Lunar New Year a reminder of contribution of Chinese to Australia
By Carl Benjaminsen
You need look no further than the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations to get a sense of the contribution of Chinese people and culture to Australian society.
Sydney is hosting the largest celebration of the Lunar New Year outside Asia. The iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up red during New Year firework celebrations and 1.4 million people are expected to attend more than 80 events across the city to celebrate Spring Festival.
Meanwhile, visitors to the main museum in Melbourne had the opportunity to see a traditional dragon dance performance with Sun Loong, a 100-meter long imperial dragon. The nearly 50 year old icon from rural Victoria, believed to be the longest in the world, is elaborately decorated with 6,000 silk scales containing 90,000 hand-cut mirrors. And more than 300 dancers gathered to countdown and celebrate the coming of the New Year. These performances are just two of the many events in and around Melbourne to celebrate Spring Festival.
Folk artists operate the Sun Loong, the longest imperial dragon of its kind outside China, during a parade to celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on February 16, in Melbourne, Australia, February 11 2018. The 48-year-old Sun Loong measures approximately 100 metres and takes more than 120 people to operate. [Photo: IC]
It should come as no surprise that Chinese New Year is an increasingly important part of Australia’s cultural events calendar. Australia’s statistics bureau figures show that half a million people living in Australia in 2017 were born in China, a number that grew by one-third over the last five years.
In 2016 more than 1.2 million people in Australia have Chinese ancestry, and around two-thirds of them speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home.
A large number of young Chinese come to Australia to study. China is the largest contributor of international students to Australia’s universities. Around 1 in 5 Chinese-born people living in Australia are students. These young people are a major reason why 1 in 4 people living in central Melbourne speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home.
More than a quarter of a million Chinese students studied in the state of Victoria in the five years up to 2017 – accounting for one-third of Victoria’s total enrolments and a major contributor to the success of the state’s $6.5 billion international education industry. Across the country about one-third of the revenue into the $30.9 billion international education sector in 2017 came from Chinese students.
From the Chinese miners on the goldfields in the 1800s, to the migrants who came in the 1970s with the end of the White Australia Policy as Australia reached out to Asia, to the students and entrepreneurs riding the wave of reform as China opened to the world over the last 30 years, Chinese people and their diverse culture have been a part of life in Australia. The enthusiasm with which Chinese New Year and Spring Festival were celebrated is a sign that the relationship between the people of these two countries will continue to grow and strengthen into the future.
(Carl Benjaminsen is a copy editor and reporter at China Radio International. After working in the NGO and local government sectors in Australia, he decided to pursue his passion for learning about China and moved to Beijing, where he now lives.)