Ah Yen, sojourner

In the forty years between 1850 and 1890 62,990 Chinese are recorded as having entered Victoria by land or sea (the land route from Robe in South Australia.). Sixty percent of these—48,000—later left the Colony, most returning to the Canton (Guangzhou) area from whence they’d come, a hundred miles or so up the Pearl River from Hong Kong.

One of those who went back to China was Ah Yen, an Avoca vegetable hawker and gardener. The Avoca Mail noted his departure in 1882:

Avoca Mail, Tuesday 5 September 1882, page 2

Local housewives will, for some months to come, miss the daily attentions of one who has for some years passed supplied their requirements in the shape of vegetables. Ah Yen, the very civil and obliging vegetable hawker and gardener, having by his industry accumulated a modest competency, has determined to visit his native land, and accordingly started for China yesterday, intending to be absent for twelve months, and we are sure that his customers will wish him a pleasant voyage, and an enjoyable holiday. Ah Yen is still a young man, and it is rumoured that he is going home for a wife — perhaps a couple of wives — and if necessary he can obtain such testimonials from the Avoca housekeepers as will secure ample favor for him in the eyes of the fair daughters of the Flowery Land. While absent his garden will be managed and his business conducted by a relative recently arrived from China.

I do not know how long Ah Yen lived in Avoca, nor anything about his replacement.

I doubt whether he ever came back. Few Chinese made a second trip to Victoria.

During the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s, the word “sojourner”, from the Latin ‘to spend a day’, referred to a Chinese who came to Australia temporarily to earn money for his family back home. ‘Sojourner’ is roughly equivalent to our ‘resident alien’.

See also:

• Macgregor, P. (n.d.). Dreams of Jade and Gold. Victorian Collections. https://victoriancollections.net.au/stories/chinese-australian-families/dreams-of-jade-and-gold