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‘Chinese through the Americas’: a beginning to the 5th WCILCOS conference

Thursday, 17 May 2012 in Conferences, History, Talks by Kate | No comments

I’m writing from the beautiful campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where tonight I’ve been to the opening dinner of the 5th International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies. Henry Yu from the Department of History at UBC gave a really good keynote address (more on that in a minute) and we had great view – all rhododendrons and sea and sunset and distant snowy mountains. Being here in Vancouver is a bit like being in a slightly odd version of home – the mountains are pointier and snowier, the cars are on the wrong side of the street, the newspapers are a funny shape and ‘veggie burgers’ don’t seem to be vegetarian … but a lot of the ads on TV are the same, people are friendly and helpful and the Queen is still on the money. Perhaps Vancouver’s apparent familiarity is really a reflection of the fact that, over the past decade, my only foreign destination has been Guangdong, and Guangdong, and Guangdong again and again.

I spent some time this afternoon wandering in the UBC bookshop and was impressed that in the four shelves on Canadian history, there were seven books that specifically discussed Chinese Canadian history. I bought one of them – Colonial Proximities: Crossracial Encounters and Juridical Truths in British Columbia, 1871–1921 by Renisa Mawani, which looks at crossracial encounters particularly between aboriginal peoples and the Chinese. I will be interested to see if it mentions intimate relationships between Chinese men and white women at all; there seems to be quite a lot of interest in relationships between First Nations women and Chinese men, including a couple of sessions at the conference, but I haven’t yet heard any discussion of Anglo-Chinese relationships.

In Henry Yu’s talk tonight – titled ‘ The rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific and the making of nations’ – he set out to do two main things: introduce the major themes of the ‘Chinese through the Americas’ conference and tell us something of the $1.2 million ‘Chinese Canadian Stories’ project he has been leading. Henry used the term ‘Cantonese Pacific’ to talk about the ways in which Chinese in BC (and Canada more generally) were part of a network of nodes that stretched out from Hong Kong, including Sydney, Yokohama, Vancouver, San Francisco, Mexico and Hawaii, and of how this network was made up of people from a particular cultural and linguistic background. This was not a ‘Chinese’ world, but a ‘Cantonese’ one, with migrants coming from about eight different counties in the Pearl River Delta.

Henry spoke of how we need to try to understand the history of the Chinese in settler nations around the Pacific from their perspective, with an understanding of their terms of reference and their imaginaries. As an example, he discussed the idea of ‘gum saan’ (gold mountain). Each new Pacific settler society, as a destination for migrating Chinese, was called ‘gum saan’ – not because Chinese migrants didn’t have proper names for these places, but because ‘gum saan’ was naming a dream and a set of aspirations for life; it was not really the name of a place but that of a geographic imaginary where dreams of wealth, prosperity and a successful return home could be realised. Henry also discussed the importance of understanding the linguistic background of these early Chinese migrants – their letters make no sense and their poems don’t rhyme if you read them in Mandarin. An important part of the Chinese Canadian Stories project has been to draw on community knowledge to help with particular activities where dialect language skills are essential, such as making connections between the places of origin (or sending villages, as Henry called them) that are given in the head tax records with their proper Chinese names and locations.

Henry said a lot more about the Chinese Canadian Stories project and showed us some of the nifty visualisations they’ve developed from the head tax record data (they’ve got info on 97,123 individuals). Good stuff. I’m looking forward to hearing more about it in the following days.

‘That famous fighting family’

Saturday, 24 March 2012 in History, Invisible Australians, People, Photographs by Kate | No comments

A little article of mine* appears in issue 9 of Inside History magazine (March–April 2012). The article discusses the experiences of Chinese Australians during World War I through the experiences of the Sam family from West Wyalong, New South Wales.

I first came across the Sam family in the file of youngest son, Percy, who travelled with his father to China in 1915. It was noted in their applications for exemption from the Dictation Test that a number of Percy’s brothers were serving in the First AIF – they were, in fact, at Gallipoli. It seemed such an irony that at the same time as his brothers were fighting for their country overseas, Percy was made to comply with the regulations of the Immigration Restriction Act, something that suggested he was less than a true Australian.

The way that Chinese Australians were treated during World War I was full of contradictions. Some young men were able to enlist, others weren’t. I don’t mention it in the article, but Chinese nationals were required to register as aliens during wartime (and afterwards) – so there were also cases of Chinese fathers having to report to the police to register as aliens while their Australian-born sons were away fighting for country and empire.

Unfortunately, I can’t provide a link to an online copy of the article, so if you’re interested you might just have to go and buy a copy of the magazine.

* Kate Bagnall, ‘That famous fighting family’, Inside History, issue 9, March–April 2012, pp. 37–40.

Two Lower George Street babies, 1861

Monday, 20 February 2012 in History, People by Kate | No comments

Early Christmas presents in the Chen Ateak and Leau Appa families in 1861. I wonder if Mrs Chen Ateak and Mrs Leau Appa were friends? From the Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1861.

[Actually, there's an interesting story to tell about Mrs Leau Appa... but that will have to wait for another day, or perhaps another year!]

Ah Yin family of Adelong, c.1897

Friday, 3 February 2012 in History, Invisible Australians, People, Photographs by Kate | 1 comment

Every time I poke around in series NAA: SP42/1, I find something new and interesting that I hadn’t noticed before.

Today’s find is a photograph of the family of Ah Yin (or Ah Yen), who was a storekeeper at Adelong in southern New South Wales, and his wife, Ah Hoo (or Ah How). The family, with six children, left for China in 1897.

The file NAA: SP42/1, C1916/7308 PART 1 relates to a request for one of the Ah Yin daughters, Sarah (b. 1890), to be permitted to return to Australia in 1910.

More on Sarah Ah Yen’s return to Australia from the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 1915.

Chinese New Year in Sydney – 150 years of history

Saturday, 21 January 2012 in History, Traditions by Kate | No comments

Chinese New Year has been celebrated in Australia for over 150 years—since the first festivities were held in the late 1850s. The first newspaper reference I can find about Chinese New Year being celebrated in Sydney is from 1862, when the Sydney Morning Herald noted that:

The coming in of the Chinese new year was duly celebrated on Wednesday week by the Chinese shopkeepers of Sydney with ceremonies peculiar to themselves, winding up with an ample supper (SMH, 8 February 1862).

The details were republished in the Queanbeyan Age:

The Chinese New Year.—On Wednesday last, says the Sydney Herald, all the Chinese shopkeepers in Sydney closed their establishments, and refused to serve customers. Upon inquiry, it was discovered that, according to the Chinese reckoning, the old year closed with Wednesday, and that the event was being celebrated in the usual Chinese fashion. In the evening a pig was killed and its head having been dressed, it was adorned with flowers and placed in a conspicuous place in one of the Chinese houses, where each Chinaman in turn bowed down before it, apparently performing some act of religious homage. The floor of each of the apartments in the house was extensively lighted with candles in bottles, and after the religious ceremonial was over, the company adjourned to partake of a sumptuous supper, consisting of an abundance of poultry. The body of the pig was also served up and eaten. Musical performances in the Chinese style followed, and were kept up till daylight in the new year (Queanbeyan Age and General Advertiser, 13 February 1862).

Here are a few other articles about Sydney’s Chinese New Year celebrations over the following decades:

Kung hei faat choi! Xin nian kuai le!

William Chie, fruitgrower, of Carlingford

Tuesday, 29 November 2011 in History, People by Kate | No comments

This guest post by Carlene Bagnall tells the story of William Chie, an Anglo-Chinese fruitgrower and poultry farmer from the Carlingford–Epping area in Sydney. Carlene came upon William Chie’s story while researching the history of the Epping Seventh-day Adventist Church.

William Chie lived at Carlingford, a suburb to the northwest of Sydney, in an area of gently undulating hills covered in fruit trees, the scattered orchards serviced by dirt roads. Here for many years he kept a poultry farm and had a productive orchard in which he grew fine apricots. The majority of his neighbours also had orchards and kept poultry. Not far from his home on Pennant Parade, on the corner of the main road linking Carlingford and Epping, was a small wooden church belonging to a small company of Seventh-day Adventists. Beyond the orchards were tall forests where timber was logged and in wet weather the muddy roads were churned up by the hooves of the horses pulling the logs to the saw mills. (See a picture of Carlingford Road, Epping around the time William Chie lived there.)

William Chie was the son of John Chi, a dairy farmer at Avondale, near Wollongong, and his wife Margaret. John Chi was from Amoy and arrived in Australia in 1852 — one of four Amoy Chinese men brought out to work on rural properties at Dapto owned by Henry Osborne, a prominent local landholder and member of the Legislative Assembly for East Camden. John Chi married Margaret Miller at Wollongong in 1859 and they had seven sons – John, William, Francis, George, Charles, Jem (James) and David – and one daughter, Eliza. Of these children, John died as a child in 1866. Margaret Chi died in 1896 and her husband John in 1908.

In 1883, William himself married Mary Jane, the daughter of a Wollongong farmer William Miller and his wife Mary née Noble. Some time in the 1880s they moved to the Carlingford area. William Chie is listed in the NSW Census as living in 1891 at Ray Road and in 1901 at Pennant Parade, with his household comprising one male and one female – he was not identified in the Census as being half-Chinese. William and Mary Jane were married for 42 years and had two sons, both of whom predeceased their parents. Mary Jane Chie died on 11 January 1927 at the home of her niece, Ivy Molloy, at 138 Campbell Street, Sydney, aged 65 years.

Some time soon after the turn of the century, William Chie became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church at Epping and remained a faithful believer until his death. The first church building was completed in January 1902 and a week-long Adventist mission held at Carlingford in June that year. Over the years, William would have seen the destruction by fire of the little Adventist church on the evening on 23 June 1914, when it was set alight by a rejected suitor of the bride on the eve of her wedding to another man. He would have participated in plans to build a new church closer to the railway station at Epping, on a block of land donated by Annie Mobbs and her son, Lewis, from a subdivision of their orchard earlier that year. He would even possibly have been among the men of the church who helped to build the new building, which was begun and almost completed on Australia Day, 1915.

Later, William Chie bought a block of land on Carlingford Road, part of the Nevertire Estate, which was also subdivided from the orchard of Annie and Lewis Mobbs in 1914. William built a house which he named ‘Avondale’, near to Annie Mobbs’ home ‘Nevertire’, between Ryde Road and Midson Road. A description of ‘Avondale’ from a sale notice in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1927 stated:

4 minutes from ‘Bus, 2 Minutes from Public School.

“AVONDALE,” CARLINGFORD ROAD, between MIDSON ROAD and RYDE STREET.

DOUBLE-FRONTED WEATHERBOARD COTTAGE, on brick foundation, having iron roof and containing four rooms, kitchen, bathroom. Detached is laundry, car entrance at side, verandahs front, side, and rear. Fowl houses and run. TORRENS TITLE. Land, 120 feet by a depth of 145 feet 4 inches.

The Epping Seventh-day Adventist Church had good reason to remember William Chie with affection. The church building carried a debt which, according to an account from the 1960s:

was finally cleared in 1922 [sic] by a sum of £100 left in bequest to the church by a Mr Chee, a Chinese fruit agent in Sydney.

William Chie’s will, which was written on 26 October 1924 and stated he was a fruit agent, left a life interest in his estate, valued at £1276/12/5, to his wife Mary Jane and named as his executors George Chie of Woodside Avenue, Strathfield, and Edward Keeler of Pennant Parade, Carlingford.

Mary Jane could use any of the furniture ‘for her own comfort’ and was ‘at liberty to occupy the cottage rent free and undisturbed should she elect to do so’. After her death and the bequest of £100 ‘free of legacy duty’ to the church, his estate was to be divided into one-eighth shares to his brother Frank Chie, his sister Eliza Chie, his nephew Frank Chie, his niece Stella Chie, his niece Maletta Chie, and the last one-eighth share was to Helen Elizabeth Hawkins of Pennant Parade, Carlingford. Witnesses to the will were Alice and Ernest Hawkins of Pennant Parade.

This obituary appeared in the Australasian Record, a weekly publication of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, written by E.G. Whittaker:

William Chie, aged sixty-three, died at his residence, Carlingford Road, Epping, on Sunday, September 13, 1925. Brother Chie was one of the pioneer members of the Epping church, having been associated with the message for about twenty years. His health had been somewhat indifferent for some time. He leaves a wife to mourn her loss. We laid him to rest in the Carlingford Cemetery. In the service conducted at his house, his favourite hymn was sung; ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh! What a foretaste of glory divine.’

Sources

Australasian Record, vol. 29, no. 41, 12 October 1925, http://www.adventistarchives.org/docs/AAR/AAR19251012-V29-41__B.pdf
Carlene Bagnall, ‘Epping Church 1902 to 1940’, Epping Seventh-day Adventist Church website, http://www.eppingsda.org.au/sites/default/files/u2/Epping%20Church%201902%20to%201940.pdf
Kate Bagnall, Golden Shadows on a White Land, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2006, p. 145
Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate, October 1898
Last will and testament of William Chie, late of Epping, fruit agent – NSW probate no. 134087, 16 November 1925
NSW birth certificates – 14049/1860, 14994/1862, 15032/1863, 16587/1864, 17089/1865, 17904/1867, 19804/1869, 19504/1871
NSW death certificate – 1927/52
NSW Census Collectors Books for 1891 and 1901
Sands Directory, 1924, p. 284
Souvenir programme: Official opening of the Epping Seventh Day Adventist Church, 17–18 June 1961
Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1902
Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1902
Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 1927
Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 12 November 1898

Recent research in Cantonese Chinese history in New Zealand

Friday, 11 November 2011 in History by Kate | No comments

An extra special Melbourne Chinese Studies Group seminar in November to coincide with Dragon Tails 2011.

Date: Monday, 14 November 2011

Time: 6pm

Admission: $2

Venue: Hayden Raysmith Room, 4th Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Sts)

Topic: Recent Research in Cantonese Chinese History in New Zealand

Speaker: James Ng, Dunedin

This talk recounts categories of recent or impending publications and film on the New Zealand Cantonese, with many of the works assisted by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Fund. They have a broad range of subjects, and exemplify how one significant work acts as a springboard for another. Presently the works have reached a volume and depth amply sufficient to support the Cantonese as a longstanding ethnic minority of value which arrived early in goldfield times and have a rightful place in New Zealand. However, one cannot say that the Cantonese story has been comprehensively told, particularly as to how they lived in China and early New Zealand. Also poorly told is their thinking as sojourners and when they changed from sojournism to settlement in New Zealand. Until these aspects are clarified, effectiveness in their purpose and as a people cannot be fully ascertained. This will require more writings on and by them, especially of a biographical nature.

James Ng of Cantonese origin is a retired family doctor from Dunedin in Otago, New Zealand. Between 1993–1998 while still working in his practice he published the 4 volume Windows on a Chinese Past, which recorded Cantonese history in New Zealand. The late Henry Chan told the story of his hitchhiking in inland Otago in 1960 and being picked up by Jim who was searching out Chinese ruins and graves on his honeymoon! Jim is credited with publicising the recognition of the Chinese role in southern New Zealand. To commemorate the importance of the early Chinese, he initiated the building of Dunedin’s acclaimed Chinese Garden which was completed in 2008. In 2005–2010 Jim was appointed the founding Chairman of the Government-funded Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Fund which aims to encourage Cantonese language, literature, history and heritage. From this perspective he will present an overview of recent research in New Zealand-Cantonese history and general literature.

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

‘Birth of a Chinese in the colony’, 1865

Friday, 4 November 2011 in Can you help?, History, People by Kate | No comments

In July 1865, the Maitland Mercury carried an article announcing the birth of the second Chinese baby in the colony of New South Wales – a little boy named Henry Sydney Ah Foo – or, as recorded in the NSW BDMs index – Ah Cong, son of Sam Ah Foo and Ah Fie (15489/1865):

Some days ago Mrs. Ah Foo, wife of Mr. Ah Foo, storekeeper, of Nundle, to the delight of her husband and every other celestial on the Peel river, presented the former with an unmistakable pledge of love in the shape of a fine healthy son, no half and half affair, but a thorough Mongolian. We are given to understand that this is the second birth in this colony where both parents were Chinese, and is, consequently, well worth mentioning. The Chinese in the neighbourhood have taken the matter up, and elated with joy, have made a present to the parents of £150. On Sunday last, the Rev Mr. Whitfield of Tamworth performed the interesting ceremony of christening the child, which was witnessed by a large number of Chinamen. The youngster’s name is Henry Sydney. Mrs. Ah Foo is said to be an interesting woman.

The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 18 July 1865

I’ve recently started working on a project that has its roots back more than ten years. As part of my PhD research, I started compiling a database of marriages between Chinese men and non-Chinese women in 19th-century New South Wales. A version of it ended up as an appendix to my thesis, but since a lot of time went into the original data-gathering (thanks Mum!) I thought that perhaps this data should now take on a new and exciting life.

I’m therefore extending my original database to include any ‘Chinese’ marriage or birth registered in New South Wales up to 1918 – that is, where either husband or wife, father or mother, were Chinese or part-Chinese. I’m initially working from the published NSW BDM indexes (hence the 1918 cut-off), but I’ll then add information from my piles and piles of other research notes and also hopefully crowdsource further data to fill out the scant details provided by the index. So far I’ve worked through maybe a tenth of the material I have, and I’ve already got over 1000 entries in the database.

You can read more about the database project, Threads of Kinship – and there’s a prize for guessing the origins of the project name and why I chose it.

Seeing the women and children

Tuesday, 27 September 2011 in Archives, History, Invisible Australians, Photographs by Kate | No comments

I’ve been thinking further about the possibilities of Tim’s wall of faces as a finding aid, as something to help both locate archival documents and to understand their context.

The series we used in our test (ST84/1) was one in which we knew there was a very high percentage of photographs. Each item contains ten certificates, most of which have both a front and profile portrait attached. There is a small amount of other paperwork included in some files, but not a whole lot. We therefore knew what sorts of things we were going to get back.

But what about if we apply the same facial detection technology to a series in which we aren’t so sure of the photographic content? Unfortunately, Tim’s current laptop isn’t up to the task of doing all the grunt work (donations, anyone?), but here’s what I reckon might happen when we are able to move on to other series.

With series like SP42/1 and B13, which hold applications for CEDTs and similar records, I know that there are photographs in many, even most, of the personal case files. (B13 is complicated because it also contains other Customs files that don’t relate to individuals and don’t relate to the administration of the Immigration Restriction Act.) Because files might hold applications for a family, or a parent and child/ren, or an uncle and nephew, or siblings, you don’t always know from the item title exactly who the file relates to. Also, those who were Australian born did not necessarily apply for CEDTs since they could travel using their birth certificates as proof of their right to return, meaning that they don’t appear in CEDT series like ST84/1.

It was usual practice, though, to supply photographs of each person who was travelling (whether on a CEDT or not), and so by extracting those photographs, you would be able to have a better impression about who files related to. Of course, for files that are digitised (or even not) you could go through each one individually (which I’ve done, believe me…), but think how much more fun it would be to scroll through a wall of beautiful faces!

With B13 it would also be useful because there is no separate series of CEDTs; they are mixed in with the application/case files. Facial detection could be a way of extracting the forms themselves from the larger files.

My main research interest is in families, and women, and children – and we know that women are often hidden in archives because of bureaucratic systems which gave priority to the men in their lives. Although there are many White Australia records which relate to individual women and children, they can be lost in files organised and catalogued under the names of husbands and fathers. But scroll through a wall of mostly male faces, and the women and children just leap out at you!

I’m feeling a bit impatient, really, about running SP42/1 and B13 through Tim’s facial detection script. There are so many, so very interesting possibilities.

(Fewer than) six degrees of separation: James Minahan and William Ah Ket

Wednesday, 14 September 2011 in History, People by Kate | 1 comment

I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Sydney, and come from very good, solid Adventist stock. My paternal grandmother’s family were among the earliest Adventists in Australia, and my father’s uncle, Arthur Shannon, was behind the company that eventually sold its best-selling product Weet-Bix to Sanitarium. Both my maternal grandparents worked, as doctor and nurse, at the Adventist hospital in Wahroonga, and a wing of that same hospital was named after my Shannon relatives. I went to the Adventist school next to the hospital and, as a child, it seemed that everyone we knew was related or connected – somehow – to everyone else. Much like a country town, I guess. Or like the early Chinese Australian community.

Recently I’ve been looking again at James Minahan, the Anglo-Chinese man whose case went to the High Court in 1908, and thinking about connections between the players in his story. James Minahan left Australia as a young boy, and returned twenty-five years later. Although he could remember little of his Australian childhood – he no longer spoke English, nor could he remember his Australian mother – he was returning to a community that both expected his return and looked after him when he found himself in legal difficulties.

Legal representation was found for him after he was arrested in Sydney and, at the High Court hearings, he was represented by Frank Gavan Duffy KC and William Ah Ket. Frank Gavan Duffy was the outstanding KC who, five years later, would join the ranks of the High Court, later becoming Chief Justice. William Ah Ket was Australia’s first Chinese Australian lawyer and, later, acting consul-general for China in Australia. I haven’t yet established who exactly it was that organised James Minahan’s legal representation; the Chinese consulate began its operations the following year.

I hadn’t imagined that there was any real connection between James Minahan and William Ah Ket. Although born in the same year to families that lived no more that 50 kilometres from each other in rural Victoria, James and William’s childhoods had taken them in very different directions. James grew up in his father’s ancestral village in Xinhui, attending the local village school and failing three times to pass the gruelling imperial examinations; William was educated at Wangaratta High School and at home by a Chinese tutor, and studied law at the University of Melbourne.

But, curiously, the lives of James Minahan and William Ah Ket were connected through a web of kinship and intermarriage:

James Minahan was related to Chin Kee (they both were Chens of Shiquli village in Xinhui)
Chin Kee married Ethel Hun Gip
Ethel Hun Gip’s cousin was William Hoyling (their mothers were sisters, Isabella and Emma)
William Hoyling married Ruby Yon
Ruby Yon was the niece of barrister William Ah Ket (her mother was William’s sister Margaret)

Did you get that? Here’s a diagram:

I’m not sure that it means anything particularly significant, except that it demonstrates the family ties that existed among early Chinese Australian families, and it’s kinda cool.

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