Chinese Australian History by Chidestudy Press

How did a colourful scene of Sydney harbour from around 1820 find itself depicted on a large punchbowl - the so-called Canton Punchbowl - that was manufactured in the Chinese port city of Canton (Guangzhou 廣州)? This gilded punchbowl was one of many China-made products produced specifically for export to Europe and represents the growing establishment of European-China trade centred on Canton but very much including the Colony of NSW in the years before the Opium Wars and the establishment of Hong Kong. The use of an engraving of the small British colony at Port Jackson – only established a generation previously – highlights the strong link with China that existed from the beginning of this British colony long before its gold rushes of a subsequent generation. The implications of this often forgotten China connection is discussed in detail. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/  

It is impossible to understand Chinese Australian history without also understand the qiaoxiang - the home districts. The various small countries or districts in the Pearl River Delta with which people identifies and via which many people organised and associated themselves when far from home. Here we only touch upon this fascinating topic. See: Returning Home with Glory: Chinese villagers around the Pacific, 1849 to 1949 by Michael Williams, Hong Kong University Press, 2018. and also, ‘Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang‘, Modern Asian Studies, 2004, vol. 38, part 2, pp. 257-282. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/  

Too much like Englishmen uncovers a forgotten migration that reshaped colonial Australia long before the gold rushes made Chinese migration visible. Between 1848 and 1853, more than 3,000 men from Amoy—modern Xiamen in China’s Fujian province—were recruited under five-year labour contracts and sent to New South Wales. Their recruitment was often opaque and coercive, their voyages arduous, and their lives in Australia profoundly disparate. Some endured exploitation, isolation, and violence; others resisted mistreatment, adapted to new conditions, and forged lives beyond the terms of their contracts. When their contracts expired, these men did not simply vanish from history. Some moved on to the goldfields, but many remained in rural Australia, marrying locally, becoming naturalized, and establishing families whose descendants live in Australia today. Long eclipsed by later Cantonese migration and distorted by the enduring stereotype of “coolie” labour, their experiences have been marginalised or misunderstood. Drawing on newly uncovered archival records and family histories, Too much like Englishmen restores these men to the centre of Australia’s colonial story, revealing a complex history of resilience, agency, and belonging. To purchase Too much like Englishmen  - https://books2read.com/b/3n0OvR Please check out our publications at ChideStudy Press https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

The rise of China and the rise of multiculturalism in Australia has greatly influenced how we perceive Chinese Australian history. Here we discuss how modern influences have impacted on the production of history in recent times. The question is posed: Is history about making us feel good about ourselves or is it about learning about ourselves? For a Youtube lecture on Mirroring the Past see: https://youtu.be/PFRySelOMTE  Please check out our publications at ChideStudy Press https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

The Tung Wah News was one of a number of Chinese language newspapers published in Sydney and Melbourne from the late 19th century well into the 20th century. This is an in-depth look at just one of these newspapers over a brief period around 1900 that gives us an insight into the concerns of the Chinese Australian community at this time. See: M Williams, Wading 10,000 li to seek their fortune: Tung Wah News selections 1898-1901, Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation Please check out our publications at ChideStudy Press https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

In the history of links between people from the Pearl River Delta with the countries of South-East Asia and the Pacific, the role played by Hong Kong cannot be ignored. An examination of the role and contribution of Hong Kong to these Pearl River Delta links over the period 1842 to 1942 allows the impact of Pearl River Delta links on Hong Kong to be investigated. This perspective enables aspects of Hong Kong's history and its contribution to the history of the Pearl River Delta counties and their overseas links to be seen in a new way. See: Williams, M., 2004, ‘Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang‘, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, part 2, pp. 257-282. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

Too often Chinese Australian history is viewed as a history parallel to "real" Australian history that only touches this history at points like racism or the gold rushes. In reality people from China have been an integral and significant part of Australian history from its European beginings, and even to some extent before that. Here is an overview of that history that originated in an interview with a TV production company that never saw the light of day. Too good to waste! Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

Chinese–Australian history is a vital part of the national story—one that has long fascinated, yet often perplexed, many (white) Australians. As Australia’s Chinese communities continue to grow and evolve, this history is attracting increasing attention. That interest spans both academic inquiry and popular curiosity, though, as in most fields, scholarly insights do not always travel easily into the popular sphere. In public understanding, Chinese–Australian history too often remains confined to familiar themes: gold diggers, racism, and market gardeners. Yet the field is far richer, as recent research shows—revealing enduring links to Pearl River Delta villages, business networks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Chinese–Australian contributions to Federation, and the shaping of Australian identity itself. Although centred on Chinese–Australian history, this podcast has three distinctive features. First, it highlights a niche but compelling area of study. Second, it uses AI not to create, but to distil and summarise the texts published by ChideStudy Press. And third, it draws upon those very texts—summaries that, we hope, will encourage you to seek out, purchase, and enjoy the originals. Enjoy! Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/ Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  Michael Williams is a graduate of Hong Kong University. A scholar of Chinese–Australian history. And a founding member of the Chinese-Australian Historical Society. He is the author of Returning Home with Glory — a sweeping historical journey following the people of south China’s Pearl River Delta as they moved across the vast Pacific world…to Sydney, to Hawaii, to San Francisco…and back again. He is also the author of Australia’s Dictation Test: The Test It Was a Crime to Fail —a dramatic and forensic account of the bureaucratic heart of the White Australia Policy. A system designed to exclude…and a test designed so that failure was guaranteed. Michael has taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Peking University, and once served as an Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University. His digital project —Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects —was shortlisted for the 2022 Premier’s Digital History Prize. A collection of stories, artefacts, and forgotten histories that reshaped how Australians see their past. His most recent work traces the extraordinary journey of the Robe Chinese goldfield walkers. Every requisite for a campaign upon the gold-fields is a story of organisation…migration…and the long walk into the gold-rush frontier. Today, Michael is the creator of Scattered Legacy —a national database of the treasures of Chinese Australian history. A project that gathers objects, landscapes, inscriptions, and the fragile traces of nearly two centuries of community life. Michael Williams is one of the leading voices in Chinese–Australian scholarship —a historian who brings depth, clarity, and humanity to the stories that shaped a nation.    

The first of a great many myths and misconceptions relating to Chinese Australian history. This is one of a mystery beehive shaped and stone capped well is associated with the famous walk from Robe in South Australia as Chinese gold seekers evaded the Victoria Poll tax in the 1850s. This is an episode you can find in Every Requisite for a Campaign upon the Goldfields, a Chidestudy Press book - Click here for a description and contents See also the recently published: Williams, M., 2025, Constructing the Exotic: The Myth of Chinaman’s Well, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, No. 52, 2025, pp.69-79. Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: Every Request for a Campaign Upon the Goldfields. Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

Thomas Cook, Esq. J.P. was one of many immigrants of middling income and status who early in their life threw in their lot with the young Colony of NSW. A good image of Thomas Cook as a magistrate can be built up from the chance survival of the Magistrates Letterbooks of the Dungog Court in which is preserved much of his official outward correspondence, particularity from 1837 throughout the 1840s, dealing with a wide range of issues. Cook makes suggestions regarding the training of new arrivals to minimise accidental death, he badgers the government in Sydney for funds to improve the facilities at Dungog, to pay arrears owed people employed under him, and to secure blankets for the local natives. Cook is prepared to argue with the local landowners over legalities and shows occasional sympathy to those convicts and ex-convicts, who come before him. Cook also made efforts to assist the local people who were rapidly being displaced by the new settlers, making efforts to secure sufficient blankets and also to intervene, even if ineffectually, in at least one case where an overseer was holding Aboriginal women against the wishes of their male kin. See also: Williams, M., 2022, 'This anomalous community: Dungog Magistrate's Letterbox, 1834-1839', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 108(1), p.73. Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: By the Pleasing Countenance of My Superiors. Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]

When people talk about the Chinese diaspora before the mid-20th century, it’s usually described as a story of men heading overseas. But those men stayed closely tied to the women who remained in their villages back in south China—often just as many, if not more, than the men who left. The role these women played has been seriously under-researched. Because of that, the focus in most writing has been on leaving and settling abroad, not on the lives of those who stayed or on the experiences of return. For the women in the villages, life revolved around remittances. That meant living in a space shaped by both wealth and poverty, dependence and independence, authority and anxiety, loneliness and freedom. If we bring these women properly into the picture—at least as much as our mostly male-centred sources allow—it opens up new ways of understanding the diaspora. We can better see how restrictive white-settler laws were felt back home, and what motivated some men to return to their villages while others never did. For the published article see: Michael Williams, 2021. Holding Up Half the Family, Journal of Chinese Overseas 17.1, pp.179-195. https://doi.org/10.1163/17932548-12341438 Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

The Dictation Test is often seen as the defining symbol of the White Australia policy. For more than 50 years after 1901, it was the main tool used to keep so-called “undesirables” out of the country. This podcast looks at the story behind it—the mix of history, politics and ideology that produced a fake test you were never meant to pass. A key moment came at the 1897 Imperial Conference, where the colonial Premiers thrashed out the issue of immigration restriction with Joseph Chamberlain speaking for the British government. Their debate led directly to the compromise that became the Australian Commonwealth’s Dictation Test. The arguments at play were many: imperial politics, local class tensions, questions of principle, and the need to keep up appearances. What emerged was the Dictation Test—uniquely unpassable, hotly contested, and something Australia would live with for the next two generations. This discussions based on Michael Williams, 2020. Avoid stigmatising them by name. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 106(2), p.165. A more detailed history of the Dictation Test can be found in Michael Williams, 2021 Australia’s Dictation Test: The Test it was a Crime to Fail, Brill. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

The story of Chinese settlement in New South Wales is unique. From the start, Chinese communities worked hard to keep close ties with their home villages in south China. Most of the early arrivals were men, not women, and they often had to deal with open prejudice and harsh anti-Chinese laws. All of this shaped a settlement history that stood apart from other migrant groups. Those constant connections back to their villages influenced Chinese life in NSW right up until the mid-20th century. For many non-Chinese Australians, though, what’s most familiar is how Chinese settlers were caught up—often unwillingly—in shaping national identity through racism and the White Australia Policy. We often hear about how discrimination in jobs and daily life affected them, but what gets less attention are the deeper cultural reasons behind certain practices: the work routines, the fact that most women stayed behind in China, the use of opium, and the decision many made to eventually return home. These were part of Chinese tradition and history, but in Australia they became excuses for prejudice. Michael Williams, Chinese settlement in NSW – a thematic history, Heritage Office of NSW, Sydney, 1999. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]   

Most research into migration and diaspora tends to focus on one group or country at a time — often treating them in isolation. This is especially true for studies of Chinese and Italian migration to places like the U.S. and Australia. Here we discuss what we can learn by putting those stories side by side. The focus is on how people from China and Italy moved to the U.S. and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how many of them kept close ties to the places they left behind. By comparing things like family networks, remittances, migration chains, agents, loans, donations, publishing, trade, border laws, return visits — even the practice of sending bones back home for burial — we can explore the ways migrants stayed connected to their homelands. We also look at how the villages back home were affected, the role of those who stayed behind, and how the experiences of later generations started to diverge. Finally, this comparison sheds light on how the two white settler nations — the U.S. and Australia — treated migrants differently, especially along lines of race or perceived whiteness. We argue that these differences not only shaped migration at the time, but also still affect how historians write about these two diasporas today. Comparing them directly, we suggest, helps us understand both better. Williams, M., 2020. Sojourners & Birds of Passage: Chinese and Italian Migrants in Australia and the United States in Comparative Perspective, 1871-1914. Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia, 11(2), pp.2-16. Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]   

Controlling entry to an island continent proved more complex than the Immigration Restriction Act, 1901 framers imagined. Chinese people had been coming to Australia in numbers since the 1850s and by 1901 had substantial community, family, and economic links with their Pearl River Delta villages, around the colonies and with Hong Kong and Shanghai. Resistance was fought out on the boats themselves; musters were held, documents examined, searches made and dictation tests administered. Secrecy, fraud, informers, and harassment reduced but did not eliminate communities while also causing governments much embarrassment before this first attempt at halting boat people was abandoned. Throughout the period after 1901 evolved a system that was not simply one of restriction but also of interaction between the Chinese-Australian community and its Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong and Shanghai based connections. The result, after more than 50 years, was a fall in Chinese community numbers but never an elimination of that community or its links with China before a gradual rise, after much cost in economic links, political embarrassment, and personal hardship.  For the published article see: Michael Williams, 2020. Stopping them Using Our Boats. Australian Economic History Review, 61(1), pp.64–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12207 Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected]  For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

Dundas Crawford was sent to the Australian colonies at a time when the Colony of Queensland was concerned as thousands of Chinese goldseekers were arriving at Cooktown and walking inland to the Palmer River goldfields. This was in 1877 and the report of his observations of Chinese activity in Queensland, NSW and Victoria was duly sent to the Foreign Office. The report makes fascinating reading. It is not only a rare example of a wide-ranging investigation with many interesting comments but even rarer, it is written in a, for the times, objective and sensible manner. Despite this the Crawford report remains an underutilised resource. Historians have done what they all too often do with interesting material, plunder it for a quote or statistic relevant to their specific task and then leave the remains to languish in a footnote. It was in a footnote I found the Crawford report many years ago and intrigued I tracked it down in the copy of the voluminous British Foreign Office files kept in the National Library of Australia.  For the published article see: Michael Williams, ‘Observations of a China Consul’, Locality, Vol. 11, no.2, 2000, pp. 24-31. For the report of Crawford itself see: Great Britain, Foreign Office Confidential Prints: No.3742, Notes by Mr. Crawford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian Colonies, J. Dundas Crawford, 1 September 1877.  Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

The one hundred years between the mid nineteenth-century Cali­fornian and Australian gold rushes and the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 saw the establishment and maintenance of extensive trans-Pacific links. These links developed between the native places or qiaoxiang of tens of thousands of people originating in the Pearl River Delta of south China who travelled to various destinations including the Pacific ports of Sydney, San Francisco and Honolulu. Here we discuss the history of these qiaoxiang links, a history of movement outside the qiaoxiang, but also a history of efforts to survive, return to, retire in and improve the qiaoxiang. * Qiaoxiang can be translated as "native land of one who is away" and refers to a person's home village, district or county, depending on which they choose to identify with as their place of origin. For the published article see: Michael Williams, ‘In the Tang Mountains we have a Big House‘, East Asian History, vol. 25/26, June/December, 2003, pp. 85-112. Please check out publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

Chinese Opera was a prominent feature of colonial Australia, initially in the Victorian goldfields, but later in New South Wales, Queensland, and north-eastern Tasmania. Tracing its performance history and key locations, this discussion describes how it was staged and received, the efforts to attract a non-Chinese audience, and the practise of charitable benefit performances. The discussion also demonstrates the cultural importance of Chinese Opera, both to the Chinese living in Australia and as an exotic form of entertainment for their European and other co-colonials. The reasons for the absence of this form of entertainment from the historical memory are also reflected upon within the context of the psychology of a White Australia and the persistence of stereotypes in which ‘opera goer’ has no place. For the published article see: Michael Williams, Smoking opium, puffing cigars, and drinking gingerbeer: Chinese Opera in Australia, In Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes Volume II Applied Perspectives: Compositions and Performances, edited by Jane W. Davidson, Michael Halliwell and Stephanie Rocke, pp.166-208. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/   Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

Anglo-Saxonizing Machines: Exclusion America, White Australia by Michael Williams, contrasts the restrictive immigration policies targeting Chinese people in Australia and the United States from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It examines the political and social contexts that shaped these laws and their enforcement, highlighting that while both countries aimed to limit Chinese entry, the United States laws were more complex with various exemptions, unlike Australia's more consistent and exclusionary approach. The discussion also explores the impact of these policies on Chinese individuals, noting differences in return migration patterns, the role of courts and citizenship laws, and the rise of illegal entry methods like the "paper son" system in the United States. Comparing the experiences in both nations provides a broader understanding of the restrictive laws and the diverse motivations of Chinese migrants. For the published article see: Williams, M., 2003, ‘Anglo-Saxonizing machines: Exclusion America, White Australia’, Chinese America – History and Perspectives, vol. 17, pp. 23-33. Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: Every Request for a Campaign Upon the Goldfields. Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

Of the many episodes that make up the oftentimes exotic impression of Chinese Australian history the 1850s walk from the small port of Robe in South Australia to the goldfields of Victoria has repeatedly taken on epic proportions. Its ‘long march’ like length, tales of hardship and death, not to mention present-day outrage at the discriminatory tax the walk was designed to avoid, all combine to make the stuff of legends.  Yet remarkably the telling of this history has largely been left to local historians with their characteristic eagerness to retell every tale and make use of every allusion to their subject with little regard to plausibility, contradiction or even relevance. Thus, while the arrival of thousands of gold seekers from southern China in the mid-1850s at Robetown on Guichen Bay, South Australia, in order to avoid taxes imposed by the neighbouring gold rich colony of Victoria is well known, it is surprisingly little understood in detail. As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: Every Request for a Campaign Upon the Goldfields. Feel free to ask questions at: [email protected] 

If people know anything about Chinese Australian history, they likely associate it with the 19th-century gold rushes, market gardening, the Lambing Flat Riots, and the infamous fake Dictation Test from the early years of Australia's 20th-century Immigration Restriction Act. But this common understanding focuses almost entirely on people from the Pearl River Delta, a region of the province of Guangdong (廣東) still widely referred to as Canton, and on Cantonese migrants. Even this level of awareness leaves significant gaps, overlooking contributions that range from opera companies to village networks and major business enterprises—stories that extend only to the mid-20th century. What is often reduced to a mere footnote, even in more comprehensive accounts, is the story of around 3,000 men who arrived in the British colony of New South Wales (which then included Queensland and Victoria) in the late 1840s and early 1850s. These men came not from the Pearl River Delta but from just north of it, the province of Fujian (福建), still considered southern China. Their migration predates the Australian gold rushes, yet their presence is a fascinating but often overlooked chapter in Australian history. Check out: Williams, M., 2025, Too Much like Englishmen: Amoy Migrants in Australia, Ashfield, NSW: ChideStudy Press. For more details see: Maxine Darnell, The Chinese labour trade to New South Wales 1783-1853: An exposition of motives and outcomes, PhD thesis, UNE, 1997. Go to the 88 Objects website and see Ang's Defence (it's No,59) for yourself - https://chinozhistory.org/  As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected] 

The stereotype of the Chinese market gardener is a prominent one in Australia. That it is a stereotype does not mean that it is wrong but that it is simply not as true as it claims to be. Today the discussion however is more about giving examples of how a denial of individuality helped to create such stereotypes. Stereotypes that remain embedded in Australian history today.  This podcast is based on an article I wrote in 2022 called: ‘Vegetables varied and excellent, chiefly from a Celestial garden’, History, September, pp.9-11. As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected] 

It is all well and good to focus on interesting aspects of a history but it is also necessary to have a grasp of its entirety. Here I strive to give the briefest of overviews to help provide the much needed context for previous as well as future podcasts. Enjoy! As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected]  Suggested further reading Returning Home with Glory: Chinese villagers around the Pacific, 1849 to 1949 by Michael Williams, Hong Kong University Press, 2018. [On the pattern of links to China] The Poison of Polygamy by Wong Shee Ping (trans: Ely Finch), Sydney University Press, 2019. [A Chinese voice from 100 years ago] Locating Chinese Women Historical Mobility between China and Australia, edited by Kate Bagnall and Julia T. Martínez, Hong Kong University Press, 2021. [On women] One Bright Moon by Andrew Kwong, Harper Collins, 2020. [A personal memoir] Chinese Australian History Seminar Series by Dr Michael Williams. [Online overview of Chinese Australian history]      

For much of our evidence on Chinese Australian history – especially in the 19th century – reliance is necessarily on European observers and European records. A great deal of this material is patronising at best and stereotypical or even plain made up at worst. In general, such observation pieces often tell us more about the writers than those being observed – although this too can be useful. Nevertheless, amid this diverse material can be found many instances of careful and interesting observation – even when it is patronising (and/or ignorant). Personal observation when sincerely given can provide much of value.  Presented here is a small selection of the abundant amount of such material to be found scattered throughout 19th century Australian sources. The selections range from the comments of a naive English teacher to those of an experienced China consul. From eyewitness to the arrival of the first 150 Chinese gold seekers to pass through Bathurst in 1855, as well as the astonished spectator to a Chinese opera. Not to mention the creations of the authors of both Mary Poppins and The Man from Snowy River. Of course, these sections would not be complete with reports from one each of those instant experts – the journalist and the travel writer.  As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected] 

It has been said many times (by me anyway) that Chinese Australian history is perforce reliant on European observers – often of dubious quality and more often dubious perspectives (see Observers 8 - No.6 in the Podcast series). Nevertheless, there are instances – increasing over time naturally – of Chinese Australians speaking in their own voice. Here are presented a selection of writings by Chinese Australian’s in both Chinese and English. They range from the first (certainly the earliest extant) piece of Chinese writing in Australia as an indentured shepherd named Ang defends himself in 1850 from a murder charge, to a full novel written in Classical Chinese in 1910 on the eve of China’s Republican revolution by the Melbourne based Wong Shee Ping. As well, there are reasoned attacks on discriminatory legislation, personal memoirs old and new, poetry, letters to those who have done well, and short stories expressing something of life in “white” Australia for someone of non-white heritage.  As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected] 

Based on my Master thesis, updated and recently published by ChideStudy Press this is a in-depth look at the continuing links between Sydney market gardeners and their villages in South China - the remittances, the trips and the gifts. Brief Sojourn in Your Native Land highlights the enduring connection between Sydney and South China from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, maintained by thousands of Sydney residents born in the diverse districts of the Pearl River Delta. The work draws on a wide range of Immigration Restriction Act files, along with other sources such as the late 19th-century ‘Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling,’ the burial register of the Chinese section of Rookwood Cemetery, and oral histories from descendants of these residents. The narrative reveals the experiences of a generation often referred to as huaqiao, whose ties to their home villages are traced from youth through adulthood and into retirement, passing onto subsequent generations. Key aspects of this enduring connection include the importance of their districts of origin, restricted marriage choices, evolving conditions in China, the emergence of a new generation, and the impact of the White Australia Policy’s 1901 Immigration Restriction Act and its administration. Throughout their lives, the huaqiao were largely driven by a desire to support their families in their home villages, fostering ties between these villages and Sydney that lasted for at least two generations. As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected] 

Chinese Australian history in 88 Objects is not so much a publication of Chidestudy Press as its grandfather, that is an older project with much to offer of interest. The aim is to approach history in a manner that strives to bridge the academic and the popular. Rather than add yet another narrative history, Chinese-Australian history is explored and exposed through some of the many objects that exist in collections both public and private in both Australia and, suggestively, China. These objects may or may not have aesthetic or historical value in themselves; rather the choice of object is based on its capacity to add a unique piece to the puzzle that is Australian and its Chinese-Australian aspects. In so doing it is hoped to diminish mystery while illuminating history. Go to the website and see for yourself - https://chinozhistory.org/  As usual you should always check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  You can ask questions at: [email protected]