Quong Tart
Date Published
: Quong
: Male
: 梅光達 / Moy Quong Tart / Mei Guangda
: 1850
: 1903
: Pearl River Delta 珠江三角洲
: Sydney
: Sydney
: Merchant
Mei Quong Tart was a complex individual. Chinese born, he was arguably one of the most westernised of Australia's Chinese. A successful businessman, particularly as a tea importer and restauranteur he also worked for social causes both within and outside the Chinese community. He was one of the best known nineteenth century Sydney Chinese. While seen by the non-Chinese community as a leader of the Chinese the Chinese community was divided in their views and support of him.
Source: CHIA - Tart, Quong (1850 - 1903)
See also: Australian Dictionary of Biography - Moy Quong Tart (1850–1903)
See note below concerning the "Australianism" that is Mei Quong Tart
Quong Tart
A Note on the name Mei Quong Tart
Quong Tart is often referred to as Mei Quong Tart in a effort to provide his full name. However this only manages to mangle two Chinese languages in order to produce a name in English the man himself would no doubt have found amusing.
“Quong Tart” arises from the last two elements of the name 梅光達 with the leading character or characters being, in the Chinese style, the family name. Thus the full name of Quong Tart is Moy Quong Tart in the pronunciation in his native vernacular of 端芬 Duanfen, Taishan or Mei Guangda in the Mandarin pronunciation of those same characters.
This was even reported at the time:
“My lady friends will thus be shocked to hear that for all these years they have been calling the admirable Quong Tart by his Christian name. What should they have called him? That is the question. In full, the appellation by which he would have been known in China appears to be Moy Quong Tart …”
Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1888, p.5.
The name Mei Quong Tart is thus an Australianism unknown to any Chinese language.
[The author is grateful to Ely Finch for pointing out the newspaper article.]
