Perth Voice Interactive

THE life and times of Hu Che-Em (aka Hop Chong) are slowly being pieced together with new details about the Chinese market gardener being unearthed this week. 

Hu Che-Em ran a market garden in Bayswater until the 1940s or 1950s. 

Locals from the Bayswater Historical Society want his nickname “Hoppy” to be approved for use as a street name, but Landgate is first requesting “information on where he has given back to and contributed to the community outside of the financial ties” (‘The Search for Hoppy’, Perth Voice, November 2).

That request came in response to the initial information gathered by the BHS mostly being related to Hu Che-Em’s business dealings. 

The group’s struck gold this week after getting in touch with historian Lucy Hair, who’s working on UWA’s project Two Centuries of Chinese Heritage in Western Australia. 

Ms Hair has found several records related to Hu Che-Em, including a post office record from 1912 noting that the address of a “Hop Chong” as being at Norwood Estate (in the area around East Perth/Mt Lawley). That’s very likely Bayswater’s Hu Che-Em, given the name is rare, and another record shows a Hop Chong lease for a vegetable garden in Bayswater in mid-1912. 

Several newspaper articles from found in the National Library of Australia’s archive Trove also recorded a 1931 incident in which Hop Chong defended a woman named Gladys Hume from an angry ex-partner, labourer Robert Ferrier.

Ms Hume, who was white, was walking with another woman named Elsie Chan, along with Hop Chong and a man named Ah Yook. 

Papers of the day recounted Ms Hume’s testimony that Mr Ferrier, backed up by another man named Alexander Brown, confronted the group of four. 

Mr Ferrier, the father of Ms Hume’s child, became furious that Ms Hume was associating with Chinese people and tore her dress, according to her testimony. 

Ah Yook and Hop Chong intervened, and “he was punched while acting as protector to a lady friend,” The New Call newspaper reported on December 31, 1931 edition. Ferrier was fined £5, with £2 pounds and 10/6 imposed in costs. 

BHS members are hoping this instance of defending Ms Hume will help their cause in getting a street named after Hoppy. 

But if you have any other leads on Hu Che-Em’s contributions to Bayswater, they’re still keen for stories via admin@bayswaterhistoricalsociety.org.au

by DAVID BELL