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How an 'awful-looking' dragon fought back against racist Australia
At more than 40 metres long and 120 years old, Loong is a crucial part of Australia's multicultural history.
Published 21 March 2023 11:40am
By Charis Chang
Source: SBS News
Image: Loong at a parade in 1961. (Supplied / Golden Dragon Museum)
When the Duke and Duchess of York (later known as George V and Queen Mary) arrived to open Australia's first federal parliament in 1901, they were greeted by a sea of men in top hats at Melbourne's St Kilda Pier and a grand procession through the streets.
Australians were giddy at the creation of their new Commonwealth nation, but among those proudly gathered in the streets were members of the Chinese-Australian community accompanied by a "weird and awful looking dragon".
Historians can't say for sure whether the dragon being described at the time was Loong (龍), which had been shipped over from China just months before, but photos show he was an integral part of the grand welcoming of the royal couple on 6 May that year.
At 40 metres long and more than 120 years old, Loong is thought to be the world's oldest complete processional dragon. He requires 22 people to carry him - with his head alone weighing 21kg - and he can still be seen in Victoria today, at Bendigo's Gold Dragon Museum.
Loong means 'dragon' in Cantonese, but he was also referred to by the Chinese community as Gum Loong (Golden Dragon) and Moo Loong (Dancing Dragon). He was brought to Australia in March 1901 by the Chinese community not to appear in local Chinese New Year celebrations, but mainly to participate in Bendigo's annual Easter parade.
The Chinese community has a long history in Bendigo, having arrived during the gold rush of the 1850s. It was estimated around 4,000 members of the community were working in fields in 1854. So when the Easter parade became a local institution in the 1870s, they also joined in.
Loong was a popular feature, winning an award for "best display in procession" in 1940, and the parade is still held today.
Golden Dragon Museum research officer Leigh McKinnon said large dragon parades in the Chinese diaspora, including in other towns like Ballarat, began to be seen in the 1880s and 1890s. He said they may have been a show of "cultural pride" and a response to some of the harsher laws being introduced against Chinese people in Australia and in North America.
That included the Chinese Immigration Act in Victoria which limited the entry of Chinese people to one person per 10 tons of ship cargo and imposed a £10 head tax on every Chinese person entering a Victorian port.
Loong at a parade in 1961. Source: Supplied / Golden Dragon Museum
Mr McKinnon said the participation of the Chinese community in the 1901 royal procession appeared to show them identifying as citizens of the new Commonwealth of Australia.
"So I think it was very much staking their place, even in a country [where] one of its first acts of its new parliament was what became the White Australia policy," he said.
The Chinese arch constructed for the 1901 royal visit in Melbourne. Loong can be seen parading underneath. Source: Supplied / State Library of Victoria
Mr McKinnon said the popularity of dragon parades may also have reflected the beginnings of a more nationalist sentiment among the Chinese population in the lead-up to revolutions in China against the ruling dynasties.
"[Loong] had a very important role to play in the local Chinese community of strengthening or continuing the pride in community and cultural practices they'd inherited from their ancestral homelands."
Loong was part of a procession to help welcome the Duke and Duchess of York in 1901. Source: Supplied / Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo
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A very special dragon
There are, of course, other dragons around the world that are older than Loong, but most of them are in bad shape, with just a head or tail remaining, or even just a pair of glass eyeballs.
Loong was made around 1890 in a workshop near the city of Guangzhou in southern China and was originally 20 metres longer than he is today.
Mr McKinnon said researchers had searched for older dragons in comparable places, with similar traditions and collections but had not been able to locate a rival to Loong. Even in China, Mr McKinnon said the "history and climate" of Loong's home province of Guangdong may have made it difficult for other specimens to survive because it was more humid than towns like Bendigo.
Loong appears in a parade in 1962. Source: Supplied / Bendigo Historical Society
While the wars and upheavals in China may also have played a part, Mr McKinnon believes climate has a bigger part to play. Some of the other examples of dragons that have survived, in California and Victoria, also have drier, less humid climates. Whereas in Darwin for example, which had a similar history of traditions of lion dance and processional collections to Bendigo, there is very little material that has survived even going back to the 1970s because of the climate.
University of Melbourne conservator Dr Holly Jones-Amin said she believes Loong has survived for so many years because he is "so loved".
"He's been looked after by the Bendigo Chinese Association and he's got a son and a grandson that took over the parading from him," she said.
Holly Jones-Amin performs repairs on Loong. Source: Supplied / University of Melbourne
"That display has kept him protected and revered and respected," Dr Jones-Amin said.
"He's a living entity to the Bendigo Chinese Association, as well as recognised as living heritage by Heritage Victoria."
In 2021, the museum was awarded a Living Heritage Grant of $133,000 for conservation works to Loong.
Restoration work being done on Loong. Source: Supplied / University of Melbourne
Mr McKinnon said Loong was a reflection of the Chinese community that first brought him over from China in wooden boxes.
"In some ways he's like the community that brought him out here, and looked after him for all that time," he said.
"He has survived against the odds in many ways, just like the Chinese-Bendigo community, and perhaps the Chinese-Australian community through an era when any expression or increase of non-European culture in Australia was not looked upon kindly."
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is marked on 21 March.
Harmony Week is held from 20-26 March.
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