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Abstract
Little research exists on the participation of Chinese in Australian sport in the colonial or Federation periods. This article examines the involvement of three, hitherto-unknown, amateur sportsmen in late nineteenth-century Sydney—the Kong Sing brothers. Otto, Ophir, and George Kong Sing, sons of a Chinese shopkeeper and white Australian mother, participated in several sports over two decades, enjoying varying degrees of success and recognition. Adopting a mixed-race perspective, this article examines their identity in various contexts as Chinese, Australian, and Anglo-Chinese in order to explore the complexities of racial identity and the lived Chinese Australian experience.
Notes
1‘Interview with Stephen Jay Gould’ (2003), Race–The Power of an Illusion, http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-09.htm.
2Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, eds Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 395; Penny Edwards, Debjani Ganguly, and Jacqueline Lo, ‘Pigments of the Imagination: Theorising, Performing and Historicising Mixed Race’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 28, no. 1 (2007): 1–13.
3Claire E. Alexander and Caroline Knowles, Making Race Matter: Bodies, Space, and Identity (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 3.
4See, for instance: Torika Bolatagici, ‘Claiming the (N)either/(N)or of “Third Space”: (Re)presenting Hybrid Identity and the Embodiment of Mixed Race’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 25, no. 1 (2004): 75–85; Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of “Race”, Nation and Gender (London: Routledge, 1999); Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, ed., ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2004); Jill Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool: The Social Construction of Mixed Race (London: Pluto, 2002); David Parker and Miri Song, eds, Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’ (London: Pluto, 2001); Robert B. Potter and Joan Phillips, ‘Both Black and Symbolically White: The “Bajan-Brit” Return Migrant as Post-Colonial Hybrid’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, no. 5 (2006): 901–27.
5Ifekwunigwe, ed., ‘Mixed Race’ Studies, xix–xxi, in Parker and Song, eds, Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’, 1–2.
6For international studies of racial stereotypes in sport, see: Benjamin Carrington and Ian McDonald, ‘Race’, Sport, and British Society (New York: Routledge, 2001); Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins, eds, Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Routledge, 2004); Colin Tatz, Obstacle Race: Aborigines in Sport (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995).
7Gary Osmond and Murray G. Phillips, ‘“The Bloke with a Stroke”: Alick Wickham, the “Crawl” and Social Memory’, Journal of Pacific History 39, no. 3 (2004): 309–24; Bob Petersen, Gentleman Bruiser: A Life of the Boxer Peter Jackson (Sydney: Croydon, 2005); Andrew Ritchie, Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer (San Francisco: Bicycle, 1988).
8See, for instance: Angela Woollacott, ‘Rose Quong Becomes Chinese: An Australian in London and New York’, Australian Historical Studies 38, no. 129 (April 2007): 16–31; Barry McGowan, ‘Reconsidering Race: The Chinese Experience on the Goldfields of Southern New South Wales’, Australian Historical Studies 35, no. 124 (October 2004): 312–31; Keir Reeves, ‘Historical Neglect of an Enduring Chinese Community’, Traffic 3 (July 2003): 53–77.
9J. Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), x, 210–235.
10J. A. Mangan, ‘Series Editor's Foreword’, in The First Black Footballer, Arthur Wharton 1865–1930: An Absence of Memory, ed. Phil Vasili (London: Frank Cass, 1998), xvi–xvii.
11Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool, 8–10; Teresa Kay Williams, ‘Race-ing and Being Raced: The Critical Interrogation of “Passing”’, in ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader, ed. Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe (London: Routledge, 2004), 166–70.
12Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool, 8–9.
13Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool, 8–11.
14Williams, ‘Race-ing and Being Raced’, 166.
15Olumide prefers the term mixing race; see Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool.
16Philip A. Mosely et al., eds, Sporting Immigrants: Sport and Ethnicity in Australia (Sydney: Walla Walla Press, 1997), 11.
17See, for instance: S.W. Pope, ‘Decentering “Race” and (Re)Presenting “Black” Performance in Sport History: Basketball and Jazz in American Culture, 1920–1950’, in Deconstructing Sport History: A Postmodern Analysis, ed. Murray G. Phillips (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), 147–77.
18Ann Curthoys, ‘“Chineseness” and Australian Identity’, in The Overseas Chinese in Australasia: History, Settlement and Interactions: Proceedings, eds Henry Chan, Ann Curthoys, and Nora Chiang (Canberra: Interdisciplinary Group for Australasian Studies and the Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora, 2001), 22.
19For instance, see: Referee, 23 February 1898, 6 (Pogonowski); Sydney Sportsman, 29 April 1903, 3 (Rosenthal); Sydney Mail, 16 January 1907, 158 (Tanna); SS, 9 January 1901, 7 (Bow Chong); Referee, 18 October 1899, 7 (Tartakover).
20Colin Tatz, Aborigines in Sport (Adelaide: Australian Society For Sports History, 1987); Tatz, Obstacle Race.
21Tatz, Obstacle Race, 112. For an assessment of the allocation of positions in football based on racial stereotyping (stacking), see C. Hallinan, T. Bruce, and M. Burke, ‘Fresh Prince of Colonial Dome: Indigenous Players in the AFL’, Football Studies 8, no. 1 (2005): 68–78.
22Frederick Gary Osmond, ‘Nimble Savages: Myth, Race, Social Memory and Australian Aquatic Sport’ (PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2006).
23For a recent exception, see Matthew Stephen, ‘Looking through Other People's Masks: Sport and Leisure in the Northern Territory, 1869–1911’, Journal of Northern Territory History, no. 18 (2007): 11–18. For an overview of leisure and gambling activities, see Michael Williams, ‘Chinese Settlement in NSW: A Thematic History’, (NSW Heritage Office, 1999), 51–54.
24Rob Hess, ‘“A Death Blow to the White Australia Policy”: Australian Rules Football and Chinese Communities in Victoria, 1892–1908’, in After the Rush: Regulation, Participation and Chinese Communities in Australia, 1860–1940, eds Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor, Otherland, no. 9, December 2004: 89–106.
25Ellen McEwen, ‘The Ties That Divide’, in Staining the Wattle, eds Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1988), 33.
26Ellen McEwen, ‘The Ties That Divide’, in Staining the Wattle, eds Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1988), 33, 33–34; Cathie May, Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns 1870–1920 (Townsville: History Department, James Cook University, 1984), 92; Stephen, ‘Looking Through Other People's Masks’, 16, 19; Robert Travers, Australian Mandarin: The Life and Times of Quong Tart (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1981), 43–44.
27Hess, ‘A Death Blow’; Stephen, ‘Looking Through Other People's Masks’, 16.
28Carole Tan, ‘Boundaries, Border-Crossings and Gatekeepers: Issues Relating to the Formation of Identity Amongst Young Chinese Australians in the 1920s and 1930s’ (paper presented at the Australian and New Zealand Chinese History Workshop, 13 February 2000, 13–14).
29 Sydney Sportsman, 9 January 1901, 7; Travers, Australian Mandarin; Mrs. Quong Tart [Margaret], ed., Life of Quong Tart, or, How a Foreigner Succeeded in a British Community (Sydney: Maclardy, 1911), 58–59; Hess, ‘A Death Blow’, 100–01.
30Eric Rolls, Sojourners: Flowers and the Wide Sea. The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 349–60.
31 Bulletin, 16 April 1898, 24.
32Cited in John Birmingham, Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney (Sydney: Knopf, 1999), 93.
33For an overview of the impact of historic Australian stereotypes of Chinese in modern sport, see Peter Kell, Good Sports: Australian Sport and the Myth of the Fair Go (Sydney: Pluto, 2000), 78–92.
34 Sydney Sportsman, 23 January 1901, 7.
35Hazel Brombey and Maurie Daly, Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club 1896–1996 (Sydney: Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club, 1996), 12; Sydney Sportsman, 10 December 1902, 6; Dee Why Life Saving and Surf Club Minute Book, 1913–18, A3075, Mitchell Library, Sydney, 192.
36 Bulletin, 16 April 1898, 24; Bulletin, 25 December 1913, 32.
37NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages (hereafter NSW BDM) – Marriage Registration No.: 623/1866. See also Golden Threads: The Chinese in Regional NSW 1850–1950, http://amol.org.au/goldenthreads/.
38Birth registrations for nine children have been gathered from a number of sources, including the NSW BDM Registry: Justine, Edith, Otto, Oppo, Ah Ah Ho, Aplin, Una, Ottis, and Julia. No registrations for Ophir, George, or another brother, Christopher, have been found; however they may be included in the above list under other names. No information on the family is held in the Chinese Naturalisation Database, Chinese Heritage of Australia Federation.
39NSW BDM – Birth Registration No.: V18491012 34A/1849; Death Registration No.:1931/011985.
40Lydon, Many Inventions, 68–69.
41Newington College enrolment records for Otto Kong Sing. At Newington College, we would like to thank Phil Davis for his archival research on our behalf, and John Benn for facilitating this. See also Town and Country Journal, 23 March 1889, 40.
42Newington College enrolment records. NSW BDM – Birth Registration No.:14869/1871.
43 Newingtonian, September 1889, 235.
44David S. Macmillan, Newington College, 1863–1963 (Sydney: Newington, 1963), 50.
45 Town and Country Journal, 23 March 1889, 40.
46 Town and Country Journal, 28, 40; Bulletin, 9 April 1898, 24.
47NSW BDM – Birth Registration No.:14378/1896; Sands Sydney & NSW Directory 1898–1905; NSW Electoral Rolls 1903.
48Kate Bagnall, ‘Golden Shadows on a White Land: An Exploration of the Lives of White Women Who Partnered Chinese Men and Their Children in Southern Australia, 1855–1915’ (PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2006), 232, 325.
49 Bulletin, 9 April 1898, 24.
50 Referee, 31 March 1897, 6.
51Newington College enrolment records: John Benn, Newington College, letter to authors, June 2007.
52 NSW Education Gazette, 1 April 1898, 255–56; 2 May 1898, 275; Referee, 30 March 1898, 6; Bulletin, 9 April 1898, 24.
53 Referee, 16 March 1898, 6; Referee, 18 November 1905, 6.
54 Referee, 18 January 1899, 7.
55 Bathurst Times, 28 December 1898, 2.
56 Sydney Sportsman, 23 January 1901, 7; Sydney Sportsman, 13 February 1901, 7. NSW BDM – Death Registration No.: 27828/1943.
58Kate Grenville, The Idea of Perfection (Sydney: Picador, 1999), 16.
57Several photographs from 1898 of the Randwick and Coogee Swimming Club and Bathurst carnivals include a man who is almost certainly Ophir, although he is not named: see Marks Q83, Sporting Pictures album, Mitchell Library.
59See, for instance: Mark McKenna, ‘Writing the Past’, public lecture delivered 1 December 2005, http://www.humanitieswritingproject.net.au/mckenna.htm; Inga Clendinnen, ‘The History Question: Who Owns the Past?’, Quarterly Essay, no. 23 (2006): 16–31.
60Kate Bagnall, ‘“He Would Be a Chinese Still”: Negotiating Boundaries of Race, Culture and Identity in Late Nineteenth Century Australia’, in After the Rush, eds Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald and Paul Macgregor: 155, 168n8.
61 Bathurst Times, 27 December 1898, 2; Bulletin, 9 April 1898, 24.
62Helen Brown, Tin at Tingha: The History of Tingha (Armidale, NSW: H. Brown, 1982), 33–35.
63Alan Birch and David S. Macmillan, eds, The Sydney Scene, 1788–1960 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962), 223.
64Lydon, Many Inventions, 73–80.
65Bagnall, ‘Golden Shadows’, 232.
66Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool, 10.
67 Sand's Sydney and NSW Directory, 1900, 1905.
68Lydon, Many Inventions, 136.
69Potter and Phillips, ‘Both Black and Symbolically White’, 919.
70Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 224.
71Travers, Australian Mandarin.
72Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 5.
73Tatz, Obstacle Race, 241.
74Lydon, Many Inventions, 80.
75Cited in Lydon, Many Inventions, 73.
76 Newingtonian, and Newington College enrolment records, 1885–89.
77Peter L. Swain, Newington across the Years: A History of Newington College, 1863–1998 (Sydney: Newington College, 1999), 231.
78Peter L. Swain, Newington across the Years: A History of Newington College, 1863–1998 (Sydney: Newington College, 1999), 46.
79NSW Electoral Rolls, Commonwealth Division, Redfern, 1903.
80NSW BDM – Marriage Registration Nos: 228/1909, 3131/1909, and 10115/1926. The surname of Otto's wife Dorothea is unknown.
81Justine Kong Sing (1868–1960) was a miniature-portrait painter who studied art in Sydney and Melbourne, then lived in London and Majorca before returning to Australia: ‘Justine Kong Sing’, Dictionary of Australian Artists Online, http://www.daao.org.au/main/read/3775. See also Woollacott, ‘Rose Quong Becomes Chinese’, 19.
85Cited in Travers, Australian Mandarin, 16, 15–16.
82Jim McKay, No Pain, No Gain?: Sport and Australian Culture (Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1991); Tatz, Obstacle Race, 356; John Hughson, David Inglis, and Marcus Free, The Uses of Sport: A Critical Study (London: Routledge, 2005), 67.
83Tan, ‘Boundaries’, 13.
84Cited in Travers, Australian Mandarin, 16, 55, 96.
86See, for instance, Town and Country Journal, 23 March 1889, 40.
87Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus, eds, Who Are Our Enemies?: Racism and the Australian Working Class (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1978), 51; Bagnall, ‘He Would Be a Chinese Still’, 153, 167n3.
88E. J. Lea-Scarlett, ‘Quong Tart—A Study in Assimilation Part 1’, Descent 4 (1969): 97.
89For an overview of the aforementioned 1891 Royal Commission, see Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney's Chinese (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1997), 70–75.
90Bagnall, ‘He Would Be a Chinese Still’, 158.
91 Bulletin, 9 June 1883, 14.
92Travers, Australian Mandarin, 53–54.
93Jack Williams, Cricket and Race (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 15–32.
94 Town and Country Journal, 23 March 1889, 28, 40.
95For examples, see: ‘Archive of 19th-century Racial Images’, http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/fine-art/Race/race/race2.htm.
96See: Hazel Brombey and Maurie Daly, Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club 1896–1996 (Sydney: Randwick & Coogee Amateur Swimming Club, 1996), 9. It is possible, of course, that Otto was lighter skinned than Ophir.
97 Bulletin, 9 April 1898, 24.
98 NSW Education Gazette, 1 April 1898, 256.
99Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 135.
100Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 136.
101Bagnall, ‘He Would Be a Chinese Still’, 154.
102Osmond, ‘Nimble Savages’; Gary Osmond and Murray G. Phillips, ‘“Look at That Kid Crawling!”: Race, Myth and the “Crawl” Stroke’, Australian Historical Studies 37, no. 127 (April 2006): 43–62.
103Swain, Newington, 33.
104For an exploration of the meanings of Freeman's Aboriginal identity, see Toni Bruce and Christopher Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman: The Quest for Australian Identity’, in Sport Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting Celebrity, ed. D.L. Andrews and S.J. Jackson (London: Routledge, 2001), 257–70.
105Williams, ‘Race-ing and Being Raced’, 166.