Chinese in Late Nineteenth-Century Bendigo: Their local and translocal lives in ‘this strangers' country’

Abstract

Chinese immigrants to nineteenth-century Victoria lived in two worlds. This article explores the last words of Yick Yourn, a Bendigo storekeeper who committed suicide in 1875, revealing his life to be a complex web of local, cross-cultural and translocal connections. His suicide letters, combined with the witness statements at his inquest, provide a unique opportunity to glimpse the private world of a nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant to Victoria. This article argues that an assimilation narrative is an inappropriate way for understanding the lives of Chinese immigrants, but neither can they be dismissed as sojourners. Yick Yourn was an agent of his own making as a long-term resident intent on returning to China.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the Public Records Office of Victoria and the staff of the Golden Dragon Museum Bendigo in allowing me access to resources to research this article. I would also like to acknowledge Lin Juncai and Huang Jia Hong who assisted with translation of the suicide notes, and Dr Ruth Ford who advised on an early version of this paper.

Notes

¹Yick Yourn, Inquest, 8 June 1875, Public Records Office of Victoria (hereafter PROV), VA 2859, Registrar General's Office of Victoria, VPRS 24/P0, 1875/545.

²All names in this article are spelt as they appeared in the inquest record. Spelling of Chinese names varied considerably as they were phonetic renditions of the names as they were heard by European scribes.

³Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of the Overseas Chinese (London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1991), 43.

⁴C. Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1975), 22.

⁵Jennifer Cushman, ‘A Colonial Casualty, the Chinese Community in Australian Historiography’, ASAA Review (April 1984): 100. Cushman reviewed Kathryn Cronin, Colonial Casualties Chinese in Early Victoria (Singapore: Melbourne University Press, 1982); Jean Gittins, The Diggers from China. The Story of the Chinese on the Goldfields (Melbourne: Quartet Books, 1981); Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850–1901 (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1979); Robert Travers, Australian Mandarin: The Life and Times of Quong Tart (Kangaroo Press: Sydney 1981), and C. F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain: the Chinese in Australia 1901–1921(Richmond: Raphael Arts, 1977).

⁶H. D. Chan, ‘Becoming Australian but Remaining Chinese: The Future of the Down Under Chinese Past’, Keynote Lecture, The Overseas Chinese in Australasia: History, Settlement and Interactions Symposium (National Taiwan University, Taipei. 6–7 January 2001).

⁷Jane Lydon, Many Inventions: The Chinese in the Rocks 1890–1930 (Melbourne: Monash Publications in History, 1999). Lydon demonstrates that the Chinese asserted their own identity and showed that gender and class alliances crossed racial lines, while divisions within European society also challenged the assumptions about coherent systems of cultural meaning.

⁸For example Kate 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); Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney's Chinese (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1996); Diane Giese, Beyond Chinatown—Changing Perspectives on the Top End Chinese Experience (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1995); Valerie Lovejoy, ‘The Fortune Seekers of Dai Gum San: First Generation Chinese on the Bendigo Gold Field, 1854–1882’ (PhD Thesis, La Trobe University, 2009); Cathie May, Topsawyers: The Chinese in Cairns, 1870–1920, Studies in North Queensland History No. 6 (Townsville: James Cook University, 1984); Keir Reeves, ‘A Hidden History: the Chinese on the Mount Alexander Diggings, central Victoria, 1851–1901’ (PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2005); Jan Ryan, Ancestors: Chinese in Colonial Australia (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995).

⁹Shen Yuanfang, Dragon Seed in the Antipodes: Chinese-Australian Autobiographies (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 19–46.

¹⁰Chee-Beng Tan, Colin Storey and Julia Zimmerman, Chinese Overseas: Migration, Research and Documentation (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2007), 6–7.

¹¹ Acts Relating to and Instructions for the Guidance of Coroners, Government Printer, Melbourne, March 1867.

¹²Valerie Lovejoy, ‘The things that unite: inquests into Chinese deaths on the Bendigo goldfields 1854–65’, Provenance 6 (September 2007).

¹³Ralph Grillo, ‘Betwixt and between: Trajectories and projects of transmigration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 2 (March 2007), 204.

¹⁴Grillo, 204.

¹⁵Of ten inquests into Chinese deaths in Bendigo in 1874 and 1875, the length of time in Victoria was recorded for eight. The average length of time in Victoria was eighteen years.

¹⁶‘Sojourners’ was a term developed by Paul Siu, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study in Social Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1987).

¹⁷Pan, 106.

¹⁸Pan, 106.

¹⁹Valerie Lovejoy, ‘Depending upon Diligence: Chinese at Work in Bendigo, 1861–1881’, Journal of Historical and European Studies 1 (no. 1, 2007), 26.

²⁰Flett, 280.

²¹ Maryborough and District Advertiser, 21 August 1861, quoted in James Flett, The History of Gold Discovery in Victoria (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1970), 277.

²²The Rate Books of the Shire of Dunolly show rates being paid by a storekeeper, Sim Cum Yuen in 1868 at Gooseberry Hill on the outskirts of Dunolly. His store was valued at £35. This store was the wealthiest Chinese business in Dunolly. Sim Cum Yuen also paid rates in 1869 for a store at the Chinese Camp valued at £30, in 1874, 1878, 1879 and 1880. Yick Yourn's name translates in the modern version as Yee Yuen, but the dates would seem to preclude the store as Yicks. Yet stores were often given a business name and the business could possibly have changed hands without changing names after Yick left Dunolly. A Chi Yuen was on the electoral roll of 1869 and the business of Sim Cum Yuen was a subscriber to the local hospital in 1866, 1869, 1870 and 1873. A man of the same name as Yick's business partner, Ah Quon, paid rates on a house at Gooseberry Hill valued at £10, in 1869. Rate Books, Shire of Dunolly. Accessed at the Dunolly Museum.

²³Mining Registrar's Register of Claims, Sandhurst Mining Division, PORV, VA3801, Sandhurst Mining District, VPRS 6496, Unit 6, 5 August 1873.

²⁴Frank Cusack, Bendigo, a History (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1973), 163.

²⁵Inquest, Yick Yourn.

²⁶Reverend William Young, Report on the Condition of the Chinese Population in Victoria, Victorian Parliamentary Papers (hereafter V.P.P.), 1868, vol. 3, 1271—300.

²⁷John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), 48–51.

²⁸Inquest Deposition Files, PROV, quoted in Valerie Lovejoy, ‘Fortune Seekers’, 175.

²⁹Susan Mann, ‘The Male Bond in Chinese History and Culture’, American Historical Review 105, (no. 5, 2000), 5–6.

³⁰Inquest, Yick Yourn. The suicide notes appear exactly as Chin Kit translated them.

³¹Two recent translations, one by a professional translating service, the other by Juncai Lin, a native of Guangdong Province who is studying his Master of Education in Victoria, have been used to create the modern version reproduced in this paper. As Yick used no punctuation in his letter, a common feature of personal letters in the nineteenth century, the placement of full stops may explain some differences in the translation and affect the meaning Yick intended to convey.

³² Bendigo Advertiser, 9 June 1866.

³³Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

³⁴James Hayes, South China Village Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25.

³⁵As early as 1855, Tyeng Howqua gave evidence to the Goldfields Commission that letters were sent back and forth via Jardine, Matheson and Company of Hong Kong. Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Conditions on the Gold Fields of Victoria, 29 March 1855, Victoria Legislative Council, Votes and Proceedings (hereafter V&P), 1854–5, vol. 2, 335–8.

³⁶Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China 1882–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 40–9.

³⁷Fitzgerald, 48–9.

³⁸John Francis Davis, The Chinese: A General Description of China and its Inhabitants, vol. 1 (London: Charles Knight & Co., 1844), 244.

³⁹Hsu, 40–53.

⁴⁰Hayes, 25.

⁴¹Louey O'Hoy's family is a Bendigo example. Louey had two Chinese wives. The first lived in China and the second joined him in Bendigo. His eldest son born to his first wife, joined him in his family business in 1886. Lovejoy, ‘Fortune Seekers’, p. 186.

⁴²For example Kathryn Cronin, in her very fine study, Colonial Casualties: Chinese in Early Victoria (Singapore: Melbourne University Press, 1991) considers religion only from the perspective of conversion to Christianity.

⁴³Richard Smith, China's Cultural Heritage: The Ch'ing Dynasty, 1644–1912 (Boulder: Westview Press Inc., 1994) 144.

⁴⁴Bendigo City Council Rate Books record four joss houses between 1871 and 1873.

⁴⁵Frederick Simoons, Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1991), 26.

⁴⁶Young, 43.

⁴⁷Young, 43.

⁴⁸Cusack, 153.

⁴⁹Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850–1901 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1979), 76.

⁵⁰Chen, 118–20.

⁵¹Chen, 119.

⁵²Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China: A Study of Overseas Migration and Its Influence on Standards of Living and Social Change (New York: AMS Press, 1978), 229.

⁵³Inquest, Yick Yourn.

⁵⁴Eleven hanged or strangled themselves, five took an opium overdose, two cut their throats, two drowned themselves, and one method was not stated. Inquest Deposition Files, PROV, VPRS 24/P1.

⁵⁵Young, 15.

⁵⁶Young, 15.

⁵⁷ Bendigo Advertiser, 28 September 1875.

⁵⁸ An Act to Make Provision for Certain Immigrants, 18 Vic, no. 39, 1855. This act of parliament, as well as restricting the number of Chinese immigrants ships could carry and placing a head tax on the Chinese, gave the governor power to make rules and regulations for the registration and management of Chinese within local districts. Governor Hotham quickly moved to set up a Chinese Protectorate.

⁵⁹Police Department Reports on Chinese Camps, January 1869, PROV, VA 724, Victoria Police, VPRS 917, Inward Registered Correspondence, Unit 105, File 1869, Bundle 3.

⁶⁰In 1867, 100 Chinese Victorians petitioned the government to set up schools to instruct Chinese in English and Chinese. The government did not oblige. Bendigo Advertiser, 14 June 1867.

⁶¹ Bendigo Advertiser, 23 October 1878.

⁶² Bendigo Advertiser, 28 September 1875; Bendigo Advertiser, 25 May 1865; Bendigo Advertiser, 11 April 1871.

⁶³Pauline Rule, ‘The Chinese camps in colonial Victoria: their role as contact zones’, in After the Rush: Regulation, Participation and Chinese Communities in Victoria 1860–1940, Otherland Literary Journal 9 (2004), 119–32.

⁶⁴In many of the inquests I have studied, Chinese people refused to call English doctors or go to hospital. As well as poverty (for doctors were expensive), dislike of English food, fear of amputation and a sure knowledge that the use of opium to relieve pain would be denied them, kept them away.

⁶⁵At least three Chinese doctors, Fat Chung, who appeared in the Bendigo Council Rate Books between 1866 and 1883, Po Sang Hang from 1868 to 1883 and Lim Jam from 1872 to 1883, were practicing in Bendigo at the time of Yick Yourn's residency. Bendigo City Council Rate Books, 1868–83.

⁶⁶Supreme Court of Victoria, Certificates of Naturalisation, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), CRS 726. Chin Kit, 10 July 1862.

⁶⁷Chin Kit and Matilda Jane Millar, Marriage Record, Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages (hereafter VBDM), 1865/2578.

⁶⁸Court of General Sessions, Bendigo Advertiser, 2 August 1878. Chin Kit had acted as an agent and interpreter for Chinese in Bendigo who wished to borrow money to make purchases of houses, land or businesses such as tailings operations. When bad debts ensued, Joseph and Sloman prosecuted Chin Kit. Although the defence maintained it had not been proven that Chin Kit had ever gained a single penny from any of the transactions, he was convicted in the Court of General Sessions of receiving £6 under false pretences and sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment with hard labour.

⁶⁹Burial Registers, White Hills Cemetery, 1857–1890 (Accessed at the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo).

⁷⁰Burial Registers, White Hills Cemetery, 1857–1890 (Accessed at the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo).

⁷¹Lovejoy, ‘Things that unite’.

⁷²See for example, Ken Inglis, ‘Going Home: Australia ns in England 1870–1900’, in David Fitzpatrick, ed., Home or Away: Immigrants in Colonial Australia: 3 (Canberra: RSSS, 1992); Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to the Present, 3^rd edn, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000).

⁷³H. D. Hsi Chan, ‘Becoming Australian but Remaining Chinese: The Future of the Down Under Chinese Past’. Keynote Lecture The Overseas Chinese in Australasian History Settlement and Interactions. Symposium, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 6 and 7 January 2001, 14.