Cross the Great Water

Synopsis

As the nineteenth century draws to a close Chinese immigrant miners face deplorable conditions in the Australian gold rush. Panning for gold many die due to disease and exploitation at the hands of their European overseers. HUNG, a Chinese free miner in Ballarat, falls in love with MON SING, a beautiful Chinese woman brought to Australia by her father and orphaned as a teenager, and now the escort of the European mine henchman JOHN LAWLOR. Uneducated and illiterate in her mother tongue, it is HUNG who teaches her to read Chinese and decipher the secrets of the I Ching, the ancient book of divination which holds the key to their emancipation. Using a south-pointer, a compass-like instrument from China, HUNG carefully draws out the broken and unbroken lines of the book’s final hexagram: ‘Before Completion’, a collection of lines that will mark their lives forever.

Inviting the wrath of LAWLOR the couple marry and MON SING falls pregnant. As the European miners instigate a riot against their Chinese counterparts, HUNG and MON SING improvise a plan to steal LAWLOR’S fishing boat and navigate with the help of the south-pointer across the ocean to Fiji where they hope to prosper in safety, free of exploitation. But as MON SING, pregnant, makes for the boat she is shot by LAWLOR, and the I Ching and south-pointer she cradles fall to the ground. Bleeding profusely from her wound and aided by HUNG, MON SING reaches the small fishing boat, they set sail and are soon beyond LAWLOR’S reach. However, MON SING’S wound is too deep and the shock induces her labour. MON SING dies soon after giving birth in the open ocean to a baby girl, FUNG YEE. HUNG and his baby daughter reach Fiji becoming the first Chinese inhabitants of the islands and HUNG vows one day to return MON SING’S bones to China in accordance with ancient tradition.

Setting up his own general store in the colonial capital of Levuka, HUNG makes a modest yet adequate living, all the while mourning his lost love and guarding vigilantly against corruption of his Chinese values which he tries to instill in his daughter FUNG YEE. Despite his best efforts FUNG YEE is inspired by the European nuns that educate her, and she chooses to enter the world of the convent and herself become a nun. Devastated by her decision, HUNG tells her never to forget her origins, and gifts her the south-pointer to help her navigate her way home to her Chinese roots.

Having taken the name SISTER CATHERINE, FUNG YEE is chosen to become the next mother superior of the convent on the island of Makogai, where the Sisters care for victims of leprosy. Just as she is to take her final vows, JACK HAMILTON-SYKES, the outspoken and reformist son of the Colonial Secretary of New Zealand arrives on the island. Born and raised in Hong Kong, during his father’s Asian posting, JACK speaks Cantonese and brings with him a Chinese copy of the I Ching from which he is teaching himself to write. The two soon fall in love turning SISTER CATHERINE’S world upside down, forcing her to confront her true Chinese identity in a world dominated by the British Empire – a racist world far beyond the cloistered life of the convent. Torn between her devotion as a nun and her love for JACK, who is already promised to another, SISTER CATHERINE is led on a path of rediscovery of her Chinese identity and traditions. With the south-pointer and I Ching as her guide she succeeds in an epic journey to ‘cross the great water’ to win back her love and return to China, the land of her forefathers.

Told in flashback, the love story of HUNG and MON SING runs parallel to the SISTER CATHERINE and JACK story, informing CATHERINE’S decisions as she grapples with a personal journey of discovery and an inter-racial love that dare not be. Only by ‘crossing the great water’ as the I Ching prescribes can CATHERINE redefine the limitations of her time in order to honor a love that comes only once in a lifetime.

Cross the Great Water is inspired by the true story of the writer’s family. Her great-great grandfather was the first Chinese man in Fiji who fled the Australian gold rush and sailed for one month across the Pacific to reach and finally settle in Fiji. Her mother was a Chinese Anglican nun and her father a missionary from New Zealand. The film pays homage to the writer’s forebears – true pioneers in spirit and in love.