太平天国运动前后,我国华南有许多农民被卖到或者被骗到美洲和澳洲做苦力,有的开金矿,有的修铁路,在异国他乡遭受白种人的歧视和迫害。十多年前,为了了解澳洲历史上所谓“白色澳大利亚”政策时期华人的遭遇,曾在当地图书馆里寻觅和翻阅白人写的一些历史资料。有一本书中记录的两件事至今记忆犹新。第一件事情是,澳州北部靠近赤道的昆士兰州金矿上没有白种人,全是华人,因为金矿处在热带雨林之中,气候十分闷热,而 Before and after the Taiping Rebellion, many peasants in South China were sold or fooled into the coolies of the Americas and Australia, some of them opened gold mines, some repaired railroads, and suffered white discrimination and persecution in foreign lands. More than a decade ago, in an attempt to understand what happened to the Chinese during the so-called “White Australia” policy in Australia's history, they searched and read some of the historical materials written by whites in local libraries. There are two things recorded in a book still fresh in my memory. The first thing is that there are no white people on the Goldfields in Queensland near the equator in the northern part of Australia, all of them Chinese, because the gold mine is in a tropical rainforest and the climate is very hot