The Southern Hemisphere's largest and most significant Chinese cultural library will be based in Ballarat after a donor purchased a floor in one of Sturt Street's heritage buildings.
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The Xin Jin Shan Chinese Library Inc. has moved into 200 Sturt Street after installing over 125 bookshelves to house a collection of books, manuscripts and other cultural documents, numbering over 250,000 items in total.
Chairman of the Xin Jin Shan Chinese Language and Culture School (XJS), Mr Haoliang Sun, purchased the property to house the school's library.
Xin Jin Shan translates as 'New Gold Mountain', the colloquial name bestowed on Victoria in the Nineteenth Century.
XJS has schools across Melbourne.
Charles Zhang, vice-president of Ballarat Chinese-Australian Cultural Society, says XJS has around 7000 students and is the biggest Chinese language community school in the world.
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He says Mr Sun has had a property in Ballarat for some years, but now wants to move the school's collection to the city from its present home in Mt Waverley.
"Our idea is to (change) the collection from the single-purpose book library and upgrade it into a centre for the Chinese cultural studies," Mr Zhang says.
"Mr Sun wants to give the building back to the community, so it can be used free-of-charge. There are 16 rooms in the building, so if there are artists or people who want to have a meeting, they will be able to use it, including other ethnic communities - I have already spoken to the Filipino community, for example."
Mr Zhang says the rooms in the library will be named for professors who were also donors to the collection and its maintenance. He says the collection is largely made of items of which there are few copies, and many are the only existing manuscript .
"That's why this is a special collection," he says.
"Most of them one only (and are) very, very valuable - not for money, it's the value of the books itself, the history. Ideally, once we get some volunteers, this collection will be open to the public by the end of June."
Mr Zhang says the Xin Jin Shan library Inc is now a separate entity from the XJS school, which in 2020 was found to have a record of financial mismanagement and poor record keeping after an ABC report forced the Victorian Department of Education and Training to release an audit exposing delays in tuition fees being banked, inadequate record-keeping, lack of staff employment contracts and unidentifiable and possibly conflicting transactions.
"I believe that our school has conscientiously implemented the relevant provisions of the Department of Education on the use of funds," Mr Sun said in 2020, according to the ABC.
He thanked the auditors "for pointing out the problems in our school's financial management, which we have and are improving."
A Victorian Department of Education and Training spokesperson told The Courier the department was committed to ensuring the integrity of the Community Language Schools Funding Program and took any instances of non-compliance very seriously.
"The Department audited Xin Jin Shan Chinese Language and Culture School, Eastern Chinese Language School and Western Chinese Language School in 2019 and 2020, and identified a number of issues requiring improvement," they said.
"The three language schools have since confirmed these issues have been addressed."
The schools are awaiting another audit outcome.
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