Daisy Kwok: From Sydney to Shanghai to shovelling sh*t
· 38 min
Episode Daisy Kwok: From Sydney to Shanghai to shovelling sh*t
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The White Australia Policy seems to be the spectre haunting many episodes of our podcast/Australian history. This week we meet Daisy Kwok, just one Chinese Australian whose life was changed by one of the world's worst immigration policies. Born in Sydney in 1909 in the lap of luxury, Daisy and her family leave Australia, fleeing racism but also chasing further riches in Shanghai in the 1920s, the ‘Paris of the East’.
There Daisy becomes an it-girl of the bustling cosmopolitan boom town before things come crashing down (can you hear the clap of thunder of the communist revolution in the distance?).
SOURCES
Kwok, Daisy. Shanghai Daisy: The Autobiography of Daisy Kwok. Edited by Tess Johnston and Graham Earnshaw. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2019.
Brown, Jeremy, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Chen, Danyan. Shanghai Princess: Her Survival with Pride & Dignity. New York: Better Link Press, 2010.
Fitzgerald, Shirley. Red Tape, Gold Scissors: The Story of Sydney’s Chinese. Sydney: Halstead Press, 2008
Henriot, Christian, and Wen-hsin Yeh In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Loy-Wilson, Sophie. “Daisy Kwok’s Shanghai: Life in China before and after 1949.” In Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia, edited by Kate Bagnall and Julia T. Martínez. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2021.
Loy-Wilson, Sophie. Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China. London: Routledge, 2017.
Listen to the RN Earshot episode about Daisy
• Hosted by Alecia Simmonds and Leigh Boucher • Supervising Producer: Hannah Reich • Producer: Hannah Jose • Video producer: Christian Harimanow • Executive Producers: Clare Rawlinson and Eric George • Head of ABC Audio on Demand: Jessica Radburn • Theme: Martin Peralta • Artwork: Gabriel Virata-Alves
Links in the notes 1
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