Chinese Department Stores, Rugby League and the Great Depression in New England
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Trophies in the Window: CHINESE DEPARTMENT STORES, RUGBY LEAGUE AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN NEW ENGLAND Rodney Noonan is an independent researcher and has written several articles on Chinese-Australian history. In late winter 1933, the Glen Innes Rugby League 'decided to make a comprehensive display of all the trophies' it had won that season and exhibit them in the 'main window' of Kwong Sing & Co. department store - the employer of the town's representative halfback Charlie Chong.1 Twelve months later, after winning the 'coveted Barrett Shield', the Inverell Rugby League displayed its prized new trophy in the window of Hong Yuen & Co. department store. 2 Hong Yuen employed several Chinese-Australian players, and its proprietor Louie Mew Fay (known locally as Harry Fay) was official patron of the Inverell Rugby League and sponsored the Fay Cup from 1932 to 1936. Tommy Wong Young, owner of the Sam Kee store in neighbouring Tingha, sponsored the Sam Kee Cup from 1935-39,. while Yow Sing, whose name adorned Emmaville's Yow Sing & Co. store, served with Michael Bruxner (the state's deputy premier and Country Party leader) as foundation vice-presidents of the town's second rugby league team, the Emmaville Magpies, in 1935.3 The myriad Chinese stores throughout the New England region of northern New South Wales (NSW) were a legacy of the nineteenth-century mining booms. Gold and tin had attracted thousands of Chinese miners to the area, many of whom remained after the booms subsided. By the 1930s, the White Australia policy had been in place for three decades and the Chinese Australians in New England, who were employed in many of the industries traditionally associated with early Chinese settlement in Australia, had unquestionably encountered persistent racism. However, as Gregor Benton observes, 'reducing the Chinese experience to victimhood plays Sporting Traditions, vol. 26, no. 1 CMay 2009), pp. 1-19. © Australian Society for Sports History. 2 sport1ngTRADITIONS VOLUME 26 no 1 MAY 2009 down the extent to which Chinese overseas shaped their own destinies and took an active part in the host society and economy'.4 This article explores the participation of Chinese Australians in rugby league (and other aspects of New England society) during the Depression years, as well as their social, financial and political links with other communities among the Chinese diaspora in Australia and overseas. Donating trophies to rugby league (and women's hockey) had broader social and commercial implications than helping Harry Fay and Tommy Young promote their respective businesses. Inter-town sporting contests injected funds into the economy of the host town, not only boosting financial turnover for the sponsor but also numerous other local businesses. The Invereli Chamber of Commerce adopted the slogan 'Be Loyal, Buy Locally' in 1932 to encourage consumers to support the town's businesses5 and the extra revenue generated in lnverell by Fay Cup matches perfectly complemented this campaign. Furthermore, sporting teams were closely linked to notions of community identity and Chinese Australians were visible members of those communities, whether in Uralla's town band, Tingha's Salvation Army or as fallen Anzacs commemorated on Inverell's war memorial. Engaging with the non-Chinese community did not infer a disavowal of Chinese cultural practices. The Fay and Young families made trips to China in the 1930s, while less affluent families, unable to afford overseas travel, continued to observe Qingming and celebrate Chinese New Year, cook Chinese food, and speak Chinese at home with parents or grandparents who had migrated from China.6 Community networks too, enhanced a sense of cultural identity, and helped many Chinese Australians find work with New England's Chinese stores during the Great Depression. Chinese Australians and Sport In his influential study of Australian sport, Brian Stoddart claimed that despite extensive Chinese migration to Australia 'there is little if any evidence of their having become involved in Australian sport'.7 Subsequent studies have provided that evidence but Stoddart's statement was nonetheless an accurate reflection of the lack of relevant research to that time. Two years before Stoddart's book, Jennifer Cushman observed that Australian historians were 'more [concerned] with Australian attitudes towards Chinese' than with exploring 'how the Chinese situated themselves within the Australian social and political order' and urged scholars 'to relocate the Chinese experience within the Chinese community itself'. 8 Later cultural historians have conducted the community-based studies that Cushman advocated and a variety of sports featured in Paul McGregor's exploration of Chinese- Australian social clubs in Melbourne, 9 Robyn On's discussion of the Darwin Chinese Recreation Club,10 and the interviews in Diana Giese's oral history Rodney Noonan Chinese Department Stores, Rugby League and the Great Depression in New England 3 project. 11 Henry Chan praised the accomplishments in cricket and table tennis in a volume on Chinese-Australian history but lamented that 'there has not yet been a Wallaby or prominent League player of Chinese descent'.12 This may not be correct: Charles Little speculates on the probable Chinese ethnicity of Bill Hong, who represented NSW in 1931 during his four-year rugby league career.13 Chinese Australians were not one of the eight ethnic groups considered in Sporting Immigrants, the major study to date on sport and ethnicity, although three individuals were mentioned: cricketers Hunter Poon (also known as Ander Poon) and Richard Chee Quee, and Australian Rules footballer Wally Koochew. 14 Andrew Honey discussed a Chinese soccer team that twice toured Australia in the 1920s while exploring the impact of the White Australia policy on sporting contact with non-European nations,15 while Richard Cashman noted the same tour, as well as the performances of Poon, Koochew and lesser-known individuals in rugby union, rugby league, Australian Rules and amateur boxing.16 More substantial studies have since been undertaken by Rob Hess, Julia Martinez and Sophie Couchman. Hess reveals that Chinese miners and gardeners opposed each other in three Australian Rules matches in Ballarat during the 1890s and Chinese players were involved in fundraising matches in Melbourne in 1899.17 Martinez notes that Chinese Australians played in Darwin's Australian Rules competition until segregation was introduced, after which they helped establish a multi-racial soccer association in 1927.18 Couchman demonstrates that Chinese Australians have a lengthy association with competitive cycling, particularly in Bendigo in the 1920s and 1930s, and at Wangaratta, in northeast Victoria, in the late 1890s.19 A gender imbalance is evident in the few women cited: the table tennis players Chan mentioned at the 2000 Olympics and Robyn On's reference to an Olympic torch runner in Darwin in 1956. However it should be noted that cricketer Hunter Poon's teenage daughter Daphne Poon played at the 1946 Australian Tennis Championship. 20 She provides an early instance of female sports participation at an elite level and demonstrates the value of biographical research into the families of known sports figures. The same is true ofJim Sam, the amateur boxer identified by Richard Cashman. Jim Sam's brothers Norman and Percy Sam, and their nephew George Loo Long, were all involved in rugby league. 21 Indeed, either Jim or Norman Sam, whichever was nicknamed 'Doc', represented NSW against Queensland in a rugby league match between Australian troops in Egypt in early 1915. 22 Chinese-Australian sporting teams and. individuals may well have been overlooked in studies of Australian sport as they were not prominent in the areas of greatest population density: the five mainland state capitals. Rather, existing research indicates players and teams emerged from large towns or 4 sport1ngTRADITIONS VOLUME 26 no 1 MAY 2009 region areas with a history of Chinese settlement: communities in Ballarat, Bendigo, Darwin, northeast Victoria, north Queensland, or in the case of this study, New England. Chinese Comn1unities in New England The Chinese who arrived in New England in the mid-nineteenth century were not a monolithic entity but members of two geographically and linguistically distinct communities. Hokkien-speaking labourers and shepherds from Xiamen (in Fi.tjian province) arrived in the late 1840s and early 1850s but were soon outnumbered by Cantonese-speaking miners from Guangdong province, lured by the gold boom at Rocky River in 1856, and the tin boom at Tingha and Emmaville in the 1870s. The Guangdong miners reputedly 'looked down on' the Xiamen labourers 'because they had married Australian girls', whereas the Guangdong miners sought spouses back in China. 23 There was still a significant Chinese presence in New England in 1903, the year Commonwealth legislation prohibited Chinese (and other non- Europeans) from being naturalised. The Chinese temples in Emmaville, Rocky River and Tingha were all active, while the numerous market gardens, medical practitioners and general stores were critical to the region's infrastr11cture. Dr Ah Foo, one of Armidale's nvo Chinese herbalists, died in 1903 after many years as a physician and prodigious fundraiser for the local hospital. His brother was a storekeeper in Glen Innes, 24 where there were at least two other Chinese stores. 25 Inverell had five Chinese stores in 1899,26 four ofTingha's five general stores were Chinese in 1902, 27 while Emmaville had at least two Chinese stores. 28 Encouraged by the substantial Chinese-Australian population in New England, Liang Qichao visited the region in January 1901 and established a branch of Kang Youwei's Baohuanghui [Protect the Emperor Society] in Tamworth. Liang, one of the leading Chinese intellectuals of the twentieth century, rose to prominence as Kang's protege during the Hundred Days Reform in 1898. Exiled from China after the emperor was deposed, Kang and Liang sought refuge and financial assistance among the Chinese diaspora in Asia, Australia and North America.