Saturday, February 17, 2007
History of Choy Lee Fut as told by Chen Yong Fa,
http://www.clfsd.com/hist.html My great-great-grandfather, Chan Heung was from the village Ging Mui2 in the district of Ngi Sai, the county of Sun Wui, in the Kwuntung province. From the age of seven, Chan Heung was taught martial arts by his uncle/village elder3, Chan Yuen Wu.
Ka-Shue
LYNDA CHANWAI-EARLE Ka-Shue (Letters Home) Playwright’s Note I am Eurasian by ethnicity, a fourth-generation New Zealander. Based on the Chinese side of my family (the Tung clan of BakChuen), Ka-Shue uncovers some of the last 150 years of a buried history in New Zealand. There has been a noticeable absence of a Chinese voice in this country. Perhaps it is because the Chinese community has been producing its own work for its own people, but this work has been largely inaccessible to a wider public until now. The material has often been spoken in Chinese, and not produced for mainstream audiences. In writing Ka-Shue I have focused on the personal and domestic lives of three generations of a Chinese family. Ka-Shue spans the cultures of New Zealand and China, encompassing a broad sweep of the political events between the two countries as a backdrop for the personal dramas of the characters. This play is dedicated to my family. I am aware that this play is close to the bone as far as my family history is concerned, but I hope in the end that I have attempted a universal story about immigration, about the systematic alienation of particular immigrant groups. For me Ka-Shue is also a story about immigrant women, struggling to make for themselves a sense of home and identity. The play works most effectively with minimal props and furniture, which remain on stage throughout. Descriptions such as the venetian blinds of the hotel windows or Paw paw’s graveside can be lit areas played out to the audience. Ka-Shue is set in several time frames—1939, 1941, 1945, 1959, and 1989—and the scenes weave seamlessly between them. KaShue can be played by one actor or a full cast (as a series of monologues). If one actor is used, it is preferable to use only one costume and have the actor portray character changes through voice and body. Time and place can be evoked with the help of live music (preferably
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Assassin jailed for at least 17 years
10:30AM Thursday February 15, 2007
Tam Yam Ah was killed in 2005
Related nzherald links:
Read the full story behind the murder
A hitman who murdered a triad enforcer with a single shot to his chest will spend at least 17 years in jail.
Wan Yee Chow, 55, was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years today when he appeared for sentencing in the High Court in Auckland.
A jury last year found him guilty of murdering Tam Yam Ah, 37, in July 2005.
Tam, a long-time criminal and triad enforcer, was shot dead outside his karaoke bar in Symonds Street, Auckland.
Chow drove from the Hutt Valley to Auckland, donned black clothes and headgear, then shot Mr Tam.
Prosecutor Kieran Raftery told the court the murder was "a cold-blooded Chinese gang killing".
Tam arrived in New Zealand in the late 1980s.
He beat his wife, the court heard, and she retaliated by drugging him and hitting him with a meat cleaver.
She was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder after her lawyer argued she suffered battered women's syndrome.
Tam has previously served at least two jail terms for a variety of offences.
Tam Yam Ah was killed in 2005
Related nzherald links:
Read the full story behind the murder
A hitman who murdered a triad enforcer with a single shot to his chest will spend at least 17 years in jail.
Wan Yee Chow, 55, was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years today when he appeared for sentencing in the High Court in Auckland.
A jury last year found him guilty of murdering Tam Yam Ah, 37, in July 2005.
Tam, a long-time criminal and triad enforcer, was shot dead outside his karaoke bar in Symonds Street, Auckland.
Chow drove from the Hutt Valley to Auckland, donned black clothes and headgear, then shot Mr Tam.
Prosecutor Kieran Raftery told the court the murder was "a cold-blooded Chinese gang killing".
Tam arrived in New Zealand in the late 1980s.
He beat his wife, the court heard, and she retaliated by drugging him and hitting him with a meat cleaver.
She was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder after her lawyer argued she suffered battered women's syndrome.
Tam has previously served at least two jail terms for a variety of offences.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Obituary: Eric Wong Ming
Saturday January 20, 2007 By Nigel Murphy and staff reporter
Eric Wong Ming, greengrocer, poll tax immigrant. Died aged 102.
Eric Wong Ming arrived in New Zealand in 1920, a time when Chinese immigrants were required to pay £100 as a poll tax or entry tax, the equivalent of about 10 years' wages.
They were also required to pass an education test that consisted of reading 100 words in English.
Eric raised the money by using land inherited from his father as collateral. He also took a three-month intensive English language course.
On his arrival he paid over the money and then prepared to sit his test. As he remembered it when he was 99, the Customs officer chose page one of the Fourth Pacific Reader, the standard fourth-form text in New Zealand. Eric had just begun, "Long ago, men wandered from place to place ... " when the officer stopped him, saying, "That's enough, you've passed."
Eric eventually found work in a Wellington fruit shop with a family from Jung Seng county in Guangdong, near his birthplace.
The intense racism of New Zealanders caught him so much by surprise that he considered returning home. But he realised New Zealand offered the chance of a better life so he accepted the challenge and stayed.
In 1930 Eric returned to China to get married. A number of women were paraded for his choice, but his eye fell on Wong Low She.
They married and Eric stayed in his home village of Gwa Liang for two years, but because there was no work, and because the immigration of Chinese women to New Zealand had been stopped in 1925, he returned here alone.
In 1937 he set up his own fruit shop in Blenheim and in 1940 his wife was finally able to join him, as a refugee from the Japanese war in China.
This respite was for two years only, as the law then stated that after that time the women and children, including any born in New Zealand during the two years, had to return home.
In 1947 the Government reluctantly decided to allow the refugees to stay.
Eric and his wife had four sons between 1940 and 1948. They moved to Auckland when Eric retired in 1964. He is survived by three sons.
Eric Wong Ming, greengrocer, poll tax immigrant. Died aged 102.
Eric Wong Ming arrived in New Zealand in 1920, a time when Chinese immigrants were required to pay £100 as a poll tax or entry tax, the equivalent of about 10 years' wages.
They were also required to pass an education test that consisted of reading 100 words in English.
Eric raised the money by using land inherited from his father as collateral. He also took a three-month intensive English language course.
On his arrival he paid over the money and then prepared to sit his test. As he remembered it when he was 99, the Customs officer chose page one of the Fourth Pacific Reader, the standard fourth-form text in New Zealand. Eric had just begun, "Long ago, men wandered from place to place ... " when the officer stopped him, saying, "That's enough, you've passed."
Eric eventually found work in a Wellington fruit shop with a family from Jung Seng county in Guangdong, near his birthplace.
The intense racism of New Zealanders caught him so much by surprise that he considered returning home. But he realised New Zealand offered the chance of a better life so he accepted the challenge and stayed.
In 1930 Eric returned to China to get married. A number of women were paraded for his choice, but his eye fell on Wong Low She.
They married and Eric stayed in his home village of Gwa Liang for two years, but because there was no work, and because the immigration of Chinese women to New Zealand had been stopped in 1925, he returned here alone.
In 1937 he set up his own fruit shop in Blenheim and in 1940 his wife was finally able to join him, as a refugee from the Japanese war in China.
This respite was for two years only, as the law then stated that after that time the women and children, including any born in New Zealand during the two years, had to return home.
In 1947 the Government reluctantly decided to allow the refugees to stay.
Eric and his wife had four sons between 1940 and 1948. They moved to Auckland when Eric retired in 1964. He is survived by three sons.
Delamere believed applications honest, lawful - lawyer
11:45AM Thursday February 08, 2007
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere
Related nzherald links:
Former minister in court for fraud
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere believed applications made to the Immigration Service on behalf of his Chinese migrant clients were honest and lawful, a defence lawyer told a jury today.
Delamere denies 20 fraud charges over applications made to the Immigration Service between 2001 and 2004 by his immigration consultancy, Tuariki Delamere and Associates.
On the second day of the trial in the High Court at Auckland, defence lawyer Paul Dacre, in his opening address, asked the jury to think about what was going on Delamere's mind when he made the applications.
"Was it some cynical approach or a genuine application?"
Mr Dacre said he disputed the Crown's case that the scheme was dishonest.
"Mr Delamere believed what he was doing was honest and also lawful."
Attempts to paint a scheme with a Chinese business partner as a "money-go-round" was a cynical ploy.
"It was perfectly legal, perfectly legitimate."
Mr Dacre said it was not a system that was designed to get around the Immigration Service. Documents used by Delamere were not dishonestly produced with the intention of misleading third parties, he said.
Delamere "at all times was acting legitimately, honestly and in his clients interests".
The trial is continuing
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere
Related nzherald links:
Former minister in court for fraud
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere believed applications made to the Immigration Service on behalf of his Chinese migrant clients were honest and lawful, a defence lawyer told a jury today.
Delamere denies 20 fraud charges over applications made to the Immigration Service between 2001 and 2004 by his immigration consultancy, Tuariki Delamere and Associates.
On the second day of the trial in the High Court at Auckland, defence lawyer Paul Dacre, in his opening address, asked the jury to think about what was going on Delamere's mind when he made the applications.
"Was it some cynical approach or a genuine application?"
Mr Dacre said he disputed the Crown's case that the scheme was dishonest.
"Mr Delamere believed what he was doing was honest and also lawful."
Attempts to paint a scheme with a Chinese business partner as a "money-go-round" was a cynical ploy.
"It was perfectly legal, perfectly legitimate."
Mr Dacre said it was not a system that was designed to get around the Immigration Service. Documents used by Delamere were not dishonestly produced with the intention of misleading third parties, he said.
Delamere "at all times was acting legitimately, honestly and in his clients interests".
The trial is continuing
Festival goes nuts over bananas
Wednesday December 13, 2006
Roseanne Liang and her husband Stephen Harris. Photo / Kelly Blizard
Auckland film-maker Roseanne Liang has won the Best Director For a Documentary Award at the Asian First Film Festival in Singapore.
The festival celebrates excellence for first-time producers, directors, cinematographers, writers, actors and documentary makers from the Asian region.
Liang's 55-minute documentary, Banana in a Nutshell, is about her falling in love with a Pakeha New Zealander and getting her parents to accept their relationship. Liang was born in New Zealand to Chinese parents. She graduated from Auckland University with a masters degree in screen writing and directing.
Banana in a Nutshell has also been awarded best documentary in the medium-length category at the NZ International Documentary Festival, and was a finalist in the AirNZ Screen Awards category for Best Digital Feature. Liang was the recipient of the SPADA New Film-maker of the Year Award last year.
Roseanne Liang and her husband Stephen Harris. Photo / Kelly Blizard
Auckland film-maker Roseanne Liang has won the Best Director For a Documentary Award at the Asian First Film Festival in Singapore.
The festival celebrates excellence for first-time producers, directors, cinematographers, writers, actors and documentary makers from the Asian region.
Liang's 55-minute documentary, Banana in a Nutshell, is about her falling in love with a Pakeha New Zealander and getting her parents to accept their relationship. Liang was born in New Zealand to Chinese parents. She graduated from Auckland University with a masters degree in screen writing and directing.
Banana in a Nutshell has also been awarded best documentary in the medium-length category at the NZ International Documentary Festival, and was a finalist in the AirNZ Screen Awards category for Best Digital Feature. Liang was the recipient of the SPADA New Film-maker of the Year Award last year.
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