Work | Leaving & staying | Leisure | Beliefs | Dress | Food

Leisure

Subthemes: 
gambling | opium smoking | picnics | music | sport | social visits

Picnics

In regional New South Wales the bigger Chinese general stores followed the example of their European counterparts and held picnics for employees and their families. At first, the picnics held by the Chinese stores reflected their largely male and Chinese staff. By the 1920s the mixture of gender and cultural backgrounds among staff had changed.

Picnic party for staff from the Kwong Sing store in Glen Innes, 1907. (Private collection)

The man wearing the bowler hat in the second row is Wong Chee, manager of the Kwong Sing store in Glen Innes. His adopted daughter, Ruby, is the only female in the photograph.

Hong Yuen picnic, late 1920s. (Private collection)

By the 1920s the larger Chinese stores employed increasing numbers of local non-Chinese residents. Annual store picnics provided a moment when Chinese and non-Chinese mixed socially. Jessie Higgins who worked at the Hong Yuen store in Inverell during the 1920s and 1930s remembered:

... we'd have races and competitions and things like that. Also, would meet up with people from Kwong Sing. The Fays would supply all the food, and the travellers would often give something towards the picnic.