Stereotypes

Stereotypes both negative and positive greatly influence interpretation.

Perhaps the two most dominant stereotypes of Chinese people in Australia are that they were hapless victims of white racism and discrimination, and that they were extremely hardworking and frugal. Like all good stereotypes these have elements of truth while leaving little room for nuance and alternatives. The most obvious within these two frames being that Chinese people often strongly resisted racism and discrimination on many levels - political, intellectual, legal and physical, while many Chinese people failed to work successfully and/or spent their money freely. In other words, they were human with the same range of human frailties and desires as the rest of us. 

Stereotypes, including stereotypical images, are not wrong because they don't exist, they are wrong because they substitute for nuance, individuality and all that makes up historical reality.  The ‘success' of The Mongolian Octopus and the broader project that was the White Australia Policy is that it continues to make it difficult to see Chinese Australian history and individual men and women in their entiity. As a result the cafe proprietors, doctors, opera performers, veterans, Christian missionaries, newspapermen, temple custodians, and home builders, as well as the politically active, the authors and unionists are made more difficult to see or if seen at all they are too often perceived as exotic “exceptions” to the norm, rather than as the fundamental elements of the norm they in fact are.

Resistance - political (petitions, appeals to Premiers), intellectual (books and pamphlets), legal (court challenges) and physical (guns, knives, fighting)

Victims - role in WAP - Lambing Flat myth.

Hardwork - families - left behind - no pension - opium - taking a tram 

Outside the stereotype - Quong Tart, women, 

Whitewashing - forgotten - opera, doctors,