This year is the first day of the Lunar New year, some friends can spend the traditional Chinese festival at home, some can only stay up late to watch the Spring Festival Gala after the next day to get up to work. February every year for the Chinese are filled with festive, the year before the purchase of new year cleaning, New Year`s Eve must be next meal program Spring Festival Gala, the first to the 15th of the New year there are always a variety of regulations programs. But do you know that it was in February 1818 that the first Chinese immigrant in history arrived in Australia.
On this traditional festival, the editor also tells us about the history of Chinese immigrants in Australia.
During the gold rush of the 1850s, a large number of immigrants, in fact, should be said to be more accurate workers poured into the new state to dig treasure, a large part of which came from China, they are Australia`s earliest Chinese immigrants. In fact, as early as the 1850s or even earlier, the appearance of Chinese in Australia, some as labor exports, some prisoners, but also their own emigrants, but a small number.
The official record of the first Chinese immigrant was around the Spring Festival in February 1818, 200 years ago, when a Chinese immigrant named Mak Sai Ying arrived in Xinzhou.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of Chinese grew, with most of them living in a large Chinese camp at the end of Wagga Wagga,Fitzmaurice Street, New York, a five-hour drive from downtown Sydney. Most of the Chinese who came here came from poor areas in southern China, especially around Guangzhou, who had to flee to Australia for a variety of reasons when they were heavily indebted.
Life in the camp
Over time, the so-called gold rush has cooled down, as thousands of Chinese male immigrants have left their jobs and been hired to do land repairs, gardening, agronomy and other physical work. But most of them also live in refugee camps and ranch farms outside town.
Statistics at the time showed that 869 people were Chinese in the camps, with the largest camps in Narrandera,Wagga Wagga,Deniliquin,Hay and Albury.
Describe the camp life in Narrendera
The number of Chinese students studying abroad in Australia is more and less male and female, which is the opposite of what it used to be. Gold mining is hard physical work, so there must be more men, it is said that more than 10,000 men, there are less than 100 women. (girls, we`re not in time for this.)
The Chinese people have never had a hard-working heart and an aggressive heart. Anyway, they run wherever they have the chance, first to Victoria, then to Queensland, then to Northern Territory and Tower State. Chinese people go to gold mining or farm mines to do all kinds of manual labor. And then it wasn`t just the workers at the bottom. So did the Chinese entrepreneurs, who came to Australia to invest and bring things back to China. After the mining industry did not make so much money, they turned to the farm, ranch, fishing ground. So it`s not just now, since a long time ago, the Chinese workforce has made a big contribution to Australia, especially in the northern territories and northern Queensland.
The job ad at the time
There was a steady increase in the number of Chinese in Australia until the mid-late 19th century, as the number of Chinese residents declined as a result of the internal situation in China and some contradictions in Australia.
In the first half of the 20th century, Australia`s "White Australia Policy" blocked the dream of many Chinese emigrating to Australia. In the 1960s and 1970s, the policy was relaxed step by step, but the number of Chinese immigrants did not increase significantly. It wasn`t until the late 1980s that Australia`s immigration from China grew, not to mention now.
There are still 1.2% of Wagga residents of Chinese ancestry, John Xie is one of them, but he did not live in this place since childhood, but moved from China to New Zealand and then moved to Brisbane, and finally settled in Wagga Wagga. because of his job.
John Xie
He says few people know about the history of Chinese in Wagga, where Riverina has just built a 200-year-old monument to Museum of Chinese Australian History,. Even when he arrived by chance, he learned that the original history of the Chinese Australians was recorded here.
This article cannot detail all the experiences of the Chinese in Australia, but at least we know that we have a long history with this land. Speaking of not afraid of pride, in Australia`s 400-odd-year history, the figure of the Chinese has also appeared for at least 200 years. It is no wonder that Siddah and the principal of UNSW are going to pay homage to us in China for a year. I wonder if this has reduced the sense of loss of "Australian left-behind children"?
