I Like Chinese
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
It is very hard for people to realize that 50 years ago in the outer suburbs of Australian cities, it was possible to go for months without seeing an Asian face. Certainly in Box Hill where I grew up during World War II. There were no Asian faces ever to be seen except for one Chinese family who ran a Chinese laundry. They were the Woo family.
For some reason or other my mother was not anti-Asian as were most of the people in Box Hill in those days of World War II. The impact of the Japanese in bombing Darwin and in threatening Australia had created a strong reaction on top of the normal anti-Chinese reaction that had existed for more than 80 years in Australia’s ‘white Australia’ policy.
The people of my home town couldn’t distinguish between Chinese and Japanese and didn’t understand that the Japanese had already invaded China. Any Asian face was seen as the enemy. This was made worse by the fact that when the invasion of Papua New Guinea occurred, Box Hill moved to a war footing. Trenches were dug in our schools, churches and in the grass median strips up Whitehorse road. An air raid siren was installed on the Town Hall which deafened people from miles around. But the south ward thrust of the Japanese through Papua New Guinea, the shelling of the Newcastle Hospital from a Japanese submarine off shore and the capture of a Japanese submarine in Sydney Harbour really created hysteria. Young men from Camberwell and Box Hill were recruited to fight the Japanese in Papua New Guinea. The Australian regular army was still in the Middle East and the Japanese were coming over the Owen Stanley Ranges. The young men ill equipped and untrained were rushed to Papua New Guinea and they were mostly from the region of Camberwell and Box Hill.
One of our young bread cutters Eric Vial aged 18 was with them. On the first day of hostilities against the Japanese in the first hour, Eric Vial was shot dead. He was not only one of our employees but later his older brother was to marry my widowed mother.
The Box Hill citizens with patriotic fervour were not only anti-Japanese but also decidedly anti-Chinese. Consequently people would not take any laundry to the Chinese laundry owned by the Woo’s. People spoke about them and avoided them in the street. Their habits were different. They ate rice with wooden sticks, when every Englishman knows that rice could only be eaten in a milk pudding for desert. They even changed their surname from Woo to Wood in the hope they would be acceptable.
I had been friendly with Rosemary Woo, a little girl my own age. She had taught me to count to ten in Cantonese. For two or three years we were close friends before it was time for us to go to school. In fact Rosemary Woo, when I was aged four, was my declared girlfriend. However I was also a child of my era and my environment and I remembered vividly as to this day that when we were both four in Bank Street we had an argument over World War II. I was maintaining the strong line heard in the bake house by the men who worked for my parents that the Woo family, the Chinese nation and all other Asians were not to be trusted as they were in league with the Japanese. Rosemary protested strongly and a fight developed which resulted in a strong right hand punch, which I landed on Rosemary’s nose and it immediately burst into a torrid flow of blood. I had struck a blow for democracy, the King and Empire and the white race.
Miss Perry who worked for my mother and was a devout Christian, was horrified. As soon as I proclaimed my victory over four year old Rosemary she took me by the hand, marched me round to the Chinese laundry and made me apologize to Rosemary and to Mr. & Mrs. Woo. All the way there and back she lectured me about how these Chinese were fine people, they were Australians and in fact were third generation Australians whose ancestors had come out during the gold rush. What is more said Miss Perry with pronounced emphasis, they were Christians and were members of Chinese Church of Christ in Queensbury Street, Melbourne, near the Victoria Markets. Their Minister was Mr. Goon who was a faithful Christian evangelist.
I don’t remember meeting another Chinese person until I was at University. We had a few token Chinese mainly from Hong Kong along with token Indians, Sri Lankans, called Ceylon in those days, and a few Africans from various parts of the Commonwealth. They were at our University as part of the Colombo Plan, the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme that brought members from one Commonwealth country to study in another. In my class was Henry Ho who had come from Hong Kong. He sat by himself and ate by himself. Remembering my experience with Rosemary Woo I struck up a friendship with Henry Ho speaking to him, eating lunch with him and eventually inviting him back to our home for meals.
I had only recently married Beverley and we had started a young adult fellowship for young married couples in our church. We had a number of single young adults in the group and I invited Henry to come and eat with us and then attend the young adult fellowship. He certainly enjoyed his visits. Beverley bought a Chinese cookbook in order to provide some food that Henry might appreciate. Chicken chowmein was on the menu. On one occasion Henry very bashfully and politely said, “You sit in lounge, I cook the meal”. Henry cooked the Chinese meal and it was the first Chinese food I had ever tasted. It was delicious. I was 22 at the time.
We never knew any Asian people at all during the rest of those seven years in Ascot Vale nor did I see an Asian face in Ararat. Nor were there any when I came to the church in Cheltenham. However, during the 1960’s there were more Asian people coming to Australia.
One night there was a knock at the door and a young Chinese man about my own age was standing at the door. He asked if I would conduct a funeral service for his sister. She had been swimming in Port Phillip Bay and had drowned. Peter Tong introduced me to his young wife Susan. They had two small children the same as we had. I visited the grieving Chinese family, told them that I was happy to conduct a funeral. They were all Buddhists and I explained that while I would conduct the funeral, I would be happy if they wanted to conduct any special Chinese ceremonies after I had conducted the funeral. I explained that not being a Buddhist and not understanding Chinese culture I would not be able to do anything more than a simplified burial for their daughter and sister but I was willing to do whatever I could to enable the right traditions to be observed. The service was held and in the absence of a Buddhist priest a number of Buddhist customs were observed.
It was expected that I should go back to the house after the funeral to eat a meal and then on the anniversary of her death to also meet with the family and eat a meal. In between time, the mother of the drowned girl, Hou In cooked us a number of Chinese meals and delivered them piping hot to the door. It was a very generous act and one I expected to stop after one or two occasions, but no, Peter Tong kept knocking on my door bringing more Chinese food. We were embarrassed with their generosity.
Then Peter’s father became ill with cancer. I visited old Charlie and prayed with him on a number of occasions. The old man who could not speak a word of English then died and I conducted my second Chinese funeral. Suddenly Chinese relatives and friends of the Tong family asked if I would conduct funerals for them or marry their son or daughter and before long I had developed a wide network of Chinese people to whom we ministered.
One day Peter asked me if I could give some marriage counseling to a young Chinese girl who was married to a very abusive and aggressive large Australian man. The problem was they lived up in the mining town of Weipa on Cape York Peninsula. He was a health professional who regularly got drunk and beat his young Asian wife to a pulp every time. It was occurring with increasing regularity. He had recently broken her arm. She was in desperate need. The man with the kind of remorse that alcoholics occasionally show after inflicting injury upon someone they love agreed for her to come to Melbourne to speak to me. I felt very embarrassed and inadequate in trying to help her.
At the first meeting I was amazed how small and slim this little young Chinese girl was. The signs of her violent assaults from her aggressive husband were quite obvious. I spent many hours letting her tell me her story and trying to think of ways in which we could minimize the damage. I outlined to her, her rights as a wife and a citizen. I also indicated the role that could be played by the police at times of domestic violence. I indicated to her that if she left her husband we would be willing to support her in a number of ways. I also indicated that we would do all we could to change her husband both through meeting with him and through praying for him. The young woman flew back to Weipa.
I telephoned the husband on a number of occasions at his work in the medical section of the giant mine. He was naturally very embarrassed and hesitant to talk at his work. However, I was quite persistent and he happened to agree to come with her on the next occasion. I continued to see the pair of them for some months, as they would fly down especially for a few hours of marriage counseling. At the same time in the Cheltenham Church of Christ I had organized and was running a group for battered women of alcoholic husbands. We were following the insights of Al-Anon. Al-Anon was an organization set up to help the non-drinking wives of alcoholic husbands. There was a belief that if the wife changed her approach, her behaviour and her speech she could lessen the physical impact upon herself from a drunken husband. In fact the non-drinking wife with intelligence and with some skillful training was in a better position to control the habits of a drunken husband than many people believe.
I had success with a couple of women teaching them what not to say and how to respond to a drunken husband. One woman in the church was so successful in changing herself that her husband began to realize the problem was within himself and he started to change himself. It was quite a radical turn around using the Al-Anon principles. I spent time teaching the al-Anon principles to Violet the young Chinese girl from Weipa. She found they worked in changing her husband’s attitude to her. The violent attacks ceased and he began to realize the problem was his not hers. Both of them were grateful.
One day a huge cardboard box, packed with ice arrived on our doorstep. Inside were a hundred of the largest king prawns you had ever seen in your life. It was a gift of appreciation. Then a strange parcel arrived from Macao where her father lived and worked as a tailor. Young Violet had described me to her father and in appreciation for what had happened, he had made me an overcoat out of beautiful camel hair cloth. The only problem was that in describing me the diminutive shy Violet had given her father measurements, which resulted in an overcoat, which would have enveloped even John Wayne. Years later I had the coat cut down and restitched to proper size. Years later again one of my sons dyed it a different colour and still wears it to work.
What had happened with Violet and her husband and with the Tong family spread within the Chinese community and I had more and more Chinese people coming to me asking for help of one kind or another. Peter and Susan Tong and their two children became close friends with our family and we visited their home regularly and they visited ours.
I was reaching the point where I felt I could gather a number of Chinese to start a worship service and an evangelism program when I accepted the call to come to Sydney to be Superintendent of Wesley Mission. That did not end our friendship with the Tong family. Because they and other members of their family, not long afterwards shifted to Sydney themselves and our friendships have continued now for more than 30 years. Regular meals, celebrating birthdays, particularly of Ho In the elderly matriarch of the family have become a fixed part of our calendar. Their children are today committed Christians.
During this ministry at Cheltenham a Chinese family came to see if I would sponsor their daughter and her husband who were being badly treated in Vietnam. While the allied forces and the Vietnamese people were fighting each other, both sides seemed to be fighting the small group of Chinese who were caught in the middle. I sponsored Mary and Kee out from Vietnam. He had sold his business and they came to our country as refugees. I arranged a house for them to rent, gathered together from church members furniture, clothing, suitable cooking utensils and organized a job for Kee in a local Chinese restaurant. The day came when they arrived and still bearing their refugee labels, arrived back at my house. We had a cup of Chinese tea together, prepared by my wife and I was then to take them to their new home. Mary asked if I could get a bank manager. I was surprised at her request but she told me that she wanted to put the sale of their business into a bank straight away. I rang the Commonwealth Bank manager but he was too busy. I then rang the National Australia Bank manager who was a friend from Rotary and he agreed to pop over to my house and open an account for them. When my Rotary colleague Don came in the door and sat down with the papers to open the account I was amazed as Mary took out of her hand bag and from the lining of a fur coat which she had carried on the refugee flight, a roll of American bank notes which could choke a horse. Then from the bottom of her handbag she took out five gold bars. Don was staggered. There was more than a quarter of a million dollars in cash and gold. I felt rather embarrassed as I took the refugees around to their little house that I had rented and showed them all the second hand furniture and clothing that I had gathered. Mary and Kee quickly settled into business, bought a restaurant and have become fine Australian citizens. Their children, now committed Christians, have all graduated from university and two of them are doctors. Mary and Kee never forget us and for more than 30 years I receive a Christmas card and a gift of $50 every year in appreciation of bringing them to Australia.
Before I left Cheltenham, I was given a farewell dinner and a heavy brass Chinese character to go on the front of our new house. It said to all who could read it, that inside the house lived the man who was “The Father of all the Chinese people.”
In 1977 when I was appointed Superintendent of Wesley Mission, I wrote that the first thing I wanted to do was to establish a Chinese congregation for Chinese people in Sydney. I discovered there were 40,000 Chinese people living in Sydney and that only about 2,000 of them attended church. The other 38,000 I declared would be our mission field. In my very first sermon at the time of my reordination in the Lyceum Theatre, I announced that I would start a Chinese service in four weeks time and if anybody knew any Chinese people, would they please tell them. I intended to advertise in the Chinese speaking papers. I had seen no Chinese faces at all in the crowd of 1,300 at that Induction Service but on the way out at the door I met Ping and Dorothy Hui. I had asked the people to come with me in a long-term ministry that would end up in the 21 century. At the door Ping and Dorothy said to me “We will march with you into the twenty-first century”.
Four weeks later I started the Chinese service as promised. I preached in English and I had arranged for a Mandarin translator. About 14 people attended including Ping and Dorothy Hui, Mrs. Shirley Wright and Andrew and Mabel Hui. Mr. & Mrs. Seato and a few others were also present. Over the next weeks we regularly met for service with the translator translating, I myself leading the service and then a delightful afternoon tea of yum-cha.
Four weeks after we had started I said to Mr. Ping Hui “How do you like our service?” He replied with a flashing smile, “Velly good.” “How do you like my preaching?” “Velly good.” “How do you like our yum-cha?” “Velly, velly good.” “How do you like our interpreter?” “No good, cannot understand that fella! He speak Mandarin, we all speak Cantonese!” I had made a monumental blunder. From that time on I advertised that we would have translations into both Cantonese and Mandarin. The numbers of Chinese attending increased until I eventually was able to hire two retired Chinese ministers Rev. Foo Kain Chen and Rev. James Mau. They took the Mandarin and the Cantonese speaking groups and did the preaching themselves. After a couple of years we had 110 people attending regularly.
I then searched the world to find a young Methodist minister, who had a PhD because the Chinese people respect scholarship, and who was willing to live in Sydney to minister to this congregation. Eventually I found Rev. Dr. Tony Chi in Singapore where he was ministering at the large Wesley Church with thousands of people attending. He and his wife Jenny accepted my invitation and came with their two small sons. Tony commenced a 19-year ministry. It was only after all of my research and careful planning that we now had a Chinese minister of our own, working full-time with our Chinese congregation.
At my first meeting I made a horrible discovery – Tony could not speak Chinese!
So we kept our two old retired ministers, caring for those who could not speak English and Tony developed a ministry among Chinese students and English speaking Chinese from Singapore. Soon the International Congregation, as it was called, separated from our Mandarin and Cantonese congregations and under Tony’s enthusiastic leadership rapidly grew. Within 10 years we had reached a thousand people attending the largely Singaporean International congregation where the service was in English.
A Chinese minister with whom I had developed close friendships Rev. Wilfred Chee from the Anglican Church came to minister with our Mandarin speaking people. The tragedy of Tiennamen Square brought us into contact with hundreds of young Chinese students.
Then I added Rev. Bunyun Oey and before long we had Chinese people everywhere in Wesley Mission.
My staff reflected the number of Chinese that we had connected to our church and our congregations in three languages were growing rapidly.
Today we have three and a half thousand Chinese involved in the Mandarin, Cantonese and English speaking services.
I like Chinese! My subsequent visits to China and meeting with Chinese church leaders and with people in the underground church have firmly cemented these relationships. The publication of some of my books into Chinese and their widespread sale throughout China and our purchase of Bibles and other Christian literature and shipping into China has resulted in firm friendships and a wonderful ministry to the Chinese. But it all started on a Box Hill footpath with a bloodied nose on a four year old girl Rosemary Woo.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.