The Goon Yee Tong is an old Chinese Australian district association of Chinese from the district of Tung Koon. The Goon Yee Tong association, established by Tung Koon natives to organise bone repatriation and engage in charitable endeavours, survives to this day.[1]
Early history of the Goon Yee Tong
The Goon Yee Tong was established in the early gold-rush era. Sydney-based Chinese merchant Way Kee (c.1824-1892), who is reported to have been treasurer of the Goon Yee Tong from 1857 to 1889, had commenced business in the Rocks by 1871.[2] He conducted business with stores on the NSW goldfields and is named as a creditor in the 1872 insolvency of Sofala storekeeper, John Ah Sue.[3]
Way Key [sic] signature in Jahun Ah Sue insolvency file.
By 1876, Way Kee leased 164-168 Lower George Street, through which he sold imported Chinese goods through country stores in NSW, including at Bourke, Bega and Hillston and in Stanthorpe in Queensland. Jane Lydon writes:
Through his firm he sponsored Chinese migrants, housed new arrivals, provided information and assistance—especially with bureaucratic procedures—and channelled job-seekers to the market gardens or country towns.
Way Kee also remitted gold to Hong Kong, remitting some £7000 to £8000 in gold to Hong Kong in 1891.[4]
“The late Mr Way Key”, From a portrait by H. J. Maguire, George Street North, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 17 September 1892. p. 1
According to Mei-fen Kuo, the Goon Yee Tong was not just a native-place association but a merchant club which limited its membership to those who could afford to meet its substantial membership fees. Giving evidence at the New South Wales Royal Commission of 1892, leading Goon Yee Tong member, Yuen [Yen] Tah, claimed that new members paid a lump sum on entry that never fell below £1. Although it was claimed that Koong Yee Tong had 600 members, the controlling power within the Tong lay with wealthy businessmen.”[5]
An important function of the Goon Yee Tong was arranging the repatriation to China of the bones of Chinese who had died in the colonies. From 1875 the Goon Yee Tong established contacts with the Tung Wah Hospital in Hong Kong, which established a network of connections linking native villages in China and the overseas Chinese community through a series of associations.[6] In December 1881 and January 1882, warrants were issued for the Kung Yee Tong [sic] of 144 George Street to remove fourteen Chinese to China. This was the first identified/instance of mass exhumations at Rookwood Necropolis being organised by a Chinese district society.[7]
When Way Kee died in 1892, his funeral was attended by about 3000 Chinese mourners, representing all major clan associations:
A mile (1.6 km) in length, with elaborate banners and two brass bands, it moved from his house along George Street to the Town Hall, then north to Smith’s Wharf. Here a shrine had been erected for a Chinese ceremony before his body was placed aboard the Tsinan for return to China. His wife, and five sons of his first marriage, survived him.[8]
Funeral of Mr Way Kee passing down York Street. Photo in “Funeral of Mr. Way Key.” Illustrated Sydney News 17 September 1892.
Goon Yee Tong rules
In 1902, the Goon Yee Tong revised and published new rules in the Tung Wah Times newspaper, (noting that other pre-established rules will continue as before):
As translated by Ely Finch, the revised rules in summary state:
(1) New Tung Koon arrivals need to pay the association £1 on arrival. Whereas persons returning after a visit back to China did not previously need to pay again, owing to a diminished number of new arrivals, reducing association funds, from now on returners will also need to pay £1. The same applies to Tung Koon people coming not from China but foreign places.
(2) Hitherto, the association had provided all returners to China aged 60 or over with £2, regardless of means. The gift will now only be bestowed on the poor, and will require a letter of application supported by two firms.
(3) Under the previous rule, persons who did not pay the £1 within time were required to pay double. There shall be an amnesty on this fine to allow persons who have not yet paid to do so ASAP.
(4) A census of Tung Koon people is being conducted by means of a fundraising appeal. People must make pledges within the following month. Persons who are mean and do not any pledge should not expect to receive the Association’s protection should they meet with trouble. A long list of donors to the appeal follows the article.[9] In September 1904, a list of 150 names of those who donated to the Goon Yee Tong was published in the Tung Wah Times.[10]
In NSW in the early twentieth century, people from Tung Koon were still concentrated in rural towns such as Tamworth, Newcastle, Bathurst, Camden and Liverpool, where they mainly worked as market gardeners or storekeepers.
The Goon Yee Tong clubhouse at 54 Dixon Street
As Tung Koon and Tsang Shing are adjacent counties in Canton, a close relationship, was forged between the Goon Yee Tong, representing people from Tung Koon, and the Loon Fook Tong, the district association for people from Tsang Shing. In 1907 funds were raised to form a joint association, the Loon Yee Tong, and purchase land in Dixon Street. On 11 February 1916, land title for two blocks of land at 50-54 Dixon Street was transferred to Goon Yee Tong representatives, Chee Sung and Gilbert Yet Ting Quoy and Loon Fook Tong representatives Fung Nam and James Kwong Sing. That same year, a building application was made to the Council and a plan submitted by G. L. Quoy for a three-storey building at 50-54 Dixon Street to house three stores and dwellings.[11]
Plan – 50-54 Dixon Street Sydney, G L Quoy, three stores and dwellings, 1916(01/01/1916 – 31/12/1916), [A-00580341]. City of Sydney Archives.
Gilbert Yet Ting Quoy was a leader of the Tung Koon community and manager of produce business, Lee Sang & Co., which occupied the Municipal building at 90 Hay Street. The pediment of the building at 50-54 Dixon Street shows the date of its completion as 1916.
Pediment of 50-54 Dixon Street showing the date 1916. Photo Source: Juanita Kwok, January 2024.
In 1918, a building application was approved to make alterations to 54 Dixon Street, to build partitions to create six rooms on the first and second floor of 54 Dixon Street by Council. Leslie Chang told Mavis Gock-Yen:
“In the early days there were also dormitories in the upstairs of the Dixon Street buildings for Tung Koon and Tsang Shing people passing through Sydney. Under the constitution of the society the shops can only be leased to a Tung Koon person at a very reasonable rental”.[12]
On the ground floor of 54 Dixon Street in 1920 was the China Trading Co., which was advertised as “Importers, exporters, Eastern Merchants and Indent Agents”. An advertisement from 1921 showed the company sold imported rice, ginger, sauce, peanuts, silks and teas and sought to buy shark fins and beche-de-mer. A Chinese restaurant called Lean Sun Low which had opened on the ground floor of 54 Dixon Street by December 1922, advertised banquets, meals, Chinese cakes, barbequed meats and welcomed birthday, marriage and other celebrations.[13]
Chinese sign on the exterior of 54 Dixon Street reads “Lean Sun Low”. Photo source: Juanita Kwok, January 2024.
In the 1950s, the Lean Sun Low Café was run by the Lai family. Alan Lai, who had arrived in Sydney as a teenager in 1951 and lived in Dixon Street, was at the time running Lean Sun Low… He recalled that in the 50s, girls would walk past holding their noses, and the only Aussies who came in were often drunk and reluctant to pay the bill.”[14]
Amongst the Chinese community, Lean Sun Low was very popular for its wonton (short soup). Irene Moss, born in Dixon Street in 1948, recalled her childhood:
Mum and Dad used to work quite hard packing tomatoes. And sometimes when Mum didn’t have time to cook a meal, she would give me a couple of bob and, because she knew the people at Lean Sun Low pretty well, I’d go in there and they’d know what to get me – a little bowl of wonton soup. I used to do that quite a lot.[15]
Fashion designer Jenny Kee, whose father was a produce agent at the markets, also recalled going to the Lean Sun Low Café after visiting her father’s office upstairs at the markets in the early 1950s. “On the way home, we always stopped by the Lin [sic] Sun Low Café to have our billy cans filled with a savoury rice porridge called juk.”[16]
A 1959 photograph titled “Chinese in Sydney” shows the street number 54 at the top of the glass door. The restaurant in the photograph is Lean Sun Low.
Chinese in Sydney, October 1959/ Photographs by Ivan. Source: Mitchell Library.
Lance Lai’s father Lai Kum Hung was in his early twenties when he was sponsored to come Australia around 1954. Lance’s mother Eileen Hung Wah Lai arrived in Australia when she was fourteen. There were many people like the Lai family, who moved from their villages to Hong Kong and then to Australia, and on arrival lived for cheap rent at 52 and 54 Dixon Street until finding a place to rent in the suburbs. According to Lance Lai, his father Lai Kum Hung became an elder in the community and was President of the Goon Yee Tong in the 1980s.[17]
The Lean Sun Low Café continued operating into the early 1990s when an application was made to build a new shop front for the restaurant. In 2000, the restaurant operating across both 52 and 54 Dixon Street, was called the Eastern August Moon.
The ground floor of 54 Dixon Street is presently leased for retail and dining whilst the Goon Yee Tong Ltd occupies Level 1 of 50 Dixon Street, Haymarket. Its website describes the association as:
A registered non-profit Chinese society based in Sydney, Australia. It was founded over a century ago by Chinese migrants from the district of Dongguan, Guangdong province in southern China.[18]
The current arrangement is that Goon Yee Tong has a sublease from Loong Yee Tong for 50 Dixon Street and Luen Fook Tong has a similar arrangement for 52 Dixon Street.
Signs are painted in Chinese on the exterior of 50-54 Dixon Street. The signs read from right to left:
東莞公義堂
東增聯義堂
增城聯福堂
They translate, respectively, to: Tung Koon Goon Yee Tong, Tung-Jaang Loong Yee Tong, and Tsang Shing “Loon Fook Tong”.[19]
Chinese signs on the exterior of 50-52 Dixon Street. Photo source: Juanita Kwok, January 2024.
According to Terri McCormack, during renovations of the building in 1997-8, significant records relating to Chinese exhumations were discovered. These include documents relating to exhumations made in Locksley (near Bathurst) and Cootamundra.[20] These are important records for understanding the Goon Yee Tong and with the co-operation of the Goo Yee Tong committee these documents could be accessed, photographed and digitised for public access.
In late 2023, Hector Abrahams Architects (HAA) were engaged by the City of Sydney to investigate the history and potential significance of three buildings in Haymarket, including 50-54 Dixon Street. HAA worked in co-authorship with Our Chinese Past President, historian Dr Juanita Kwok, who was engaged to conduct research and provide contextual histories of the buildings and advise on their significance and management. Following the development of the historical research reports, HAA was engaged to undertake a heritage assessment of all three sites which recommended that all three sites be heritage listed. On 15 December 2025, City of Sydney Councillors unanimously approved a planning proposal to add the three buildings to the City’s Local Environment Plan and on 24 April 2026, all three buildings were formally listed as heritage items under Schedule 5 of the Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2012. The heritage inventories for each new listing will soon be available from the NSW online heritage database.
Were you your family members of the Goon Yee Tong? If so, Our Chinese Past would love to hear from you. Email us at ourchinesepast.gmail.com
[1] The Chinese Australian Herald, 27 December, 1902, 5, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/169055770
[2] Jane Lydon, ‘Way Kee (1824–1892)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/way-kee-13240/text7145, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 5 August 2026.
[3] Juanita Kwok, The Chinese in Bathurst: Recovering Forgotten Histories, PhD thesis, Charles Sturt University 2019, citing State Archives of NSW: Supreme Court of NSW; NRS 13654, Insolvency files 1842-1887, [9451] 10954 Insolvency file John Ah Sue, 1872.
[4] Jane Lydon, ‘Way Kee (1824–1892)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography.
[5] Mei-Fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban elites, newspapers and the formation of Chinese-Australian Identity, Melbourne, Monash University Publishing, 2013, 21.
[6] Kuo, 22.
[7] Terri McCormack, Quong Sin Tong Monument No, 1 General Cemetery, Rookwood Cemetery Rookwood, Sydney, NSW 2141 Conservation Management Plan Volume II (History Report), 36.
[8] Jane Lydon, ‘Way Kee (1824–1892)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography.
[9] “雪 梨 埠東 莞 公 義 堂 童 訂成 規 勸 稍 助 公 尤 庫啟” Tung Wah Times (Sydney, NSW : 1901 – 1936) 20 December 1902: 1 (Supplement to the TUNG WAH TIMES). Web. 5 Aug 2026 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article227924065>. Summary translation by Ely Finch on 17 February, 2024.
[10] Terri McCormack, Quong Sin Tong Monument CMP, 48.
[11] Hector Abrahams Architects – Heritage Assessment Report – 50-54 Dixon Street for the City of Sydney, Attachment B.
[12] Thelma and Leslie Chang, “In a Nutshell” in Mavis Gock-Yen, South Flows the Pearl, ed. Siaoman Yan and Richard Horsburgh, Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2022, 47.
[13] Hector Abrahams Architects – Heritage Assessment Report – 50-54 Dixon Street for the City of Sydney, Attachment B.
[14] Shirley Fitzgerald, Red tape gold scissors: The story of Sydney’s Chinese, Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1997, p. 149, citing Graham Shirley.
[15] Annette Shun Wah and Greg Aitken, Banquet: Ten Courses to Harmony, Sydney, Doubleday, 1999, p. 130.
[16] Chinese Community of Sydney in the Past, Facebook post by Anthony Ah Kee, 29 May 2018, accessed 9 February 2024, (1) Chinese Community of Sydney in the past | Jenny Kee describes her childhood impressions of Haymarket Chinatown in the early 1950s: | Facebook
[17] “Lance Lai Interviewed by Christopher Cheng for the Australians with Chinese Heritage Oral History Project.” By Christopher Cheng, 2023, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3183559394/listen.
[18] Hector Abrahams Architects – Heritage Assessment Report – 50-54 Dixon Street for the City of Sydney, Attachment B.
[19] Ibid. Translations by Ely Finch
[20] Terri McCormack, Quong Sin Tong Monument Conservation Management Plan, 50.