Dai Gum San Precinct and the Golden Dragon Chinese Museum

While not an official heritage site, our next destination is an important reflection of the history of Chinese Australians in Bendigo. The Dai Gum San precinct encompasses an outdoor community meeting space, the Yi Yuan Gardens, and the Golden Dragon Chinese Museum.

Dai Gum San means Big Gold Mountain. Chinese immigrants who first arrived in the 1850s gave this name to Bendigo in reference to the Gold Rush.

The Yi Yuan Garden means Garden of Joy, and inside the garden is the Guan Yin Temple, or the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy.[1] The Gardens were based on the Imperial Palace in Beijing, and were a joint project of the Bendigo Chinese Association, the City of Greater Bendigo, the Federal Government, the Victorian State Government and the City of Baoding.[2]

The area is a meeting place for residents, and is the end destination of the parade during the Bendigo Easter Festival. As such, it is an important tangible site for the intangible heritage of Chinese Australians in Bendigo.

The Bendigo Easter Festival has been in existence since 1871, and the Bendigo Chinese Association has been contributing since 1879.[3] The fair was originally a fundraising effort for the Bendigo Benevolent Asylum and Hospital. After the Gold Rush ended, many Chinese who could not afford to return home lived in poverty, and were in poor mental and physical health.[4] Many Chinese used the services of the Asylum and Hospital, and so the Bendigo Chinese Association had a vested interest in increasing the success of the fundraiser.[5]

Their contributions included opera and acrobatics performances during the parade, and from 1892, a Chinese dragon known as Loong, which is now housed in the Golden Dragon Chinese Museum.[6]

The participation of the Chinese in the Easter Fair was an important way of forming constructive relationships between Chinese and non-Chinese citizens.

Aware that the fair could be used to improve their social standing in Bendigo, the Chinese consistently negotiated with organisers each year to improve their standing in the procession. At first relegated to the low social position of the back of the procession, by 1883 they had negotiated to be the first of the groups to march into the fair showgrounds at the end of the parade, a symbol of their contribution and status.[7]

Beyond their participation in the parade, the Bendigo Chinese Association offered extraordinary support to the festival in the form of donations. This loyalty was reciprocated in 1887, when after a destructive fire in the Chinese camp, a relief fund and fundraiser event was organised by other residents.[8]

The Chinese performances and Chinese dragon, Sun Loong are now integral to the Bendigo Easter Festival, which draws thousands each year.

[1] “Dai Gum San Chinese Precinct,” Bendigo Tourism, accessed May 10, 2019, www.bendigotourism.com
[2] Ibid.
[3] Amanda Rasmussen, “Networks and Negotiations: Bendigo’s Chinese and the Easter Fair,” Journal of Australian Colonial History 6, (2004), 79-80.
[4] Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 126.
[5] Rasmussen, “Networks and Negotiations," 80.
[6] Ibid., 87.
[7] Ibid., 83.
[8] Ibid., 85.