Quong Tart came to the Braidwood goldfields as a nine-year-old Chinese boy and ended up one of the best-known men in Sydney. He picked up a Scottish accent, wore a kilt, recited Burns, made money from gold claims, and then opened tea rooms that gave Sydney something it hadn't really had before: a decent, affordable place to sit down for tea and a meal. He fought the opium trade, stood up for Chinese people at a time when the colony was openly hostile to them, was made a mandarin by the Chinese Emperor, and was given a funeral fit for a governor. Not bad for a lad who arrived with an uncle and a shipload of miners.
From Taishan to Bell's Creek
Who he was
The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) says he was born in 1850 at Hsinning (Sun-ning) in Canton Province, the son of a dealer in ornamental wares. That district is today's Taishan in Guangdong. His full name was Moy (or Mei) Quong Tart. Moy was the family name, and in Chinese the surname comes first, so all those Sydneysiders calling him "Mr Quong Tart" were really using his given name. The Daily Telegraph pointed this out with some amusement in 1888, telling its lady readers they had "for all these years" been calling "the admirable Quong Tart by his Christian name". "Mei" is the modern Mandarin spelling of Moy, and that's why you'll see him called Mei Quong Tart today.
The boy on the goldfields
At nine he came out to New South Wales with an uncle, who was in charge of a shipload of Chinese labourers bound for the Braidwood goldfields. He lived in Thomas Forsyth's store at Bell's Creek. Forsyth was a storekeeper from Argyllshire, and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Chinese Museum's biography both say the boy picked up his Scottish accent and his love of Robert Burns there.
Before long he was taken in by Robert Percy Simpson and his wife Alice (née Want). The ADB says Alice taught him English and converted him to Christianity. He became an Anglican, and he stayed a keen one for the rest of his life. The Simpsons got him buying shares in gold claims, and by 18 he was a wealthy young man.
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A local identity
He stayed on at Bell's Creek after the Simpsons moved to Sydney and built himself a cottage there. Around Braidwood and Araluen he was everywhere: captain of the local cricket team, founder of a football team and a horse-racing man. The ADB says he ran a series of popular Chinese horse races at Jembaicumbene. He also worked as an interpreter for the Chinese miners. The South Coast History Society says his standing in the district helped keep out the kind of racism found on other goldfields.
He was naturalised on 11 July 1871 and joined a lodge of Oddfellows. In 1877 he went on the board of the Bell's Creek public school, and in 1885 he became a Freemason.
The Scottish Chinaman
This is the bit everyone remembers. At social functions Quong Tart turned up either in mandarin robes or in a kilt and sporran, according to the State Library of NSW. He told jokes, recited Burns and sang Scottish ballads. The South Coast History Society adds that he played the bagpipes. The Herald described him as having a "thick Scottish brogue". He got the nicknames "Quong Tartan" and "Quong MacTartan". The ADB says his "Scottish songs and recitations mingled with quaint wit" were a guaranteed crowd-puller, and he was in constant demand as a speaker at charity and social events.
Tea for Sydney
The first tea shop
In 1881 he went home to China to see his family. The Herald says his mother had picked out a Chinese bride for him, but he went back mainly to tell them his future was in Australia. When he came back he opened a tea and silk store in Sydney, then a tea shop where customers could sample his China tea. It went over so well that he opened a whole chain of them. According to the Herald, the first was in King Street, where he put chairs and tables out so people could try the tea. Curator Jennifer O'Callaghan told the paper that in the Sydney of the day there were really only taverns for men or expensive restaurants, and "no cafes or tea shops selling inexpensive food".
His rooms ended up in the Sydney Arcade, the Royal Arcade and King Street, plus George Street, Moore Park Zoo and the Haymarket theatre district.
The Loong Shan Tea House, King Street
In December 1889 he opened his grandest place yet, the Loong Shan Tea House at 137 King Street. It had marble fountains and ponds of golden carp. The tea and grill rooms were on the ground floor and a reading room was upstairs. Governors and premiers ate there, and the Herald calls it one of the most important political meeting places in town. The State Library says Louisa Lawson, Henry Lawson's mother, drank her tea in the Loong Shan while she organised the campaign for women's votes. Wikipedia calls his rooms the site of Sydney's first suffragette meetings. The site is now part of the Glasshouse on King Street, home of the Tea Centre.
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The Elite Hall at the Queen Victoria Markets
When the Queen Victoria Markets building (today's QVB) went up in 1898, Quong Tart took space in it. The ADB dates the opening of his dining hall there to December 1898. The tea rooms were on the ground floor, near the middle of the building on the George Street side. A carpeted staircase led up to the Elite Hall, which held nearly 500 people and had a stage with a carved proscenium. At the other end was the Elite Dining Saloon.
The State Library puts his success down to good food at fair prices, the quality of the tea and the décor: fountains, ferneries and fishponds, reading rooms and non-smoking rooms for ladies. A place where a woman could comfortably sit down in town on her own was a big thing in those days. He also hung local painters' work on his walls and promoted concerts.
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A fair boss
Most of his staff were European women working as waitresses. He gave them time off to go shopping and paid them when they were sick, which the ADB calls an "enlightened policy". The State Library adds reasonable hours for the day, meals in the restaurant and free time for reading and needlework. In April 1894, before one of his trips, his employees wrote him a bon voyage letter, and it still survives.
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Margaret Scarlett
On 30 August 1886 he married Margaret Scarlett, a young Englishwoman who was a schoolteacher. Her family didn't approve. O'Callaghan told the Herald that her father, a business associate of Quong Tart's, stayed away from the wedding, and that "inter-racial marriage was considered shocking". They had two sons and four daughters. He had each child baptised in a different Christian denomination so nobody could accuse him of favouring one church. The family lived at Gallop House in Ashfield, and the girls went to Presbyterian Ladies' College at Croydon, the first Asian students at the school. The South Coast History Society also notes that he appears to have been supporting a wife and children in China at the same time.
After he died, Margaret published his story in 1911 as Quong Tart, or How a Foreigner Succeeded in a British Community.
The Fight Against Opium
In 1883 he went with Sub-Inspector Martin Brennan to look into the Chinese camps of southern New South Wales. Their report showed opium addiction was everywhere. On 24 April 1884 he handed the Colonial Secretary, Alexander Stuart, a petition calling for a ban on opium imports. That June he took the campaign to Melbourne and Ballarat. In 1887 he tried again with a second petition to parliament and a pamphlet, A Plea for the Abolition of the Importation of Opium. The State Library notes that the clergy were on his side, but politicians and businessmen argued that opium wasn't addictive and the colony needed the import revenue. He never lived to see the imports stopped.
Speaking Up for the Chinese
He did all this while anti-Chinese feeling in the colony was at its worst. In 1887 it flared badly, and the ADB says he spent a great deal of time defending his countrymen and interpreting for them. In 1888 the ship Afghan arrived in Sydney with a large number of Chinese passengers and was held in quarantine, and the State Library says Quong Tart helped mediate between the passengers and the government. He was one of the founders of the Lin Yik Tong, the first Chinese merchants' association in Sydney, and he sat on the 1891–92 Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality. He co-signed a petition in 1888 asking China to open a consulate in Australia, then sent one in his own name in 1889. The Herald says he acted for years as an unofficial Chinese consul.
The ADB adds a fair caution. It says the wider community saw him as a Chinese leader, but the Chinese community itself didn't necessarily see him that way. It was split into factions and separated from him by "a wide social and cultural gap".
The China Trips and the Mandarin's Robes
His work was recognised in Peking. The ADB says he was made a mandarin of the fifth degree in January 1888 and went back to China that year. Wikipedia says he and Margaret went with their daughter, and that in Canton he met the viceroy Zhang Zhidong and told him about anti-Chinese feeling in Australia. On his third trip, in 1894, he was raised to a mandarin of the fourth degree, the Mandarin of the Blue Button. The Herald says that was roughly like a British earldom.
A Big Heart
Between 1885 and 1888 he put on a series of free feasts for the inmates of the destitute asylums. He also gave dinners for the Benevolent Society home at Liverpool and for the newsboys of Ashfield, Summer Hill, Croydon and Burwood. The State Library says he once invited all the city's newsboys to a banquet and another time hosted local Aboriginal people, and that he helped clothe and feed the children of the Waterloo Ragged School. From 1887 well into the 1920s, racehorses were even named after him.
The Attack at the Markets
On 19 August 1902 an intruder savagely assaulted him in his office in the Queen Victoria Markets. The Herald says he was beaten with an iron bar and the attacker got away with just a few pounds. Frederick Duggan was jailed for 12 years. The police saw it as a robbery gone wrong, but not everyone agreed. Letters from his Chinese friends, which the State Library translated for its 2003 centenary display, show some suspected "the Western people" and others blamed Chinese businessmen whose interests his campaigns had hurt.
He partly recovered, but never got back to his old self. He died of pleurisy at Gallop House, Ashfield, on 26 July 1903, about eleven months after the attack. He was around 53.
The Funeral
His biographer Robert Travers, quoted in the Herald, said he was "carried to the grave with all the pomp and ceremony befitting a state governor or a great statesman". Two hundred men escorted the coffin from his Ashfield home to a train that took the funeral party to Rookwood Cemetery. Thousands were waiting there. He was laid out in his mandarin's robes of the Blue Button, with his Masonic apron over the top.
Remembering Him
In 1998 a statue of him went up in Ashfield, and his bust stands near Ashfield railway station. For the centenary of his death, Sydney held a year of events. These included an evening at the State Library, the exhibition No Ordinary Man. Sydney's Quong Tart: citizen, merchant & philanthropist in the QVB in July and August 2004, and a Powerhouse Museum conference, "Quong Tart and his time, 1850–1903". The QVB Tea Room and the Tea Centre in King Street even served "quong tarts" in his honour. His descendants kept Quong Tart as the family surname. The actor Josh Quong Tart is his great-grandson.
Timeline
- 1850 – Born at Hsinning (Taishan), Canton Province, China.
- 1859 – Arrives on the Braidwood goldfields with his uncle, aged nine.
- c.1868 – Wealthy from gold claims by 18.
- 11 July 1871 – Naturalised.
- 1877 – Joins the board of Bell's Creek public school.
- 1881 – Visits China, then opens a tea and silk business in Sydney.
- 1883 – Tours the southern Chinese camps with Sub-Inspector Brennan.
- 24 April 1884 – Presents his anti-opium petition to Alexander Stuart.
- 1885 – Becomes a Freemason.
- 1885–88 – Puts on free feasts for destitute asylum inmates.
- 30 August 1886 – Marries Margaret Scarlett.
- 1887 – Second opium petition and his Plea pamphlet.
- January 1888 – Made a mandarin of the fifth degree (ADB) and visits China.
- December 1889 – Opens the Loong Shan Tea House, 137 King Street.
- 1891–92 – Sits on the Royal Commission on Chinese gambling.
- 1894 – Raised to mandarin of the fourth degree (Blue Button).
- December 1898 – Opens the Elite Hall in the Queen Victoria Markets.
- 19 August 1902 – Assaulted in his QVM office.
- 26 July 1903 – Dies of pleurisy at Gallop House, Ashfield.
- 1911 – Margaret publishes his life story.
- 1998 – Statue unveiled at Ashfield.
- 2003–04 – Centenary year of events.
Where the Sources Disagree
- Date of the attack: The ADB gives 19 August 1902, and the Herald says August 1902. Wikipedia's Death section dates the attack to 26 July 1903, which is actually the day he died. The ADB date fits the "11 months" everyone agrees on.
- When he became a mandarin: The ADB says January 1888. Wikipedia says 1887 and links the honour to the 1887 Chinese mission. The Herald mentions only the 1894 Blue Button.
- Where the Scottish streak came from: The Herald and the Chinese Museum credit storekeeper Thomas Forsyth of Argyllshire. The State Library credits his time with the Simpsons.
- Wealth and the cottage: The ADB, the Herald and the State Library say he was wealthy at 18. Wikipedia has him building the Bell's Creek cottage "aged just 21".
- Freemasonry: The ADB dates it to 1885 in Sydney. The Herald seems to place it in his Braidwood years.
- Federation Convention dinner: Wikipedia says delegates to the 1891 Federation Convention dined at the Elite Hall. The ADB dates the Elite Hall to 1898, so if they dined with him in 1891, it was probably somewhere else.
- Margaret Scarlett: The ADB calls her "a young Englishwoman". The South Coast History Society calls her a Braidwood schoolteacher.
My Earlier Posts
- Photographs 1879–1892 (includes the Royal Arcade with Quong Tart's premises)
- The Queen Victoria Building – George Street – Sydney
- Queen Victoria Building – George Street, York Street, Market Street
- George Street 1890 Sydney heritage walk
- Glentworth – Ashfield
Sources
- E. J. Lea-Scarlett, "Moy Quong Tart (1850–1903)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 5, 1974: adb.anu.edu.au/biography/moy-quong-tart-4181
- State Library of NSW, "Significant individuals: Quong Tart": sl.nsw.gov.au
- Steve Meacham, "The man who brought cafe society to town", Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 2003: smh.com.au
- South Coast History Society, "Mei Quong Tart": southcoasthistory.org.au
- Chinese Museum, Chinese-Australian Historical Images in Australia, "Tart, Quong": chia.chinesemuseum.com.au
- National Portrait Gallery, "Finest quality", Portrait magazine 37: portrait.gov.au
- Wikipedia, "Mei Quong Tart": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mei_Quong_Tart (including its citations of the Evening News, 23 December 1889, and the Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1888)
- Margaret Tart, Quong Tart, or How a Foreigner Succeeded in a British Community, Sydney, 1911.
- Robert Travers, Australian Mandarin: The Life and Times of Quong Tart, Kangaroo Press, 1981.
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits as shown under each image.