- It happened in Sydney, and in Brisbane - the lure of the suburbs drew the Chinese from those cities' traditional Chinatowns to communities away from the centre
- Now a developer plans a US$310 million lifestyle, dining and residential complex 14km from historic Little Bourke Street, hub of Melbourne's Chinese community
When large numbers of Chinese gold prospectors began arriving in Melbourne, Australia, in 1853, they would stop in the city's Little Bourke Street to rest and obtain provisions before heading off to seek their fortune in the Victorian goldfields.
By the early 1860s many Chinese district associations had bought land there to build club rooms, which the Chinese community could use as meeting places, and soon the strip became Australia's first Chinatown.
After more than 160 years of boom and bust Little Bourke Street is still there. Buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries still stand, and today it is a food and cultural hub.
Chinatown's survival is a testament to its ability to evolve, says Mark Wang, CEO and co-founder of Melbourne's Museum of Australian Chinese History.
Given Chinatown's history and cultural significance, plans for a A$450 million (US$311 million) New Chinatown 14km east of the city, not surprisingly, met a mixed response from Melburnians. Some were excited at the prospect of a new food and business strip, while others were sceptical, and saw the development as a cynical exercise in cultural exploitation.
The proposal follows a pattern of urban decentralisation and suburban development that is occurring in many of Australia's cities.
The company behind the development is Golden Age Group, owned by property magnate Jeff Xu. Originally from Wuxi in China's Jiangsu province, Xu has bought and developed properties along Australia's eastern seaboard.
The New Chinatown project in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill is Xu's most ambitious project yet. Due for completion in 2022, the 10,000 square metre (108,000 sq ft) residential and commercial development will feature a multilevel lifestyle and dining complex between two 18-storey towers.
"Much like China in recent decades, Box Hill has undergone a period of immense transformation, to emerge as a cultural, tourist and economic destination in its own right," Xu told Commercial News, a property website.
"New Chinatown will help support and facilitate the continued growth of Box Hill's city centre, while creating more than 1,000 jobs for the local community and providing a thriving economic, entertainment and cultural precinct that also acknowledges the rich history of the area and its inhabitants," he added.
It will be a far cry from Melbourne's original Chinatown, one of the oldest continuously occupied Chinese settlements in the Western world.
According to the Museum of Australian Chinese History, once they arrived, Chinese clans were quick to settle in. The Chinatown Precinct Association records that, after the gold ran out, diggers who stayed returned to Little Bourke Street's Chinatown, establishing businesses catering to both the Chinese and non-Chinese communities.
Chinatown became a place to meet, conduct business and gamble. A Chinese Christian church was built there too. To this day, the church and some of the association buildings still belong to their original owners.
It thrived until Australia became a federation in 1901 and introduced the White Australia policy, a law that drastically limited non-European immigration to Australia, especially for Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders.
The law took a heavy toll on the once lively strip, with the Chinese population dropping to 20 per cent of that seen in its heyday, says Wang. By the end of World War II there were just 12,000 Chinese-born residents in the whole of Australia.
"The fortunes of Melbourne's original Chinatown began reviving in the 1970s and early 80s when taxable business lunches encouraged a long-lunch etiquette, bringing business back to Little Bourke Street," says Wang. "An influx of Chinese students also helped revive the once lively strip. By the 1980s, Chinatown was flourishing again."
Long before then, a trend of decentralisation had begun with the opening of Melbourne's first shopping centre, Chadstone, in 1960. Suburban shopping centres began springing up throughout the country and, slowly but surely, Chinese began leaving for the suburbs just as other Melburnians had.
The Chinatown Precinct Association, a government-backed organisation to promote and market Melbourne's Chinatown, says this flight to the suburbs was also a direct response to the White Australia policy. Chinese and other minority groups felt cut off and cornered in their urban enclaves, and believed a move to the suburbs would make life easier.
Established in 1980, Box Hill, where New Chinatown will be built, is one of those Chinese-friendly suburbs. Popular with Asian Australians, residents of Chinese ancestry outnumber those of European ancestry 2.5 to one, according to a 2016 census. Nearly three in five households speak a language other than English.
Mandarin Chinese is the most widely used foreign language, spoken in 28.3 per cent of Box Hill homes; the Chinese dialect of Cantonese, used in Hong Kong, is spoken in 9.8 per cent of homes, and Korean in 1.7 per cent.
The planned New Chinatown will feature a childcare centre, a Chinese language school, Chinese and Western medicine clinics and a 4,000 square metre hawker hall based on New York's Italian marketplace Eataly.
Wang concedes that if a city is to grow it must be allowed to change and develop.
It was his father who gave Little Bourke Street its Chinatown name " though at the time, like New Chinatown today, it had its naysayers.
"The Chinese people were up in arms, saying, 'Don't call this a Chinatown, it's not Disneyland'," Wang says.
New Chinatown will help support and facilitate the continued growth of Box Hill's city centre, while creating more than 1,000 jobs for the local communityGolden Age Group's Jeff Xu, as quoted by Commercial News
Melbourne's Chinatown is not the only one in Australia to find itself having to move with the times.
In Sydney's Chinatown, at Haymarket, between Central station and Darling Harbour, less than 32 per cent of residents are of Chinese ancestry, whereas in suburban, whereas in suburban Hurstville 50 per cent of the population identify as Chinese and 36.4 per cent of residents were born in China.
Other large Chinese populations can be found in the suburbs of Burwood, Campsie, Strathfield, Chatswood, Eastwood and Ashfield. Large developments in Chatswood revolve around Asian cuisine; both Chatswood Interchange, a multilevel dining complex above the Chatswood railway station, known by locals as "Chatsfood", and Hawkers Lane Food, have been built on a similar theme to that proposed for Box Hill in Melbourne.
In Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, you'll often hear people say, "The valley is dead" " a reference to Fortitude Valley, a short Chinatown strip, nestled among the bars, restaurants, adult entertainment clubs and massage parlours of the city's nightlife district, that's slowly becoming redundant.
The reason? Sixteen kilometres away is Sunnybank, a vibrant Asian hub where a third of residents identify as Chinese, and which dominates the dining market. Here, property developer ADCO is spending A$40 million (US$28 million) to turn its most popular dining destination, Market Square, into a four-storey complex.
In each of Australia's major cities, suburbs where Chinese families are dominant have emerged to challenge their traditional Chinatowns, and continue to expand. Their lower rents, ease of access and proximity to populations of Asian descent mean it makes commercial sense for developers to build in these areas. And Australia is not the first country to experience this pattern.
Five reasons New York's Chinatown is surviving gentrification scourge
"Old Chinatown to New Chinatown theories are not new and have been observed in the United States in Los Angeles and in New York," Thomas Sigler, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Queensland, says. The less dense nature of Australian cities is creating a hybrid model.
New development is causing what Sigler calls "densification" in suburban areas as high-rises go up. "If the suburban sprawl was the American influence, the densification of Australian cities comes from the Asian influence," he adds.
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