"BAD WHITE MEN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 199, 24 August 1939, Page 9

"BAD WHITE MEN."

CAUSE OF DISGRACE.

SUE HONG BEW'S CHARGE. A STRANGE AUSTRALIAN. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 18. There is in Sydney a natural-born Australian to whom white people are foreigners, who has never learnt to speak English, because he considers it too difficult, and who blames "bad white men for having caused him to disgrace his ancestors."

This strange Australian, James Innes, otherwise Sue Hong Bew, was born at Quirindi, New South Wales, where his parents worked on a farm. His father died when he was two years old and bis mother married Soong Yee, an elderly Chinese. When he was eight, his mother died and his stepfather took him to China. There he went to a Chinese school for seven years and also worked in the rice fields. When his step-father died he came back to Australia to make his fortune. He has been working for Chinese market gardeners in Sydney and hag three times j saved his fare to go back to China, j where he has a wife and daughter, butj he has always spent the money. He hasj a Chinese half-brother at Townsville. i

Some time ago this white Chinese committed a petty theft. For this he was forgiven by his Chinese friends, who overlooked one such offence, but when he committed a second one they said he had offended the gods, H'sien, Sheng, and Tien, and declared him an outcast. Innes has now sworn before the joss sticks to reform and the Chinese have accepted him back into their community.

In an interview, through an interpre ter, afterwards he said: "My step-father was a kind and honourable man. He taught me never to smoke opium nor play pakapoo. In China he bought me

a Chinese wife named Ah Hoy. We have a little girl named Ah Quin. She is now nine years old, but I have not seen her since she was a baby. They are waiting for me in China; if I never go back they will still be waiting. "Ah Hoy is manageress of a clothing factory in Hongkong. I wrote to her five years ago and must write again this year. In China I was an honourable man like my father. In Sydney bad white men have taught me to drink. It makes me sleep and dream of China and little Ah Quin."