summed it up well. Overtly Communist and well read in communist literature, he was involved politically in the Chinese Youth League, but he also went to the temple in Glebe ('just a social gathering'), to cemetery days at Rookwood ('a bit of a picnic'), to dances put on by the Kuomintang on the last Wednesday in the month, and to church at Surry Hills. 'We all went so we could see each other'. Japan, World War II and the People's Republic In the early dark days of the 1930s, with Australia favouring the Japanese in trade and ignoring Japan's expansionary plans for China and the Pacific, the Sydney Chinese community was ever anxious to educate the rest. This was the impetus for the George Ernest Morrison Lecture established by William Liu in 1932, and for a number of books and pamphlets written to put the Chinese case. WW2 unified the Chinese community. They put on an extravagant Chinese Festival at the Sydney Showgrounds the following year, during the sesquicentenary celebrations of the arrival of Europeans in Sydney in 1788. This spectacular event got rave reviews in the mainstream newspapers. The police estimated there were 40,000 people, with another 10,000 turned away, while the Sydney Morning Herald reported that 'tramway men said they had never seen anything like the pressure of people'. This involvement of the Chinese community in 'the Sesqui' was partly about alerting Sydneysiders to China's plight and partly about raising money from the Europeans. Seasoned organiser of Chinese events Albert Cumines, of the long established Rocks firm of King Nam Jang, recalled in the 1990s that the Chinese spectacular, which 'coincided' with the sesquicentenary, was so popular that it was repeated on a following evening. 'We sold all the tickets (and) we raised enough money for the ambulance.' In the face of Japanese aggression, elements of Sydney's Chinese community made the closest political links they had ever had with sections of the mainstream community that condemned the Japanese. Left-wing unions supported boycotts of Japanese goods and waterside workers refused to load ships bound for Japan. Chinese seamen deserting Japan-bound ships were sheltered from the authorities. When workers refused to load pig iron on the Dalfram at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, in 1938, Fred Wong, who was a member of the Trades and Labor Council's 'Hands off China Campaign', collected truckloads of fruit and vegetables from the Sydney