Chinese Voices from the Past

In Person Talk and Presentation

This presentation will include six short pieces of newsreel footage from the late 1930s and an eight-minute radio broadcast from 1943 relating to a registered charity known as the NSW Chinese Women’s Relief Fund, established in 1937 to send relief to China after the invasion by Japan.

This is a one-time only opportunity to experience archival newsreel footage and a radio broadcast from the time of the Relief Fund – an opportunity to hear the voices from the past of Anna May Wong and Mrs Fabian Chow in Australia.

The event will include a PowerPoint presentation about the historical context of the newsreel material and the broadcast.

The newsreel footage will include:

• The Chinese dragon from Hong Kong performing at the Sydney Show Ground as part of the Sesquicentenary Celebrations in 1938.
• A fundraising event in October 1938 for the NSW Chinese Women’s Relief Fund
• The 1938 funeral procession along George Street of James Wong Chuey
• The arrival in Sydney of Anna May Wong in June 1939.

The radio broadcast was made by Mrs Fabian (Alice) Chow and her young son, thanking the children of Australia for donating 100,000 pennies (over $33,000 today) for war orphans in China.

This presentation has been made possible with the assistance of the National Film and Sound Archive, Cinesound Movietone Productions (the copyright owner of the newsreel footage), and the Australia China Economics, Trade and Culture Association.