Fook Shing

Fook Shing
Portrait of Fook Shing published in Britain's The Graphic, November 1880
Born	Guangdong, China
Died	2 April 1896 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Resting place	Melbourne General Cemetery

Fook Shing ( – 2 April 1896) was a Chinese Australian community leader in colonial Victoria, known for being the longest-serving Chinese member of the colony's detective force, and for policing Melbourne's Chinatown, where he lived throughout his career.

Life

Born and raised in Guangdong, Shing joined tens of thousands of his countrymen in migrating to Australia at the height of the Victorian gold rush in the early 1850s. On the Bendigo goldfields, Shing took an active role in community life by serving the colonial government as a local "headman" (or "Chief of the Chinese"), campaigning against anti-Chinese sentiment, and running a touring theatre company. Having attained wealth through a number of business interests, he became a naturalised Briton and, in 1857, married Ellen Mary Fling.

The Victoria Police relied on Shing as an interpreter, and in the 1860s he was officially appointed by the force, at first as an informant and later as the principle detective of Melbourne's Chinatown, centered in Little Bourke Street. Shing lived and served there for the next twenty years while also taking up regular assignments in country Victoria and occasionally being sent interstate to pursue Chinese suspects.

Among European colonists, Shing was widely considered an authority on life in Chinatown, and served as a guide through the area for a number of journalists, including bohemian Marcus Clarke, who featured Shing in his "Night Scenes in Melbourne" articles for The Argus.

Fook was never promoted above his entry rank as a detective, possibly due to inherent racial bias, but also due to his growing reputation as an opium addict and "an inveterate gambler" at Chinatown's Fan-Tan houses. Despite increasingly sensational media attention, as well as colleagues calling into question his work ethic, Shing's superiors frequently overlooked any moral failings and even paid for his supply of opium, seeing it as necessary to obtain information from the Chinese. They occasionally assigned Shing to cases beyond those pertaining to the Chinese community, including the hunt for Ned Kelly and his gang.

By the 1880s, Fook's drug use had taken a toll on his health, and in 1886 he was retired as unfit for further service. Shing traveled back to China and spent a few years there before returning to Melbourne, where he died in 1896. He was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.