Helene Chung HomepageHelene Chung, a former ABC Beijing correspondent, was the first non-white reporter on Australian TV and the first female posted abroad by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A fourth-generation Tasmanian Chinese, she is an honorary research fellow at Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, and the author of Shouting from China, Gentle John My Love My Loss, Lazy Man in China and, a new memoir, Ching Chong China Girl.
Ching Chong China Girl In the tradition of Amy Tan, Ching Chong China Girl is a hilarious and bittersweet memoir of growing up different in a very eccentric but traditional Chinese family in Tasmania. Warning: Not to be read by convent girls not wearing their gloves. ‘Ching Chong Chinaman’ girls taunted Helene Chung in her Catholic school playground. An Australian-born Chinese growing up in 1950s Tasmania, Helene not only dealt with being different from her blonde-haired, blue-eyed classmates but suffered the shame of having divorced parents. And she kept a shocking secret – her mother, Miss Henry, was a nude model, who also lived in sin with a foreign devil and drove a red MG. Surviving the embarrassment of childhood, Helene discovered the thrill of the theatre, fell into journalism and travelled the world. She became the first non-white reporter on Australian TV and the first female posted abroad by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Ching Chong China Girl is a memoir filled with honesty, humour, love and loss, and gives insight into life that traverses cultures East and West.
Born in Hobart, Helene is the great-granddaughter of a Chinese miner who, like many others labouring for years in the Tasmanian tin fields, became an opium addict. An honours graduate and Master of Arts in history, she has reported for radio and television in Australia, for radio from Britain, China, Egypt and Hong Kong, and freelanced for the BBC, CBS, NZBC and Hong Kong radio. Helene is an engaging speaker on China, her life as an Australian-born Chinese from the age of assimilation to the era of multiculturalism, and her experience of love and loss.
North Melbourne Library Melbourne Athenaeum Fitted for Work DKN Financial Group Conference: Gold Coast Chinese Association of Victoria, Melbourne Launch of Ching Chong China Girl Ching Chong China Girl: From Australian Chinese to Chinese Australian Helene Chung on Writing Ching Chong China Girl: Hobart Bookshop launch of Ching Chong China Girl Helene Chung on Ching Chong China Girl
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