Ching Chong China Girl

The Age

Saturday May 31, 2008

Steven Carroll

Ching Chong China Girl

Helene Chung

ABC Books, $32.95

WE KNOW THE FACE OF former ABC Beijing correspondent Helene Chung. Here is the story of how this Australian-born Chinese Catholic school girl became, in many ways, emblematic of the changing nature of Australia. She may have been teased at school in Tasmania (like her mother) with the old "Ching Chong" rhyme and she had to put up with small-minded prejudice about her divorced parents (and her mother who was not only an artist's model but lived "in sin") but the spirit, energy and clear-sighted intelligence that eventually took her to journalism - via the theatre - and on to such iconic programs as This Day Tonight, then to become the ABC's correspondent in Beijing, shine through in this engaging memoir. Its tone is conversational, often wry and humorous but the passages dealing with the deaths of her husband and sister are told in simple prose that accentuates the loss. Like so many memoirs, it's a portrait of the subject's journey through life, the bright and the bleak, and the times themselves.

© 2008 The Age

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