Cirrus@Austlit

'This article considers remembrance and forgetting of ‘June Fourth’ (also known as the Tiananmen Square Incident or the Tiananmen Square Massacre) in Australia’s Chinese-language (Sinophone) narratives. Australia’s Sinophone narratives are defined as including those texts created using the Chinese language in Australia as well as the Chinese-language translations of Australian Anglophone narrative texts involving China. The article considers four examples of remembrance and forgetting of June Fourth – each Australian in substance: the 1989 performance of Retrial of a Political Prisoner by Chinese students in Sydney; the novel Oz Tale Sweet and Sour by Leo Xi Rang Liu (Liu Ao), written and first published in Chinese; and Chinese-language translations of two Anglophone texts written by white Australians – Nicholas Jose’s Avenue of Eternal Peace (translated by Li Yao) and The Hawke Memoirs (translated by a large committee).'

'When I first received the manuscript for nibs & nubs, I was immediately intrigued by the title. What are these ‘nibs’ and ‘nubs’? They are written in lower case and joined by an ampersand, so that they look like humble specks on the page. The effect is surprising and puzzling, as well as beguiling.' (Introduction)

'This article proposes to view Australian Chinese cultural products through a Sinophone studies lens to clarify the position of Australia in transnational patterns of Chinese-language cultural production. Three examples illustrate how Sinophone studies can expand research on Chinese-language culture in Australia, by showing them to also be instances of wider phenomena: Chinese-language theatre, Federation-era fiction, and the foreign student literature of the 1990s. Examining how these examples fit into wider patterns of Chinese-language production allows us to expand dyadic views of diaspora or transnationalism while also directing greater attention to community diversity and marginalised texts. The Australian Chinese studies community is right to celebrate the length and breadth of Chinese cultural production in Australia, and considering Sinophone Australian literature and theatre in the context of global Sinophone cultural production can help sharpen perspectives on what is shared and what is particular about the Australian case.' (Publication abstract)

'The Poison of Polygamy originally appeared serially in Melbourne’s Chinese Times in 1909–10. Wong Shee Ping’s novella is a kind of Cantonese Rake’s Progress by way of Rider Haggard, relating the wanderings and misadventures of a man sojourning in Australia, and the yearnings of the wife he leaves behind at home. Subtitled as social fiction, its chief concern is not migration but the moral ills afflicting Chinese society. Accordingly, the opium-smoking rotter of a protagonist is finally punished for his lust, slovenliness, avarice, and addiction: throttled by his slatternly concubine, who has only just dispatched his wife and child in a bid to improve her social position. Along the way, thylacines attack, business partners are rescued from collapsed mines, and thinly veiled Christian moralism excoriates traditional medicine and religion.' (Introduction)