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Billy Sing
William ‘Billy’ Sing was born in 1886 to an English mother and Chinese father. He and his two sisters were brought up in Clermont and Proserpine, in rural Queensland. He was one of the first to enlist in 1914 and at Gallipoli became famous for his shooting prowess.
In his new novel, Billy Sing, Ouyang Yu embodies Sing’s voice in a magically descriptive prose that captures both the Australian landscape and vernacular. In writing about Sing’s triumphant yet conflicted life, and the horrors of war, Yu captures with imaginative power what it might mean to be both an outsider and a hero in one’s own country. The telling is poetic and realist, the author’s understanding of being a Chinese-Australian sensitively informs the narrative.
The result is a short novel of great beauty that impacts way beyond its size. A novel that is searing yet fresh, delicate yet brutal, a masterful habitation of another life. Billy Sing is arguably one of Ouyang’s finest works to date.
‘Australian son of both “Mother England” and “Father Cathay”, Billy Sing is a Gallipoli hero and a modern killer, beloved and abandoned, admirable and deluded, lost and found. In his most concentrated, accessible and humane novel yet, Ouyang Yu brings a figure from remote history fully alive with intensity and tragic depth, lets us hear his voice and feel his pain.Ouyang restores Billy Sing to an Australian history that has threatened to erase him, but leaves us fundamentally unsettled about just what that history has been and might be.
In his new novel, Billy Sing, Ouyang Yu embodies Sing’s voice in a magically descriptive prose that captures both the Australian landscape and vernacular. In writing about Sing’s triumphant yet conflicted life, and the horrors of war, Yu captures with imaginative power what it might mean to be both an outsider and a hero in one’s own country. The telling is poetic and realist, the author’s understanding of being a Chinese-Australian sensitively informs the narrative.
The result is a short novel of great beauty that impacts way beyond its size. A novel that is searing yet fresh, delicate yet brutal, a masterful habitation of another life. Billy Sing is arguably one of Ouyang’s finest works to date.
‘Australian son of both “Mother England” and “Father Cathay”, Billy Sing is a Gallipoli hero and a modern killer, beloved and abandoned, admirable and deluded, lost and found. In his most concentrated, accessible and humane novel yet, Ouyang Yu brings a figure from remote history fully alive with intensity and tragic depth, lets us hear his voice and feel his pain.Ouyang restores Billy Sing to an Australian history that has threatened to erase him, but leaves us fundamentally unsettled about just what that history has been and might be.
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First published January 1, 2017
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About the author
Ouyang Yu
41 books8 followersOuyang Yu is a poet based in Melbourne and since his first arrival in April 1991 in Australia, he has published quite a few poems. His eighth novel, All the Rivers Run South, is forthcoming with Puncher & Wattmann in 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 18, 2023
Billy Sing: A Novel, by Ouyang Yu, tells the story of William Edward Sing (1886-1943), Australia’s most famous marksman.
Born to a Chinese father and an English mother in rural Queensland, Sing was a subject of racial prejudice. While suffering insults and obscenities from others, he discovered guns, earning prizes and admiration in kangaroo and target shooting.
Ouyang’s poetic prose is raw and brutal, depicting Sing as being stubborn and ambitious. “I come from nowhere. But I’ll go somewhere,” Sing announces. “In fact, I’ll fail every subject at school just to let my free heart rejoice. I’d rather become part of my gun and shoot.”
When the war broke out in 1914, Sing was one of the first to enlist. During the Gallipoli Campaign, he took at least 150 confirmed kills. Contemporary historians put his tally at close to 300 kills.
“Thought was no hindrance to action, at least not on my part, as my eyes were quick and my right index finger quicker,” Sing confides.
“The bullet, long contained in the magazine, brewing, like wine, and brooding, was impatient enough to rush out towards its target, the ‘popping head’, and blasted it to pieces. I, with my own eyes, could see the instantaneous blooming of a flower where the head had been, death revealing its full blood-stained neck, in all its pride.”
He ponders the horrible truth of war: “Would there be someone like me on the Turkish front who mourned the passing of his mate shot dead by me?”
“My heart softened almost as instantly as it hardened. I mustn’t allow myself to wax sentimental just because the same thing happened to our enemy. This was war. For one to live, the other had to die. There was no compromise. The more you killed of your enemy, the less likely your mates were to die. Simple as that.”
Sing was dubbed “The Assassin” and “The Murderer” by his comrades, and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916. In military records, he was commended “for conspicuous gallantry at Anzac, as a sniper”. His triumphs were reported in British and American newspapers.
Yet Sing is presented as a conflicted man – a hero and a killer, both beloved and despised, defiant yet disillusioned, found but forever lost. He reflects:
“The war was a bloody bore. We killed for no purpose. To save myself and my comrades, I had to kill and kill well. I could never escape the thought that I had killed another William or Edward or Sing on the other side, one with a family of mother, father, sisters and brothers, speaking a language I couldn’t understand.”
This is not an easy read, the description perhaps too intense, the portrayal of an Australian son of “Mother England” and “Father Cathay” too honest for the faint-hearted. But it is also a story of courage and unyielding confidence, that of a man who sought to be, and had indeed become, “a gun that shoots right through history”.
Ouyang Yu’s Billy Sing; A Novel was published by Transit Lounge in April 2017. You can find a print copy of the book in your local library.
Note: This book review was originally published under the title “An Australian son of war” by Ranges Trader Star Mail, Easter Special Edition, on March 30, 2021, Page 4.
Born to a Chinese father and an English mother in rural Queensland, Sing was a subject of racial prejudice. While suffering insults and obscenities from others, he discovered guns, earning prizes and admiration in kangaroo and target shooting.
Ouyang’s poetic prose is raw and brutal, depicting Sing as being stubborn and ambitious. “I come from nowhere. But I’ll go somewhere,” Sing announces. “In fact, I’ll fail every subject at school just to let my free heart rejoice. I’d rather become part of my gun and shoot.”
When the war broke out in 1914, Sing was one of the first to enlist. During the Gallipoli Campaign, he took at least 150 confirmed kills. Contemporary historians put his tally at close to 300 kills.
“Thought was no hindrance to action, at least not on my part, as my eyes were quick and my right index finger quicker,” Sing confides.
“The bullet, long contained in the magazine, brewing, like wine, and brooding, was impatient enough to rush out towards its target, the ‘popping head’, and blasted it to pieces. I, with my own eyes, could see the instantaneous blooming of a flower where the head had been, death revealing its full blood-stained neck, in all its pride.”
He ponders the horrible truth of war: “Would there be someone like me on the Turkish front who mourned the passing of his mate shot dead by me?”
“My heart softened almost as instantly as it hardened. I mustn’t allow myself to wax sentimental just because the same thing happened to our enemy. This was war. For one to live, the other had to die. There was no compromise. The more you killed of your enemy, the less likely your mates were to die. Simple as that.”
Sing was dubbed “The Assassin” and “The Murderer” by his comrades, and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916. In military records, he was commended “for conspicuous gallantry at Anzac, as a sniper”. His triumphs were reported in British and American newspapers.
Yet Sing is presented as a conflicted man – a hero and a killer, both beloved and despised, defiant yet disillusioned, found but forever lost. He reflects:
“The war was a bloody bore. We killed for no purpose. To save myself and my comrades, I had to kill and kill well. I could never escape the thought that I had killed another William or Edward or Sing on the other side, one with a family of mother, father, sisters and brothers, speaking a language I couldn’t understand.”
This is not an easy read, the description perhaps too intense, the portrayal of an Australian son of “Mother England” and “Father Cathay” too honest for the faint-hearted. But it is also a story of courage and unyielding confidence, that of a man who sought to be, and had indeed become, “a gun that shoots right through history”.
Ouyang Yu’s Billy Sing; A Novel was published by Transit Lounge in April 2017. You can find a print copy of the book in your local library.
Note: This book review was originally published under the title “An Australian son of war” by Ranges Trader Star Mail, Easter Special Edition, on March 30, 2021, Page 4.
January 18, 2019
Something differs from Oriental stereotype in this book.
After I've finished reading Ouyang and John Hamilton's books, I decided to make a comparison. To me, the novel is more attractive as several philosophic concepts such as 'mirror stage to identification' and 'existentialism' were being wildly implemented into the writing. The quotes in the prologue, 'dust' reminds me of the Buddhist concept 'āgantuka' (literally as 'guest dust' in Chinese) with the same meaning--Upset and Oscillation.
The question is, how come the 'bullets' affect Billy's eye? or do the bullets mean 'guest dust' that Billy struggles to wipe it out throughout his entire life? and to release them by shooting the target? or maybe vice versa?
I intend to believe it's a symbol which reflects the actual situation of Chinese-Australian's hard-time period in 1900s, plus the drought led economic crisis and White-Australia policy.
The author also cited poems refers to Li Bo in a raining night scene. After I checked his introduction on wiki, the work 'Drinking Alone by Moonlight' (Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó) caught my eyes which I prefer to apply it to turn his wife(I mean Billy's mother, Mary) on. It relates to the 'Waltzing Matilda' theme, a quite popular Aussie bush poem that helps to localize the story. On this point, I guess Aussies and Chinese are sharing the same feeling.
Quite interesting monologues and the book about a digger has much more potential to dig out. Recommend
After I've finished reading Ouyang and John Hamilton's books, I decided to make a comparison. To me, the novel is more attractive as several philosophic concepts such as 'mirror stage to identification' and 'existentialism' were being wildly implemented into the writing. The quotes in the prologue, 'dust' reminds me of the Buddhist concept 'āgantuka' (literally as 'guest dust' in Chinese) with the same meaning--Upset and Oscillation.
The question is, how come the 'bullets' affect Billy's eye? or do the bullets mean 'guest dust' that Billy struggles to wipe it out throughout his entire life? and to release them by shooting the target? or maybe vice versa?
I intend to believe it's a symbol which reflects the actual situation of Chinese-Australian's hard-time period in 1900s, plus the drought led economic crisis and White-Australia policy.
The author also cited poems refers to Li Bo in a raining night scene. After I checked his introduction on wiki, the work 'Drinking Alone by Moonlight' (Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó) caught my eyes which I prefer to apply it to turn his wife(I mean Billy's mother, Mary) on. It relates to the 'Waltzing Matilda' theme, a quite popular Aussie bush poem that helps to localize the story. On this point, I guess Aussies and Chinese are sharing the same feeling.
Quite interesting monologues and the book about a digger has much more potential to dig out. Recommend
July 19, 2017
I've read some of Ouyang's poetry, and this, the first novel of his that I've read, fits in well with it. It's a short, elliptical, dreamlike novel based on the life of the half Chinese Billy Sing, who became Australia's most famous sniper at Gallipoli. There's a harsh edge to Ouyang's poetic prose so that you wouldn't exactly call it "beautiful" writing, but I think this is a fascinating read and very well written.
March 2, 2020
There are many admirable traits to the novel, not least its shining a light on an oft overlooks part of the Australian (indeed all 'western') immigrant story. You can tell immediately that the author is a poet, as there's a lyrical, dreamlike quality that can on occasion distract.
That said, some of the language felt quite anachronistic, and the titular hero - a real life figure - felt decidedly modern. All up, I liked it.
That said, some of the language felt quite anachronistic, and the titular hero - a real life figure - felt decidedly modern. All up, I liked it.
April 4, 2017
Billy Sing is a novella from Ouyang Yu, a multi-award-winning Chinese Australian author and poet whose work I have read and (mostly) enjoyed before. Ostensibly the story is based on the real-life story of the famed Gallipoli sniper, William Edward Sing who received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘conspicuous gallantry’ and the Belgian Croix de Guerre for his service on the Western Front.
As in much of his other fiction and poetry, Ouyang Yu in this first-person narrative focusses on bi-racial identity in this fictionalised version of Sing’s life. Born in the late 19th century to a Chinese father drawn by the gold rush to Australia from Shanghai, the fictional Sing has a complex identity forged by two cultures. His mother was English, proud of the fact that she was born ‘near’ Shakespeare’s home town, as if that conferred some kind of prestige on her own birthplace. His father’s stories – and his frequently cited advice – derive from his ancestry, and are passed on orally. His mother’s stories come from the rich tradition of English literature, but Sing is not interested in reading. Bookended between the accounts of racist incidents in his lonely childhood and adolescence, and a brief account of his post-war life and a troubled marriage, is Sing’s account of his war service.
Appropriately for a story that is focussed so much on the death and destruction of WW1, Sing lives between a world of ghosts and of nightmare.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/04/b...
As in much of his other fiction and poetry, Ouyang Yu in this first-person narrative focusses on bi-racial identity in this fictionalised version of Sing’s life. Born in the late 19th century to a Chinese father drawn by the gold rush to Australia from Shanghai, the fictional Sing has a complex identity forged by two cultures. His mother was English, proud of the fact that she was born ‘near’ Shakespeare’s home town, as if that conferred some kind of prestige on her own birthplace. His father’s stories – and his frequently cited advice – derive from his ancestry, and are passed on orally. His mother’s stories come from the rich tradition of English literature, but Sing is not interested in reading. Bookended between the accounts of racist incidents in his lonely childhood and adolescence, and a brief account of his post-war life and a troubled marriage, is Sing’s account of his war service.
Appropriately for a story that is focussed so much on the death and destruction of WW1, Sing lives between a world of ghosts and of nightmare.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/04/b...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews