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During the second half of the nineteenth century over 30,000 Chinese
men came to work and live in regional NSW. The majority returned
to their home villages in China to be reunited with family and ancestors.
Others stayed in Australia: some stayed alone while some created
Australian dynasties with Chinese, Aboriginal or European wives.
Many who remained in Australia retained links with China via visits,
letters, and remittances, until these links were fractured by the
Sino-Japanese war of the 1930s, the Second World War, and the Communist
Revolution in China.
 For
those who stayed in Australia, one of the greatest challenges was
to negotiate Australian racism. Chinese-Australians were denied
citizenship, and were often regarded as, at best, exotic and, at
worst, a threat. Their tenuous status was enshrined in the 'White
Australia Policy' which was one of the cornerstones of Federation.
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 Trunk
and clothing belonging to Alice Ling (Sing Yin Ean) of Wellington,
1930s. (Oxley Museum, Wellington)
Alice Ling packed a number of trunks with the intention of visiting
China. The trip did not eventuate. The trunks remained in Wellington
until unpacked by Alice Ling’s great niece, Carole Gass, in
the mid-1990s. Alice Ling's trunks symbolise the tensions between
staying in Australia and leaving to return to China which characterised
the lives and movements of many Chinese immigrants in Australia
between 1850 and 1950. 
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