thoughts on the history and heritage of Chinese Australia
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Read about former journalist Lincoln Kaye’s efforts to find out about the Weaverville (CA) Louies:
http://anewscafe.com/author/lincoln-kaye/
He’s writing it in episodes, and so far there’s an interesting look at researching at NARA (US National Archives) and at the US consular unit in Hong Kong.
The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas, has a great collection of online maps of China, both current and historical.
One of the real treasures is the China – Topographic Maps [Scale 1:250,000] (China Series) U.S. Army Map Service, Series L500, dating from 1954. Using a map of the whole of China as a guide, you can click to bring up very detailed maps of particular regions. Place names are given in modified Wade-Giles with some Chinese characters (and it’s kinda fun spotting familiar places – a detail map of Macau, for instance, points past the Portas do Cerco to ‘Chi-Ta 5 km’, which would be Jida, now a bustling and ever-growing part of Zhuhai city).
The Chung Shan map (NF-49/8 on the big plan, and warning, it’s a big file: 6.4mb), shows the western part of the Pearl River Delta, from Kaiping in the west to the border with Hong Kong in the east, from Panyu in the north to Macau in the south. You can see the level of detail provided on the map below.
The maps that are likely to be useful for those interested in Chinese Australian history are the following:
The other very cool thing about these maps is that they correspond to the map references in the Chinese Villages Database. So, for instance, the villages database gives the map reference ‘GQ 4394′ for Shek Kay Chun in Chung Shan (Shiqi in Zhongshan). This means you have to look for the area marked as GQ, find line no. 4 and go in 3/10 of the way to line no. 5, then find line 9 and go 4/10 of the way to line no. 0. A somewhat daggy illustration of how to do this is below (click on the image to get the full-size version). There you can see, circled in blue is Shekki.
You can read ‘A legacy of White Australia’, the paper I gave at the Fourth International Conference of Institutes & Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies in Guangzhou in May, which has been published on the National Archives of Australia website.
A large part of the paper is about the Poon Gooey deportation case from 1910–13. The photo of the family below was published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 May 1913, shortly before the famiily left Australia. The newspaper article was clipped and placed on the wonderfully rich Department of External Affairs file about the case (NAA: A1, 1913/9139).
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.
![NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (CANTON) AND VICINITY [verso]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china/txu-oclc-10552568-nf49-4-back.jpg){kind=link}
![NF 49-8 MACAU AND VICINITY [verso]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china/txu-oclc-10552568-nf49-8-back.jpg){kind=link}
![NF 50-5 VICTORIA AND KOWLOON AND VICINITY [verso]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china/txu-oclc-10552568-nf50-5-back.jpg){kind=link}