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Furniture manufacture was one of the areas of work into which Chinese
moved. Like market gardens and stores, it was an enterprise which
was labour intensive and could be established and pursued solely
with fellow Chinese. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries Melbourne and Sydney were the focus of the Chinese furniture
manufacturing industry. The success of the Chinese there provoked
hostile reactions and discriminatory legislation. In regional areas,
Chinese cabinet makers did their work as part of the services provided
by general stores and as travelling tradesmen. Derrick Yee, who
spent his childhood in Bundarra during the 1930s remembered:
A lot of the incidental furniture, say the kitchen table and
even the chairs, ... were made by old Chinese carpenters who
used to travel around... they'd camp in the back sheds.
 Tools
used by Chinese carpenters working at the Kwong Sing store in Glen
Innes, early twentieth century. (Land of the Beardies History House,
Glen Innes)
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