For all my Chinese relatives who made their own journeys to Australia. CC
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
The Diary of Edward, Chek Chee: Sydney, 1903–1904
Preface
HISTORICAL NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
Copyright
The Diary of Edward, Chek Chee
Sydney, 1903–1904
Preface
I am writing these pages because soon I am not going to be living here. I may never return to Australia. If I don’t return, this book will show where I come from. This book will record all the different things that happen. I like to write.
My name is Edward Loh. Sometimes my father calls me Chek Chee, especially when I am in trouble or when we are with other Chinese people. My mother never does. I live in George Street in Sydney above our store. I am shortly to attend Fort Street Superior School as my elder brother did before me. I will be in fifth class when school begins. I speak English. I don’t speak much Chinese. I have lived here all my life. My father is Chinese and has lived in Australia, first in the goldfields and now in Sydney. Like most Chinese people I have lots and lots of relatives but most of them are living in China—I expect that I will meet lots of them in China.
My mother’s family emigrated from England with the convicts. She too has a big family but we don’t see them. Some of them live here in Sydney. My mother is a lovely person but the rest of her family are not very pleasant. Her family even tried to talk her out of marrying father. My mother’s father even forbid her to marry that Chinaman. That’s what he called my father—and most other Chinese men too. He said that she was polluting the white people; that she was marrying beneath her status. This is strange to say when some of my mother’s relatives arrived as convicts while father paid his own way here. They told my mother that if she married that Chinaman they would disown her, she would never be allowed to meet with them again. That must have been an immense burden for my mother, and father too; family is very, very important to Chinese people. Father has told me that enough times. My grandfather must have been a very hard man. When he died the family permitted mother to attend his funeral (but not us children, and never my father). I think they do not like us very much. Maybe if we looked more like them we would be liked.
Father’s store is very successful. He does very well in the import and export trade. The store has grown from a small business to one of the big traders. He sends goods all over the country. My father even sponsored his brother and family to come out to Australia to help him in the business, they live next door. They are very Chinese!
When my father and mother married they agreed that their children would live the first years with the family and attend school. After that each child would spend two or three years in China with father’s Chinese family. Elder Brother is due to return. He has been learning the Chinese ways. Father says he will start in the family business straight away. He will do well working with father, but I do not know if I will. I like writing letters and reports at school but do not enjoy the number work or geography as much. I like to read. Thankfully Elder Sister will still be in China when I arrive. I do not want to leave here and go to China but this is what the dutiful son must do. Mother and father are yet to decide when I will leave but it will be after the Chinese New Year. When I go to China I will live with people I do not know (except Elder Sister), who speak a different language and who live in a very different country. I am going to live in Guangdong province in China where my father was born. I am being sent there so that I can learn Chinese ways and Chinese education. I think they want me to be more Chinese! Like my cousin maybe.
Since the recent government policy, father also helps other Chinese families. Most of them want to stay here. I think they should, especially after they have worked here and they have children born here. I know some Chinese people who have returned to China and then been refused entry back into Australia.
Father says that for his family coming and going will never be a problem. He was naturalised an Australian citizen, and his children were born here. Other men ask if they can be naturalised too. It is too late for them. They tell him to persuade the government men to let them be naturalised but he can’t. These Chinese men are not pleased with father. What will happen while I am away? Maybe the government will change the rules again. Maybe then I will never return.
Along with my brothers and sisters, I am the first of the new generation. We are Australian but we are Chinese too. My father continually tells me that I will be the bridge between the nations. I think that I am a shaky bridge.
I am not my brother and sister. They were both excited to meet the Chinese family but I do not want to leave here. I like living in Australia. I like our house. I like our store. I like the games I play. I like my clothes. I like our street. I like my mother’s cooking. I like father’s Chinese food too but can I eat it all the time? I hate the heads of birds.
Thursday, 23 July
I have been waiting a few days to write of interesting things. Nothing interesting has happened, except that I didn’t have to go to school today. Mother walked my sisters to school. Instead I was helping Father in the store. I counted 97 (that’s gow sup chut in Chinese—see I do know some numbers) ginger jars, swept the floor, straightened Father’s newspaper collection and many other tasks. Father did not seem too busy.
After tonight’s meal I washed the dishes while sister dried them. Mother played the piano while we sang songs and then we went to bed.
Friday, 24 July
No school today again. Like my elder brother before me I am changing to the Fort Street Superior School and I begin on Monday. My brother did very well at the school. I hope I can too.
Saturday, 25 July
I hope that there are other boys like me there. Elder Brother never had any trouble. He liked the school so I will probably like it too.
Sunday, 26 July
It is raining today. Quong Tart is dead. That is what everyone in the Chinese community (maybe all of Sydney) has heard about today and that is all I will write.
Monday, 27 July
Mr Mei Quong Tart has finally passed from this life to the next. He will go to heaven, not because of his good life or the wonderful way he helped Chinese people or the way he treated them. He will go to heaven because he believes, that’s what Mother says.
Father is very sorrowful. Mother too. It is harder for them than for other Chinese people because like Father, Mr Quong Tart was not concerned that Mrs Quong Tart was not a Chinese woman. He too married across borders.
Mr Quong Tart was a Chinaman that everyone respected. Sometimes he even took Father and other businessmen with him to meet government officials. But not everyone respected him. I think that my grandfather and people like him did not. And some Chinese men disrespectfully called him a Chinglishman.
Father said ‘I hope that my life can be as well-remembered as his will be. And, Chek Chee, you will do well to live a life like his.’
Sometimes Mr Quong Tart came to our store to meet with other Chinese men. Sometimes they would meet at his house in Ashfield or in his tea rooms and discuss the important issues that were affecting the Chinese people. Since he was attacked and left to die in his tea rooms last year we have not seen him very often. He wasn’t even at the New Year celebrations. I am glad that they caught the man that attacked him. That man’s sentence should now be increased because he killed Mr Quong Tart. He received his punishment for the next 12 years and then is free but Mrs Quong Tart and their children have to live with only his memory for the rest of their lives. It does not seem just.
; Chinese men and women from the community have been passing through our doors all afternoon. All they talk about is the death. Some of the men and a few of the Chinese women even questioned whether his bones would be sent back to China and buried in his homeland but Father said that that was not possible. Mr Quong Tart’s home was here. Even the family in China knew that. His children are here. His wife is here. He is an Australian so why would he be buried in China? Father really does respect him. I wonder if Mr Quong Tart ever sent his children from Australia to China to learn the Chinese ways.
One of the men who arrived in Australia last year complained that the relatives would not be able to pay their respects properly. I remember he squealed and said ‘How will they present offerings to a body lying in a foreign country? His spirit will be lost in this land.’ But he was not thinking straight. Last year Mr Quong Tart was here in Australia and able to pay respects to his relatives whose bones were buried in China. His relatives will do the same.
Mr Quong Tart had been very sick all week. He caught a chill. It became worse. It was nine o’clock last night when he died.
I was supposed to start at my new school today. Father and Mother decided it would be best to wait until after the celebrations.
Tuesday, 28 July
I am very tired. My feet hurt from walking so much. I have paid my respects to Father and Mother’s friend Mr Quong Tart. I have never seen Father cry like this. Tears were flooding from his eyes.
The funeral cortège was immense. There were Chinese people attending and English people too. There were government officials (Father pointed those people out to me), and staff from his tearooms and many of the men from the markets who he traded with, and the gardeners and merchants, and there were Chinese men and women whom I have never seen. Only at Chinese New Year do more Chinese people gather together. There was no trading in the Chinese stores today. A brass band played. Mr Quong Tart’s polished coffin was laid in a hearse, pulled by four majestic horses. They must have known whose body they were leading because they held their heads high all the way. We walked from his home Gallop House in Ashfield to the station. Along the path people who were watching were very, very respectful. This is very good. They knew who had died. I know some people in Sydney are scared of Chinese people but I could not see them today.
When the Chinese men marched to the goldfields last century the white miners would say that they looked like a swarm of ants, blue and black, walking in line, single file, following the leading ant to the source. Today those white miners would really have been shocked seeing all these Chinese men walking two or three abreast dressed in English suits and hats.
As they carried the coffin onto the train we uncovered our heads. A train transported us from the station near Mr Quong Tart’s to the Mortuary Station at Rookwood—it must surely be the most impressive of all train stations in Sydney. And at the Necropolis I could not believe my eyes—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people had marched in procession from the station. There were not one but three ministers, including the Archdeacon and Reverend Soo Hoo Ten reading the service that was in Chinese and in English. Everyone, no matter what type they were, surely felt part of this celebration. The service concluded with the hymn ‘Abide With Me’. I sang the first two verses:
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
I really did not like that place. I hope that we don’t ever come again—even for festivals. There are pathways and lovely gardens, elegant ponds and bridges but seeing the monuments and the urns and the building for burying the bodies, I shivered and clasped the sides of my tunic. It was an eerie feeling standing there in the rest houses with all the living people but knowing that we were surrounded by dead bodies.
At festival times people complain about the Chinese people being happy and cheerful and crowding out the Mortuary Train, and all the food and the drinks and the fireworks. But this is good. This is how Chinese celebrate a person’s life and part of the religious ceremony, showing respect. Many people think funerals should be glum and sad and mournful.
Mr Quong Tart’s body was fully dressed in the clothes of an esteemed Chinaman. This is good. He was Chinese but he was also Australian. He was a Chinese Australian.
Wednesday, 29 July
Mr Quong Tart was really, really important to all Sydney people. Usually Chinese people only ever get mentioned for the drugs and the opium or for the Chinese people that are flooding Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald has reported on the funeral—twice. The first was in the summary column (Pope Leo XIII has died too). Then there was a long report of the funeral. They even listed the names of the chief mourners—so many important people were there including local government people and ministers and consul-generals and mayors and police and military.
I was sooo tired that I slept in late till the middle of the day. This afternoon Father called me into his office. This is his little piece of China with the burning incense and the wooden panels. He told me that as respected as Mr Quong Tart was, he, like Father, would always be known as a Chinaman, not coming from this land. ‘But you Chek Chee, you were born here. The blood in your veins flows with my blood from China and your mother’s blood from Australia, a perfect mix, so you can only ever be one born of this land.’
I giggle when Father calls his children the perfect mix as if we were like sauces prepared for dinner. Because I was born here boys and girls like me will be the ones who make this land a home, not just for the white-skinned people born here but for all people like me with parents from other lands, ‘those who no longer want to be sojourners but great citizens’.
Father expects greatness from his children but I don’t know if I can live up to his expectations. I do not know if I can be the type of person that my Father wants. I do not excel at school like my elder brother.
Thursday, 30 July
My sisters had to go to school today. Father decided that it would be better that I wait for the new week to begin, so I helped in the store.
Sunday, 2 August
Tomorrow I finally start at my new school—one week late.
Monday, 3 August
I used to walk with King Woo, my cousin, to school. He would teach me Chinese and I would teach him English. Now my cousin is walking with me only part of the way as we go to different schools. My uncle’s children only have Chinese names. They came from China last year but already my cousin has achieved exceptional results at school, excelling in all his work. Already they have attained a competency in the English language. All teachers comment on his studiousness and his meritorious attitude to learning. I would still like to be at school with him. Not in a new school.
I do not like this new school. There is no one there that I have met like me. There are Chinese boys there like my cousin but no-one like me.
When Father asked me how the school day was I told him that all went well. I was not lying because my classes did go well. I even received a perfect mark in my copy book work. But things did not go well. I cannot write what was said to me today. It was stupid but I wonder am I Chinese, or am I Australian?
Tuesday, 4 August
I am strong. I can endure the words that I have been hearing at school about me. Yesterday I did not denigrate this book with those words they whispered, like moon-face. At my old school I did not hear these words. I am puzzled why they say this. I do not look like most Chinese boys. Only part of me is Chinese. My queue makes me look Chinese. I could reply with some witty remark but Father says that would lower me to their level and that I have to grow through these hateful words just as he did.
But the words said by Mee Sing,
a boy in the senior grade, as I was walking home surprised me and have really caused me anguish. Why would he call me names when he too is Chinese? He is wholly and completely Chinese. He called me China boy and when he knew he had my attention, ‘Yes you, who can’t even speak Chinese, who thinks that he is Chinese with that stupid queue.’ He said the last part flicking my hair.
To reinforce his point he started speaking Chinese words that I am sure are not permitted in public as he ran. I have heard these words muttered before by a merchant in the store. He dropped a ginger jar while Father and I were there. When Father heard them he yelled ‘m’hi’ and made the man apologise for uttering the words in front of his children. And to make sure he understood, Father repeated it in Chinese. And he did, with many, many bows too.
I did not know that my queue was causing distress to Mee Sing. My queue is not to show that I am Chinese. I am part Chinese and I am Australian too. I like wearing my hair this way just like Father does. Not all Chinese men wear their hair like this but my family does.
Mee Sing does not have a queue. Maybe he wishes he did to be more Chinese? I do not speak much Chinese but that is not my fault. I am learning some words, but not well enough for him.
Wednesday, 5 August
Today did not start out well. I think that I am not the boy I should be. I hit my cousin.
‘Tso shan King Woo,’ I said as I met my cousin on the path when I finally caught up with him. He was already ahead of me. I repeated it again, louder this time, thinking that he did not hear me properly.
The Melting Pot Page 1