis of 'cousinship', displaying their charity in the transport of old men and the bones

of their deceased countrymen to China' .2 The societies raised money from member's

subscriptions with nobody being, 'allowed to pay less than £ 1, but many of the merchants

paid as much as £5, £10, and £50' .3 Such societies also, played a significant role in 'keeping

huaqiao [overseas Chinese] focused on their obligations to their families in the village'.4

Dish·ict-based societies are central to an appreciation of Chinese settlement in NSW before

the 1930s. Not only did they provide support for those in need but they were responsible for

establishing temples and returning the bones of the dead to families. The merchants who ran

these societies also owned the stores tlu·ough which their fellow district members received a

great deal of support.5 It was only after the 1930s, as more 'national' ideas arose, that

organisations with a 'Chinese' rather than a district focus became more common.6

It is not known when the first societies were established in NSW but the Quang Sing Tong,

which was in existence by 1877, was reported to be the oldest. 7 By the 1890s there were at

least 10 such societies in Sydney with memberships that reached throughout NSW.8 Most

districts had their own society, though some had more than one and some districts

combined to form a single society, such as the Dong Guan and Zeng Cheng peoples who

joined to form the Loong Yee Tong.9 Today tlu-ee of these 19th century societies still

1 Sinn, Power and Charity, op. cit., pp.55-6, notes the strength of the guild based structure of Hong Kong and Chinese cities generally and the importance of regional associations among the overseas Chinese.

2 Royal Commission , op. cit., p.28. 3 Royal Commission, op. cit ., p.117, line 4697. 'The purpose of such societies was also to express longing and to remind members of their obligations.

Elizabeth Sinn, 'Xin Xi Guxiang: A Study of Regional Associations as a Bonding Mechanism in the Chinese Diaspora. The Hong Kong Experience', Modem Asian Studies, 31/2, 1997, p.375.

5 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.14, line 402, 'The principal stores would be the treasury'; line 404, 'the principal storekeepers would hold the money'; and on their NSW reach, p.54, lines 2065-83. Sinn, Power and Charity, op. cit., p.55, refers to the role of merchants in taking the place of the scholar elite in the circumstances of Hong Kong and p.60, discusses the characteristics of Chinese voluntary organisations.

• Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.117- 11 8 & 137. 1 ' There is one very old society called Quong Sing Tong.' Royal Commission, op. cit.,. cit., p.153, line

6094. The district this society covered is unknown. 8 Royal Commission, op. cit., scattered references. ''Royal Commission, op. cit. , p.146, lines 5871-2. The Commissioners needed to have the 'exclusiveness' of

the societies explained to them on a number ofoccasions, such as when Way Shong stated that, 'Moy Ping is not of my community - he would not subscribe', and when Sam Tin needed to explain that he was denying membership of the Loong Yee Tong, not because it was a gambling society but rather 'as I do not

15

Chinese Settlemel/l in NSHi - ."i'o<'ia/ fn,·wwi1111s

operate in Sydney .10 The Yum Duck Tong of the largest represented district in NSW, that

of Zhongshan district, dissolved in the 1930s and was refounded in the 1970s. More recent

migrants have founded their own district societies since the 1980s. 11

Merchant leadership was pait of a traditional paternalism which, as explained by his

grandson describing Way Kee's role in the Koon Yee Tong of the Doon Goon district

people, was not a question of seeking election but, 'on account of seeing that my

grandfather was in such a larger way of business, and was trusted, these men would take

their money to him to keep for them'. The men he was referring to were those principally in

' the gardening or hawking line' .12 A man in Way Kee's position was obliged to help others

of his community. As his grandson again explained, ' if my grandfather did not go and bail

them out [Chinese arrested for gambling], being a leading man, it would not look well.' 13

The practice of returning the bones of the dead to rest in the soil of their ancestors was

fundamental in Chinese culture and played an impmtant role in the bond with the village. 14

The usual practice was to bury a body for several years then to collect the bones of a

number people at once to be 'returned to China'. 15 An alternative, for those who could

afford it, was to be embalmed and returned immediately .16

District societies played the dominant role in the return of bones. 17 The societies collected

fees from their members and used the funds to ship the bones of those who died in

Australia. The Hing Foon Tong (ift~~) of the Gao Yao people kept a membership book

which recorded the naines and villages of its members to ensure the information would be

belong to that part of the country they would not let me in it' . Royal Commission, op. cit., p.69, line 2697 and p.117, line4665.

10 That of the Gao Yao, Dong Guan and Sze Yap districts, see Appendix I. 11 See Appendix I. 12 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.47, lines 1934-36. I) Royal Commission, op. cit., p.52, line 1946. 1' Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwc111gt11ng, University of London,

Athlone Press, 1966, pp.139-140, on the role of bones in ancestor worship. Sinn, Power & Charity, op. cit., p.18, considers that concern for the dead was 'paramount' with the overseas Chinese.

15 'Returned to China,' in red ink, indicated exhumed plots in the, Register of Burials in the Necropolis at Haslem' s Creek, Rookwood Cemetery, Anglican Trust, Chinese Section of General Cemetery.

16 Australian Archives (NSW), SP42/l; C47/2369, Wellington Wing Ning, Charles Wong Wing Kau, statutory declaration by Ah Ching, December 1914. Australian Archives hereafter AA.

11 Sinn, Power and Charity, op. cit., p.18, concern for the dead was, 'a keystone of community leadership and influence'.

16

Clunese Settle111c111 i11 NS\\.' - .">11«iol /11.,·uf/t111111'

available if required. 18 The Chinese Gambling Conunissioners were told in 1891 that it cost

'£10 to remove a man's bones from the country' and that it cost Way Kee's society

£529/19/2 to 'raise 84 bodies' .19 The return of bones to the actual villages was probably

done through the Tung Wah Hospital based in Hong Kong, a role this institution played for

Chinese people in many countries.20 The concern that bodies not be lost was so strong that

' the putting of coffms on board vessels going to and fro in case a Chinaman dies' was also

one of the functions of the societies. Money was also donated to the Tung Wah Hospital in

Hong Kong to ensure that this was done at that end also.21

The high percentage of exhumations from Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney suggests that

many of the Chinese cemeteries in rural NSW no longer contain remains.22 From the records

of this cemetery it can be seen that there was a tapering off of returns after 1930, and from

1938 there were few removals until after World War Two. Many of those who died after

1931 were exhumed between 1946 and 1948, after which only 10 more were removed in

1950, with the last recorded exhumation from this section of the cemetery in 1962.23

A related role of the societies was in the establishment of temples. Currently only two pre­

war temples remain in Sydney.24 Both these temples were built with material imported from

China and originally such temples, like the district associations, were aligned with their

districts and people from other districts would not have associated with them. In rural NSW

many more temples or Joss Houses are recorded, particularly in former gold mining

settlements.25 In recent times a number of Chinese temples have been built, the most recent

of which opened in Ashfield in July 1999.

1" Membership book in possession of the Tiy Loy & Co., sighted by the author.

19 Royal Commission, op. cit., p. 15, lines 486-7 and p.57, line 2232 & Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.53 for major exhumations in I 862.

20 Royal Commission, op. cit., p. 105, line 4 I 69, ' they send some money to the Chinese Hospital in Hong Kong, the Tong Wah Yee Yuen'.

21 Royal Commission, op. cit. , p.55, line 2 I 13 and p.70, lines 2724-28. Sinn, Power and Charity, op. cit., pp. I 08-9, mentions coffins being placed on emigrant ships to prevent the dead being thrown over board.

22 Evidence to the Chinese Gambling Commissioners was that 500 bones (from rural NSW) had been sent in 'the last IO years'. Royal Commission, op. cit., p. 14, line 485. In the same period 250 bones were exhumed from Rookwood. See theme Mining.

23 At the period of most active exhumation and shipment of bones, from 1875 to the late 1930s, a peak of 75% of burials in the 'Old Chinese Section' of Rookwood Cemetery were, ' returned to China', with an average of 55% to 65%. Note the drop in returns around the time of the 19 11 revolution. The total number of burials in this section from 1875 to 1950 was 3,094. See Appendix IV, Table 7.

24 That of the Sze Yap in Glebe and the Gao Yao in Alexandria. 25 Smith, op. cit., p.50, records a Joss House for miners in 1860. One at Emmaville in the I 870s was

described as 'gorgeous', Ian Lobsey, The Creek, A History of Emmaville, 1872-1972, Emmaville

17

Clime,\1' .)d1/e11H'lll t11 \IS\\." - .)11«ial f11,1uuti1111'

While the majority of Chinese people in NSW were not Clu·istian and remained so, a

minority did convert to various Clu·istian Churches. The motivation for doing so seemed to

have been intermarriage and the desire of the usually non-Chinese wife that children be

brought up as Clu·istians. 26 The predominant Church appears to have been the Chinese

Presbyterian Church due to the missionary work of Rev Young Wai but the Anglican and

others all had Chinese Churches, including some specifically built for Chinese

congregations. 27 English classes then as now also provided avenues of contact and

conversion as well as opportunities to meet future wives.28 'Clu·istian Chapels for Chinese'

are also referred to in rural NSW and Bathurst was the base for the 'Western Chinese

Mission' in 1899.29

A prominent organisation that was not limited to a single district or group of districts was

the Chinese Masonic Society. This had been the Yee Hing until 1912, a 'secret society'

which traditionally took its members from those cut off from their village or districts.30 The

Chinese Masonic Society greatly expanded in 1916 and ran its own newspaper for many

years. It was also prominent in many of the legal cases taken up to improve the rights of

Chinese, including the High Comt challenge to the attempted expulsion of many wartime

refugees in 1949. The Society continues to operate from the building in Maiy St, Sydney it

has occupied since 1912. 31

Centenary Celebrations Committee, Glen Innes, 1972, p.34-35. Crawford, op. cit., p.9 gives a brief description of a Victorian temple. Further information on NSW Joss Houses and related artefacts is in Golden Threads, a project by Janis Wilton to be completed late 1999, see Appendix I.

16 Crawford, op. cit., p.8-9 and Yong, op. cit., p.208. 27 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.100 and Yong, op. cit., p.203. 18 See Margaret Egerton, 'My Chinese', The Cosmos Magazine, Sept, pp.124- 128 for an interesting

description of one such class & William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999. 1• Lobsey, op. cit., p.34 & Theo Barker, A History of Bathurst, Vol 2, Crawford House Press, Bathurst,

1992, p.299. ·'° Crawford, op. cit., p.10, identifies the 'Sheathed Sword Society' as another such secret society he

observed in Victoria and Qld with a primarily religious influence and more sway than the district societies. He also noted that as 'immigration wanes' they degenerate into 'mere tea shops.'

3 1 Yong, op. cit., p.157 & William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999.

18

Chinese .)ettlemenr in !VSH: - .'111<·ia! lm1ir111i1111.'

Apaii from the Chinese Masonic Society and various merchant associations,32 the first

'Chinese,' as opposed to distTict organisations, were several attempts at establishing

Chinese language schools. Two schools were established around 1914 but both had

difficulties obtaining teachers and were closed ai1d reopened many times in the 1920s.33 A

further effo1i at providing Chinese language education was made around 1941 by the

Australian Chinese Association but lack of students forced the school's closure after only a

year's operation.34

Education in English was provided at the Anglican Church of St Lawrence in the early part

of the 20th century but as families with children moved to the suburbs the demand for

primmy education diminished. However, in the 1930s, students sponsored under the

Immigration Restriction Act increased in numbers and the Chinese School of English run by

the Presbyterian Church in Campbell St, Haymarket was opened after the government ruled

that sponsored Chinese students could not attend Public Schools. As many of these students

were older than their stated age and more interested in helping their sponsors in their shops

or gardens, the smooth nnming of the school was difficult and inspections by Customs and

later Immigration Officials frequent.35

Major 'Chinese' associations of a social or community nature were not formed until the

1930s when Japanese attacks on China and a growing sense of nationalism among a

younger generation led to the founding of such groups as the Chinese Youth League and

the Australian Chinese Association in the late 1930s and early 1940s.36 After the war the

Australia-Chinese Friendship society was formed to maintain links with the new China.37 In

more recent times, organisations such as the Australian Chinese Community Association

(ACCA), the Inda-Chinese Chinese Association and Chinese Women Association have been

f01med with combined social and benevolent aims. Most of these organisations profess a

' Chinese' coverage but in practise membership is often still based on dialect and region of

origin, though on a somewhat broader basis than in the past.

32 See theme Commerce. 33 Yong, op. cit., p.215- 16. 3" William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999.

35 William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999 and inte rview 20/8/99 & AA (NSW), SP! 122/1 , N53/24/435, Betty Gee (Lai Kong Gee), School report form, 30/6/50.

36 William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999 and interview 20/8/99 37 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.145.

19

Clunes(' .'w1tlemc111 in NS\Y ·· Cn111111crn'

Chinese people and commerce were linked in NSW before significant Chinese

settlement began. China trade began with the First Fleet while the indentured workers

of the 1840s were part of an international trade in labour. The goldseekers were also

part of an organised system of emigration which by the 1870s included working gangs

moving from country to country seeking contracts. 1 Conunerce conducted by Chinese

people began with ex-goldseekers who set up stores and other businesses to supply, at

first Chinese, and then European customers throughout NSW. Fishing and the curing

of fish, storekeeping, international trade, fruit and vegetable selling, hawking, drapery,

cabinet-making, newspaper publishing, shipping and restaurants have all been

occupations carried out by Chinese people in NSW at various times.

The first recorded Chinese store was in Campbell St, Sydney in 1858 but by the end of

the 19th century, Sydney was the centre of a network of such stores spread tlu·oughout

NSW.2 The stores in the countryside had a high level of interaction with non-Chinese

people and many NSW towns saw their Chinese storekeeper as a prominent and

valuable citizen.3 In Sydney, firms such as Anthony Hordern, Arnott's and Mick

Simmons regularly advertised in the Chinese language papers.4 Neve1theless a racially

based anti-Chinese stores movement did get underway in 1904-5 and the decline in the

number of Chinese customers, especially outside Sydney, saw the number of rural

Chinese stores greatly reduce, one exception being the Hong Yuen network of stores

that maintained itself in nmthern NSW.5

1 Crawford, op. cit. , p.2 refers to these international contract gangs and p.19, to the importation of bonded labour and the chartering of immigrant ships by Australian based Chinese merchants.

2 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.68. This network of stores and societies is well illustrated in the Royal Co111111ission, where there are numerous references scattered throughout the evidence to visits by the witnesses to such NSW towns as Hay, Hillston and Tingha and their Chinese 'camps'. Way Kee is reported to have had four stores in Bourke, Bega, Stanthorpe and Hillston, Royal Commission, op. cit., p.47, lines, 1704-8. See also Yong, op. cit., pp.39-41, for a discussion of the Chinese in the rural environment.

3 For example, a testimonial on wax parchment was signed by Gundagai residents, including the Mayor, for Mark Loong on his departure for China in 1903, after 16 years in the district. Australian Archives (NSW), SP42/I; C 1903/875, Mark Loong, Testimonial, 9 January 1903.

" See end of this theme for Chinese language newspapers. 5 Wilton, op. cit., pp.98- 101, discusses the campaign against Chinese country stores, also Yong,

op.cit. p.47 and A. T. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: the background to excl11sio11, 1896-1923, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1964, p.118. See Appendix IV, Table I.

20

C/1i11ese Se({/en1<:111 in ,VS\V - Co111111t'r< ,.

The Sydney stores had links and pa1tnerships with those in rural NSW and between

them would pass remittances to the villages and imp01ts from China such as birds'

nests, smoked duck, lychees and medicine herbs.6 The stores also provided services for

fellow district members. People without a district-related store of their own could use

other stores, but for sending remittances and other services relative to their villages

they were not of great use. 7 The Zhongshan based firms such as Wing On, Onyik Lee

and the Kwong War Chong, paid fares, purchased tickets, arranged Immigration

Restriction Act paperwork, provided accommodation and even lent money for the first

remittance home, including a letter written by the firm' s scribe if necessa1y. 8

These Sydney-based stores were able to provide services that reached back to the

villages because they were part of a network of stores related by ownership and/or

common partners in Hong Kong and the home districts.9 Kwong War Chong & Co.

was typical of many such stores. It was run by people from the Zhongshan district and

was used by market gardeners from that district. 10 Established in 1883 in Campbell St

by several partners, including Phillip Lee Chun who had come to Aush·alia in 1874, the

store moved to 84 Dixon St in 1910, where it operated as a general store and trading

company until 1987. 11

6 Hong Sing of Reservoir St, Surry Hills sold to stores in Tenterfield, Emmaville and Tingha, AA(NSW), SPl 122/1; N57/2220, Chang Wai Sheu Sing. Wilton, op. cit., p. 133, for details of northern NSW connections with Sydney. For imports, AA(NSW), Al026, Correspondence in connection with Immigration Restriction Act 1904-12, vol. 3, report, 'Check on importation of Chinese Goods', Collector of Customs to Comptroller-General, 5/6/08.

'Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.115, as San Tin reported of his Lodging House, 'only friends and countrymen [district) stop there ' . Yong, op. cit., p.46, discusses this feature of the stores. Interview with Arthur Gar Lock Chang, Sydney, 7 March 1998 (Tape 2, B, 0.00).

• Royal Commission, op. cit. , p.115, lines, 4567-71, Sam Tin reported that as many as 50 stayed in his lodging house 'when they have been going away to China, or going into the country'. Victor Gow remembers he and his father in the 1920s staying above the Kwong War Chong store, Dixon Street Sydney, on buying trips from Wollongong. Interview with Arthur Gar Lock Chang, Sydney, 7 March 1998 (Tape 2, B, 0.75) & Victor Gow, 30 October 1997 (9).

•The 'General Merchants' firm of Sun Sam Choy had 25 partners, only five were in Sydney, nine were in Newcastle, one in Glenn Innes, eight in Hong Kong and a further two in Canton. AA (NSW), SP42/l; C29/48, Ping Fun, Certificate of Registration of a firm with the Registrar-General, Sun Sam Choy - General Merchants, no.3, 694, 5 June 1906.

'0

In the Zhongshan district capital, Shekki, (fili[t, Shiqi), the Kwong War Fong (J'tlU-=f.) was a branch of the Kwong War Chong ()'L:;ftJ {3). Interview with Norman Lee, 25 September 1997 (2).

11 Interview with Norman Lee, Sydney, 25 September 1997 (I & 10) and AA (NSW), SP42/I; N59/3386, Kwong War Chong & Co., 'Particulars form', 30 October 1951 .

21

( '/1111e\·<, \elf/e111c111 i11 VSW - C(l111111er< ·1·

The customers of these stores made many trips to their villages in China and were

expected to bring gifts and to display some of the success they were experiencing in

foreign lands. A shopping visit to a local trading store such as the Kwong War Chong

or to Anthony Hordern & Sons, was necessary therefore before taking ship to buy

such gifts as Arnott's biscuits, boiled lollies and umbrellas, as well as guns, leather

shoes and in at least one instance, an Ajax safe. 12

Remittances to the fan1ily in the village were a significant part of this commerce. 13

Nineteenth century remittances may have been in gold but by the 1930s, bank drafts

were more common. In this case, a store collected the individual remittances from its

customers and a standard letter was written to the family, usually by the store's clerk,

to accompany the payment. 14 The Kwong War Chong, for example, charged a small

commission on each remittance and consolidated them into a single draft drawn on the

English, Scottish and Aush·alian Bank in pounds sterling. The draft was then sent to

the Hong Kong branch of the Kwong War Chong, where it was converted to Hong

Kong dollars and then into Chinese dollars for the money to be sent to the dish·ict

capital Shekki. The store's branch in Shekki then dish·ibuted the money to the families,

either by their collecting it or by it being delivered to the villages by the firm's clerks.

A receipt, which included a letter back to Sydney, would be signed and returned to the

shop in Dixon St, where it was set up on a rack in the front window for people to

collect. 15

12 Interview with Cliff Lee, 28 September 1997 (3). Photo, Appendix V. 13 Breakdowns of figures are not available but in 1927 the Manager of one Sydney Bank stated, 'In

this Branch alone, the Hong Kong exchange sold by us yearly averages £600,000.' William Liu papers, Box I, ML MSS 6294, Letter, 16/8/27, Manger, C.A. Morgan, The English Scottish and Australian Bank Ltd to Mr W. J. L. Liu.

" Royal Commission, op. cit., p.55, line, 2 126; Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 47, refers to an early mishap which may have encouraged the use of a safer system. Interview with Norman Lee, Sydney, 25 September 1997 (2). When the Bank of China began to take over all remittances after 1949 it issued a standard letter form to accompany remittances that may have been modelled on that created by the stores' scribes. Such a le tter had 5 points: best wishes, write more often, let me know when received, have received your letter & tell how to spend the money in another letter. Mar Letters, no.264, Bank of China notice, 5 June 1944.

15 Interview with Norman Lee, Sydney, 25 September 1997 (2,3 &4). 3~)Cffl Miao Wenyue & i%1~¥ Gao Huanzhang, :U-tl!tr~ 1lv. ft~ fn1 Z:.! 'Shiqi Yinye de Huiyi' (Recollections of the Shiqi silver industry), lf-111 !.X:.!fj Zhongshan Wenshi (Zhongshan Cultural History), 1962-5, reprint, Special collection, 5. l 0.1989, pp.88-90, discusses commissions earned between Shiqi and Hong Kong. For similar descriptions of remittance services in Hawaii, Char Tin- Yuke, The Sandalwood Mountains. Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii, The University Press of Hawaii,

22

Citmes1' .)dtlemc11! in NS\·V - Co11111wr< 1"

The purchase of tickets for ships was another matter handled by the stores in both

Sydney and Hong Kong. 16 In this, the average Chinese person had little choice as

shipping agents preferred not to have to deal with Chinese people directly. 17 In 1892

some of the leading Sydney Chinese merchants formed the Lin Yik Tong partly for the

purpose of acting as an agent in the purchase of these tickets, a role succeeding

associations of merchants continued to play .18

Travel between NSW and south China in the 19th century included chm1ers as well as

regular runs, usually via Singapore. 19 By the begining of the 20th centwy such

journeys were provided by two companies, the Eastern & Orient Line and the Taishan

Marn, operating two ships each between Sydney and Hong Kong. Later the Japanese

line was replaced by the Eastern & Australian Steamship Co. This meant an average of

two ships per month and a trip of about three weeks between Sydney and Hong Kong.

A shipping sh011age in WWI and the tempormy domination by the Japanese Line

inspired Chinese merchants in NSW, with some supp011 from merchants in Melbourne

and elsewhere, to establish the China-Australia Mail Steamship Line. Two ships were

purchased in 1917 by the co-operative efforts of most of Sydney's Chinese merchants.

The venture met with inunediate losses when the Conunonwealth Govenunent

requisitioned its ships for the duration of the war. In 1919, with its ships returned, the

company purchased 'China House' in George St and began again. However, the Line

faced sh·ong price competition and could not rely on the loyalty of the many Chinese

passengers in the face of substantial cuts in passenger fares by its competitors and by

1924 the Line was wound up and it ships sold. 20

Honolulu, 1975, p 127; and South-East Asia, Chen Ta, op. cit., p.79. The Tiy Loy & Co. of the Gao Yao people in Sussex St. Sydney still have such a letter rack, now used only for correspondence.

16 Such arrangements go back to at least the 1880s, when tickets purchased in bulk in Hong Kong would be sold in the villages regardless of names on tickets, SP42/I, C33/7368, Harry Chun Fook, memo Collector of Customs to Deputy Crown Solicitor, 18/9/33, & Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.26.

11 '. •• if an ordinary Chinamen came to book a passage they would refuse to take his money; he would have to book through a Chinese merchant.' Royal Co111111ission, op. cit., p.99, lines, 3982-83.

1" Yong, op. cit., p.80. The stores knowledge of European ways, English and the capacity of the store

managers and merchant's class position to override, to some extent at least, racial bias. 19 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.25-26 and Crawford, op. cit., p.19. 20 Yong, op. cit., pp.97-109.

23

Chinese .~e1tle111c11r in NS\V - Co11t111en·('

The China-Australia Mail Steamship Line was not the only example of co-operation

among Chinese merchants. The role of the Lin Yik Tong was taken over in 1903 by

the more representative Chinese Merchants Association, formed partly to balance the

grouping of the more conservative merchants, the Empire Reform Association. Soon

after, the Chinese Merchants Defence Association was also formed to cotmter the

agitation of the Anti-Asiatic League. These two associations merged in 1913 to form

the NSW Chinese Chamber of Commerce, a level of co-operation which assisted the

establislunent of the shipping line. This organisation lasted until 1965 when lack of

numbers caused its dissolution.21 An organisation with the same name was formed in

1975 and continues to promote various benevolent and cultural activities today.

These organisations and the merchants they represented were involved in a number of

causes not strictly commercial. The boycotts of U.S. and Japanese goods in 1906 and

1908, the support for the 1911 revolution, including sending delegates to Peking, and

numerous donations for flood and other disaster relief were some of the activities of

NSW's Chinese merchants.22 However, links with China and Hong Kong were always

an important aspect of the operation of NSW firms including support for large scale

investment in China, the setting up of China and Hong Kong based businesses with

capital generated in NSW, and the development of an import/export trade.

In 1919, Chinese businessmen in the Eastern States were able to raise £30,000 to

invest in China Steelworks and in 1921, 10% of the capital of a Shanghai Company, or

£13,000, was raised in Australia. NSW based businessmen also used their capital to

establish companies in China and/or Hong Kong. In 1924, two Sydney Chinese

businessmen established the Xiangshan Bank in Shekki23 and in 1928 Lee Yip Fay

returned to Sydney after a lengthy time trying to, ' float The Chosen Co. of Hongkong,

Canton and Shakee [Shekki], General Importers and Exporters,' of which he was the

Manager of the 'Shakee Branch'.24

21 Yong, op. cit., p.85-90 & Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 11 2. 12 Yong, op. cit., p.90. 23 Which collapsed after two years operation, r~Jt i:Jtj Miao Wenyue & i%1~¥ Gao Huanzhang,

z:i~rtHV. rt~fnHZiop. cit., p.93. 2" AA (NSW), SP42/l ; C3 1/135, Lee Yip Fay. Letter, Lee Yip Fay to Collector of Customs, 15 May

1928; Chen Ta, op. cit., p.20, quotes a report on the increase in overseas Chinese investment in

24

( '/1iJl('\1 .'Je1tlemc111111 VS l.\.' - ( ,1111111erc,

More well-known than these unsuccessful ventures are the successes of Wing On &

Co. and Wing Sang & Co. in founding Hong Kong-based companies with their NSW

capital and knowledge of modern business practises.25 NSW and Australian trade with

China had been in decline since the 19th centu1y but its gradual growth in the 20th, as

both the Australian and Chinese economies developed, was not due to such successful

Chinese merchants, who preferred to move their capital to Hong Kong rather than

invest in a ' White Australia'.26 The Wing On and Wing Sang branches in Sydney

therefore remained small trading firms.

In the 19th century Chinese stores imported and exported goods to provide for their

customers, but after the Immigration Restriction Act took effect this international trade

became linked to their capacity to bring in family members and employees under the

White Australia Policy .27 More than 2,000 people entered Australia before 1940 on

' temporary' Ce1tificates of Exemption who were able to remain until war-time

conditions made their return impossible or at least politically difficult. They entered as

students, merchants, the wives of merchants, and as substitutes and assistants to those

working in stores and market gardens.28 The linking of the number of people on

Certificates of Exemption that could be employed by a firm with turnover by the

Immigration Restriction Act after 1934 often meant the stores slashed profit margins in

order to boost turnover.29 In the 1950s this criteria became profits and so tax returns

were then exaggerated. The cost of such measures becoming part of the 'bond' the

new employee needed to pay off.30

home districts after 19 11 and the failure of these investments due to 'disturbances', and pp.75-76, on the later preference for keeping capital elsewhere due to China's instability.

25 Yong, op. cit., p.56-58. 26 Yong, op.cit. p.47 and p.262, trade figures. 27 See theme Law & Order. 26 Fitzgerald, op.ci t. p.38 & 4 1. 29 In 1948, the Kwong War Chong, with a turnover of £5,994, was able to employ four assistants. AA

(NSW), SP42/l ; N59/3386, Kwong War Chong & Co. Figures attached to minute, 18 March 1948. See theme Law & Order.

30 Interview with King Fong, I April 1998 and Donald Young, 11/10/94 (4). See theme, Labour.

25

C/unl'.\< .)ertlemc111111 ,VS\.\' - ('p111111i>r(,

Chinese restaurants such as the Peking Cafe in Pitt St had always been popular in

Sydney but during the 1950s numerous small establislunents were opened up to serve

'Australian-Chinese' meals to unsophisticated palettes throughout NSW towns and the

city suburbs. The reason for this sudden boom was that after WWII, as the number of

stores and especially market gardens declined, Chinese cafes and restaurants took over

as the way in which those in NSW could carry on a 'Chinese' business which would

entitle them to employ a Chinese person.31

The commercial activity of most Chinese stores was closely linked to businesses such

as the vegetable and banana h·ades, as well as the earlier fishing and fish curing

industry .32 As early as the 1860s a fishing industry was established on the NSW central

coast involving catching, curing and exporting the dried product. Longer lasting was

the vegetable trade, with many market gardens owned by the merchants who owned

the stores. Many merchants acquired their capital by working in the gardens or as

vegetable dealers at the markets before becoming partners in a store. Many Sydney­

based stores owned plantations in Fiji and later attempted to develop plantations on the

NSW no1th coast before discrimination and banana diseases ended their efforts.33

An industry not directly related to stores or market gardens was that of cabinet­

making. A quaiter of all such workshops were reported to be Chinese in the 1880s and

in 1912 there were 862 Chinese people employed in the furniture trades area. 34 Most

workshops were very small and scattered tlu·oughout the city and by the 1920s few

were left. The biggest and most successful being that run by the Lock Lee family in

Botany Rd, Alexandria. Cabinet-making was an indushy that attracted a great deal of

anti-Chinese attention including various NSW Facto1y Acts that directly discriminated

against Chinese people working in this industry.35

1 1 Officials would calculate that a cafe served 'Chinese meals at approximately 85%' for example, AA (NSW), SPI 122/1, N57/5016, Chan Yin Ming. Report on the Sun Sun Restaurant, Clerk Non­European to CMO, 9110156.

32 See theme Agricult11re. 33 Yarwood, op. cit., pp.117-119, on the banana trade; Yong, op. cit., p.77-78, on restrictions placed

on Chinese in the banana trade. See theme Agriculture. 34 Fitzgerald, op.cit. p.83-84 & Yong, op.cit. p.41. See theme, Labour. 3~ Yarwood, op. cit., pp.117-119, on the furniture trade. Choi, Chinese Migration, op. cit., p.53 on the

refusal of all applications for substitutes and assistants in this industry.

26

( !ti111'.\e 'l<'lf!t'111cnf 11; V\ l\ ( '11111111t'r< e

A final commercial activity involving Chinese in NSW was the Chinese language

newspapers. The earliest, the Chinese Australian Herald was established in 1894 by

two Europeans and a Chinese person named Sun Jolmson. Its reliance on European

advertisers is an indication of the commercial links between the Chinese population, of

Sydney at least, and such non-Chinese firms. Subsequent papers were all established

with Chinese capital and were founded with a political role in view as well. The Tung

Wah News (later Tung Wah Times) was established in 1898 in response to the

humiliation of the Sino-Japanese War to promote China's modernisation and position

in the world. The Chinese Republican News was founded in 1914 to support the new

Republic of China, and the Chinese World News, founded in 1921 , was the voice of the

Chinese Masonic Society th.en newly reorganised. In the 1920s the Chinese Times was

transferred to Sydney from Melbourne to become the official organ of the Chinese

Nationalist Party. 36

36 Fitzgerald, op.cit. p.98 & Yong, op.cit. p.90, 11 6 and 166.

27

Cf1111nc Sctrlc1111'nt 111 ,\SH Luw and Ou!t ·

More than any other group within NSW with the exception of Aboriginal people, people

of Chinese origin have had a great number of legal restrictions placed upon them. While

violence meant dealing with the law in order to secure its protection, hopefully. Contract

labourers before the courts for absconding from their employers argued they had been

improperly treated. 1 Anti-Chinese violence on the goldfields brought police protection as

well as the first restrictions on Chinese inunigration, these restrictions culminated in the

Inunigration Restiiction Act of 1901, which had the effect of freezing Chinese settlement

patterns into a slow decline and endangered the links with families in the villages. Such

restrictions and the denial of citizenship and other rights ensured that people of both

Chinese birth and origin remained separate from the rest of the community in NSW and

tied to a restricted range of occupations. Factory Acts and bans on opium and gambling

put Chinese people on the wrong side of laws sometimes enacted for that purpose.

Resistance to these laws included political lobbying, legal challenges, smuggling, a high

degree of self-support within the Chinese conununity and a sophisticated manipulation of

regulations, as well as simply being very friendly with the relevant officials.

Not all discrimination against Chinese people in NSW was enacted in law and the

consequences of violence, the tlu·eat of violence and of racial prejudice, while difficult to

determine, cannot be underestimated. From Lambing Flat to larrikins at Bondi, Chinese

people in NSW had to deal with a high level of racial prejudice and associated violence.2

Crawford observed a marked degree of difference between Victoria and Sydney, at least in

the 1870s, in 'the unhappy air of constraint which characterises the Chinese of Sydney,

and distinguishes them from their free-mrumered countrymen in Victoria. '3

1 Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.65. Crawford, op. cit., p. 12 optimistically considered the use of the Colonial Courts by Chinese people in disputes with other Chinese as proof of 'their general acknowledgment of the j ustice of English law.'

2 On Lambing Flat and other early acts of v iolence, Price, op. cit. , p.78-83; Egerton, op. cit. , Oct 19, p. 139-140, does not understand the possible consequences and is shocked that nearby fe llow Chinese made no attempt to assist the person set upon; A d isrespectful winding up of pig-tails was necessaiy due to larrikins according to a British China Consul, Great Britain Foreign Office Confidential Prints, F.O. 24867, Undersecetary of State, Colonial Office to Foreign Office, 15/1 2/1888, p.5.

3 Crawford, op. c it. , p.11.

28

Ch1111'.1c S(•!fft111e111 in :V."i H - /u11· w1d Ordi'r

Acquiescence was not always the response, particularly by the merchant class, and when

an Anti-Chinese Asiatic League was created in 1904 the Chinese Merchants Defence

League was quickly formed to provide counter arguments and refutations in the Sydney

Morning Herald.4 Even where such anti-Chinese prejudices did not exist ove1tly their

place was often taken by high levels of paternalism. 5

The special place Chinese people had within NSW can be traced in statistical records.

Aboriginal and Chinese people were the only ethnic groups consistently counted separately

in the census of 1891. However, in 1898 when a record of 'aliens' in Sydney was

compiled it included Japanese, Indians and others but did not include any Chinese people,

they were aliens of another sort.6 A 'sort' whose passing was to be noted, as when a

special section appeared in the 1925 Conm1onwealth Year Book entitled the 'Chinese in

Australia', which reported with satisfaction that, 'as only 2,026 of the 17, 157 Chinese

recorded in 1921 were born in this country, the decrease is likely to continue'. 7

The most well-known of the legal impositions upon the Chinese in NSW were those

directed at their coming into NSW at all. These included an 1861 Act (repealed in 1867),

and ones in 1881, 1888 and 1898 in NSW and finally the 1901 to 1957 Federal

Inunigration (Resh·iction) Act, with various gradually lessening discriminations until

1972.8 All but the last of the NSW Acts were aimed at 'members of the Chinese race'

while the 1898 and Federal Acts did not mention any people by name in the interests of

Imperial politeness.9

4 Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.94 and Yong, op. cit. p. 70-72. 5 ' I have found him a white man in all my dealings', speaks for itself. AA (NSW), SP42/ I, C47/2245, Ah

Tong, Reference for Ah Tong by Mrs Nesbit, 1/2/ 1926. 6 SP822/10, 'Aliens Registered Sydney', 23/12/1888 - 71111902. 7 T. A. Coghlan, NSW Statistical Register for 1899 and Previous Year, Sydney, Government Printer,

1900, p.593, Part VII, Table 2, includes 'full ' and 'half-castes' of both groups; Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, no.18, 1925, Section 14, 'Chinese in Australia', pp.951-956.

8 See, Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.187-189 for details of a ll such legislation and amendments. "Yarwood, op. cit., p.1-1 6.

29

Chinnc Scl!lcllienr in .VS\\ /.u11· uncl Out1 r

All these laws recognised the rights of Chinese people already resident in NSW to travel to

China and to return, though the NSW Act gave only nine months to do so while the

Commonwealth Act gave 36 months to pre-1901 'domiciles', with extensions. 10 However,

even these limited rights were subject to administrative whims and the early administration

of the Immigration Restriction Act began by interpreting the 'domicile' requirement as

' intention to establish a permanent home' rather than evidence of pre-1901 domicile,

leading to a number of early refusals to grant the 'Ce1tificates of Domicile' necessary to

re-enter Australia. 11 Complaints by the shipping companies at the loss of passengers and

protests by the Chinese merchants themselves may have influenced the decision to soften

the interpretation. A relatively relaxed attitude to such matters was essential if the links

with the home villages were to be maintained and the Chinese were not forced to choose

between the income they could earn and their families in China.

The Inunigration Restriction Act extended itself further than the NSW Acts, to Hong

Kong and beyond, by fining shipping companies £100 for eve1y illegal inunigrant carried

to an Australia port. The result was that Chinese people in Hong Kong could not purchase

a ticket to Australia without either a valid CEDT12 or a letter from the Collector of

Customs stating that they would be admitted, 'on being satisfactorily identified'. People

eligible as 'domiciles' would give their CEDTs to agents, often branches of the Sydney­

based stores, who would purchase steamer tickets for them. After 1912 the merchant class

could use passports issued by the Chinese govenm1ent. 13 However, most Chinese people

continued to be dependent upon the stores for all aspects of their dealings under the

Inunigration Restriction Act. 14

10 AA (NSW), SP 115/ I 0, Certificates of Residence 1862- 1886, contains certificates issued under the various NSW Acts.

11 Yarwood says this is because the Immigration Restriction Act had been designed to be based on 'administrative techniques' and this required administrators to look to the debates rather than the wording of the Act. In addition, the ALP used its influence to ensure that administration of the Act was tight. See, Yarwood, op. cit., pp.22-3, and pp.68-70, for discussion of the early interpretation of the Act.

12 Certificates Exempting from the Dictation Test replaced Certificates of Domicile in 1905. 13 AA (NSW), SP I 15/1 ; Taiping2/6/29 & Araji1ra 3015129 and Yong, op. cit. p.25. 14 See theme Commerce.

30

Chinc'c Sl'tt!cn1<'nt in \~II · I <!11 w1d nu fer

While the various restrictions on Chinese inm1igration attempted to control people's lives

they also left open many opportunities for manipulation as well as circumvention,

opportunities more easily taken up by merchants and those with money. For the bulk of

market gardens this meant that their wives, present or future, would remain in the villages

regardless of circumstances. In this way legal restrictions acted to reinforce existing

patterns and to prevent, or at least slow, change. 15

Under pre-Federation NSW law, the children and wives of Chinese people naturalized as

New South Welshmen were exempt from the £100 poll tax and could enter freely. This

was reduced by the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act to only the wives of merchants and

after 1903 even these people could obtain temporary ent1y only .16 Extensions could be

sought and a temporary stay sometimes converted into a permanent one. 17 The substitute

and assistant provisions of the Act offered even further opportunities. Eligibility was

defined by turnover and a judgement that the position required a Chinese person to do it.

This also meant that those with businesses were in a better position to bring family

members, or at least fellow villagers, than the average market gardener. 18 It also meant

that if a person lost their job they were liable to deportation, a continuation of the

'bonded' employment previously ensured by the credit ticket system.19

15 "The traditional Chinese imperatives to return home to China were thus reinforced by Australian regulations ... " Fitzgerald, op. cit. P.37. The Chinese Gambling Commissioners were told that 'the majority of them who come here are too poor to pay the passage money for their wives', and even Way Kee, a rich merchant, waited 22 years before bringing his wife to NSW. Royal Commission, op. cit., p.58, lines 2239-40 and p.57, line 2213.

16 See, Yarwood, op. cit., pp.79-81 for a discussion of these amendments and their reasons. 17 Through numerous such extensions and the judicious building up of a trading firm , one couple was able

to remain long enough in NSW to be among the first Chinese to take up the right of Australian Citizenship when this was finally granted to Chinese people in 1958, Australian Archives (NSW), SP 1122/J ; N57/2220, Chang Wau Sheu Sing. Wilton, op cit. pp.174-7, gives examples of strategies used to extend short-term visits for wives. Yong, op. cit. p.31 on agitation to allow wives to enter.

18 Yarwood, op. cit., pp. I I 0-112, on firms such as Wing On & Co. being favoured; Fitzgerald, op. cit., pp.37-40, on the need to be importer/exporters; Wilton, op. cit., pp.120-5, on the sponsorship of assistants by stores in northern NSW.

19 See theme Labour.

31

Ch 11 !<' \ (' .)cl I ic1111 !1l ! 11 .\ S \·\ I .ii\ 1 (/ ilc ! ()me/'

While some people may have been able to manipulate the Act's requirements, others were

prepared to defy it entirely. After the 1888 imposition of a £100 Poll Tax on the entry of

Chinese people into NSW, the land border with Queensland became of great significance.

While the receipts of the poll tax shows a handful of people supposedly entered NSW after

1888, the records of the Inunigration Restriction Act shows a very much larger number

actually did so. An ' underground' seems to have been set up which saw the prospective

New South Welslunan anive at Cooktown, northern Queensland and make his way

overland or perhaps by coastal steamer, to Brisbane. From there he could cross the NSW

border at Stanthorpe and make his way to Sydney.20

After Federation, the purchase of false Naturalisation Certificates and CEDTs were some

of many illegal methods used to enter Aush·alia. Corrupt officials supplying false

identification as a returned domicile was another method but more common was desertion

by ships crews.21 However, the method that seems to have added to NSW's Chinese

population more than any other after Federation was the smuggling of people on board

ships.22 These were usually part of an organised eff011 that included crew members and the

planning of people in both Hong Kong and NSW. The prospective emigrants were

concealed in such places as coal bunkers and water tanks, and as these last were inside the

'Chinese passengers quai1ers', returning 'domiciles' presumably knew all about this

alternative method of migration.23

~0 SP42/l , C47/2468, record of interview with Yum Leong, 1947. He arrived in 1900. 21 Australian Archives (NSW), SP! 122/1; N53/24/2343, Ah Tom, memo re number of blank CEDTs

stolen by Departmental Officer, 3 August 1953; Yarwood, op. cit., p.62, refers to evidence of Customs officials involvement in illegal entry and p.54, NSW was a ' haven' for Chinese deserters, and pp.56-57, g ives figures for 1914 that 77 of 81 deserters were in NSW due to ships staying longer in NSW and the greater number of Chinese there making hiding easier. Also Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.29-30.

22 Between 1926 and 1929, 400 people were depo11ed as stowaways, Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.32, though this begun after the 1888 Act, Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.30.

23 AA (NSW), AI026; Correspondence re Immigration Act 1904-12, vol. I, p.12, letter, the Collector of Customs to Manager, Burns Philp & Co., I 0 Januaiy 1906 & vol. 3, p.328, memo, Detective Inspector to Boarding Inspector, 23/3/1908. Yarwood, op. cit., pp.56-62, on stowaways.

32

Chill<'\( .\r·llfc111nii ill .V'l H - I 11\ , ' u!lrf Jrdi····

Those who were caught, either on ship or after a period in NSW, were given the

'Dictation Test' at the Customs House, Sydney. Such 'tests' are usually blank, apmi from

signatures at the bottom of the page.24 Stowaways, deserters and other 'prohibited

immigrants' faced gaol terms before they were deported unless someone was willing to go

surety until they embarked on a ship back to Hong Kong. This, various people were

willing to do, putting up as surety £100 per person and in one case, a total of £1,000.25

Tlu·oughout the life of the Inunigration Restriction Act, court cases and other legal

challenges were mounted. Such cases were supported by members of the Chinese

commwuty and were often successful in limiting the powers of administrators. So much so

that these administrators sometimes became wmy of taking a case to court lest it result in

an adverse ruling that would further limit their discretion.26

Perhaps the most extreme example of discrimination was the denial of citizenship rights to

both naturalised and Australian-born people of Chinese origin. The Inunigration

Restriction Act did recognise the Australian, or rather ' British' citizenship of those

naturalized in NSW, but not the rights of their children despite both British citizenship law

and the Australian Constitution recognising the rights of naturalised British subjects and

their children and of those born in Australia. All people in the category of Chinese and

other Asian origins were denied such rights by a combination of bureaucratic discretion,

political decision-making and court rulings. Eventually, some rights were recog11ised when

Australian-born people who returned to Australia in less than 10 years were recognised as

having a right to do so, but not to citizenship.27

24 The Dictation Test, due to successful legal challenges, needed to be carefully administered. A 1927 instruction explained such details as the use of an interpreter to explain what was required, the possibility of authorising an outside person to give the test in the language chosen, the necessity of reading the who le passage at d ictation speed even if the person makes no attempt to write, and the fact that it was not allowable to abandon a test started in a language that the person unexpectedly looked like passing. AA (NSW), C4203/J; Boarding Branch Records, 19 14- 193 1, vol.2, p.460, circular, Assistant Secreta1y to Collector of Customs, 4 March 1927.

25 George Gay and Lee Bung Yee in 1923 did so for 20 deportees at £50 each for a total of £ 1,000. AA (NSW), SP740/I; NN George Gay & Lee Bung Yee, bonds, 15 March 1923.

26 Paul Jones, Alien Acts: The White Australia Policy, 190 I to 1939. PhD, Uni of Melbourne, 1998, p.84. 27 Jones, op. ci t. , p.84-86 and Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.50 & pp.189-90.

33

(Inn. \( ','( i /r'i'/, 11: u1 \\ \\· I u11· ill/1/ i >,

Laws relating to citizenship and inunigration were not the only ones that discriminated

against Chinese people living within NSW. Factory Acts of 1898 and 1913 brought

harsher regulations to bear on any workshops employing Chinese people while the Crown

Lands Consolidation Act 1912 prevented Chinese people from acquiring such land, denial

of ent1y into the army was ensured by a clause stating that ' European' blood was

necessaiy. 28

The heritage provided by discriminatory laws against the Chinese in NSW and Australia is

immense. Images of the acquiescent .but cunning ' Chinaman', the hardworking gardener

and the thrifty merchant are conm1on enough. The role played by restrictive Inunigration

Laws and an atmosphere of tlu·eat in creating and maintaining the basis of such images are

rarely acknowledged. A more tangible heritage are the tens of thousands of photos of

Chinese men and a few women who stove to maintain links with the fainilies they could

not bring to join them. Less easy to determine is the contribution of this heritage of 'law

and order' to Federation, Australian-Imperial relations and the development of Australia' s

identity as a 'white' nation and to its more recent 'multicultural' transformation.

28 See theme, labour.

34

It was tlu·ough issues of labour and wages that Chinese people became most caught up

in colonial politics. The struggle for workers rights in NSW was partly fought out

around the issue of Chinese Labour, with racist elements always present. Even those

who suppmted a Chinese presence in NSW usually did so on the basis of racist

stereotypes of hardworking and submissive 'orientals'.1 Hostility began when the

Amoy contractors, intended to replace convicts as cheap labour, were opposed as a

tlu·eat to 'free' labour.2 Conditions such as the credit-ticket system3 of the goldseekers

and later arrivals which helped to ensure that the continued frugality and hardwork of

farm-born peasants was maintained as long as possible, and the Immigration

Restriction Act's enforcement of a form of ' bonded' labour well into the 20th century,

provided 'proof for many that Chinese workers were not the same as other workers.

Colonial workers and their growing unions early rejected the possibility of workers

uniting regardless of race, instead opting for racially-based policies of exclusion.4 The

attempted use of Chinese seamen in 1878 as strike-breakers reinforced such attitudes

and the fact that Chinese workers in the cabinet-making industry were organised and

prepared to strike did not change this.5 It was seamen's and waterfront unions,

however, that first broke with these exclusionist policies and worked with the Chinese

Seamen's Union during WWII to fight for equality of wages regardless of race. The

replacement of market gardens with Chinese cafes as the major source of employment

for Chinese workers in the post-war years and the only gradual dismantling of the

White Australia Policy meant that full equality of wages regardless of race was not

finally achieved until the 1960s.

One of the most obvious characteristics of Chinese settlement in NSW related to

labour was the gradual narrowing of jobs and occupations. After shepherding6 and

' E. W. Cole, Better Side of the Chinese Character, Melbourne, 1918. 2 Darnell, op. cit., p.1 -5 and Fitzgerald, op. cit. , p.2 1. 3 See theme, Migration. 'Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850-1901 , Hale &

Iremonger, Sydney, 1979, pp.157-179; Choi, Chinese Migration, op. cit. , pp.86-87, on the union contribution to restricting opportunities for improvement.

~ Markus, op. cit. , pp.81-87; Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.76 & 83; Markey, op. cit., pp.348-350 and Price, op. cit. , p.163-64.

6 Once indentured labour ended, Chinese people seem never again to have worked as 'shepherds,' though shearing did employ many before unionisation.

35

Clunese Setll<'mc111 111 .VS\V - L u h1111 1

goldmining, 7 the occupations of Chinese men quickly expanded until by the end of the

19th century, scrub cutting, tobacco farming, fishing and cooking provided a great deal

of work. 8 Most of these occupations were highly transient and a record of locations

shows that working in an average of four to eight different locations widely spread

around NSW and Queensland for Chinese workers during the last two or tlu-ee decades

of the 19th century was not uncommon. 9 In Sydney, the main occupations were

'merchants, storekeepers, cabinet-making, market-gardeners, hawkers, and

gamblers.' 10

After 190 I the range of occupations greatly contracted and market gardening

predominated, apart from a few storekeepers and the cabinet-making industry, as many

people took up work in Sydney .11 This was due to the dramatic collapse of the NSW

rural Chinese population in the early years of the 20th century resulting in Sydney

becoming the dominant centre and maintaining its numbers despite a statewide decline

in the overall Chinese population. 12

Often neglected as an occupation, yet one that played a crucial role, was that of

interpreter. The NSW courts attempted to have interpreters present, even if they were

not always so concerned as to their capability .13 The position was not only well-paid

and prestigious, but provided employment for the relatively few Australian-born

Chinese people, often of part-European descent. 14 'If a fracas occur in a teashop, or a

watch be missed from the pocket of an opium-sleeper, it is the interpreter to whom the

1 Chinese miners worked as porters at Kiandra when weather halted mining, Smith, op. cit., p.51 -52. 8 Yong, op. cit. , p.40-41; Reports upon Chinese Camps, Votes and Proceedings of the legislative

Assembly, I 883-84, 11th Parliament, Vol.II, p.660, and Fisheries J11q11i1y Commission, op. cit., throughout.

•See Appendix IV, Table 3. 10 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.27. 11 Choi, op. cit., p.28. 12 See Appendix IV, Table 2. 13 William Lee, correspondence June, 1999. If they were present at all, see Administration of Justice

(Imprisonment at Parramatta of a Blind Chinaman), Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879-80, Vol.III, pp.207-2 10.

1• Long Pen was one such interpreter who claimed that he charged, 'a guinea a day', which compared

well to a market gardeners' £1 per week Royal Commission, op. cit., p.93, line 3698 and p.418, line 15506. A guinea being £1 and I shilling.

36

Chinese c01ru1rnnity looks for the punishment of law breakers, and on his head the

blame when a thief eludes the police.' 15

It was conm1only reported that Chinese workers worked for very little and so undercut

efforts of other workers to maintain or raise wages and conditions. A police rep011 in

1916 described this; 'the keeper of every cabinetmaker's shop, produce, fruit and

groce1y store, employ large numbers of chinese [sic] (aliens) who are paid a weekly

wage, and are provided with acconm1odation for their services'. 16 These wages were

lower than average, with cabinet-makers in 1899 recorded as being paid a wage of

£2/8/-, while Chinese cabinet-makers received £1/11/6. Similarly, cooks were recorded

as averaging £2 per week, while Chinese cooks earned only £1/2/-. 17 As these wages

were in addition to board the overall payment is difficult to assess and costs given by

Chinese merchants in 1904 suggest that the differences were not great. 18

For many Chinese workers, wages and conditions were determined by the debts they

incuned obtaining passage to NSW and the need to support a family in China. 19

Referring to the cabinet-making industry, the Chinese Gambling Commissioners

described the system as 'indentures under which new arrivals were compelled to work

for certain periods at excessively low rates' .20 The Conunissioners also had described

to them how a Dr On Lee brought in 30 inm1igrants, paid the £100 poll tax on them

and then deducted this from their wages. The agreement was that they would work in

15 Crawford, op. cit., p.1 3. 16 AA (NSW), SP 11/16; Aliens Registration 1916-2 1, Item no. 2, No.2 Police Station, Regents St,

Sydney to Department of Defence, 8 December 1916. Also Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.84, for a discussion of Ah Toy's workshop. Not that Chinese were the only workers to accept board, Thomas Smith, Royal Commissio11, op. cit., p.420, lines 15635-15639, gave evidence of paying his two European workers 18s plus board while his Chinese worker received 26s without board.

"T. A. Coghlan, NSW Statistical Registerfor 1899 and Previous Years, Government Printer, Sydney, 1900, p.994, Part XIV, Industrial Wages, Table no. 7, and p.1004, Table no. 11. Though the rate for cooks in 1912 was reported as 30s per week and that for 'Chinese Cooks' as 40s! NSW Statistical Register, 1919-20, no.51, 'Average Rate of Wages in Misc. Industries, 1912,' p.486.

18 See, 'Chinese Merchants reply', Syd11ey Morning Herald, 22 August 1904, p.12, for a table of typical expenses for a Chinese and European store in which the inclusion of boarding costs makes the Chinese store more expensive to operate.

'9 'For each tael I must repay two taels.' Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.27. See theme, Migration.

20 Royal Commission , op. cit., p.27.

37

Cii111l.I£' Self/1'11/l'llf r11 \'~·11 · - l.<1i>l'i1/'

his gardens for five years.21 Crawford refers to ' domestic slaves' as well as 'bondsmen'

but felt a 'good workman soon clears off the debt of say £20.'22

The impression should not be that Chinese workers were hopelessly suppressed.

Crawford also noted that Chinese workers ' under the influence of Australian

institutions and the attraction of high wages without debt, grow so careless of

consequences and independent of custom, as to dese1t, ... ' 23 As a consequence of

immigration resh·ictions imposed by NSW in 1888 and the Conunonwealth in 1901 ,

wages for both cabinet-makers and gardeners improved due to their enhanced

bargaining position.24 Whatever wages were paid, lower living costs due to the

provision of board and lodging and having no family to supp01t in NSW meant that it

was possible to remit money to the villages. Such money sent from NSW would go far

in the villages according to estimates given to the Chinese Gold Commissioners as, it

cost 'four times as much to feed a man here', while wages were, '20 times as great'.25

After paying their debts, workers saved to purchase a share in a market garden or

other business while remitting what they could to their parents. When these parents

aMounced they had saved sufficient to anange a marriage, or if this became

increasingly unlikely, a man saved sufficient himself, he could finally return home to

begin to raise a family of his own.26 For a man with a family in the village, the cost of

seeing them occasionally was also part of his expenses. In 1921 , the ' Deck class

passage money' on an Eastern and Aush·alian Steamship Co. ship to Hong Kong was

£5/10/- and the CEDT cost £ 1. 27 For a market gardener this was about 3 weeks'

wages for the ticket, and at least half a week's wage for the CEDT.28 Including the

21 Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.160, lines 6420-35. 22 Crawford, op. cit. , p.19. n Crawford, op. cit. , p.19. 2• Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit. , p.4 18, lines 15506.

25 Royal Co111111ission, op. cit. , p.419, Jines 15566-70. This was in the late 19th century, by the 1930s the gap had widened even more when according to, Chen Hen-Seng, landlord and Peasant in China -A Study of the Agrarian crisis in South China, 2nd edn, Hyperion Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1973, p. l 03, it took a labourer 5 days in the 1930s to earn the price of a 11111 of land [rice field measure] in Canada compared to 8 years in Guangdong Province.

26 Chen Ta, op. cit., p.131 , an emigrant would, ' remain single, especially if they have failed to improve their economic status' and p.135, higher betrothal payments expected of emigrant sons.

27 AA (NSW), SP42/l; C33/7574, Ah Lee. Letter, Eastern and Australian Steamship Co. to the Collector of Customs, 30 June 1921.

28 Billy Gay estimated that £2 per week in the 1930s was a 'good wage' for a market gardener.

38

loss of income while away, these journeys were an expensive, though necessary,

activity for Chinese workers if links to the family and village were to be established and

maintained.

For those who came into Australia after 1901 there was a link between eligibility to

remain in Australia and employment for those on Ce1tificates of Exemption29 which

resulted in a form of bonded employment similar to those arriving in the 19th

century .30 People on Ce1tificates of Exemption were liable to deportation if they lost

their job, required official permission to change jobs and could only work in jobs

defined as 'Chinese'.31 The Second World War changed the situation when Chinese

seamen became reluctant to return to ports w1der threat of Japanese attack and a

manpower shortage meant that Chinese workers could expect to demand and receive

equal wages. The Chinese Seaman's Union began to organise these workers and, with

the support of the waterside unions and many in the Chinese conummity, equality of

payment and the right to work in any position was established, at least temporarily . 32

The aging and retirement of many market gardeners and the effect of administrators

not allowing sufficient 'substitutes' and 'assistants' to replace them, meant that by the

1950s Chinese market gardens had nearly disappeared, often replaced by recent

southern European migrants. With their customer base thus reduced, the number of

Chinese stores, even in Sydney, were also greatly reduced. However there was much

capital in the Chinese community and the Inunigration Restriction Act still allowed

businesses with a need for 'Chinese' labour to sponsor people to enter Australia.33

With large numbers of refugees entering Hong Kong, the result was a dramatic

increase in the number of Chinese cafes and restaurants around NSW, all employing

Chinese cooks and waiters.

Interview with Billy Gay, 19 March 1998 (Tape 2, A, 115). zy Certificate Exempting from Dictation Test. 30 Wilton, op. cit., pp. 129-30, mentions this virtual bonding & Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.88. ~·See the case of Yut Kwan in Michael Williams, Sojourn in Your Native Land, M.Lit thesis,

University New England, October, 1998, pp.73-74, for examples of all these features. n Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.41-44 & William Lee correspondence, June, 1999. 33 See theme, Law & Order.

39

The limitations of the Immigration Restriction Act meant that this employment

continued to be potentially exploitative, and those who entered Australia illegally were

in an even more exposed situation. These conditions were only alleviated when the

gradual extension of citizenship rights and changes in union attitudes allowed many

workers to leave their 'Chinese' only positions and/or to join unions. While the

gradually increasing number of migrants of Chinese background from South-East Asia

in the 1960s and 70s faced no such restrictions and were able to take up a wide range

of positions.

40

Cltinn<' Sc11h111e111 u· \S\\ .. 1-.:11, ul!11n'

People from the districts of the Pearl River Delta were described as 'nearly all farmers

and labourers' 1 and for those who gave up gold mining or came after the gold rushes, a

move into agricultmal occupations was natural and comparatively easy. By the end of

the 19th centmy it was ' only in cabinet-making and vegetable-growing', that Chinese

workers were in 'serious competition with European tradesmen. ' 2 Fishing, banana

plantations and tobacco growing were other areas involving Chinese people but it was

Chinese market gardeners who for over a generation, from the late 19th century to the

1930s, that dominated the production and distribution of vegetables in NSW.3

Some regarded the Chinese production of vegetables as saving the health of a colony

which could not produce sufficient without them and having 'reduced vegetables from

an expensive luxmy, often exotic, to being a cheap and universal article of diet. ' 4

Despite this dominance, no 'Chinese' vegetables were introduced into the general diet

of NSW people before the 1970s. Such vegetables were grown by Chinese households

for home consumption only until they began to become popular after the 1970s. 5

The Chinese Gambling Commissioners observed that ' in the cultivation of vegetables

the Chinese are practically masters of the situation' and this was 'due to exh·eme

frugality and unremitting toil'.6 Though evidence of a European market gardener was

that 'Chinese competition did not cause any great difficulty and he could make it pay.' 7

Certainly the teclmiques used on the gardens were of an intensive natme and

willingness to do this kind of work, probably gave Chinese workers an edge over

Europeans who were freer to choose from a wider range of occupations. 8

1 By Way Kee in the Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.57, line 2220. 2 Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.27, 'Callings and Occupations of the Chinese'. ) In 190 I , 67% of market gardeners in NSW were Chinese people, Yong, op. cit., p.262. 'Crawford, op. cit., p.3. 5 Interview with Billy Gay, 19 March 1998 (Tape 2, A 11 5). " Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.28; Yarwood, op. c it., p. 117, gardening regarded as a, 'special

preserve of the Chinese'; Price, op. cit., p.224, greater efficiency compared to European gardeners; and 'Chinese in Sydney', The Sydney Mail, 25 February 1903, p.482, describes a Chinese Garden as, 'remarkable for the thorough manner in which it is worked. There is never a patch idle or weedy, ... '

7 Royal Co111111issio11, op. cit., p.28. 8 Billy Gay cannot now understand why his father insisted he hand water with two five gallon cans

when taps and pipes were avai lable. Interview with Billy Gay, 19 March 1998 (Tape 2, A 115).

41

(./1111£'.\( ,')(·1t!c11u'1ll :11 1\SH - \"I it 11luc1,

In Sydney the main gardens were established in the sandy soils of the coastal suburbs,

from Rose Bay to Randwick and through Botany to La Perouse, while Alexandria had

a small number of gardens of people from the Gao Yao district.9 At the tum of the

century there were also many numbers gardens in the Willoughby area and Fairfield,

while Chester Hill, Camden, Parramatta and Windsor all had at least one or two

gardens. Around NSW, Chinese market gardens could be found in nearly every town

and on many stations where people working as cooks would also grow vegetables. '0

Most of these gardens were leased by groups of 5 to 10. Such arrangements suited

people who would go to China for a year or two. 11 When they did so their share was

passed onto another gardener and taken up again on return. The vegetables themselves

would be either hawked around the streets or sold at the Belmore Markets where

Chinese stallholders were conu11on. Chinese people often worked as vegetable dealers

and a gardener with limited English would sell his entire load to such a dealer who then

sold it at the markets.12 The dormitories above the stores in the Haymarket would be

full on market day before the gardeners returned to their huts on the gardens.

Exemptions for assistants to, or substitutes for, market gardeners under the

Immigration Restriction Act did not keep pace with their retirements, despite it being

recognised that most of Sydney's vegetables were grown by Chinese people and that

this was endangered by their aging. 13 By the 1950s, the NSW Chamber of Fruit and

Vegetable Industries strongly supported the transfer in status of a Chinese student to

an assistant because; 'As you know, this Chamber is ve1y concerned at the low

production of vegetables and is anxious to do anything it can to improve the supply,

and therefore supp011s the application .. . to enable the youth to be employed in the

garden.' 14 Vegetable production in NSW was maintained by the post-war arrival of

9 See 'The Belmore Markets,' Dalgety's Weekly, I January 1902, p.85; Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.97. For a description of gardeners huts see, Gifford and Eileen Eardley, 'The Chinese Market Gardeners of St George District', St George Historical Society Bulletin, Dec 1970, pp.75-8 I.

10 See Appendix I . "Billy Gay, knew many gardeners who would, 'go back for 12 months whenever they had saved

£ 100.' Interview with Billy Gay, 19 March 1998 (Tape 2, A 115). 12 'The Belmore Markets,' op. cit., p.85-88 for a description of the markets. 1~ Choi, op. cit., p.53, on the impact of aging on market gardens. 04 AA (NSW), SPI 122/1; N65/3278, Lee Bing Hoong, letter, NSW Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable

Industries to Department of Immigration, 20/5/52.

42

Chine,,c Scfllc111en! in !\'.\ W ;i:.;nn1!T11n

Italian and other inm1igrants who developed market gardens on the outskirts of Sydney

as Botany and other traditional market gardening areas were developed for new

housing. Today, only four market gardens remain in the Botany area while the Chester

Hill garden of George Gay is now a local park.

For many Chinese men in NSW their market gardens were not their only agricultural

pursuits as many returned there to use their NSW-earned money to buy land. Thus

workers in NSW were often also landowners in China. Land purchased was rented out,

possibly to relatives and certainly to fellow villagers. 15 Rent would be paid in cash or as

a share of the rice crop which was then sold on the speculative rice market. 16 The

handling of the family's affairs, such as deposits on land, rent collection and payment

of taxes, was usually in the hands of the wife. 17

Given the strong agriculhual background of most Chinese people in NSW, their

involvement in forms of agriculhll'e aside from vegetable gardening is surprisingly low.

Fishing, tobacco and banana-growing are the only significant areas of Chinese

agriculture outside market gardens. A significant fishing and fish curing industry seems

to have arisen along with the arrival of numerous goldseekers and their requirements

for food. Fishing grounds such as that at Lake Macquarie, Broken Bay, Port Stephens,

Jervis Bay and Twofold Bay all seem to have been extensively fished in order to supply

the diggers with ' dried and salted' fish. 18 Both Chinese and Europeans fished and

supplied their catch to Chinese_curers who cut the fish, salted them and packed them

into casks for shipment to the diggings and later Sydney and Melbourne. 19 By the time

of the Fisheries lnqui1y Conunission in 1880, some Chinese fishermen were still

present but the days of their taking 'all the fish brought' seem to be long over.2° Chin

Ateak stated the decline in Chinese fishermen to be because of the fewer Chinese

numbers than in previous days, but while the number of Chinese people in NSW had

15 Chen Hen-Seng, op. cit., pp.22, 47-8, on sub-renting in Chungshan (Zhongshan) and other districts; Faure, op. cit., p.205, discusses the complexities of the landlord/tenant relationships.

16 Chen Hen-Seng, op. cit. , p.48, on speculation in rice & p.54, reports that cash rents were more common in Zhongshan than most other districts.

17 Chen Ta, op. cit., p.121, on the role of the wife 'acting head of the fam ily' while the husband was overseas; Chen Hen-Seng, op. cit., pp.46-8, on leasing details, such as deposits and sub-tenants.

18 Fisheries Inquiry Commission, op. cit. , p.23-28. 19 Fisheries lnq11i1y Commission , op. cit., line, 2418.

43

C.hine\c S<:tr/n11e111 in \'SH' - , l ~;m 11//:m

fallen in the 1870s, perhaps a broader diet also explains the reduced demand for salt

fish. 21 In the 1870s Chinese fishermen were reportedly known for the 'cheapness of

their fish, by their destruction of sharks, and by recent objections to ... their nets. ' 22

Though as evidence to the Fisheries Inqui1y Conunission makes clear, many non­

Chinese used more destructive nets and methods.23

Tobacco growing was an industry that appears to have been pioneered by Chinese

farmers in NSW and by 1891 there were 464 growers in NSW and Victoria, a number

that fell to 89 only 10 years later. Areas of tobacco farming included Albmy, Nundle

and in particular Manilla in northern NSW.24

The banana trade was a profitable business for many Chinese stores in Sydney and

many of these stores also owned plantations in Fiji. Rising tariffs on imported bananas

led a number of these stores to support the development of plantations in n011hern

NSW and by 1919 nearly 500 acres around Mullumbimby were owned or leased by

Chinese growers. There was a great deal of resistance from established European

growers and reh1rned soldiers attempting to enter the industry and, while no specific

legislation was introduced, the Crown Land Act's prohibition of Chinese owning land

may have limited expansion. 25 In any event, by 1925 disease had ruined the industry for

all in northern NSW.26

2° Fisheries Inquiry Co111111issio11, op. cit., line, 24 17. 21 Fisheries Inquiry Co111111issio11, op. cit., line, 3603. 22 Crawford, op. ci t., p.3. 2i Fisheries Inquiry Co1n111issio11, op. cit., line, 5003-5.

H Yong, op. cit., p.40. 21 The Act prohibited non-citizens owning land but Chinese people could not become citizens. 26 Yarwood, op. cit., pp.117-119, on the banana trade; Yong, op. cit., p.52, on restrictions placed on

Chinese in the banana trade and pp.77-78.

44

Chmt.sc .\errleml!nl in.\ \'II \-finin•

The Chinese as goldseekers is for many Australians the predominant image of Chinese

people in Australian history. Certainly the search for gold was the motivation that first

brought large numbers of Chinese people to NSW. 1 From these diggings many former

miners dispersed to nearly every town in the colony to take up a range of other

occupations. But while the major NSW gold rushes were over by the mid-1860s, in

1901, 9% of Chinese people were still occupied as miners.2 This was due to the

continued search for gold by some and because tin mining had become prevalent.

The stereotype of the Chinese gold miner in Australian hist01y is one of hardworking

Chinese patiently working in groups and going over the diggings left by European

miners while suffering umelenting hostility and violence. While containing some truth,

such generalisations are not the whole picture. Chinese miners discovered new fields as

well as worked old ones, they sought gold individually and worked in groups. 3 While

hard working and frugal, Chinese ruiner's gradual acquisition of a more 'comfo11able'

lifestyle was noted and while violence there cer1ainly was, peaceful workings over may

years were also the case.4

While the big Victorian goldfields in the early 1850s attracted most prospectors,

including Chinese ones, the smaller NSW fields also had Chinese miners, probably

from those in NSW as contracted labourers.5 In 1856 only 700 Chinese miners are

recorded on NSW fields but even this relatively small number had resulted in some

disturbances.6 In 1858 the first large numbers of Chinese miners entered NSW when

Twofold Bay became a point of entry to the increasingly hostile Colony of Victoria.7 In

1 Crawford considered the cause of goldseeking to be; "From three causes, over-population, internecine feuds, and an universal spirit of gambling, resulting in different degrees of slave1y, crime, and debt, gold-hunting possesses eve1y attraction for men of the south [China], providing means of escape, or food for excitement, with the final inducement that if they return they will return rich enough to compensate for past offences or misfortunes." Crawford, op. cit. p.2.

2 Yong, op. cit. p.40. 3 McGowan, op. c it. p.30-35. Crawford, op. cit. p.5 refers to the common if not legal habit of

'prohibiting Chinese from occupying unturned ground.' 4 Crawford, op. cit. p.5, ' usually a humble extravagance keeps pace with income, an imperceptible

bettering of dress and accessaries ... ' see also the Rev E.J. Eitel, 'Social Life in China,' Royal Geographic Society of Australia. S.A. Branch, Proceedings 8, 1904-06, pp.1 - 18.

5 Price, op. cit. p.77 refers to W. C. Wentworth's attempt to include in a Goldfields Bill of 1852 an assurance that Chinese miners had discharged their contracts.

6 Windyer in 1854, Christo Aitken, Windeyer - Te/If Town to Village, p.147 & Rocky River near Armidale in 1856, Price, op. cit. p.78.

1 Price, op. cit. p.78. While 9,000 went overland to Victoria, 3,000 went to NSW fields.

45

C/1inc:sc Se11/eme11t in .\'\'If' ilinii!.L'

1859, 3000 and in 1860, 7,000 Chinese goldseekers alTived by sea in NSW while a

further 10,000 crossed the land border from that colony after it enacted severer

restrictions on Chinese inunigration in 1859 than it already had. 8 The crossing of ex­

miners from other colonies was a feature of NSW Chinese immigration even after the

major NSW gold rushes ended, as when the end of the Palmer River rush resulted in

the crossing of former goldseekers from Queensland in the late 1870s.9

The arrival of thousands of Chinese miners on the NSW goldfields resulted in more

hostility and violence, the most famous incidents being those at Lambing Flat in 1860

and 1861. While the authorities suppressed this violence and some perpetrators were

brought to trial, the ultimate result was the 1861 'Chinese Inm1igrant Regulation and

Restriction Act' which, until its repeal in 1867, imposed a £10 poll tax, tonnage

restrictions and prevented any Chinese person becoming naturalised. 10 This hostility

was usually dealt with by the police tlu·ough the segregation of 'Chinese camps' from

that of European miners. 1 1

Complaints against the Chinese on the goldfields ranged from the way they used, or

misused, water to the selling of 'spurious' gold. 12 But the fear of competition for the

hard sought gold combined with the racist thinking of the day ensured that such

complaints took on a violent edge. 13 While discussion of violence on the goldfields

usually emphasised that of Europeans towards Chinese, Chinese also fought with

Chinese and conunitted violence against Europeans. 14

8 Price, op. cit. p.80 & Smith, op. cit. p.3 1. "See Appendix IV, Table 5 . 10 Price, op. cit. p.78-9 and p.85. This last point making the NSW law much harsher than that of

Victoria. See theme law & Order. 11 For an example of this segregation at Kiandra see Smith, op. cit. p.5 l. 12 McGowan, op. cit. p.35 & 40 and Price, op. cit. p.82. 13 Price, op. cit. p.83 refers to the then Premier's concerns about 'aliens' such as Germans and

Americans on the goldfields . " McGowan, op. cit. p.33 & 35 & Price, op. cit. p.82. Sam Poo was a case of a 'Chinese Bushranger'

in the Gulgong area, Sydney Morning Herald, 11/10/1865. Crawford, op. cit. p.8, reporting at a later time considers that inter-district rivalry among Chinese people in Australia was much less than that in the United States.

46

The pattern of settlement by Chinese gold mmers was generally similar to that of

European miners in that a find of gold would result in a large influx of miners into a

district followed by a rapid decline once the gold was depleted or a new field opened. 15

In some areas Chinese miners would remain to work the old field methodically and

even after the gold was finished continue in the area as storekeepers or in other

occupations, often marrying local women and raising a family .16

While both European and Chinese miners worked many claims co-operatively, Chinese

miners were also reported to have worked their fields in large 'gangs' under a

' headman'. 17 Such organisation of mining was due to many miners arriving in debt or

possibly even under a form of 'slaveiy'.18 This arrangement also helps explain why

some Chinese miners were prepared to methodically work abandoned diggings rather

than follow European miners onto ever fresher finds. It was not a matter of Chinese

people being unusually patience or long sighted but simply that such miners worked for

a master and did what they were insh·ucted. 19

The hard work and frugality of Chinese miners was also much remarked upon.

However the distinction between those who worked for others and those who worked

for themselves was not often made by Europeans, when it was, the naturalness of the

response to circumstances was obvious. Miners free to earn and spend as they liked

gradually adopted habits of comfort and spending similar to those around them, while

' if his earnings are not his own, his shoes remain of straw, his jacket of coarse blue

cotton, and his luxuries continue to consist of pickled cabbage and jerked pork till his

time is fulfilled. '20

15 McGowan, op. cit. p.31-32. 10 Kiandra is an interesting example, Smith, op. cit. p.45-65. Most local histories in the former gold

mining areas refer to an aged Chinese goldminer or Chinese family remaining years afterwards. 11 Smith, op. cit. p.55. 18 Crawford, op. cit. p.29. See theme Migration . rn Crawford, op. cit. p.3, 'on the older fields only diggers remain who are steadily working under

agreement'. 20 Crawford, op. cit. p.5.

47

( '!1i11c.\t .)e!fll'111e11t in \:,;11 - \lin111i:,

The methods of mining used by Chinese miners were usually considered to be different

from those of European miners in some respects and this may have been due to their

adopting teclmiques used by Chinese tin miners in south-east Asia. 21 Archaeological

investigations have shown that the tailings of Chinese diggings are distinct with

evidence of much more intense working. 22 The well built 'races' used to bring water to

a site constructed by Chinese miners are much remarked upon and were adopted by

European miners in at least one instance, as are their dams and stonework parapets. 23

Other characteristics of Chinese miners reported include that they never sank their

shafts deeper than 60 feet, used rounded shafts rather than squared ones to prevent

ghosts occupying the corners and rarely worked reefs, instead sticking to alluvial gold,

often with the most primitive equipment.24 As deep shafts are reported to have been

unprofitable as more workers were required for the same area of a claim, the question

might well be, why did Europeans sink so many deep shafts?25 The fear of ghosts in

square holes is unknown to Chinese mythology but while square shafts were more

easily timbered, perhaps shallower round ones did not need such supports.26 As to the

Chinese reluctance to work reefs, which required more capital, as did the later methods

of hydraulic sluicers and dredgers. It needs to be remembered that Chinese people still

on the goldfields after the 1860s were those who did not return to their villagers as

relatively wealthy men or did not open stores and other easier ways of making a living.

The question, why did 'Chinese' prefer to stick to alluvial prospecting? is based on too

narrow a view. No one would ask why impoverished Europeans did not take up

dredging as a method of mining gold.27

21 Yong, op. cit. , p.1. 22 McGowan, op. cit. p.4. n McGowan, op. cit. p.91. For a description of the building of such a race see, Ai tken, op. cit. p.152. 2' Many of these repo1ts come from local histories and are based on various folk memories and stories

which even if true usually make no allowance for the period oforigin. 25 Blainey, Geoffery, The Rush that Never Ended. A History of Australian Mining, Melbourne

University Press, Victoria, 1969, p.89. 26 I am not saying the fear did not exist as local folk beliefs are infinite. 27 Impoverished Europeans might be employed by a dredging company but Chinese people would be

unlikely to be employed by such companies, see Blainey, op. cit., p.89.

48

Chini;;w.' .\cu/cmcnt 111 \Slf - \Iinin;:,

Scattered throughout NSW with its many gold mining sites are burial grounds,

including the usually separate Chinese cemeteries. Such cemeteries have not been used

to provide all the information they might be able to yield. A typical headstone would

attempt to record as much information as was available to allow exhumation and

transport to the home village at a future date. Thus not only the name and date of

death of the person was recorded, sometimes by Imperial counting and later by the

Revolutionary calendar, but also the province, district and village. Not all of this

information was always available and the name in Chinese would not necessarily match

the name the person was know as among Europeans.28 Also the date recorded may

have been a reburial date rather than the actual date of death if the body was moved

before final return to China .. If sufficient information was not known about a person at

the time of their burial, removal would be difficult and perhaps would not have taken

place.29 The records of Rookwood Cemetery reveal that an average of 75% of Chinese

burials were removed to China between 1875 and 1930.30

Another common story related to Chinese miners was that they used the bones of their

fellow miners to smuggle gold out of Australia and is assumed to be because gold was

banned as an export. However the export of gold was never baimed from NSW or

Australia, except for a brief period during World War One. Customs duties were levied

and this would have provided some incentive to concealing exports. 31 The use of bones

to do this and certainly on any scale, would have been extremely unlikely for the

reason that exhumations were usually undertaken several years after the burial and it is

unlikely people would have risked their gold for so long. A wealthy few were

embalmed and returned immediately after death but the vast majority of miners could

not have afforded this.

28 See Appendix II. 2• Such a lack of details occurred about a number of burials in Townsville when an appeal for further

information was advertised in Chinese language papers published in NSW. Such circumstances may have also occ;urred in NSW. Chinese Australian Herald (J(;it. 1M~~. 3 June 1903, p.3.

30 Williams, op. cit. p.65-67. See also Appendix IV, Table 7 . .ii Crawford attempts a detailed estimate of amounts undeclared based on the Palmer River goldfield

in 1877, Crawford, op. c it. p.25-26.

49

<'hint:.~( Sorlc1w11t in .\\H \Jinu1;_

After gold, mining for tin became common when major alluvial finds were made in the

early 1870s. Tin mining had been carried out by Chinese miners in Malaya and Borneo

and like gold, this form of mining could be carried out cheaply by a few people. 32

Northern NSW was the major area for tin mining and the district population reaching

many thousands in the 1870s and 1880s then fell rapidly thereafter. 33 Enunaville was

one of the main sites of this form of mining and a contemporaiy description describes

the Chinese miners as living in ' bark humpies', though the same report also describes a

quite large Chinese marriage in 1887 and 'a gorgeous Joss-house'. 34

32 Yong, op. cit. p.1. 33 Wilton, op. cit. p.5 and p.85. 3" Lobsey, op. cit., pp.33.

50

The image of Chinese people toiling umemittingly with little or no time for leisure is as

one-sided as the image of the inveterate gambler and habitual opium smoker. Music,

tea-drinking and chatting among friends, perhaps while smoking cigars, were more

likely sources of entertaimnent for Chinese people in NSW. Gambling and the smoking

of opium, considered the two great vices of Chinese men, were not only much

indulged in by Europeans but opium was legal until the early 20th century and was an

ample source of income for the NSW govenunent. 1

Crawford observed that; 'Most of the village idlers are drinking tea ... ' and it was,

'The clubs (now tea shops) where members of the same family or district meet after

work to smoke tobacco and drink tea ... '2 Over 20 years later, Way Kee explained to

the Chinese Gambling Commissioners that cigars were a regular item of expenditure

for the enjoyment of the conm1ittee members of his district organisation.3 While

another 30 years on, every Sunday the Kwong War Chong in Dixson St, as did other

such stores, held 'open table' for the market gardeners on their one day off.4

Music was another source of entertainment, and tlu·oughout the 1860s Chinese Opera

and acrobatic troupes toured the Victorian goldfields attracting large audiences,

including curious non-Chinese.5 In the Chinese camp at Cooktown in 1877, a crowd

gathered every night to listen to music in a hall dedicated to that purpose.6 While

neither of these examples is from NSW there is no reason to think that its Chinese

residents were less inclined to appreciate music. Certainly Emmaville in northern NSW

when it was a centre for tin mining in the 1870s and 1880s, had its own 'Chinese

band'.7

1 'the very considerable sum of£ 12,961' per year according to Quong Tart, Chinese Camps, op. cit. , p.665.

2 Crawford, op. cit. p.9 & p.11 . 3 Royal Commission, op. cit. p.54, line 2083. • Interview with William Lee, 20/83/99. s Harold Love, 'Chinese theatre on the Victorian gold fields, 1858- 1870.' A11stra/asia11 Drama

Studies, Vol 3, No.2, April 1985, pp.45-86. 6 Crawford, op. cit. p.10. 7 Lobsey, op. cit. p.35 & photo, p.34.

51

C/1111( 1(' \'e!l/r·111e111 111 \') \\· i l'i.\/f!'<'

Two generations after the last Opera tour, regular dances sponsored by the Chinese

Youth League in the 1930s and 1940s, with music supplied by the Chinese Masonic

Society orchestra, were popular ways of spending leisure time in the Chinese

conununity.8 Such dances only became possible when the numerical imbalance between

the sexes finally disappeared. For many men in the 19th and early 20th century, whose

family links may have been lost forever or who led a de facto bachelor life even when

they had a wife and children in a south China village, leisure time often needed to be

filled in more forceful ways.

Two of the most popular methods of filling the lack of family or possibly bring about

such a lack, were opium smoking and gambling. When Chow Kum, for example, was

asked why the old don' t go back to China he replied, 'Because they have no money.

As a general rnle their money has all gone in opium-smoking and gambling, and they

have become too old to do anything to make any more. ' 9 Crawford estimated the

number of opium smokers in NSW to be half the number in Sydney and one third of

those in the rural districts or about 2,000 ' habitual' and 4,000 ' occasional' smokers in

total. 10

Opium smoking had been common in China for many centuries before European trade

in cheaper, higher quality opium varieties helped to make it a major social problem.11

Chinese government attempts to ban opium smoking and its importation were forcibly

suppressed by the British in the mid 19th century. This action lead, among other things,

to the occupation of Canton and the facilitation of access by people in south China to .

European shipping and subsequently to British colonies such as NSW. 12

8 William Lee, correspondence, June 1999. 9 Royal Commission, op. cit. p.39, line 14357. '° Crawford, op. cit. p.16 bases his calculations in part on the amount of opium imported into NSW. "A fact that meant' in the matter of opium the Chinese are entitled to every consideration' as far as

Martin Brennan, Quong Tart's fellow inspector of Chinese Camps, was concerned, Chinese Camps, op. cit., p.66 1.

12 Frederic Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate - Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1966, especially pp.172-6. The wresting of the concession of ' free emigration' is told by British Officials in Great Britain Foreign Office Confidential Prints, No. 894, 'Correspondence respecting Emigration from China, Apri l 1859 to May 1860'.

52

The presence of opium among Chinese people in NSW was not therefore in itself

remarkable. What was remarkable was the development of the image of the 'opium

demon' whereby Chinese people were only seen not only as debased opium addicts but

to use opium to seduce and corrupt others, usually young girls. 13 For many, already

prejudiced against Chinese people, the fact that non-Chinese women chose to live with

Chinese men could only be explained by the power of opium.14 By the end of the 19111

centmy Chinese merchants such as Quong Tart were campaigning to ban opium in an

effort to raise the image of Chinese people. 15 Such a ban was passed in 1905, and

opium smuggling was added to the image of the Chinese in Aush·alia. 16

In NSW gambling had been an illegal but much practised leisure pursuit since the

colony's foundation. While Chinese people were by no means the only practitioners,

general hostility towards them ensured that their involvement had a high profile. Thus

when the issue of police conuption was raised in the 1880s and 1890s, it was closely

linked with Chinese gambling and the Royal Commission investigation into this area

spent the bulk of its time and resources interviewing Chinese people about gambling

and very little with the police about corruption. 17

There were various main forms of gambling popular among Chinese people, though

the most well-known are Fantan and Pak-a-pu. 18 Fantan is a game played indoors on

gaming tables while Pak-a-pu (or 'pigeon catching) is a form oflotte1y based originally

on 80 Chinese characters and is thought to be the basis of Keno. 19 Other games were

popular, such as dominoes and card playing, and some games may have been more

popular with people from different districts or provinces.20

13 This notion was 'a fallacy and has nothing in truth to support it', Chinese Camps, op. cit., p.661. 14 Yong, op. cit. p.179-188. The Chinese Gambling Commissioners fascination with this topic

resulted in their being sidetracked into detailed interviews with such women. Royal Co111111issio11 , op. cit. pp.425 to 465.

15 Yong, op. cit. p.186. 16 Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.125-6. "Fitzgerald, op. cit. p.74. Twenty-five Chinese witness were called to one police witness. 18 Yong, op. cit. p.174-78 & Crawford, op. cit. p.14 gives a description of Fantan. '" In the 1950s, Children were asked by old men to pick out characters at random. Interview with

King Fong, 3/6/99. 2° Crawford, op. cit. p.15, describes a game played with a ' teetotum' popular with Fujian people.

53

l hi11nc Sr'ffln11e111 i11 NSiV 1.ei.1ur1'

It was not only in NSW that opmm smoking and gambling were recognised as

problems. Opium, prostitution and gambling were part of village life in China and

according to some researchers, more likely to be present due to remittances from

places such as NSW. The comparatively high level of disposable income that

remittances gave to such families led to some of their members indulging in these

activities. Analysis of the role of clan elite's has also revealed that they attempted to

gather some of the remittances by demanding money for 'protection' and controlling

gambling, opimn houses and prostitution.21 In the 1950s and 1960s Chinese people in

NSW continued to have a reputation for being enthusiastic gamblers with the

Mandarin Club reputed to be Sydney's leading illegal casino. Then, as before, the

patrons of such establishments were non-Chinese as often as they were Chinese.

ll Chen Ta, op. cit., pp.1 87-192 describes the relationship of these habits with 'emigrant communities'; };I~ f.5 $Zheng Delma, I' 1L tti: f.2 ::t. 0 J,, (ff .~ n~ JfJ ~ )!<. J:l: ITH ~fr 'Shijiu shiji mo Taishan qiaoxiang de xingcheng ji qi pouxi' (A analysis of the formation of overseas emigrant communities in Taishan in the late 19'" century), ffi: .~ '!!t ·t!Q. Qiaoshi xuebao (Jou m a/ of overseas Chinese Histo1y), 1986-3, p.36.

54

Too often in Australian history Chinese people have been seen as background players

in the mainstream dramas of gold and racism. The obvious can be forgotten, that

Chinese people were individuals with families and their own aims and desires. They

were not all Quong Ta1ts, a rare kind of person in any society, but they were fathers

and sons, mother and daughters, humble workers and founders of multinational

businesses, supporters and opponents of revolution, landlords and gardeners, those

who died surrounded by their descendants and those who died alone in rooms above

Sydney's Dixon St.

The following is not an attempt at a definitive list of all Chinese people in NSW, nor of

the 'prominent' or 'successful'. It is intended simply to show something of the

individuals behind the phrase 'Chinese people' and to reveal some of the variety

beyond stereotypes and generalisations.

The Hoon family: Louie Hoon from Dou Tou village, arrived in Sydney in 1880 and

worked in various occupations including as a vegetable dealer in Parramatta. He

married a European women and they had a son named Jolm Louie Hoon who at age

seven was taken back to his father's village to be looked after while his father returned

to Sydney. Unfortunately Louie Hoon died and when Jolm returned to Sydney aged

16, he could no longer speak English. John worked as a market gardener for the rest of

his life, making numerous trips back to China where he married and had a son and two

daughters. John, usually called Jack or even Jung gwai (whiteman Hoon), spent the

war years in China where he and his family suffered greatly. He afterwards returned to

Sydney where he spent the rest of his life. Jolm died in 1981 , aged 85, but not before

one of his daughters migrated to Australia where she now lives with her husband and

son, a third generation Australian. 1

' AA (NSW), SP 11 22/1, N 1952/24/395 1, John Louie Hoon.

55

The Gows: Joe Wah Gow was a successful Wollongong merchant whose wife was

brought to Australia on a purchased Australian passport and whose first six children

were all born in Australia. The entire family went back to the village to live in 1929

when Joe Wah Gow retired. The Japanese invasion of south China in 1939 resulted in

some of these sons returning to Australia where one of them, Victor Gow has lived

even since. Victor has a sister and numerous relatives in south China as well as being

part owner of a business there.

The Changs: Chang Yet came to Australia in 1898 and after making eighteen trips

back to the village of Long Hee, made a final trip in 1950 to retire. His family owned

some land before his remittances enabled them to expand these lands fmther. The new

govermnent after 1949 took all this land and left the family the village house only. This

house today contains many items Chang Yet brought back on trips, including a bird

cage made to contain a rosella brought because of its familiarity from the Arnott's

biscuits Chang Yet also brought back. In 1933, Chang Yet's son, Chang Gar Lock

(Arthur), came to NSW when he was sponsored as a student by Chang Yet' s

employer. Arthur worked in this employer's store in Tingha before moving to Sydney

where, during the war, he was an organiser for the Chinese Seamen's Union.

The Gays: George Gay was a 'well known market gardener' who began by leasing a

garden in Rose Bay before becoming manager of a Fijian banana plantation. On return

to Sydney with his wife, Ada, Australian born and part-Chinese, he purchased land at

Chester Hill. George never returned to the village but did own land there and assist his

brothers to come to Australia. He also sent his second son, Billy to his family village

for tlu-ee years so that he would be able to speak Chinese. Billy took over the market

garden from his father and worked it until the 1950s. The site of the garden is now a

local park.

56

The Lees: Philip Lee Chun came to Australia via Cooktown in 1874 before coming to

Sydney where he became a partner in establishing the Kwong War Chong. This

business he eventually became the sole owner of before travelling to Hong Kong where

he died in 1935. Philip Lee Chun was a leading member of his districts' association, of

the China Mail Steamship Line and assisted many gardeners in their dealings with the

adminish·ation of the Immigration Restriction Act. His eldest son William became one

of the first people of Chinese decent to move into the professions, becoming a leading

Sydney bmTister. Philip Lee Chuns' others sons, Hany and later Norman, took over

the rmming of the business, while Arthur became Professor of English at the University

of Amoy.

Rich & Famous: Chinese people such as Way Kee, Philip Gock and Quang Tart are

well known because of their wealth. Way Kee was a leading businessman in NSW

whose funeral in Sydney in 1892 brought out nem·ly every person of Chinese origin in

the city. Mei Quong Tart had been brought up by a European family and was able to

deal equally well with both European and Chinese people. The Gock brothers are

famous for their establislunent of Wing On & Co in Hong Kong and Shanghai as the

first department store in China with capital originating from their banm1a import

business in Campbell St Sydney.

Ce1tificate of Exemption: Yat Kwan (Ken Wong) aITived in Australia on a tempormy

Certificate of Exemption in 1921 and did not leave Aush·alia again until his honeymoon

trip in 1963 when he depaited as an Australian citizen. During that time he was

tlU"eatened with deportation on a number of occasions because the jobs he had

disappeared or were denied him due to his Chinese background. Y at Kwan fought

these moves in court and in the newspapers and was eventually able to take out

Australian citizenship when he was certified to be 'a good sort' who lives in the

suburbs and drinks beer, that is, he had properly assimilated.2

2 Williams, op. cit. p.72-74.

57

Pan Kees: For families such as the Pan Kees regular trips to Hong Kong, the bilingual

education of their children and business branches in both Hong Kong and Australia

were part of normal life. Thomas Pan Kee of Moree and Narrabri, and later Campbell

St NSW, had 10 children, two born in Hong Kong. During the 1920s all the children

lived in Hong Kong while Thomas remained in NSW. In 1930, the family returned to

live in NSW and between 1930 and 1950 various children lived in Hong Kong and

NSW, with most manying in Hong Kong.3

Pearl Kwok: Pearl Kwok was Australian-born who left for Hong Kong in 1926, aged

14, marrying, in 1931, one of the Kwoks of Wing On.4 She visited her mother in NSW

in 1946 and in 1949, with tlu·ee of her four children. The entry of these children was

refused at first, then granted temporarily. Pearl and two of her children returned to

Hong Kong in 1954 while one daughter stayed and became an Australian citizen in

1960.5

The unrecorded: Historical records cannot be trusted to leave us an accurately

proportioned account of human activities. Inevitably the nature of some peoples

activities means that they leave more records that others. Crawford, for example, tells

us that 'Of great colonial fame is a Chinese doctor Wang of Sydney,' Wang like many

other such doctors, has left no other record.6 People of Hakka origin (a distinctive and

often persecuted minority group within south China), were very few in Sydney, too

few to have had their own association. Yet some Hakka people did live in the city and

perhaps elsewhere in NSW. How people isolated within an already isolated conununity

managed in NSW is an as yet unanswered question.

3 AA (NSW), SPl 122/1; N53/24/2284, Choy See Pan Kee (Mrs Thomas Pan Kee) & N53/24/2285-90, files of the Pan Kee children, Lawrence, Rose, Agnes, Minnie and Mary.

• Nee, Lock Lee of the well-known Alexandria cabinetmakers. 5 AA (NSW), SPl 122/1; N67/4101, Kwok Pearl (Mrs) (Pearl Lock Lee). 6 Crawford, op. cit., p.9.

58

( '/J111c\·e \'c1tlei11('1// lll _\'ii·! - J>enofl\

Australian-born Chinese: Comparatively unknown to Australian history are those

people born in NSW who made their mark in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Such

includes many involved in the early days of the Chinese revolution, including those

working closely with Sun Yat-sen, the first editor of the China Mail and others

prominent in the development of Hong Kong.7

Women: The greatest gap in our knowledge concern women. Those few who came to

NSW, the many who remained in the villages, those of European origin who married

and they and their children who went to the villages. The decision of so many to marry

in the village was not only the result of custom and parental wish but also because of

limited choice. The great imbalance between the sexes, whether created by Chinese

cultural norms or European legal restrictions, imposed a basic restriction on the

choices available. The Commonwealth Census of 1911 records 801 Chinese out of a

total male population of 21,032, living with wives in Australia and a further 6, 714

were recorded to have wives in China. The places of bi11h of the Australian based

wives were recorded as, 'China born' - 181, 'England' - 63, ' Scot' - 15, ' Ireland' - 22

and 'Australia born' - 485. This last group are asswned to be 'Chinese or mixed',

though on what basis is unclear. 8

Despite their greater chances of bringing a wife from China, merchants and

storekeepers were also more likely to marry the few Chinese or part-Chinese women

who were in Australia. While poorer people were more likely to marry, or at least live,

with non-Chinese women. Perhaps because they were 'so lonely they married

Australian girls', as one explanation has it.9 The ' intermarriage' option was one that

was disagreeable to both Chinese and European cultures throughout the period though

as, the 1911 census figures indicate, a number did take this option.10

7 Sleeman, op. cit., pp.137- 142. s Official Year Book of the Co111111011111ealth of Australia, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and

Statistics, Melbourne, 1925, Table 10, no.18, p.956. 9 Interview with Norman Lee, 25 September 1997 (7). 10 The census was recording formal marriages only. On the question of attitudes to marriage and

intermarriage see, Price, op. cit., pp. 108-9 & 249; and Wilton, op. cit. , p. 164. For a case of a Chinese father's opposition to his daughter marrying a ' white,' that was well publicised in 1946, see, Australian Archives (NSW), SP1655; N54/24/3362, Gwenda Yee.

59

The lonely: A final 'choice' that an indeterminate number made was to neither marry

nor return. Many village members who left for Australia simply 'disappeared' as far as

their village was concerned. Sometimes family in the village might make an effort to

contact them but this could easily be ignored. A rough estimate of the proportion that

might fall into this category was four to five percent of the population. 11

It is unsatisfactory to try and breakdown stereotypes with further categories.

Neve11heless it is hoped that some hint of the range of individuals and their eff011s can

be gained from this arbitrary and by no means conclusive overview of few of the many

who have contributed to the Chinese heritage ofNSW.

11 Interview with Cliff Lee, 28 September 1997 (8) & Norman Lee, 25 September 1997 (7). Fitzgerald, op. cit. , p.164, discusses the ' old men' in the 1950s and 60s, and quotes King Fong, 'Some of the old men sold peanuts at Randwick races, in baskets once used for veg ies'.

60

Chinese \l 11/emo1t 111 VS\1 - (fll/c/1111n 1

The unique contribution of people of Chinese origin to the heritage and history of NSW

cannot be doubted. The setting for this contribution was, until as recently as the 1970s, the

interaction of traditional Chinese culture and the specific aims and ideals of those who came

to NSW, with conditions of social alienation and legal discrimination. These elements

combined to help create the distinctive patterns of Chinese settlement. It is for this reason

that the background to Chinese migration and culture, as pmtly outlined in the theme

, needs to be understood in conjunction with the history of Chinese people within

NSW before the Chinese heritage ofNSW can be fully appreciated.

Once the background to Chinese migration and culture is better understood, much of the

stereotyping that has pervaded the image and history of Chinese people in NSW loses its

capacity to mislead. Tlu·ift and hard work can been seen as partially the result of contractual

and other conditions of migration, while the lack of female migrants is readily

understandable in terms of culture. Neither require the stamp of the 'mystic East' or

'inscrutability' to be understood. It is for this reason, for example, that gambling and opium

have not been dealt with under Law & Order, or from a European legal view, but under

Leisure, a practical perspective. After all, such activities served much the same purpose

when legal as when they were not. The most extreme example of stereotyping, however, has

been the perpetration of kind of ' disembodiment.'

Chinese people in much historical writing have been viewed as merely the alien victims of

white racism with no ideals or individuality of their own. While the impact of prejudice has

not been denied, it is hoped that an understanding of such aspects of Chinese history in

NSW as the continuing links with fanli lies and villages in China and the fundamental role the

districts of origin played in self-identity, has highlighted the reality that the actions of

Chinese people have not been dependent upon European attitudes. For this reason also, the

theme Persons is not a list of the 'famous' or ' notable', but is instead an effort to illustrate

variety and individuality in an attempt mitigate the 'disembodiment' of the past.

61

( · 1i11c·:e ':en!en1c·11• 11. \S\ 1 ( 'll<"ll ,,,.

A feature of Chinese settlement that runs tlu·ough all themes and which has perhaps

contributed most to the Chinese heritage of NSW is the level of organisation that

accompanied most aspects of this settlement. The bulk buying of steamer tickets in Hong

Kong, the chartering of migrant ships, the development of a specific food supply for the

diggings, numerous court challenges and the removal of bones to China, are just some

examples of the maimer in which settlement in NSW was organised to enable largely

illiterate peasai1ts to earn money, survive ai1d support their distant families over a life time

spent in a hostile and foreign enviromnent. It is this high level of organisation over many

years with its attendant paternalism between the merchant class and their humbler district

fellows, that has provided NSW with its plentiful heritage of temples, stores, cemeteries,

gardens, organisations and even material items in south China.

Along with tangible items of heritage, the contribution to national identity and history that

the very presence of Chinese people in NSW inspired ca1mot be ignored. For those who

wished a 'white' identity only, this presence stimulated sh·uggles around issues of national

identity which, combined with struggles for improved conditions for workers, left a mai·k on

the history and heritage of NSW and Australia that ca1mot be understood without also

understai1ding the role played in them by people of Chinese origin.

NSW can be seen to have a long and interesting Chinese heritage, one that reaches from the

tea drinking disapproved of by Bigge to the present day descendants of Jolm Shying. This

heritage is represented in the remains of buildings and items scattered throughout most

regions of NSW, in organisations still functioning today and in the many citizens of NSW

with a perhaps unknown Chinese ancestor. Migration free of the discrimination of the past

also ensures that new contributions will continue to be added to the heritage of NSW for the

foreseeable future.

62

Districts of the Pearl River Delta from which most 19111 century Chinese migrants originated

[Map based on that in David Chuen-yan Lai, 'An analysis of data on home journeys by Chinese immigrants in Canada, 1892-1 9 15', The Professional Geographer, 29.4, 1977, p.362.)

-· r·, (- rfu~ 1·'\ .. ;'~~g \ . ,·-·" 1 Cheng // ~· an u (-' • i ·-.. ., \

~ >· J anhai 't Q /' "\. .-.. ,

. ..... "') ; o ~, '\I hunde

l[:!~~::;:==. _ _J~~--J ao '· ~. ~·,.i . _;, Dong uan r'

'"\ ./ . . . ' . I

• _,..('< • oshan ,J • • ,-,... ). ·-. . .. ·

/ • {;i~1g -{ inhui . ..... ,., ,..../ . .f .

j r ( 1 • -..· nping (' l''i '. I I ' ' ' I • ...... J ) I .

I' "· "( v . i "-. ·~ a1shan

1.,_1 r•_; angjiang

' "'' . \

·-·""" ao An ,._,,-'

M 5

/>(1£cntiai fieritage Sires & /u:1ns - Ar1pc11dix I

The following table is intended as a list of potential heritage sites and items. It is very much a working document and a great deal more research is still to be done. An attempt has been made to relate them to the themes but these categories are not meant to be exclusive. All sites found in various records have been recorded and categorised according to the following key:

A - Those already heritage listed or of probable heritage value B - Original building in existence C - Unconfirmed contemporary existence or unknown address D - Building no longer exists

The final category (D) is included because it is important that heritage sites be given a context and one such context is that provided by numbers. How many stores were there in Sydney or Joss houses in NSW? Is the listed market garden one of lOO's or one of 1,000' s?

The dates given are either the recorded existence of the business, organisation, etc or a date at which it was in existence as evidenced by the source material.

A major source was the Immigration Restriction Act correspondence from 1904 to 1908. This correspondence included many letters to Chinese businesses and gives the addresses of those that existed at that time.

The 'Golden Threads' Database, is soon to be completed and will contain much more detailed information on many regional areas of NSW. See a summary of this project by Dr. Janis Wilton at the end of this appendix.

Also included in this appendix is a table of archival sources which have particular interest for NSW Chinese history and heritage.

63

Fr.i1~:1iti<il Jleriwge Sire~ & lir::111s - Appendix J

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source District Societies (Social Institutions)

A Loong Yee Tong 54 Dixon St 1870s District association of the Dung Guan people, at this site since at least 1910. George Livanes

B Hung Fook Tong 417 Sussex St 1870s District association of the Gao Yao (Yiu Ming) people now called Tiy Loy & Co. At this site since 1960s.

B Sze Yap Little Hay St 1898? Yong, p.190. c Tung Sing Tong unknown 1870s? Yong, p.191 & Tung Wah Times. Loong Dou people association c Yum Duck Tong above 84 1890s- Zhongshan people association. Ended 1930s, reformed in the 1970s.

Dixson St? 1930s Arthur Chang, Cliff Lee. c Quang Sing Tong unknown 1877 Reputedly the oldest in Sydney, district unknown. Royal Commission, op.

cit. p.153, line 6094.

B More recently established various since 1970s Hainan, etc. Chinese Yell ow pages

Dormitories (Social Institutions)

A Dong Guan 54 Dixson St 1870s Still intact? c King Nam Jang 85 George St 1870s? Earliest dormitories? Cumines family, Sze Yap.

A Kwong Wah Chong 84 Dixson St 1912 Private shop, upstairs unknown.

A Wing On & Co Thomas & 1930s Dormitories upstairs, now Kung Fu rooms. Ultimo Rd

64

J>ote11tiui Ifrritop,e Sift'.\ & ltu11\· - 1l(1]JCndix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Temples (Social Institutions)

A Sze Yup Edward St. 1912 Built by Sze Yup district people. Article Glebe

A Gao Yao Regent St. 1904 Built by Gao Yao district people. Powerhouse ref Alexandria

c unknown district 86 Goulburn St before Tung Wah News 28/211900 1900

B Dung Guan 54 Dixon St 1870s? Still intact? D ' Joss' House Kiandra 1860s Smith, op. cit. p.50. D ' Joss' House Nerringundah 1860s Including a so called ' pig oven' D 'Joss' House Emma ville 1939 Reportedly destroyed in 1939 c ' Joss' House Bathurst ? c ' Joss' House Lowes St, East ?

Maitland D ' Joss' House Mongarlowe 1860s McGowan, op. cit. p.33. c Various Temples regional areas Identified in Golden Threads Database

65

f>otcuti<.1! Heritoge ,\fre~ & Jte111s - !\ppe11dix J

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Churches (Social Institutions)

c Congregationalist Pitt St 1854 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 100 c Anglican Christchurch, Chinese primary school 1910s-20s.

St Lawrence, Haymarket. Christchurch, Chinese minister ordained. Built by Chinese Christians Botany. 1885 Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. l 03-4. St Lukes, Surry Hills. 1896

c Presbyterian Waterloo and 1893 Rev Young Wai. Fitzgerald, p.100. Photos in Yong p.209 Foster St

c Catholic Ashfield? Asiana? B Baptist? Milsons Point 1960s?

Schools (Social Institutions)

c Chung Wah(i:j=t~) unknown 1910-1914 Yong, p.215, Tung Wah Times 26/211910 & 19/1/1924 & 1924-1926

c Quong Wah O'c~) Surry Hills 1913-1915, Yong, p.215. Reopened a number of time due to lack of teachers in 1920 & 1920s. 1925

c Chinese School of English Campbell St 1920s-30s Immigration Restriction Act files & William Lee correspondence.

66

Pou 11.ti<1! fferitoge Sire'.' & Jtcm'i - Aripcnclix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Sydney Stores (Commerce)

D Kwong War Chong 46 Campbell 1890-1912, Zhongshan district store, operating till 1984. Had dormitories. St, then Williams, op. cit. various. Immigration Restriction Act SP42/1

A 84 Dixon St 1912-1984 D WingOn&Co 24 Campbell St 1893 to Original store from which Wing On Hong Kong founded. Immigration A Thomas St & 1908? Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

Ultimo Rd 1930s Operated dormitories, leading Zhongshan store. c On Yik Lee & Co 228 George St 1890 to Major Zhongshan store. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence,

1930s 1904-08 A Wing Sang & Co 18-22 1890s to Major Zhongshan store and basis of the Sincere & Co empire in Hong

Campbell St 1930s Kong. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. Currently various Chinese businesses.

B Kwong Wing Chong 307 1904/8 Wong Suey. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. Now Castlereagh St a Chinese restaurant. & 1927 Immigration Restriction Act files. 92 Hay St

c War Sang & Co Manly 1929 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

B War Tin 215 Thomas St 1949 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. Now Emperor' s Garden BBQ

B War Hing & Co 410 Pitt St 1904/8 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. Now Chinese D 49 Dixon St 1953 Cafe

Immigration Restriction Act files B Hop Lee & Co 8/9 Ultimo Rd est 1899 Immigration Restriction Act files. Market building? c Lees & Co 440 Railway 1940-1952 Fruit & Vegetable shop of Lee Man Dick, father of Cliff Lee. Immigration

Pde, Allawah Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

67

Pou:n.ti<ll I frritoge Sire,· c\: lte111s - Afl!wndix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Sydney Stores (Commerce)

c Hong Sing & Co 62 Dixon St 1930s-1963 Closely connected to Tingha and Nth NSW group of stores. then Reservoir Immigration Restriction Act files St?

B Hop Chong & Co 100 Hay St & 1920s Immigration Restriction Act files. 100 Hay St now Emperor's Garden D 207 Thomas St Restaurant. c Fong Lee Jang & Co 196 Elizabeth 1904-08 Founded by Ah Fong of Fong Lee & Co, W ellingfon. Immigration

St Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. B Hang Hi Hop Kee & Co. 412 Pitt St 1904-08 Ah Chee owner. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

B Sun Hing Jang & Co 422 1904-08 Stores associated with Quong Tarts' family, Margaret Tart and Mei Chen B 429& Ying. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 D 43 1 Pitt St D Hang Hi 309 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

Castlereagh St c Quing Young & Co 136-138 & 172 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 D Castlereagh St

D Mr. Ben Hing 121 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 Castlereagh St

D Mr. W. Shin Yee 293 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 Castlereagh St

D Mr. Joe Ah Jung, 39 Reservoir St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

68

Fotuitiaf lfrritage Sires & item~· - Ar>pendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Sydney Stores (Commerce)

D Wing War Hing & Co. 52 Campbell St 1904-08 Fun Chong, d.1904, Low Tew Hee. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

D Tiy Sang & Co 30 Campbell St 1904-08 Joint company for importing bananas from Fiji. Yee Wing , Manager, George Lee. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

D Hie, Lee & Co 28 Campbell St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 D Lee Sang and Co 28a Campbell 1904-08 Mr. Wong Kew Jim/Mr. G.Y.T.Quoy. Immigration Restriction Act

St correspondence, 1904-08 D Gee Ick & Co 62 Wexford St 1904-08 Mr Willie Gee Ick. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 c On Yik Lee 228 George St 1904-08 Mahor Zhongshan related store. Immigration Restriction Act

correspondence, 1904-08 D Sun Suey War 75 Campbell St 1904-08 George Suey, Shee Wah. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence,

1904-08 c On Chong & Co 223 George St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 c Tiy Loy & Co Botany Rd, 1904-08 Mr. Choy Young. Major Gao Yao district peoples store. Immigration

Alexandria Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 D Suey You Kwong 84 Goulburn St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08. Masonic Centre c Mrs Hock Shung 100 Botany St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

Waterloo c Mr S.C.S. Dockson 219 George St 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

c Mrs Mary Joy 244 Botany Rd 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 Alexandria

c Quong Hing Chong & Co 1904-08 Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08

69

Po1c1ttial 1Jeritoge .')ire' & Itel/I\' - Appendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Cabinet Makers (Commerce)

c Lock Lees 134-136 1890s- Supposedly leading Cabinet makers and last. Victor Gow, Immigration Botany Rd 1930s Restriction Act files

c Ah Toys 192 George St 1870s Furniture workshop. (Photo Fitzgerald, op. cit., p. 77) D Chow Kum&Co 230 Elizabeth 1915 Immigration Restriction Act files

St c Jung Hing & Co Pecks Lane, 1921 Immigration Restriction Act files

Alexandria c unknown 14 3 Devonshire 1919 Immigration Restriction Act files

St c unknown 419 Sussex St 1920 Immigration Restriction Act files c Sing War & Son Albion Pl 1903 Immigration Restriction Act files c Regional Areas Identified in Golden Threads Database

Newspapers (Commerce)

c Chinese Australian Herald 1894 European partners

A Chinese World News 18 Mary St 1921 Chinese Masonic Society c Chinese Republican News 1914 c Tung Wah Times 1898 A Chinese Times 77 Ultimo Rd 1920? KMT. Printer upstairs.

70

Potential lleritoge Siles & !tc':1n~· - Ar>J>( ndix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Other businesses (Commerce)

c China House 249 George St 1919-1925 HQ of China-Australian Steamship Line, bought forUl,000. Yong, p.106. William Liu papers.

c Quong Tarts Tea Shop Queen Victoria 1890- Position? Building? 1903?

c Kee Sun, Tobacconist 352 Pitt St 1904 Suspected gambling shop, Immigration Restriction Act files Cafes (Commerce)

B Town Hall Coffee Palace 517 George St 1904-08 Mr Ah Gow. Immigration Restriction Act correspondence, 1904-08 QVB

c Peking Cafe City 1930s Pre WWII Cafes. Immigration Restriction Act files c Nankin Cafe City 1949 Pre WWII Cafes. Immigration Restriction Act files c Shanghai Cafe City 1930s Pre WWII Cafes. Immigration Restriction Act files c Arthur's Parramatta 1950s 1st in this area? Arthur Chang c Overseas Cafe 21 Pitt St 1951 Wilfred Yee, owner. Immigration Restriction Act files c Tiensin Cafe City till 1950s c Harry Sing Blaney 1950s? Later owned by Billy Soo. R. Miller, op. cit., p.34 c Restaurant Herbert St 1871 Johnson papers

Gulgong Various in rural NSW Golden Threads database

71

Po!entiu! Jieri!o,~e Sires & !1e111s - Ar1pendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Rural Stores (Commerce)

c Kwong On & Co. Cobar 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904; Daily Telegraph, 1903

c Fong Lee & Co. Wellington c1875- Father and owner died 1903?, two boys raised in China, returned 1915?, 1935 one opened store in Dubbo? Fong Lee Jang, Sydney. Golden Threads AA

(NSW), correspondence, 1904; Daily Telegraph, 1903. c Tong Hup & Co. Coonamble 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904

c Joe Wah Gows Wollongong till 1930s Victor Gow c Ti Hing (Hung) & Co. 9 Steel St 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904

Newcastle c Sun Hong Shing&Co. Narrandera 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904

(Sun Hing Sheng)

c Mr Yee Lee Emma ville 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904; Linked to Hong Sing, Reservoir St, Surry Hills, 1920s.

c Yee Hing & Co. Tumut 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904

c Wing Jang & Co. Macquarie St 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904 Dubbo

c Hop Cheong Lachlan St, 1904-08 AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904; Royal Commission Hay

c Kwong Sing War Glen Innes 1889-1908 Young family. AA (NSW), correspondence, 1904; Golden Threads.

c Way Kee's Bega, Bourke, 1890s Royal Commission Stanthorpe, Hillston

c Wing Hing Long Tingha c1885- Golden Threads Database; Heritage Office Inventory Form.

72

Polcntiui lferitoge Sires & l!en1)· - Ar1pe11dix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Rural Stores (Commerce)

A Hong Yuen & Co Inverell, Tingha 1899- Daily Telegraph, 1903, Immigration Restriction Act files, Golden Threads c Sun Sun & Co Tenterfield c1924- Golden Threads Database.

1973 c Yee Lee Stuart Town Golden Threads Database c Hop Sing & Co T enterfield c1925- Golden Threads Database. Linked to Hong Sing, Reservoir St, Surry

1990 Hills, 1920s. Immigration Restriction Act files, 1913 c F. Kwong Sing Casino 1929- Golden Threads Database c Nomchong Braidwood Golden Threads Database c Sam Kee Tingha, Inverell cl870- Golden Threads Database

1997 c unkown Tamworth 1903 Daily Telegraph, 1903 c Hang Sing Summer St 1930s R. Miller, Orange

Orange c Paul Kee Chong Gulph St 1885 Burdett, op. cit. 25

Nerringundah c Chewying (George & Vulcan St 1920s LEP

Sophie) Moruya c Wong Store Blaney 1877 LEP c Sun Tong Lee Herbert St 1870s Johnson papers

Gulgong c Hong Hing Belmore St 1870s Johnson papers

Gulgong c Sam Hand Belmore St 1870s Johnson papers.

Gulgong

73

Potuitia! lieritoge Sires & item\· - Ar1pe11dix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Rural Stores (Commerce)

c Chung Hin Gee Cassiles, 1915 Chung Hin Gee chain of stores, killed by bandits in China 1915. c Binnaway, c Merriwa, c Gundagai

Other rural stores Golden Threads database Gardens (Agriculture)

A Operational Four Botany Gao Yao and Zhongshan ones

A George Gay Chester Hill 1910sto Owned, not leased. Now a park 50s

c Gardens Willoughby, vanous Immigration Restriction Act file refs. Yong, op. cit., p.39 based on local Moama, years histories. Golden Threads database Condobolin, Nundle, Tamworth, Wellington Point, Newcastle, Deniliquin, Jerilderie (Coree Station), Junee

74

Potclltia! lferitoge Sires & //c!IH - Aepcndix 1

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Gardens (Agriculture) c Yee Lee (owner King Tuggerah 1930s Immigration Restriction Act files

Young, Dixon St) c Sun Chong Kee Camden Immigration Restriction Act files & correspondence, 1904-08.

Hop Chong c Wong Hing Ry de Immigration Restriction Act files c Louey Chong, Union Albury Immigration Restriction Act files. Golden Threads database

Bridge Gardens c See Lee Garden off Fredrick St, Immigration Restriction Act files

Camperdown c Hang Sing Chessmans R. Miller

Creek, Orange c Sung On Sung Garden Fairfield Immigration Restriction Act files

Farms (Al!riculture) c Tobacco Farms Albury, Manilla 1880s Yong, p.232. c Banana Growing Mullumbimby, 1919-1925 Freehold and leasehold Yong, p. 243.

Billinudgel, Grabbes Creek

c Com & potato Farm (700 Tingha 1902 Owned by several partners. Immigration Restriction Act files acres)

75

Pote!ltiui J!erit(i'd Sirl!s & Item~· - Ar>pendix i

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Other Occupations(Labour)

c Fishing Swansea, Lake Royal Commission on Fishing, 1881 Macquarie, Port Stephens, Coila Lake

c Scrub Cutting Albury, 1860s-70s Gangs of 500. Chinese Camps report, op. cit., p.659. Golden Threads Riverina database

Mines (Mininf[) A Gold Mines Rocky River 1850s- Remains of Chinese include diggings and tailings, 'races', darns and B (Uralla), Ophir, 1870s cemeteries. Various archaeological & local history sources. Golden c Nundle, Sofala, Threads database

Hill End, Forbes, Gulgong, Braidwood, Kiandra, Adelong, Lambing Flat, Bulgandry, N errigundah.

c Tin Mines New England 1870s- Various local histories & Golden Threads database. area, 1910s Emmaville

76

Pountiuf I feritoge Sires & lte111s - Ar>j>endix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Cemeteries (Social Institutions)

A Old and New Chinese Rookwood 1877- Oldest graves in Sydney. Many exhumations. Rookwood cemetery record section Cemetery present book.

A Quong Sing Tart Rookwood 1877 Memorial or ritual pavilion set up by reportedly oldest district association. construction Cemetery Nearly forgotten by Chinese community.

A Mei Quong Tart grave Rookwood 1902 Grave outside Chinese sections Cemetery

A Quarantine Station North Head 1930s? Quarantine Station has at least 6 headstones with Chinese inscriptions. Also numerous rock engravings. National Trust listed

A various rural Carcoar, 1860s to Headstones often give districts of origin and other information. Windeyer c Cobar, 1920s? reportedly has an ' Amoy' Chinese Cemetery. Local histories, LEP.

N erringundah, Golden Threads database Ernmaville, Tumut, Criagie, Windeyer,

A various rural Tabaroora (Hill 1860s to Condoblin monument, 1883-1945. National Trust listed End), Home 1920s? Rule (Mudgee ), Condoblin, , Upper Bingara, Lighting Ridge, Wombat (Young)

A Newcastle Newcastle Dong Guan monument

77

Potcntiuf l!eritoge Sires & Items - Aependix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Homes (Persons) A Mei Quong Tart Ashfield 1890s- now a nursing home

1903? A Rev Young Wai 2-6 Mary St, 190s Leading Presybeterian Minister. Fitzgerald, op. cit., p.100. Immigration

Surry Hills Restriction Act files. Now ACCA site. c Various Homes in rural Golden Threads database

NSW Chinese Merchants associations (Social Institutions, Commerce)

c Lin Yik Tong Probably met in 1892-1903 8 leading merchants, including Quong Tart. Acted as shipping agents. shops of the Yong, op. cit., p.211.

c Chinese Merchants Society var10us 1903-191 2 members.

c Chinese Merchants 1904-1912 Formed in response to Anti-Asiatic League. SMH Defence Society

c Chinese Chamber of 1913-1965 Minutes in Noel Budin Archives Commerce

c Chinese Chamber of 1975-Commerce present

c Empire Reform 166 George St 1900? Association

78

Potential! leriwge Sires & I tcm ~· - Ar1pendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Chinese associations (Social Institutions, Commerce)

A Nationalist Party (KMT) 77 Ultimo Rd 1920- now c Chinese Seaman's Union 1940s Protected refugee seamen, fought for wage equality. Arthur Chang c Chinese Workers Successor to Seaman's Union? Arthur Chang

Association A Aust-China Association CnrHay & 1941 Attempted to bring in part-Chinese. William Lee

George St B China-Aust Friendship Trades Hall 1950s Early links with People's Republic

Association A Chinese Masonic Society Blackburn St, 1912 Yong, op. cit., p.160. Supported court challenges to White Australia

(Yee Hing) 18 Mary St Policy. William Lee.

A Australian Chinese 2-6 Mary St 1974 General Community association Community Association (ACCA) Moveable Objects (Af!riculture)

A Billy Gay Chester Hill 1930-50s Watering Cans, weights and measures, taps, photos, etc. Moveable Objects (Mif(ration)

A Arthur Chang, In south China 1930s Ajax Safe, bird cage, various household objects, photos, houses. Medal Cliff Lee awarded by Sun Yat-sen to Sydney resident (Kaiping)

c Various rural NSW Golden Threads database

79

Pc•toiti,1! Her ita,'-{e SiTt,\' & ltc111\· - Ar>pendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

Sydney general (Law & Order, Mif!ration)

A Customs House Circular Quay HQ of Immigration Restriction Act admin 1902 to 1940s. Dictation Tests administered

D Anthony Horderns Haymarket 1900s- Popular among Chinese, advertiser in Chinese papers. Model for first 1930s Shanghai Department stores

A Quarantine Station North Head 1875-1930 Many Chinese kept in 'Asian' section, graves and inscriptions. B Shipping Agents China Tickets to Hong Kong purchased. Often went surety for well known

Navigation passengers. (G.S. Yuill & Co) 6 Bridge St Eastern & Australian Steamship Co (Gibbs, Bright&Co)

Hong Kong (Migration, Commerce)

c Kwong War Fong Hong Kong 1930s Branch of the Kwong War Chong, Dixon St. William Lee. c Tong Sang Loong 110 Gerbisal?, 1930s Agents for purchasing tickets and negotiating with Immigration in Aust.

HK c Dang Chee, Son&Co 25 Des Voeux 1930s Agents for purchasing tickets and negotiating with Immigration in Aust.

Road, HK c Mr. Nis Men 4 Connought 1930s Agents for purchasing tickets and negotiating with Immigration in Aust.

Road

80

J>otemiai fieritog.-' S'ires & /rein)· - Appendix I

Type (Theme) Location Dates Comments/Source

China (Commerce)

c Kwong War Cheong Shekki 1930s Branch of the Kwong War Chong, Dixon St (Zhongshan City)

A Ma Houses Shekki 1930s Two houses of Ma brothers, Wing Sang & Sincere A Wing On House Shekki 1930s House of Kwok family or Wing On & Co

Rural Items general (Mining, Agriculture, Commerce)

B Dams Warren shire B Dam Chinaman's 1860s? A dam, now a causeway. No real evidence anything to do with Chinese

Crossing, people beyond the name. Lockhart. Y erong Creek

A Assorted items Mt Panorama Museum, Orange

A Assorted items Braidwood Nomchong family Museum

B Stone fences Coo ma A Letter book Tumut Tumut historical society A Cathurthun wreck Seal Rocks 1895 Many Chinese passengers c Various rural NSW Golden Threads database

81

J>o1cwiai ! Jeritoge S'ires & /1011.\ - Aependix I

Archives Comments Noel Butlin Archive - Australian National University Australian Agricultural Company records (with contracts of Amoy labourers)

NSW Chinese Chamber of Commerce minutes & records.

Mitchell Library MSS5857, MSS6294 John Shying research, William Liu papers

NSW Archives AO Col Sec Special Bundles 4/829.1 Various Chinese related matters, including passenger shipping arrivals and various investigations and disputes concerning Chinese migration.

Fisheries Inquiry Commission 1881. Votes & Details basic history and locations of fishing and fish curing industry carried out Proceedings, NSW. by Chinese people between 1860 and 1880, one Chinese witness.

Chinese Camps report, 1884. Votes & Proceedings, Summary of statistics, occupations and issues of women and gambling NSW. associated with various towns in the Riverina area ofNSW.

Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Numerous Chinese witnesses. Details activities and locations of Chinese people Police Corruption, 1892. Votes & Proceedings, NSW. in Sydney.

Foreign Office Confidential Prints, various dates. Many Material prepared for use by the British Foreign Office, often including detailed held in Australian National Library. reports on Chinese Immigration to the Australian colonies and governmental

reactions to issues such as anti-Chinese legislation.

Rookwood Cemetery, Anglican Trust, Old Chinese Records of burials and exhumations in the old Chinese section of Rookwood section records. cemetery, including names, dates and ages.

82

GOLDEN THREADS: THE CIDNESE IN REGIONAL NSW DATABASE

This database links sites, objects, places, people and customs/events relating to the Chinese contribution to regional New South Wales. There is a particular focus on the Central West, New England and Riverina regions where extensive field work has been carried out. There are also some entries for other parts of regional NSW.

The focus of the Project (and the database) is on the moveable heritage in local museums, families and communities, and the varying historical contexts which give it meaning. To this end, field work and research have sought to identify relevant sites as well as documenting the specific history of the Chinese presence in different localities and regions. The amount of detail varies. Some sites, for example the Wing Hing Long store in Tingha, have attracted some initial in depth research, while other sites consist of no more than a name, location and some very preliminary details.

The initial purpose of the database is to provide local museums and communities with consolidated information and assistance relating to the Chinese heritage of their areas. The information collected underpins recommendations for the types of assistance which could benefit local museums and their Chinese collections. It also underpins the small travelling exhibition and accompanying products which are currently being planned as a means to continue providing assistance and to promote the significance (including as potential tourist and educational attractions) of the Chinese heritage of regional New South Wales.

It is also envisaged that the database will provide a very useful reference point for government departments and agencies like the Heritage Office and the Migration Heritage Centre, for members of Chinese communities, for local historical societies and museums, for school students, and for researchers.

A version of the database should be available for some government and public use by early 2000. CmTently, details and images are still being collated and entered; further consultation is required with the owners of collections and information about the extent to which they want their material made publicly available; and a decision needs to be made about the ultimate home of the database.

It is hoped that agencies and researchers seeking to work on aspects of the Chinese heritage of regional NSW will work cooperatively and collaboratively with the Golden Threads Project. There are substantial issues relating to ethics and ownership as well as the pragmatic desire to ensure that scarce resources are used to further the work being done rather than to retrace and reinvent research and details already collated.

In this spirit of cooperation and collaboration, a small number of additions and cross references have been added to Michael Williams' list of rural stores in his Chinese heritage sites table. The reference to the Golden Tlu·eads Database indicates that some research and documentation is underway. It seemed premature and overwhelming, however, to provide a complete list of sites so far identified tlu·ough Golden Tlu·eads.

83

l'of('llfiul f-leoll1!~1' ,)1/1'' c.\: /!clll'. \i>/)('llcli I

(Currently these amount approximately to 70 sites mainly in the Central West, New England, and Riverina regions, and include cemeteries, gold and tinfields, stores, 'camps', joss houses/temples, market gardens. Added to these, is the growing number of linked entries on objects, places, people and customs/events. )

The Golden Threads Project was conceived and is financially supported by the Museums Committee of the NSW Ministry for the Arts. It is also supported by the Powerhouse Museum, the New England Regional Art Museum and the University of New England.

Enquires should be directed to the Project Coordinators:

Janis Wilton Joe Eisenberg

PO Box 508 Armidale 2350

August 1999.

Phone: 02 6773 2107 Phone: 02 6772 5255

84

Chinese language considerations

Many systems for the romanisation of Chinese dialects1 have been used in the past

and so much confusion results when texts from different periods are used.

'Mandarin', which is the national language of the People's Republic of China, has had

numerous romanisation systems developed to enable it to be pronounced phonetically.

Some of the most conunon are Wade, Yale, Giles, Wade-Giles and finally Pinyin,

which is that officially used by the Chinese Govenm1ent today. However, for

Cantonese, its sub-dialects and non-Cantonese dialects such as that spoken within the

Long Du area of Zhongshan few or no standard romanisation systems have been

developed.

As neither the Chinese person, nor the various English speaking officials seeking to

write down their names, would have known any such systems, the result was a variety

of renderings into English script of the names of people and places. Thus, Zhongshan

(using its Pinyin romanisation in mandarin pronunciation) was usually written either

Chungshan or Chongshan and either variation is recognised by descents today. When

it comes to personal names, however, there are even more complications.

As Philip Lee Chun, whose Chinese name was Lee Lum Chun though he'd been

naturalized as a NSW citizen under the name Ah Tchee, conceded, 'I can readily

understand that the Chinese system of nomenclature is rather bewildering to a

European. ' 2 Many Australians of Chinese descent today cany family names such as

Hoon, Gay and Gooey which have no relation to traditional Chinese family names.

These names usually derive from the personal names of the first family member to

arrive in Australia.

The explanation for such renderings is a combination of the non-phonetic basis of

written Chinese, dialect variations within spoken Chinese and different cultural

practices in the way family and personal names are given and written. The absence of

1 'Treatment of them [Chinese languages] as mere dialects is based on the fact that they all can be put down, at least to some degree, in Chinese characters acceptable to the Great Tradition.' Leo J. Moser, The Chinese Mosaic. The Peoples and Provinces of China. Westview, London, 1985, p.3 .

2 AA (NSW), SP42/I ; C36/813, Lily Lee. Letter, Philip Lee Chun to the Collector of Customs, I February 1915.

85

a consistent system of spelling English renderings and a Jack of interest in 'getting it

right' on the part of the officials writing them down are contributing factors. When

John Louie Hoon's father, Louie Hoon, gave his name he was expressing his fan1ily

name Louie (~) and his personal name Hoon (~ in the Chinese order. Europeans,

however, identified 'Hoon' as the family name. Both 'Louie' or 'Louey' and 'Hoon'

were roughly rendered English phonetic equivalents of the characters tlt~ in the Min

dialect of his Long Du area in the district of Zhongshan. When his son was given the

English name Jolm (Jack), this was appended to his father's name to make him Jolm

Louie Hoon in the files of the Customs and Excise Office of NSW. He was also given

a Chinese nan1e which began with his family name Louie (ill) and then Jer (Y!U). This

last was chosen either because it sounded similar to Jolm (or Jack) or visa versa. As

an added twist, John Louie Hoon's fellow Chinese might ignore his Chinese name and

write his 'English' name in Chinese characters. The result, .!J!IJmYft or Jer Louey Hoon

was a confused mix of naming conventions.3

Jolm Louie Hoon and his father were unusual in referring to their family name at all.

The majority of villagers when asked their name for the purposes of registration or

CEDT applications would omit what, for English speakers would be the essential

element, the family name. This was not because it was thought unimp011ant, but

because it was too important. For most Chinese speakers at the end of the 19th

century the 'family' name was the clan or lineage nan1e. They were members of a

specific clan but were not in the habit of using that name as part of their personal

identification. Such use was also unlikely as most people came from either single

surname villages, or villages that had at most, 3 to 4 separate clan names. In such a

situation, the habit of using a ' family' name as a personal identifier would not have

been very practical.

When giving a name to Customs officials in the p01t of Sydney, the average person

gave his personal name. Yuk Kwan's family name, for example, was Wong. This

name does not appear in his files until the 1950s, some 30 years after the file began,

3 AA (NSW), SPI 12211; N 1952/24/395 1, John Louis (Louie) Hoon. This was how Norman Lee explained the various renderings in Chinese characters of John Louie Hoon's name that appear throughout his file, interview with Norman Lee, 25 September 1997 ( 12).

86

when he also began to refer to himself as Ken.4 If a name happened to sound similar

to an English name or word then that was written down, such as with Young or Lee.

Otherwise a name was rendered as best the differences in basic sounds between the

two languages allowed, such as Duck or Dick for t~, and Yet or Y at for SI.

Another conunon variation also came about when a person had only a single character

for their personal name. In this case, it was usual to extend it and make it sound more

'polite' by adding another sound to the begi1ming. For those of the Pearl River Delta

districts this was invariably the sound 'ah ' (Wb. Sufficient people became known as

Ah something, Ah Moy, Ah Yat, etc, that the second and subsequent custom-made

alphabetical CEDT registers ordered by NSW Customs had additional leaves tagged

'AH' inserted between the 'A' and 'B' leaves to facilitate their being recorded.5

The final factor adding confusion to this issue is that a persons name might have been

different when a boy or young man (that is, before marriage) from that later in his life.

As Philip Lee Chun explained, for the benefit of the Collector of Customs, when a son

is born, ' the mother gives him a name; when he goes to school, the schoolmaster

gives him a name; if the boy marries, then he takes his paternal name ... ' 'The names

given to him in his infancy are of no import, except the family name. It is when he

marries that he acquires a definite nan1e. '6 This was the Chinese practice, but the

imperatives of bureaucratic documentation meant that the name of 'no import' often

became a person's permanent name. Philip Lee Chun himself was writing this

explanation because the Collector of Customs wanted to know why he was claiming

to be the naturalized Ah Tchee, the name he used before his marriage.

4 AA (NSW), SPI 1/12; Yuk Kwan, Tai Moon, & others, 1926-47 and SPI 122/ I; N56/6446, Yuk Kwan Wong.

5 AA (NSW), SP726/2; Particulars of Applications for CEDTs, vol. 2, 10/ 1/11 - 21/10/1 8. A similar explanation 'Ah' is in, Char Tin-Yuke, The Sandalwood Mountains. Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Ha\11aii, The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1975, p.61 , n.19.

6 AA (NSW), SP42/1; C36/813, Lily Lee. Letter, Philip Lee Chun to the Collector of Customs, I February 1915.

87

Canton

A final confusion of identification exists over places of origin. Chinese people in

nearly all the files and records of the Inm1igration Restriction Act administration give

'Canton' most often as their place of origin.7 In fact ve1y few people actually came

from this city. The Royal Commission minutes also has nwnerous instances of

witnesses replying 'Canton' when asked where they come from. Only Sun War Hop

answers, 'I come from the big city in Canton. ' 8 In English-speaking terms this means

he actually came from Canton City.

European officials were not usually interested in village or even district names.

Chinese people in giving ' Canton' as a place of origin were not, however, naming the

only city in south China they thought these officials may have heard of. Rather they

were referring to their province of origin, Guangdong (Kwangtung). " 'Canton" is

"Kwang-tung," corrupted and misused.'9 'When Chinese speak of themselves as

being from Canton, they may mean from the province of Kwangtung [Guangdong]

and not necessarily from the city of Canton. The word Canton is used instead of

K wangtungese.' 10

7 An interesting exception to this is during the 1930s when a question concerning the ' location of wife' was asked, the answer often given was the name of a specific village.

8 Royal Commission, op. cit. , p.398, line 14490. 9 Parkes, op. cit. p.2. '° Char, op. cit., p.88, n.2.

88

Chinese characters

This table lists some of the variations in romanisation of Chinese words and names

referred to in the text.

Character Pinyin Wade-Giles Cantonese Other dialect or (former Mandarin Mandarin (former name)

non-standard name) romanisation

r:j=r iJJj Zhongshan Chung Shan Chungshan Chongshan

(WW or (Xiangshan (Hsiang Shan (Hsiangshan or (Heangshang

.7,!f~) or Xiang Yi) or Hsiang I) Hsiang Yap) Heong Shang Hung Shang)

1>*-~~ Long Dou Long Tou Lung Dou Long Doo

,(,"lb~ Shi qi Shi Ch'i Shekki Shakee

im~: Siyi Ssu I Sze-Yap Ssu Yap

See Yip

fJLD Taishan T'ai Shan Toisan

(%.Jiy) (Ximung) (Hsin Ning) (Sunning) (Sun Wing)

7f-T· Kai ping K'ai Ping Hoi Ping Hoy Ping

~-/':->IJT ~ Xinhui Hsin Hui Sunwui Sun Wiy

W'f· ,~,· En ping En Ping Yanping Ying Ping

•I I .-.i:s Sanyi San I Sam Yap Sam Yip

*'~ Fa.nyu Fan Yu Pun-yu Par Yoon

r*i~ Nanhai Nan-hai Nan-hai Namhoy

Jll!ilt~ Shunde Shun-te Shuntak Sun Duck

*% Dong Guan Tung Guan Tung Kwun Toon Goon

t~~ Zeng Cheng Tseng Ch' un Tsang Sing Chang Sing .,.., . l~J~ Gao Yao Kao Yao Go You Go Yiu

fti~W He shan Ho Shan Hok Shan Hock Sang

~* Kejia K'er Chia Hakka Har Kar

f 'fM Guangzhou Kwang Chou Kwongchou

)''* Guangdong Kwangtung Kwong Tung Canton

PJH'·i* . ~. I·. Yin De Tang Yin Te Tang Yam Tak Tong Yum Duck Tong

1JHrii11\ Hong Fu Tang Hong Fu Tang Hung Fook Hing Fook Tong Tong

I\. ')/.,_A!!. 'L., . . 'I\ Gong Yi Tang Kong Yi Tang Kung Yee Tong Goon Yee Tong

1··~* n . 1·. Guangshantang Kuangshantang Kwong Sin Tong Quang Sing Tong

89

( 'hi11es,· Sl'11/,•111e111 in \Sit - .·l111Jt:11,/ix Ill I )i\fi 1h11ti1111

An estimate of the proportions in which Chinese people emigrated to NSW from the

various Pearl River Delta districts would be of great value in begi1ming the process of

'disaggregation' of the Australian-Chinese communities referred to by Dr Hemy

Chan. 1 This is of particular importance for Sydney, as it appears to have attracted an

unusually wide range of districts compared to other Australian regions, particularly

when compared to Melbourne's domination by the Sze Yap.2

The most ambitious attempt at estimating Sydney's Chinese population by dish·ict of

origin was that by Dr Charles Price.3 His findings were Chungshan (Zhongshan) -

40%, Kao Yao (Gao Yao) - 24%, Tongkoon (Dong Guan) - 20%, Sze Yap (Si Yi) -

10%, Sam Yap (San Yi) - 3% and non-Cantonese - 2%. However these figures were

based on Department of Inm1igration fi les of the late 1960s and early 70s and it

cannot be assumed that the proportions had remained the same since the nineteenth

century.

A Chinese Chamber of Conunerce membership list of 1913 provides some

comparative evidence. This membership list shows the stores and the district of origin

of each manager who were members of the Chamber.4 The table below shows the

tally.

Xiangshan (Zhongshan) 7Jf ili ( 9=i ili ) 6

Gao Yao ~!J 4

Dong Guan {t;;!¢1 / \_.JL,jl 9

Xing Ning (Taishan, one ~r ct:aLID 2 of the Si Yi) He Shan (one of the San Yi) ~ili 1

Zeng Cheng ~w~ 7

1 H. D. Min-hsu Chan, 'A decade of achievement and future directions in research on the history of the Chinese in Australia', in Paul Macgregor (ed.), Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbourne, 1995, p.420.

2 Choi, Chinese Migration, op. cit., pp.78-9. 3 Price, op. cit., p.220, n.12. 4 Noel Butlin Archives Centre (ANU); Deposit 111 , 111/2/3, Chinese Chamber of Commerce of

NSW and other Chinese Associations, miscellaneous 1913-26, membership list. 90

( 'hi1h':1c' Sr..•ffit'111en1 in .\.\JI ·l11ne11dix /// /)i.,11"ihution

The most obvious difference between the estimates of Dr Price and the Chamber list

is the appearance of Zeng Cheng. This is a district often associated with Dong Goon

and which according to evidence given in the Royal Commission co-operated in the

Loong Yee Tong. 5 The relatively few representatives of the Sze Yap districts and the

preponderance of Zhongshan and Dong Guan/Zeng Cheng districts does, however,

roughly fit with the Price calculations.

Of course stores and managers do not necessarily conespond neatly with population

numbers. Particularly when is possible that a manager was not from the same district

as the store's orientation. This appears to have been the case with Wing On & Co., an

undoubtedly Zhongshan store, whose Chamber of Conunerce member was from

Dong Guan!

Various estimates of society membership are also given in the Royal Conm1ission into

Alleged Chinese Gambling. At a time when the census reported the total NSW

Chinese population at 13,048 and Sydney's share as 3,499, the Koon Yee Tong of the

Dong Guan district is reported to have had 600 'scattered' members.6 The Loong

Yee Tong, which had Dong Guan as well as Zeng Cheng district members, is said to

have had 1,5 00 members representing 80% to 90% of the community. 7 The Gao Yao

are reported to have 1,000 of the 'clan' in Sydney and of the Sze Yap there were 300

in Sydney.8

Taking this evidence at face value and assuming all but the Koon Yee Tong evidence

were referring only to Sydney, the total mentioned are 2,800. This leaves a further

700 to be made up by Zhongshan district members. This calculation would show a

much higher representation for the Dong Guan and Zeng Cheng districts in the

nineteenth centwy and a smaller one for Zhongshan than the 1970s Price estimates.

Yet Zhongshan had at least two societies in operation at this time. If, however, the

1,500 for the Loong Yee Tong is taken to mean NSW and this is added to the 600

Koon Yee Tong members then the total NSW proportion for the Dong Guan and

Zeng Cheng districts is not too far off the 2,600 the Price calculations would give

5 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.146, lines 5871-2, where it is transcribed as 'Chang Sing'. 6 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.54, lines 2056-83. 7 Royal Commission, op. cit., p.153, lines 6098-99.

9 1

( '!unnt' .\t•lflt'lllc iii in .\SH - . lt>/h'.11</ix JI/ I >i.~r, 1h11tin11

them. The figure for the Gao Yao people in Sydney is also not too far off its Price

level of about 1,000, though the Sze Yap level is twice as high.

Little definite can be said from such calculations except that it is highly likely some

districts slu·ank in size more rapidly than others in the years between the 1891 Royal

Commission and the final 'non-European' fi les of the Department of Immigration of

the early 1970s. If further sources of figures can be found it may be possible to come

to more conclusive findings.

8 Royal Co111111ission, op. cit., p.391 , lines 14 174-76 and p.145, lines 5807-09. 92

< ·:11"" s,·ut, 11 ·. ''· ,, \.'>II - ,,.,, 11dn 1 ''"'.\''

Table 1: Chinese populations of Australia, NSW and Sydney, 1861-19471

Australia NSW Sydney Year Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total Year 1856 1,800 6 1,806 1856 1861 40,000 12,986 2 12,988 189 1861 1871 28,662 7,208 12 7,220 336 1871 1881 38,274 259 38,533 10, 141 64 10,205 2,232 1881 1891 35,523 298 35,821 13,048 109 13, 157 3,499 1891 1901 29, 153 265 29,418 10,063 159 10,222 3,474 1901 1911 21,856 897 22,753 7,942 284 8,226 3, 183 151 3,334 1911 1921 15,940 1,143 17,083 6,903 379 7,282 2,813 85 2,889 1921 1933 9,311 1,535 10,846 3,472 193 3,665 1,761 130 1,891 1933 1947 6,594 2,550 9,144 2,548 724 3,272 1,726 611 2,337 1947

Table 2: Percentage of Chinese in NSW and in Sydney

Year NSWof Sydney of Sydney of Australia NSW Australia

1861 32.5 1.5 0.5

1871 25.2 4.6 1.1

1881 26.5 21.8 5.8

1891 36.7 26.6 9.8

1901 34.7 34.0 11 .8

1911 36.2 40.5 14.6

1921 42.6 39.6 16.9

1933 33.8 51.5 17.4

1947 35.8 71.4 25.5

1 Tables 1 and 2 are derived from a variety of sources, most of which are ultimately derived from either Commonwealth or NSW Census data. The figures are sometimes difficult to interpret as it is not always ciear when figures include both China and Austral ian-born people. Generally aggregate figures are used as the earlier data does not make a distinction. ' Sydney' is also difficult to define but the general trend ofthe figures is clear. Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1911 , 192 1, 1933 and 1947, Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No. 18, 1925, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Melbourne, 1925; Royal Commission, op. cit., p.402 & Coghlan, op. cit. , p.594, Table no. 5, ' Populations in Divisions at the Census of 1891 '.

93

CEDT derived statistics: Tables 3 to 6

Statistics for these tables are derived from the CEDT applications fotmd on the individual files in Australian Archives (NSW); SP42/1 and SPl 122/1. A total of 130 files were examined on a random basis from years across the period. These were 1903, 1911, 1913, 1920, 1929, 193 1, 1933, 1936, 1941, 1946, 1947, 1952 and 1955. The details of name, date of birth, arrival, trips, family, occupation, and location were recorded and analysed to provide the statistics.

Table 3: Locations2

NSW location workers per Sydney workers per Sydney 98 48% Botany 15 21%

Far West 31 15% Nth Sydney 14 20% Northern NSW 23 11% Double Bay 6 9%

Queensland 11 5% Rose Bay 5 7% Newcastle 10 5% Fairfield 5 7% Brisbane 9 4% Liverpool 5 7%

Melbourne 8 4% Alexandria 4 6% Victoria 4 2% Camden 4 6% Riverina 3 1% Manly 3 4%

Snowy Mts 2 1% Canterbury 2 3% West Australia 2 1% Waterloo 2 3%

Wollongong 1 0% Parramatta 2 3% South Australia 1 0% Windsor 2 3%

Granville 1 1% Total 203 100% Total 70 100%

Table 4: Occupations

Occupation percentage Occupation or er percentage

Gardener 101 46% Scrub cutter 7 3% Labourer 23 11 % Tobacco 5 2% Storekeeper 14 6% Drapery 2 1% Hawker 13 6% Bookkeeper 2 1% Groceries 12 5% Farmer 2 1% Cook 11 5% Station work 1 0% Cabinet Maker 11 5% Total 219 100% Carpenter 8 4% Miner 7 3% Mulitple jobs 45

2 Occupations are derived from applications for CEDTs which requested details of all previous jobs and locations. The details from the 130 files sampled were tallied to provide the distribution of both locations and occupations. As many people had multiple jobs and locations, the totals exceed 130.

94

('i!!t:<'.1 .. .\d1f.,·mo11 :;: \Sii - .lp/l<'ildt.\ /J \ 1.111.11,,,

Table 5: Dates of arrival in NSW

Year People percentage Year People percentage

1877 3 2% 1890 4 3% 1878 0 0% 1891 5 4% 1879 0 0% 1892 7 5% 1880 2 2% 1893 6 5% 1881 2 2% 1894 6 5% 1882 0 0% 1895 9 7% 1883 5 4% 1896 9 7% 1884 4 3% 1897 11 8% 1885 4 3% 1898 10 8% 1886 7 5% 1899 7 5% 1887 16 12% 1900 3 2% 1888 4 3% 1901 1 1% 1889 6 5% Total 131 100%

Table 6: Average periods spent in China3

Time in China Time in Australia Less than 12 23 14% 1 year 9 6%

months 1 year 63 39% 2 years 24 17% 2 years 43 27% 3 years 27 19% 3 years 22 14% 4 years 25 17% 4 years 4 2% 5 years 16 11 % 5 years 3 2% 6 years 15 10% 6 years 1 1% 7 years 7 5% 7 years 0% 8 years 3 2% 8 years 2 1% 9 years 3 2% 9 years 0% 10 years 4 3%

11 years 3 2% 12 years 1 1% 13 years 3 2% 14 years 1 1% 15 years 2 1% 16 years 1 1%

Total 161 100% Total 143 100%

3 The number of previous trips and the dates of Sydney arrival and departure were all recorded on each subsequent CEDT application, this allowed the approximate length of time both in China and between sojourns to be calculated.

95

t 'lili«.I . · )',•:/[, i/1C1 11'1 \\II '':/ •!ii'' / 1 <\1,11 1;.

Table 7: Burials and Returns4

Year Burials Returned Year Burials Returned 1875 13 7 54% 1914 44 34 77% 1876 11 7 64% 1915 54 38 70% 1877 8 6 75% 1916 50 33 66% 1878 17 10 59% 1917 39 23 59% 1879 17 12 71% 1918 37 28 76% 1880 21 12 57% 1919 76 45 59% 1881 28 23 82% 1920 56 33 59% 1882 18 16 89% 1921 49 31 63% 1883 16 9 56% 1922 40 21 53% 1884 24 16 67% 1923 42 22 52% 1885 23 17 74% 1924 58 31 53% 1886 29 21 72% 1925 38 18 47% 1887 45 36 80% 1926 38 17 45% 1888 46 36 78% 1927 54 14 26% 1889 38 31 82% 1927 41 19 46% 1890 44 37 84% 1928 41 19 46% 1891 56 39 70% 1929 48 26 54% 1892 33 30 91% 1930 44 18 41% 1893 33 24 73% 1931 25 9 36% 1894 43 33 77% 1932 31 19 61% 1895 35 32 91% 1933 38 26 68% 1896 31 30 97% 1934 25 15 60% 1897 38 27 71% 1935 36 18 50% 1898 38 22 58% 1936 37 20 54% 1899 41 29 71% 1937 42 18 43% 1900 52 33 63% 1938 33 7 21% 1901 52 32 62% 1939 42 10 24% 1902 39 23 59% 1940 39 1903 50 19 38% 1941 42 1904 55 21 38% 1942 60 1905 46 28 61% 1943 66 1906 69 33 48% 1944 47 1907 39 21 54% 1945 62 1908 53 30 57% 1946 47 1909 42 27 64% 1947 40 1910 19 15 79% 1948 36 1 1911 43 32 74% 1949 57 1912 54 3 6% 1950 38 1913 43 31 72% Total 3094 1523 49%

4 The statistics in this table are derived from the Rookwood Cemetery, Anglican Trust: Register of Burials in the Necropolis at Haslem 's Creek, under the Necropolis Act of 1867, 3151 Victoria, no. 14, 'Chinese Section of General Cemetery' . Each burial was recorded and then crossed out in red ink when exhumed. If a burial subsequently took place in the same plot it was recorded by being written over the same space. The figures for 'Returned' relate to the year of burial not the year of removal. Exhumations usually took place several years later.

96

Table 13: Arrivals in Australia by CEDTs

and Certificates of Exemptions (C of E)5

Year CEDT C of E Year CEDT C of E

1902 121 8 1924 1544 100 1903 308 14 1925 1904 603 31 1926 1549 99 1905 1,200 31 1927 1518 100 1906 1928 1440 118 1907 1,312 60 1929 1213 104 1908 1,628 71 1930 1025 85 1909 1,618 56 1931 665 106 1910 1,684 58 1932 562 100 1911 1,851 74 1933 444 91 1912 2,098 79 1934 490 111 1913 2,187 32 1935 460 170 1914 1,681 59 1936 461 198 1915 2, 178 36 1937 470 191 1916 2, 191 58 1938 426 300 1917 1,889 40 1939 293 251 1918 1,575 88 1940 187 264 1919 1,336 68 1941 148 340 1920 1,395 174 1942 0 328 1921 1,464 108 1943 0 734 1922 1,681 75 1944 0 483 1923 1,668 102 1945 0 488

1946 8 296 Total 44571 6379

All material drawn from Immigration Restriction Act files and other sources in,

Michael Williams, Sojourn in Your Native Land, M.Lit thesis, University New England, October, 1998, Appendix IV.

5 This information is extracted from that provided in Barry York, Ad111it1ed: 1901 to 1946. Immigrants and others allowed into Australia between 1901and1946. Centre for Immigration & Multicultural Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1993.

97

( '/Ji11ese \'ei//e111cm in \Sil' - 1Jihli11,'.:,ru;1/11

Primary Sources

Government Archives

Australian Archive (NSW)

SP42/1; Correspondence of the Collector of Customs relating to Immigration Restrictions and Passports, 1898-1948.

SP 1122/ 1; General Correspondence and Case files, 1901-1967.

ST84/1; Certificates of Exemption From Dictation Test, 1904-1959.

Al026; Outward letters books, Correspondence in connection with the Immigration Act 1904-8, vol.1-vol.3.

SP726/1; Register of Certificates Exempting from the Dictation Test, 1902-1959.

SP115/10; Certificates Exempting from the provisions of the Influx of Chinese Restrictions Act of 1881, 1862-1888.

SP 11/26; Applications for Certificates of Domicile, 1897-1910.

SPI 116; Certificates of Exemption from the Dictation Test, 1902-1946.

SP726/2; Register of Birth Certificates, 1902-1962.

SPl 1125; Aliens Returns for December 9th, 1939, NSW, 1939-1940.

SPl 148/2; Passenger lists, Outward 1902, 1929 & 1939.

Australian Archive (ACT)

A 1; 1903/3081, Instructions re: Ce11ificate of Domiciles, minute, 26 November 1902.

A6980/Tl; 8250386, Non European Policy Review 1962.

98

< '/Jn1e\·e ,.ctll•'lll< 111 i11 \Sii - /Jih1iut.:.f ·111111

Private archives and records

Rookwood Cemetery, Anglican Trust: Register of Burials in the Necropolis at Haslem's Creek, under the Necropolis Act of 1867, 31st Victoria, no.14, 'Chinese Section of General Cemetery'.

Noel Butlin Archives Centre: Chinese Chamber of Conunerce of NSW and other Chinese Associations Deposit 111, Australian National University.

Mar Letters. A collection of letters and sundry documents written to and from Harry Fay from c.1912 to the 1950s. Copies held by Dr Janis Wilton, University of New England.

William Liu papers, Mitchell Library MSS 6294.

Goverrunental Reports

Administration of Justice (Imprisonment at Parramatta of a Blind Chinaman), Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879-80, Vol.III, pp.207-210.

Repm1s upon Chinese Camps, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1883-84, 11th Parliament, Vol.II, pp.559-666.

Report of the Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality and Charges of Bribe1y Against Members of the Police Force. Appointed August 20th 1891. Government Printer, Sydney, 1892.

Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, no.6, 1901-1912, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Melbourne, 1913.

Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, no.18, 1925, Conunonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Melbourne, 1925.

Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, no.28, 1935, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Melbourne, 1936.

Coghlan, T. A., NSW Statistical Register for 1899 and Previous Year, Sydney, Govenunent Printer, 1900.

Fisheries Jnquily Co?nmission, Report of the Royal Commission, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879-80, Vol. III, pp.1101-1265

Great Britain Foreign Office Confidential Prints, No. 894, 'Correspondence respecting Emigration from China, April 1859 to May 1860' .

Great Britain Foreign Office Confidential Prints, F.O. 3742. 'Notes by Mr. Crawford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian Colonies', Acting Consul Davenport to Lord Tenterdon, September 1877,

99

Great Britain Foreign O.ffice Confidential Prints, F.O. 24867. Report by E.H. Parkes, Undersecetary of State, Colonial Office to Foreign Office, 15/12/1888.

Statistical Register of New South Wales for 1886, Govermnent Statisticians Office, Government Printer, Sydney, 1887.

NSW Statistical Register/or 1919-20, NSW Government Statisticians Office, NSW Government Printer, Sydney, 1921.

Smith, Lindsay M., The Chinese of Kiandra, NSW. A report to the Heritage Office, October, 1997.

Oral Histmy interviews

Arthur Gar-Lock Chang, Sydney, 28 October 1997. Cliff Lee, Sydney, 28 September 1997 and Zhongshan, January 1998. Victor Gow, Sydney, 30 October 1997. Norman Lee, Sydney, 25 September 1997. Donald Young, Sydney, 11 October 1997. Billy Gay, Sydney, 19 March 1998. King Fong, Sydney, 1April1998. William Lee, correspondence with the author, June, 1999 and interview 20/8/99

Newspapers & Journals

'Chinese refutation of Anti-Chinese and Asiatic League attacks', Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 1904.

'Chinese in Sydney', The Sydney Mail, 25 February 1903.

'Chinese life in Sydney', Illustrated Sydney News, 12 June 1880.

'Chinese delegation to the Prime Minister', Daily Telegraph, 30 December 1902.

'The Belmore Markets', Dalgety s Weekly, 1 January 1902, pp.84-93.

Clark, W. H. , ' Om Vegetable Supply', The Agricultural Gazelle of NSW, vol. XII, Part 12, Dec, 1901 , pp.1606-1613.

Egerton, Margaret, ' My Chinese', The Cosmos J\1agazine, Sept, pp.124-128, Oct, pp.1 38-141 , Nov, pp.192-196, 1896.

The Chinese Australian Herald, J".fia-<-r.:HI. 3 June 1903.

Tung Wah News, *-<~{i'.Jid'li. 9 March 1901.

Chinese Republic News, 13 September 1919 and 20 September 1919.

100

Secondary Sources

Chinese language ruticles

~ R;Jll Gao Minchuan, r:j:i Lltr!l$·(f1:7c¥i.a 'Zhongshanshi huaqiao dashiqi' (Record of major events of Zhongshan City overseas Chinese), r:j:i Ill )(JI: Zhongshan Wensh.i (Zhongshan Cultural Hist01y), 1990.

1*-1 ~J ifi Kan Y anxin, }A 7-f ¥- :$ {fl: lw !fm 'cB' )( !fm ~ IRi , ;13· $ ·(if x1· ,f.D. 00 A-9 ..di~ 'Cong Kaiping Huaqiao bowoguan wenwu changpin, kan Huaqiao dui zuguo de gongxian' (From the collection of the Kaiping Museum to see the Huaqiao contribution to the homecountry), ·ffl: se ~iii Qiaoshi xuebao (Journal of Overseas Chinese Hist01y), 1, 1987, pp.44-49.

** ~ Hi Lin Qinzhi, M ~ ~ 1'~ *-'~ ~ 1WJ ~ A ~ 1$ m rfiJ: ?11, 8"J m ZJfJ JJz ;Jt xt· ;~j .~ ~9 :9t ilR 'Cong zupu ziliao kan min yue renmin yiju haiwai de huodong ji qi dui jiaxiang de gongxian' (A look at clan records to see the overseas activities of Fujian and Guangdong people and their contribution to their hometowns), 1'-f'.! .f{t 1~ .A . .Jjj .'1:. {iJf ~I Huaqiao huaren lishi yanjiu (Overseas Chinese Hist01y Researches), 1, 1991, pp.16-23.

t~.XT:f:i Miao Wenyue & i%1'*• Gao Huanzhang, ntl&:~~it A~ @11l 'Shiqi Yinye de Huiyi' (Recollections of the Shiqi silver indushy), ~ WX.Y.!. Zhongshan Wenshi (Zhongshan Cultural Hist01y), 1962-5, reprint, Special collection, 5/10, 1989, pp.88-95 .

. mJ 7f; ~Zhou Xiaozhong, Yfj: :9~ $ ffi: ~ ir n!; ~I 'Haiwai huaqiao yu shenggong bagong' (Overseas Chinese abroad ru1d a provincial port strike), 1~ 11~ 12:-' .X .~~I Huaqiao lun wen shi (Overseas Chinese Hist01y Thesis) , no. l , April, 1982, p.258.

English lru1guage articles

Chen Yong, The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to Cal(fornia Reconsidered. Western Historical Quarterly 28 (Winter 1997), pp.521-546.

Cushmru1, J.W., 'A 'Colonial Casualty': The Chinese community in Aush·alian Historiography', Asian Studies Association of Australia, vol.7, no 3, April, 1984.

Eardley, Gifford and Eileen, 'The Chinese Market Gardeners of St George Dish·ict', St George Historical Society Bulletin, Dec 1970, pp.75-81.

Eitel, Rev E.J., 'Social Life in China,' Royal Geographic Society of Australia. S.A. Branch, Proceedings 8, 1904-06, pp.1-18.

Hayden, Albert A., 'NSW Immigration Policy, 1856-1900', Transactions oft he American Philosophical Society, vol 61, Pt 5, 1971.

IOI

Loh, Morag, 'You're My Diamond, Mum!' Some thoughts on women married to immigrants from China in Victoria from the 1860s to the 1920s ', Oral Hist01y Association of Australia Journal, no. 6, 1984.

Markus, Andrew, 'Chinese in Australian Hist01y', Meanjin, 42.1, March, 1983.

Mei, June, 'Socioeconomic origins of emigration: Guangdong to California 1850-1882 ',Modern China, vol. 5, no.4, June, 1979, pp.463-501.

Nairn, N. B., 'A Survey of the Hist01y of the White Australia Policy in the Nineteenth Centmy', The Australian Quarterly, vol. XXVIll, no.3, September, 1956, pp.16-31.

Oddie, G., 'The Lower Class Chinese and the Merchant Elite in Victoria, 1870-1890', Historical Studies, vol.10, no.37, November, 1961, pp.65-69.

Palfreeman, A. C., 'The End of the Dictation Test', The Australian Quarterly, vol.XXX, no.1, March, 1957, pp.26-38.

Palfreeman, A. C., ' Some Implication of Asian Immigration', The Australian Quarterly, vol.XXIX, no. I , March, 1958, pp.43-50.

Si1m, Elizabeth, 'Xin Xi Guxiang: A Study of Regional Associations as a Bonding Mechanism in the Chinese Diaspora. The Hong Kong Experience', Modern Asian Studies, 3112, 1997, pp.375-397.

Siu, Paul C.P., 'The Sojourner', The American Journal of Sociology, L VII, July, 1952, pp.34-44.

Wang Gungwu, 'South China perspective's on overseas Chinese', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.13, 1984, pp.69-84.

Wang Gungwu, 'Upgrading the Migrant: Neither Huaqiao nor Huaren', Chinese America: Hist01y and Perspectives, 1996, pp 1-18.

Yu Lan Poon, 'The two-way mirror: contempormy issues as seen tlu-ough the eyes of the Chinese language press, 1901-1911',Chapter3, pp.50-65 in Fitzgerald, Shirley & Wotherspoon, Garry (ed.) Minorities: Cultural Diversity in Sydney, State Library of New South Wales Press in association with the Sydney History Group, Sydney, 1995.

Chinese language books

I!* Ji .A. Chen Chih-fu, 1~ ml J:l JJR 1~ 1-f! -{]f Ao-chou chi lu Ao Hua ch'iao (Australia and Australian Overseas Chinese Travel), Shanghai, 1946.

)~l~#.fJi Zheng Jiarui, ·"f.lfr::!If Li Chengji, et al, rt1 LlJ .A:G:~/JH Zhongshamen zai Aozhou (Zhongshan people in Australia), iflz#})' ·*r:p LiHh~ . .ITT.~ Zhengxie Guangdong Zhongshansh.i weiyuanhui (Assisted by Guangdong Zhongshan City Conunittee), n.p., 1992.

102

English language books

Aitken, Clu·isto, Windeyer - Tent Town to Village

Australian Dictionmy of Biography, vol. 1-vol.6, Melbourne University Press, Calton, 1966-1993.

Barker, Theo, A Hist01y of Bathurst, Vol 2, Crawford Hse Press, Bathurst, 1992.

Blainey, Geoffery, The Rush that Never Ended. A Histo1y of Australian Mining, Melbourne University Press, Victoria, 1969.

Brawley, Sean, The White Peril - Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America I919-I978, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1995.

Campbell, Persia Crawford, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countl:ies Within the British Empire, P.S. King & Sons, Westminster, 1923.

Char Tin-Yuke, The Sandalwood Mountains. Readings and Stories of the Early Chinese in Hawaii, The University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1975.

Chen Ta, Emigrant Communities in South China: A Study of Overseas Migration and its influence on standards of living and social change. Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1940 (1939).

Choi, C. Y., Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1975.

Cole, E.W., Beller Side of the Chinese Character, Melbourne, 1918.

Cronin, Katluyn, Colonial Casualties: Chinese in Early Victoria, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1982.

Cuslunan, Je1mifer W. & Wang Gungwu (eds), Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese Since World War II, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1988.

Fitzgerald, Shirley, Red Tape, Gold Scissors, State Library of NSW Press, Sydney, 1997.

Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, University of London, Athlone Press, 1966.

Giese, Diana, Beyond Chinatown: Changing Perspectives on the Top End Chinese Experience, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1995.

Giese, Diana, Astronauts, Lost Souls & Dragons: voices of today's Chinese Australians, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996.

Gittins, Jean, The Diggers from China: The st01y of the Chinese on the Goldjields, Quartet Books, Melbourne, 198 1.

103

Chinese 1.,·dlie111<'111 in \Sil' - Nib/iu::,ru11J 1

Hicks, George L. (ed.), Overseas Chinese Remittances from Southeast Asia, 1910-1940, Select Books, Singapore, 1993.

Homage, Bill, The Yellow Peril, Review Publications, Dubbo, 1971.

Huang Tsen-ming, The Legal Status of the Chinese Abroad: Overview of legal conditions in the US, British Empire, French and Dutch East Indies, 2nd edition, China Cultural Service, Taipei, 1954.

Huck, Arthur, The Chinese in Australia, Longmans, Melbourne, 1963.

Kee, Poo-Kong, Chinese Immigrants in Australia: Construction of a Socio­Economic Profile, Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbomne, September, 1988.

Lobsey, Ian, The Creek, A Hisl01y of Emmaville, 1872-1972, Enunaville Centenruy Celebrations Committee, Glen limes, 1972.

Loh, Morag Jeanette (Judith Winternitz, ed.), Dinky-di: the contributions of Chinese immigrants and Australians of Chinese descent to Australia's defence forces and war efforts 1899-1988, Australian Govermnent Publishing Service, Canberra, 1989.

London, Herbert Ira, Non-white Immigration and the White Australia Policy, Sydney Uni Press, Sydney, 1970.

McGowan, Bany, Conservation and Heritage overview of the Araluen catchment area, incorporating the Araluen, Bells Creek and Majors Creek Goldfield, Canberra August, 1998.

Macgregor, Paul (ed.), Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific, Museum of Chinese Australian History, Melbomne,1995.

Macnair, H. F., The Chinese Abroad Their Position and Protection. A Study in International Law and Relations, The Conm1ercial Press, Shanghai, 1925.

Markus, Andrew, Fear and Haired: purifying Australia and California, 1850-1901, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1979.

May, Cathie, Topsawyers: the Chinese in Cairns 1870 lo 1920, James Cook University, Townsville, 1984.

Mo Yimei, William J Liu, O.B.E. - Pathfinder, 1893-1983, Australia-China Chru11ber of Conunerce and Industry of New South Wales, Canberra, 1991.

Moser, Leo J., The Chinese Mosaic. The Peoples and Provinces of China. Westview, London, 1985.

Palfreeman, A. C., The Administration of the White Australia Policy, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967.

104

( .'hi11ese Settle111cm ill \Sii' - HiNiu.<.!,l'll/Jl/_l

Price, Charles Archibald, The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia, 1836-1888, Australian Institute oflnternational Affairs in association with Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974.

Purcell, V. W., Chinese in Southeast Asia. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 1966 (1951).

Reid, Anthony (ed.), Sojourners and Settlers: histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996.

Rolls, Eric, Sojourners: jlm,vers and the wide sea, vol.l, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1992.

Rolls, Eric, Citizens: flowers and the wide sea, vol.2, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996.

Ross, I. Clunies, Australia and the Far East. Hist01y of Oriental Trade Contacts and Diplomacy, Australian Institute oflnternational Affairs, Angus and Robertson, 1935.

Ryan, Jan, Ancestors: Chinese in Colonial Australia, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, 1995.

Ryan, Jan (ed.), Chinese in Australia and New Zealand: a multidisciplinary approach, New Age International, New Delhi, 1995.

Saunders, Kay (ed.), Indentured Labour in the British Empire 1834-1920, Croom Helm, Canberra, 1984.

Sinn, Elizabeth, Power and Charity- The Early Hist01y of the Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989.

Siu, Helen F., Agents and Victims in South China Accomplices in Rural Revolution, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1989.

Somers Heidhues, Ma1y F., Southeast Asia's Chinese Minorities, Longman, Hawthorn, 1974.

Sleeman, John H. C., White China. An Austral-Asian Sensation, Ultimo Sydney, 1933.

Smith, Lindsay M., The Chinese of Kiandra, New South Wales. A report to the NSW Heritage Office, October 1997.

Stacker, Julie & Stewart Perri, Chinese Immigrants and Chinese-Australians in NSW, Guide 1, Australian Archives, NSW Office, August, 1996.

Stockard, Janice E ., Daughters of the Canton Delta - Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South CMna 1860-1930, Stanford University Press, California, 1989.

105

Tart, Margaret, The Life of Quang Tart: or How a Foreigner Succeeded in a British Community, Sydney, 1911.

Travers, Robert, Australian Mandarin: the life and times of Quang Tart, Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst, 1981.

Tweedie, Sandra M., Trading Partners: Australia and Asia 1790-1993, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1994.

Wakeman, Frederic, Strangers al the Gate - Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1966.

Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese overseas, Times Academic Press, Singapore, 1991.

Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia, and Australia, Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992.

Willard, Myra, Hist01y of the White Australia Policy to 1920, 2nd edition, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967.

Wu, C.H., Dollars Dependents and Dogma,· o/seas Chinese remittances lo Communist China, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California, 1967.

Yarwood, A. T., Asian Migration to Australia: the background to exclusion, 1896-1923, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1964.

Yong, C. F. (Ching Fatt), The New Gold Mountain: the Chinese in Australia, 1901-1921, Raphael Arts, Richmond, South Australia, 1977.

York, Barry, Admitted: 1901 to 1946. Immigrants and Others Allowed into Australia between 1901and1946, Centre for Immigration & Multicultural Studies, Australian National University, 1993.

York, Barry, Adniissions and Exclusions: 'Asiatics' and 'other coloured races' in Australia: 1901 to 1946, Centre for Immigration & Multicultural Studies, Australian National University, 1995.

Young, Faye & van Barnevald, Nicole, Sources for Chinese Local History and Heritage in New South Wales, n.p., 1997.

106

Unpublished Theses & Conference Papers

Choi, Chi-cheung, Descent Group unification and segmentation in the coastal area of southern China. University of Tokyo, PhD, 1987.

Burrage, Vivien Suit-Cheng, The Chinese community, Sydney, 1870-1901, Masters thesis, Macquarie University, 1974.

Darnell, Maxine, The Chinese Labour Trade to New South Wales, 1783-1853, PhD thesis, University of New England, 1997.

Darnell, Maxine, Responses and Reactions to the Importation of Indentured Chinese Labourers. Paper presented to 'The River' Australian Historical Association Conference, Newcastle, 28-30 September 1997.

Jones Paul Anthony, Alien Acts: The White Australia Policy, 1901to1939. PhD, Uni of Melbourne, 1998.

Williams, Michael, Sojourn in Your Native Land, M.Lit thesis, University New England, October, 1998.

Wilton, Janis, Chinese Voices, Australian Lives: Oral hist01y and the Chinese contribution to Glen Innes, Inverell, Tenterfield and surrounding districts during the first half of the twentieth centmy, PhD thesis, University New England, August, 1996.

107

Districts of the Pearl River Delta from which most 19111 century Chinese migrants originated

[Map based on that in David Chuen-yan Lai, 'An analysis of data on home journeys by Chinese immigrants in Canada, 1892- 1915', The Professional Geographer, 29.4, 1977, p.362.)

. '-·"")

Dong Guan •

-· r·...,, .- tfu; f·" d~ng \ t ,_,.,. ··( Cheng i \, .'Pan Yue·-· .('' /';<,·...... .., \

...; >· jNanhai 't Q ,.......,, ,..-.\.

CHINA

Gao Ji I Shunde Yao r• \ 1i.=:====:===.~.....l.~~,..-~ '·

,.,,,,<'< ;r 0

'?-ldhan) •

/"'. ( . " ~ B;;An ,_,..

/'~i~?-r·-"xinhui . '" ,·\ ,_../ r· .r . . f' ........

I E . • J • • np1ng (' I''\ .., , 1 l ... ,. . ...... 91.

,<' "·, ·~ ..,...Taishan / Yangjiang '

_.,,...., r •.,,, ~ ..... \ .

0 KM 50