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Abstract
Fiction, as one of the earliest diasporic Chinese literary genres as well as the most neglected one in current scholarships, is the focus of this research project. The thesis examines Chinese language fiction published in the three earliest Australian Chinese language newspapers from 1894 to 1912, when Australian Chinese diaspora experienced an initial plethora of urban cultural development. Through the thesis, I propose to show the incipient evolution of Australian Chinese language fiction and argue that the beginning of Chinese Australian writing should be redefined to the turn of the 20th century given its original and exemplary contribution to the development of a diasporic literary tradition in Australia. During these years, Australian Chinese language fiction evolved from a production largely derivative of the classical Chinese narrative tradition, to a modern and localised form through the influence and inspiration of the late Qing revolution in fiction. This achievement can be witnessed in the employment of modern narrative techniques and structures, in the incorporation of local lives and events into the stories, and in the hybridity of themes that mix traditional and modern interests such as exile and ethnic unity, which are rare in late Qing Chinese fiction but essential to the concerns of post-colonial and diasporic cultural studies.
Demonstrating the value of early Australian Chinese language fiction offers a fresh angle to enrich our knowledge of the life experience of early Chinese migrants. It also reconnects such diasporic narratives with the modernising development of late Qing fiction in China as well as other early Chinese diasporic fiction, thus providing us an opportunity to discuss their mutual interaction and influence, as well as their role in the transnational development of world Chinese language literature. More importantly, it demonstrates how the localising process of the diasporic Chinese literary tradition began in Australia by supplementing the stories and other imaginative accounts of early Chinese migrants into the national literature of Australia, showing an alternative historical image of the Australian Chinese communities and a diversified vision of Australia’s social and cultural experience that was taking place already over a century ago.