New research shows the White Australia Policy played an important role in the development of the Bendigo Easter procession.
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The Australian National University’s Tsai Tsan-Huang studied the development of the Bendigo Easter Parade and its connection with the local Chinese community.
He said few researchers had studied the parade’s transformation during the White Australia Policy era.
The policy’s 1901 introduction barred many immigrants from entering the country.
But Dr Tsai said even as the local Chinese expat community shrank the dragon was becoming a symbol of the festival.
He found early 20th century Easter Festival committees were increasingly concerned about the risk of no Chinese involvement in the parade.
But he was surprised to find Bendigo’s Chinese community initially resisted offers of help from white locals, preferring to rely on fellow expats in other Australian cities for both financial help and performers.
He said the Chinese were even lobbied by the non-Chinese to stay in the parade.
“Obviously, without enough Chinese people to carry on the procession, this tradition would have disappeared. So they gradually accepted participation from the white community.”
(Story continues below photo.)
In the same article Dr Tsai investigated another understudied part of history: the origins of the parade from 19th century Chinese religious processions.
He said these processions started in China’s Canton province and marked events like New Year and temple festivals.
Dr Tsai said today’s local procession sounded dramatically different to those before the 1920s.
Originally the festival included Chinese operatic performances and folk music. Chinese lutes and stringed instruments.
“The second and third generation of Chinese didn’t learn (this music) from their families or elders. So that’s one major difference,” he said.
“A second reason (for the change) was the negotiations between Chinese and local Bendigo communities.
“You see, the music originally performed in the procession would only have been understood by people who used to enjoy or appreciate that kind of music.
“And during the procession non-Chinese people wouldn’t understand what this music was meant to be.”
Dr Tsai’s research was published in the academic journal Ethnomusicology Forum.