New Gold Mountain’s Yoson An: ‘I’m surprised it took this long’

A little-known part of 150-year-old Australian history is finally getting its due in a four-part drama.

5 min read

October 13, 2021 - 6:16PM

The gold rush western is a beloved screen genre.

From Charlie Chaplin’s starving fool to the grizzled frontier of Deadwood, the heady mix of fortune and violence has been irresistible to storytellers.

But one story that’s been absent on screen until this week is that of the Chinese miners during the Victorian gold rush — some 24,000 Chinese people digging for a new life across the gold fields of Ballarat, Bendigo, Ararat and more.

That changes this week, with the SBS drama New Gold Mountain, which takes the backdrop of the Victorian gold rush to tell a fictional murder mystery through the perspective of Chinese miners.

The story is centred on Shing, the “headman” of a Chinese mining camp, whose job it is to manage everything that goes on, including relations with the British colonialists who would rather they weren’t there.

When a white woman is found murdered near the camp, Shing’s survival instincts kick in, aware of how it will look – and the deadly consequences – if Chinese people are suspected of the crime.

“I’m surprised it took this long,” New Zealand actor Yoson An said of New Gold Mountain’s pioneering presence in Australian screen culture. “I was very happy to see that this is happening because for the longest time, stories like this have been suppressed.

“It’s predominantly told from a Chinese perspective, and it’s a period drama, a murder mystery, which I’ve never seen before – I don’t think anyone has seen before.”

New Gold Mountain Picture: SBS

An, who was born in China but grew up in Auckland, said he wasn’t taught about the contributions of Chinese miners in Australia or New Zealand.

As fate would have it, he’s had the opportunity to play in that world twice. Shortly before auditioning for New Gold Mountain, An had finished a supporting role of a Chinese miner in The Luminaries, set during New Zealand’s gold rush around the same time.

“I didn’t the know the Chinese in the 1800s were in Australia and New Zealand, I had to learn about that when the [acting] jobs came to me. So, being able to dive into that world and to learn about it has been a thrilling experience.

“Maybe I’ve got a past life in that gold rush era, and for whatever reason, I’m revisiting it as an actor.”

Shing is a self-serving, manipulative and pragmatic character. He has shades of grey. His complexity is testament to New Gold Mountain’s commitment to creating characters that are neither heroes nor villains. Most significantly, in a rarity on Australian TV, the series has a multiplicity of textured Chinese characters, played by Mabel Li, Sebastian Li, Sam Wang and Chris Masters Mah.

No one here is token.

Mabel Li and Yoson An in New Gold Mountain. Picture: SBS

The series was created by Peter Cox and produced by Kylie du Fresne and Elisa Argenzio, but the team understood it had to bring on creatives with Chinese heritage to shepherd the series.

The behind-the-scenes crew included Taiwan-born, Melbourne-based director Corrie Chen who helmed all four episodes, writer Benjamin Law, and creatives Jean Tong, Olivia Cheung and Samantha Kwang.

“I was just incredibly desperate to get on board,” Chen told news.com.au. “This is a story that’s been waiting to be told on screen, and just from a personal point of view, I was dying to see an Asian-Australian direct this story.

“I know what it feels like to be Chinese in this country. I know what it feels like when you walk out the door and the way people look at you, or the assumptions they make of you even before you start speaking.

“That experience to me, that feeling, is so specific. It’s not intellectualised or an aesthetic you can slap on. I felt for this specific story, where it was a chance to pivot and re-imagine stereotypes that Chinese-Australians have been forced to carry for a long, it was really important that the person who was leading the creative coalface of it was someone who knew what it felt like.”

Yoson An in a scene with Rhys Muldoon. Picture: SBS

An, who is best known for his role in the Disney live action remake of Mulan and for starring opposite Rachel Griffiths in Australian drama Dead Lucky, said he instantly clicked with Chen on set.

“Because we both share such a similar background, growing up, it just was an instant understanding. We were able to find nuances that we wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise.

“I think we would’ve missed a lot of nuances that would’ve been very specifically Chinese, if we didn’t have behind-the-scenes creatives working on the project.

“Although Peter Cox, who created the world, did a phenomenal job of researching down to the finest details, it’s not the same as being raised within that culture. There is a difference.”

An was able to bring his own lived experiences as a Chinese immigrant in New Zealand to inform his understanding of his character. He drew on memories of visiting his grandparents as a child, visiting altars in which he had to bow with incense.

There are two scenes in New Gold Mountain in which his character does the same, but he able to distinguish the emotionality behind his character’s state of mind through different body language during the act.

“When [Shing] rejects his culture, he just stabs the incense, but then when he’s authentically praying to his ancestors for blessings, there’s a shift within him. I channelled my experiences, took from my own personal life experience into the scene.”

New Gold Mountain also stars Alyssa Sutherland. Picture: SBS

For all the mystery of the whodunit, New Gold Mountain is show that centres the outsider experience, which also extends to characters that are female, Irish and Indigenous.

The death that drives the narrative is merely a framework to explore the conflict inherent in figuring out where you belong. Being a part of a country’s stories is part of that journey.

Chen said what it means to belong in Australia is one of the broad themes of the series.

“That’s something I’ve had to navigate my whole life, I think that’s something that any migrant in any country has to navigate,” she said. “And for a large part of my life, I think I was quite lost in terms of what my voice is as a person and in my work, trying to blend in instead of embracing my duality.

“The idea of home, it’s such a powerful word but I’ve come to realise, and New Gold Mountain was part of this realisation, that now the word home to me is an emotion, it’s a feeling.