Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988 By Ouyang Yu

The total output of studies in this area is comparatively small in Australia;²⁶ in the United States, where such study has been long established, major books have been written, such as W. P. Fenn’s Ah Sin and His Brethren in American Literature (1933), Mary Gertrude Mason’s Western Concepts of China and the Chinese 1840–1876 (1973), Harold R. Isaacs’s Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (1958), and, more recently, William F. Wu’s The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850–1940 (1982), to cite but a few notable examples.²⁷

This brief survey shows an absence of any substantial critical study of the representations of the Chinese in Australian fiction.²⁸ This is a determining, if not the sole, reason for my choice of the subject. By focussing on fiction, I deliberately bypassed other genres such as drama, poetry, and film, although I make frequent references to them when necessary. Although I do not dare claim to be the first pioneer to venture into a virgin land, I do cherish a secret wish to open up an area left virtually untouched, perhaps more out of a lack of interest than of wilful neglect. Indeed, back in 1995 when I submitted the proposal of this book to Cambridge University Press, their letter of rejection cited the reason of no market for such books. I wonder if they still retain that view today. Therein lies my desire to conduct a critical study of Australian fiction in regard to the representations of the Chinese. Choosing fiction over other literary genres represents my need to narrow the subject to something well within my control. More importantly, a comparison with poetry and drama as well as nonfiction shows that fictional representations wield a stronger power in the creation and perpetuation of stereotypes and present more problems in its representation of the Other. Two classic examples, Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, spawned a swarm of stereotypes in their images. Furthermore, on the basis of the reading I have done, I have the impression that the images of the Chinese in drama and poetry would not differ in any fundamental sense from those in fiction.

But why 1888 to 1988? Why not concentrate on contemporary times with more relevance to us? Why not deal with a shorter period such as that from 1949 to 1988, for example? My preference for a period of one hundred years comes from the need, as I see it, to examine the significant past to establish a perspective on the present. It also comes from my awareness of the vital importance of these two years in the history of the Chinese in Australia.