A Chinese shopkeeper on the Atherton Tablelands
Tracing connections between regional Queensland and regional China in Taam Szu Pui's 'My life and work'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2014.23Keywords:
Taam Szu Pui, 'My life and work', Chinese shopkeepers, oral testimonies, diaries, Australian depictions in travel literature and memoirsAbstract
Taking My Life and Work as a starting point, this article examines Chinese shops and shopkeepers in regional Queensland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on Chinese shops spaces, it argues that commercial development in Australian rural towns was interwoven with regional Chinese economies in ways not yet fully explored by historians. It does so by examining two sets of sources dating between 1885 and 1940: the diaries and oral testimonies of Chinese shopkeepers and shop workers in regional Queensland (such as My Life and Work) and Australian depictions of Chinese shopkeepers in travel literature and memoirs from the same period.
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