Towards a Modern Diasporic Literary Tradition: The Evolution of Australian Chinese Language Fiction from 1894 to 1912
Haizhi Luo
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master by Research at the University of New South Wales
School of Humanities and Languages Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of New South Wales
April 2017
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet
Surname or Family name: Luo
First name: Haizhi Other name/s:
Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: MA(Research)
School: School of Humanities and Languages Faculty: Faculty of Arts and SocialSciences
Title: Towards a Modern Diasporic Literary Tradition: The Evolution of AustralianChinese Language Fiction from1894 to 1912
Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) Fiction, as one of the earliest diasporic Chinese literary genres as well as the most neglected one in current scholarships, is the focus of this research project. The thesis examines Chinese language fictionpublished in the three earliest Australian Chinese language newspapers from 1894 to 1912, when Australian Chinese diaspora experienced an initial plethora of urban cultural development. Through the thesis, I propose to show the incipient evolution of Australian Chinese language fictionand argue that the beginning of Chinese Australian writing should be redefined to the turn of the 20th century given its original and exemplary contribution to the development of a diasporic literary tradition in Australia. During these years, Australian Chinese language fictionevolved froma production largely derivative of the classical Chinese narrative tradition, to a modern and localised form through the influence and inspiration of the late Qing revolution in fiction. This achievement can be witnessed in the employment of modern narrative techniques and structures, in the incorporation of local lives and events into the stories, and in the hybridity of themes that mix traditional and modern interests such as exile and ethnic unity, which are rare in late Qing Chinese fictionbut essential to the concerns of post-colonial and diasporic cultural studies.
Demonstrating the value of early Australian Chinese language fictionoffers a fresh angle to enrich our knowledge of the life experienceof early Chinese migrants. It also reconnects such diasporic narratives with the modernising development of late Qing fictionin China as well as other early Chinese diasporic fiction, thus providing us an opportunity to discuss their mutual interaction and influence, as well as their role in the transnational development of world Chinese language literature. More importantly, it demonstrates how the localising process of the diasporic Chinese literary tradition began in Australia by supplementing the stories and other imaginative accounts of early Chinese migrants into the national literature of Australia, showing an alternative historical image of the Australian Chinese communities and a diversified vision of Australia's social and cultural experience that was taking place already over a century ago.
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ABSTRACT
Research of Australian Chinese language literature is an expanding field in both the studies of world Chinese language literature (or Sinophone literature as other scholars may call it) and ethnic literature in Australia. Yet despite a history of over 150 years of Chinese migration to Australia, recent studies only focus on the production of Australian Chinese language literature of the past three or four decades, whereas its early development remains virtually untouched by research up until now. Therefore, fiction, as one of the earliest diasporic Chinese literary genres as well as the most neglected one, is the main focus of this research project. Tracing this back to the turn of the 20th century, when Australian Chinese diaspora experienced an initial plethora of urban cultural development, this thesis examines Chinese language fiction published from 1894 to 1912 in the three earliest Australian Chinese language newpapers in Sydney and Melbourne. They are The Chinese Australian Herald ( , 1894- 1923), The Tung Wah News ( , 1898-1902)/The Tung Wah Times ( , 1902-1936) and The Chinese Times ( , 1902-1905/ , 1905-1914). This thesis proposes to shows the incipient evolution of a diasporic literary tradition in the local communities in Australia.
Through the thesis, I argue that the beginning of Australian Chinese language literature should be redefined as the turn of the 20th century due to the considerable amount of fiction published in local newspapers and its original and exemplary contribution to the development of a diasporic literary tradition in Australia. During the two decades from 1894 to 1912, Australian Chinese language fiction evolved from a production strongly derivative of the classical Chinese narrative tradition, to a modern and localised form through the influence and inspiration of the late Qing revolution in fiction. This achievement can be witnessed in the employment of modern narrative techniques and structures, in the incorporation of local lives and events into the stories, and in the hybridity of themes that mix traditional and modern interests, including ideas such as exile and ethnic unity, which are rare in late Qing Chinese fiction but essential to post- colonial and diasporic cultural formations. My research also uncovered Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy). Not only it is the first novel produced by a local Chinese
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author, it overturns the current academic conclusion that the first appearance of the local Chinese novel only came into being in the late 20th century; the themes and the narrative techniques applied in this novel also epitomise milestones in the modernising and localising development of early Australian Chinese language fiction.
Demonstrating the values of early Australian Chinese language fiction offers an until now unexplored angle to enrich our knowledge of the life experience of early Chinese migrants, it also reconnects such diasporic narratives with the modernising development of late Qing fiction in China as well as other early Chinese diasporic fiction, giving rise to an opportunity to discuss their mutual interaction and influence, as well as their role to the transnational framework of the development of world Chinese language literature. More importantly, it demonstrates how the localising process of the diasporic Chinese literary tradition began in Australia at the turn of the 20th century by supplementing the discourse of early Chinese migrants into the national literature in Australia, showing an alternative historical image of the Australian Chinese communities and a diversified vision of Australia’s social and cultural experience that was taking place already over a century ago.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I offer my sincere thanks to my supervisors, Dr Yi Zheng and Dr Jon von Kowallis from the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, who guided me through my postgraduate research with their knowledge, understanding and encouragement. I am indebted to Dr Yi Zheng for her patience and flexibility to accommodate my study needs as a part-time research student, allowing me the room to work in my own way whilst steering me in the right direction. My appreciation also goes to Dr Jon von Kowallis for his expert on translation and valuable comments.
I would also like to thank Dr Kow Mei Kao from Singapore, who initiated me into this project and who has constantly helped me with useful resources. I would like to thank Dr Mark Stiles and his wife, Lee Whitmore, a great Australian animation artist, for their unfailing encouragement. I am especially grateful to Dr Mark Stiles who directed me to the connections between Australian history, the Australian literary experience and my research topic, and who also edited my thesis.
My profound gratitude also goes to my partner, Jingjing Ma, for his unconditional support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without him.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to the early Chinese migrants in Australia, who left these wonderful stories about their journeys and life experiences, so that we can commemorate this particular part of history and be inspired as late-comers on the pathway of settling in Australia.
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NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION
All Chinese-English translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted.
This thesis uses Hanyu Pinyin for transliteration of Chinese terms, names and phrases, except when different conventions or preferred spellings already exist, as is frequently the case in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas Chinese diasporic communities in terms of personal names and proper names. The ordering of Chinese names follows their conventional forms: family names first, followed by given names.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
Originality Statement…………………………………………………… ii Copyright and Authenticity Statement………………………………… iii Abstract………………………………………………………………...... iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………... vi Note on Translation and Transliteration………………………………. vii
Chapter 1. Introduction………………………………………………. 1 1.1 Critical reviews of current studies of Australia Chinese language Literature………………………………………………………... 3 1.2 Theoretical framework in world Chinese language literature, Sinophone studies, and Chinese narrative tradition…………...... 7 1.3 Thesis structure………………………………………………..... 18
Chapter 2. The Early Prosperity: A Full Landscape of Australian Chinese Language Fiction at the Turn of the 20th Century...... 20 2.1 Foundation of early Australian Chinese language fiction: the birth of Chinese language press in Sydney and Melbourne...... 20 2.2 Australian Chinese language fiction from 1894 to 1912...... 25
Chapter 3. The Early Evolution of Australian Chinese Language Fiction: Drawing on the Late Qing Experience...... 54 3.1 Innovations and inventions in genres and themes...... 57 3.2 Evolutions of narrative techniques and structures...... 65 3.3 The elevation of fiction in its status and functions...... 84
Chapter 4. Conclusion...... 95 4.1 Pathways of localisations: a comparison between the early developments of Australian Chinese language fiction and Australian English language fiction...... 96
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4.2 From local to transnational: early Australian Chinese language fiction and other diasporic Chinese language fiction in the development of world Chinese language literature...... 107 4.3 Conclusion...... 118
Bibliography...... 121 Appendix I: Catalogue of Australian Chinese Language Fiction from 1894 to 1912...... 131 Appendix II: Translated Fiction Published in Australian Chinese Language Press from 1894 to 1912...... 151 Appendix III: Stories with Foreign Contents Recorded in Australian Chinese Language Fiction between 1894 and 1912...... 152 Appendix IV: Local Stories Recorded in Australian Chinese Language Fiction between 1894 and 1912...... 154 Appendix V: List of Fiction Written by Mainland Chinese Novelists and Reprinted from Other Chinese newspapers...... 156
ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction
There is a growing interest in Australian Chinese (language) literature in the fields of diasporic studies, Australian literature and overseas Chinese literature since the turn of the 21st century. In Australia, it follows the increasing focus on Asian Australian writing and more recently, the multicultural and transnational turn in Australian literary studies. Wenche Ommundsen, for instance, describes Australian literature as a movable cultural feast: constantly enriched by new arrivals and the ‘conversation’ between different literary and cultural traditions (2004). She maintains that Australia’s transnational literary heritage is also multilingual with linguistic, formal, generic and cultural influences from other traditions (2012:3-4). Robert Dixon also advocates the need of Australian literary studies to be more aware of non-Anglophone traditions (2007:17) and a transnational approach to chart the international migration and local adaptation of literary forms in genre-based research (2007:23-24). Chinese Australian writing, as part of Asian Australian writing, has been recognised as an important and growing category within Australian literature since the 1990s1, and have contributed significantly to the cultural and linguistic multiplicity, in Michael Jacklin’s words (2009:3), in the multicultural and transnational dimensions of Australian literature considering the long history of Chinese migration to Australia.
Fiction produced in the Australian Chinese diaspora at the turn of the 20th century is the subject of my research in this thesis. It is one of the earliest diasporic genres in Chinese Australian writing, present scholarships tend to focus heavily on the contemporary English language fiction written by local Chinese authors.2 While a large part of Chinese language writings goes unnoticed, this is especially the case with Chinese language fiction produced in the early days of local Chinese communities more than a hundred
1 Wenche Ommundsen (2011) has summarised the status of current research of Chinese Australian writing and listed a sizeable body of literary criticism in this field. 2 Brian Castro (born in Hong Kong in 1950 and has lived in Australia since 1961), Hsu-Ming Teo (born in Malaysia in 1970 and immigrated to Australia in 1977) and Ouyang Yu (born in China in 1955 and arrived in Australia in 1991), for instance. 1 years ago, which laid the foundation for Chinese Australian Writing but has long been ignored in research.
My research aims to enrich the established knowledge of the history and development of Chinese language fiction in Australia by filling a gap in the study of Chinese language writings produced in the early Australian Chinese diaspora, and to restore the full landscape of how Chinese language fiction sprouted, set root in Australia, and subsequently evolved towards a modern diasporic literary tradition through its initial development.
It is important to give an accurate nomenclature to these early Chinese language writings as departure for my discussion. The study of Chinese language fiction produced in Australia falls into the categories of Chinese Australian writing as well as overseas Chinese literature. However, the naming of both categories remains debatable: Chinese Australian writing can be accounted for under the rubric of diasporic writing, multicultural writing, ethnic writing or transnational literature, but the problem is that none of these terms can clearly specify the language used. For example, Chinese Australian fiction or diasporic Chinese fiction can also contain works written in English or other community languages as long as the author is Australian Chinese; whereas the term of overseas Chinese literature leads to two easily-confused Chinese terms of huaren wenxue ( , literally the literature of people of Chinese origin) and huawen wenxue ( , literally Chinese language literature). As the study of overseas Chinese literature gains depth with time, overseas Chinese language literature, as a more crystallised concept that points to the language of the research subject, has become established in academia3 for the reason that its subject of study only deals with
3 Discussions of the concepts of Chinese literature and Chinese language literature can be read in a number of publications and papers published in various journals of Chinese literature. To name a few as examples, Chen Xianmao’s accounts (1999) of the definition, characteristics and development prospect in the first chapter of his book Haiwai Huawen Wenxueshi ( , History of Overseas Chinese Language Literature), Taiwanese scholar Gong Pengcheng’s (2004) Morang Huawen Wenxue Dengyu Huaren Wenxue ( , Don't Equate Chinese Literature with Overseas Chinese Literature), Rao Pengzi’s paper (2008) Haiwai Huawen Wenxue Zai Zhongguo Xuejie De Xingqi Jiqi Yiyi ( ,The Rise and Significance of the Studies of Overseas Chinese language Literature in Chinese Academic Arena), and Australian Chinese writer He Yuhuai’s (2010) Guanyu Huawen Wenxue De Jige Wenti ( , Some Issues of Chinese Language Literature). 2 texts written in Chinese. Literature produced by Chinese migrants but in other languages such as English is still part of Chinese Australian writing or overseas Chinese literature, but is no longer subsumed into the category of Chinese language literature. Following this proposition and based on the materials I have collected from the early Australian Chinese language press, I will adopt the concept of Australian Chinese language fiction and Australian Chinese language literature in my discussions in this thesis.
1.1 Critical reviews of current studies of Australia Chinese language literature
It is generally recognised and agreed4 in current academic circles that Australian Chinese language literature did not begin its development until the 1980s against the background of the Australian government’s multi-cultural policy and the resumption of Chinese migration, as well as the resurrection of the Australian Chinese language press. This formulation is probably partially true as we have witnessed the burgeoning of Chinese language literature development in Australia starting from the 1980s to the present. The reputable cultural figures who continue their writings in Australia and promising writers who have arisen from newer generations of Chinese migrants and students have both contributed to the boom of Chinese language fiction, poetry and prose in Australian Chinese communities.5 The appearance of quality literary works has won Australian Chinese language literature acclaim as a significant development in overseas/world Chinese language literature, and made it a focus of research in this field with increasing influence.
4 Qian Chaoying states that the rise of Australian Chinese language literature was marked by a number of literary events in the1980s and 90s (Rao (eds), 2009:186). Other books such as Chen Xianmao’s (1999), Gong Zhong’s (2000) and Ma Sen’s (2015) systematic introduction of the history and development of overseas/world Chinese language literature hardly mention any Chinese literature in Australian earlier than the 1980s. Similar views are also shared in some Australian Chinese scholars’ studies such as Mabel Lee (1998), Huang Yonglian (2001), He Yuhuai (2001, 2010), Zhang Jingfan (2001, 2011). 5 To name a few of the cultural figures: Liang Yusheng ( , 1926-2009), who earned his fame as a master of Wuxia or chivalric novels in Hong Kong and China, continued his writings after he migrated to Australia in 1987; Zhao Dadun ( , 1918-2016), who was an educator in Hong Kong and Vietnam, is well-known for his classical Chinese poetry after moving to Sydney in 1983. As for the newer generation of writers, the contemporary Chinese poetry of Bing Fu ( ) and Ouyang Yu( ), the fiction of Huang Yuye ( ) and Kang Ning ( ), and the essay of Zhang Aolie ( ) are considered the outstanding pieces of contemporary Australian Chinese language literature. 3 Was the 1980s however the real beginning of Australian Chinese language literature? It is commonly recognised that the history of Chinese migration to Australia can be traced back to the early 19th century6. Also, as a matter of fact, the Chinese language press in Australia had quite an early history and had already made its appearance at the turn of the 20th century in the two cities with the largest Chinese populations: Sydney and Melbourne.
According to a few early attempts at searching for the origin of Australian Chinese- language literature (Liu, 1989; Lai, 1991), the early appearance of Chinese language prose and poetry in Australia over 100 years ago has been evidenced and broadly acknowledged. Liu Weiping, a distinguished scholar of Australian Chinese history, dug out copious records of Liang Qichao ( , 1873-1929)’s historical visit to Australia between October 1900 and April 1901 from early Australian Chinese newspapers. Liu dedicated two chapters in his book (1989:99-106; 144-177) to elaborating on the establishment of early Australian Chinese newspapers and on relevant materials of Liang Qichao’s activities in Australia including his itinerary, travelogues, poems and writings in various social occasions. Lai Bojiang, the very first scholar to write a general overview of overseas Chinese language literature, had also briefly mentioned some lines of poetry carved on stones found in the places where early Chinese labourers stayed and worked (1991:286). But such attempts are only limited to these findings, fiction and other forms of literature like drama are neither confirmed7 nor mentioned at all.
Without any further investigation into the early Australian Chinese language press, many subsequent studies simply quote or repeat these early findings. Even worse, this small clue to any possible germination of literature is sometimes ignored in discussions of the historical development of Australia Chinese language literature. For example,
6 There are multiple Australian and Chinese official and academic resources in regards to the early Chinese migration history to Australia. To list a few online source for examples: http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/chinatowns-across-australia; http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/pubs/tracking-the- dragon-section-a.pdf; http://www.chinesemuseum.com.au/history. 7 Although Liu modestly acknowledged the appearance of poems, prose and travel writings in early Australian Chinese language newspapers at the turn of the 20th century, he later commented, “I didn’t see any local fiction, it could have been there but I didn’t notice it. I just roughly remembered seeing the serialised novel of Geming Jun ( , The Revolutionary Army) by Zou Rong ( , 1885-1905)” in an interview conducted by Australian Chinese migrant writer Zhang Aolie (Zhang, 2003:18). 4 Huang Yonglian, who is a renowned Australian Chinese writer and the director of the Sydney Chinese Writers’ Association, once stated that “although Chinese people had arrived in Australia as far as more than 150 years ago, the Chinese language literature was a complete blank for this over-a-hundred-years’ time” (Huang, 2001:23). Chen Xianmao, who specialises in overseas Chinese literature study and has compiled a monumental 4-volumes book on the history of overseas Chinese language literature, even skips those early findings and jumps directly to the “golden age” (Chen, 1999(3):446) of Australian Chinese language literature in the 1980s and 90s, while, in other chapters of his book, the early Chinese language literature from southeastern Asian countries and United State is at least mentioned.
While acknowledging Liu Weiping’s findings of early writings from local Chinese newspapers, Zhang Aolie adopts a more careful description in two of his papers and claims the turn of the 20th century as a “sprouting stage” (2001:7; 2004:54) for the appearance of poems, prose and travel writings during Liang Qichao’s visit in Australia. Liu Xi Rang in his PhD dissertation also shares a similar viewpoint and states that “Chinese-Australian literature started from nonfiction. …… early Chinese-Australian writings were limited to nonfiction works, such as poems, antithetical couplets, diaries, memoirs and autobiographies” in his more recent study of Chinese Australian fiction (2007:69). However, Liu still arbitrarily limits the appearance of the early Australian Chinese language fiction by claiming that “from the gold rush to the 1940s, Chinese- Australians did not create any fiction. ……before the 1990s, no Chinese-Australian wrote fiction in Chinese about their lives in Australia” (2007:69). Even in Ouyang Yu’s latest discussion of the origin of Australian Chinese language literature, he only mentions a few diaries, memoirs or autobiographical types of writings on top of his acknowledgement of the existence of classical Chinese poems as the earliest beginning of Australian Chinese language literature (2016:120-125). No trace of any possible early Australian Chinese language fiction is revealed in his analysis.
5 It was not until the recent Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project on New Transnationalisms: Australia's multilingual Literary Heritage from 2013 to 20158 led by Professor Wenche Ommundsen that scholars in the field of transnational, diasporic and multicultural literatures in Australia has started to gain knowledge of the existence of early Chinese Australian writing. In Huang’s and Ommundsen’s brief survey of the Tung Wah Times ( ) (2015:1-11), one of the earliest Chinese language press in Australia established since 1898, the emergence of the first literary writing in the Australian Chinese diaspora is confirmed. Their compendious analysis of a few short stories and poems published in the newspaper illustrate the functions of these early literary writings as to serve many and varied purposes in the Chinese community in Australia in the early years of Federation including seeking to define its diasporic identity while under considerable pressure from events in both their home and host countries (2015: 2, 8). However, Huang’s and Ommundsen’s analysis is limited to only one of the three earliest local Chinese newspapers in Australia. Without a careful and comprehensive examination of all these three early Chinese language newspapers, the early development of Australian Chinese language literature, especially that of the genre of fiction at the turn of the 20th century cannot be fully accounted for.
When we turn our gaze to the early Chinese literature history of other regions such as Singapore, Malaysia and North America, the appearance of various Chinese literary forms has been confirmed in the local Chinese language newspapers of the late 19th century9. Despite the fact that the urbanisation of Chinese migration also started to flourish in Australia at a similar time and hence gave rise to a fairly large readership of Chinese newspapers, the study of possible early Australian Chinese language literature remains as an uncharted terrain. After reviewing the aforementioned ideas which deny, ignore, undervalue and inadequately account for the existence of early Australian Chinese language literature, I couldn’t help but wonder: When is the real beginning of Australian Chinese language literature? If early Australian Chinese language fiction, which is most neglected in previous studies, indeed exists and has started its first
8 Please refer to the project website http://lha.uow.edu.au/hsi/istr/UOW148231.html hosted by Institute for Social Transformation Research, University of Wollongong for more information regarding this project. 9 See Kow (2005, 2009, 2011), Li (2010) and Yin (2000). 6 development at the turn of the 20th century, how did it happen and relate to the evolution of fiction in mainland China, its parent literature, as well as other overseas Chinese language fiction? And what values and contributions has it brought to the Australian literary experience and the modernising and localising process of this ethnic literary tradition? With these questions in my mind, I investigated the three earliest Australian Chinese language newspapers from 1894 to 1912 in order to further explore the clue initiated by Liu with the hope of finding an answer.
Based on my findings and also as an answer to Ommundsen’s question “When did ‘Asian Australian Writing’ come into existence” (2012:1) from the perspective of Chinese migrants, in this thesis I intend to put forward a completely different exposition to push the timeline of the real beginning of Australian Chinese language literature back to the turn of the 20th century during the initial development of the Chinese language press in Australia. According to the historical records available, there were three Chinese language newspapers at that time: The Chinese Australian Herald (Guang Yi Hua Bao ), The Tung Wah News (changed name to The Tung Wah Times in August, 1902, ) and The Chinese Times (Ai Guo Bao , its Chinese name was changed to Jing Dong Xin Bao in February, 1905). The establishment of early Australian Chinese newspapers provided a place where educated Chinese migrants and intellectuals from China could continue with their literary creations in the diaspora in Australia. A considerable amount of fiction, poems, folk-play writings and prose can be found in the pages of these newspapers, which, from my point of view, has formed a substantial and inspiring debut of Australian Chinese language literature. Fiction, as a major literary form, occupied a very important position at this stage but was insufficiently studied in current scholarship. Hence it will be extensively investigated in this thesis.
1.2 Theoretical framework in world Chinese language literature, Sinophone studies, and Chinese narrative tradition.
Before proceeding with the discussion of this topic, it is necessary to clarify relevant concepts and theories that set out a systematic framework for my study of Australian
7 Chinese language fiction, as an important genre of Australian Chinese language literature.
The concepts of overseas Chinese language literature and world Chinese language literature
The concepts used in the study of the large amount of Chinese literature produced overseas have developed from the initial and very limited “Taiwan and Hong Kong literature” to the once popular “overseas Chinese language literature” and then to the mostly accepted “world Chinese language literature”10. Among those early attempts to demarcate this emerging subject, Chen Xianmao, who is often considered to be the first person to conduct a holistic study of the history of overseas Chinese language literature, gives a very representative definition of this term as “all literary writings composed using the Chinese language as an expressive device in countries and regions outside of China” (Chen, 1999(1):7) 11. However, the use of the term “overseas” (literally meaning ‘outside of China’) has been subsequently criticised as “less rigorously conceptualised” (Gong, 2000:4) for its historically sinocentric connotation that may give overseas Chinese language literature an inferior or marginal status compared to that of mainland China, which is conventionally regarded as the centre of Chinese language literature.
The criticism of “overseas” is raised in academia along with the introduction of a more extensive term “world Chinese language literature” which represents an evolution of the study of Chinese language literature from a hegemonic discourse of sinocentricism to the advocacy of pluralism, or multiple centres of literary development12. Liu Denghan (2004:134) records in his essay on the pluralism of world Chinese language literature that the notion of “multiple literary centres” was initially introduced by Zhou Cezong in
10 For a detailed account of the transition of these terms, see Qian Hong’s paper Cong “Taigang Wenxue” dao “Shijie Huawen Wenxue” – Yige Xueke de Xingcheng he Mingming ( “ ” “ ”— , Formation and Naming of a Discipline: from “Taiwan and Hong Kong Literature” to “World Chinese language Literature”). 11 This book was firstly published in 1999. However, the theory of his book was developed from his early contribution of Haiwai Huawen Wenxueshi Chubian (A Preliminary Compilation of the History of Overseas Chinese Language Literature), a very primary version of his study published in 1993. 12 For criticisms of “overseas” or sinocentricism in literature, please refer to Gong (2004), Liu (2004), He (2010), and Zhu (2010). 8 1989 with the intention of recognising the importance of Chinese language literature outside of mainland China. Liu also points out that the notion of pluralism or multiple centres is unequivocally a form of existence and a way of development of world Chinese language literature originating from the Chinese diaspora across the world.
While “overseas Chinese language literature” can be included under the umbrella of “world Chinese language literature”, the ‘upgrading’ of this term removes the disparities between inland and outside, centre and margin by acknowledging the status of overseas Chinese literary centres and putting the study of Chinese language literature in a global perspective. For over a century, Chinese language literature in southeastern Asian countries represented by Singapore and Malaysia, and western countries like America and Australia has gradually formed a local literary tradition. These overseas regions could well be considered as literary centres. Together with the traditional literary centres of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, they jointly constitute the vast landscape of global Chinese language literature nowadays.
Gong Zhong (2000:5) provides a clear-cut definition of “world Chinese language literature” that is "classified based on language" and refers to "all literatures that are composed using Han Chinese language as an expressional device within the scope of the world", a slightly modified version compared to Chen’s. Gong’s definition has subtly eschewed the geographical argument of sinocentrism and managed to place overseas Chinese language literature into an equally important context of the mainstream Chinese literature under the rubric “the scope of the world”. The main directions of such research include the interrelations and mutual influences between the Chinese language literature in mainland China and other regions around the world, as well as their common natures and individual features.
Since my intention in this thesis is to probe the actual initiation of Australian Chinese language literature, it will be most suitable to describe it under the framework of the development of world Chinese language literature so that the full history and achievements of this diasporic literary tradition created by Australian Chinese migrants will be valued as a contribution to world Chinese language literature and no longer be
9 stereotypically treated as a sub-branch or a marginal extension of Chinese literature. Similar to other overseas regions such as Singapore, Malaysia and the United States, whose status has already been recognised as essential centres of Chinese language literature, Australian Chinese language literature as a whole also plays an important and indispensable part in the system of world Chinese language literature.
Based on Gong's theory, the prerequisite for the development of world Chinese language literature is Chinese emigration across the world, which subsequently contributes to the “three main pillars” (Gong, 2000:33) bolstering the development of the local Chinese language literature: local Chinese language school, Chinese language press and Chinese cultural and art communities. After my examination of the early Australian Chinese newspapers at the turn of the 20th century on the basis of other evidences supplied in Liu Weiping's and other scholars' studies of Chinese migration history in Australia, I will argue in this thesis for the existence of these three main "pillars" in Australian Chinese communities of that era, and then further demonstrate how the appearance of Chinese language literature in Australia became possible at a time when Chinese language literature also started to emerge in other overseas regions.
The concept of Sinophone Literature
My research into the early Australian Chinese language press and literature possibly falls within the scope of Sinophone studies as its focus is on the Chinese literary productions in the Sinophone communities where early Chinese migrants settled in Australia. The term “Sinophone literature”, with the Chinese translation as “Huayu Yuxi Wenxue ( , back translation is Chinese linguistic system literature)”, is very close to the term “world Chinese language literature” discussed above, nevertheless, we need to bear in mind the subtle undertone carried in its etymological context. As David Wang pointed out (2006:1-2), the corresponding words of Sinophone literature in other linguistic systems are Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone or Lusophone literatures. These literatures usually indicate the literary texts produced in the regions other than the native-speaking countries across the world using a language of the suzerain. Good examples are the English literature of West Indies, French literature in
10 West Africa and Quebec, as well as Portuguese literature in Brazil. Such “-ophone literature” generally features a strong colonial or post-colonial imprint. Its formation and development is often a reflection or the consequence of the hegemonic intervention of an external power to the native culture in an overseas region. However, the development of overseas Chinese language literature had faced and undergone a largely disadvantaged environment where the Chinese language mostly appeared as a minority language and has barely obtained an authoritative status in overseas regions13 compared to Anglophone or Hispanophone literature.
Keeping this context in mind, even though “Sinophone” is frequently used by academic writers to mean Chinese-speaking or written-in-Chinese, I believe the use of the term ‘Australian Chinese language literature’ is more appropriate for my study, than ‘Sinophone Australian Literature’ for the reason that the concept of ‘Sinophone’, as explicated by the American scholar, Shu-mei Shih, in her paper, The Concept of Sinophone (Shih, 2011), contains multi-layered implications of historical contents and linguistic multiplicity. In the context of historical processes and postcolonial theories, Shih views Sinophone literature as a situated literature in a given time and place which “exhibits commitment to the place where one resides” and “announces the expiration date of diaspora” (Shih, 2011:717). However, the most common usage of Sinophone in current academic discussions is usually associated with Chinese language literature in a modern, contemporary or post-colonial context. From this point of view, I believe it would be a safer and more appropriate use of Sinophone Australian Literature to describe the present-time Australian Chinese literature which embraces more contemporary features and localised commitments, but possibly not the case of the early development of Australian Chinese language literature over a century ago, especially when the diasporic Chinese communities in Australia were more akin to a “sojourning” status.
As for the linguistic layer, Sinophone writers, in Shih’s opinion, are not limited by monolingualism, ie. the universal/standardised Chinese language writing of Mandarin,
13 The only exception is Singapore. Chinese became one of the official languages when Singapore was officially separated from Malaysia in 1965.
11 but have shown negotiation between different dialects and local or indigenous languages. Jing Tsu also points out an “additional complexity of bilingualism” as the diasporic Chinese writings may involve other national tongues (Tsu, 2010:709). An example given by Jing Tsu is Eileen Chang’s written-in-Chinese novella Jinsuo Ji (1943) and her self-translated English version The Golden Cangue (1967). These works can be discussed under the topic of Sinophone literature even though they have traversed the boundary of Chinese language. Similarly speaking, a Chinese writer who lives in Australia and writes in English may well be considered as Sinophone Australian writer in this context. Based on my reading of early Australian Chinese literature in which all Chinese literary production from the 1890s to the 1900s is written in Chinese with no involvement with English or other indigenous languages’ writings, I believe “Australian Chinese language literature” is a more accurate term to faithfully reflect the content of my findings.
Both Shih and Tsu have also mentioned the differences between Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien that are reflected implicitly in Sinophone literature. It is the case that the usage of Cantonese words can be observed in early Australian Chinese literature, especially back in the Australia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries where Cantonese Chinese were the main source of Chinese migrants. However, it should be noted that Cantonese, which belongs to the family of Chinese languages, also adopts the same Chinese writing systems/scripts and the same tradition of Chinese language literature. Hence there is no point here to identify Sinophone Australian Cantonese literature or Sinophone Australian Mandarin literature in this context.
History and theories of Chinese narrative tradition
According to my reading of the three available Australian Chinese language newspapers starting from 1894, the literature that appeared in these newspapers is mostly in the forms of classical prose and poetry, fiction and folk drama-script. As far as the Chinese language fiction of this period is concerned, its inheritance of classical Chinese literature can be clearly observed in the themes and genres it adopted, its use of classical language style and traditional narrative skills. In light of the significant influence of the classical
12 Chinese narrative tradition which is also the cultural root of early Australian Chinese language literature, I have applied the following studies to separate fiction out of numerous texts published in these newspapers and to examine its quality and values.
The first resource I utilised is the groundbreaking study on the history of classical Chinese fiction written by Lu Xun ( , 1881-1936)14. Not only he had traced the historical origin of Chinese fiction back to over 2000 years ago and attempted to provide his own demarcation of genres out of the complexity of classical fiction, he also summarised the development of different generic types of fiction in a chronological order of Chinese dynasties with a thorough analysis of the historical backgrounds, narrative techniques, merits and demerits of each genre as well as important works. His study covered almost the full range of narrative traditions in Chinese history from the legendary mythology of Pre-Qin era to the development of exposure novel in Late Qing period, including the supernatural tales and anecdotal stories that flourished in Han, Wei and the Six Dynasties, the middle-age advancement of Chuanqi or prose romance in Tang Dynasty, huaben or prompt-book of Song and Yuan which is deemed the beginning of vernacular Chinese fiction, and a range of outstanding historical, satirical fiction and novels of manners of the Ming and Qing Dynasties which are deemed as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.
According to Lu Xun’s textual research, the earliest conception of “fiction”, or in Chinese, “xiaoshuo (literally ‘small talk’)” that is close to the later understanding of fiction is defined in a speech of Huan Tan15:
“The writers of xiaoshuo put together odd sayings and small talks, use handy parables to make short stories that are with dictions worthy of reading (for the purpose of) self- cultivation and managing the household.” (Lu, 2011:5)
14 Lu Xun’s study titled Zhongguo Xiaoshuo Shilue ( , A Brief History of Chinese Fiction) was originated from the lecture notes he prepared for his teaching in Peking University in the 1920s. His book was firstly published by Beixin Shuju, Beijing in 1925. My reading of this book is based on a re-published version by The Commercial Press in 2011. 15 Huan Tan ( , 43 BC–28 AD) was a Chinese scholar and philosopher of the Han Dynasty (202 BC– 220 AD). Further reading of his career and life can be seen in Loewe, Michael. (2000), A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (221 BC - AD 24), pp. 164–165. The original text of Lu Xun’s quotation is as follow: “ ”. 13
The word xiaoshuo in early Chinese history was used in reference to “the gossips and talks of the streets from hearsays” (Lu, 2011:6)16. This is also the earliest definition showing how this concept was primarily conceived in China. However humble or “small” as it is, the initial conception of fiction in classical Chinese literary tradition not only illustrates its forms at the beginning, but also points to a way to search for the possible emergence of fiction in the Australian Chinese language press at the turn of the 20th century, where a considerable amount of narrative writings could be found scattered in newspaper pages together with other news texts that are similar to “hearsays of streets”. 17
Among these writings, some can be singled out from news articles by their obvious literary traits. I tend to include this type of literati-processed “news-like” stories in the category of “fiction” or “xiaoshuo” following the Chinese literary tradition as described by Lu Xun. By naming these “news-like stories” as xiaoshuo, I don’t mean to create any confusion by mixing news as fiction here. What my intention in this part is to establish an idea that with the guidance of the traditional conceptual framework of classical Chinese fiction, such narrative writings found in early Australian Chinese language newspapers should be examined in line with the historical forms of classical Chinese fiction. These storytelling forms may involve parables, various tales of supernatural, anecdotic records, parodies, and humorous writings just as Lu Xun exposited in his historical study. It is true that the appearance of early Australian Chinese language fiction is quite different to some extent to the expectation according to the May Fourth paradigm18 or the modern conceptual standards of fiction. However, we must bear in
16 These are Lu Xun’s records of sayings from Ban Gu ( AD 32–92, a Chinese historian of the Han Dynasty), the original text is “ ” 17 For example, Huang and Ommundsen acknowledges the ambiguity of identifying what writing falls under the category of “literary” as opposed to journalistic reporting. See Note 6 in Huang and Ommundsen (2015), p10. 18 The May Fourth paradigm of fiction is recapitulated by David Wang (1997:16) on the basis of the propositions advocated by several known May Fourth reformists; they argue that the modern Chinese literature emerged from the anti-traditionalism prevailing in the May Fourth period and that May Fourth writings were nurtured largely on Western intellectual resources ranging from humanism and scientism. It has also been widely held that modern Chinese literature was dominated by writers’ concern with immediate national crises and that realism was the unique narrative mode expressing this concern. For further reading of May Fourth literature, please also refer to Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era edited by Merle Goldman, Harvard University Press, 1977; 14 mind that such presentation of fiction is also an inheritance from Chinese narrative traditions. As Yang Yi pointed out, “the concept of fiction as a literary form had appeared in China with a history of over two thousand years…hence, it doesn’t require the application of western theory of fiction that came up in the later hundreds or thousands of years’ time to designate its artistry and manifestation” (1998:2). When we look into early Australian Chinese language fiction as a part of the developmental history of Australian Chinese language literature, the connection between these short stories or “pre-modern” classical fiction and the classical Chinese narrative traditions should not be ignored or discarded.
Chinese fiction has gone through a long history ever since its humble origin and has evolved to a variety of forms and genres. When this literary tradition was carried onto the land of Australia by early Chinese migrants, apart from the “small stories” as mentioned above, I also saw supernatural tales like Yiyuan Xueyuan ( , The Loyal Ape Wreaks Grievance) and Guigu Xiansheng ( , , Mister Ghost Valley), love romances like Pingshui Qiyuan ( , Love by Encounters) and Pojing Chongyuan ( , Reunion of the Broken Mirror), exotic adventures like Haiwai Qitan ( , Strange Tales of Overseas), chivalric stories like Mazei Zhuxiong Ji ( , Tale of The Horse Gang Man Wiping out Bandits), as well as serialised novels of manners like Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy) and Zuanshi Yuezhi ( , The Diamond Ring). Serving the various purposes of self-cultivating, entertaining minds, teaching of virtues, reflecting social lives and exposing vicissitudes as identified in Lu Xun’s analysis (2011:65, 102, 167, 263), these stories carry a familiar didactism that is an important feature of classical Chinese fiction. Traditional writing techniques passing on from Tang prose romances, and the prompt-book practices of Song and Yuan such as tipo ( , prefacing the narration with poems or anecdotes) and pianmo chuijie ( , ending with a moral preaching) were also popularly employed in early Australian Chinese language fiction.
Another important study I drew upon to examine and judge the substantiality of early Australian Chinese language fiction is Andrew Plaks’s distinction between the two
15 narrative branches in the Chinese context: historiography and fiction. In Plaks’s summary (1977:318), the former “deals primarily with affairs of state and public life while the latter takes up the slack to cover the more individualized and intimate details of the private lives of figures of varying roles or status”. Based on this judgment, I was able to untangle the complexity of the overlapping and bewildering Chinese narrative categories and separate fictional writings from news articles, historical accounts or documentary records in the early Australian Chinese language newspapers.
In Plak’s critical analysis (1977) of the uniqueness of Chinese narrative, he particularly investigated the variations in narrative rhetorical stances, patterns of narrative structure, as well as the characterisation and meaning manifested in Chinese narrative works that are distinctively divergent from the Western literary tradition. For example, the quality of omniscient narrative stance and the consistent impression of didacticism that emphasize judgment over pure narration; the episodic feature of narrative structures that are more concerned with small units and the tendency of composite characters rather than individual figures, evocation of meaning in the overall vision rather than in particular configurations of events. These styles or attributes of Chinese narrative presented in classical Chinese fiction were also carried into the early Chinese language fiction in Australia, which again shows its close cultural affinity with the traditional Chinese literary traditions. The traditional aesthetic pursuit identified by Plaks also enlightened me to the values of early Australian Chinese language fiction by apprehension of its total intelligibility through a broader prospective as an integral entity rather than the mere focus on individual pieces.
On top of the inheritance of traditional Chinese literary tradition, early Australian Chinese language fiction also received nutrition from the literary evolution of Late Qing fiction. The development of traditional Chinese fiction had undergone radical change in the Late Qing and Early Republican era under the impact of the introduction of western novels, and subsequently formed a fad of Xin Xiaoshuo (New Fiction). Chen Pingyuan (2005) conducted a detailed study of late Qing fiction and its creative achievement. The early development of Australian Chinese language literature also began at a similar period of time. Therefore, the obvious influence from the current New Fiction can also
16 be noted in early Australian Chinese language fiction. Almost all genres of Late Qing fiction even including the translated story can find their counterparts in the early narrative writings that appeared in Australian Chinese language newspapers at the turn of the 20th century, such as the many stories about detective, chivalry, court-case, romance, adventures and exposure of official depravity and social scams. Some of them also came with fashionable tags like scam fiction, social fiction, political novel, and so on. Most of the thematic elements of early Australian Chinese language fiction are closely related to political and social lives in mainland China, from which we can read out the underlying purposes in this literature of civil enlightenment, sarcasm or condemnation of iniquity. Again, this is in the same spirit of the didactic and awakening functions of late Qing fiction. As for narrative techniques, the early Australian Chinese language fiction started with an outlook carrying classical narrative traditions. It however gradually developed its new and modern characteristics that are also consistent with the advancements achieved by late Qing fiction. Examples such as the introduction of foreign concepts, characters and even overseas backgrounds, the transfer of narrative stance from omniscient to first/third person, the employment of inversion and psychological writings, and the point of view of spectator or traveller can also be observed in these early Australian Chinese language stories.
Apart from Chen Pingyuan’s theoretical study of late Qing fiction’s achievements and techniques, I also adopt David Der-Wei Wang’s research on the repressed modernity of the fin-de-siecle Chinese fiction at Late Qing period (1997). Inspired by Wang’s re- assessment of “repressed modernity”, I followed his clues to start a rethinking of literary history (1997: 21) as the status of early Australian Chinese language fiction is at a somewhat similar position to what Late Qing fiction used to be. Though the initial development of Chinese language fiction in Australia was neither repressed nor suppressed in the history, its existence has been wittingly or unwittingly denied, ignored by the academic circles of overseas Chinese literature and Australian Chinese history, not to mention its historical and literary values. In Wang’s arguments, he stresses that he is not attempting to downgrade or overthrow the importance of May Fourth literature, but instead to review the multiple possibilities of modernity that are shown in Late Qing fiction. Similarly, I am not going to debate the merits or demerits of the
17 current study of Australian Chinese language literature as part of the world Chinese language literature, nor to exaggerate the significance of Australian Chinese language literature at its beginning stage. My real purpose following David Wang is to restore the missing link in the history of Australian Chinese language literature, with an attempt to find out what genres, styles, themes and figures have been created in the Australian Chinese fictional writings over a hundred years ago.
1.3 Thesis structure
Following this introductory chapter, this thesis will be comprised of three main parts. In chapter two, I will briefly go through the socio-political and historical background of Australian and Chinese migration, as well as the history of the establishment of the early Australian Chinese language press at the turn of the 20th century. Subsequently I will focus on a detailed and comprehensive study of Australian Chinese language fiction from the 1894 to 1912 by examining its genres, styles, themes, authorship and readership, as well as the relationship between early Australian Chinese language fiction and the classical Chinese narrative tradition as an attempt to redefine the beginning of Australian Chinese literature.
Chapter three will then discuss the enlightening influence from late Qing fiction on the continual development of Australian Chinese language fiction towards a modernised and localised literary tradition by reviewing its evolution and innovation in narrative techniques, styles and themes, which is demonstrated in the achievements of its representative works including the milestone novel of manners Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy).
In the last and the concluding chapter, I will recapitulate my findings and further elaborate on the significance of early Australian Chinese language fiction through a comparative review with the Australian literary experience during the late colonial and early Federation period, as well as the concomitant developments of Chinese literary tradition in other overseas Chinese diasporas. Restoring the values of the early Australian Chinese fiction not only offers an up till now unexplored angle to enrich our
18 knowledge of the life experience of early Chinese migrants, and how the localising process of the diasporic Chinese literary tradition begins in Australia at the turn of the 20th century; it also reconnects such diasporic narratives with the modernising development of late Qing fiction in China as well as other early Chinese diasporic fiction, raising an opportunity to discuss their mutual interaction and influence, as well as their role to the transnational framework of the development of world Chinese language literature.
19 CHAPTER 2
The Early Prosperity: A Full Landscape of Australian Chinese Language Fiction at the Turn of the 20th Century
The Chinese language newspaper is a key element in the development of Australian Chinese language literature; Not only has it been of inestimable importance to the rapid growth of literature in the Australian Chinese diaspora (Chen, 1999(3): 444) since the 1980s1, it also witnessed the initial appearance of the literary writings produced by early Australian Chinese migrants more than a century ago. The early establishment of the Chinese language newspaper in the two decades of the 1890s and the 1900s is set against the background of developing Chinese urban communities in the two most populated cities in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne.
2.1 Foundation of early Australian Chinese language fiction: the birth of the Chinese language press in Sydney and Melbourne
Since the late 19th century, the mining rush in Australia gradually subsided and the colonial authorities started to enforce various “head taxes” and restrictions on the entry of Chinese migrants. The number of Chinese in Australia was accordingly in a steady decline, dropping from its peak at nearly 60,000 in 1860s to around 23,000 by the end of 1900s.2 Despite the fact that the Chinese population was decreasing on a nationwide scale, the Chinese communities in major Australian cities had a sizeable development following the trend of increasing urbanisation across Australia. As Paul Jones pointed out, “between 1880 and 1901, the concentrations of Chinese in capital cities across Australia grew two- to threefold” (2005:16). The growing number of urbanised Chinese
1 For further discussions on the relationship between Chinese language press and the contemporary development of Australian Chinese literature, please refer to the papers of Zhang, Aolie (2004) and He, Yuhuai (2010). 2 Numbers are quoted from the analysis of the Chinese population in Australia by Liu, Weiping (1989:40) and Paul Jones (2005:14). 20 migrants laid a solid ground for the emergence of the Chinese language newspaper3, and subsequently the early literary production of the Australian Chinese diaspora.
The attempts to set up a more formal and regularly-published Chinese language press in Australia started in the 1890s.4 By the end of the 1900s, there were three Chinese language newspapers circulating across Australia. Sydney, as a major focus of Chinese migration where the Chinese communities were rapidly developing, had two Chinese newspaper established during this period. The Chinese Australian Herald (Guang Yi Hua Bao , hereinafter referred to as CAH) was first published in 1894 through a partnership of Chinese and Europeans and circulated for almost three decades till 1923. Aiming for a mass readership from the Australian Chinese communities, CAH claimed to use a plain writing style that is intelligible to every reader5. This populist approach is also reflected in its respectable coverage of local events that served Chinese residents’ interests and concerns, and a comparatively neutral political stance in its journalism. Therefore, CAH was quite popular in the Chinese community with about 800 regular subscribers and an estimated circulation of 1000 copies per issue6.
Different from CAH’s emphasis on the local Chinese communities, the establishment of the other two Chinese language newspapers is more connected to the political movements in China at the turn of the 20th century. The Tung Wah News (Donghua Xinbao ) was the second Chinese newspaper in Sydney starting in 1898. It was renamed a few years later in 1902 to The Tung Wah Times (Donghua Bao , hereinafter both The Tung Wah News and The Tung Wah Times will be referred to as TWT) and circulated well over 30 years till 1936. Initially managed and jointly funded by several successful Chinese merchants, TWT was closely related with the NSW Chinese Merchants’ Society7 and the NSW Chinese Empire Reform Association8
3 For further reading of the history of early Chinese language newspapers in Australia, please refer to Liu (1989: 99-105) and Bagnall (2015). 4 The first Chinese language newspaper published in Australia was established by an Englishman Robert Bell in Ballarat, 1856. This newspaper was titled The Chinese Advertiser ( ) and only lasted for 2 years to 1858, consisting mainly of advertisements and government announcements. 5 CAH, Editor’s statement, 18940901, p1. 6 See, Liu (1989), p101-102. 7 The NSW Chinese Merchants’ Society (1903-1912) was the former body of the NSW Chinese Chamber of Commerce (1913-1965). 21 founded in 1899. It had soon become the promotional organ of the Chinese monarchists especially after Liang Qichao’s visit to Australia in 1900.
In 1902, Melbourne, another hub of Chinese migrants, also had The Chinese Times (Aiguo Bao , hereinafter referred to as TCT) come on stage. It was firstly created by an ex-TWT-editor who had different opinions on Chinese politics, and then was taken over by the Melbourne arm of the Chinese Empire Reform Association9 in 1905 with its Chinese name changed to Jingdong Xinbao ( ). Its English title however remained the same until its publication suspended in 1914.10 The establishment of TCT had branded with distinctive political interests in promoting China’s republican movement and rivalling against TWT’s monarchist advocacy right from its beginning.
These Chinese language newspapers were not only distributed in Australia, but also throughout the Chinese diasporic communities in New Zealand and the Pacific region. However, the actual figures of their circulations are scarcely recorded. Previous studies have estimated that the weekly prints of these papers should run around 800 to 1000 copies each, and up to 6000 copies altogether11. Based on the Chinese population in Australia at that time, it could be safely worked out that there should be one regular reader in approximately every 30 to 40 Chinese migrants. The extensive circulation and comparatively long lastingness of the early Australian Chinese language press prove the fact that they were well received in the local Chinese communities and were a popular channel for the communications of the diaspora.
8 The NSW Chinese Empire Reform Association, active mostly between 1899 and 1911, was affiliated with the international monarchist movement of overseas Chinese chaired by Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and Liang Qichao (1873-1928) and adherent to the cause of maintaining China’s monarchy with constitutional improvement. 9 Although it shares the same English title as its Sydney arm, the Melbourne arm of the Chinese Empire Reform Association was quite radical in Chinese politics and eventually disassociated itself with the Sydney arm and the international monarchist movement due to its preaching of China’s republican movement and revolution. Its Chinese name was changed to Xinmin Qizhi Hui ( , literally New Citizens Enlightenment Society) in 1904 and later on to Shaonian Zhongguo Hui ( , literally Young China League) in 1911. It eventually became the Melbourne branch of the Chinese Nationalist Party in 1915. 10 It was later on taken over by the Chinese Nationalist Party in Australia and continued to be published under difference Chinese titles as Ping Bao ( , 1917), and Min Bao ( , 1919-1949). Its publication had moved from Melbourne to Sydney since 1922 and stayed in print till around 1950. 11 The distribution and circulation of the early Chinese language press are briefly indicated in the following studies: Rudolf Lowenthal (1936), Liu Weiping (1989), Huang Yuanshen (1998), Paul Jones (2005) and Mei-Fen Kuo (2008). 22 Mei-Fen Kuo also pointed out another significance of the early Australian Chinese language press that it was the only foreign-language press in Sydney to publish without interruption over three decades from the 1890s to the 1920s (2008: 37). However, these important resources are much less utilised in current research. Prior studies, such as Yu Lan Poon’s examination of the early Chinese language press (1986) and her discussions of a few contemporary issues raised from it (1995), as well as Michael Williams’s general analysis of the first few years of TWT (2003) 12, have mainly focussed on the layouts and publication histories of the newspapers, as well as the political essays, advertisements and news reports published in them. The only exceptions I noticed are Mei-Fen Kuo’s recent papers (2010, 2011, 2013) on a variety of narratives of the early Chinese communities at the turn of 20th century where she has made note of the appearance of the first Australian Chinese language novel and discussed its values13. Still, there is hardly a monograph, nor a chapter in these studies to specifically explore the possible literary writings on these newspapers. With no less than eight pages of each issue, these newspapers contain more than just advertisements and news articles. There is a considerable amount of literature-related content published in these newspapers that has been basically ignored or undervalued by the researchers.
This possibly explains why early Australian Chinese language fiction is never mentioned. Unlike the comparable developments of Chinese language literature in other early overseas Chinese diasporas in America and Southeastern Asia, the status and growth of early Australian Chinese language literature is often overlooked or even denied in the system of world Chinese language literature due to the inadequate investigation of early Australian Chinese language literary materials.
Gong Zhong (2000) theorised the important factors in support of the worldwide development of Chinese language literature as “three major pillars”, which are the
12 See also Qiu Jie’s discussions on the life of Late-Qing Chinese migrants in Australia (2005). Even in a few earlier papers of Mei-Fen Kuo on the early Australian Chinese diaspora and identity (2008, 2009), the contribution of early Australian Chinese language literature is not mentioned nor studied. 13 Kuo makes use of the novel Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy) to account for its connotation on the female, brotherhood and socio-political narratives of the settlement of early Australian Chinese community. However, she has mistaken and incorrectly cited the publication dates of this novel in two of her papers (2010, 2011) and her latest book Making Chinese Australia (2013). She also incorrectly quoted Jiangxia Erlang ( ), the author of another Australian Chinese language fiction Zuanshi Yuezhi as the author of Duoqi Du (2013:222). 23 Chinese language press, Chinese cultural and art communities and Chinese language schools. He specifically indicated that the existence of early overseas Chinese language literature relies on the supplement pages of the (Chinese language) newspapers (2000:34). Since we have discussed the establishment of the early Chinese language press in Australia, the evidences of the other two pillars supporting the early development of Australian Chinese language literature can easily be spotted if we go through these newspapers carefully enough.
For example, CAH had reported several Chinese couplet writing contests organised by the Sydney National Language Society ( / ) and the Society of Seeking Folk Practice ( )14. It is worth noticing that these two organisations were formed for the purpose of cultural and art activities, which are quite different to other types of tongs and associations based on place of origin, family clan, political or business needs that are usually seen in the early history of Australian Chinese. In addition to this clue, the early establishments of Chinese language schools in Melbourne and Sydney around the years of 1909 and 1910 were further recorded in the local Chinese newspaper at that time. Such reports include articles to promote the importance of Chinese language education, appeals for the funding of school operation, as well as news about the Chinese teachers coming from China and the opening of the school.15
All this evidence clearly suggests the early Chinese migrants were more than labourers and businessmen; educated migrants, intellectuals including bilingual elites and probably cultural figures from China are also a part of the newly developed Chinese communities in Australia. The boom of early Australian Chinese language newspapers at the turn of the 20th century provided an important platform for these people to continue with their literary production.
14 See CAH, 18950816, p4; 19060609, supplement page; 19080404, supplement page. 15 See TWT, 19090313, p2; 19090515, p7; 19100108, p7; 19100226, p7; TCT, 19091023, p10-11. 24 2.2 Australian Chinese language fiction from 1894 to 1912
I have carried out an examination of the initial years of the three earliest Australian Chinse language newspapers from 1894 to 1912, which falls into the timeline of the turn of the 20th century. This roughly twenty years of time is also a crucial period in both the histories of China and Australia as it covers the first ten years of the newly founded Commonwealth of Australia, as well as the last ten years of Qing Dynasty, the final imperial rule in China. Both countries had undergone drastic changes in their political, economical, and socio-cultural developments. As explicated in Huang’s and Ommundsen’s survey of in the TWT (2015), the early Chinese Australian literary writing can keep the local Chinese communities in touch with events in the homeland at a time of national crisis and enable them to share their feelings of frustration and sadness; it is also instrumental in fostering a sense of solidarity and forging a diasporic identity both within Australia and beyond. Therefore, to what extent this era of vicissitude and uncertainty was reflected in the Australian Chinese language literature of this period and how it facilitated the shaping of local Chinese communities would be quite a meaningful topic for the study of the early Chinese diaspora.
Following the clues indicating the possible appearance of literature in the early Australian Chinese diaspora, my examination managed to identify and recover a solid quantity of literary contents published in the local Chinese newspapers during this period. These findings constitute diversified literary genres such as poetry, fiction, prose, pianwen ( , parallel prose), couplets, biographies, banben ( , Chinese opera scripts), and folk rhymes represented by Cantonese folk tunes ( ). However, only a small portion of this vast corpus of early Australian Chinese language literature has been brought to academic attention, for example, the poems and travel essays about Liang Qichao’s visit in Australia (Liu: 1989; Zhang, 2004; Xia, 2007), a few pieces of fiction quoted in Mei-fen Kuo’s studies on early Australian Chinese communities (2010, 2011, 2013), and some early Australian Chinese language stories and poems of the TWT investigated by Huang and Ommundsen (2015). While the majority of literary writing remains an uncultivated land, the lives of the early Australian Chinese diaspora presented in these literary materials as well as the historical and literary values of these
25 Chinese literary writings in the development of Australian Chinese language literature as both a diasporic and a localised ethnic literary tradition are largely overlooked.
By focusing on the Chinese language fiction, for being one of the earliest diasporic Chinese literary genres, published in these local Chinese newspapers from 1894 to 1912, this chapter attempts to restore the missing link in the development of Australian Chinese language literature and the history of the Australian Chinese diaspora.
Based on my readings of the extant pages of the early Australian Chinese language press, a total of 445 texts (See Table 1) can be identified and categorised as fiction or xiaoshuo, which is a more specific and accurate term in Chinese. This number has excluded some confirmed works of known Chinese novelists and the writings noted as a reprint from other mainland or overseas Chinese newspapers. With this reasonable amount, these early stories have constructed an important narrative of the early Chinese diaspora that should never be neglected.
The Tung Wah News / Tung Wah Times 140 The Chinese Times 114
The Chinese Australian Herald 191 Total 445
* Table 1. Australian Chinese language fiction from 1894 to 1912
The early Australian Chinese language press is mostly printed weekly with between eight and twelve pages for each issue. In the initial years of these local Chinese newspapers, there was no specific page layout based on different topics or contents. Accordingly, the writing of fiction was found randomly in the newspaper pages together with other articles such as news reports, political essays and commercial advertisements. It is clear that fiction, as well as other forms of literature like poems and drama-scripts, are generally given less priority as they were generally located after social, political and military updates, and essays on current affairs. In the later development of the Chinese newspaper business in the first ten years of the twentieth century, the number of newspaper pages gradually expanded to include a few supplement pages. The addition of supplement page not only served to accommodate various public announcement and
26 more commercial advertisements for the business needs; it also offered more spaces, usually with a specific section or column, for literature. Since then, fiction gradually increased its appearance in the supplement pages of these newspapers.
Language Styles and Forms
The development of Chinese fiction in the traditional Chinese literary tradition comprises two branches of language system: wenyan xiaoshuo ( , fiction written in classical Chinese) and baihua xiaoshuo ( , fiction written in vernacular Chinese). Wenyan was once the prevalent written language and deemed as a higher artistic genre in the production of Chinese literature; whereas the writings composed in baihua was mostly associated with popular literature. Patrick Hanan (1967:175) roughly described the main characteristics of these two language styles as referential, denotative and exhaustive for the vernacular; elegant, evocative, concentrated and elliptical for the classical.
In my findings, both language styles were used in early Australian Chinese language fiction, with a majority of them written in classical Chinese. There are only thirteen (the TWT – 2, TCT – 8, the TCT - 3) stories, out of the total of 432 pieces of fiction, that are completely written in vernacular Chinese, and another ten (TWT – 4, TCT – 5, CAH - 1) are written in qianjin wenyan ( , a simplified version of classical Chinese in between the formal classical Chinese and vernacular, which is less colloquial in style but maintains a smooth readability). The prevalent use of classical Chinese in early Australian Chinese literary productions is not only because its concentrated yet evocative style can better fit the limited spaces in the local Chinese newspaper pages, it also signifies a close connection between these early Australian Chinese stories and the traditional Chinese narrative traditions.
Hanan (1967:175) has noticed an important change in the vernacular narrative prose showing a growing tendency to use an evocative way derived from the Qing dynasty novels. The shift of the narrative style of vernacular Chinese was further manifested in the rising tide of vernacular movement starting in the late Qing period, during which
27 the status of wenyen in Chinese literature, particularly in the writing of xiaoshuo, had gradually given way to the advocacy of baihua.
The appearance of vernacular or simple classical Chinese stories in the local Chinese newspapers at the turn of the 20th century is more or less a direct influence of late Qing’s vernacular movement in literature. Among the early Chinese language press, TCT has the most supportive, or radical others may say, stand on late Qing’s cultural and political movements in China. When this is shown in the preference of language style in early Australian Chinese fiction, more vernacular fiction is found in TCT than the other two Chinese newspapers.
The appearance of vernacular fiction is also related to the readership. Due to the fact that early Australian Chinese migrants were mostly from the rural towns and villages of Guangdong province, namely, Cantonese, the local fiction writers were clearly aware of this vast base of readers and thus stories written in the vernacular language of Cantonese were also witnessed.16 Writings in the colloquial form of this South China dialect could have an earthier and more natural effect on the Cantonese migrants in the early Australian Chinese diaspora. For example, Niunv Tanqing17 insinuated the grief and lovesickness of the wives staying back in China’s countryside, longing for their husbands who had gone to make a living overseas, into the story through a replotted conversation between the cow herd and the weaving maid from a traditional Chinese legend. When the story is delivered in this most native and familiar tone of language, it easily produced a catching and empathic effect on its readers. This is exactly the evocative function of vernacular language as Patrick Hanan pointed out in late Qing vernacular fiction. It can also be considered as a very solid attempt of localisation in the early development of early Australian Chinese fiction.
The close link between early Australian Chinese language fiction and the classical Chinese narrative tradition is also reflected in its forms. It has to be noted that a majority of fiction I found appear in the form of short stories, records of anecdotes and
16 This tendency is even more noticeable in the genres of traditional banben ( , drama-script) and Cantonese folktunes such as muyu ge ( , wooden fish songs), longzhou ge ( , dragonboat songs), and yue ou ( , Cantonese ballads) found also in the early Australian Chinese language press; 17 Niunü Tanqing ( , Love Talks between The Cowherd and His Maid), TCT, 19090904, pp.9-10. 28 conversations, jokes and parodies resembling those commonly found in traditional Chinese biji xiaoshuo ( , jottings or literary sketches): most of their lengths are around several hundreds to a few thousands of Chinese characters. The smallest pieces of them, which are both jokes, are even less than a hundred.18 This probably explains why these stories are easily ignored in academic research. On one hand, such narrative writings can conveniently be confused with news articles due to their notable brevity especially when there is no specific labels or columns for literary works in the early Chinese language press; on the other hand, these stories show significant similarities to the features of traditional Chinese xiaoshuo, which has distinctive connotations to the xiaoshuo in modern Chinese literature as well as Western ideas of fiction. 19 As a result, their presentations and values can also be misjudged and underestimated if we review these writings only based on the norms of modern Western literary theories.
The simple form and terse language style of the early Australian Chinese language fiction evinces its cultural derivation of traditional Chinese xiaoshuo. This finding echoes one of the characteristic of the multicultural writing in Australia brought forward by Ommundsen (2004) that the writing of ethnic minority writers tends to derive more directly from their cultural roots and deal with issues of migration and cultural heritage in a straightforward manner without the stylistic and structural sophistication associated with European modernism and postmodernism. It is essential then for us to jump out the constrained perspective of applying westernised or modern fiction theory to these early Chinese language stories, but to acknowledge the influence from traditional Chinese xiaoshuo and examine them in accordance with the criticism and theories of classical Chinese narrative tradition.
In the previous chapter, I briefly mentioned the humble beginning of fiction in Chinese literature history as xiaoshuo, which originally referred to “small talks” or “street
18 Canshang ( , Orion and Scorpius, TCT, 19110630, p9) only has 76 Chinese characters; Laokang Zhazhi ( , Squeezing Juice out of Chaff, CAH, 19050722, p5), 97 Chinese characters. 19 The differences between xiaoshuo in ancient China and the current usage of xiaoshuo in modern China as a literary genre and the equivalent translation of the Western concept of fiction have been discussed in several authoritative studies. See Mair (1983), Ma (1986) and Gu (2006) for further readings. Especially in the “Chinese Notions of Fiction” chapter in Gu’s Chinese Theories of Fiction: A Non-Western Narrative System (2006, pp.17-42), Gu has a very detailed and insightful discussion based on previous scholars’ opinions on this topic. 29 gossips”. Developing from this origin, traditional Chinese fiction contains a large corpus of narrative materials recording all sorts of stories, hearsay, anecdotes, events, and notes on miscellaneous subjects, anything that is considered to be insignificant and unofficial compared to the orthodox learning, history and classics. There has been abundant research on this Chinese narrative tradition by discerning Chinese and Western scholars. Luo Fu regarded the writings of xiaoshuo “with the utmost simplicity and perspicuity are the orthodox of this genre”20; Jordan Paper characterised such stories as “recorded in a journalistic fashion” and “usually short and written in a strange but factual incident, more in the style of journalism than fiction”21; Victor Mair even understood xiaoshuo as “to gossip and report” 22. The formal essence of brevity and clarity of the ancient form of Chinese xiaoshuo is also reflected in the stories found in the early Australian Chinese newspapers.
What I want to point out here is that despite the controversy on the nuances between the denotations and connotations of the terms xiaoshuo and fiction, xiaoshuo has been used both by the general public and academia as a literary genre in modern Chinese and as a loose translation of the Western concept of fiction. Moreover, this unique feature of the xiaoshuo tradition not only appeared in the early development of Chinese fiction, it was also carried on through to the late Qing and early Republican fiction at the turn of the early 20th century23. Therefore, when examining Australian Chinese language fiction, we should seriously consider the values and influences of traditional Chinese narrative traditions on these early productions from the Chinese diaspora. Those pieces that culturally inherited the traditional Chinese narrative traditions, however simple or short their forms are, should not be excluded from the study of Australian Chinese language fiction.
20 Luo Fu ( , active from the late 18th to early 19th century) was a novelist in Qing Dynasty. His preface to his novel Chenlou Zhi ( ) was often quoted by traditional Chinese xiaoshuo scholars. The words I quoted is from a quotation in Gu (2006), p.34. 21 Quoted in Mair (1983), p.24. 22 Mair (1983), p.22. 23 In The Columbian History of Chinese Literary (Mair(eds), 2001), Rania stated in “The Supernatural” chapter (p.131) that “The tradition of writing about the supernatural continues in the late Ch’ing; Western-style periodicals such as the daily newspaper……also contain familiar chih-kuai material, tales of haunting foxes or moral retribution, in that new frame work”; James M. Hargett also mentioned in the “Sketches” chapter (p.564) that “This pi-chi tradition continued to flourish through the Ch’ing dynasty.” Chen Pingyuan (2010:226) has similar accounts on the popularity of writings of supernatural tales, records of remarks and anecdotes in late Qing period. 30 That being said, there are also much more mature forms of xiaoshuo that appeared in the early Australian Chinese language fiction that make it an important genre of diasporic literature: stories like Xiaseng, Meihua Nv and Chanqing Ji24 represent the novelette forms of classical tales comparable to chuanqi ( , prose romance) and the biji xiaoshuo of Ming and Qing dynasties. Serialised fiction such as Zuanshi Yuezhi and Duoqi Du25 are well-developed and sophisticated enough to be called a novel of manners; we can also find the new fashion of fiction writings such as Haiwai Qitan and Yidali Huangzu Zhi Aihechao26 that were up-to-date with the innovations of late Qing new fiction by absorbing the influence of Western fiction into the traditional xiaoshuo form.
Based on the above discussion, the emergence of simplified classical and vernacular Chinese as a narrative language of Australian Chinese fiction after 1905 had already shown a progressive development that is in tune with the revolution of narrative tradition occurring in late Qing fiction at the beginning of the 20th century. This trend is also exhibited in the diversified forms of the early Australian Chinese language fiction, which shows that these writings not only are closely connected to the classical Chinese narrative traditions as their cultural root, they are also up to the date with the development of fiction in late Qing China.
Genres and themes
In light of the connection between early Australian Chinese fiction and the classical Chinese narrative traditions, it is necessary to review the genre history of traditional Chinese xiaoshuo before I proceed to the discussion of the genre of early Australian Chinese fiction. The division of the xiaoshuo genre can be done with respect to different criteria such as length, language, form, content and period of composition. It is easier to
24 Xiaseng ( , The Chivalric Monk), 19101231p7, TCT; Meihua Nü ( , The Maid of Plum Blossom), TWT, 19100723, p8; Chanqing Ji ( , A Tale of Atoning Love), TWT, 19071214, p6. 25 Zuanshi Yuezhi ( , The Diamond Ring), published in 3 episodes in November, 1910, in TCT; Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy), published in 53 episodes from June,1909 to December 1910 in TCT. 26 Haiwai Qitan ( , Strange Tales of Overseas), published in 3 episodes from 19010413 to 19010420 in TWT; Yidali Huangzu Zhi Aihechao ( , The Love Tide of the Italian Royal Blood), TCT, 19080620, pp.9-10. 31 divide the traditional Chinese xiaoshuo into wenyan ( , classical Chinese) and baihua ( , vernacular Chinese) according to the language style; or changpian ( , novel) and duanpian ( , short stories) according to the length. However, such a simple demarcation is too general to sufficiently describe and reveal the generic nature of Chinese xiaoshuo.27
As a matter of fact, the study of the xiaoshuo genre is always problematic for both Chinese and Western scholars. The controversy is apparently due to the fact that the categorisation of the xiaoshuo genre was never really an independent discipline in traditional Chinese scholarship, but essentially a by-product, in the words of Laura Wu (1995:339), of bibliographers’ cataloguing efforts. In terms of ancient Chinese literati attitudes towards the xiaoshuo genre, Cheng Yizhong (2003) has a good summary of the traditional genre divisions of Chinese fiction, from Liu Zhiji( 661-721)’s classification of ten categories28, to Hu Yinglin( , 1551-1602)’s six branches29 and Ji Yun( , 1724-1805)’s three catchall genres30 in Siku Quanshu ( , The Complete Library of Four Sections). As for Western scholars, Robert Hegel (1994:396) offered a division of biji, chuanqi, bianwen ( , transformation texts), huaben ( , story texts), pinghua ( , plainly-told tales) and zhanghui xiaoshuo/changpian xiaoshuo ( , fiction in chapters or novels)based on xiaoshuo’s conventional forms. Y.W.Ma (Nienhauser, 1986:34-35) has gone even further to combine all the criteria and developed a thorough yet excessively detailed and complicated subdivision system under the two major genres of stories and novels.31
27 Chen Pingyuan (2010:206) pointed out in his study of the genres and evolution of Chinese fiction that a demarcation too simple is not the best solution. 28 Pianji ( , records on matters), xiaolu ( , minor records), yishi ( , anecdotes), suoyan ( , scrapes of remarks), junshu ( , biographies of local elites), jiashi ( , family histories), biezhuan ( , unofficial biographies), zaji ( , miscellaneous notes), dili ( , georgraphical records) and duyibu ( , records of cities and towns). 29 Zalu ( , miscellaneous accounts of anecdotes), congtan ( , miscellaneous notes), bianding ( , evidential researches, zhengui ( , moral admonitions), zhiguai ( , records of anomalies) and chuanqi ( , tales of remarkable things). 30 Zashi( , miscellaneous events), yiwen ( , unusual hearsay) and suoyu( , insignificant remarks). 31 Ma listed 5 sub-genres under stories which are pi-chi, chuan-chi, pien-wen, hua-pen and kung-an; and another 3 layers of 15 sub-genres and subdivisions under novels by incorporating Sun Kai-ti ( , 1898-1989)’ s grouping framework on popular Chinese fiction. 32 It is worth noticing that Andrew Plaks had long pointed out the complexity of the genre demarcation of Chinese fiction. He (1977:316) argued that the difficulty of sorting out the genres and sub-genres of the narrative traditions and failure to constitute a clear generic demarcation in the Chinese context is attributed to the extensive overlapping historical and fictional branches of traditional Chinese fiction32. Chen Pingyuan’s account of Chinese xiaoshuo’s intermingling with history in its origin has further explicated this point (2010:207-211). In his analysis of the grouping and evolution of ancient Chinese fiction (2010:211-233), Chen has discussed respectively several genres represented by bowu ( , broad learning of things), suoyan ( , inconsequential remarks), yishi ( , anecdotes), zhiguai ( , record of anomalies) and suibizalu ( , jottings and miscellanies). Chen’s framework is clearly developed in the same strain as the ancient Chinese cataloguing tradition. Although anecdotes or miscellanies as generic types may include various discursive writings that one may find ambivalent, such genre divisions perfectly match with Andrew Plaks’ description of “flexibility” in the positing of the major narrative branches that carries over into the further distinction of the various sub-generic alternatives, and his conclusion that “it is more content categories than formal genres that actually inform the process of narrative composition in traditional China” (1977:318). According to Plaks (1977:323), such emphasis on content categories rather than on formal generic divisions is reflected in the perception of traditional writers and critics of Chinese fiction who have not felt the need to distinguish between the novel and other shorter forms within the general term for prose fiction hsiao-shuo.
When it comes to the genre divisions of early Australian Chinese language fiction, I tend to agree with Plaks perception of “content genres rather than formal genres”. Though genres or sub-genres like zhiguai, yishi, suoyan and zalu can be subsumed into one broad formal category of biji xiaoshuo ( , literary sketches or jottings), we should be aware of the context of early Australian Chinese language fiction and the actual materials collected from the local Chinese language press. Due to the restriction of the size and lay-out of the early newspapers, even where there are serialised stories
32 That being said, Plaks managed to provide a list of quasi-generic categories along the narrative continuum from history to fiction based on the level of distinction between truth-telling and fabrication (1977:319). 33 published in quite a few successive issues, most fiction appear in a form resembling the biji narrative tradition: short, concise and involving various topics. Compared to the voluminous corpus of ancient Chinese fiction, the early Australian Chinese language fiction presents a fairly small quantity of works. If we simply base on the conventional form and bracket these local productions into catchall genres like biji, short stories or novels, the specific and valuable generic information of these works will then be easily missed in the academic study of this field.
This reminds me of a major problem I have noticed and would like to avoid from some studies of overseas or world Chinese language literature conducted by the scholars from mainland China. Once they classified the overseas Chinese literary production into the simple structure of “new literature” and “old literature” simply on the basis of their temporal range, then the whole discussion and analysis only revolves on the new, whereas the implications and values of the old are totally ignored just because they are “old”, out-dated or not up to the standard of the new literature.33
Therefore, based on the above-discussed study of the xiaoshuo genre and the actual materials I found on the early Australian Chinese press, I have summarised the most common genres of early Australian Chinese language fiction as listed in the form follow:
Genre in Chinese Genre in English TWT TCT CAH
Zhiguai Supernatural Tales 8 2 17
Zhiren Anecdotes of Persons 33 20 13
Shiqing Stories of Manners 29 17 45
Xienue Humorous Writings 40 34 65
Yuyan Allegories 12 19 13
Zalu Miscellanies 18 22 38
TOTAL 140 114 191
* Table 2. Common genres of Australian Chinese language fiction from 1894 to 1912
33 The most representative case is Chen Xianmao’s (1999) Haiwai Huawen Wenxueshi (《 》History of Overseas Chinese Language Literature). 34 Some of the early Australian Chinese language fiction, especially the earlier ones, were usually published without any signifiers indicating their genre. Adding tags or labels describing the generic type of their writings to the front of the story texts became a common practice of Australian Chinese language newspapers only at a later stage. Reading such labels has provided me with clues on the genre divisions of these stories. Such as the labels of yuyan ( , fables), xietan ( , humorous talks) and xiaolin ( , forest of jokes) clearly point out the nature of these writings as resembling the ancient Chinese xiaoshuo genres; the other tags such as jinshi xiaoshuo ( , stories of current affairs), zhengzhi xiaoshuo ( , political fiction) and shehui xiaoshuo ( , social fiction) are more from the direct influence of the new fiction of Late Qing that features marking fiction as belonging to various new genres as a break from the stereotyped classical Chinese narrative tradition. The way the author or editor labelled these stories was fashionable enough at the time but has complicated the process of producing proper genre divisions. In order to avoid creating too many tags and confusion, my attempt at classification is built on the classical Chinese narrative tradition with reference to the tags already provided and still focuses on the content genres presented by these early stories.
Zhiguai and Zhiren tales are the two most commonly discussed genres of classical Chinese fiction. These two genres have been a fundamental element of the Chinese narrative tradition and developed in the history of Chinese literature from the entry form or the prototype of the artistry of Chinese fiction to the sophisticated and refined works that are comparable to the concept of modern fiction.
In the genre of zhiguai, which can be translated as supernatural tales or records of anomalies in English, we can see a wide range of narrations of ghost talks, accounts of strange events and records of man with supernatural power or the spirits of fox and other creatures34. Such stories are very much like those usually seen in the long classical Chinese literary tradition represented by Soushen Ji ( , In Search of Spirits) of the Eastern Jin (317-420), Jiyi Ji ( , Records of Compiled Anomalies) of Tang (618-907)
34 For instance, Guigu Xiansheng ( , Mister Ghost Valley), TWT, 18980813,p3; Yiseng ( , The Eccentric Monk), CAH, 18970101, p5; Yiyuan Xueyuan ( , The Loyal Ape Wreaks Grievance), CAH, 18990812, p5, 18990831, p3. 35 and Taiping Guangji ( , Extensive Records of the Taiping Era) of the Northern Song (960-1127). The themes of most of these supernatural tales are very similar to the traditional ones: retribution of karma, allusion to or satire of the reality, encouraging goodness and punishing evil through depicting various paranormal events, haunting of ghost and spirits, and netherworld experiences. Although the religious teaching from Buddhism and Taoism is less found in the local zhiguai stories compared to their equivalent in Chinese fiction, the focus on the theme of moral preaching shows that traditional Chinese moralities were still highly valued in the mind of early Australian Chinese migrants.
Meihua Nü ( , The Lady of Plum Blossom) and Haiwai Qitan ( , Strange Tales of Overseas)35 are the two most outstanding pieces of this genre from early Australian Chinese language fiction. The former tells of a young man’s encounter with a household of mother and daughter who are the avatar of plum blossom spirits; its beautiful writing and the tender depiction of the encounter run in the same groove as the very mature form of this genre such as Jiandeng Xinhua ( , New Stories told while Trimming the Wick) of Ming (1368-1644) and Liaozhai Zhiyi ( , Strange Tales from the Leisure Studio) of Qing (1644-1911). Especially Haiwai Qitan, an adventurous tale as its title revealed, records the adventures and various strange encounters told by a British seafarer to his Chinese neighbour living in Victoria. Its plot setting could even be considered as a breakaway from the classical supernatural tales as it no longer lingers in the modes of ghosts, spirits and religious karma of the traditional Chinese stories. While the main scenarios describe various monsters’ fights and wonders from the bizarre lands of overseas, it carries a theme of exploration with an audacious spirit that is very rare and extraordinary in this traditional genre of Chinese fiction.
In the classical Chinese narrative tradition, the genre zhiren or anecdotes of persons are mostly in the forms of short entries or jottings, recording the words and deeds of certain historical or cultural figures as some sort of unofficial account or apocryphal narration complementary to the history. From the thematic angle, there is no lack of typical
35 Meihua Nü, TWT, 19100723, p8; Haiwai Qitan, TWT, 190110413, pp.2-3, 19010417, pp.2-3, 19010420, pp.2-3. 36 stories of traditional religious/moral preaching in this zhiren genre of early Australian Chinese language fiction36. What are more observable are those pieces carrying a significant feature of the fin-de-siecle spirit of Chinese literature at the turn of the 20th century: the “persons” or characters that are recorded by these writings were extended to the images of valiant revolutionary37, hypocritical Chinese students studying abroad38, and even exotic figures such as a loyal French soldier39, Japanese female spies40 as well as the British queen41. Such an expansion to the traditional zhiren characters reflect the profound change in Chinese xiaoshuo that started in late Qing under the influence of radical social revolution and the importation of Western cultural and literary theories during that historical era has now spread to the early Australian Chinese language fiction. According to these snippets and anecdotes, we can pick out the onset of how this traditional xiaoshuo genre started its journey towards modernity in an overseas Chinese context. Whether it is about the praise of the revolutionary’s heroic deed, the censure of the pretence of those so-called “progressive youth”, or the account of foreign characters’ loyalty and virtues that are similar to traditional Chinese values, these zhiren stories were intentionally utilised by their authors to carry on the epochal themes of political enlightenment and patriotism in the local Australian Chinese communities.
The next genre shiqing, was referred by Lu Xun as the stories that “usually depict the joys and sorrows, separations and reunions, one’s sudden success or change in human life, as well as the ways of the world to witness the vicissitudes of life, intermingled with the theme of divine retribution but less accounts of supernatural” (2011:167)42. In my
36 To name a few: the revenge of a maiden in the imperial court in Ming Gongren Yishi ( , The Anecdotic History of a Court Maid of Ming, TWT, 19080307, p8), an inspiring conversation between a Taoist Monk and a farmer on life and poverty in Gusong Zi ( , Master Old Pine, TWT, 19091030, p7), and the snippets of infamies of China’s government officials in Guanchang Benjing Zhi Chouzhuang Liangze ( , Two Ridicules of Chasing Shortcuts to Officialdom, TWT, 19050401, p2). 37 Mouguo Gedang Shu Mouzhishi Zhi Zhuanglie ( , The Bravery of a Martyr Told by a Revolutionary of a Country), TCT, 19100924, pp.8-9. 38 Riben Mou Nüshi ( , Some Lady in Japan), TWT, 19091113, p8. 39 Kuli Zhong Qinanzi ( , A Remarkable Man of Coolie), TWT, 19070528, p8. 40 Zhentan Meiren Tan ( , Tales of Spy Beauties), TCT, 19040615, p2, 19040622, p2, 19040706, p2, 19040713, p2. 41 Yinghou Jiali Yangqi Quanshi ( , The British Queen Carie Pretending to be a Beggar to Encourage Charity), TWT, 19110107, p7. 42 The original Chinese lines by Lu Xun is “ ”. When translating this sentence, I have made reference of Yang 37 understanding, apart from what has been said in Lu Xun’s interpretation, those stories that tell of love romance, social mores of the era, and the follies of society could also fit into the framework of shiqing, or Stories of Manners. Though not every piece under this generic type in early Australian Chinese language fiction can be deemed as mature and sophisticated in its length and literary technique as the traditional category of Chuanqi or Shiqing Xiaoshuo (novels of manners), I am still inclined to integrate these types of stories into one genre considering the nature of their themes and contents.
In this genre, we can find love tales with distinct characteristics of the social and historical background of the time in China. For example, Pojing Chongyuan ( , Reunion of the Broken Mirror) is about a pair of lovers’ parting and reuniting during the Boxer Rebellion in China43; Yidali Huangzu Zhi Aihechao ( , The Love Tide of the Italian Royal Blood)44, which depicts an Italian marquis’s commitment of love and daring to break the imperial rule to marry an American civilian lady. Though its writing is still heavily influenced by the traditional theme of scholar-beauty romance; the whole setting of plot development is completely based on exotic characters and events.
There is also an important fiction under this genre named Zuanshi Yuezhi ( , The Diamond Ring)45 that should not be overlooked. It tells a story of two Chinese labourers defrauded by two Australian prostitutes who cheat them of their precious diamond rings. As a local composition from the Australian Chinese diaspora, not only we can find its connections to the traditional edifying and exhortative stories such as those in Dupian Xinshu ( , New Book on Stopping Fraud) of Ming (1368-1644), it also poses a response to the development of one of the very important genres of late Qing fiction, that is, fiction of excoriation which exposes hoaxes and social depravities. By disclosing the ordeal of Chinese migrants’ entrapment by the local prostitutes, it revealed whoring as a common phenomenon among early Australian Chinese migrants,
Xianyi’s and Gladys Yang’s edition of translation of Lu Xun’s A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (Yang, Xianyi; Yang, Gladys. (trans). Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2009, p220). 43 Pojing Chongyuan, TWT, 19001031, p2. 44 TCT, 19080620, pp. 9-10. 45 3 episodes published in TCT in November, 1910, see Appendix I for the actual publication dates. 38 and further raised a didactic and admonitory theme to the readers of the early Australian Chinese diaspora about its harm.
Apart from love romance and exposure fiction, there is also a large quantity of stories presenting the social mores of the era and the local lives from the hometowns of these Chinese migrants and even the early Chinese communities in Australia, ranging from the trivial accounts of extramarital affairs or domestic disputes46, to the folk customs of wangqing ( , Marriage to a Deceased Man) and Shinü ( , Stone Woman)47, and to the titbits of local Chinese communities such as winning a sweepstake ticket or an adulterous next door neighbour48. The most representative work is a novel of manners titled Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy) published in TCT in 53 episodes49 from June 5th, 1909 to December 10th, 1910. It has a detailed depiction of the traditional folkways of the Cantonese countryside, and the lives of early Australian Chinese labourers in the mid to late 19th century including their painstaking journey to make a living in the wilderness of Australia. It presents an almost panoramic account of Chinese migrants’ lives in the early Australian diaspora from their struggling beginning in this strange land to their settlement in the Chinese community, and to the different life journey they go on after they return to China with their fortune. While the main aims of the writer clearly match with the current trend of civil enlightenment such as patriotism, unremitting efforts of self-strengthening, and the denunciation of the bad practices of opium, gambling and polygamy, the author also instinctively probed into the themes of ethnic identity, exile and nostalgia, highly valued in the later study of post-colonial diasporic literature, through the main characters’ conversations, thoughts and encounters. The exploration of these themes is a unique feature contributed to early Australian Chinese language fiction by this novel that is probably first seen in the
46 For instance, ( , Retribution as the Heavenly Principle), CAH, 18961016, p3; ( , The Flesh Pillow), TCT, 19070921, pp.6-7. 47 Daogui Xinniang ( , The Bride that Acts Crazy), CAH, 18950329, p3, CAH; Sanshengshi Yuan ( , Karma of The Three-Reincarnation Stone), TWT, 19001110, p3. 48 Fu Zi Tian Lai ( , Luck Bestowed from Heaven), CAH, 18941228, p6; Liao Bo Yixiao ( , Worth A Laugh), CAH, 18950111, p6. 49 Although the ending episode has a subtitle of “52”, however the editor of TCT had wrongly marked the episode numbers starting from Episode 27, please Endnote 3 of Appendix I for the correct number of episodes; 39 contemporaneous late Qing Chinese fiction. It marks an outstanding exemplar of fiction writing in the later development of the diasporic Chinese literature in Australia.
The genre of humorous writing also has a large presentation in early Australian Chinese language fiction. Some are traditional jests about people’s follies50, and witty and glib speeches51 purely for the purpose of amusement. More meaningful and featuring the spirit of the time are the jokes and parodies with a satirical theme that mock debauched officials and rotten government in China, the injustice or disgrace of current policies and affairs, as well as the unfair and unfriendly treatment experienced by the early Chinese migrants in Australia. For example, Wenming Liqi ( , The Edged Tool of Civilisation)52 invents a scene from a battle of the First Sino-Japanese War, fantasising about a victory committed by three thousand xiucai53 whose ink-writing frightens the Japanese soldiers and makes them beg for peace. However, the main demand from these xiucai turns out to be a mere teaching position in the Japanese education system. The humour created by such a contrast ridicule the obstinacy and pedantry of the stereotyped traditional Chinese scholars. This story betrays an underlying disappointment with the plight of China. Jieshi Xiaolin ( , Joke from the Street Market) 54, which was written in vernacular Cantonese, made fun of the accounts in the TWT through the conversation of street vendors as a sarcastic reply to the conservative royalist ideas advocated by TWT during their debate on Chinese political ideologies.
Although traditionally the genre of allegory is a different form of writing to jokes and parodies, these two genres of early Australian Chinese language fiction can be jointly discussed. Most of the allegories share similar satirical and enlightenment motifs to some extent with the humorous writings; whereas some humorous writings also utilise allegory as a rhetoric device. For example, in Youmin Zhuan ( , The Life of Youmin), a fictional character named youmin (the dawdler) living in the Opium Town,
50 For instance, Shuyao ( , The Rat Poison), TWT, 19070323, p8; Bianzi Chengjing ( , Queue Turning into a Spirit), TWT, 19120309, p8. 51 Shizhou ( , Eating Congee), TWT, 19120309, p8; Tiemian ( , The Iron Face), TCT, 19110603, p9; Kezi Xiaotan ( , The Laugh Talk about Teaching Son), CAH, 18970924, p6. 52 TWT, 19070615, p8. 53 Xiucai , a title referring to those who had passed the first degree of China’s traditional official examination; 54 TCT, 19110923, p.6-7. 40 was created metaphorically to criticise the image of those idling Chinese opium smokers; in the parody named Laoxiong ( , The Old Bear), the animal images of bear, tiger, lion and panther were used as an allegory of the Western powers coveting China’s benefits.55
Among all the allegorical stories recorded in the early Australian Chinese language newspapers, there is only one parable with the theme of traditional religious teaching, which is a Buddhist edification story to extricate readers from the obsession with money56. The focus of all other allegories and fables was mainly on the corrupt customs and the predicament of late Qing China. In these works, images such as “the sleeping country”, “the bandits’ realm”, “the gambling dice town” and “a wealthy landowner whose assets were embezzled by his eastern neighbour and visitors”, as well as anthropomorphised figures like the troops of ants and bookworms were created as allusions to the absurd and benighted reality of contemporary China.57
The last genre I would like to discuss in this part is the miscellanies, ie. zaji ( )or zalu ( ) in Chinese. This term generally refers to the collections of all sorts of miscellaneous and possibly inconsequential writings including anecdotes, literary jottings, unofficial records of history and biography, and trivial talks and speeches. These texts may be able to find a category from other genres of xiaoshuo depending on their themes and contents, or just simply be unclassifiable. The same situation applies here in early Australian Chinese language fiction. There are also a number of short entries or minor records that neither belong to news, prose, nor to any other major literary genres. I tend to subsume all these writings into “miscellanies”, which can be deemed as a loose or catchall genre under the broad definition of xiaoshuo according to classical Chinese narrative traditions.
55 Youmin Zhuan, TWT, 19060414, p6; Laoxiong, TCT, 19120727, p9. 56 Qianmeng ( , The Dream of Money), TWT, 19060908, p6. 57 See Shuiguo ( , The Sleeping Country), TWT, 19040406, p2; You Shuixiang Ji ( , A Journey to the Sleeping Town), CAH, 19010518, p3; Daozei Shijie Ji ( , Tale of the Bandits’ Realm), TCT, 19120914, p9; Sifangxu Ji ( , Story of the Square Dice Town), CAH, 19060623, p4; Yibing Taodu Ji ( , Tale of Ants’ Troop Conquering Bookworms), CAH, 19001006, p2. 41 These writings include, for instance, hearsay of sensational stories such as a dog saving its master’s life from the attack of kangaroo58; scraps of remarks or dialogues that satirise or condemn social injustice59; records of what one sees and hears in a tour or a battle60, as well as accounts of various unofficial history or anecdotes such as the origin of pipa ( , a plucked string Chinese musical instrument) and the quirky events of Russian anarchists61. Some of these narrations, such as Duwu Kewei ( , The Frightful Poison) and Hu Wei Yan Wang ( /, The Death of Tiger Caused by Opium) 62, are very close to the local lives here in Australia. Even though they were labelled as xiaoshuo in their appearance on the newspapers, the former is more like a scientific note sharing the experience of using opium to protect farmers from the invasion of dingoes; whereas the latter further developed the idea of the first piece and continued to demonstrate its toxicity by telling a story of how opium can kill a tiger. This again shows the “flexibility”, as described by Andrew Plaks, of the Chinese narrative tradition in genre division.
As I have indicated earlier in this section, parts of the early Australian Chinese language fiction also came with various labels indicating their genres and themes that are innovations to the classical literary traditions. This speaks of the situation that early Australian Chinese fiction once kept pace with late Qing fiction’s development in China.
In other words, we can even further classify the genres of early Australian Chinese language fiction according to the late Qing fiction’s styles, for instance, satirical fiction, fiction of exposure, heroic cycles, court-case fiction, and novels of manners. However, doing so can simply increase the complexity of the genre division of early Australian Chinese language fiction and become confusing and ineffective by giving too many names of genres and subgenres. In order to fully reflect early Australian Chinese connections with classical Chinese narrative traditions, I will stick to my generic
58 Mengshou Jingren ( , The Shockingly Fierce Beast), CAH, 18950517, p4. 59 Yueyuan Xinyu ( , New Talks from Guangzhou), TCT, 19021105, pp.2-3. 60 You Yanchang Ji ( , Record of a Tour to Saltfield), TCT, 19100205, p9; Guoliujiao Guanzhan Ji ( , Watching the Battle of Guoliujiao), TCT, 19030715, p2. 61 Pipa Xiaoshi ( , A Brief History of Pipa), TWT, 19091120, p8; Xuwudang Lishi Tan ( , A Talk on the History of Anarchist), TWT, 19090619, p8. 62 Duwu Kewei, TWT, 19081219, p7; Hu Wei Yan Wang, TWT, 19090206, p8. 42 categorisation as outlined in Table 2 and leave the specific influences of late Qing fiction for the discussion in the next chapter.
Authorship and readership
It is noteworthy that the authors of most of the early Australian Chinese language fiction are unidentified. Among all the stories retrieved from the early Australian Chinese newspapers, those with a name of the author or contributor account for less than one third of the total number. This is another example of the imprint of classical Chinese literary tradition on early Australian Chinese language fiction. In the history of classical Chinese literature, xiaoshuo is generally given a lower status compared to other literary forms such as poetry and prose; hence traditionally-minded Chinese literati in the past tended to regard writing xiaoshuo is an inconsequential deed and avoid naming themselves as a novelist or a writer of fiction. However, this situation was changed during the late Qing period under the impact of Western fiction. The status of xiaoshuo was quickly elevated in both the commercial market and in literary circles, and the concept of xiaoshuo also became closer to the modern sense of fiction. The number of fiction with author names identified was then noticeably increased. In the case of the early development of Australian Chinese language fiction, the names of fiction writers also increased in the local newspapers during the first ten years of the 20th century.
The names of fiction writers recorded in the early Australian Chinese newspapers are either traditionally-worded such as “Banxian Zhuren ( ( , lit. The Half-idle Master)”63, “Siming Yusheng ( , lit. The Oratorical Scholar from Siming)”64; or being metaphorical reflecting the themes or spirits of their writings such as “Rexue Ren ( , lit. The Warm-blooded Man)”65, “Xiao Shi ( , lit. Scoffing at the World)”66. However, the real identities behind these pseudonyms are most unlikely to be recognised due to the lack of useful clues for further investigation. The only exception is
63 CAH, 18950111, p6. 64 TWT, 19070420, p8. 65 TWT, 19010327, p2. 66 TWT, 19110826, p7. 43 those which can be easily confirmed as of established mainland Chinese fiction writers such as Bao Tianxiao ( , 1876-1973), under his pen name Xiao ( ) or Tianxiao ( ) and Chen Jinghan ( ,1878-1965), under his pen name Leng ( )67. Apart from that, some names are just a simple phrase indicating the native place of the writer, for example, “Jinyou Laihan ( , lit. A Letter from a Friend from Tianjin)”68 and “Shunde Chencun Youren ( , lit. A friend from Chencun, Shunde)”69. There might be only one or two that can be surmised to be the real names of the author, such as “Xinyang Shen Ding ( , Shen Ding from Xinyang)” 70 and “Cai Wangyao ( )” 71.
As an attempt to explore more clues of the possible writers of early Australian Chinese language fiction, I have also resorted to a number of reference works including the catalogues of late Qing fiction and Chinese popular fiction, and biographical dictionaries for late Qing and early Republican figures. 72 However, my cross-referencing of these resources yields no valuable inputs on the pen names or pseudonyms I recovered from the newspapers so far. Hence, to the best of my knowledge, I can only come up with a possible conclusion that the authors behind these pen names are most likely educated Chinese residents living in the early Australia diaspora who wrote and contributed their writings to the local Chinese newspapers. Pen names such as “Tianya Ke ( , lit. Guest from the Edge of the Sky)”73 and “Nan Ren ( , lit. Man from/of South)”74 subtly imply the sojourning identity of the author’s status. Other examples such as “Yaoluo Bu Zheng Xiong ( , lit. Brother Zheng from the
67 There is also a pen name “Xing An ( )”, author of Waifubu ( , The Department of Foreign Attachment), TWT, 19080229, p8, 19080307, p8. Tian Xingliu ( , 1874-1958), a late Qing early Republican Chinese poet of the South Society also used Xing An as his sobriquet (as listed in a poem published on Guangyi Cong Bao in Chongqing, issue no.255, 19101231). However, whether there is any link between Tian and the author of Waifubu remains unknown as no records of this short story are found in the collections of Tian’s writings nor the catalogues of late Qing fiction available. 68 TWT, 19001031, p2. 69 CAH, 18961204, p4. 70 TCT, 19080215, p6. 71 TWT, 19081219, p7. 72 Please refer to the “primary source” section in the bibliography for a list of the catalogues I used. 73 TWT, 19060414, p6. 74 TWT, 19080222, p7. 44 Town of Yalwal)”75 and “Zhaoli Bu Cixin Wuneng Zi ( , lit. Man of Mercy-Heart and Incapability from the Town of Junee)”76 clearly point out the name of the Australian town the author was from. The authors’ naming styles together with the narrations of local Australian lives reflected in their works77 have supplied evidence for my inference on their identity as the writers from local Australian Chinese communities.
Based on this finding, the majority of stories with no authors can also be considered as genuine narrations produced by early Australian Chinese migrants as these compositions were published only in the early Australian Chinese language press and have no records in other overseas or mainland Chinese resources. Although the true identities of the unnamed writers of these stories remain unknown and are basically impossible to recover, it is reasonable to assume that the editors of these early Chinese newspapers in Australia could be the possible authors of these diasporic stories. Being well conversant in Chinese and profoundly educated in traditional Chinese learning, these editors had every resource to write and publish their works in the newspapers they were appointed to. One supporting eveidence is the author name of Niunü Tanqing ( , Love Talks between The Cowherd and His Maid)78 appearing as “You Gong ( )”, a possible homophonic pseudonym of Wong Yew Gong ( , ?-?) who was the editor of TCT at that time.
The editors of early Australian Chinese newspapers were a group of bilingual elites represented by Johnson Sun ( , 1868-1925, also known as Sun Junchen) of the CAH and politically-affiliated intellectuals employed from mainland China such as Tang Caizhi ( , 1880-1966, also known as Tong Choi-chih) of the TWT and Wong Yew Gong of TCT. Mei-fen Kuo has detailed Johnson Sun’s educational background in both Hong Kong and London and described his life experience as
75 Guanggun Piancai ( , A Hoodlum’s Money Swindle), CAH, 18970709, p5. 76 Qianshi Yuanchou ( , The Rancour from Prelife), CAH, 18970730, p6. 77 For examples, Cixin Wuneng Zi’s Rancour from Prelife records a manslaughter case in Junee committed by newly-arrived Chinese migrants; Banxian Zhuren’s Liao Bo Yixiao and Chen You’s Yinfu Zhenqing ( , The Truth of Underworld, CAH, 18950118, p4) both tell of stories happened in the local communities of Townsville; 78 TCT, 19090904, pp.9-10.
45 “combined both Chinese and Western cultures” (2008:38). Sun worked as a journalist, the proprietor as well as the main editor of the CAH, especially after another Chinese editor Lee Caizhang ( ) died in late 1896. Chang Luke ( , ?-?, also known as Chong Luke), who was initially the journalist and editor-in-chief of TWT and later on founded TCT in Melbourne, may act in a similar half-proprietor-half-editor role like Sun. He could be another good example of bilingual elites capable of literary production in the Australian Chinese diaspora, considering his capacity of managing the newspaper business, however, little is known about his life and educational background apart from the shift of his political stance on China from a monarchist to a revolutionary in turn of the 20th century.
As for other editors of the early Australian Chinese language press, I managed to identify one common background based on the available historical materials that they are all well versed in classical Chinese culture and traditional learning, despite their different political standing. Lee Caizhang, whom was deemed as “traditionally- minded”79 by Johnson Sun, had exhibited his excellence in classical Chinese literature as he had organised Chinese couplet-writing contests in Sydney and won prizes80. Wong Yew Gong and Lew Goot-chi ( , ?-?), the Chinese editors of TCT, were both school teachers in China before they came to Melbourne. In the TWT, Wu E’lou ( , ?-?) was commented as a “multi-talented old-fashioned literati”81 ; And Tang Caizhi had received both classical Chinese learning and western education in Hunan Current Affairs School ( ) before he went to Japan for further studies and was sent to Sydney by Liang Qichao.
The Chinese editors’ proficiency and competence in traditional Chinese culture and historical resources are also manifested in Mei-fen Kuo’s study (2013) where she has cited examples of how the three earliest Australian Chinese newspapers interpret the Confucian ideology and heritage in their narratives for the shaping of Chinese migrants’ ethical identity, nationalism and modernity. The Chinese editors undoubtedly played an
79 Originally published in an interview on Daily Telegraph, 18961006; quoted in Kuo (2008:38). 80 CAH, 18950816, p4, 18960221, p4. 81 See Footnote 28 in Chiu & Yeung (1999: 9). 46 important role in this respect through their literary and writing skills in composing article and selecting stories for this purpose.
Deeply influenced by the contemporaneous waves of civil enlightenment and political reforms in late Qing China at the turn of the 20th century, the early Australian Chinese newspapers also set their goals or tenets such as “bringing expostulation and benefits to people’s minds ( )”82, “increasing people’s wisdoms and knowledge ( )”83 or “chastising the unjust and denouncing the imperious ( )”84. Poon (1995), Chiu & Yeung (1999), Qiu (2005) and Kuo (2011, 2013) have individually analysed the early Australian Chinese language press’s pursuit of broadening the Chinese migrants’ knowledge of modern Western society and lifestyle and the support of China’s social and political developments. While these investigations are mainly of news and political essays, one aspect that has long been neglected is that similar endeavours exist in the literary writings in the newspapers, too. In my findings of early Australian Chinese language fiction, a large number of stories published in the press catered for the needs of civil enlightenment as explained above. In these stories, we can find various mimicries of the social injustice and official depravity, true portrayals of the harms of gambling and opium smoking, records of Chinese migrants’ strivings in this new country, and inspiring narrations to encourage patriotism and promote ideas of China’s political advancement. It is quite obvious that the publishing of such stories targets the interests of and appeals directly to the mass readers of the early Australian Chinese diaspora.
Although the early Australian Chinese press unanimously put civil enlightenment as their foremost claim, they catered to a different readership when selecting fiction for publication. As I pointed out earlier in this chapter, CAH aimed for a mass readership from the Australian Chinese communities and stuck to a rather neutral stance on China’s politics. Therefore, there is less coverage of political disputes in its fiction. Instead, a large proportion of ghost tales, humorous writings, miscellaneous accounts of
82 CAH, Editor’s statement, 18940901, p1. 83 TWT, A Brief Note of The Tung Wah News ( ), 18980629, p1. 84 TWT, The New Age of Our Newspaper ( ), 19031107, p2. 47 street hearsays, and sensational stories from both local communities and hometowns in China were published throughout the first 20 years of the CAH. The CAH’s preference for such stories could certainly be considered evidence of its populist approach that helped gain it popularity in the grass-root stratum of the Chinese diaspora.
Also based at Sydney, the TWT had a close connection to the affluent businessmen and China’s monarchist movement right from its beginning. Its Chinese editors such as Wu E’lou and Tang Caizhi were traditionally educated intellectuals with strong affinities with Kang Youwei ( , 1858-1927) and Liang Qichao, the two reputed leaders of China’s monarchist movement. Accordingly, TWT targeted a more educated readership that is relatively conservative in cultural values against the radical revolutionary ideas of China’s politics advocated by TCT in Melbourne, its major newspaper opponent concerning the promotion of China’s political and social movement. Hence, we find a lot more classical content such as the scholar-beauty romance, literary jottings with historical and personal anecdotes typically suited to the aesthetics of traditional literati. The criticism of political themes and traditional Chinese culture is also comparatively milder than that of TCT.
TCT in Melbourne obviously adopted more progressive approaches to distinguish itself from the pro-monarchist TWT and the Chinese-politics-apathic CAH in its publication of fiction, such as the choice of language style and its clear-cut support of the revolutionary movement in China. The editors of TCT was likely to take account of the demographics of early Australian Chinese migrants and hence embraced vernacular Chinese, or more accurately vernacular Cantonese, as the language of their fiction. Not only has TCT the most vernacular stories among these three early local Chinese newspapers, it also shows attempts to modify the language style in order to cater for its readers. For example, Shuo Menshen ( , On Door-Gods)85 is a reprint of a story published in Dagong Bao ( ), an influential Chinese newspaper in the early Republican period of China ; it is however clearly indicated that this writing was typically modified from standard Beijing Mandarin to colloquial Cantonese. This
85 TCT, 19021217, p2. 48 progressive approach is also reflected in the selections of themes in TCT’s fiction, sentimental romances, supernatural accounts and street gossips were cut to very little in coverage compared to the other two newspapers. Whether it appeared as a fable, a joke, a record of anecdote or a story of manners, almost every piece of fiction published in TCT carries a purpose or a function to satire, expose, exhort or denounce on behalf of the civil enlightenment and socio-political advancement of Chinese people.
In the case of similar themes in fiction, the TWT’s approach is clearly different from that of TCT. Take the assassination stories as an example; this type of writing was a direct result of the late Qing trend of nihilistic fiction and had appeared on both the TWT and TCT. Eguo Nüxia ( , The Female Assassin of Russia)86 in the TWT tells of a Russian chief warden being assassinated by a young maiden for his cruelty in treating prisoners. At the end of the narration, the writer concludes
The so-called Revolutionaries, they exist when you (the authority) think they exist; they don’t when you don’t. If you insist to create them out of thin air, and indulge on hunting and killing (them). They are thence forced to commit assassination.
The author emphasised that the perception of assassin or revolutionary appears “out of thin air” and wrote an admonition to remind the authority not to dwell on such thing. When it comes to another piece titled Xuwudang Lishi Tan , A Talk on the History of Nihilistic Gang)87, it is nothing like an historical record but an account of various mysterious and magical tricks of Russia’s Red Hand Gang. This type of narration completely overturned the original purpose of late Qing’s nihilistic fiction for the political arousal of the general public. Instead, it had become a strange talk or an urban legend that is nothing more than an exotic supernatural tale.
86 TWT, 19080222, p7. 87 TWT, 19090618, p8. 49 The treatment of TCT on the same theme is significantly different to the TWT due to its consistent backing of China’ revolutionary movements. Pudi Ansha Ji ( , Record of the Assassination of Portuguese Emperor)88 , which is a translated fiction by Leng ( ), vividly depicts the horrifying scenes of the assassination. Leng ended the story by commenting:
Be it a noble emperor, or an ordinary man, they all ended up in merely flesh and blood. There is inequality of power no more.
Such comments conform to the anarchistic attitudes promoted by late Qing’s nihilistic fiction that defy authority and pursue the utmost equality even in an extreme way. Another story of Mouguo Gedang Shu Mouzhishi Zhi Zhuanglie ( , The Bravery of a Martyr Told by a Revolutionary of a Country)89 presents a much more straightforward account of the fearless and gallant integrity of the revolutionary. The revolutionary patriot’s act to turn himself in after killing a corrupt officer and bravely face his execution as a glorious martyr was eulogised by the writer as “heroic”.
Another theme that can be compared here is the portrayal of the “female spy”. In the light of the TWT’s conservative views inherited from traditional Chinese culture, the female spy is described in a derogatory way in Nüzhentan Lianhuaniang ( , Lady Lotus, the Female Spy)90. It tells of Lotus, a Polish lady who was paid by the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to seduce the leader of the Hungarian revolutionary party and who eventually destroyed him. Huang’s and Ommundsen’s interpretation of this story is inaccurate as they have read it as an espousal of the feminist agenda featuring the depiction of a courageous and intelligent Polish woman detective (2015:5)91. Clearly they fail to grasp the real intention of the author, who
88 TCT, 19080418, p9, 19080425, p9. 89 TCT, 19100924, pp.8-9. 90 TWT, 19100820, p8, 19100827, p8, 19100903, p8, 19100910, p8. 91 Huang and Ommundsen even incorrectly translated the title of this story as “The Woman Detective-Ms Lotus Flower”. The word “Zhentan ( )” here is referring to “spy” rather than “detective” according to the storyline. 50 laments the damage caused by the lust for female beauty and chastises the protagonist at the end of the text
Oh, Lotus! How vicious! You are such a fine lady; how dare you use the blood of the partisan to buck for your own gold!
The author’s comment stands in sharp contrast to the attitude conveyed in TCT’s Zhentan Meiren Tan ( , Tales of Spy Beauties)92, which includes three small stories of how Japanese female spies used their wits and charms to pry for valuable military and diplomatic information for the Japanese government, the author not only highly praises and admires the discreet and meticulous efforts shown in Japan’s intelligence service, the selfless endeavours of these female spies are also acclaimed as deeds of patriotism. The author wrote:
Out of their (the female spies’) enthusiasm and loyalty (to the country), they would not hesitate to sacrifice their bodies.
Compared to the old-fashioned “beauty-is-beastly” view held by the fiction in the TWT, this story in TCT clearly displays a distinctively affirmative attitude towards the theme of the female spy.
TCT’s support of revolutionaries is also embodied in its relatively larger amount of allegories and humorous writings compared to the other two local Chinese newspapers at the turn of the 20th century. Obviously, the function of humour and allegorical writings to satirise social reality was highly valued by the authors and editors of TCT. In the genre of fiction of manners, TCT has less coverage of the traditional scholar-beauty love romances and trivial accounts of neighbourhood hearsays, but published more stories about the lives of early Australian Chinese migrants. One of the most outstanding pieces of this kind is the serialised novel titled Duoqi Du ( , The Vice
92 TCT, 19040615, pp.2-3, 19040622, p2, 19040706, p2, 19040713, p2. 51 of Polygamy) as mentioned before, which carries a spirit of literary realism and fully exhibits the cultural customs and lifestyle of early Chinese migrants following their journeys starting from leaving home for Australia, then the perilous expedition in the vast wilderness, to the struggle to establish their business and then returning home with their fortune.
Through this analysis of the forms, genres, themes and other aspects of early Australian Chinese language fiction, I have examined the multiple possibilities and diversified development of local compositions of fiction. However trivial and assorted their forms and contents are, they should not be ignored or undervalued as most of these stories carried the didactic themes of patriotism and enlightenment which are the focus of the whole Chinese society in that era, and thus served an important function for the local Australian Chinese readers in the spreading of knowledge and the cultivation of community and ethnic cohesion.
In addition, these stories also offer us a new angle to enrich our understanding of the early Australian Chinese diaspora and its literature through the appearance of some unique Australian elements in these xiaoshuo writings. For example, the detailed depiction of kangaroo and its way of attacking in Mengshou Jingren, and the use of opium to keep dingoes away by Australian farmers in Duwu Kewei, are both the contributions of local Chinese writers in Australia. From this we can see that local literary production had started to take root in this “otherland”, which is very likely to lead to the beginning of a native literary tradition. The novel Duoqi Du is evidence of this with its exploration of diasporic themes and the hybridity reflected in its integration of traditional Chinese culture and the new lifestyle in Australia.
The development of early Australian Chinese language fiction undoubtedly has absorbed nutrients from the classical Chinese narrative traditions as its cultural root. This chapter has presented a detailed analysis of how traditional Chinese fiction set foot in the early Australian Chinese literature. I have also mentioned the heavy influence of late Qing fiction and its literary movements on early Australian Chinese language fiction. How this interaction with late Qing fiction inspired the achievements of early Australian Chinese language fiction will be further investigated in the following chapter. 52 CHAPTER 3 The Early Evolution of Australian Chinese Language Fiction: Drawing on the Late Qing Experience
While diasporic Chinese fiction set foot in Australia following the waves of Chinese migrants in the late 19th century, narrative fiction in China was simultaneously going through a radical development in the wake of the effervescent political and literary movement of the late Qing period. Late Qing is a historical era from the First Opium War in 1840 to the downfall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, a turbulent period in Chinese history, which witnessed the decline of old tradition and the strong impact of Western learning. As an autogenous response to Western influences and the challenges brought about by modernisation, a multitude of literary breakthroughs, reforms and innovations sprang up from the interstices of the loosening traditional literary framework, exhibiting early signs of the modernisation of Chinese literature.
Late Qing fiction, which refers to the fiction produced in this period and culminating at the turn of the 20th century, is an important literary genre that addresses this challenge. However, the achievement and historical importance of late Qing fiction in the modernising process of Chinese literature has long been overshadowed by the paradigm of the May Fourth literature1 and is only recently being re-assessed and thoroughly studied through the efforts of a number of influential scholars from both overseas and mainland China.2 In the history of the evolution of Chinese fiction, the May-Fourth literature is usually given, especially by the scholars from mainland China, the official status as the decisive beginning of modern Chinese fiction. The values of late Qing fiction were often a belittled subject of study in most of the 20th century. However, with the rediscoveries and indepth studies of late Qing fiction over the past three decades, there are increasing arguments for the role of late Qing fiction in the modernity of
1 See Footnote 18, Chapter 1. 2 The first integral study on late Qing fiction was Wanqing Xiaoshuo Shi ( , The History of Late Qing Fiction written by A Ying ( , 1900-1977) in 1937). However, late Qing fiction’s historical importance and innovative contribution to the development of Chinese fiction was not valued and brought to the forefront by the academics until after the 1980s-90s period following the representative studies of Milena Doleželová-Velingerová (1980), David Der-Wei Wang (1997), Patrick Hanan (2004), and Chen Pingyuan (1990, 2005).
54 Chinese literature that the creative attempts of late Qing fiction writers had essentially heralded the onset of modern Chinese fiction.
The historical significance of late Qing fiction lies in its experimental approaches and new perspectives that not only provocatively transformed and renewed the face of classical Chinese xiaoshuo, but also foreshadowed the subsequent literary revolution in the succeeding May Fourth era. 3 The translation and introduction of Western fiction from the late 19th century largely expanded the genres and themes of late Qing fiction, and gave rise to the revival and reform of the traditional vernacular fiction and short story. Upon the impact of Western fiction, the perennial narrative structure and techniques of classical Chinese xiaoshuo tradition were enriched by the use of interleaved narrative sequence, the rise of non-plot elements such as scenery and psychological depiction in narrations, and the switch from the traditional oral-telling omniscient narrator to more restricted stances such as first and third-person narrators. The change of Chinese literati’s attitude towards the function, orientation and duty of fiction also facilitated the professionalisation and commodification of fiction writing in late Qing China, and as such the status of fiction was elevated and the forthcoming ascent of fiction to the centre stage of Chinese literature was made possible. With all these achievements, late Qing fiction emerged as a nexus of the transition of Chinese fiction from the traditional form to its modern evolution.
More importantly, late Qing fiction also has a cross-cultural significance. In Doleželová- Velingerová’s view, the evolution of late Qing fiction is a crucial process and an important stage of fundamental cultural transformation taking place not only in China, but throughout the whole of Asia (Mair, 2001:600). Like her predecessors in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, Doleželová-Velingerová incorporates late Qing fiction into the historical framework of modern Asian literature (Doleželová-Velingerová, 1980:4). By taking into account the historical background of the late Qing period and the turn of the 20th century, this cultural transformation distinguished by late Qing fiction is then interpreted by David Wang (1997:18) as the “beginning of a modern era”.
3 For discussions on the status and historical significance of late Qing fiction, please refer to Doleželová - Velingerová (1980:3-17; 2001:697-731); Wang (1997:1-52), Chen (2005:20-23).
55 During the turn of the 20th century, late Qing fiction writers experienced the most personal encounters of China’s entry to the modern age and the changes brought to this old empire under the incursion of the Western economic, military and cultural powers. According to David Wang (1997:18), late Qing fiction writers found themselves already in a drastically changing world and a volatile society. Amongst the ongoing worldwide traffic in intellectual, technological and political-economical goods, the evolution of Chinese literature no longer can exclude itself and operate in relative isolation like before. Therefore, due to late Qing fiction’s global relevance and immediate urgency to enter into a modern era, late Qing fiction writers had to face the task brought by this cultural transformation of immediately grasping and responding to the developments and influences of the West (Wang, 1997:18).
Likewise, when the global relevance of this cultural transformation towards the modern age is examined against the situation of the Chinese diasporas in Australia, one can find that the turn of the 20th century is a very sensitive yet crucial period of time for the history and transformation of the Chinese migration and Australia itself. Not only because of the foundation of the Commonwealth symbolising Australia’s transition from former British colonies to a unified modern nation, it also witnessed the beginning of the urbanising and modernising process of local Australian Chinese communities following the nationwide tendency. Mei-fen Kuo’s study (2013) has also indicated how the shaping of modern imagined Chinese community started in 1890s colonial Sydney through her analysis of several symbolic events recorded and advocated by CAH, a local Chinese language press based in Sydney. These events include the western-style manifestation of commercialism and the publication of Anglo-Chinese calendar poster, the promotion of clock-time, holidays and festivals according to the Western calendar, as well as the two major Chinese ceremonial processions conducted in 1897 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Charity Carnival. Kuo’s study of the early Australian Chinese communities and the ethnic newspaper provides a solid and pertinent local example of the global relevance of Doleželová’s observation of cultural transformation. This ethnic cultural development was then stimulated by this modernising process of Australian Chinese diasporas. Against this background, we have witnessed the establishment of the early Australian Chinese language press and the founding of Chinese schools and cultural societies for the local Chinese communities; all contributed to the beginning of
56 Australian Chinese literature, a diasporic ethnic literary tradition. The Australian Chinese language fiction at the turn of the 20th century, as a popular genre of this diasporic literary tradition, gives us a chance to look at how the early Australian Chinese fiction writers got their inspiration from the late Qing fiction and responded to this significant trend of Asian cultural transformation towards modernisation through the prospect of literature.
Following the discussion of the previous chapter, Australian Chinese-language fiction, as one of the earliest diasporic Chinese literary genres, made a rapid progress over the two decades of the 1890s and the 1900s, which is also the time of the culmination of the development of late Qing fiction. Starting out by carrying on the classical Chinese literary tradition, the initial development of Australian Chinese language fiction would not achieve its early burgeoning without the stimulus of the robust late Qing fiction. By drawing on the experience and achievements of late Qing fiction, Australian Chinese language fiction strode through its incipient development from a simple mimesis of classical Chinese xiaoshuo to the beginning of localised literary productions and innovations.
3.1 Innovations and inventions in genres and themes
Australian Chinese language fiction didn't come on stage until 1894 after the birth of The Chinese Australian Herald, the first Chinese language newspaper following the urbanisation trend of the Chinese diaspora in Australia. Then, following the increasing contacts of Chinese intellectuals between overseas Chinese communities and mainland China,4 the monumental wave of late Qing's cultural transformation also reached down to the Chinese communities in Australia. With the inspiration of late Qing fiction's achievement, Australian Chinese language fiction was able to gradually wear off its birthmark of the classical Chinese xiaoshuo appearance, and develop at a tremendous pace to keep up with the modernising tendency of Chinese fiction.
4 Australia was one of the important hubs of the overseas Chinese royalist movement. Liang Qichao, who was a prestigious Chinese monarchist and reformist at the time and meanwhile the leader of late Qing’s new fiction movement in the literary circle, had visited Australia in 1901 in order to raise support from the local Chinese communities.
57 The early development of Australian Chinese language fiction basically followed the trajectory of the development of late Qing fiction. As indicated in Wu’s (2003) and Chen’s (2005:69) analysis of the rise of late Qing fiction, newspaper is the fertile soil for the growth of fiction and has a real impact on its development. In the scenario of the Australian Chinese diaspora, the local Chinese language press, as a fruitful outcome of urban cultural development of the early Australian Chinese communities, is the only soil to produce local Chinese language fiction.
In previous chapters, we learned that there were three Chinese newspapers published, which are the Chinese Australian Herald (CAH), the Tung Wah News/Times (TWT) and the Chinese Times (TCT), in Australia at the turn of the 20th century, operated by local Chinese elites and intellectuals who came from mainland China and had various ties to the political organs of late Qing China. Reprints of articles from other newspapers in mainland China and overseas Chinese settlements as well as contributions from well- known novelists in China can often be found in these newspapers5. With constant communication between the diasporas and China, it is no surprise that early Australian Chinese language press could keep abreast with the latest news of the social and literary development of late Qing China.
This up-to-date connection with late Qing firstly influenced the local production of Chinese fiction in its genre development. In Wu Xi’s (2003) study of Shen Bao ( ), which was one of the most influential mainland Chinese newspapers in terms of the development of fiction during the late Qing period, Wu provided a summary of the genres of fiction published in this newspaper such as huaji ( , humorous), zhentan ( , detective), shishi ( , current affairs), youxi ( , parody or burlesque), yuyan ( , allegories), shehui ( , social manners), yishi ( , anecdotes), yanqing ( , love romance), qiqing ( , bizarre romance), and so on. This example is sufficient to reveal the diversity of new fiction genres created by late Qing writers. Correspondingly, in the CAH, TWT and TCT, apart from the usual xiaoshuo, tancong ( , miscellaneous accounts), zalu ( , mischellaneous records), yuyan, xiaolin (
5 The works of some big names of Chinese novelists such as Xiao or Tianxiao, aka, Bao Tianxiao ( , 1876-1973) and Leng, aka, Chen Jinghan ( , 1878-1965) were also published in early Australian Chinese press, see Appendix V.
58 , forest of jokes) and xietan ( , humorous talks), we can also find a similar diversity of fiction genres: duanpian ( , short stories), jinshi ( recent affairs), shishi (current affairs), xiezhen ( , fiction of reality), shehui (social manners), lishi ( , historical fiction), yuyan xiaoshuo (allegorical fiction), and occasionally even more meticulously sub-divided genres like the short story of current affairs and short social fiction.
In addition, there are also stories with a translator name next to the title or a paragraph of translator’s comments at the end. These signifiers indicate their genres as translated fiction6. The popularity of translated fiction is a significant phenomenon of late Qing fiction as it facilitated the importation and dissemination of Western fiction and consequently propelled the profound changes leading to the modernisation of Chinese fiction. The appearance of translated fiction in early Australian Chinese language fiction again shows the depth and extent of the influence led by the evolution of late Qing fiction. Although these unconventional fiction genres produced by early Australian Chinese writers are still no match for the exuberant generic types of late Qing fiction, it is important to realise that with the facilitation of the cultural and intellectual importations from late Qing China to the local Australian Chinese communities7, local Chinese writers had consciously started to pursue the innovations of late Qing fiction, which further stimulated the development of local fiction production.
The trend of innovations originated from late Qing fiction also presents in the evolution of the materials and themes of early Australian Chinese language fiction. Following the influence of late Qing fiction, those xiaoshuo published in the local Chinese newspapers during this period soon evolved from the middlebrow accounts of street hearsays, anecdotes and strange talks to the mainstream forms and genres similar to late Qing fiction, comprising a variety of jokes and parodies that satirise corrupt customs and
6 See Appendix II Translated Fiction Published in Early Australian Chinese Language Press from 1894 to 1912. 7 The cultural importations here I am referring to the Chinese editors of these early Australian Chinese newspapers who were literati hired from mainland China. With their knowledge of the late Qing Chinese culture, the ideas and concepts of late Qing fiction would undoubtedly be integrated into the articles they composed and selcted for the local Chinese newspapers. Together with the contributions and reprints of fiction from Chinese writers and other late Qing Chinese newspapers, they jointly fuelled the early development of Australian Chinese language fiction.
59 decadence, stories of spies and revolutionaries that inspire and enlighten people’s thoughts and ideas, as well as fiction that expose and excoriate the grotesqueness of social norms. The change in the orientation of content and themes in early Australian Chinese language fiction showed not only the stimulation to local Chinese writers by late Qing fiction, but also how it facilitated the evolution of early Australian Chinese language fiction from classical xiaoshuo to a more modernised form of Chinese fiction.
Given that the early Chinese communities in Australia at the turn of the 20th century basically consisted of first-generation migrants and sojourners, the local Chinese writers still kept a close focus on the political news and social situation of late Qing China and hence produced a large number of stories about the hometowns of the Chinese migrants. Be it the exposure of the hardships of Chinese people, the satirical sketch of the grotesqueness of China’s officialdom, the criticism of social injustice, the tribulations of romance in turbulent times, or the eulogy of patriotic martyrs, the themes of most early Australian Chinese language fiction are more or less in the same strain of late Qing fiction to serve the educational purposes of eliminating the outmoded practices and unhealthy habits of Chinese people, enlightening their wisdom and publicising political ideals and the spirit of self-strengthening and patriotism, which in a way contribute to the community-building and the nurturing of modern spirits in the early Australian Chinese diaspora.
What is more important during this evolving process is that, by riding the tide of literary innovations and renovations led by late Qing novelists, the early Australian Chinese writers had intentionally launched various attempts in combining the local life experience with the influence of late Qing fiction into the composition of native Chinese fiction in Australia. As a result of their efforts, the development of Australian Chinese language fiction in turn of the 20th century primarily exhibited its own native and diasporic feature rather than completely becoming a sub-branch of what was happening in China itself.
Specifically, we can see that the characters and places of the stories in early Australian Chinese language fiction are no longer restricted to the miscellaneous news and street talks from the hometowns of the Chinese migrants but show a diversified constitution instead. The plots of these stories can occur in China, in Western countries and even in
60 the local Chinese diaspora in Australia and Southeastern Asia. A variety of foreign characters of local Australian Chinese migrants also emerged in the narrations of early Australian Chinese language fiction. Based on a brief count of these stories, the foreign countries and regions that appeared include Britain, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, America, Latin America, Arabia, Japan, Siam, Luzon and Rangoon. The exotic characters are even more eye-dazzling ranging from the British Queen or the Italian Royal family, to heroic figures such as a British explorer, a Japanese reformer or a Russian nihilist, and to ordinary people such as a French merchant, a beauty in Latin America or a Thai witch doctor. 8 As a remarkable achievement among all these changes, when the Chinese fiction writers started to make use of lives and experiences in Australia, a mixed variety of local characters such as Chinese migrant workers, businessmen and literati, as well as Caucasian farm owners, Australian onlookers, housewives and even local prostitutes had become the subject to portray in their compositions, showing characteristics of a literature based on typical settler colonial experience.9
With the impacts of Western scientific achievements and their strong economic and military powers observed by late Qing fiction writers, enlightening wisdoms and broadening the vision of Chinese nationals thus became one of the principal themes originating from late Qing's New Fiction trend. Led by this notion, the innovation of late Qing fiction not only prompted the inclusion of new characters and new places beyond the traditional realms of classical Chinese xiaoshuo, it also brought forth the use of various new technologies and inventions and consequently the birth of the earliest Chinese fiction of science fantasy. The early development of Australian Chinese language fiction may not provide fertile soil for the rise of science fantasy fiction, however, the same clue of writing something new is still found in the existing stories. For example, the X-Ray scan, electric lamp and pencil were all utilised by the local Chinese writers as a metaphor for social criticism.10
8 See Appendix III: Stories with Foreign Contents Recorded in Australian Chinese Language Fiction from 1894 to 1912. 9 See Appendix IV: Local Stories Recorded in Australian Chinese Language Fiction from 1894 to 1912. 10 See Zhaobing Jing ( , Disease-scanning Mirror), TWT, 19061006, p6; Yiqiao Butong (( , Impenetrable Dullness), TWT, 19090828, p6; Maozhuizi Rang Meiqideng Heian Ji ( , Mr.Brushpen’s Blame on Gas Lamp’s Turning Dark), CAH, 19120427, p4; Ni Yanghaobi Zhi Qianbi Shu ( , A Simulated Letter from Goat Hair Brush to Pencil), TWT, 19071207, p7.
61 We have to also take into consideration that the first batch of Australian Chinese writers are either of the first generation of Chinese migrants or intellectuals who were hired to work and stay in Australia during the turn of the 20th century. When they set foot on this exotic continent for the first time, the surrounding environments, landscapes and the lifestyles they observed would naturally become a “newer” experience to them. Then, when this newer experience was reflected in their writings, it brought an unprecedented level of detailed depictions of local Australian lives and landscapes to the early development of Australian Chinese literature and even to the tradition of Chinese literature: the very first detailed depiction of kangaroo in Mengshou Jingren11, the record of using opiums to repel dingoes in Duwu Kewei12, the vivid wilderness landscapes and the thrilling first encounters of Chinese coolies/settlers with the “dark barbarians” (the aboriginal people) in Duoqi Du13. All these unique details of Australia not only add brand-new lives and customs to the content of late Qing fiction and traditional Chinese literature, they also represent the beginning of a rudimentary local literary tradition.
The signs of localised writings can also be observed in these early stories that are of the same genres or similar themes as late Qing fiction. For example, in the same form of humorous writings, Lok Dap Mei yu Lok Dap Him zhi Bijiao ( , The Comparison between “Lock up Me” and “Lock up Him”)14 mocks the difficulties a Chinese labourer’s language problems cause him adversity when he arrives in Australia; Jieshi Xiaolin ( , Joke from the Street Market)15 utilises a short conversation among three local Chinese peddlers to satirise the political disputes between the two major Australian Chinese newspapers, the Tung Wah Times and the Chinese Times, which was a sensational event for the Chinese communities at that time. In the same form of fictional exposure, Guanggun Piancai ( , The Unmarried Swindler)16 describes a Chinese labourer who returns to Hong Kong with the fortune he earned in Australia but who is soon bamboozled by an impostor who claims to be his unmarried
11 Mengshou Jingren ( , The Shockingly Fierce Beast), CAH, 18950517, p4. 12 Duwu Kewei ( , The Frightful Poison), TWT, 19081219, p7. 13 See Episode 14 of Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy), TCT, 19090918, pp.9-10. 14 TCT, 19090529, p10. 15 TCT, 19110923, pp.6-7. 16 CAH, 18970709, p5.
62 nephew; Zhuanshi Yuezhi , The Diamond Rings)17 tells of a trap set by Caucasian prostitutes in Sydney to defraud two hardworking Chinese men of their money and precious diamond rings. Both pieces aim at alerting the local Chinese migrants of the realistic dangers they could encounter in their daily lives. In the same form of narrating current affairs, Wulong ( , Dragon Dance) and Wulong ( , Lion Dance), two short entries under the tag of Shehui Jing ( , Social Mirror)18, through the discussions of two Australian onlookers of a splendid parade of Dragon and Lion Dance organised by local Chinese associations, subtly points out the distressing situation of China in international politics; whereas Lushui Yinyuan ( , Casual Love Affairs)19 was clearly a literary creation written in traditional romance style based on the local news about a Sydney housewife’s extra-marital affairs.
These examples show the pioneering efforts of resident Chinese writers to integrate local experience into their writings. These persistent trials then brought the appearance of Duoqi Du ( , The Vice of Polygamy), a mature novel of manners that can be considered as a milestone to the early development of Australian Chinese language fiction, and fully reflects the lives and struggles of early Chinese migrants. Apart from the popular late Qing themes such as patriotism, self-strengthening and enlightenment, Duoqi Du, due to its focus on the Australian Chinese diaspora, started to explore themes that are often discussed in later post-colonial diasporic literature. One example is the conversation between the two newly-arrived Chinese labourers journeying across the wilderness in Victoria. Chengnan ( , lit. Journey to the South) and Binnan ( , lit. Guest in the South) who are uncle and nephew have both come to Australia to make a living: Seeing no resting areas in the front, but only boundless wilderness when looking back, Chengnan at this moment was dismal and frustrated. He thought to himself: The industry and technology of our country are weak, our mining business is also stagnant. So we, the impoverished, had to put our lives at risk and come adrift in this barren continent; all for the purpose to make a living. Recalling the past days back in my mother country, I
17 3 episodes published in TCT in November, 1910, see Appendix I for the actual publication dates. 18 TCT, 19090417, p10. 19 CAH, 19011214, p5.
63 dug well and ploughed in the fields, went out to work and went home to rest. Day and night, I lived with my white-haired parents at home. What a happy time it was. Like now, how sad and grievous will my parents be if they know about my plight of this moment…… (Binnan) asked: “You never showed any distress since you came all the way from Guichen Bay. Why are you in such a deep sorrow now?” Chengnan said: “our country has been subjugated for several hundred years and is subject to the autocratic government of the foreign race. (This government) only cares for carnal pleasure but takes no consideration of its people’s livelihood. Now that we have to suffer to earn our living, how can (I) not painfully deplore!” …… Binnan finished reading, then sighed downcastly: “In this critical moment of life and death, we’ve got no time to think of the national affairs.” Chengnan replied: “Since the Manchurian invaded China, with a mere population of five million people, they do no farming and weaving, but are fed with the resources of our country. Today, our people are impoverished and our finance is crumbled so we had to earn our living overseas. We can’t say this is not the reason.”20