Is Bendigo in China?

Last weekend I hopped the train to Bendigo, a regional Victorian town best known for its 19th century goldrush that drew prospectors from all over the world. A large group of diggers came from Guandong in China’s south. They packed their culture with them which is so well preserved that it had me wondering if a ticket to China was worth it.

In the 1800s Bridge St looked very different. It was legal to import opium until 1900 and the street boasted no less than three opium dens. Today it’s home to the Golden Dragon Museum, named for characters like Sun Loong (New Dragon) the world’s longest dragon who romps the streets every year at the Easter festival. It’s studded with 90,000 tiny mirrors to repel evil spirits. Wandering the museum’s creepily lifelike wax figures you’ll see Buddhist and Confucian relics because these Chinese immigrants got out before the Culture Revolution crushed their beliefs in China. Further out of town there’s also the Joss House, a tiny temple to Guan-Di, a god of many portfolios including war, literature and, in his spare time, patron of bean curd sellers.

Outside the garden is a modeled on Beijing’s Imperial Garden with a few more nods to Buddha. There’s a large dragon screen much like the one we saw recently in Datong, that repels even more of those pesky evil spirits. As I looked at the two dragons squabbling for a pearl, I was struck by how this ‘immigrant culture’ had outlasted what remained at home. Okay so you'd have to wait 700 years for it to be as historic as the original, but this Chinese Australian construction is unique in its own way.