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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.

From Shekki to Sydney: An Autobiography by Stanley Hunt

Saturday, 23 January 2010 in Books, People by Kate | No comments

A new book that might be of interest (via chinatown.com.au):

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries large numbers of Chinese travelled to the USA, Australia and other parts of the world to prospect for gold, or to work as labourers, gardeners and traders, but there are few eyewitness accounts of the lives of these people who predominantly came from South China. Stanley Hunt’s From Shekki to Sydney fills part of that gap in Chinese and Australian social history by documenting his childhood in Shekki, his experiences after relocating to Australia, and the lives of his parents and grandparents. His story will resonate with those of many silent others all over the world.

From Shekki to Sydney by Stanley Hunt

Stanley Hunt was born Chan Pui-Tak in Shekki, Zhongshan county, Guangdong province, China. The Japanese had invaded North China, and were beginning to bomb Shekki and the nearby coastal areas of South China when he, his mother and two younger siblings, left home to join his father in Australia. Reunited in Sydney on 5 April 1939, the small family travelled north to the county town of Warialda where his father ran a general store. Australian troops were fighting in Europe and Asia, the country was still suffering lingering effects of the Great Depression, and his father was on the verge of bankruptcy. On the timely advice of a travelling salesman, his father was able to save himself from financial ruin by negotiating new terms for repaying his accounts.

Through times of rations and quotas, the family value-added to their limited supplies, worked very hard and paid off their debts before relocating to Sydney in early 1945. Stanley and his father acquired businesses and prospered. Stanley is recognised for his significant contributions to social and community work in Australia, and China.

The father worked in Australia and had only returned to Shekki a couple of times during the author’s childhood: father and son were virtual strangers when they were reunited in Australia in 1939. As a twelve-year-old boy he began to work as a man alongside his father, and the development of their relationship contains many poignant moments that underscore the impact of ‘old country’ traditions on a younger generation of Chinese maturing into adults in Australia. The author is a highly observant ‘outsider’ as he grows from boy to man and is transformed into an ‘insider’.

If you are interested in the above abstract, please order your new book: From Shekki to Sydney: An Autobiography by Stanley Hunt, 200 pp. including 42 black & white photographs. Softcover: AUS $37.50.

In Sydney, copies are now available at GLEEBOOKS at 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe NSW 2037, phone (02) 9660 2333, www.gleebooks.com.au.

Alternatively, the book can be ordered through local bookshops.

ISBN: 978 1 876957 15 5
Sydney: Wild Peony, September 2009
International distribution: University of Hawaii Press. www.uhpress.hawaii.edu

Eric Rolls’ ‘Citizens’ translated into Chinese

Saturday, 5 September 2009 in Books by Kate | No comments

Eric Rolls’ history of the Chinese in Australia from 1888, Citizens: Flowers and the Wide Sea, has been translated into Chinese by Zhang Wei, a professor at Shandong University. The translation was launched at the Australian Embassy in Beijing on 4 September. See an article about it in the People’s Daily Online. Makes me think that it really is time someone else wrote a ‘definitive’ history of the Chinese in Australia…

NT History Grants 2009

Monday, 20 July 2009 in Books, History by Kate | No comments

Two Chinese projects are among those that have been awarded Northern Territory History Grants for 2009:

  • Gordon Grimwade of Atherton: $3400 to research Chinese overland migration between the Northern Territory and Queensland, c1870–1910
  • Claire Lowrie of Wollongong: $3000 to research a history of Chinese and Aboriginal male servants in Darwin, 1870s–1930s

PM’s Prize for History 2008

Thursday, 9 July 2009 in Books by Kate | No comments

John Fitzgerald’s Big White Lie has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize for History for 2008.

First prize was jointly won by Tom Griffiths’ Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica, along with Robert Kenny for The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World.

See the announcement on the ALP website.

Ouyang Yu’s ‘Chinese in Australian Fiction’

Thursday, 7 May 2009 in Books by Kate | No comments

It looks like Ouyang Yu’s work on literary representations of Chinese in Australian writing has made it into book form. Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988 is published by Cambria Press, but unfortunately for what seems an awful lot of money. The Cambria Press website lists it at $139.95 / £82.95. Ouch. More information is available on their website.

Transnational ties

Tuesday, 23 December 2008 in Books, China, People, Photographs by Kate | No comments

An article of mine has just come out in a new volume called Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World, edited by Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott and published by ANU E Press. The book is the result of a great conference, Transnational lives/Biography across borders, that was held at the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU in July 2006.

My article, ‘A journey of love: Agnes Breuer’s sojourn in 1930s China’ explores a ’scandal’ involving a young white Queensland woman, Agnes Breuer, who went to China with her Chinese husband in the early 1930s. (Their picture, together with their baby son, is featured on the front cover of the book.)

The couple had married contrary to the wishes of both their families, and Agnes found a very cold reception from her father-in-law on her arrival in China. Wishing to return to Australia, but with an infant son to look after, Agnes’ plight was exaggerated to the Salvation Army in Hong Kong – and she was ‘rescued’ under dramatic circumstances.

I first came across the story in John Sleeman’s White China, but he doesn’t mention Agnes Breuer’s name, or that of her husband, except as ‘Low Mun’. It took a bit of lateral thinking and a ship’s passenger list to find the family’s real name – Lum Mow. Sleeman had referred to a statement given by Agnes to Australian Customs officers when she returned to Australia, so I figured that there had to be some material in the National Archives about it all. More lateral thinking uncovered a file about her husband, known to most in Australia as William Lum Mow – but the file was listed under his Chinese name, Lum Wie. It was one of those lovely fat departmental files that contains correspondence and news clippings and all sorts of treasures.

More pieces of the puzzle fell into place when I managed to track down both Agnes Breuer’s granddaughter and William Lum Mow’s neice, who had themselves only recently made contact. Much thanks therefore has to go to Liz McNamee and Jenny Showyin for their generosity in sharing what they knew about the story of Agnes and William. Of particular value to me were the photographs, letters and other documents of Agnes Breuer’s that her granddaughter still had. The photographs are particularly wonderful, with a handful of pictures taken in China in 1932 during Agnes’ trip and many more of Agnes and William and their friends in and around Townsville in 1931. A detail from one of my favourites of Agnes and William is below.

Sydney Chinese community archiving workshop

Thursday, 4 December 2008 in Archives, Books, History, People by Kate | No comments

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of hosting an archiving workshop for Chinese community organisations at the Marigold Restaurant in Sydney’s Chinatown. The workshop had been funded by a federal government Community Heritage Grant from 2006 and was one of the many visions of the late Henry Chan (of the Chinese Australian Historical Society). Henry’s untimely death earlier in the year had meant the workshop hadn’t taken place as originally planned and it was good to finally see it finally happen. Sigrid McCausland, education officer with the Australian Society of Archivists, presented the workshop.

In attendance were members of about 8 different Chinese community organisations, and a few ring-ins, totalling 20 in all. The organisations included the Chinese Women’s Assocation, the Sze Yup Temple Trust, the Sze Yup Society, Goon Yee Tong, Chinese Community Council of Australia, Chinese Australian Forum, Chinese Heritage Association of Australia, Chinese Historical Association of Queensland and the Chinese Australian Historical Society. They were a jolly bunch, with lots of wit and banter coming from the floor. Tony Pun, from the Chinese Community Council, amazed us with talk of his shed, biscuit tins and how archives really should be kept on the moon.

More seriously, Sigrid’s presentation led us through some of the issues facing community organisations in terms of their current recordkeeping practices, as well as what to do with more historical records. She talked about what archives are, and why we should keep them; how to go about starting off an archive – developing policies and so on; how to record information about the archives; and finally how to look after them in terms of storage and preservation. It seemed that a real issue facing community organisations was having one central place where organisation records would be kept – there were lots of examples of how people would horde the records of their particular projects, or would keep records in their own homes because they didn’t trust what others might do with them.

We referred to the National Archives’ booklet Keep it for the future!, which gives a basic overview of managing archives and is specially targetted to community organisations. The Australian Society of Archivist’s book Keeping Archives is the Australian archival bible and provides much more detailed information.

We finished the day with a visit to the Chinese Nationalist Party of Australasia (KMT) in Ultimo Road, Chinatown. The KMT were very generous in allowing us to have a tour of their wonderful building, opened in 1921, and to see the work that they had done as a result of Community Heritage Grants of their own. The grants allowed them to commission a significance assessment and preservation needs report (done by Mei-fen Kuo, Henry Chan and John Fitzgerald), and then to purchase archival storage and environmental control equipment. Mei-fen’s recent PhD thesis makes use of some of their material.

The ground floor of the building is occupied by a Chinese medicine shop. The KMT offices are on the first floor, the hall where our group photo was taken is on the second floor, and then up again are rooms in which there are exhibits of historical KMT material. There are many interesting things – printing presses, publications, flags, a sign from the former Chinese consulate in Perth and lots of framed photographs on the walls. One of the things that fascinated me about the photographs was the number of images of dinners and social occasions which showed that these gatherings were also attended by people who looked distinctly un-Chinese, particularly women. Bang goes another misconception!

Early president of the KMT, Yee Wing (whose name is featured on the plaque next to the doorway of the KMT building), did, after all, have a white Australian wife and a gaggle of Australian children!

You can see more photos of the workshop and the KMT visit in my Flickr site. Just follow the link.

3 new publications from Victoria

Friday, 14 November 2008 in Books, People by Kate | No comments

The latest issue of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria’s newsletter (History News, Issue 278) includes info on three new Chinese-related publications. Details are copied below.

George Ah Ling, Donald’s Friend

Donald History and Natural History Group of the Music, Literature and Art Society Inc., Box 111, Donald, 3840, 2008, pp. iv + 40. ISBN 1 876978 36 8

From the 1920s, George Ah Ling was a much-loved market gardener living alone in Donald. He died in 1987 and this book celebrates his life by publishing the recollections of those who knew him as well as some photos of George at work in his garden and with his horse and cart.

The Chinawoman by Ken Oldis

Arcadia with State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 261, $34-95. ISBN 978 1 74097 164 5

The murder of an English prostitute in Melbourne on 1 December 1856, the subsequent investigation, trial and conviction and hanging of two Chinese for her murder, and the flaws in the justice system that were revealed, are all fully examined in a most engaging and analytical narrative. The case involved both Redmond Barry as judge and Charles Hope Nicolson as detective, and is significant in the anti-Chinese hysteria of the late 1850s. Very well-documented but regrettably and surprisingly, no index.

Chinese in Echuca-Moama, a chronicle 1850s-1930 by Carol Holsworth

…an interesting collection of stories and reports about the early settlement and the involvement of the Chinese community in this exciting riverboat town.