From Xiamen to Brisbane, it took 11.5 hours by plane, nearly 10,000 kilometers away, and 170 years ago, at least a month's worth of sea.
Around 1850, 300 Xiamen people set foot in this journey for their livelihood.
They came to Brisbane from Sydney, Australia, to become contracted shepherds, pioneers and herding more than four hundred and fifty thousand sheep.
The 300 men were also called "Xiamen shepherds" for this reason.
The icon is located in St. George's town.
Map of St. George's Town
On March 30, a monument to Xiamen Shepherd was completed in Brisbane.
You may be as curious as the daily newspaper, we Xiamen is a seaport city, how can there be shepherds?
And go across the ocean to graze?
On the arrival of Ching Ming Festival, Xiamen Daily (xamenribao) contacted people, exclusive decryption of the monument behind the inauguration.
Together with the historical details of Xiamen Shepherd, we remember the pioneers who traveled to Australia.
The story of Xiamen Shepherd is engraved on the monument in English.
At 4: 00 p.m. on March 30, a monument specially designed for the "Xiamen Shepherd" was held in the small town of St. George, which was just 2500 people. It attracted the mayor and deputy mayor of St. George, an official of the Chinese Consulate General in Brisbane. Members of the Australian Parliament and representatives of the Queensland Chinese Society and more than 100 people from all walks of life participated.
The story of Xiamen Shepherd is also engraved on the monument in English. The inscription is only eight lines of small characters, but their contribution to Australia-Xiamen Shepherd is a witness to the development of Brisbane.
IN MEMORIAM
mourn
To the young men who, around 1850, left the famine in Amoy to become indentured shepherds and those who, in the 1880s, drifted here in itinerant "coolie" gangs after the Palmer River gold had gone.
The monument gave rise to young men who left the famine of Xiamen around 1850 to become contract shepherds, as well as the "hard work" that drifted here after the Palmer gold mine disappeared in the 1880s.
These sojourners never earned enough to return to the families left behind in their ancestral villages.
The men left their homes and received little, and were unable to return to their hometown and reunite with their families.
Here now they lie silent witenesses to the settlement history of this region.
As witnesses to the history of colonization in this area, they slept in silence here.
Brought in traditional agricultural techniques and raised more than 450000 sheep.
According to public media sources such as the people's Network, Brisbane was still a wild place before 1839 and was used as an exiled camp by the colonists of New South Wales to establish Australia's largest colonial prison. 1845, Deserters discover new land above the Balqu River-Beylando., a fertile ranch in central Queensland The herdsmen came here with their livestock to make more of this a ranch. The shepherds from Xiamen arrived during this period.
They traveled all the way north from New South Wales to southern Queensland and signed a five-year contract to settle down as shepherds and workers, according to a local Chinese-language publication, the Chinese car World.
In addition to herding sheep, these Xiamen shepherds helped develop the Darling Hills.
The mixed agriculture of the Murray-Darling Basin (a combination of farming and animal husbandry) is a good condition for Australia's sheep industry-so it is known as a "country riding on the back of sheep."
"their application of traditional technology to irrigation and crop production is highly commendable." Queensland Governor Anastasia Palazzuk spoke highly of the "first seed they sown for our multiculturalism in Queensland today."
The monument was prepared for two years, with support from all walks of life in Australia. After the completion of the five-year contract, the expatriate did not earn enough money to return home.
Some of them died early and slept here-an anonymous cemetery in St. George's.
In the 1970s, a fire burned the original wooden tombstone.
Sun Jian, chairman of the St. George's Chinese Memorial Committee, said: more than two years ago, under the proposal of local born and raised federal congressman Graham, they held various fund-raising activities and design competitions for the monument, which included Chinese and white people. Hundreds of philanthropists, including aborigines and other skin races, received support from the Federal Prime Minister of Australia, the Queensland Government and the Brisbane government.
A watercolor painting by St. George's high school students is designed as a monument-the flags of China and Australia are on one side of the painting, a bridge links the exchanges between the two countries, and indigenous Australians on one side raise their hands to welcome Chinese from the other side.
Last year, the monument for Xiamen Shepherd was completed.
Sun Jian said that the monument is 2.0 meters long, 1.6 meters wide, 1.3 meters high, and its base is north, meaning that the hometown of the deceased is in the north-Xiamen, China. It is also engraved with a "meditation at night," hoping that the deceased and their hometown will always be closely connected. "it is hoped that this will enable more people to see the contribution of the Chinese and unite the hearts of the Chinese people in Australia."
Secret: why did Xiamen farmers become shepherds?
From the inscription, these shepherds are coolie (the labourers of the old days, especially in India, China, etc.). Australian historical research expert Check Ling said in an interview on local radio that the shepherds were farmers from Xiamen who crossed the sea from 1848 to 1853.
In 1848, settlers in New South Wales, Australia, commissioned Germany to sell 120 Chinese workers to Sydney, including 20 boys, according to the Xiamen hometown of overseas Chinese. The Chinese workers were the first Chinese to arrive in Australia from Xiamen, Fujian Province, as recorded in British parliamentary documents. Brisbane once belonged to New South Wales. According to the report of the British Consul of Xiamen in 1852, the number of Chinese workers who went to Australia from Xiamen in 1849 was 270, 1438 in 1851, 2666 in 1852, and more than 4300 in the past four years.
This coincides with the arrival of 300 shepherds in Australia. Combined with inscriptions, the shepherds were actually labourers from Xiamen. Brisbane's animal husbandry flourished in 1845, and these labourers were directly involved in local construction as shepherds.
Source: CCTV-4 Chinese International Channel
Where are these shepherds from Xiamen?
In the 1970s, the fire destroyed the tombstone, the only one reserved for the Huanggang Rock, which was deliberately placed next to the monument with the inscription "Dongyi Jin Mei Village personage / Caifuren's Tomb / Gengxu early June 6".
According to the inscription, the owner of the tomb is Ren Caifu, a native of Jinmei Village in Dongyi. Yan Lishui, an expert in Xiamen literature and history, speculated that the pronunciation of "Tong" in the southern Fujian language was similar to that of "Dong Yi", or "Tongyi", or "Tongan County" in ancient times. And Jin Mei Village "Jin" and the late Ming Dynasty "xunwei" beautiful name-Jimei pronunciation is similar.
Ancient Jimei belongs to Tongan jurisdiction, most likely "Tongyi Xunwei village". However, where they came from, more research is needed.
It is reported that these shepherds cross the ocean because of the famine in their hometown. This is also consistent with Tongan's historical scene at that time. According to historical records, in order to avoid famine and unrest, Xiamen overseas Chinese go abroad to earn a living an important reason. Since the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Xiamen has been suffering from droughts, typhoons and other natural disasters, and farmers have been living in poverty. In 1850, after the small knife uprising broke out in Tongan, many farmers fled overseas by boat.
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