Unbroken commitment : Fred Wong, China, Australia and a world to win

![CDATA[Arthur Gar Lock Chang was asked to donate an artefact to the Chinese Historical Museum in Beijing. The required object was to symbolise the dignity of working Chinese in Australia. Arthur sent a soiled, threadbare canvas apron once worn by market gardeners, barrowmen and greengrocers in the Haymarket, the working world of Sydney’s Chinatown. For Arthur, the apron represented the industriousness, earthiness and integrity of Chinese labour. It was also given in memory of a man with whom Arthur worked respected and admired: Fred Wong. During the crowded dozen years before a New China was born - as the Old China was convulsed by war, death and destruction and as patriotic resistance to Japanese militarism deepened - the lives of Arthur Gar Lock Chang and Fred Wong were immersed in struggles to assist the countrymen of their ancestral home to secure a better life.2 Wong Gar Kin, or Fred Wong, the son of poor Cantonese peasants, was Arthur Gar Lock Chang’s political mentor. Twenty years Arthur’s senior, the plain speaking Wong was a driving force in a number of broad, popular Chinese organisations formed in Sydney as expressions of cultural resistance and social advance. But who was Fred Wong? And why is he part of Australia’s Chinese heritage?]]