Chinese Australians
National Library of Australia
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| National Library Director-General Warren Horton, Carolyn Whan, King Fong, Diana Giese and Stan and Dot Hoy at the launch of the Chinese Australian Oral History Partnership. |
The Post-War Chinese Australians oral history project has generated interest, enthusiasm, goodwill and respect far beyond its core activity of preserving tapes. There have been presentations about it to university, library and museum gatherings, to historical associations and community groups, throughout Australia. Venues have included the Australian Historical Association, Perth and Newcastle; James Cook University, Cairns; and Parliament House, Darwin. The ABC Radio programs Top End Chinese (1993) and Reclaiming the Past (1996) have been based on the work. In 1995, the Library published Beyond Chinatown and in 1997 the University of Queensland Press produced Astronauts, Lost Souls & Dragons. Both attracted media coverage on TV, radio, newspapers and magazines in all states and overseas. The work has also been described in conference papers, published in collections and in numerous articles in professional journals and the mainstream media.
During the life of the project, Chinese Australian communities have moved from being interviewed and written about to becoming proactive in the reclamation of their own pasts. They are now in many ways leading this sort of community history work, through exhibitions, family history videos, collections, compilations and presentations. The tapes have responded to these developments. Oral history that taps into ‘insider’ reclamation work has a special immediacy and excitement, drawing as it does on both the time remembered and its recreation. In north Queensland, interviewees include the creative team of the Kwong Sue Duk family history project; in Darwin, members of the Chung Wah Society historical sub-committee, movers and shakers in two collaborative exhibitions there; and in Sydney the Yau/Hoy family discussing their CD-ROM. Through the Reclaiming the Past series Diana Giese convened from 1996 at the Museum of Sydney, space was provided for presentation and discussion of such projects.
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| Pearl Lowe at the opening of the Courage and Service exhibition. During World War II, she helped manufacture medical equipment and glassware, and volunteered in hospitals and canteens. |
The Darwin Chung Wah Society historical sub-committee and the National Library have jointly recorded interviews with senior members of prominent Darwin families. Each interview was a collaboration involving a committee member and family members. Resulting tapes have now been preserved, copied and fed back for use in the Chung Wah’s Chinese Museum and records, as well as the Library’s Oral History Collection. As the sub-committee noted, the profiles of both the Library and the Chung Wah Society, with their united voice, are important in giving such projects credibility, and in eliciting future support. Interviewing was extended through the Chinese Australian Oral History Partnership, an alliance with communities to continue the work. Donors to this include organisations such as the Australia-China Friendship Society, leaders, individuals and family groups. Interviewees include community leaders in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Broome.
Collection of oral accounts has also brought to public attention the documents and artefacts of Chinese Australian history previously kept mainly within families. The Library’s Manuscript Collection now includes the diary in Chinese characters of herbalist and entrepreneur Kwong Sue Duk, and documents, pictures and letters from the Lowe, Yuen and Con Foo families, among others. Families in both Darwin and Cairns lent tools and artefacts, including ink pads and brushes, jade, ceramics and embroidered silk garments, for use in displays at the Northern Territory Library and the Cairns Regional Gallery. Each of these objects carries its own story, many told on subsequent tapes. Their owners were made aware, through large attendances, of the value the wider community now places on what they have so lovingly preserved.
Links
Access the Post-war Chinese Australians oral history project and the Chinese Australian oral history partnership through the National Library of Australia’s Website at
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/489327 or https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/489327
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/780997 or https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/780997
See 'Chinese Australian oral history: a project of the National Library of Australia', Asian Libraries 8, 1999 at https://doi.org/10.1108/10176749910267857
See Papers of Diana Giese at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-341276786
See National Library of Singapore, https://nlb.gov.sg/biblio/13213747
Read related articles: 'The ancestral village: the Top End Chinese, ourselves and others', Voices 1(3) Spring 1991 http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/51922536
'Editing Lives', Voices 6(1), Autumn 1996 on Articles & Radio page
For the 2018 Chinese Australian Services Society's At Home on New Land, for which Diana gave advice on content, presentation and production, see
https://casscare.org.au/publications/new-book/