Walk down Dixon Street on a Saturday night and you'd think Chinatown had always been right there, under the red gates, with the roast duck hanging in the windows. It hasn't. Sydney's Chinatown has moved twice. Historian Shirley Fitzgerald repeats a lovely old saying about it in the Dictionary of Sydney: Chinatown is like a dragon, "with its feet in The Rocks, its belly in the Haymarket and its head in Dixon Street." She also points out that nobody probably called any of it "Chinatown" in the early days at all.
This is the story of how that dragon got here. It starts with one carpenter at Parramatta in 1818 and runs through the gold rushes, a riot in Lower George Street, the slums of Wexford Street and a law in 1901 that tried to shut the door for good. It ends with the gates going up in Dixon Street in 1980.
The First Arrivals
Mak Sai Ying, alias John Shying
The first Chinese settler we have papers for is Mak Sai Ying. The Dictionary of Sydney says he arrived in 1818 and bought land at Parramatta. Wikipedia's account says he came in on the Laurel in February 1818 and worked as a carpenter, first for John Blaxland at Newington and then at Elizabeth Farm for Elizabeth Macarthur. The City of Sydney's Chinatown history adds that the Macarthurs had three Chinese workers in the early 1820s: a carpenter, a cook and a servant.
In 1823 he married an Englishwoman, Sarah Thompson, at St John's in Parramatta, and took the name John Shying. By 1829 he held a pub licence in Parramatta. The Dictionary of Sydney calls it the Golden Lion, and the City of Sydney history calls it the Lion Inn. He went back to China for a few years and then came home to Sydney. Some of his children became furniture makers, and his descendants are still here.
The City of Sydney history counts only 18 Chinese settlers coming to Australia before 1848, so for thirty years he was very nearly on his own.
The indentured labourers of the 1840s
Once convict transportation to New South Wales stopped in 1840, the squatters were short of cheap labour, and some looked to China. The first big group came from Amoy (Xiamen) on the Nimrod, which docked at Henry Moore's wharf at Millers Point in October 1848 with 121 Chinese passengers. The Dictionary of Sydney says about half of them got off there. They were meant to work out five-year contracts on country runs, and the City of Sydney history says they were paid £2.5 a month with rations.
Plenty didn't stay put. Some stayed in Sydney, and others walked off the lonely bush stations and came back to town. Then gold was found in 1851, and as the Dictionary of Sydney puts it, a five-year indenture "meant very little" after that.
Gold, and the Backlash
By early 1852 news of the gold had reached southern China. Men came out from Hong Kong, Shantou and Xiamen on the credit-ticket system, which meant borrowing the fare and paying it back out of whatever they found. Most of that story belongs to the bush rather than the city. The City of Sydney history says that by 1861 there were 13,000 Chinese people in New South Wales.
The diggings turned nasty. The worst trouble was on the Burrangong goldfield near today's Young, and it went on from late 1860 into 1861. On the night of 30 June 1861, a mob of between 2,000 and 3,000 European miners drove about 2,000 Chinese off Lambing Flat. They then went on to Back Creek, where they tore down tents and looted. Many Chinese men were badly beaten, though nobody was killed. About 1,000 Chinese fled to camp near Roberts' homestead at Currowang station. Troops and police were sent from Sydney and stayed for a year.
Sydney answered the riots with a law. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first Act designed to keep the Chinese out was in place by 1861. It was repealed in 1867 because fewer Chinese were arriving, then brought back in a tougher form in 1881 and again in 1888.
The First Chinatown: Lower George Street, The Rocks
The diggers had to land somewhere, and that was the wharves around Circular Quay. The first cluster of Chinese shops and boarding houses grew up in Lower George Street in The Rocks. Men headed for the goldfields bought their supplies there. Before long the rough stores were also writing letters home, sending money back to the villages and serving as meeting rooms for men from the same clan.
The City of Sydney history says Fitzgerald found the first Chinese businesses in the 1855–1873 directories listed only as "Chinamen", at addresses in Cambridge Street behind Lower George Street. By 1870 there were at least five Chinese furniture makers in the area. The biggest belonged to Ah Toy, who made cheap furniture and also filled orders for David Jones.
Some of the Rocks firms lasted a very long time. King Nam Jang, importers and ship providores at 85 George Street North, was still trading a century after it opened in the 1860s. On Chong & Co was in George Street too. Even after the trade moved south, the Dictionary of Sydney notes, many of the wealthiest merchants chose to stay on in The Rocks.
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The 1878 riot at Ah Toy's
In 1878 the seamen's union struck against the Australian Steam Navigation Company for using cheap Chinese crews, and anti-Chinese meetings sprang up all over town. After a big torchlight meeting in Hyde Park, a crowd the police put at about 2,000 marched off to Ah Toy's furniture shop and tried to set it on fire, probably knowing that his workers were asleep upstairs. The sources don't agree on the details, which I've set out further down. John Moy Mow, a merchant in The Rocks, wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald asking for "fair play and protection from ruffianism".
The Second Chinatown: The Haymarket and Surry Hills
By the 1870s, the Dictionary of Sydney says, the centre of Chinese trade had moved south to Campbell and Goulburn Streets, near the Belmore fruit and vegetable markets. The reason was vegetables. The market gardeners came in from Alexandria, Botany and the other outer suburbs with their carts, sold at the Belmore Markets and stayed the night in boarding houses close by. Cook-shops and stores followed them.
A lot of those boarding houses were dreadful. Durand's Alley, renamed Robertson Lane in the 1880s, had a building run by Kow You Man that held 100 men. Kwong Chong took over Robertson's old coach factory as a boarding house and charged sixpence a night for a man and sixpence for his horse. The City of Sydney history makes the point that every one of these condemned buildings was owned by Europeans, yet it was the Chinese tenants who got the blame.
Just to the east, Wexford Street in Surry Hills was almost entirely Chinese by 1900. It ran roughly where Wentworth Avenue runs now. People called it a slum, but James Ung Quoy, a community spokesman, lived there. When the 1891 Royal Commission visited Chinese families in the area, it was surprised to find their homes "neat and homely".
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Market Gardeners, Hawkers and Cabinet-Makers
The Museum of Sydney's Celestial City exhibition says that by 1888 Sydney relied on more than 100 Chinese market gardens for its fresh vegetables. The 1885 Sands Directory lists 54 of them, half in Alexandria. Hawkers carried the produce door to door in baskets hung from a pole across the shoulders. For most Sydney families, the exhibition says, the hawker was the "human face" of China. Women swapped cakes and flowers for ginger and tea over the back fence, and the friendships could be real.
It wasn't always friendly, though. In December 1892 Ah Bun, a hawker from Robertson Lane, was attacked and wounded by youths near Regent Street. In 1881, Chinese stallholders at the Belmore Markets walked away from their stalls for fear of being attacked.
Cabinet-making was the other big trade. Chinese workshops clustered in The Rocks and around the Belmore Markets and turned out cheap furniture for stores like Anthony Hordern & Sons. In 1889 the Furniture Trades Union claimed that nine-tenths of the furniture sold in Sydney was Chinese-made. The museum reckons two-thirds was nearer the mark. Chinese workshops outnumbered European ones until 1915.
Merchants, Newspapers and Politics
Above the gardeners and hawkers sat a small merchant class. Some were also mandarins, officials of the Chinese Empire. Quong Tart and Dr George On Lee were the best known of them, and they spoke for the community at awkward moments such as the 1888 crisis. Quong Tart was a Royal Commissioner in 1891. The Dictionary of Sydney thinks his presence may have kept the other commissioners "from straying into hyperbole". I've written about him in full in his own post (linked below).
The newspapers came in the 1890s. The Chinese Australian Herald, the first major Chinese-language paper in Australia, ran from 1894 to 1923, and its editor Sun Johnson lived in Mary Street, Surry Hills. The Tung Wah Times backed the Emperor and the monarchist reformers, and the City of Sydney history puts its office at 52 Dixon Street. The republican side had papers too. James Chuey founded the Min Guo Bao. When the republic was declared in 1911, most of Sydney's Chinese put up the new flag. The next January they held the first of many picnics at Cabarita, with plenty of firecrackers.
Temples, Tongs and the Chinese Masonic Society
Clan societies
Outsiders saw "the Chinese" as one group. Inside the community, what mattered most was your clan and the county you came from. The big stores doubled as headquarters for clan tongs (societies). The tongs wrote letters, sent money home through people they trusted, settled disputes, helped with legal trouble and arranged for the bones of the dead to go back to China. The Lin Yik Tong was formed in 1892 for the merchants. It went through a few names and in 1913 became the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. The Goon Yee Tong bought its rooms at 50 Dixon Street in 1917, and the Dictionary of Sydney thinks that may be the longest continuous Chinese presence in the street.
The Chinese Masonic Society
The Chinese Masonic Society grew out of the Yee Hing, or Hung League, a secret society sworn to overthrow China's Manchu rulers. Respectable Sydney had long looked down on it. The movement went public in 1908 with offices in Surry Hills. In 1912, the Dictionary of Sydney says, it moved into new premises in Mary Street and took the English name Chinese Masonic Society. That building became the national headquarters of all the Yee Hings, and the society is still there. Its early leaders, Moy Sing and J. A. Chuey, backed the republican cause.
The Sze Yup Temple at Glebe
People from Sze Yup, the "four counties" of Guangdong, were said to be especially devout, and they wanted a temple of their own. According to the NSW Heritage Register listing, they prayed for a sign showing where to build it. They then bought a market garden block in Glebe, close to a "Chinamens garden" running down to Blackwattle Bay. The land covenant even made a specific exception for a "Chinese joss house". A local builder, a Mr Stewart (or Stuart), put up the central red-brick hall in 1898, with the side halls following in 1903–04. The temple is dedicated to Kwan Ti, a Three Kingdoms warrior the community honoured as a judge and protector. Bones of the dead were kept here in urns until they could be sent home to China.
The Go Yui gardeners built their own temple, the Yiu Ming, at Alexandria. The City of Sydney history dates it to 1909, and in that decade there was also a joss house at 86 Goulburn Street. Both Glebe and Alexandria are still in use, and the Heritage Register says they are among only four pre-First World War Chinese temples still active in Australia.
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Opium, the Bulletin and the 1891 Royal Commission
By the 1880s, opium smoking and games like fan-tan and pak-a-pu had spread well beyond the Chinese community. The press, the Bulletin above all, blamed the Chinese for low wages, smallpox, gambling and vice. In 1886 the Bulletin printed Phil May's cartoon "The Mongolian Octopus", with a Chinese octopus wrapping its arms around the colony. One politician, Ninian Melville, even claimed in 1889 that leprosy could be spread by Chinese-made furniture.
The Royal Commission into Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality of 1891 took evidence from more than 60 people. What it found must have disappointed the agitators. The gambling dens couldn't survive on Chinese customers and depended on Europeans. A union man told the commission that fan-tan was popular with Sydney's wharfies. Overall, Chinese gambling was found to be a "trifling" part of the city's gambling. Pak-a-pu tickets became so common that the Dictionary of Sydney calls the game the forerunner of Lotto.
The Chinese community fought opium too. The City of Sydney history says that by 1905 a Chinese Anti-Opium League, chaired by Yee Hing of On Chong & Co and including Quong Tart, claimed 61,000 signatures. In January 1906 it reported that the Commonwealth had banned opium imports except for medical use.
1888: The Afghan Crisis
In 1888, Sydney's centenary year, it all boiled over. The steamer Afghan had already been turned away from Melbourne, and in May it sailed into Port Jackson with Chinese passengers. The Menmuir and the Guthrie came in behind it. A 1988 retrospective by Robert Willson in the Canberra Times describes what happened next. About 2,000 people crammed into Sydney Town Hall, while another 3,000 packed the steps outside and held a meeting of their own. Afterwards a crowd of about 5,000 marched on Parliament House, and for a while it looked as if the chamber might be invaded. Premier Henry Parkes calmed them by promising legislation. Parkes rushed new laws through Parliament, and the passengers were held and sent away. The Museum of Sydney's exhibition calls it a turning point that paved the way for White Australia.
Things were turning violent in the streets as well. In August 1888, 17-year-old Charles Ratcliffe attacked and injured a hawker, Sun Je, in Goulburn Street.
1901: White Australia
When the colonies federated, one of the first laws the new Commonwealth Parliament passed was the Immigration Restriction Act, which became law on 23 December 1901. It gave officers the power to make any non-European sit a 50-word dictation test in whatever language they chose. The National Museum of Australia says the test was given 1,359 times before 1909, and only 52 people passed. After 1909, nobody passed at all.
For the Chinese already in Sydney, the Museum of Sydney says, the Act meant no citizenship, no vote and no freedom to go back and forth to China. If they left, they might not be let back in. So many stayed, and a community of "sojourners" became a settled one, almost by force. The Dictionary of Sydney says that by 1901 there were 3,276 men and 56 women "born in China" living in Sydney. The men who never got home are remembered as the "left-overs", old men living out their days in lodgings in Chinatown.
The Third Chinatown: Dixon Street
The Haymarket Chinatown was pushed out by slum clearance. In 1906 the council resumed Wexford Street and its surrounds to widen the road and build a new approach to Central Station, which became Wentworth Avenue. The City of Sydney history says an estimated 724 people were evicted. Between 1909 and 1915 the council built the new City Markets near the head of Darling Harbour, on the site that is now Paddy's Markets, and the Chinese traders followed the markets.
The move started early. By 1910, the City of Sydney history says, Chinese firms were buying in the Dixon Street area instead of renting. In 1909 the council approved plans for a pair of three-storey stores at 82–84 Dixon Street for Lee Chun, and the tea merchants Kwong War Chong moved in during 1910. The Goon Yee Tong came in 1917. By the 1930s, in the City of Sydney history's words, the third Chinatown had "clearly emerged".
Some of the plain-looking shops were in fact the head offices of trading empires. Wing On and Wing Sang started out trading fruit in the Haymarket, Wing Sang with Fijian bananas in the 1890s. They went on to open department stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Dictionary of Sydney says Wing Sang's Hong Kong store was supposedly modelled on Anthony Hordern's.
The Gates Go Up: Dixon Street in the 1980s
The markets moved out to Flemington in 1968, and the Chinese community in the city was getting smaller, so Dixon Street ran down. The council set up the Dixon Street Chinese Committee in 1971, chaired by Henry Ming Lai, but nothing much happened at first. In 1979 the council closed Dixon Street to traffic to make a mall, timed for the Moon Festival. Local Chinese businesses paid for the arches, the damen. The Dictionary of Sydney credits the architects Tsang and Lee, who worked for free, and the City of Sydney history names Henry Tsang as the designer. Lord Mayor Nelson Meers opened the new Chinatown in 1980.
The City of Sydney history translates the characters on the gates. One line reads "Virtue is to be found in the celebration of cultural differences." On the posts are "The antiquity of China is celebrated worldwide" and "The maintenance of freedom and trust preserve the virtues of the past." Some academics sniffed at it as a commercial romance of "Chineseness". It worked anyway. Property values rose, the restaurants filled up, and in 1988 Guangzhou, Sydney's sister city, gave the Chinese Garden of Friendship next door.
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Timeline
- 1818 – Mak Sai Ying (John Shying) arrives and settles at Parramatta.
- 1823 – He marries Sarah Thompson at St John's, Parramatta.
- 1829 – He holds a pub licence in Parramatta (Golden Lion, or Lion Inn).
- October 1848 – The Nimrod lands 121 indentured Chinese labourers at Millers Point.
- 1851–52 – Gold is found and Chinese diggers start arriving.
- 1855–1873 – Chinese businesses appear in the directories around Lower George Street and Cambridge Street, The Rocks.
- 30 June 1861 – The Lambing Flat riot on the Burrangong goldfield.
- 1861 – The first NSW Act to restrict Chinese entry. It is repealed in 1867.
- 1870s – The trade centre shifts to Campbell and Goulburn Streets near the Belmore Markets.
- 1878 – A mob of about 2,000 tries to burn Ah Toy's furniture shop.
- 1881 – A tougher restriction Act passes and smallpox breaks out.
- 1886 – The Bulletin prints "The Mongolian Octopus".
- 1888 – The Afghan crisis, the Town Hall rally and march on Parliament, and the Chinese Restriction and Regulation Act.
- 1891 – The Royal Commission into Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality, with Quong Tart as a commissioner.
- 1894 – The Chinese Australian Herald begins.
- 1898 – The central hall of the Sze Yup Temple, Glebe, is built.
- 23 December 1901 – The Immigration Restriction Act becomes law.
- 1906 – Wexford Street is resumed and demolished, and about 724 people are evicted.
- 1908 – The Yee Hing goes public. In 1912 it becomes the Chinese Masonic Society in Mary Street.
- 1909 – The Yiu Ming Temple at Alexandria opens, and plans are approved for Chinese stores at 82–84 Dixon Street.
- 1909–1915 – The new City Markets are built near Darling Harbour.
- 1917 – The Goon Yee Tong buys 50 Dixon Street.
- 1930s – Dixon Street is clearly Sydney's third Chinatown.
- 1968 – The markets move to Flemington.
- 1971 – The Dixon Street Chinese Committee is formed.
- 1979–1980 – Dixon Street becomes a mall, and the gates open in 1980.
- 1988 – The Chinese Garden of Friendship opens.
Where the Sources Disagree
- Mak Sai Ying's trip back to China. The Dictionary of Sydney says he went back in 1832 and was in Sydney again five years later. Wikipedia's account has him away from 1831 to 1836, coming home after his first wife died. Wikipedia also says the long-assumed date of his death (1880, as "John Sheen") is wrong, because DNA from the descendants shows John Sheen was a different man.
- The name of his pub. The Dictionary of Sydney calls it the Golden Lion, and the City of Sydney history calls it the Lion Inn.
- How many indentured labourers came. The Dictionary of Sydney says more than 1,500 had arrived by 1852. The City of Sydney history says 981 arrived between 1848 and 1851, with 1,000 more before April 1852. The Museum of Sydney's Celestial City says 3,000 in the 1840s.
- Where the Nimrod's other passengers went. The Dictionary of Sydney says about half got off at Millers Point. The City of Sydney history says half stayed in Sydney "and the rest were sent to the farms in Queensland's north".
- The Ah Toy riot. The Dictionary of Sydney places it at Ah Toy's shop in Queen's Place (now Dalley Street) and links it to a November 1878 strike. The City of Sydney history says December 1878 at his Lower George Street workshop, and the Museum of Sydney says George Street. Both of those say about 2,000 people, and the museum describes them as "youths carrying flaming torches".
- The Tung Wah Times. The Dictionary of Sydney dates it 1902–1936. The City of Sydney history says it was founded in 1898.
- The Chinese Masonic Society building. The Dictionary of Sydney says the society moved to Mary Street in 1912. A photo caption in the City of Sydney history says the hall at 18 Mary Street was built in 1911.
- The Sze Yup Temple's date. The Dictionary of Sydney, the NSW Heritage Register listing and the City of Sydney history all say the central hall was built in 1898, with side halls in 1903–04. The 1909 date sometimes given belongs to the Yiu Ming Temple at Alexandria.
- The temple fires. The Heritage Register listing says the roof fire was in 1952 in one place and 1953 in another, with repairs in 1953–55. The Dictionary of Sydney mentions a reopening after a fire in 1955.
- Who designed the Dixon Street gates. The Dictionary of Sydney credits the firm Tsang and Lee, working for free. The City of Sydney history says architect Henry Tsang was commissioned.
My Earlier Posts
- Hay Street – Haymarket – Chinatown – Sydney – New South Wales
- Paddy's Markets – Campbell Street – Haymarket – Sydney
- Quong Tart – The Scottish Mandarin of Sydney – Braidwood, the Tea Rooms and the QVB – 1850 to 1903
- Wexford Street – Before the Creation of Wentworth Avenue
- The Story of Old George Street – Sydney Mail, 1918
- Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta
- Federation – 1 January 1901 – From Parkes at Tenterfield to the First Parliament
- Forbes – The 1861 Gold Rush and the Lachlan
- The Sydney Green Plaques – The 101 Round Green Historical Markers of Old Sydney
Sources
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Chinatown", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/chinatown
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Chinese", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/chinese
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Royal Commission into Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality 1891", Dictionary of Sydney, 2010 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/royal_commission_into_alleged_chinese_gambling_and_immorality_1891
- "Chinese Masonic Society", Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/organisation/chinese_masonic_society
- GML Heritage for the City of Sydney, Chinatown Thematic History, February 2023 – https://meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/documents/s74978/Attachment%20E%20-%20Chinatown%20Thematic%20History.pdf
- Museums of History NSW, "Celestial City: Sydney's Chinese Story" (Museum of Sydney, 2014 exhibition) – https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/celestial-city-sydneys-chinese-story/
- National Museum of Australia, "White Australia policy" (Defining Moments) – https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy
- "Sze Yup Temple", Wikipedia, drawing on the NSW State Heritage Register listing H00267 (CC BY 4.0) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sze_Yup_Temple
- "Lambing Flat riots", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambing_Flat_riots
- "Mak Sai Ying" (John Shying), Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mak_Sai_Ying
- Robert Willson, "The immigration debate in 1888", Canberra Times (Midweek Magazine), 9 November 1988, via Trove – https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110612365
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, with individual credits under each picture.