Australian Dictionary of Biography

Studio portrait of Gladys Sym Choon

Courtesy of the family.

Gladys Sym Choon (1905–1991), businesswoman, was born on 14 December 1905 at Unley, Adelaide, fourth child of Chinese-born parents ‘John’ Sym Choon, market gardener and storekeeper, and So Yung Moon. Raised as an Anglican, Gladys was educated at Flinders Street School and Adelaide High School, where she was ‘an extremely bright student’ (Russack 1921) and excelled at commercial studies. From her earliest years, she was surrounded by business and trade, growing up above her parents’ grocery store on the east end of Rundle Street. Sym Choon & Co sold fruit and vegetables as well as nuts, ginger, tea, and fireworks imported from China, Hong Kong, and other places. The family was well-known and respected in the community, though this did not protect them from racist attacks and the provisions of the White Australia policy. They each had to apply for certificates of exemption from the dictation test before leaving the country; Gladys was granted one in early 1921 when she went to China for three months with her father and younger brother, Gordon.

The following year, Gladys’s father died on a visit to China, leaving his wife, and eldest son Thomas George, to manage the family business. They began to stock fancy oriental wares and gradually took advantage of the availability of adjacent shopfronts to expand and diversify. Soon the Sym Choon siblings were all running successful stores on the same block. The brothers held a monopoly on fireworks and also sold nuts; Gladys and her older sister Dorothy opened the China Gift Store. Described as a ‘wonder store of 1,000 surprises’ (Advertiser 1931, 32), and ‘the only one of its kind in the city’ (Advertiser 1936, 26), it sold luxury Chinese goods, including lingerie, embroidery, napery, and ceramics. The sisters frequently travelled overseas to purchase new stock and visit family and friends. In Adelaide they enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle and Gladys later remembered that they stocked ‘lovely things’ only the wealthy could afford, ‘very exclusive things’ (Sym Choon 1990).

Such was the Sym Choon sisters’ success that they opened a second store in Regent Arcade in 1929. They cannily traded on their perceived exoticism and used their business acumen and family reputation to attract customers. In accordance with Chinese tradition, their mother carefully selected spouses for her children from other prominent Chinese-Australian families. In 1930 Dorothy married and Gladys took over as sole manager of the store. She was later introduced to Edward ‘Teddy’ Chung Gon, a Tasmanian silk merchant of Chinese heritage, through mutual friends in the textile trade. The couple married on 12 August 1939 in a glittering cross-cultural ceremony at St Paul's Church of England. The occasion was somewhat marred by a feud between her brothers, which had erupted in 1930 when Gordon had eloped with his brother’s fiancée; George did not attend Gladys’s wedding.

The newlyweds moved to Hobart, where Teddy’s family ran the Pekin Gift Store. Gladys appointed trusted managers to oversee her Adelaide stores, returning often with new stock from her travels to places as diverse as Malaya (Malaysia) and the Soviet Union. With her family and business responsibilities divided between Adelaide, Tasmania, and China, she sometimes felt as if she were managing three different lives. In Tasmania she raised three children, Mei-Ling, Kuo-Weng, and Robert, while maintaining an active business and social life. This included supporting charitable causes such as the Chinese Comforts Fund, Hobart Rotary Club, and Kennerley Boys’ Home, of which her husband was governor. They also hosted dinner parties and events for prominent Tasmanians and interstate visitors at their Sandy Bay home.

When Sym Choon’s husband died in 1967, she took over the family business with her sons. She continued to travel and manage the China Gift Shop from afar and was also a foundation member of the Chinese Community Association of Tasmania Inc. (1969). In 1976 she suffered a heart attack and subsequently gave away most of her holdings to her children. The Adelaide store at 235 Rundle Street was gifted to her daughter, who managed remotely for several years until it closed in August 1985. The premises was later sold to Joff Chappel and his fashion designer partner Razak Mohammad, who honoured her long connection to the store by naming their business Miss Gladys Sym Choon. The property, with its iconic shopfront, was heritage listed in 2001. Survived by her three children, Gladys died on 16 October 1991 at her daughter’s home in Melbourne. Her funeral was held in Launceston, and she was buried alongside her husband in Carr Villa cemetery.

Described as ‘a thoroughly modern woman for her time’ (Collins and Eccleston 2019, 263), Sym Choon had a keen sense of taste and was always impeccably turned out. She was at home in both traditional Chinese dress and the latest Western fashions, wearing exquisite fabrics and on-trend designs with ease and glamour. Travel was something she enjoyed, and she delighted in stocking the best Chinese fancy goods in her stores. Though often in the public eye, and a formidably energetic businesswoman and member of Adelaide and Hobart society, she was a private, composed, and confident person who valued her independence. In 2020 the artist Peter Drew featured photographs of Dorothy and Gladys in his iconic Aussie poster series. The family was commemorated in a small lane in Adelaide, running parallel to Rundle Street, which was named Sym Choon Lane.