Helene Chung brings years of experience on live radio and television to captivate her audience. A former ABC Beijing correspondent, she was the first non-white reporter on Australian TV and the first female posted abroad by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She is a fourth-generation Tasmanian Chinese, an honorary research fellow at Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, and the author of Shouting from China, Gentle John My Love My Loss, Lazy Man in China and, her latest, Ching Chong ChinA Girl (ABC Books, April 2008).

Ching Chong Ching Girl
From fruit shop to foreign correspondent

Warning: Not to be read by convent girls not wearing their gloves.

‘Ching Chong Chinaman’ girls taunted Helene Chung in her Catholic school playground. An Australian-born Chinese growing up in 1950s Tasmania, Helene not only dealt with being different from her blonde-haired, blue-eyed classmates but suffered the shame of having divorced parents. And she kept a shocking secret – her mother, Miss Henry, was a nude model, who also lived in sin with a foreign devil and drove a red MG.

Surviving the embarrassment of childhood, Helene discovered the thrill of the theatre, fell into journalism and travelled the world. She became the first non-white reporter on Australian TV and the first female posted abroad by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Ching Chong China Girl is a memoir filled with honesty, humour, love and loss, and gives insight into life that traverses cultures East and West.

Lazy Man in China (Pandanus, 2004) is the story of China over two decades – its transformation from Old Communism to New Capitalism – told in an amusing, conversational way, intertwined with a love story.

Helene Chung (pronounced: He-LANE, Chung as in HUNG) is the great-granddaughter of a Chinese miner who became an opium addict on the Tasmanian tin fields.
At the University of Tasmania Helene spent most time cavorting on stage and directing plays in the Old Nick Company. She also majored in English literature and history and graduated with history honours and as a master of arts. As a student in 1968, she interviewed a Hobart butcher who claimed to have seen the ‘extinct’ Tasmanian tiger. That first interview was broadcast on the ABC radio program AM. So began her three decades as a journalist in Australia, Hong Kong, Britain, Egypt and China.

She joined This Day Tonight (a precursor of 7.30 ReporT) in 1974, so becoming the first non-white reporter on Australian TV. On TDT in 1976 she interviewed a former university classmate she hadn’t seen for years. History teacher John Martin became the love of her life. Her husband’s death by cancer in 1993 prompted her to write Gentle John My Love My Loss (Hill of Content, 1995).

Her first book, Shouting from China (Penguin 1988) – with a 1989 edition including the democracy demonstrations – tells of her adventures and tribulations as Beijing correspondent in the 1980s. She had to shout to be heard over the telephone – unlike today’s instant clear connection.

Helene is available to talk to schools, community groups and other organisations about China, her life as an Australian-born Chinese from the age of assimilation to the era of multiculturalism, and her experience of love and loss.

Visit Helene's website for more info, http://www.helenechung.com/

Helene speaks as she writes – with crystal clarity, sensitivity to her audience, a firm grasp of her subject, and always a touch of humour.’
– Dr John Fitzgerald
Head of Ford Foundation, Beijing
Former founding Professor of Asian Studies, La Trobe University

‘With China emerging as a world power, Ms Chung’s detailed knowledge of the country, its politics and its people comes across in her articulate and amusing presentation, during which she engages with her audience in a relaxed and informal way. I have not heard better in the 25 years that I was based in Asia.’
– John W Downer, AM
Former Group Chairman, Maunsell International Consulting Engineers

‘A thoroughly professional presentation … I wish the lessons I sat through at school on modern Chinese history had been half as interesting and engaging.’
– John Crone
Former China Head, Radio Australia and Secretary, Chinese Language Teachers Association (Vic)

Lazy Man in China ‘is a China book you read through in one go ... a very intimate China reportage that is personal and conversational ... It is at once a wistful love story ... and a dialogue between [Chung] and her late partner about China.’         
– Dr Stephen FitzGerald, AO
Australia’s first Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China

‘Others have written about China today, but Lazy Man in China records the experiences and impressions of two discerning and talented observers during the past 20 years in a manner that is both memorable and thoroughly diverting, not least with the help of its many apt illustrations. This is … a fascinating, beautifully produced book.’                                     
– Professor Ralph Elliott, Canberra Times, 19 February 2005