A Brief History of Chinese Fellowship of Victoria (1971-2021)
Chinese Fellowship of Victoria was founded on August 28, 1971, shortly after the “Defend Diaoyutai” patriotic movement. There were many patriotic overseas Chinese clubs established in affiliation of this movement. In view of the high patriotic enthusiasm of overseas Chinese in Melbourne at that time, and the existence of the White Australia policy, our founders of the club deeply felt the need for an organization to unite all overseas Chinese, to support this movement protest against Japanese imperialist aggression, and to fight for the rights and interests of Chinese in Australia. At that time, China and Australia had not established diplomatic relations, and there were few patriotic associations in Melbourne city. Our founders decided to establish this non-profit organization “Chinese Fellowship of Victoria”.
The birth of the Chinese Fellowship of Victoria and its Purpose Goals shocked the entire Chinese community in Melbourne. A few months after the establishment of the association, there were more than 300 members, and the participants were from all walks of life, which were very representative to the Chinese community in Melbourne. Afterwards, our association launched various activities according to the established purpose, including:
- Organize cultural and recreational activities.
- Organize picnics in the countryside.
- Organize film festivals.
- Publish “Monthly ” magazines.
- Organize studying Chinese to English language classes.
- Organize Chinese cultural symposiums.
- Organize a welfare group to serve the members.
- Set up a library with Chinese newspapers, books, magazines and music tapes and CDs.
- Set up a cooperative canteen to serve our members and community.
- Set up a weekend family dinner for members to enjoy.
All these services were appreciated as a hospitality by the majority of our members and overseas Chinese residing in Melbourne. Our Victoria Street shop owned by one of our members was open every night and all day on weekends. The members were on duty in turn to facilitate members and
overseas Chinese from all walks of life. Such fresh-look activities, and its catering to the needs of the members and overseas Chinese roused the Chinese community in Melbourne, and attracted all walks of life to participate in the activities of our Chinese Fellowship of Victoria.
After Australia’s Whitlam government Labour Party came to power in 1972, the Whitlam government immediately established diplomatic relations with China. Our club actively participated in introducing the achievements of the motherland and promoting Sino-Australian friendship. First of all, we organized a welcome party with other associations to welcome Mr Wang Guoquan, the first Chinese ambassador to Australia (at St. Kilda Town Hall), attended by nearly 2,000 people on that day, stirring up the whole mainstream Chinese society. Mr Wang Guoquan served as the Chinese Consul General in Melbourne. In the following years, our club were asked by Chinese Consul General to host a welcome dinner party for those new incoming Chinese Consul Generals. In our club’s honour, we had hosted visiting Minister of Foreign Trade of China, Guangzhou Acrobatic Troupe, Chinese Table Tennis Team, Basketball Team, Volleyball Team, Football Team, etc., and organized cultural exchange tour trips to China as well as home visiting trips.
At that time, due to the surge of members of our club, it was necessary to purchase a larger new club site for our member’s gatherings. So at the beginning of 1974, our club launched a fundraising campaign for “building a club site fund”. The fundraising was based on donations from our members and overseas Chinese. A surprise with the enthusiastic support of members and overseas Chinese, tens of thousands were raised immediately. With a mortgage bank loan, a two-storey building in North Melbourne was quickly purchased in 1976 as the permanent address of our club.
After moving into this new North Melbourne property in mid-1976, with increasing income and reducing expenditure, fund-raising, etc., within three years after moving in, sufficient funds had been raised to repay our mortgage loans, making us the only Chinese community club after the Second World War in Melbourne that was self-reliant with a self-purchased property without Government funding subsidy. Unprecedentedly, under the Victorian Companies Act, our club was registered as a non-profit, charitable association “limited company”, becoming the only official registered association in Australia at that time, and the largest non-political, non-religious Chinese club in Victoria at that time.
Recalling that after moving to the new North Melbourne site, our club held two large-scale, variety “Weekend Volunteer Sales Fair” in Melbourne City Hall to raise funds. Nearly 10,000 spectators attended the first Fair. There were a variety of stalls at the Fair to introduce various Chinese favourite food, Chinese artistic programs and Chinese movies. Our club member Dr. Cary Chuen and his wife Joanne introduced and demonstrated the most popular acupuncture treatment among Australians at that time. The variety and multicultural types of stalls in the “Sales Fair” at that time set a model for the organization and arrangement of festivals and fairs celebrated by various clubs in the future.
Our Chinese Fellowship of Victoria in the early years (70s to 80s) made great and extremely generous contributions to the development of Australian society at “all levels”, whether in Chinese social welfare, charitable services, immigration resettlement (including employment, translation, communication, family disputes, marriage and funeral affairs, etc.), ethnic affairs, multiculturalism, medical services, welfare of Chinese seamen, East Timorese refugees resettlement, Chinese- language broadcasting, new China development projects, Sino-Australian friendship promotion, etc., our club had quite a creative mind and contribution in development projects, the summary was as follows:
- Community cooperation: our club was one of the founding members of the “Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC)”. Mr Yang Jinhua, the former chairman of our club, also served as the President of the Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC) for several times, during which he helped the Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC) organizing two China International Art Festivals. Our club had borrowed our North Melbourne site to Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC) as their Community Service Centre. Our club provided one floor of our North Melbourne site for free used by the Elderly Australian Chinese Homes. Our club had also cooperated with the Chinese Masonic Society Melbourne Lodge and other Chinese clubs to co-organize the lion dance celebrating the annual Spring Festival, welcome the new Chinese ambassador designates to Australia and farewell the leaving Consul Generals (Melbourne) and hold meetings of friendly groups from China visiting Australia.
- Ethnic affairs: when Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC) was founded in 1979, our club was the only Chinese co-member of the organization, and Mr Yang Jinhua represented all the Chinese clubs in Victoria serving as the Treasurer. Our club participated in the Ethnic Minority Advisory Committee organized by the Immigration Bureau and wrote submissions in various aspects.Social charity and immigration affairs: when the Government established 3 ZZ National Radio (the predecessor of SBS Radio) in 1974-75, our club organized Chinese radio programs and participated in the broadcast. When the Government established the telephone interpretation service, 3 of our members were among those Chinese interpreters working in this service. When the East Timorese refugees arrived in Australia, the Government asked our club to assist in the resettlement program for refugees at the airport. In addition to condolences, interpretation and resettlement in migrant dormitories with provision of movies screening. When the new immigration policy was introduced, our club joined other associations to invite the Minister of Immigration having a questions and answers seminar in regards to the changed immigration policy.
- Medical services: our club’s doctors provided free consultations for members and overseas Chinese every weekend. When the swine influenza pandemic hit in 1976, the lack of vaccines supply caused panic among Australians. Our club’s doctors made endeavours to get hold a large number of vaccines for our members. Later, our club provided free vaccinations for the visiting Chinese basketball team. When the government first established the Medicare public health care system and promulgated it, our club doctors translated the Medicare booklet content into a Chinese manual to be given to our members and overseas Chinese for reference.
- Legal services: our club’s professional legal advisers explained immigration policies and application procedures for members, and answered legal questions for members.
On Sino-Australian cultural exchanges: In 1978, our club participated in the Moomba Festival float parade and introduced the Chinese red silk dance. In 1980, our club invited Chinese dance troupe coming to Melbourne to teach our club members for six months. In 1984, our club hosted the Hong Kong Children’s Choir to perform at the Hamer Hall. In the 1990s, our club had a lot of academic exchanges in Nanjing University China. We sent people to Nanjing University to teach English many times, and sent people back to China for visits and studies contributing to Sino-China cultural exchanges.
In the later years, our club had basically accomplished the historical tasks set at the time of its founding (such as uniting all overseas Chinese, fighting for the welfare and rights that the Chinese should have, and fighting against the remnants of the White Australia policy, etc.), and our club had a permanent site and a surplus fund, our club had begun shifting its goal to “promoting Chinese history and culture”, focusing on “running Chinese language education”, in line with Australia’s “multicultural” policy, and established Chinese Fellowship Chinese School in 1991. The school had trained a large number of Chinese students, not only to improve their Chinese language proficient level and familiarity with Chinese culture and society, but also to help them get admitted to renowned universities all around in Australia. Having a strict school management, high quality teachers and excellent academic performance (one of our school’s 1997 VCE students was ranked the first place in VCE – Chinese Language and invited to receive her recognition award at the Governor’s House), our Chinese school had received accreditation since and funded by the State Government’s Ministry of Education over the years.
As a result, the number of students had continued to grow. In 2004, the number of students had surged to more than 600. Chinese school aims are to promote Chinese culture, Chinese-language education, the propagation of Australian multiculturalism; and its mission, through standardization, diversification of Chinese language teaching allowing students to master basic language skills, including listening, speaking, reading, writing. Chinese nation has a long history and wonderful cultural traditions; school will inherit, follow and promote the excellent characters of traditional Chinese into the mainstream society in Australia. Our Chinese school was awarded the 2013 Victorian Multicultural “Language Education” Excellence Award in Organization and Individual categories. Its success was the reward of the dedication and hard work from all the former principals and teachers to achieve the rewarding outcome.
During this period, our club continued to support the other Chinese communities and their groups for their welfare and public welfare, to promote the friendship between Australia and China, to introduce and support the motherland “build”, to encourage Chinese Australians participation in Australian politics, to fight for the rights of racial equality, and to promote multiculturalism in all cultural and recreational activities, etc.
Among the targeted goals above, the most prominent one is to use our school campus to hold Tai Chi classes, to hold Go and Xiangqi chess competitions, to provide venues for table tennis , martial arts , Chinese singing and dancing troupe, Dajinshan repertory troupe, Yiqing Quyi Club performance rehearsals, including karaoke and other cultural recreational activities.
In 1991, our club held a reception for China Overseas Affairs Office delegation. At the same time, our club organized and participated in the relief fundraising activities for the Darwin typhoon in Australia, two floods and the Tangshan earthquake in China.
All our club’s former elected Presidents had followed the step of Mr Yang Jinhua, to actively participated in the service of the “Federation of Chinese Associations (VIC)” and made valuable contributions to highlight our Chinese services provided. Others, such as our club’s participations in the annual Australia Day activities, and going to Beijing to participate in the 50th anniversary of the China National Day, these were all our club’s contributions to the society over the years.
In addition, our club had published the 21st anniversary, 25th anniversary, 30th anniversary and 35th anniversary special edition to commemorate our historic journey as a reference to our community service in Melbourne.
Looking back the 50 years since the founding of our Chinese Fellowship of Victoria, we missed our founding predecessors and members (some of them have passed away) for their creative ideas and cultivation of our beloved club, their generous money contributions and efforts to purchase the North Melbourne property.
The lofty quality is worthy of respect by us and future generations.
On the occasion of our club’s 50th anniversary, this brief history “Chinese Fellowship of Victoria” is specially compiled to commemorate and encourage our club’s members to follow the steps.
Looking forward to the future, our club will, as always, be pursuant to our goals and unite with each other for the welfare, racial equality, the progress of Australia towards a Republic country, the good Sino-Australian friendship, the reunification of the motherland, and the Chinese Language and Culture education in future generations for better future!
Translation of the original essay “前會長秦志偉醫生編寫”
(The above essay is the personal opinions, and do not represent the position of Chinese fellowship of Victoria)