AUSTRALIANA Biography

Mei Quong Tart, or Quong Tart as he was known, was a famous and popular figure in Sydney in the late nineteenth century. Quong Tart was an Australian of Asian heritage who had a significant influence on his local community in many ways.

He was a remarkably successful, innovative and fair businessman. His employees (mostly waitresses) were treated well, working reasonable hours (for that era), provided with meals in the restaurant, and allowed free time for reading and needlework. Part of his success can also be attributed to the care he took with the decor of his tea rooms, which had fountains, ferneries and fishponds inside, the provision of special rooms for reading and non-smoking rooms for ladies. Another part of his success was that he provided good food at affordable prices.

Quong Tart was a true philanthropist. He organised many charitable dinners, at one time inviting all the city’s newsboys, and another time local Sydney Aboriginal people to free banquets. He helped clothe and feed the children of Waterloo Ragged School and undertook many other efforts to alleviate the plight of Sydney’s poor. As a cultural benefactor he also promoted concerts and exhibited the work of local painters at his shops.

In 1888, a time of significant anti-Chinese feeling, a passenger ship, the Afghan, sailed into Sydney carrying a large number of Chinese immigrants. The ship was placed under quarantine and Quong Tart helped in conciliating between the passengers and the government. This was one of the many times that he was integral in creating bridges between the Chinese and European interests in Australia at this period.

After seeing the devastating consequences of opium addiction in Sydney’s Chinatown he waged a long campaign against the importation of opium. Opium at this time was sold and consumed in Australia for its ‘medicinal’ purposes. Despite lobbying politicians for many years, and having the clergy on his side, he never lived to see the importation of opium stopped. Many politicians, businessmen and journalists argued (incorrectly) that opium was non-addictive and the colony needed the import revenue.

Quong Tart was also a true celebrity of his time. He would attend social functions dressed either in Mandarin robes or in a kilt and sporran (his affection for things Scottish stemming from his association with the Simpson family at Braidwood). He could tell jokes and anecdotes, recite Robert Burns’ poetry or sing Scottish ballads. Everyone in Sydney at that time either knew or knew of Quong Tart. When he died in 1903, he was farewelled with a huge public funeral and thousands of mourners turned out to pay their respects.

• 192 p. : ill. ports. ; 23 cm. #140624 First Edition
• Tart, Quong, 1850-1903
• Chinese immigrants: Tart, Quong, 1850-1903. Sydney. Biographies
• Chinese — Australia — Biography
• Sydney (N.S.W.) — Biography