CHINESE RUSH TO GOLD

News of the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 spread around the world, drawing fortune seekers and entrepreneurs from many nations. In China, news travelled quickly via the international shipping ports, most particularly into the small but densely populated region surrounding the trading cities of Guangzhou (then known to westerners as Canton), Hong Kong and Macau in Southern China.

China at this time was in turmoil. Overpopulation was putting the food supply at risk and waves of natural disasters were causing great loss of life, threatening crops, bringing famine and impoverishing the country. The Opium Wars between China and Britain shattered old certainties. The ruling Qing Dynasty incurred massive debt and was forced to accept not only the undesirable and addictive drug opium onto the open market but a new set of unwanted trading relationships with European powers. A series of bloody political insurrections, prime amongst them the Taiping Rebellion, raged across the country. In their wake, rebels, banditry, looting and ethnic strife proliferated. Fighting was particularly fierce in southern China which had long been a hot spot for anti-Imperial sentiment. Altogether the period 1850-1870 in China was one of the most disastrous and deadly in human history.

For many families it seemed an acceptable risk to pool their money, go into debt, and send their best sons away to find fortune overseas.

Photograph caption: This picture (above) is a close up of an embroidered section of a theatrical costume which was made in China and imported by the Bendigo Chinese community in the 1880s. It was used in parade festivities, for theatrical performances, for fundraising events and for entertainment until the 1930s.

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

There were some very distinct, local departure points. The vast majority, an estimated 90 percent, of Chinese voyagers to Australia who left for the goldfields came from a small geographic area within a tight radius of only 200 kilometres of Guangzhou (Canton), on the South Chinese coast.

A unique and populous realm, Guangdong Province, surrounding Guangzhou (known in 1850s Australia as Canton Province), was geographically, culturally and linguistically separate from the Qing Dynasty's Imperial centre hundreds of kilometres to the north.

Guangzhou (Canton) itself was only a short river journey from the Portuguese sea port of Macau and Britain's new island sea port of Hong Kong, established in 1842 as a prize of the first Opium War.

In the century preceding the gold rush, China had been reluctant to open up trade to the western world. For nearly a hundred years, Guangzhou was the only city in China officially permitted to accept European traders. This made Guangzhou, and its surrounding province of Guangdong, a unique centre of international trade. After the first Opium War between China and Britain in 1839-1842, China was forced to open more ports to western trade.

Most who left for Australia seeking gold came from the 'four counties' region (See Yup) 100-200 km south-west of Guangzhou (Canton), but a number also departed from the 'three counties' region (Sam Yup) very close to Guangzhou itself.

See Yup and Sam Yup locals may have been neighbours but they spoke different Cantonese dialects and didn't always understand or like each other. Present also was an ethnic sub group of Cantonese residents called Hakka who not only spoke a different language, but were at war with Cantonese speakers at times in the 19th century.

Other goldseekers included people from Macau, Hokkien-speakers from Fujian Province who departed from the sea port of Amoy (now known as Xiamen) further up the coast to the north of Hong Kong, and a small number of voyagers from Shanghai, further north again. These groups, who were diverse and not necessarily in harmony with each other, sometimes brought their grievances to the gold fields.

At least 14 different dialects were spoken by Chinese voyagers to Victoria in the 19th century, reflecting their diverse home villages and cultural backgrounds.

Photograph caption (above): Chart of the world showing tracks followed by vessels with sail and auxiliary steam power, 1888.

PEARL RIVER JOURNEYS

The journey to Australia usually began first by walking from your home village to a trading town, then travelling by junk along the river or the coast to an international shipping port.

If you came from one of the 'four counties' (See Yup) of Guangdong Province, as did the majority of Chinese to the Victorian goldfields, you probably started out your journey from your home village in the Tiashan, Xinhui, Kaiping or Enping counties.

You would have walked or ridden for some days (up to 170 kilometres) crossing the intersecting tributaries of the Pearl River Delta until you reached the outskirts of the sophisticated city of Guangzhou (Canton). At some point you would probably have journeyed by junk across rivers or coastal waters. Your eventual destination was a sea port such Hong Kong, an English managed island port founded in 1842, which was a short coastal journey from Guangzhou.

You may be travelling with family and village members who had also been recruited to go goldseeking with you. Unless you had enough money to pay for your own passage, you would be under a contractual obligation to an organising company who had purchased a ticket for you to sail to the goldfields, in the expectation of that debt being repayed with interest.

Once at a sea port you and your fellow travellers would wait in a shanty town for a British, American or Dutch passenger sailing ship to take you across the sea to Australia.

Here you might be exposed to opium use or gambling for the first time in your life.

Pictured above is a Chinese boat typical of the kind used for river journeys in Southern China in the 1850s-1870s.

HONOUR BOUND BY CONTRACT

Some Chinese could afford to pay their own way to the Victorian goldfields, but travel to Australia was expensive.

The majority of the southern Chinese who came to the eastern Australian gold rushes paid for their travel using a ‘credit-ticket’ system. They borrowed the cost of the ship's passage from a Chinese merchant, business or recruiting agent. On arrival on the goldfields they were honour bound to repay their debt, with interest.

Not all miners were successful and could pay back their loans. Families in China would be held responsible for the miners’ unpaid debts, and this was a heavy burden on the poorest miners.

The Chinese organising company would often require debtors to form part of controlled and well organised teams with specialist subdivisions (miners, cooks, interpreters etc.) under a team manager, or a ‘headman’, until they had worked off the debt. Some companies were good to work for and some were harsh and exploitive.

Chinese societies based in Victoria, such as the See Yup Society, would collect debt payments from miners and also act as arbiters of the credit-ticket contracts, overseeing issues of unfair treatment or exploitation of the miners, and non-payment of debts.

Once the debt was paid off, successful miners were free to mine on their own account, or use their earnings from mining to set up businesses such as store keeping or market gardening, as many did.

It is thought that news of the gold rush first reached Guangzhou (Canton) in a letter from Chinese labourer Louis (or Louey) Ah Mouy, a carpenter who had journeyed to Victoria under a working contract. Louis Ah Mouy, pictured above, was living in Melbourne at the time gold was found in 1851 and sent word to his brother in Canton urging him to come and seek his fortune.

Louis Ah Mouy became a respected Chinese-Victorian leader, making his fortune on the goldfields near Yea in north-eastern Victoria and building a Melbourne-based business empire speculating in land, mining and trade ventures. He was a strong advocate for Chinese Australian rights in a time when harsh anti-Chinese immigration laws and discriminatory taxes were in place. He married in Victoria and raised a family whose descendants still live in Melbourne today.

WHO WERE THEY?

Labourers, merchants, artisans and scribes: Chinese voyagers brought a range of experiences and skills.

Miners, carpenters, translators, entertainers, scholars, gardeners, butchers, cooks, doctors, herbalists and entrepreneurs were in their midst.

Southern Chinese villages in the 1850s-1870s were densely populated places with sophisticated divisions of labour. Someone described as a simple 'labourer' on arrival may have been trained in a variety of specialist trades which were then brought to the goldfields as transferable skills. The Chinese education system was an advanced one in the world at this time, though not all arrivals were literate. Some had basic literacy or knew only a few characters or numbers. They would employ scribes when they could for legal and communication purposes. Some voyagers were highly literate, educated people who voyaged out in the working teams, perhaps in the role of team leader or head man, some taking the important role of scribe.

Also making the journey were merchants or professional men who had hopes of exploiting new and promising business opportunities. To many merchants the chance to establish a business empire in the market-oriented economy of Victoria was very appealing.

They were a mix of ages, most in their twenties and thirties, but some were younger and some were in their sixties and seventies.

Nearly all men: the Chinese 19th century diaspora was unique in that it was almost exclusively male.

Of the tens of thousands of Chinese people who arrived in Victoria in the peak gold rush migration period between 1851 and 1870 only a very few (possibly only up to 11) were women. Men generally outnumbered women on the Victorian goldfields, but the almost entire absence of Chinese women caused consternation and disapprobation amongst European miners and bureaucrats.

However, Chinese society strongly disapproved of Chinese women journeying far away from home. Rarely would a Chinese woman break the convention and sail to the goldfields, although as the 19th century wore on more women did. One such adventurer was Tong Chay Lye, wife of Bendigo's Chinese interpreter Wat Ah Che. She was Chinese-born and known to make appearances in Sandhurst (Bendigo) in Chinese costume in the mid 1860s.

The absence of Chinese women on the goldfields did not mean they were absent from the lives of Chinese goldseekers. It's estimated that at least a third of the men who left for Victoria were already married, although that did not preclude them from marrying again in Australia.

Chinese men corresponded with their families through letters home written in their own hand or by scribes. The parents, grandparents, wives and children at home were strong motivators for voyagers to work hard and return wealthy.

However, some voyagers made other choices and stayed in Victoria, perhaps with a new partner, while some travelled to new parts of the world following the next mining boom. But few lost their connections to women and families at home.

Part of a family lineage: whether they were sojourners or settlers, miners or merchants, the ancestral family name of Chinese goldseekers was important.

Chinese culture emphasised allegiance to lineage and to family. Elders were respected and ancestors worshipped. Your Chinese family name connected you to your ancestral lineage and to your village or region. In some villages all the residents shared the same family name. Chinese sons were under pressure to honour their immediate family and ancestors by returning home as wealthy men.

This cultural pressure to return to honour the family lineage meant most voyagers thought of themselves as sojourners in Victoria, temporary visitors staying only for a while. Most of the Chinese men who came to Victoria to seek gold did return back to China. However, once in Victoria not all chose, or were able, to return home. Some died on the goldfields before they could go back. Others chose to settle in Australia. And some decided to follow the next mining boom in another city or country.

Chinese did not always share their family name with Europeans on arrival, but family connections were well known between diaspora members and family linkages formed part of the mutual network of support Chinese migrants drew on to survive.

Pictured above is the Lee Kim family, William and Ellen with their son Richard, Bendigo, circa 1885.

William Lee Kim came to Australia seeking gold and then became a market gardener. He married Ellen Plowright in the 1870s and settled in Victoria, raising a family.

Lee was the ancestral name of this family. The Australian descendents at first adopted the surname Lee-Kim but eventually abandoned the ancestral name 'Lee', and adopted the surname 'Kim'.

WHAT TO BRING?

Voyagers brought rations and clothing with them, ready for the strange new world.

The voyagers took their own food rations aboard. This might include dried duck, herbs and rice as well as clothing, bedding, cooking and mining equipment. They hoped to buy whatever else they needed when they landed. To pay for this they brought items to trade, including Chinese currency, silver, small inlaid chests, ginger jars, toys, beads, silk and opium. These goods were carried using a bamboo pole over one shoulder, with belongings tied in bundles or baskets at each end.

The Chinese-made ginger jar, pictured above, was found in the old goldmining district of Harrietville in the Ovens Valley in north-eastern Victoria. The Ovens District had one of the largest Chinese mining settlements in Victoria, with 7000 Chinese living there in 1868.

Text by Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka curator Cash Brown.

Travellers might bring opium with them to use or trade.

Although used medicinally for centuries, opium drug use became widespread in Southern China in the eighteenth century after its introduction by the British.

This tin box (pictured above) has Chinese characters and was used for opium. It was found on the old Buckland Valley goldfields in north-east Victoria. Part of the Ovens Valley gold rush, the Buckland Valley had a large proportion of Chinese miners who settled there in the mid 1800s. In 1857 it was the site of a large and violent anti-Chinese riot where an unknown number of Chinese miners were killed.

Travellers brought phrase books with them to help them find their way to known diggings and to ask for directions and services.

Written specifically for the Victorian gold rush diaspora, these phrase books helped Cantonese dialect speakers pronounce English words and the names of gold towns.

This cape, together with a basket and hat was brought from China to Victoria.

It was kept and handed down by a family who occupied the same property for four generations at Smeaton, Victoria.

The palm fibre cape is constructed from the matted and fibrous palm sheaths of the Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei). Although found throughout Asia and the tropics, the palm fibre cape has been specifically attributed to the rural areas of the Guangdong province in Southern China. Worn by both men and women, the rigid structure extends from the shoulders and effectively funnels rain away from the wearer.

It probably arrived in Australia from China around 1860.

Smeaton, in central Victoria, was at the centre of several Chinese encampments.

More information at: https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/261004

This hat was made in around 1860 and brought from China to Victoria together with a basket and the cape pictured above.

It was kept and handed down by a family who occupied the same property for four generations at Smeaton, Victoria.

SEA VOYAGERS

From sea ports such as Hong Kong the voyagers boarded tall-masted sailing ships bound for Australia.

Voyages to the colonies were sometimes so long, rough and overcrowded that many died on board, and more ashore, from disease and hunger. Sadly, some ships never arrived.

Pictured above is an emigrant packet-ship, the 'Ben Nevis', used to transport European migrants to Australia in the 1850s. These were the people movers of the era and similar vessels would have been chartered to transport Chinese voyagers to Australia in the time of the gold rush.