Enticing On Every Level

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 2, 2008

Erik Jensen

Beyond Chinatown's neon lights Erik Jensen finds historic clans and traditional tearooms.

There are two Chinatowns: one at street level, marked with tangled neon and open to all; the other above, hidden by doors and precipitous stairwells.

Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, is addressing the first, announcing plans for the New Year. A committee of Chinese businessmen watches on, too polite to ignore the mayoral pomp. The Year of the Rat, a photo opportunity.

Just behind Moore, upstairs in what is now the Sussex Centre, are the remnants of a clan room - an opium den. The narcotics are gone, remembered only by a character stencilled on the brickwork. Gone, too, is the can for visitors - the makeshift intercom, attached to a string, through which the words "Charlie not here" would dismiss Western visitors. Even gweilo, the Cantonese term for ghost man, has passed, replaced by a more courteous sai yan, meaning west person. Chinatown is no longer a ghetto. The great veins of the city run through it now, out to Central Station and back to Darling Harbour.

Inside the Sussex Centre a tobacconist sells cigarettes and trinkets. There are a few clothing stores and the escalators of a modern mall, an appetiser to the Hong Kong chaos of Market City. Then there is what Chinatown should be: a pocket of migrant history left over from the mass relocation of the gold rush.

"Sit down, sit down," says Henry Chan, president of the Yiu Ming Hung Fook Tong. He is head of a clan established in 1877 to support Ko Yiu market gardeners in Botany and St George.

"Reason for it: help the new migrants coming to Australia," he says. "We provide them financial assistance from China, we send [money] back to China and help them from China to here."

Chan's accent is thick. Words jangle in his mouth and his diction is gloriously blunt. His clan is one of the largest and most active in Chinatown, with 30,000 members and significant property holdings. "Just like the society [clan] is a father and the business associated is a son. We are investment, real estate."

The clan room is part of old Chinatown, off limits to tourists and passers-by. From Sussex Street it is simply a barred door, the words Tiy Loy & Co. Ltd. glued above an arch. Inside - up a stairwell, like everything in Chinatown - large grey tiles lead to a kitchen and a vast television. Men play mah-jong, slamming tiles onto boards amid a buzz of Cantonese. A wall of pigeonholes marks the tong's other purpose: collecting letters for migrants without fixed addresses.

Haymarket, the site of today's Chinatown, began as a cattle and hay market in the 1830s. It was not the first Chinatown in Sydney; that was George Street North in the 1840s.

By the turn of the century, Chinatown had moved from The Rocks to Wexford Street in Surry Hills. When Wexford Street was demolished to make way for the Wentworth Avenue approach of Central Station, the Chinese moved to Campbell Street in Haymarket. Between 1909 and 1915 the city council built a market complex at the head of Darling Harbour, cementing the location.

Down from the tong, through one of the arcades that grid this part of Sussex Street, is another reminder of old Chinatown: Mother Chu's Taiwanese Gourmet. In the window, women work flour into dough; a pile of meat and rice is rolled into the centre of buns; wok-fuls of oil produce tray after tray of yu tiao - airy pastry sticks. In the back, yu tiao is dipped into bowls of soy soup or scraped through pots of pork congee. Breakfast. It is just past 11am and the restaurant bustles with Cantonese. Chinatown stirs late but it also stays up late.

Outside, live fish are wheeled past in bins. An old woman hoists a knot of vegetables onto her back. Under flickering signs the streets feel very much alive. Live Crafts Centre is part of this street life, a teahouse packed with cardboard cylinders, filled with hundreds of tea grades. Leaves are conjured from a shelf, steeped twice in water, tasted from foam cups.

"It used to be no one doing tea shops in Sydney," says Alice Cho, the store's owner. "You couldn't find green tea so we brought it in [from China]. You can buy tea in the supermarket but it's no good."

The little wooden shop, packed to the rafters, is to be renovated. Less crafts, more tea, somewhere to sit. There are pockets like this around Chinatown where the feeling is authentic: Shun Fai Modern, with its waving cats and jumble of red tat; Chinese Ginseng & Herbs Co, antlers in the window and white coats inside; Leung Wai Kee, all funerary supplies and good luck. They sit unperturbed, ignoring the march of time.

FAST FACTS

Chinese New Year in Sydney is billed as the largest celebration of its kind outside Asia, with 50 events planned over three weeks from this weekend. The highlight is the New Year Parade on Sunday, February 10, with 2500 performers. It starts at the corner of Park and George Streets at 11am and finishes with a concert at Darling Harbour at 1.30pm. See www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au.

* Mother Chu's Taiwanese Gourmet, 86-88 Dixon Street, 9211 0288.

* Live Crafts Centre, 84 Dixon Street, 9281 2828.

* Chinese Ginseng & Herbs Co, 75 Ultimo Road, 9212 4397.

* Shun Fai Modern, 427 Sussex Street, 9281 9991.