Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China

165 Pages·2017·6.883 MB·English

by  Sophie Loy-Wilson

Australians in Shanghai
In the first half of the twentieth century, a diverse community of Australians
settled in Shanghai. There they forged a ‘China trade’, circulating goods, people
and ideas across the South China Sea, from Shanghai and Hong Kong to
Sydney and Melbourne. This trade has been largely forgotten in contemporary
Australia, where future economic ties trump historical memory when it comes
to popular perceptions of China. After the First World War, Australians turned to
Chinese treaty ports, fleeing poverty and unemployment, while others sought
to ‘save’ China through missionary work and socialist ideas. Chinese Australians,
disillusioned by Australian racism under the White Australia Policy, arrived to
participate in Chinese nation building and ended up forging business empires
which survive to this day.
This book follows the life trajectories of these Australians, providing a means
by which we can address one of the pervading tensions of race, empire and nation
in the twentieth century: the relationship between working-class aspirations for
social mobility and the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of white settler
societies.
Sophie Loy-Wilson is a Lecturer in Australian History at the University
of Sydney.
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Australians in Shanghai
Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty
Port China
Sophie Loy-Wilson
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Sophie Loy-Wilson
The right of Sophie Loy-Wilson to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Loy-Wilson, Sophie, author.
Title: Australians in Shanghai: race, rights and nation in treaty port
China / by Sophie Loy-Wilson.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013499| ISBN 9781138797628 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315756998 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Australians—China—Shanghai—History. | Australians—
China—Shanghai—Social conditions. | Shanghai (China)—Social
conditions. | Shanghai (China)—Race relations.
Classification: LCC DS796.S29 A96 2016 | DDC 305.82/
405113209041—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013499
ISBN: 978-1-138-79762-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75699-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton
To Judy and Kyle, for taking me with them
and to Muhilan, for finding a way
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Contents
List of Figures ix
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Note on Chinese Language Use xvii
Abbreviations xix
Maps xx
Introduction 1
PART I
Building Empires, Crossing Borders 13
1 The Kwok Family in Treaty Port China, 1880–1949 15
2 The Kwok Family After Liberation 41
PART II
Finding Work in the Eastern Markets 57
3 Work and Surveillance in Australian Expatriate
Communities 59
4 Class and Commerce in Australian Expatriate
Communities 77
PART III
‘Liberating’ China, ‘Saving’ Australia 99
5 Socialists, Missionaries and Internationalists 101
viii Contents
6 Trade Unionists, Patriots and Anticolonialists 117
Conclusion 131
Index 136
Figures
Map of China 1930 xx
Map of treaty port Shanghai 1930 xxi
I.1 Barker Street, The Rocks, 1900, showing the premises of
Chinese Australian companies Wing On & Co. and
Wing Sang & Co. 3
1.1 Chinese Australians in Shanghai, 1931 17
1.2 Chinese Australians at a Shanghai garden party, 1934 18
1.3 Chinese population of Australia, 1881–1921 19
1.4 Pearlie Kwok, photographed when she was a bridesmaid at the
wedding of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, 1 December 1927 28
1.5 Four daughters with their mother, c.1928 29
1.6 Paul Kwok’s parents on their wedding day, Hong Kong,
14 October 1937 31
2.1 Chinese Australian Arthur Janne in uniform in Shanghai during
the war with Japan 43
2.2 Pearl Fu (née Kwok), Daisy’s sister, Bobby Fu, Daisy’s
grandnephew, and Daisy Woo (née Kwok) in Shanghai in 1965 46
3.1 A&O Liners Changte and Taiping, postcard, c.1930 67
3.2 Scene on a wharf in Shanghai, 1920–1930 70
4.1 Australian dried fruit ‘sample’ 80
5.1 The bodies and the clothes of the ‘May 30th Martyrs’ 105
5.2 ‘Taken for the Child Labor Campaign, just as she came out from
a cotton mill in Shanghai’ 110
6.1 Packaging ice cream bars, Peters Ice Cream factory, Perth, c.1929 118
6.2 Sketch from Hong Kong Strike Pictorial encouraging workers to
join the 1925 general strike in Hong Kong after the May 30th
shootings 121