The Museum of Chinese Australian History – Sadly Spoiled by Beijing Propaganda
Posted: December 29th, 2011 | 2 Comments »Passed through Melbourne at the start of December (so better post this before the month ends!!) and found a few spare hours to pop into the Museum of Chinese Australian History down in the city’s Chinatown on Cohen Place off Little Bourke Street. It’s one of those museums that ranges from great to dire depending on what you’re looking at. The basement is an interesting exhibit – Finding Gold – on the Chinese who came to Australia during the Gold Rush – Hong Kong to Melbourne in 60 days on a British ship. The cabins and the moving floor along with the voice recordings are pretty good and atmospheric, I have to say, as are the reconstruction of a mining camp with Cantonese Opera tent, lottery vendor (sponsored by the awful Tattersall’s fruit machine parlours company!!) and temple.
On the upper floors there are some good displays about Chinese-Australian life – the long slow march to equality for the community and some lovely old artifacts. However, there is a rather shameful display of modern China with maps of China that don’t feature Taipei as a capital, Taiwan as a province etc etc – all sponsored by the nasty local Confucius Institute that spread Beijing’s view of the world. Shame on the University of Melbourne and the Victoria State Government Department of Education and Child Development for being involved in this distortion that pushes Beijing’s view of Chinese history and geography – the taxpayers of Victoria deserve something a little better I would suggest. The government and academia in Melbourne should be smarter than to allow the unquestioningly pro-Beijing CI and their hard core no debate anti-Taiwan attitudes into an otherwise well balanced museum. Of course those that know still exist in Melbourne’s Chinatown – see the SYS statue below.
Still all worth an hour if you’re passing.
Little Bourke Street and Melbourne’s Chinatown
The Chinese Mission Church on Little Bourke Street
SYS in Melbourne
The really sad story is that this sad story has been repeated many times in many places. Whenever there is some thoughts about building a cultural resource of Chinese heritage anywhere on earth, the PRC brutes will always spoil it and turn it into a propaganda. It is just too bad that PRC is a young ignorant brute that can’t grow up with 5,000 years of history. All power and no culture.
My kids much enjoyed the moving boat experience in the basement …. and the fact that the museum is on Cohen Place!