Mixing Race The Kong Sing Brothers and Australian Sport
Abstract
Little research exists on the participation of Chinese in Australian sport in the colonial or Federation periods. This article examines the involvement of three, hitherto-unknown, amateur sportsmen in late nineteenth-century Sydney—the Kong Sing brothers. Otto, Ophir, and George Kong Sing, sons of a Chinese shopkeeper and white Australian mother, participated in several sports over two decades, enjoying varying degrees of success and recognition. Adopting a mixed-race perspective, this article examines their identity in various contexts as Chinese, Australian, and Anglo-Chinese in order to explore the complexities of racial identity and the lived Chinese Australian experience.