Tag: Sophie Couchman

Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation

This is the paper I presented at the 2018 Australian Historical Association conference, ‘The Scale of History’, held at the Australian National University on 2–6 July 2018. I spoke alongside Sophie Couchman and Emma Bellino in a panel we put together on ‘National belonging and individual lives’:

  • Kate Bagnall: Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation
  • Sophie Couchman: New questions about the enlistment of Chinese Australians during World War I
  • Emma Bellino: ‘Australian girl became an alien’: Reporting married women’s nationality.

Sophie spoke about the disconnect between World War I enlistment regulations and practice in relation to Chinese Australians, while Emma spoke about press reports of marital denaturalisation in Australian newspapers from the 1920s to 1940s.

Abstract

In 1888 the Australian colonies came together to implement uniform laws to restrict Chinese immigration, leading eventually to the enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act after Federation in 1901. Alongside immigration restriction, after 1888 four Australian colonies also prohibited Chinese naturalisation, by law in New South Wales and by policy in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The federal Naturalisation Act of 1903 similarly prohibited Chinese naturalisation. Before these restrictions were introduced, however, thousands of Chinese men in Australia became British subjects through naturalisation, nearly 1000 in New South Wales alone. In this paper I consider the legacies of colonial naturalisation in the lives of Chinese migrants and their families in the 1890s and after Federation, particularly concerning mobility and residency rights. I argue that it is through the stories of individual lives, revealed in the press and in government case files, that we can best understand the ways that naturalised Chinese Australians and their children contested discrimination and asserted their rights as citizens.

Introduction

In early January 1889, the Ah Ket children of Wangaratta, Victoria, were stopped at the border of New South Wales. Fourteen-year-old Matilda, together with her three younger siblings aged thirteen, ten and eight, were travelling to the small town of Gerogery, north of Albury, to visit their married sister Rose. On arriving by train at Albury, however, the Ah Ket children were prevented from crossing the border by the Sub-Collector of Customs. The reason? Because they did not hold naturalisation papers. Confronted by the news that they would not be allowed to continue their journey, Matilda stood her ground, declaring that they had been born and educated at Wangaratta; that they were the children of a Chinese interpreter, Mah Ket; and that as ‘native-born children’ they were free to go anywhere in Australia. The Sub-Collector was unconvinced, and so sent them back home to Victoria by the same train. Their father, and the good people of Wangaratta, were appalled by the Customs officer’s actions. Mah Ket put the matter in the hands of a solicitor, and on 19 January 1889, the Wangaratta correspondent to the Melbourne Leader wrote an impasssioned piece on the family’s behalf:

The children whose liberty is so circumscribed are natives of Wangaratta, very intelligent and Christian; and speak better Queen’s English probably than some of the honorable gentlemen who made the law under which they are treated as aliens. It has been determined that for the peace and prosperity of the colony, Chinese immigration shall be restricted. But here were no aliens, but the most peaceful and defenceless of Australians – of like speech, education, religion and affections.

The Act under which the Sub-Collector of Customs stopped the children was the NSW Chinese Restriction and Regulation Act, passed six months earlier, in June 1888. This Act, and others introduced around the Australasian colonies, were the result of growing concerns over Chinese immigration.

One of the children stopped at the NSW border that summer’s day in 1889, thirteen-year-old William Ah Ket, grew up to be Australia’s first Chinese barrister. Educated at Melbourne University and admitted to the bar in 1903, Ah Ket had a distinguished legal career in which he actively campaigned for the rights of Chinese in Australia. He appeared before the High Court, represented Australian Chinese at the opening of the first Chinese parliament in Peking in 1911, and was Acting Consul for China in Australia in 1913–1914 and 1917. He was also a husband and father to two daughters and two sons.

This paper considers nationality, naturalisation and colonial mobility through the lens of Chinese Australian families like the Ah Kets. Mah Ket, the Ah Ket children’s father, was not naturalised, but this should not have mattered when the children tried to cross into New South Wales. Young Matilda was right – as native-born British subjects, the NSW Chinese Restriction Act should not have applied to them. Yet, the fact that they were turned back illustrates the ambiguity with which immigration restriction laws were applied to native-born and naturalised Chinese British subjects in Australia and New Zealand. The law stated what it stated, but it’s truth also lay in the way that it was interpreted and applied – whether that was at the border, in a bureaucrat’s office, in a magistrate’s court or in the High Court.

Prohibition of Chinese naturalisation formed part of the anti-Chinese policies introduced in four Australian colonies (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia) from the 1880s, and then in the Commonwealth of Australia from 1904 and the Dominion of New Zealand from 1908. Before these prohibitions, however, thousands of Chinese men in Australia and New Zealand became British subjects through naturalisation, nearly 1000 in New South Wales alone. In this paper then I want to think about the legacies of this earlier history of colonial naturalisation in the lives of Chinese settlers and their families in the 1890s and after Federation, particularly concerning mobility and residency rights. I will argue that it is through the stories of individual lives, revealed in the press and in government case files, that we can best understand the ways that naturalised Chinese Australians and their children contested discrimination and asserted their rights as citizens.

Naturalisation and Chinese restriction

The first anti-Chinese legislation was introduced in Australia in 1855 in Victoria, followed by a similar Act in South Australia in 1857. New South Wales then followed suit in 1861. With tonnage restrictions and a poll tax on each Chinese arrival, this legislation was effective in reducing the Chinese population in the colonies, and so, having served its purpose, it was repealed: in South Australia in 1861 (after three years), in Victoria in 1865 (after 10 years) and in New South Wales in 1867 (after 5 years). Between then and 1881, there was no restrictive legislation against Chinese immigration – except in Queensland, which introduced a Chinese Immigration Restriction Act in 1877. In 1881, however, new and more consistent legislation was introduced across the colonies after the 1880–81 intercolonial conferences. This legislation was then tightened following the Intercolonial Conference on the Chinese Question in mid-1888. Laws varied slightly across the seven colonies, but they generally had tonnage restrictions and some a poll tax to limit the number of Chinese migrants. They also included various exemptions, for residents and British subjects.

In New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand, for instance, the 1881 Acts brought in a £10 poll tax on Chinese arriving by sea or by land and a limit of one Chinese to every 100 tons of shipping. The NSW and Victorian Acts exempted British subjects, while in New South Wales and New Zealand, other Chinese residents could also apply for exemption certificates. In 1888, the tonnage limits increased in each of these colonies, and the NSW poll tax leapt to £100, while it was abolished in Victoria. Each colony exempted Chinese naturalised in that colony, while the NSW Act also explicitly exempted British subjects by birth. Significantly, too, the NSW Act prohibited the naturalisation of Chinese. After Federation, the Australian colonial laws were repealed, although not immediately – in New South Wales, for example, the poll tax remained in place until 1903. The new federal Immigration Restriction Act, which came into force from the beginning of 1902, provided exemptions for those who had formerly been domiciled in the Commonwealth or in any colony which had become a state (s 3n). Australian birth and naturalisation certificates could be used as proof of this domicile, although exemption certificates were also issued.

As mentioned, prohibition of Chinese naturalisation also formed part of the anti-Chinese measures introduced in Australia and New Zealand. New South Wales was the only colony that prohibited Chinese naturalisation by law and it did so twice, in 1861 (repealed in 1867) and again in 1888. Three other colonies (Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia) stopped naturalising Chinese after 1888, while Tasmania and Queensland continued until the federal Naturalization Act came into force in 1904. This new Act prohibited naturalisation of ‘aboriginal natives’ of Asia, Africa and the islands of the Pacific, except New Zealand. In New Zealand, Chinese were naturalised until 1907; and it was stopped after the NZ Cabinet decided in February 1908 to decline naturalisation applications of Chinese from them on.

Colonial Chinese naturalisation

The numbers of Chinese who became naturalised in each colony varied greatly, from about 20 in Western Australia up to nearly 3000 in Victoria. In New Zealand there were around 450. As part of my current project, I am compiling databases of Chinese who became naturalised in New South Wales, New Zealand and British Columbia in Canada. If we look at Chinese naturalisations in New South Wales each year from the late 1850s, when the first one took place, to 1888, when Chinese naturalisation was prohibited for the second time, we can see a gap during the 1860s when it was prohibited the first time, and a very obvious peak in the early 1880s. The highest point on that peak is in 1883, when there were 301 naturalisations of Chinese, making up almost a third of the total for the colony. If we think back to what else was happening in the early 1880s, it is clear that this increase was in response to the 1881 NSW Influx of Chinese Restriction Act – which provided exemptions from the £10 poll tax for Chinese naturalised in the colony.

Applicants for naturalisation in New South Wales were asked to state a reason why they sought naturalisation, and most Chinese stated that it was because they wanted to purchase land, or because they had settled in the colony, or something similar. But eight men stated that they sought naturalisation for the rights of ingress and egress. One of these men, Ah Hi, who was naturalised in 1886, stated, for example, that he was ‘desirous of seeing his parents and relatives & returning to this colony where he has an interest in a market garden’. Although there were only a handful of men who explicity stated they sought naturalisation so they could travel across colonial borders, the rapid increase in numbers of naturalisations after the 1881 Act came into force suggests that mobility was a prime motivation.

Other evidence in the archives also shows that Chinese actively used naturalisation to faciliate mobility, for themselves and for their families. There are, for example, Customs statistics that record the numbers of Chinese entering the colonies using naturalisation certificates, reports of individual cases in the newspapers, and Customs and External Affairs / Internal Affairs files that document the travels of Chinese Australians and Chinese New Zealanders. I want now to turn to some of the individual cases of naturalised Chinese and their families – to consider the ways they used their status as British subjects to negotiate anti-Chinese immigration laws, and also to consider the ambiguous nature of the interpretation and application of those laws.

At the borders

So, to return to the Ah Ket children briefly. Under the NSW 1888 Act, any Chinese who produced satisfactory evidence that they were a British subject by birth was to be allowed to enter the colony, yet the Sub-Collector turned the children away for not having naturalisation papers. Would the situation have been different if Matilda, William, Alberta and Ada had produced their Victorian birth certificates, as many Australian-born Chinese did when they returned by sea? Or what if their father was naturalised and they had produced his naturalisation certificate? Would that have been enough proof?

For Chinese Australians, crossing colonial and later national borders was first contingent on being satisfactorily identified, of convincing officials at the border that you were who you said you were. It was then further contingent on bureaucratic and legal interpretations of the law. Each time the law changed, or new regulations were issued, Customs officers at both sea and land borders had to work out how the new policies worked in practice. In her history of the Chinese in Sydney, Shirley Fitzgerald has noted, for example, that in the early 1880s, administering the 1881 Chinese Restriction Act took up much of the Collector of Customs’ time and energy, and he regularly complained to his superiors that he had inadequate staff to deal with incoming and outgoing Chinese (Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors, pp. 28–29).

Each time the law changed, Chinese Australians also had to work out what the new requirements meant, and how they could best negotiate them, whether by lawful or unlawful means. The dramatic increase in Chinese naturalisations after the 1881 Act is an example of this, and so too is the fact that by 1885, the Sydney Collector of Customs believed that there was a solid trade in naturalisation certificates, which were ‘sent to China and sold’. Chinese Australians made use of their rights where and how they could, and pushed back where and how they could, particularly where the law left room for negotiation.

Family mobility

Naturalisation allowed Chinese men themselves to come and go from Australia and New Zealand, but it also facilitated the entry of their wives and children. In 1898, Nicholas Lockyer, the NSW Collector of Customs, told Sydney’s Evening News that two ways that Chinese evaded the poll tax were by ‘the transfer of naturalisation papers’ and by ‘Chinese women passing themselves off as wives of men who have been formally naturalised in New South Wales’. Such suspicions resulted in careful investigations and meticulous recordkeeping, particularly after the turn of the century.

One example is the Ah Lum family of Sydney. Mrs Ah Lum (I’m afraid that I haven’t yet identified the names of some of these wives and children) came out to live with her husband in 1895. He was a storekeeper and had been naturalised in 1882, returning to China to visit a few years later. The Ah Lums’ daughter was born in 1887, after Ah Lum had returned to New South Wales, and she had stayed in China with her grandmother after her mother migrated. In 1899, Ah Lum asked for permission for his daughter to come to live with him and his wife, as his mother had died and the child had no one to care for her. After some investigations by the Customs department’s Chinese inspector, a permit was issued so Ah Lum’s daughter could enter without paying the poll tax.

The Ah Lums’ case was a relatively straightforward one, unlike that of George Lee’s family a few years later. Lee had been naturalised in 1884 and returned to China not long after to be married. In August 1902, he brought his wife and two sons, Quong Foo and Quong Jah, to Sydney. Mrs Lee was admitted without question because she was the wife of a naturalised British subject (and a wife’s nationality followed that of her husband), but officials demanded the £100 poll tax be paid for each son. Lee paid up, under protest, and the Presbyterian Church raised the matter with the Premier and Solicitor-General on his behalf. They were told that Lee was only a British subject while in New South Wales and that as soon as he left, he reverted to Chinese nationality, hence his children were not British subjects by birth or descent. When asked about the matter, Prime Minister Edmund Barton stated it was not of his concern – the payment of the poll tax was a matter for the state of New South Wales to decide, and the family had been allowed in properly under the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act.

Barton could be so dismissive of his responsibility because, at that moment in time, domiciled Chinese men were able to bring in their wives and minor children under section 3 paragraph m of the Immigration Restriction Act. This provision was suspended by proclamation after only 15 months, and repealed in 1905, but during the time it was in force 88 Chinese family members, mainly wives, were allowed to enter Australia permanently. One of these was the wife of Kok Say, managing partner of the Hong Yuen & Co. store in Inverell. In mid 1902, Kok Say wrote to the government requesting a permit for his wife’s entry and stating his credentials – he had been naturalised in 1884 after arriving in the colony of New South Wales nine years earlier. In his words, ‘I have made my home here & have no intention of returning at any time to China’. His request was granted without issue and Mrs Kok Say arrived at Sydney from Hong Kong in November 1902.

After the repeal of section 3 paragraph m in 1905, the entry of Chinese wives and children was solely at the discretion of the Minister for External Affairs, and over the following years we see naturalised Chinese continuing to try to find ways to bring their families to Australia, including through legal challenges in the courts. In New Zealand, naturalised Chinese similarly tested the limits of the law in their efforts to bring out wives and children without having to pay the poll tax, which continued to be applied until 1934, before finally being repealed in 1944.

Conclusion

Although the prohibition of Chinese naturalisation was part of the suite of anti-Chinese measures introduced in the Australasian colonies from the 1860s through into the 20th century, its history is more than one of simple exclusion. It is important to also consider the times when Chinese could be, and were, naturalised, and the ongoing legacies of this in their and their families lives. As British subjects, naturalised Chinese had legal and political rights that they continually asserted, testing and challenging the limits of policy and law. Sometimes they were successful in these challenges, sometimes they weren’t, but when we look closely at their individual cases we can see how their actions both shaped and were shaped by the law. We can also see inconsistencies and ambiguities in the law and in the ways it was administered and applied.

2018 Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour

In January 2018, Sophie Couchman and I hosted our second Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour to Hong Kong and Guangdong. The tour ran for eleven days, from 14 to 24 January 2018, and visited Hong Kong, Jiangmen, Kaiping, Taishan, Xinhui, Zhongshan and Zhuhai.

We were joined on the tour by seventeen guests, from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and the UK – most of whom were descended from early Cantonese migrants to Australia. One of our guests was on the tour for a second time.

Our local tour guide was Stony Xiao from China Adventure Tours, with arrangements and bookings coordinated by Active Travel in Canberra.

For the Chinese characters and Cantonese pronunciation of the names of places we visited on the tour, see this glossary of place names in Chinese (pdf, 1.6MB).

You can find out more and join our mailing list if you’re interested in joining us on a future tour.

The 2018 Chinese Australian Hometown Heritage Tour, with Selia Tan, outside the ancestral halls in Cangdong village, Kaiping

Day 1: Hong Kong 香港

Sunday, 14 January 2018

Accommodation: Charterhouse Hotel, Causeway Bay

Itinerary: arrive in Hong Kong


Day 2: Hong Kong 香港

Monday, 15 January 2018

Accommodation: Charterhouse Hotel, Causeway Bay

Itinerary: morning visit to King Yin Lei mansion and walking tour of Hong Kong Cemetery led by Sophie Couchman; yum cha lunch in Causeway Bay; free afternoon and evening

King Yin Lei, Stubbs Road, Mid-Levels: We started the tour by visiting this magnificent mansion, built by Ballarat herbalist Frank Shum Goon and his wife in 1936. It narrowly escaped demolition in 2007 but was thankfully saved by Hong Kong’s heritage-minded citizens. It is rarely open to the public but we were treated to perfect weather and a magnificent view from the street.
Hong Kong Cemetery, Happy Valley: Sophie led us on a Chinese Australian walking tour of the cemetery – we started at the top and wove our way down to the main gates opposite the Happy Valley racecourse. Among more than 12,000 graves in this beautiful ‘garden cemetery’ are a significant number of Chinese Australians who built lives in Hong Kong after leaving Australia.
Hong Kong Cemetery, Happy Valley: Pauline Rule shared her knowledge about Australian Jane Benson, the wife of Chun Yut, who is buried in the cemetery. One of the exciting aspects of the tour is the knowledge our tour members share with us and each other.

Day 3: Hong Kong 香港 – Jiangmen 江門

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Accommodation: Yucca Hotel, Jiangmen

Itinerary: morning transfer by ferry and bus to Jiangmen; lunch at Yucca Hotel; afternoon visit to Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum; dinner at Wuyi Kitchen, Jiangmen

On the bus from Zhongshan to Jiangmen: Some on the tour were old China hands and others were setting foot on the mainland for the first time. People-watching out the bus window, and lively conversation inside it, quickly became part of the tour.
Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum, Jiangmen: At the entrance of this terrific bilingual museum, where we got an overview of the breadth and significance of overseas Chinese migration from the Sze Yap region.
Wuyi Kitchen, Jiangmen: A taste of what was to come – food and architecture are a big part of the Hometown Heritage Tour!

Day 4: Jiangmen 江門 – Kaiping 開平

Wednesday, 17 January 2018

Accommodation: Pan Tower International Hotel, Kaiping

Itinerary: morning and lunch at the Cangdong Heritage Education Centre, Tangkou, Kaiping, with Dr Selia Tan; afternoon visit to Zili village, Tangkou; dinner at Jiaxiang Seafood Restaurant, Kaiping

Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping: We took advantage of the beautiful weather to explore the village environs with Dr Selia Tan. Selia told us about the uses of local plants, the feng shui of the village and the various shrines placed on the village boundaries.
Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping: It didn’t take long for these local dishes, prepared by the Cangdong village women, to be wolfed down! Kate was particularly happy to be fed such a delicious and diverse range of vegetarian dishes.
Zili village, Tangkou, Kaiping: Taking in the view from the top one of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed mansions in Zili. Built by overseas Chinese in the early 20th century, these mansions and diaolou (defensive towers) blend Chinese and Western architectural styles and building methods.

Day 5: Kaiping 開平

Thursday, 18 January 2018

Accommodation: Pan Tower International Hotel, Kaiping

Itinerary: morning visit and cultural activities in Cangdong village; lunch at Deji Restaurant, Tangkou; afternoon cultural activities and Cantonese opera performance in Cangdong village; own choice for dinner, Kaiping

Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping: We were fortunate to spend two busy days full of food, talks, craft and music at beautiful Cangdong village. Cangdong is the ancestral home of Sydney-born Chinese Australian revolutionary Tse Tsan-tai.
Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping: One of our favourite tour activities is making, and blowing, clay chicken whistles. The art of making this once-popular childhood toy was on the brink of disappearing, but has been revived thanks to the Cangdong project.
Cangdong village, Tangkou, Kaiping: We finished our second day in Cangdong with a Cantonese opera performance under the banyan tree – and Sophie made a new friend!

Day 6: Kaiping 開平 – Taishan 台山

Friday, 19 January 2018

Accommodation: Taishan Gaoye Hotel, Taicheng

Itinerary: accompanied by Dr Selia Tan, morning visit to Fengcai Tang, Dihai, then Majianglong village and Baihe Pier, Baihe; lunch in a local restaurant, Baihe; afternoon tea in Yueshan market, Kaiping, then visit to Qiaotou and Zhaolongli villages, Yueshan; dinner at Qianmanyuan restaurant, Taicheng, Taishan

Fengcai Tang, Dihai, Kaiping: A special treat for our tour was having Selia Tan talk with us about the heritage significance of this magnificent ancestral hall, built by the Yee clan, now on the grounds of a high school. Many Yees from Dihai made their homes in Australia and New Zealand.
Majianglong village, Baihe, Kaiping: UNESCO World Heritage-listed Majianglong village is surrounded bamboo – dense, protective, and beautiful – offering us very different views from those in Zili village. Among the bamboo we even discovered a school with Australian links!
Yueshan town, Kaiping: We might have already eaten a fullsome lunch but that didn’t stop us all enjoying these freshly baked goodies, on sale every afternoon from three o’clock in Yueshan. As well as the ever-popular egg tart, we found pineapple buns made with chunks of real pineapple!

Day 7: Taishan 台山

Saturday, 20 January 2018

Accommodation: Taishan Gaoye Hotel, Taicheng

Itinerary: morning visit to Longtengli in Shandi village and Meijia Dayuan, then to Haikou Pier and Silver Letter Museum, Haikou; lunch in Doushan; afternoon self-guided walking tour of ‘Old Toising’ and own choice for dinner, Taicheng

Meijia Dayuan, Dingjiang, Duanfen, Taishan: We visited the stunning Mei family market square on a Saturday and it was busy and bustling. Like at Yueshan there were plenty of local goodies for sale, except here it’s now on offer for tourists and day-trippers.
Haikou Pier and Silver Letter Museum, Haikou, Taishan: We like to do a bit of exploring on our tours, and this museum had only just opened. There’s lots of great historical material on display, but no English, so Stony provided us with an excellent overview and translated text panels on the run.
Wet market, Nanchang Street, Taicheng: On the tour we have plenty of opportunities to experience everyday life in southern China, such as the shops and markets in the backstreets of Taicheng, the capital of Taishan county.

Day 8: Taishan 台山 – Xinhui 新會 – Zhongshan 中山

Sunday, 21 January 2018

Accommodation: Sheraton Hotel, Zhongshan

Itinerary: yum cha breakfast at Gaoye Hotel, Taicheng; morning visit to Shiquli village, Luokeng, Xinhui; lunch at Yufuzi restaurant on the river at Luokeng; afternoon visit to Xinhui Confucius Temple and Jinniushan Overseas Chinese Cemetery, Xinhui; dinner at Shiqi Lao restaurant, Zhongshan

Shiquli village, Luokeng, Xinhui: One of the special things for Kate on the tour is bringing the group to Shiquli, a village whose Australian connections she has been researching for almost a decade. Since we were there on a Sunday, the village kids weren’t at school and they followed us as we were shown around the village by former village head, Chen Ruihuai, aka ‘Grandpa’ Chan.
Luokeng, Xinhui: We ate lunch overlooking a branch of the Tan River at Luokeng – while not as vital as in the nineteenth century, river culture is still an important part of life in the region.
Shiqi Lao restaurant, Zhongshan: Food as performance art!

Day 9: Zhongshan 中山

Monday, 22 January 2018

Accommodation: Sheraton Hotel, Zhongshan

Itinerary: morning visit to Zhuxiuyuan and Shachong villages, Zhongshan South District; own choice for lunch and afternoon self-guided walking tour of ‘Old Shekki’ along Sun Wen Road, Shiqi, Zhongshan; dinner at Xi Jia restaurant, Sanxi village, Zhongshan East District

Zhuxiuyuan, South District, Zhongshan: The Kwok brothers from Zhuxiuyuan founded the famous Wing On department stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai after business success in Sydney. We saw an expression of their wealth in this house built in their home village, now a suburb of Zhongshan city.
Shiqi, Zhongshan: There are lots of hidden sights down the laneways off Sun Wen Road in Shekki, the old part of Zhongshan city – these women do facial hair removal by ‘threading’.
Sanxi village, East District, Zhongshan: Enjoying a drink at the microbrewery before dinner.

Day 10: Zhongshan 中山 – Zhuhai 珠海

Tuesday, 23 January 2018

Accommodation: Aqueen Hotel, Zhuhai

Itinerary: morning visit to Xiangshan Commercial Culture Museum, Shiqi, then to Museum of the Former Residence of Sun Yat-sen and Zhongshan Folklore Culture Museum, Cuiheng, Zhongshan; lunch at Hi Centre and Zhuhai Opera House, Xiangzhou, Zhuhai; afternoon visit to Meixi Royal Stone Archways, Meixi village, Xiangzhou; dinner at Deyue Fang restaurant, Yeli Island, Xiangzhou

Xiangshan Commerical Culture Museum, Shiqi, Zhongshan: The top floor of this museum tells the story of the four major Shanghai department stores, established by Zhongshan-born Chinese who learnt their skills and raised their capital in Australia – the Mas, Kwoks, Choys and lastly the Lees and Lius.
Museum of the Former Residence of Sun Yat-sen, Cuiheng, Zhongshan: As well as stories about Sun Yat-sen’s childhood in Cuiheng and his later career, this museum contains displays about Zhongshan domestic life and culture.
Meixi Paifang, Meixi village, Xiangzhou, Zhuhai: These ‘paifang’ or archways were presented by the Qing government to Chun Afong, the first Chinese consul in Hawaii, for his benevolence and good works in his hometown. The nearby museum highlights the interesting lives of Chun Afong and his mixed-race Chinese-Hawaiian family.

Day 11: Zhuhai 珠海 – Hong Kong 香港

Wednesday, 24 January 2018

Itinerary: morning walking tour of old Xiangzhou fishing port led by Kate Bagnall and visit to Transient Fishing Culture Exhibition Hall, Xiangzhou, Zhuhai; ferry transfer to Hong Kong

Hong Kong-Macau Transient Fishing Culture Exhibition Hall, Xiangzhou, Zhuhai: We visited this former dragon boat pavilion as part of Kate’s Zhuhai walking tour – as a museum it now tells the history of Old Xiangzhou and the Tanka fishing communities of Zhuhai, Macau and Hong Kong.
Xiangzhou, Zhuhai: We were treated to an aerial display over the Zhuhai Opera House and Xiangzhou fishing port – the port will soon be relocated to make way for a luxury marina.
Jiuzhou Port, Zhuhai: Heading back to Hong Kong by high-speed ferry.

Finally, a big thanks to our 2018 tourers – Megan, Kerry, Pauline, Leanne, Natalie, Susan, Richard, Ann, Sally-Anne, Yvonne, Lyn, Kevin, Sarah, Robbie, Janice, Alice, Dalys – for the things each one of you brought to the tour. It’s a joy and a privilege to be able to share these experiences with you!

Tung Wah Newspaper Index

Over a decade ago one of the most useful tools for Chinese Australian history research was developed as part of the Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation project – an English-language index to two of Australia’s early Chinese-language newspapers, the Tung Wah Times and the Tung Wah News. For someone like me, whose Chinese reading comprehension skills were rudimentary at best, the index meant there was some practical way to find relevant material in the newspapers. Articles I located, for example, provided evidence of Chinese Australian attitudes towards intermarriage between Chinese men and non-Chinese women, something that was difficult to ascertain from other sources.

My best find was an article that related to a story I was told during fieldwork in Taishan in 2003. The story told of how foreign wives of Chinese men would give their husbands doses of poison before they made a return visit to China, a poison that could be reversed only if the man returned overseas to his foreign wife within a particular time for the antidote. My informant stated that this was the cause of the death of his uncle, who had been a laundryman in Cuba in the 1920s and was known to have had a Cuban wife. The article in the Tung Wah News provided a second example of this same story, suggesting that it was an urban myth of sorts among the qiaoxiang villages.

Unfortunately, with time the Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation website, and the Tung Wah index with it, could no longer be maintained and it was archived by La Trobe University. The index lost functionality in this process, meaning that searches no longer worked and only a certain number of items in the index were browsable.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Thanks to the hard work of Sophie Couchman and Tim Sherratt, the Tung Wah Newspaper Index has been redeveloped and a sparkly new version is now up and running. The index can be searched or browsed, as you’d expect. But Tim has also made sure the index includes Linked Open Data and a basic API and has made the code and data available on Github.

Happy hunting, everyone!

Representing lives from the archive of White Australia

Sophie Couchman, Tim Sherratt and I are presenting a session on ‘Representing lives from the archive of White Australia’ at Framing Lives: 8th Biennial Conference of the International Auto/Biography Association on 19 July 2012.

Panel description

This panel offers three approaches to representing the lives of the thousands of men, women and children who were affected by the racially-based immigration policies of late 19th and early 20th-century Australia. To administer the Immigration Restriction Act and its colonial predecessors, government officials implemented an increasingly complex and structured system of tracking and documenting the movements of non-white people as they travelled in and out of the country. This surveillance left an extraordinary body of records containing information about people who, according to the national myth of a ‘White Australia’, were not Australian at all.

The first paper will examine a unique set of almost 300 identification photographs of Chinese Australians taken in Victoria in the late 1890s, considering what these photographs reveal of the lives of their subjects. The second paper will demonstrate how, through a close reading of the records, fragments of biographical information can be built into a portrait of the life of a Chinese woman living in Australia on exemption from 1910 to 1913. The final paper will consider the possibilities of digital history for reconstructing marginalised lives and reflect on the challenges of representing biographical data from the White Australia records in a form that respects its origins and meanings.

Identifying whom?: reading identification photography by Sophie Couchman

In 1900 William Nean posed proudly on his bicycle in full racing attire for the popular photographic company Yeoman & Co. in Bourke Street, Melbourne. He used this photograph as an identification portrait and it is now preserved in the National Archives of Australia amongst 268 other photographic portraits of Chinese resident in Victoria that were created under the administration of the 1890 Chinese Act between 1899 and 1901. The Act aimed to limit and control Chinese immigration in the colony of Victoria and, from the late 1890s, identification portraits of long-term Chinese residents were used as part of documentation to allow them to re-enter Victoria free from the restrictions of the Act.

William Nean’s portrait immediately raises the questions of who he was and why such an unusual photograph was used as an identification portrait. The rest of the paperwork associated with this series of photographs no longer survives—all that remains are annotated identification portraits. This paper will place these photographs in the history of identification photography and, through close readings of them, tease out what can be learnt about the lives of the men, women and children represented in them.

Shifting the lens: uncovering the story of Mrs Poon Gooey by Kate Bagnall

This paper revisits the Poon Gooey deportation case, marking two significant anniversaries. In 1913, it will be a hundred years since Ham Hop, the wife of fruit merchant Poon Gooey, was deported from Australia with their two young daughters. After Ham Hop’s arrival in Australia on a temporary permit in 1910, Poon Gooey—a fluent English-speaker, Christian and member of the Chinese Empire Reform League—mounted a determined campaign to gain permission for her to remain more permanently. The campaign, while ultimately unsuccessful, found widespread support and was an ongoing embarrassment to the federal Labor government.

Fifty years later, historian AT Yarwood wrote on the Poon Gooey case as an example of early problems in the administration of the White Australia Policy. Yarwood based his study on the very substantial Department of External Affairs file, which documents the Poon Gooey story from 1910 to 1913. Greater access to records in the intervening decades, however, means that is now possible to uncover more of the context of Poon Gooey’s actions at this time and, more generally, of the two decades he spent in Australia—evidence that calls into question some of Yarwood’s conclusions about Poon Gooey’s actions and his motivations.

This paper shifts the lens even further, however, to focus on the life of Ham Hop, rather than on that of her husband. Although significant moments in her life—her marriage, periods of physical separation from her husband, travel to Australia, pregnancies, births of her children, medical problems, and finally the deportation of herself and her children—are recorded in the official case files, Ham Hop herself remains silent. Through a close reading of these records and the extensive press coverage of the case, this paper seeks to reveal what can be known of her story and to suggest possibilities for uncovering the lives of women and children who were marginalised and excluded by the White Australia Policy in the early years of the 20th century.

The responsibilities of data: reconstructing lives from the records of the White Australia Policy by Tim Sherratt

The sheer volume of records created by the White Australia Policy is overwhelming. Amidst this vast and disturbing legacy are thousands upon thousands of certificates documenting the movements of non-white residents. These biographical fragments, often including photographs and handprints, are visually and emotionally compelling. We cannot avoid the gaze of those whose lives were monitored, we cannot deny the people behind the policy.

But these records are also a source of data. Increasing numbers of these records have been digitised. As we develop the tools and techniques of digital history, we open up the possibility of extracting this data from the digitised records, of aggregating the biographical fragments, of tracing lives and mapping families. We can tame the overwhelming abundance of records and create a rich, new resource for exploration and analysis.

But how do we avoid imprisoning these newly-liberated lives in yet another system? How do we ensure that the challenging gaze of individuals is not lost in the transformation to data? This paper will look at some of the possibilities for extracting information from these records and reflect on the challenges of representing that data in a form that respects its origins and meanings.