“The surprising story of Wong Shee Ping” on ABC Radio National

This episode of ABC Radio National’s The History Listen programme aired on 11 June 2019, shortly before the The Poison of Polygamy was republished, this time round accompanied by an English-language translation. The episode focussed on the delightful discovery, made in July 2018, that the novel’s author Wong Shee Ping has Australian descendants. Three of his grandchildren—Mr. Glenn Mar, Dr. Phillip Mar and Ms. Lea Berry, née Mar—participated in interviews for the programme. For myself, and the other members of The Poison of Polygamy team, it felt wonderful to now be sharing a connection to the novel with the author’s family.

To be perfectly honest, though, there were elements of the finished production that I was quite uncomfortable with. Examples, apart from some errors of fact, included the undisclosed use of simplified and theatrically accented readings from my English translation, and the playing from 21 minutes 22 seconds in of the Chinese Communist national anthem, as background music for a segment about the author’s return to China as the Chinese Nationalist Party representative for Australasia at the Party’s first National Congress in 1924. Wong Shee Ping was and continued to be a staunch supporter of the Chinese Nationalist Party, which fought against the Chinese Communists in the Chinese Civil War, and this hardly seemed respectful to his memory. However, my unease was tempered by a recognition that others enjoyed the programme, and that it was celebrating the novel’s story and had succeeded in attracting much beneficial attention.