Zhongshan County (China)

Alternative Names

Heongshan County (also used, - 1925)
Xiangshan County (also used, - 1925)
Zhongshan County (also used)

Details

It is well known that most Chinese people who traveled beyond China in the years before 1949 came from a handful of counties within Guangdong Province. Of these, the four counties of the Si Yi have received most attention from historians. However, a great contributor to the history of the Chinese overseas was the county Zhongshan.

Zhongshan County, known as Xiangshan or Heongshan until 1925, was divided into nine localities and a census of 1910 reported the total population of Zhongshan to be more than 820,000. Sydney, Hawaii and San Francisco were the most popular destinations for people from Zhongshan, though the single locality of Long Du seems to have contributed as much as all other Zhongshan areas combined. Long Du, for example, was also one of the few localities (possibly the only one) that had sufficient numbers to organise its own associations in all three of these Pacific Ports. Another feature of Long Du is that its people speak a non-Cantonese dialect distinct from other localities within Zhongshan County.

Long Du makes up about 15% of the area of Zhongshan County and its northern end is only a few kilometres from Shekki, the county capital of Zhongshan. In the same 1910 census the population of Long Du was recorded at around 140,000 people or approximately 17% of Zhongshan County’s population. The 80 or so villages of Long Du varied in size from Chung Kok with about 11,000 people to Sun Ming Ting with less than 2,000 people. The majority of villages seem to have been between 3,000 to 5,000 people in size.

Estimates of the proportions of village members involved in travel to Australia and other places are difficult due to the rarity of statistics and because of the great variations between villages and localities. The Rev Damon of Hawaii, a visitor to Zhongshan in 1884, gives the impression that the proportions were quite high: ‘One long day’s walk of many miles, enabled us to pass through village after village from which people have gone out to the Hawaiian Islands or other parts of the world. It was very strange every now and then to have a man look up from his work in the field, or run out from a shop to greet us in English or Hawaiian’. In the 1890s it was said of the village of ‘Háng Míe’ in the neighbouring Zhongshan county locality of Liang Du, that one third of the village was returned from Sydney. The Long Du village of Chung Kok had at least 220 members living overseas in 1913 out of 2,300 families or perhaps 10% of its working male population. Chung Tou, another Long Du village and one with nearly 1,400 households in 1910, reported having almost 330 village members resident around the Pacific in 1948, or at least 20% of its working males.

The income from having some many people earning overseas naturally had a great impact on Zhongshan. The Rev Damon again in 1884 reported that; ‘Many new homes at different points had been built by these returned labourers who had earned enough abroad to give their family thus a decent home. The dwellings are all of one storey.’ However, prestige also demanded that support be given not only to the immediate family but to the village or wider community. Donations were often made therefore for health clinics, schools, street lights, reading rooms, tea pavilions, community buildings, village watch towers and bridges. Whenever such donations were made inscriptions listings the donors, newspaper ads or special magazines were issued to ensure that those making the donations were properly recognised.

As a result of these earnings and donations coming into the villages over the generations many changes occurred and villages with high proportions of members overseas were easily distinguished from those without. For example, until the late 1920s and early 1930s, the main means of transport in Zhongshan was walking or by ferry. By the late 1920s, those returning from overseas began to build roads, usually toll roads, which rapidly transformed the situation. The main road from Zhongshan City to Macao was the result of investment from those in Australia and elsewhere. Roads also allowed the introduction of the rickshaw, which soon replaced the sedan chair. Once roads were built, bus lines were also established, revolutionising transportation even further. Buses replaced the Long Du ferries to Shekki in 1930 and travel time was reduced from 2-3 hours to 20 minutes.

Many businesses were also established in Shekki by those who had been overseas. That the Kwok and Ma families of Zhongshan and Sydney used their capital to found the large Hong Kong and Shanghai based businesses of Wing On and Sincere is well known. However the Wing On and Sincere companies also had a branch store each in Shekki. Many other stores in Australia and elsewhere also opened branches in Zhongshan to facilitate the operation of remittance services. The Kwong War Chong of Dixon St, Sydney for example, had branches in both Hong Kong and Shekki. While Zhang Bing-chang, a Sydney herbal shop owner for many years, put capital into his Sydney educated son’s Shekki Department Store in the 1920s. By the 1930s, the main street of Shekki was lined with pawn and gold shops and other businesses associated with the need to exchange foreign currency.

However, most of these businesses were designed to facilitate consumption rather than production and dependence and consumerism was often the main consequence of years of overseas earnings. Efforts were made to promote more productive investment such as port designed to bypass dependence on Portuguese controlled Macao, but in general social and political disruptions made such investments risky. In 1924, for example, two people from Sydney established the Xiangshan Bank in Shekki, which collapsed after two years operation. Lee Yip Fay, returned to Sydney in 1928 and reported: ‘our Chinese internal trouble caused us no end of worry and suffered heavy losses and was continually harassed in business and my ambitions were scattered, so much so, … it amounted to an ordeal …’

Social changes were also attributed directly to the influence of those who had gone overseas. In 1920, for example, an essay published in a magazine aimed at those overseas complained that there was ‘no more the sound of shuttles flying, no more embroidery.’ ‘Household members all looked for support from overseas,’ ‘speaking fancy vocabularies, wearing modern clothing and much jewellery’, and going ‘once every three days to Shekki’.

What happened to those who returned to their villages after living and working so long in Australia? ‘Returning home with glory’ was a phrase commonly used to describe a person returning to their village. While many returned, not all ‘returned in glory’, however, some returned poor and there were those who returned only after they had died. For those who did ‘return with glory’ life could be one of comfortable ease, as with the retired Wollongong merchant Joe Wah Gow, who sold his business and moved his Australian born family in 1929, back to his village of Long Tou Wan, Long Du. Zhang Bing-chang after running a herbal shop in Sydney retired not to his village but to a house in the county capital Shekki. The wealthy families of the Kwoks and Ma’s built large houses in their villages, though they generally lived in Hong Kong.

Others were less happy in their returns, such as Heng Mei of Liang Du who had worked for twenty years in Australia as a carpenter and had only been home a year in 1898 when he lost most of his savings to a monk swindler. Some turned around and went back rather than face the importunities of the villagers, as John Lee York did having only got as far as Hong Kong when ‘demands’ on his savings led him to return to Australia in 1930. Others returned to find that their wives had sold their land without permission or had run off with a lover. Zhongshan’s local newspapers had numerous notices placed in them by anxious landowners in Sydney and elsewhere declaring they would not be held responsible if their wife or sons mortgaged land without permission. The permanent return of a father was not always welcome to those, especially sons, used to simply living off the remittances. And in at least two cases sons became so enraged or were made so desperate by a returned father seeking to limit their spending, that the fathers were shot.

For those educated by money from Australia and elsewhere, labouring work was no longer an option while at the same time there were few other alternatives. Many sons of those overseas found low paid teaching jobs to be one of the few avenues they had in the villages. An alternative for those without land or education was banditry and such bandits naturally made the wealthy a target and those with access to overseas incomes were a prominent one. The building of watchtowers and the creation of local village guards troops for protection were increasingly necessary and those with funds to protect were naturally expected to contribute to such measures. In Zhongshan today the houses of those who travelled overseas can often be recognised by the presence of a ‘tower house’.

The impact of the long history of overseas travel by Zhongshan’s people can be seen in its landscape today. Not least in the high number of modern industries established in this prosperous part of China with overseas capital, very often by the descendants of the same people who traveled overseas and sent money to Zhongshan’s villages in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries.

Sources used to compile this entry: Williams, Michael, 'Chinese Australia - The view from the village', Locality, Autumn, pp. 17-22; Williams, Michael, 'Destination Qiaoxiang - Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949', PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2003; Williams, Michael, 'In the Tang Mountains we have a big house', East Asian History, vol. 25/26, June/December, pp. 85-112; Williams, Michael, 'Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang', Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, Part 2, 2004, pp. 257-282; Chung Kok village hall, Zhongshan County, Guangzhou: donors tablets, 1913; F. W. Damon, ‘Rambles in China’, The Friend, June 1884, p.45; Gan-hong, Lun wo xiang funu zhi zuoshi (Comments on the sitting and eating of my village women) Zhuxiuyuan Monthly, No.4, 1920, p.8-9; Clarence E. Glick Archive, Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii; Card file: notes of B. C. Lee, n.d. (c.1930); Miao Wenyue & Gao Huanzhang, ‘Shiqi yinye de huiyi’ (Recollections of the Shiqi silver industry), Zhongshan wenshi (Zhongshan Cultural History), Vol.1-3, [1962-1965], 1989, p.93; Xiangshanxian Xiangtuzhi (Xiangshan Local Gazetteer), (Guangzhou: Zhongshanshi Difangzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui Bangongshi, [c.1910] 1988), Vol.1.

Prepared by: Michael Williams

Related Concepts

Australians in Hong Kong and mainland China

Published Resources

Journal Articles

Williams, Michael, 'In the Tang Mountains we have a big house', East Asian History, vol. 25/26, June/December, pp. 85-112. Details
Williams, Michael, 'Chinese Australia - The view from the village', Locality, Autumn, pp. 17-22. Details
Williams, Michael, 'Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang', Modern Asian Studies, vol. 38, Part 2, 2004, pp. 257-282. Details

Theses

Williams, Michael, 'Destination Qiaoxiang - Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949', PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2003. Details

Images

Title: Harry Fay and Ruby Wong Chee, Shekki, China, 1916
Type: Photograph
Date: c. 1916
Place: China - Guangdong - Zhongshan (Xiangshan or Heongshan); Details

Chinese-Australian Historical Images in Australia

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