Catch up Online: 2022 Chinese Australian History Online Seminar Series 3

This talk concerns pre-tertiary schools financed by the diaspora originating from Zhongshan county in Guangdong Province. Through a longitudinal analysis of over 30 modern school buildings between 1911 and 2021, it chronicles homeland educational philanthropy over the past century.

Despite its long history and being largely directed at Chinese people, confusion about what the dictation test was and how it was implemented continued throughout its existence and much confusion remains even today. Based on his recent publication – "Australia’s Dictation Test" - Michael will explore the history of this fake test to tease out some of the many issues and contradictions this ‘test’ generated.

This webinar will use Chinese Australian newspapers published during the late 1890s to bring to light Chinese migrants’ perspectives on the practices of Aboriginal protection invoked in the legislation’s title, and to delineate a distinctly Chinese approach to settler colonial governance prior to federation.

In this lecture, Dr Alanna Kamp will draw upon interviews with nineteen women from long-established Chinese Australian families to highlight the important contributions of women to the maintenance of Chinese cultural practices/traditions and the passing down of cultural knowledge during the White Australia Policy era.

The opening session will feature a conversation on the newly published book South Flows the Pearl. This book contains some of the earliest Chinese Australian family stories that have never been told. Mavis Gock Yen (1916–2008), of Anglo-Australian and Chinese heritage lived an extraordinary life and between 1987 and 1995 recorded 45 hours of interviews with 12 elderly Chinese Australians born between 1894 and 1938.