Talks

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A transnational Chinese-Australian family and the ‘New China’ – Melbourne Chinese Studies Group

Monday, 26 July 2010 in History, People, Talks by Kate | No comments

Date: Friday, 6 August 2010
Time: 6pm
Admission: $2
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets)

Topic: A transnational Chinese-Australian family and the ‘New China’

Speaker: Pauline Rule

Chung Mow Fung arrived in Melbourne in 1857 as a single man and left nearly forty years later in 1895 to settle in Hong Kong together with his Chinese wife and a large family of eight surviving colonial-born children. Twenty-five years of constructing a family in country Victoria had seen Chung Mow Fung and his wife Huish Huish negotiate between Australian and Chinese culture and between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ values especially in the area of gender roles. Settlement in the complicated liminal space of Anglo-Chinese Hong Kong allowed the family to identify to varying degrees with the different parts of their cultural formation. Their Australian background was acknowledged and their life-style was largely westernized but some members of the family became involved in the Republican era in the struggle to change aspects of Chinese culture, especially the role of women. This paper will examine how the Australian childhood of the family members played some part in how they, especially the women, lived out their adult lives while also retaining a strong commitment to their Chinese heritage.

Pauline Rule undertook postgraduate research on the Bengali intelligentsia and then the social history of Calcutta during the period of the British Raj. She worked in both the curriculum and assessment areas of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and its prior manifestations. She has also researched and written extensively about the experiences of Irish women in nineteenth century Victoria. As part of this research she has examined marriages between Irish women and Chinese men in colonial Victoria and the outcomes for some of these families. This has lead to an interest in those Chinese women who came to Victoria in the colonial period.

Talk followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.

Temples, ghosts and Christians – Melbourne Chinese Studies group seminar

Tuesday, 29 June 2010 in Talks by Kate | No comments

Date: Friday 2 July 2010
Time: 6pm
Admission: $2
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets)

Topic: Temples, ghosts and Christians – A brief history of Chinese spiritual practice in Australia

Speaker: Paul Macgregor

Traditional spiritual beliefs and practices were fundamental to the lives of most Chinese in colonial Australia. Temples were built across the goldfields and in major cities. Cemeteries and burning towers to maintain relations with the spirits of the those who died here were also established around the country. Rituals and ceremonies were central to community events and the annual spiritual calendar was adhered to by many. On the other hand a small but growing number chose to adopt the Christian faith and formed congregations that, by the Federation era, also had key roles in community organisation, business affairs and political activity. New migrants from the Chinese diaspora to Australia from the 1950s onwards have also continually reinvigorated and diversified Chinese spirituality in Australia.

Historians and archaeologists have undertaken significant documentation of many of the temples and cemeteries. Others have enquired into the organisational history, and the political and social influence, of traditional Chinese spiritual organistions such as the Hung League as well as key Chinese Christian congregations. This seminar however will focus on exploring the actual spiritual beliefs and practices – both traditional and Christian – of Chinese Australians, how these were transformed in Australia, and how they have underlain individual lives as well as community history.

Paul Macgregor is an historian who is the convenor of the Melbourne Chinese Studies Group, and was the curator of Melbourne’s Museum of Chinese Australian History from 1990 to 2005. He is the editor of Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific (1995), and joint editor of both Chinese in Oceania (2002) and After the Rush: Regulation, Participation and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860-1940 (2004). He has organised three international conferences on the Chinese diaspora in Australasia, and has curated numerous exhibitions on the history and material heritage of Chinese Australians.

Talk followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.

Following seminar:
Friday 6 August – Pauline Rule: A transnational Chinese-Australian family and the ‘New China’

‘Race, service, citizenship’: talk by Alistair Kennedy

Saturday, 29 May 2010 in Talks by Kate | No comments

The next event from the Chinese Australian Historical Society is a talk from Alistair Kennedy, BA (Hons) MA Dip Ch (HK), MBE from the School of History, ANU.

Race, Service, Citizenship: White Australia’s attitudes to Chinese-Australians between the two World Wars

When: Saturday 31st July 2010
Time: 2pm
Where: Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney (near Bathurst Street).

This paper represents work in progress on Alistair’s PhD thesis. It examines how the experience of war service in the First Australian Imperial Force (1st AIF) affected the lives of Chinese-Australians. It covers the consequences of the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, the Dictation Test and the white working class exclusion discrimination on Chinese workers. The Chinese-Australian population fell rapidly from more than 88,000 in the 1880s to 25,000 at the 1911 census. In 1914, there were fewer than 2,000 Chinese-Australian males of military age with British citizenship and, of these, the racially intolerant Defence Acts excluded many who could not prove they were of ‘substantially European origin or descent’. Yet many of these Chinese-Australians did enlist.

Apart from the indigenous peoples, Australian social historians have seldom examined White Australia’s treatment of ethnic minorities between the wars. This paper argues that for one such minority, Chinese-Australians, the experience of military service in World War 1 was a positive one.

Cost: $10 members; $15 non members
Bookings: Anna Lee, Treasurer. Pay at the door.
Email: annalee@workready.com.au
Phone: 9519 7436 or text 0412 334 398
Committee: Robert Ho, King Fong, Clifford To, Frederick Leung, Arthur Lock Chang, Anna Lee

State Records NSW talk on the Chinese in Australia

Monday, 3 May 2010 in Archives, Research help, Talks by Kate | No comments

On 15 May, State Records NSW is holding an event in association with the Chinese Heritage Association of Australia where you can obtain information to help you put together the pieces of your family’s history in Australia. Speakers include Christine Yeats from State Records and CHAA members.

See the State Records website for more information.

Pastoral workers, market gardeners and entrepreneurs – talk by Dr Barry McGowan

Thursday, 22 April 2010 in Talks, Uncategorized by Kate | No comments

The Chinese Australian Historical Society is holding a special meeting:

Pastoral workers, market gardeners and entrepreneurs – the Chinese people in the Riverina district of New South Wales

Dr Barry McGowan (Australian National University)

When: Saturday 22 May 2010 at 2pm
Where: Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street Sydney (near Bathurst Street)

In October of 2008 Barry McGowan was commissioned by the Museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga to research the history of the Chinese people in the Riverina for an exhibition at the Museum in 2010. This work follows an earlier study undertaken by Barry and Lindsay Smith into the Chinese heritage of the Riverina and southern New South Wales. The Chinese people were an integral part of Riverina society for many years, and the project has revealed an amazing amount of information on their daily lives.

A large number of artefacts and photographs have been obtained, and new insights gleaned into the importance of Chinese labour and enterprise for the rural economy, the internal workings of Chinese society, race relationships and the role of the police and courts.

New insights have also been obtained into the importance of fraternal and family networks. Much of this information has come from the descendants of Chinese Australian families, who have lived in the Riverina for several generations or more. But it is a lost history – the significance of which has been missed by most historians. Information to hand suggests that a major rewriting of colonial and post colonial history is in order.

The exhibition will run from November to March in Wagga Wagga and from March to June in Albury.

There will be a short discussion on the Sydney market gardens, in particular the Botany one which is heritage listed and is thought to be Australia’s first primary industry site.

Cost: $10 members; $15 non members. Pay at the door.
Bookings: Anna Lee (CAHS treasurer) by email: annalee@workready.com.au; phone: 9519 7436; text 0412 33 43 98

Telling the stories of Chinese–Australian families: Melbourne Chinese Studies Group, April 2010

Monday, 29 March 2010 in Talks by Kate | No comments

Announcing the next Melbourne Chinese Studies Group seminar…

Topic: Three approaches to telling the stories of Chinese–Australian families – a panel of papers from Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria Inc (CAFHOV)
Speakers: Sophie Couchman, Robyn Ansell, Barbara Nichol
Date: Friday, 9 April 2010, 6pm
Admission: $2. All welcome
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets)

The Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria (CAFHOV) is a group of people who gather on the first Saturday of very month to discuss issues related to their research into Chinese–Australian family history. These were the papers presented by members of the group at the Dragon Tails conference held last year in Ballarat.

Sophie Couchman – ‘Remembering Chinatown’: The history behind a self-guided audio tour of Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street
Since the early work of labour historians in the 1970s our knowledge of the history of Chinese in Australia has expanded enormously. The challenge is to bring these understandings to the broader Australian public. This paper explores the difficulties and joys of practically applying current perspectives in Chinese–Australian history to a commercial product aimed at the general public.

Robyn Ansell – The wives of Hin Yung and Ah Whay
The Irish-Chinese connection is illustrated by this transition across one generation – from shame to sobriety, from goldfield survivor to pillar of the community. Creswick and Maryborough are the setting of the story.

Barbara Nichol – Chinese restaurant children: negotiating Australian lives
We love stories of those valiant pioneers who tamed the bush, but what about the people who pioneered the urban landscape? The early post-federation stories of Melbourne’s Chinese restaurant families will be the focus of this paper. ‘Restaurant children’ recognised the importance of fulfilling the obligations of their Chinese heritage, yet at the same time were negotiating their futures as Australians. They tend not to be described as ‘pioneers’, yet in many ways their struggles were just as valiant and the obstacles they negotiated were no less daunting.

Talk followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.

[Wish I could be there, but I'll be a bit occupied elsewhere.]

Discussion on Stan Hunt’s book ‘From Shekki to Sydney’

Friday, 5 February 2010 in Books, Talks by Kate | No comments

I’ve already mentioned Stan Hunt’s book From Shekki to Sydney: An Autobiography. Here’s an opportunity to meet the author, editor and publisher.

What: Discussion on Stan Hunt’s book From Shekki to Sydney: An Autobiography
When: Thursday 11 March, 12:15pm
Where: Customs House Library, Circular Quay (Level 2 Meeting Room), Sydney

Blurb: Join Stan Hunt, Diana Giese as editor and Dr Mabel Lee as publisher, to discuss Stan’s new book, From Shekki to Sydney: An Autobiography. It’s an enthralling account of his family story, including his close relationship with his father, and the arrival of his grandfather in Australia in the late 1880s. The book offers a window into vanished worlds such as the villages of interwar southern China and country New South Wales emerging from the Depression. Stan describes setting up a series of successful family businesses in Sydney, as well as contributing to the community through service to Rotary, the Freemasons, the Chung Shan Society and the Australian Chinese Community Association.

Stan will discuss the book with Diana Giese at a free event at Customs House Library, Circular Quay (Level 2 Meeting Room), from 12.15–1.00pm on Thursday 11 March 2010.

Diana Giese has worked with Chinese Australian communities countrywide to produce the Post-War Chinese Australians project for the National Library of Australia, and have written books in the field including Astronauts, Lost Souls and Dragons (University of Queensland Press) and Beyond Chinatown (National Library of Australia). Diana Giese has collaborated on life story books with people of Polish, Hungarian, Slovakian, German, Austrian and Indian background, as well as Stan.

Dr Mabel Lee set up and runs the independent publisher Wild Peony, showcasing new writing and arts, focusing on Chinese-related themes. She has facilitated the careers of many of the most celebrated Chinese writers, artists and performers, including 2000 Nobel Prize-winner Gao Xingjian, whose work she translates. Her academic research is on modern Chinese intellectual history and literature.

Lowe Kong Meng: China’s first global citizen?

Thursday, 20 November 2008 in History, People, Talks by Kate | No comments

Paul Macgregor will be addressing the Melbourne Chinese Studies Group on the life of Lowe Kong Meng (1831–88):

Date: Friday 5 December 2008, 6pm
Admission: $2, all welcome
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Sts)
Topic: Lowe Kong Meng 1831-1888: China’s first global citizen?
Speaker: Paul Macgregor

Born in Malaya, with a Cantonese father and possibly a Nonya mother; educated in English, French and Italian; trading in: tea and opium from China to Melbourne, beche de mer from Queensland to Hong Kong, sugar from Mauritius, rice from Calcutta to Victoria – Lowe Kong Meng was head of a firm that had branches in Melbourne, Townsville, Mauritius, Hong Kong and London. Awarded the honour of Chinese imperial rank of the blue button (the equivalent of a British knighthood), Lowe Kong Meng was the unofficial consul of the Chinese government in Victoria, but also claimed to be a British subject because of his birth in Penang, a British dependency. His colleagues included those in the highest political and business circles of Melbourne, as well as New York traders and members of the Shanghai American community. All this before 1870. Lowe Kong Meng has a modest place in Australian historiography, yet the scope of his achievements warrants much more. In this paper Paul Macgregor will argue that Lowe took opportunities open to him through the expansion of the British Empire in the Far East and Australasia to become a unique bridge between European & Asian cultures in the 19th century.

Paul Macgregor is an historian who is the convenor of the Melbourne Chinese Studies Group, and was the curator of Melbourne’s Museum of Chinese Australian History from 1990 to 2005. He is the editor of Histories of the Chinese in Australasia and the South Pacific (1995), and joint editor of both Chinese in Oceania (2002) and After the Rush: Regulation, Participation and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860-1940 (2004). He has organised three international conferences on the Chinese diaspora in Australasia, and has curated numerous exhibitions on the history and material heritage of Chinese Australians.

The talk will be followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.