Way Lee

Yett Soo War Way Lee immigrated to Sydney from Dongguan in 1874 and, by 1878, had established Way Lee & Co., an importing business at 145 Hindley Street in Adelaide that grew into a substantial enterprise with branches in South Australia and New South Wales. Trading in tea, fireworks, porcelain, bric-a-brac, and Chinese medicines, Way Lee became a respected figure in South Australian business circles despite facing persistent anti-Chinese sentiment and discrimination. He played a prominent civic role, including service on a famine relief committee for which Adelaide City was gifted an Imperial Board, and in 1887, during a journey to China, he acquired an official Qing government title as a fourth-rank Mandarin in recognition of his service to overseas Chinese communities. The firm’s identity was marked by a button inscribed “Way Lee Adelaide” in English on the outer circle and 維利 in Chinese on the inner circle, and in 1900 Way Lee publicly articulated his views by publishing an open letter in the South Australian Register titled “The Chinese Question from a Chinaman’s point of view.”

Source: Way Lee 100 years on

Yett-Soo-War-Way-Lee-Mandarine-Costume-Govt-House-Adelaide-517x1024.jpeg

Image Courtesy of: http://chineseancestor.org/waylee/wl-vision-for-australia/wl-connections-with-china/