The ‘Two Centuries of Chinese Heritage Project’ at UWA takes a biographical approach by weaving snippets from historical sources to uncover stories about Chinese people who came to Western Australia.
In addition to a publicly accessible research portal, the project will also involve a series of podcasts, an exhibition, events and a book.
This series of articles profiles many surprising stories being discovered and recorded as part of this history project.
This time we feature:
Chinese-born women in WA
by Lucy Hair
Regular readers of this series may have noticed that our articles relate to Chinese men and not women. There is a strong, historical reason why this is the case.
The Census figures amply demonstrate that only a few Chinese-born women came to Western Australia in the period before WWII. In 1901, there were only 16 Chinese-born women in Western Australia.
Research from our Digital Portal confirms that probably no more than 25 women were in the state at this time. The numbers remained extremely low over the next few decades: there were 21 women in 1921 and only 47 in 1947.
Chinese men coming to WA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries typically were short-term labourers. Often working in the fields of agriculture, pearling, market gardening, furniture making, laundry work, retail and domestic service, they were expected to return to China at the expiration of their contracts. As such, they did not bring their wives and children with them.
Our Digital Portal contains information for thousands of Chinese men who had wives and children back in China.
Even the men who stayed here for decades often only returned to China intermittently and as immigration policies allowed. The travel restrictions on Chinese (and other Asian) people are heavily documented in the Certificates of Exemption from the Dictation Test that are now held at National Archives.
What do we know about the women that did come to Western Australia?
The majority arrived as young brides rather than as single women. We believe the first Chinese women came in the early 1880s. As demonstrated by the Census figures, it is entirely possible that many of them had limited, if any, contact with other Chinese-born women.
We have information about women such as Quan Sing Ah Wing Kimbly who lived in Derby with her husband Quan Sing Yee Chun who ran a general store with his brother Quan Sing Yee Lock. Ah Wing Kimbly had thirteen children who were all born in Derby. The family later moved to Carnarvon and many of her descendants still live in Western Australia.
May Chew Lun was born in China around 1865 and came to the state around the age of thirty with her husband Chew Lun. She had four children who were all born in Perth. Her husband operated market gardens around the Bibra Lake area.
In one of our previous articles in this series we discussed Rose Soong Quong’s husband, Paul, who was a Christian minister. As a minister’s wife she had an important role supporting the Chinese community in Perth. In addition, she and her husband ran a fruit shop in Stirling Street.
There are several Chinese-born women in our digital portal whom we know very little about. Women such as Sing Tay, Gooey Wong Hee and Chen See Jane who all had several children born in WA. Many of their children remained here and went on to bring up families of their own.
There are also many women on our digital portal who were regarded as ‘Chinese by Marriage’ even if they were not born in China themselves. As such our digital portal contains information about Japanese-born women such as Ah Ming Oshiga Iwata, Ang Qua Oika, Swan Juan Okame and Den Che Lin Kiko who were all born in Japan but married Chinese men. We also have women who were born in non-Asian countries but considered ‘Chinese by marriage’.
Despite the historically low number of Chinese-born women, we continue the important research to represent their stories on our digital portal.
Interested readers are encouraged to explore the UWA research database and other aspects of the project at: https://www.chinesewa.net/
As research material is being added constantly, the project team would love to hear from anyone with information about early Chinese migrants.
