Sing Kee Jang and Co., £10 10/; Ah Chee. £10 10/: Thomas Quoi, £5 5/; Wang Chee Hop, £3 3/; James Ah Kew, £3 3/; Wing Lee, £2 2/; Harry Wong. £2 2/: How Chee, £2 21; Ching Tan. £1 If; Charles Chiek. £1 1/; Chow Kee, £1 11; Sam Ha'pepau, £1 1/: Ming Kinn, £1 If; Ah Foo £1 1/; Jan Leung, £1 If; Chang Pack. £1 1/; Sing Kee, £1 If; .Along Kinn. £1 If; Ching Gee Tim. £1 1/; Peter Tooey. £1 If; Kwang Heng Veil. £1 If; S. Quoi, £1 1/: Quong Sang. £1 1/; Hop Sing. £1 11/6; Hop Lee, £1 1/; Wong Gong. £1 1/: Yap Sam, £1; Wang How, £1 1/; Lum Pee. £1 11; Tong Loy, £1 1/: Lum Gee. 10/0; Ah Nui. £1 1/; Bak Chow, 10/; Hum Log. 10/; Chee Ping, 10/; All Wong. 10/6: Ah Pen. 6/: Ah Pang, 5/; Yan Heng. 5/; Chong Him San Nui.; Sun Yung Moy. Wai Nui, 10/0: James Ah Ting. 10/0: Charles Wah, 10/0: Sum Yang, 10/0: Mong Rum. 10/: Chou Cane, 10/0; Ah Yen. 10/6; Kinn Sing, 10/0; Wong Quln, 10/6: Sai Nui, 10/0: Chum Sing, 5/; San Por. 10/; Wang Wong 1.0/0; Wong Coev, 10/0: Say Quing, 5/; Say Hing, 5/; Chum Sing. 5/: Can Lang. 5/: Sem Maw. How Tack, 5/; Ah Poy. 5/; Tong Ah Doon, 3/: Tie Wah. 5/: Tim How. 3/: Ah Kay, 5/: Ah Hay. Yee Sing, 5/; Ah Quiri. 3/; Ching Yong ITee, 2/0: Chen Kee, :l; Joe Pay. 2/0: Ah You. 3/: Jen Sing Pong. 2/0; Ah Ling. 2/6; Ah Kei. 2/6: A Jen, 1/: Ah Hag, 2/: Chow Yen, 2/: Ming Him, 10/: Ah Wing;, Yet Lee, 3/; San Gee. 2/: Ah Chow.
CHINESE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HOSPITAL.
Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 58, 9 March 1903, Page 5
Sunday, June 26, 2011
ORIENTAL BUSINESS METHODS.
CHINAMAN'S FAILURE DUE TO EUROPEAN'S OPPOSITION - SIDELIGHTS ON ORIENTAL BUSINESS METHODS.
AUCKLAND, This Day. The fact that a European fruiterer started business in opposition to a Chinese was given at a meeting of creditors at Hamilton as the principal reason for the latter's failure. The bankrupt was Leong Ming, trading as Wing On and Co., of Hamilton. Bankrupt's schedule showed that approximately £450 was owing to unsecured creditors, and £30 to secured creditors, while his assets wers assessed at approximately £179, leaving a deficit of £880.
In the course of the meeting, the interpreter stated, in reply to the Deputy. Official Assignee, that, judged from the European standpoint, Chinese business methods were very crude. They borrowed and lent large sums of money without any security other than by word of mouth. One Chinese would assist another to his last resources, and would not ask for any receipt or other written recognition, if the man failed to pay what he had borrowed the lender would know not to lend him any money in the future. Debts were hereditary, and many of the Chinese in New Zealand were at present working off debts incurred several generations previously. They only submitted accounts once a year, and it was considered lucky if a, man could discharge his obligations before the New Year:
Dealing with the question of Chinese trading under names other than their own, the interpreter said that if a Chinese was not successful while trading under one name he took' it as a bad omen, and in his next venture tried some other name. The interpretation of names also was taken into consideration by an Oriental when starting in business. Such a name as "Wah Lee" or "Ming Lee," meaning small or very small profits, was considered unlucky by sonic, while others thought it would bring in custom by tempting buyers. The meeting resolved, "That the creditors deem it advisable that steps be taken by the Government to have some system of registration of Chinese trading names instituted as a protection to the trading community." No particular resolutions concerning bankrupt were passed. Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 27 May 1925, Page 4
AUCKLAND, This Day. The fact that a European fruiterer started business in opposition to a Chinese was given at a meeting of creditors at Hamilton as the principal reason for the latter's failure. The bankrupt was Leong Ming, trading as Wing On and Co., of Hamilton. Bankrupt's schedule showed that approximately £450 was owing to unsecured creditors, and £30 to secured creditors, while his assets wers assessed at approximately £179, leaving a deficit of £880.
In the course of the meeting, the interpreter stated, in reply to the Deputy. Official Assignee, that, judged from the European standpoint, Chinese business methods were very crude. They borrowed and lent large sums of money without any security other than by word of mouth. One Chinese would assist another to his last resources, and would not ask for any receipt or other written recognition, if the man failed to pay what he had borrowed the lender would know not to lend him any money in the future. Debts were hereditary, and many of the Chinese in New Zealand were at present working off debts incurred several generations previously. They only submitted accounts once a year, and it was considered lucky if a, man could discharge his obligations before the New Year:
Dealing with the question of Chinese trading under names other than their own, the interpreter said that if a Chinese was not successful while trading under one name he took' it as a bad omen, and in his next venture tried some other name. The interpretation of names also was taken into consideration by an Oriental when starting in business. Such a name as "Wah Lee" or "Ming Lee," meaning small or very small profits, was considered unlucky by sonic, while others thought it would bring in custom by tempting buyers. The meeting resolved, "That the creditors deem it advisable that steps be taken by the Government to have some system of registration of Chinese trading names instituted as a protection to the trading community." No particular resolutions concerning bankrupt were passed. Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 27 May 1925, Page 4
Saturday, June 25, 2011
The Search for Wong Ham Hee
The Mission to search for the grave of:
Wong Ham Hee 黄咸熙 aka 月初 from Satow, Zengcheng, China
Poll Tax
Wong Ham Hee
L24/30 654
Arrived 30/11/1920
Arrived from Canton
Age 22
Former Residence Canton
Ship Ulimaroa from Sydney
No Photo
Arrived Wellington
100 pound
Finger Prints
Newspapers Past shipping list - returning from Sydney to Auckland 1930s.
Arrivals TUESDAY- MAUNGANUI FROM SYDNEY. The Union Company's' iritercolonial steamer Maunganui arrived in the stream at 6.10 a.m. to-day from Sydney and: berthed at about 10 o'clock at No. 1. North Queen's Wharf to discharge her passengers, mails and cargo. The weather was fine for the trip across the Tasman, and the voyage generally uneventful. The Maungunui had on board twenty-five racehorses, which included the well-known racers Nightmarch, True Shaft; Cimabue, and Flicker, the remainder being yearlings. The cargo included transhipments from the following vessels :—Ormond, Marella, Talleyrand, Madras Maru, Kiwitea, Mooltan, Themistocles, Macedon, Bendigo, Koranui, Anchises, Karoola, St. Albans, Aagtekerk, and Caprera. The following passengers were on board: Wong Ham Hee, Wong Git Way, and 86 steerage LATE SHIPPING Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 105, 6 May 1930, Page 11
The second arrival was in1937. He passed away 16/11/1962 suffering from lung TB.
His address was Mr. A. Wong, Eastern co 240 Cuba St, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Son 黄建华 Wong Geen Wah
His step son's name is 周奇峰. (Joe Kee Fung)
WONG Albert - Aged 64 - Auckland - Folio 5062 died 16 November 1962 - suffering from lung TB.
Immigration Case Files has Wong Ham Hee ABKF 6794 W5585/1329 Dated 1938 in Wellington.
The search is concluded:
WONG, YIT CHOR (ALBERT)
Plot : PUBLIC BURIAL A Row 1b, Plot 60
Interment Type: Burial
Title: MR
Surname : WONG
Given Names: YIT CHOR (ALBERT)
Age : 64
Gender : Male
Occupation: LABOURER
Date Of Death : 16-Nov-1962
Date Of Cremation : N/A
Date Of Burial : 20-Nov-1962
Funeral Director : C LITTLE & SONS LIMITED
Head Stone Details : N/A (None)
Account paid by Mr Chin, Wah Jang
Wong Ham Hee 黄咸熙 aka 月初 from Satow, Zengcheng, China
Poll Tax
Wong Ham Hee
L24/30 654
Arrived 30/11/1920
Arrived from Canton
Age 22
Former Residence Canton
Ship Ulimaroa from Sydney
No Photo
Arrived Wellington
100 pound
Finger Prints
Newspapers Past shipping list - returning from Sydney to Auckland 1930s.
Arrivals TUESDAY- MAUNGANUI FROM SYDNEY. The Union Company's' iritercolonial steamer Maunganui arrived in the stream at 6.10 a.m. to-day from Sydney and: berthed at about 10 o'clock at No. 1. North Queen's Wharf to discharge her passengers, mails and cargo. The weather was fine for the trip across the Tasman, and the voyage generally uneventful. The Maungunui had on board twenty-five racehorses, which included the well-known racers Nightmarch, True Shaft; Cimabue, and Flicker, the remainder being yearlings. The cargo included transhipments from the following vessels :—Ormond, Marella, Talleyrand, Madras Maru, Kiwitea, Mooltan, Themistocles, Macedon, Bendigo, Koranui, Anchises, Karoola, St. Albans, Aagtekerk, and Caprera. The following passengers were on board: Wong Ham Hee, Wong Git Way, and 86 steerage LATE SHIPPING Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 105, 6 May 1930, Page 11
The second arrival was in1937. He passed away 16/11/1962 suffering from lung TB.
His address was Mr. A. Wong, Eastern co 240 Cuba St, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Son 黄建华 Wong Geen Wah
His step son's name is 周奇峰. (Joe Kee Fung)
WONG Albert - Aged 64 - Auckland - Folio 5062 died 16 November 1962 - suffering from lung TB.
Immigration Case Files has Wong Ham Hee ABKF 6794 W5585/1329 Dated 1938 in Wellington.
The search is concluded:
WONG, YIT CHOR (ALBERT)
Plot : PUBLIC BURIAL A Row 1b, Plot 60
Interment Type: Burial
Title: MR
Surname : WONG
Given Names: YIT CHOR (ALBERT)
Age : 64
Gender : Male
Occupation: LABOURER
Date Of Death : 16-Nov-1962
Date Of Cremation : N/A
Date Of Burial : 20-Nov-1962
Funeral Director : C LITTLE & SONS LIMITED
Head Stone Details : N/A (None)
Account paid by Mr Chin, Wah Jang
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Brothers in arms gallery
http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/157346/brothers-arms-gallery
WONG, William (Bill) (Chiu Wai). Of Dunedin. 218221 Pte 1 Otago Regt. 2NZEF and 431870 P/O R.N.Z.A.F. Passed away unexpectedly but peacefully on Tuesday 14 June 2011. Beloved husband of Ivy, devoted father of Carolyn and Tong King (Ashburton), Glenys and Philip Shum (Dunedin), Brian and Fiona (Auckland), Graham and Debra (Los Angeles), cherished and very much loved Granddad of Alton and Louie, Julie-Ann, Christopher, Yvette, Maxwell and Monica, Garrett, Andrew, Michael, Nicole, and special Great Granddad of Danica. A Service for Bill will be held at First Church of Otago, Moray Place, Dunedin City at 11.30 am on Monday 20 June 2011 followed by burial at Green Park Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, a donations to the Dunedin St John Ambulance and the Dunedin Hospital would be much appreciated and left at the church service. All Messages to 32 Walton Park Avenue, Fairfield, Dunedin, 9018.
Published in The New Zealand Herald from June 15 to June 17, 2011
WONG, William (Bill) (Chiu Wai). Of Dunedin. 218221 Pte 1 Otago Regt. 2NZEF and 431870 P/O R.N.Z.A.F. Passed away unexpectedly but peacefully on Tuesday 14 June 2011. Beloved husband of Ivy, devoted father of Carolyn and Tong King (Ashburton), Glenys and Philip Shum (Dunedin), Brian and Fiona (Auckland), Graham and Debra (Los Angeles), cherished and very much loved Granddad of Alton and Louie, Julie-Ann, Christopher, Yvette, Maxwell and Monica, Garrett, Andrew, Michael, Nicole, and special Great Granddad of Danica. A Service for Bill will be held at First Church of Otago, Moray Place, Dunedin City at 11.30 am on Monday 20 June 2011 followed by burial at Green Park Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, a donations to the Dunedin St John Ambulance and the Dunedin Hospital would be much appreciated and left at the church service. All Messages to 32 Walton Park Avenue, Fairfield, Dunedin, 9018.
Published in The New Zealand Herald from June 15 to June 17, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Dominion Rd identified as Auckland's Chinatown
Auckland's Dominion Road has been identified as a potential Chinatown tourist attraction.
Parts of Dominion Road had become "distinct ethnic precincts" over the past 20 years, with Asian food shops and restaurants dominating retail space, a just-released Massey University study found.
It said that in the area from Balmoral to Kensington Ave, 78 per cent of businesses were Asia-owned (including 51 per cent by Chinese) and only 14 per cent owned by European New Zealanders. Between King Street and Valley Road, nearly half of businesses were Asian.
But for new immigrants, ethnic precincts on Dominion Road represented much more than just a place to shop, the report said.
"These areas help new migrants maintain their cultural identities by speaking a native language, eating familiar foods and meeting with others born in their homeland," the report says.
The study, Halfway House: the Dominion Road Ethnic Precinct, by the Integration of Immigrants Programme, set out to assess the contemporary character of two sections of the iconic street -- the longest straight stretch of road on the Auckland isthmus stretching nearly six kilometres from Mt Eden through Balmoral to Mt Roskill.
The fact that Auckland did not have a Chinatown, despite such a high Asian population, set it apart from most other multicultural cities in the world, said study co-author sociologist Professor Paul Spoonley, research director for the University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
- NZPA 6:47 PM Monday Jun 20, 2011
Parts of Dominion Road had become "distinct ethnic precincts" over the past 20 years, with Asian food shops and restaurants dominating retail space, a just-released Massey University study found.
It said that in the area from Balmoral to Kensington Ave, 78 per cent of businesses were Asia-owned (including 51 per cent by Chinese) and only 14 per cent owned by European New Zealanders. Between King Street and Valley Road, nearly half of businesses were Asian.
But for new immigrants, ethnic precincts on Dominion Road represented much more than just a place to shop, the report said.
"These areas help new migrants maintain their cultural identities by speaking a native language, eating familiar foods and meeting with others born in their homeland," the report says.
The study, Halfway House: the Dominion Road Ethnic Precinct, by the Integration of Immigrants Programme, set out to assess the contemporary character of two sections of the iconic street -- the longest straight stretch of road on the Auckland isthmus stretching nearly six kilometres from Mt Eden through Balmoral to Mt Roskill.
The fact that Auckland did not have a Chinatown, despite such a high Asian population, set it apart from most other multicultural cities in the world, said study co-author sociologist Professor Paul Spoonley, research director for the University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
- NZPA 6:47 PM Monday Jun 20, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
GOLDEN SHADOW ON A WHITE LAND
A VERY interesting and informative thesis was written by Kate Bagnall entitled GOLDEN SHADOW ON A WHITE LAND - An exploration of the lives of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia, 1855-1915.
This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries
read it here in pdf file Introduction, SHADOWS
http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/1412/2/02introduction.pdf
This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries
read it here in pdf file Introduction, SHADOWS
http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/1412/2/02introduction.pdf
GOLDEN SHADOW ON A WHITE LAND
A VERY interesting and informative thesis was written by Kate Bagnall entitled GOLDEN SHADOW ON A WHITE LAND - An exploration of the lives of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia, 1855-1915.
This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries
read it here in pdf file Introduction, SHADOWS
http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/1412/2/02introduction.pdf
This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries
read it here in pdf file Introduction, SHADOWS
http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/1412/2/02introduction.pdf
Pioneering spirit lives
The descendants of a 19th century immigrant have flocked to the North Shore 125 years after his arrival.
Up to 100 descendants of Thomas Wong Doo, some from as far as New York, celebrated their Kiwi and Chinese heritage with a reunion lunch at New Dragon World Restaurant in Birkenhead.
Thomas Wong Doo joined his brothers in the "New Gold Mountain" of New Zealand in 1884 when he was about 15.
"He came over in virtually his shirt and pants and took over the market garden," grandson Thomas Wong Doo III says.
Mr Wong Doo eventually returned to China and married, later bringing his wife Unui to New Zealand where she was one of the first female Chinese immigrants.
He loaned others £100 for the poll tax Chinese immigrants had to pay – the equivalent of a year’s wages, his grandson says.
Mr Wong Doo even sponsored a large group of people to migrate in the lead up to the closing date for Asian immigration in the early 1900s.
"He helped the Chinese when they came in, fed them, housed them, helped them look for jobs. The Chinese live in clans. Thomas looked after the Wong clan."
Even now family members still offer their help to new immigrants through the Kwong Cheu Club which Mr Wong Doo founded in 1923.
"To further the dynasty we’ve got to do good in this world, charity, not just looking after ourselves. It’s good for the whole family."
After making their fortunes and the family were established, the couple returned to China but were forced to come back after the Japanese invasion, Mr Wong Doo III says.
Their Chinese properties and land was lost in the Japanese invasion, civil war, and take over by communism in 1949.
The market gardens where Mr Wong Doo worked in Grey Lynn were named Chinaman’s Hill after him.
His son Norman Wong Doo went on to be Auckland Grammar School’s first Chinese student during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Norman’s son, North Shore resident Dennis Doo, says.
"He used to tell me he had his shirt ripped off his back because of racial discrimination."
Mr Wong Doo III says such behaviour was not uncommon.
"When you’re an immigrant in any country you’ve got to prove yourself, you’ve got to put up with all these things. This is what the Doo family have done – work hard, get integrated into society, get involved with charities."
- North Shore Times
BY MICHELLE LOTTER
Up to 100 descendants of Thomas Wong Doo, some from as far as New York, celebrated their Kiwi and Chinese heritage with a reunion lunch at New Dragon World Restaurant in Birkenhead.
Thomas Wong Doo joined his brothers in the "New Gold Mountain" of New Zealand in 1884 when he was about 15.
"He came over in virtually his shirt and pants and took over the market garden," grandson Thomas Wong Doo III says.
Mr Wong Doo eventually returned to China and married, later bringing his wife Unui to New Zealand where she was one of the first female Chinese immigrants.
He loaned others £100 for the poll tax Chinese immigrants had to pay – the equivalent of a year’s wages, his grandson says.
Mr Wong Doo even sponsored a large group of people to migrate in the lead up to the closing date for Asian immigration in the early 1900s.
"He helped the Chinese when they came in, fed them, housed them, helped them look for jobs. The Chinese live in clans. Thomas looked after the Wong clan."
Even now family members still offer their help to new immigrants through the Kwong Cheu Club which Mr Wong Doo founded in 1923.
"To further the dynasty we’ve got to do good in this world, charity, not just looking after ourselves. It’s good for the whole family."
After making their fortunes and the family were established, the couple returned to China but were forced to come back after the Japanese invasion, Mr Wong Doo III says.
Their Chinese properties and land was lost in the Japanese invasion, civil war, and take over by communism in 1949.
The market gardens where Mr Wong Doo worked in Grey Lynn were named Chinaman’s Hill after him.
His son Norman Wong Doo went on to be Auckland Grammar School’s first Chinese student during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Norman’s son, North Shore resident Dennis Doo, says.
"He used to tell me he had his shirt ripped off his back because of racial discrimination."
Mr Wong Doo III says such behaviour was not uncommon.
"When you’re an immigrant in any country you’ve got to prove yourself, you’ve got to put up with all these things. This is what the Doo family have done – work hard, get integrated into society, get involved with charities."
- North Shore Times
BY MICHELLE LOTTER
Doing good a Wong Doo tradition
"We work in clans, and the Wong Doo clan has been here a long time, doing what good we can."
Thomas Wong Doo III is the patriarch of a thriving network of well educated and driven Wong Doos the world over.
As a sixth generation New Zealander, his latest commendation is in the form of a Good Citizen Award from the Hobson Community Board.
From his Orakei home, lined with photographs of family and himself alongside a veritable "who’s who" in Chinese politics, he speaks about the importance of immigrants being properly
integrated into communities.
Mr Wong Doo’s family has upheld the ethics of his grandfather who arrived in New Zealand in 1884, and settled with the intention of doing what good he could.
"Our family was involved in the earliest days as interpreters. We became involved on so many levels, helping people to integrate into New Zealand. I believe it is wrong to arrive with the attitude that you are whatever culture you are and therefore superior. If you arrive here, you must adapt to this country and give back to it," he says.
There are personal recollections of times that some may never have known existed such as Auckland opium dens, and first-hand accounts of being part of drug squads, helping with communication in times of police raids. Sometimes, identifying bodies. A lot of the sort of work then was not pretty or easy.
"Luckily, Chinese people are hard-working and those who arrived worked day and night to properly educate their children. So very quickly, families have been able to improve.
"In some cases, those who worked the fields and markets produced children who were lawyers. In two generations their options were immeasurably better and able to contribute to their new country."
The 84-year-old grandfather is one of the founding members of BoysTown in New Zealand.
BoysTown helps disadvantaged children and young people up to 25 years to connect with the community.
It helps those with life challenges that include physical and emotional abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, low levels of literacy, long-term unemployment and mental illness.
"I must help my people become better citizens in their new country, but it is as important to give to the country itself and non-Chinese communities," says Mr Wong Doo, who was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for public services in the 2002 New Year honours list.
His family arrived as Chinese food merchants and textile importers and have faced their own losses and growths over many years.
He describes the death duty taxes on property as savage, and says that in a period of seven years he and his family lost their grandfather and father.
"With death duties at 45 percent each time, you can say that we lost everything with them. It took 10 years of endless days and nights to rebuild our family’s security," he says.
"I am a self-made man," he says, "who as a boy, was told that I am a lucky charm. My family would walk me through houses they wanted to clear or businesses they wanted to do well in."
Ad Feedback
In October this year the entire Wong Doo family will congregate for their first major re-union since 1997.
Mr Wong Doo says he feels lucky to be here to see that.
- East And Bays Courier BY KAREN KOTZE
Last updated 05:00 04/09/2009
Thomas Wong Doo III
Photo: AMELIA JACOBSEN
GOOD CITIZEN: Thomas Wong Doo III has been recognised for his work in the community.
Thomas Wong Doo III is the patriarch of a thriving network of well educated and driven Wong Doos the world over.
As a sixth generation New Zealander, his latest commendation is in the form of a Good Citizen Award from the Hobson Community Board.
From his Orakei home, lined with photographs of family and himself alongside a veritable "who’s who" in Chinese politics, he speaks about the importance of immigrants being properly
integrated into communities.
Mr Wong Doo’s family has upheld the ethics of his grandfather who arrived in New Zealand in 1884, and settled with the intention of doing what good he could.
"Our family was involved in the earliest days as interpreters. We became involved on so many levels, helping people to integrate into New Zealand. I believe it is wrong to arrive with the attitude that you are whatever culture you are and therefore superior. If you arrive here, you must adapt to this country and give back to it," he says.
There are personal recollections of times that some may never have known existed such as Auckland opium dens, and first-hand accounts of being part of drug squads, helping with communication in times of police raids. Sometimes, identifying bodies. A lot of the sort of work then was not pretty or easy.
"Luckily, Chinese people are hard-working and those who arrived worked day and night to properly educate their children. So very quickly, families have been able to improve.
"In some cases, those who worked the fields and markets produced children who were lawyers. In two generations their options were immeasurably better and able to contribute to their new country."
The 84-year-old grandfather is one of the founding members of BoysTown in New Zealand.
BoysTown helps disadvantaged children and young people up to 25 years to connect with the community.
It helps those with life challenges that include physical and emotional abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, low levels of literacy, long-term unemployment and mental illness.
"I must help my people become better citizens in their new country, but it is as important to give to the country itself and non-Chinese communities," says Mr Wong Doo, who was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for public services in the 2002 New Year honours list.
His family arrived as Chinese food merchants and textile importers and have faced their own losses and growths over many years.
He describes the death duty taxes on property as savage, and says that in a period of seven years he and his family lost their grandfather and father.
"With death duties at 45 percent each time, you can say that we lost everything with them. It took 10 years of endless days and nights to rebuild our family’s security," he says.
"I am a self-made man," he says, "who as a boy, was told that I am a lucky charm. My family would walk me through houses they wanted to clear or businesses they wanted to do well in."
Ad Feedback
In October this year the entire Wong Doo family will congregate for their first major re-union since 1997.
Mr Wong Doo says he feels lucky to be here to see that.
- East And Bays Courier BY KAREN KOTZE
Last updated 05:00 04/09/2009
Thomas Wong Doo III
Photo: AMELIA JACOBSEN
GOOD CITIZEN: Thomas Wong Doo III has been recognised for his work in the community.
Chairman Mao's Red Guards."
In 1966, a group of middle school students in Beijing named themselves "Chairman Mao's Red Guards."
Mao's support for them led to the name "Red Guard" being adopted by groups who were sanctioned by Mao and his supporters to "rebel against the system" all over China. Sworn to protect Chairman Mao and his revolutionary line, the Red Guards and other, older revolutionary rebels caused havoc and eventually turned on each other, resulting in great destruction and considerable loss of life.
Once the Red Guards had served their purpose of overturning the old order, these restive young people were exiled from the cities to be re-educated by the peasants in the countryside. Many did not return to the cities until the late 1970s; some never did.
For many people today, images of fanatical Red Guards dressed in old army jackets and wearing red armbands, waving copies of Mao's Little Red Book and chanting "Long Live Chairman Mao!", are all that remain of the complex, at times idealistic, and often violent student movement of the Cultural Revolution.
http://www.morningsun.org/living/redguards/redguards.html
Mao's support for them led to the name "Red Guard" being adopted by groups who were sanctioned by Mao and his supporters to "rebel against the system" all over China. Sworn to protect Chairman Mao and his revolutionary line, the Red Guards and other, older revolutionary rebels caused havoc and eventually turned on each other, resulting in great destruction and considerable loss of life.
Once the Red Guards had served their purpose of overturning the old order, these restive young people were exiled from the cities to be re-educated by the peasants in the countryside. Many did not return to the cities until the late 1970s; some never did.
For many people today, images of fanatical Red Guards dressed in old army jackets and wearing red armbands, waving copies of Mao's Little Red Book and chanting "Long Live Chairman Mao!", are all that remain of the complex, at times idealistic, and often violent student movement of the Cultural Revolution.
http://www.morningsun.org/living/redguards/redguards.html
Mao's Red Guards burned my family history
Musician Guo Yue's family was blown apart by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But while he experienced its horrors as a boy, it still formed the backdrop to his childhood
Summer music 620
Mao's Red Guards burned my family history
Musician Guo Yue's family was blown apart by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But while he experienced its horrors as a boy, it still formed the backdrop to his childhood
Juliet Rix
The Guardian, Saturday 4 June 2011
Years ago, Guo Yue's mother tried to show him family photographs, "but I wasn't interested, I wanted to go and play, I thought I could see them anytime … I wish I could see them now." There was one picture of an old Chinese man with long white whiskers – his grandfather. "My mother said to me, 'At least take one second to have a look.' I took one second, and now that is all I have – a one-second memory. All the photos were burned at the start of the Cultural Revolution. I watched them burning the family history."
On first meeting, Guo Yue seems very western. He lives in London with his British wife and children, and travels the world as a flautist. But Yue is undoubtedly a child of the Chinese Revolution, his family shaped, blown apart and re-formed by the "Thoughts of Chairman Mao".
Yue grew up in the hutongs – the narrow, ancient alleys – of Beijing. He started life with his parents, four older sisters and an older brother, in a musicians' compound of five families. His father played the erhu, the two-string Chinese violin, in an important state orchestra.
Yue was born in 1958, the year Mao launched his Great Leap Forward. The headmaster of the school where his mother taught English said she should call her new son Yue, meaning "leap forward". She didn't know then that the policy would lead to devastating famine in the countryside, to a struggle to feed her children and the death through illness of Yue's father – an event Yue barely recalls, although he does remember his father returning from concerts with sweets hidden in his violin case.
Yue's mother, Zhao Su Lin, was highly educated, a graduate in economic politics from Beijing University who spoke English, French, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin. "She was obsessed with telling me about her family," he says. "I think she wanted me to know things could be different. She was brought up near the Russian border. The family had nine servants. She had a childhood like a Tolstoy story."
Yue remembers well how the Cultural Revolution began in August 1966, "with drums and cymbals and loudspeakers and millions of pieces of paper pouring down from the sky – message papers with 'Mao say …' written on them – and people being beaten." Kites and pets were declared "petit bourgeois", and music was limited to revolutionary songs and rural tunes.
Yue remembers seeing a man hanged from a plum tree in a neighbouring compound. He had taken his own life rather than face the Red Guard.
"We did smash some windows," he admits. "We were given stones and told it was our duty to smash 'Old China'. I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't know." Many schools were damaged as they were in old temples. Yue's school was closed. Educated people were considered enemies of communism so teachers were an obvious target.
For several days, Yue's mother did not come home. She was forced to write "self-criticisms" and tortured by the Red Guard – many of them her own pupils. Yue remembers her being brought back to the compound. She could barely stand. "My sisters couldn't get my mother's shirt off. It was stuck to her back by blood and the salt they had rubbed in her wounds."
"I asked her why they beat her." She said it was because (before 1949) she had worked in a Kuomintang school. "The Red Guard kept asking her why she had not joined Mao, why she was from a rich family, why she spoke so many languages. 'What could I say,' she said, 'They would not understand. They are children.'"
"We didn't understand either," admits Yue. "Even I asked her why she didn't join Mao."
Yue's fears for his mother worsened when her headmaster – the one who gave Yue his name – was beaten to death by the Red Guard, and his mother was made to carry his body round the playground 10 times. "They made her kiss him and say, 'you go first – we will follow you.'"
What followed was that his mother was ordered to leave for the countryside for "re-education". "They called her petit bourgeois – I remember the words," says Yue.
The household now consisted of just eight-year-old Yue and his 12-year-old brother, Yi. The family had been blown apart by the Cultural Revolution. His four sisters were all away in state-sponsored jobs or at revolutionary school, working the fields far from Beijing, members of the Red Guard. Were they ever persuaded that their mother was bad, I wonder? Yue looks horrified, "No, no," he says quickly.
With no family around him, no school to go to, Yue spent his time playing his bamboo flute. "Waiting can be beautiful," he says. "I practised my flute to make it good for my mother." She was allowed a brief home visit every two or three months. Didn't Yue miss her terribly? "I felt sad," he says, "but [at least I was] not terrified … If she was being re-educated, I knew she was not being killed."
It was nearly three years before his mother returned. "She was so happy," he says. "No more digging, no more malnutrition, no more mind-torture – and she could go back to teaching at her school." It was the day of Nixon's visit to China, Yue recalls, "and we had all been told to lie and say everything in China was good!" At school again, Yue and his mother were preparing to leave the compound. "She said, 'Oh, Little Yue, I'm so happy I'm going back,' and the comb dropped [from her hand]. Half her body was paralysed and she couldn't speak. She had had a stroke."
Re-education had ruined her health and she went on to have four more strokes and spend 15 years unable to move or speak before she died in 1994.
Two of Yue's sisters and his brother used their musical talents to join state-performing companies. Kai married her long-term boyfriend, an uneducated country boy brilliant with his hands (one of Mao's chosen), and became a teacher. The other sister, Yan, used the English her mother had taught her to join the foreign-language section of the Red Army. Only Yue was left at home.
He vividly remembers one Liberation Day ("though liberation from what, we didn't know") when he and his schoolmates were involved in mass celebrations in Tiananmen Square in front of Mao Zedong himself. "It was so exciting. I was very young. Mao was the sun to me. We didn't think – didn't know – that Mao had killed a million people," he says. "These are happy memories."
At 16, Yue, too, used his music to escape being sent to a factory or the fields. He became the first flautist of a Red Army orchestra. He was now a member of the most prestigious organisation in the country – the Chinese military. The next New Year, when the Red Guard marched around the hutongs serenading model families on drums and percussion, "They played to my mother to celebrate her 'very good children'." Without fundamentally changing, Yue says, with a wry smile, "My family had turned from being 'very bad' to being 'very good'."
In 1981, Yue's sister, Yan, married a Frenchman and moved to London. She secured Yue a place at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Leaving his mother was heartrending. And his paternal aunt threw a fit at the idea of the youngest Guo leaving China but Yue knew without doubt that his mother, more than anyone, wanted him to go.
Yue occasionally gets into trouble with fellow Chinese in this country; he has been known to sing revolutionary songs. He is under no illusions about Mao's regime and is certainly no supporter of it. So why does he do it? He says simply, "This music still makes me emotional – this was my childhood."
On the Rubble of My Home, I played My Flute: A Memoir in Music and Sound by Guo Yue will be broadcast as part of Radio 3's Between the Ears series on 11 June at 9.15 pm. He also performs tales from his childhood for children as part of the Children's Bookshow, thechildrensbookshow.com; guoyuemusic.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/04/guo-yue-china-childhood-cultural-revolution?CMP=twt_gu
Summer music 620
Mao's Red Guards burned my family history
Musician Guo Yue's family was blown apart by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But while he experienced its horrors as a boy, it still formed the backdrop to his childhood
Juliet Rix
The Guardian, Saturday 4 June 2011
Years ago, Guo Yue's mother tried to show him family photographs, "but I wasn't interested, I wanted to go and play, I thought I could see them anytime … I wish I could see them now." There was one picture of an old Chinese man with long white whiskers – his grandfather. "My mother said to me, 'At least take one second to have a look.' I took one second, and now that is all I have – a one-second memory. All the photos were burned at the start of the Cultural Revolution. I watched them burning the family history."
On first meeting, Guo Yue seems very western. He lives in London with his British wife and children, and travels the world as a flautist. But Yue is undoubtedly a child of the Chinese Revolution, his family shaped, blown apart and re-formed by the "Thoughts of Chairman Mao".
Yue grew up in the hutongs – the narrow, ancient alleys – of Beijing. He started life with his parents, four older sisters and an older brother, in a musicians' compound of five families. His father played the erhu, the two-string Chinese violin, in an important state orchestra.
Yue was born in 1958, the year Mao launched his Great Leap Forward. The headmaster of the school where his mother taught English said she should call her new son Yue, meaning "leap forward". She didn't know then that the policy would lead to devastating famine in the countryside, to a struggle to feed her children and the death through illness of Yue's father – an event Yue barely recalls, although he does remember his father returning from concerts with sweets hidden in his violin case.
Yue's mother, Zhao Su Lin, was highly educated, a graduate in economic politics from Beijing University who spoke English, French, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin. "She was obsessed with telling me about her family," he says. "I think she wanted me to know things could be different. She was brought up near the Russian border. The family had nine servants. She had a childhood like a Tolstoy story."
Yue remembers well how the Cultural Revolution began in August 1966, "with drums and cymbals and loudspeakers and millions of pieces of paper pouring down from the sky – message papers with 'Mao say …' written on them – and people being beaten." Kites and pets were declared "petit bourgeois", and music was limited to revolutionary songs and rural tunes.
Yue remembers seeing a man hanged from a plum tree in a neighbouring compound. He had taken his own life rather than face the Red Guard.
"We did smash some windows," he admits. "We were given stones and told it was our duty to smash 'Old China'. I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't know." Many schools were damaged as they were in old temples. Yue's school was closed. Educated people were considered enemies of communism so teachers were an obvious target.
For several days, Yue's mother did not come home. She was forced to write "self-criticisms" and tortured by the Red Guard – many of them her own pupils. Yue remembers her being brought back to the compound. She could barely stand. "My sisters couldn't get my mother's shirt off. It was stuck to her back by blood and the salt they had rubbed in her wounds."
"I asked her why they beat her." She said it was because (before 1949) she had worked in a Kuomintang school. "The Red Guard kept asking her why she had not joined Mao, why she was from a rich family, why she spoke so many languages. 'What could I say,' she said, 'They would not understand. They are children.'"
"We didn't understand either," admits Yue. "Even I asked her why she didn't join Mao."
Yue's fears for his mother worsened when her headmaster – the one who gave Yue his name – was beaten to death by the Red Guard, and his mother was made to carry his body round the playground 10 times. "They made her kiss him and say, 'you go first – we will follow you.'"
What followed was that his mother was ordered to leave for the countryside for "re-education". "They called her petit bourgeois – I remember the words," says Yue.
The household now consisted of just eight-year-old Yue and his 12-year-old brother, Yi. The family had been blown apart by the Cultural Revolution. His four sisters were all away in state-sponsored jobs or at revolutionary school, working the fields far from Beijing, members of the Red Guard. Were they ever persuaded that their mother was bad, I wonder? Yue looks horrified, "No, no," he says quickly.
With no family around him, no school to go to, Yue spent his time playing his bamboo flute. "Waiting can be beautiful," he says. "I practised my flute to make it good for my mother." She was allowed a brief home visit every two or three months. Didn't Yue miss her terribly? "I felt sad," he says, "but [at least I was] not terrified … If she was being re-educated, I knew she was not being killed."
It was nearly three years before his mother returned. "She was so happy," he says. "No more digging, no more malnutrition, no more mind-torture – and she could go back to teaching at her school." It was the day of Nixon's visit to China, Yue recalls, "and we had all been told to lie and say everything in China was good!" At school again, Yue and his mother were preparing to leave the compound. "She said, 'Oh, Little Yue, I'm so happy I'm going back,' and the comb dropped [from her hand]. Half her body was paralysed and she couldn't speak. She had had a stroke."
Re-education had ruined her health and she went on to have four more strokes and spend 15 years unable to move or speak before she died in 1994.
Two of Yue's sisters and his brother used their musical talents to join state-performing companies. Kai married her long-term boyfriend, an uneducated country boy brilliant with his hands (one of Mao's chosen), and became a teacher. The other sister, Yan, used the English her mother had taught her to join the foreign-language section of the Red Army. Only Yue was left at home.
He vividly remembers one Liberation Day ("though liberation from what, we didn't know") when he and his schoolmates were involved in mass celebrations in Tiananmen Square in front of Mao Zedong himself. "It was so exciting. I was very young. Mao was the sun to me. We didn't think – didn't know – that Mao had killed a million people," he says. "These are happy memories."
At 16, Yue, too, used his music to escape being sent to a factory or the fields. He became the first flautist of a Red Army orchestra. He was now a member of the most prestigious organisation in the country – the Chinese military. The next New Year, when the Red Guard marched around the hutongs serenading model families on drums and percussion, "They played to my mother to celebrate her 'very good children'." Without fundamentally changing, Yue says, with a wry smile, "My family had turned from being 'very bad' to being 'very good'."
In 1981, Yue's sister, Yan, married a Frenchman and moved to London. She secured Yue a place at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Leaving his mother was heartrending. And his paternal aunt threw a fit at the idea of the youngest Guo leaving China but Yue knew without doubt that his mother, more than anyone, wanted him to go.
Yue occasionally gets into trouble with fellow Chinese in this country; he has been known to sing revolutionary songs. He is under no illusions about Mao's regime and is certainly no supporter of it. So why does he do it? He says simply, "This music still makes me emotional – this was my childhood."
On the Rubble of My Home, I played My Flute: A Memoir in Music and Sound by Guo Yue will be broadcast as part of Radio 3's Between the Ears series on 11 June at 9.15 pm. He also performs tales from his childhood for children as part of the Children's Bookshow, thechildrensbookshow.com; guoyuemusic.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/04/guo-yue-china-childhood-cultural-revolution?CMP=twt_gu
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Liyen Chong's favourite things
Artist Liyen Chong, exhibiting as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography, shares a few of her favourite things with Viva.
Photography has taken over the city, with the Auckland Festival of Photography on until June 26. As part of the festival there are various official and unofficial exhibitions and events, including a photographic exhibition at Melanie Roger Gallery which opens today. The exhibition features works from an interesting range of photographers and artists including Derek Henderson, Tom Roberton, Patricia Piccinini, James Lowe, Richard Orjis and Liyen Chong. Chong has become known for her detailed embroidered "drawings" that use hair as thread; a modern take on Victorian "hair painting". Explains gallerist Melanie Roger, "Liyen Chong is an exciting young artist whose work consistently surprises, delights and challenges her audiences". For this photographic exhibition, she has made new works on plates as part of her residency at McCahon House in Titirangi, which Roger explains places photographic imagery on to found ceramics, adding a 3D element to the exhibition. Chong tells us about some of her favourite things.
* Photography at Melanie Roger Gallery until July 9. 226 Jervois Rd, Herne Bay, ph (09) 360 1151.
10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. Asian stationery
How could you resist retractable fluorescent markers and gel ink pens that glide effortlessly with the slightest pressure? I've always taken my writing implements seriously. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable with the envy I used to raise whenever I opened my pencil case back in high school in Christchurch. I've recently returned from a trip to Malaysia and Singapore with a bagful of stationery that I probably won't get around to using for a while yet - old habits die hard!
2. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art
Edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Delicious reading when you want to decipher what an artist was thinking, or even if you just want to be entertained. I borrowed it so much from the library at art school, I decided to buy a copy of it.
3. Lundia shelving
A fantastically easy to customise and modify system of shelving that facilitates hoarding. All made in beautiful, solid New Zealand pine. The unit in my lounge is so versatile it houses the TV, computer, plants, and bits and bobs. Best of all, it shelves the books we've collected and borrowed from friends (and haven't returned).
4. Plastic human skull
A plastic replica of a human foetal skull at 32 weeks made by Bone Clones, an osteological reproduction company. It reminds me of the absurdity and profundity of life because it is unnervingly cute and thoroughly creepy at the same time. I made a series of seven hair embroideries based on this skull, with white hair from a dear friend of mine a while ago.
5. Malaysian/Indonesian traditional Batik prints
I love collecting them and draping or hanging them around the house because they remind me of some of my roots in Southeast Asia. A hodge-podge of colourful cultures and clashing histories with hardly any resolution in sight.
6. Kitchen tools from Ikea
Good design for extremely affordable prices - and yes, not very good for the landfill in some cases I know. I love them most when my husband uses them more than I do while beaming happily at me because I let him fill up our suitcases with these hard-to-pack items.
7. Paint and colour
After working with a mostly black and white palette for the last couple of years, I'm having a huge thing for colour at the moment. I'm fascinated with the world of colours and effects you can get in this day and age, not to mention the culture and psychology of fashionable colours. I'm currently experimenting with photographs on Photoshop, acrylic paints and ceramic glazes.
8. Post-it notes
I love them and can't function properly without them. I have them in every colour - they're seriously useful for any random and absolutely trivial thought that I can't file away immediately.
9. Peter Robinson's student work
Peter Robinson's old student work that I found in the painting studio wall cavities in Ilam in 1998. You never know what you're going to find! Well, at least it makes me feel better to think that it could be, that it might be.
10. John Baldessari
I have many favourite artists that I like for different reasons, but I adored his retrospective that I caught in Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien back in 2005. My husband and I had such a great time giggling away at all the clever works that he'd made. I love art that combines metaphysics, reality and theory in a way that makes me laugh.
By Zoe Walker | Email Zoe By Zoe Walker
10:00 AM Thursday Jun 16, 2011
Photography has taken over the city, with the Auckland Festival of Photography on until June 26. As part of the festival there are various official and unofficial exhibitions and events, including a photographic exhibition at Melanie Roger Gallery which opens today. The exhibition features works from an interesting range of photographers and artists including Derek Henderson, Tom Roberton, Patricia Piccinini, James Lowe, Richard Orjis and Liyen Chong. Chong has become known for her detailed embroidered "drawings" that use hair as thread; a modern take on Victorian "hair painting". Explains gallerist Melanie Roger, "Liyen Chong is an exciting young artist whose work consistently surprises, delights and challenges her audiences". For this photographic exhibition, she has made new works on plates as part of her residency at McCahon House in Titirangi, which Roger explains places photographic imagery on to found ceramics, adding a 3D element to the exhibition. Chong tells us about some of her favourite things.
* Photography at Melanie Roger Gallery until July 9. 226 Jervois Rd, Herne Bay, ph (09) 360 1151.
10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. Asian stationery
How could you resist retractable fluorescent markers and gel ink pens that glide effortlessly with the slightest pressure? I've always taken my writing implements seriously. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable with the envy I used to raise whenever I opened my pencil case back in high school in Christchurch. I've recently returned from a trip to Malaysia and Singapore with a bagful of stationery that I probably won't get around to using for a while yet - old habits die hard!
2. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art
Edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Delicious reading when you want to decipher what an artist was thinking, or even if you just want to be entertained. I borrowed it so much from the library at art school, I decided to buy a copy of it.
3. Lundia shelving
A fantastically easy to customise and modify system of shelving that facilitates hoarding. All made in beautiful, solid New Zealand pine. The unit in my lounge is so versatile it houses the TV, computer, plants, and bits and bobs. Best of all, it shelves the books we've collected and borrowed from friends (and haven't returned).
4. Plastic human skull
A plastic replica of a human foetal skull at 32 weeks made by Bone Clones, an osteological reproduction company. It reminds me of the absurdity and profundity of life because it is unnervingly cute and thoroughly creepy at the same time. I made a series of seven hair embroideries based on this skull, with white hair from a dear friend of mine a while ago.
5. Malaysian/Indonesian traditional Batik prints
I love collecting them and draping or hanging them around the house because they remind me of some of my roots in Southeast Asia. A hodge-podge of colourful cultures and clashing histories with hardly any resolution in sight.
6. Kitchen tools from Ikea
Good design for extremely affordable prices - and yes, not very good for the landfill in some cases I know. I love them most when my husband uses them more than I do while beaming happily at me because I let him fill up our suitcases with these hard-to-pack items.
7. Paint and colour
After working with a mostly black and white palette for the last couple of years, I'm having a huge thing for colour at the moment. I'm fascinated with the world of colours and effects you can get in this day and age, not to mention the culture and psychology of fashionable colours. I'm currently experimenting with photographs on Photoshop, acrylic paints and ceramic glazes.
8. Post-it notes
I love them and can't function properly without them. I have them in every colour - they're seriously useful for any random and absolutely trivial thought that I can't file away immediately.
9. Peter Robinson's student work
Peter Robinson's old student work that I found in the painting studio wall cavities in Ilam in 1998. You never know what you're going to find! Well, at least it makes me feel better to think that it could be, that it might be.
10. John Baldessari
I have many favourite artists that I like for different reasons, but I adored his retrospective that I caught in Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien back in 2005. My husband and I had such a great time giggling away at all the clever works that he'd made. I love art that combines metaphysics, reality and theory in a way that makes me laugh.
By Zoe Walker | Email Zoe By Zoe Walker
10:00 AM Thursday Jun 16, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
A voice for Chinese migrants
Producing four tonnes of chips an hour is busy work for Steven Wong.
But the hard-working East Tamaki factory owner doesn't stop there.
Mr Wong has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday honours for his services to the Chinese community.
He works six days a week but still finds time to help new migrants in his spare time.
The multi-millionaire from China has been president of the United Chinese Association of New Zealand for the past 11 years.
Mr Wong uses his established business Fresher Foods to help raise funds for the Chinese community.
"I came here in 1972. I know what it's like to be new in a foreign country," he says.
"I work to bring together new migrants and help them integrate into New Zealand life yet still keep their Chinese culture."
Mr Wong speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese and is often called upon as a representative of the Chinese community at parliamentary functions.
"I need to be able to voice the concerns of all Chinese people living in New Zealand," he says.
Mr Wong was also part of the government delegation to Beijing in 2008 led by then Trade Minister Phil Goff to sign New Zealand's Free Trade Agreement with China.
New Zealand life hasn't always been easy for Mr Wong. He migrated after being sponsored by his sister and worked in her fruit store.
Struggling to keep his head above water, Mr Wong worked two jobs. He was a kitchen hand by day and worked in a carpet factory by night.
"I worked six days a week back then and I still do," he says. "My wife also works six days a week. It's what we are used to in our families."
It was Mr Wong's wife Mary who sparked the entrepreneur in him so he started a takeaway business in Blockhouse Bay. "I needed to earn more money to support my children."
Eventually he tired of cooking the chips and moved on to making them.
"I set up Fresher Foods because I felt that in a takeaway business you are waiting for the customer. When you do wholesale or processing, you can go out and look for more business."
Fresher Foods now employs 40 people and runs 24 hours a day from Monday to Saturday. Mr Wong is the main supplier to Auckland and Hamilton takeaways and exports throughout the Pacific.
- Eastern Courier
But the hard-working East Tamaki factory owner doesn't stop there.
Mr Wong has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday honours for his services to the Chinese community.
He works six days a week but still finds time to help new migrants in his spare time.
The multi-millionaire from China has been president of the United Chinese Association of New Zealand for the past 11 years.
Mr Wong uses his established business Fresher Foods to help raise funds for the Chinese community.
"I came here in 1972. I know what it's like to be new in a foreign country," he says.
"I work to bring together new migrants and help them integrate into New Zealand life yet still keep their Chinese culture."
Mr Wong speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese and is often called upon as a representative of the Chinese community at parliamentary functions.
"I need to be able to voice the concerns of all Chinese people living in New Zealand," he says.
Mr Wong was also part of the government delegation to Beijing in 2008 led by then Trade Minister Phil Goff to sign New Zealand's Free Trade Agreement with China.
New Zealand life hasn't always been easy for Mr Wong. He migrated after being sponsored by his sister and worked in her fruit store.
Struggling to keep his head above water, Mr Wong worked two jobs. He was a kitchen hand by day and worked in a carpet factory by night.
"I worked six days a week back then and I still do," he says. "My wife also works six days a week. It's what we are used to in our families."
It was Mr Wong's wife Mary who sparked the entrepreneur in him so he started a takeaway business in Blockhouse Bay. "I needed to earn more money to support my children."
Eventually he tired of cooking the chips and moved on to making them.
"I set up Fresher Foods because I felt that in a takeaway business you are waiting for the customer. When you do wholesale or processing, you can go out and look for more business."
Fresher Foods now employs 40 people and runs 24 hours a day from Monday to Saturday. Mr Wong is the main supplier to Auckland and Hamilton takeaways and exports throughout the Pacific.
- Eastern Courier
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Becoming Kiwi Chinese:
Becoming Kiwi Chinese: A 140 Year History of the Overseas Chinese in Otago
Edward W. Tennant University of Florida July, 2005 – Under Review
Introduction
The story of the overseas Chinese in Otago1 begins 140 years ago. Their story embraces sorrow and joy, success and failure, acceptance and rejection. Since the Chinese reached Otago in the 1860s, they have remained a vital part of the region.
The first Chinese arrived in the region with large numbers of Europeans, in search of gold. However, the establishment of small settlements by British immigrants in the region two decades earlier was used to legitimize the arrival of Europeans on the goldfields. The Chinese who arrived were considered nomadic workers imported to the area because of labor shortages, and immigrants in the region two decades earlier was used to legitimize the arrival of Europeans on the goldfields and most Europeans believed that the Chinese would eventually return to China (Ip 2003:4).
While the numbers of overseas Chinese dwindled by the early twentieth century, the
connections established during the gold-mining era remain strong even today. For instance, Chinese business men, such as Choie Sew Hoy, left a lasting impression on both the economy and history of Otago. Intermarriages, occurring as early as the 1870s, created linkages between Pakeha2 and Chinese settlers in Otago that exist today. Throughout the twentieth century increasing numbers of Chinese arrived and joined the growing communities established during the gold-mining era.
A large amount of literature has surfaced chronicling the Chinese during the initial goldmining period, approximately 1865 – 1900 (see Butler 1977; Ng 1993 & 1995; Ritchie 1986).The gold-mining era encompasses only a quarter of the time overseas Chinese have lived in Otago.
Separate literature has grown that explore the twentieth century (see Ip 1996 & 2003). Indeed, most literature that examines the New Zealand Chinese deals with either the gold-mining era or the mid- to late-twentieth century, rarely combining the two. A recent exception is Dr. James Ng’s three volume history of the overseas Chinese in New Zealand, which successfully presents a continuous picture of the Chinese in New Zealand from 1860s until today. Numerous themes have developed to culturally explore the Chinese in Otago; these include assimilation,
acculturation, adaptation, integration, and racialization by Otago’s white majority.
Terminology related to the Chinese outside the geographical domain of China can
http://www.little-yeti.com/idh3931-co/readings/Becoming%20Kiwi%20Chinese.pdf
Edward W. Tennant University of Florida July, 2005 – Under Review
Introduction
The story of the overseas Chinese in Otago1 begins 140 years ago. Their story embraces sorrow and joy, success and failure, acceptance and rejection. Since the Chinese reached Otago in the 1860s, they have remained a vital part of the region.
The first Chinese arrived in the region with large numbers of Europeans, in search of gold. However, the establishment of small settlements by British immigrants in the region two decades earlier was used to legitimize the arrival of Europeans on the goldfields. The Chinese who arrived were considered nomadic workers imported to the area because of labor shortages, and immigrants in the region two decades earlier was used to legitimize the arrival of Europeans on the goldfields and most Europeans believed that the Chinese would eventually return to China (Ip 2003:4).
While the numbers of overseas Chinese dwindled by the early twentieth century, the
connections established during the gold-mining era remain strong even today. For instance, Chinese business men, such as Choie Sew Hoy, left a lasting impression on both the economy and history of Otago. Intermarriages, occurring as early as the 1870s, created linkages between Pakeha2 and Chinese settlers in Otago that exist today. Throughout the twentieth century increasing numbers of Chinese arrived and joined the growing communities established during the gold-mining era.
A large amount of literature has surfaced chronicling the Chinese during the initial goldmining period, approximately 1865 – 1900 (see Butler 1977; Ng 1993 & 1995; Ritchie 1986).The gold-mining era encompasses only a quarter of the time overseas Chinese have lived in Otago.
Separate literature has grown that explore the twentieth century (see Ip 1996 & 2003). Indeed, most literature that examines the New Zealand Chinese deals with either the gold-mining era or the mid- to late-twentieth century, rarely combining the two. A recent exception is Dr. James Ng’s three volume history of the overseas Chinese in New Zealand, which successfully presents a continuous picture of the Chinese in New Zealand from 1860s until today. Numerous themes have developed to culturally explore the Chinese in Otago; these include assimilation,
acculturation, adaptation, integration, and racialization by Otago’s white majority.
Terminology related to the Chinese outside the geographical domain of China can
http://www.little-yeti.com/idh3931-co/readings/Becoming%20Kiwi%20Chinese.pdf
China & New Zealand share long-term bond
Chinese in New Zealand
Chinese were some of New Zealand’s early and most prolific immigrants and now make up the fifth largest ethnic group in the country, with nearly 150,000 residents.
The stories of Chinese migrants are deeply embedded in New Zealand history and have provided the foundation for many tourist attractions from early mining settlements to an authentic Chinese garden, constructed in Shanghai, imported and rebuilt in Dunedin in the South Island.
Chinese culture is evident throughout New Zealand today and provides a colourful element to every day life and special events like food, art, music and sporting festivals.
Traditions like Chinese New Year and the mid-autumn festival are widely celebrated and some of New Zealand’s most popular events now include the lantern festival and dragon boat races.
The Chinese community is active in many sectors of the business world and is particularly influential in the food industry as producers, retailers and food professionals. A recent Chinese New Zealand business collaboration has seen the establishment of a major oolong tea plantation in the Waikato region.
Dunedin Chinese Garden
The Chinese Garden was a gift to the city of Dunedin to commemorate the historic relations between New Zealand and China, and is a permanent reminder of the Chinese people who first came to Otago during the gold rush and stayed to establish some of the city's businesses.
The garden is the only authentic Chinese Garden in New Zealand, the first in the southern hemisphere and one of only a handful outside China.
The design, based on the private gardens in Suzhou from the 10th to the 19th centuries, is in-keeping with the Qing Dynasty 1644 - 1911.
Otago goldmining history
The first record of ethnic Chinese in New Zealand was of immigrants from Guangdong province, who arrived during the 1860s gold-rush era and settled mainly in the Otago region but also on the South Island's west coast.
At one stage there were more than 5,000 Chinese miners in Otago and Southland, and at some diggings they even outnumbered Europeans.
Their merchants and suppliers made Dunedin the headquarters not only for the Otago trade but for dealings throughout New Zealand. Since '8' is the Chinese lucky number, the eight-sided Octagon made Dunedin an exceptionally lucky city.
But few of the thousands of Chinese men who came to Otago and the West Coast realised their dream of earning a fortune to take back to their home country. Many stories were of extreme hardship and loneliness.
Northland - 'Ventnor' ship wreck
In 2009, one chapter of China - New Zealand history was closed with an unexpected discovery of a burial site, 100 years on from a tragedy at sea.
A ship called the Ventnor, which had left Otago in 1902 carrying the bones of around 500 Chinese gold miners who were being returned to their homeland, ran aground 10km off the Hokianga coast in northern New Zealand.
Chinese thought their ancestors had been lost forever but local Māori put new light on the tragedy during research for a Chinese documentary.
It transpired that when coffins from the shipwreck began floating to shore, Māori living along the remote Northland coastline pulled them in and gave the Chinese a fitting burial.
Some were interred in the sand dunes and others in nearby gravesites alongside the Māori ancestors.
Descendants of the Chinese miners said the discovery was "like finding gold" and closed the chapter on a tragedy that had haunted families for generations.
Otago Settlers Museum
The history of Chinese in Otago is well catalogued in the Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin with a gallery called ‘Windows on a Chinese Past’.
The exhibition tells the story of Otago's Chinese community from the first arrivals in 1865 through to the present day, and depicts life on the goldfields, the movement into towns and cities, and the eventual assimilation of a generation of Chinese refugee children into a New Zealand way of life.
‘Windows on a Chinese Past’ includes an extensive array of artefacts and biographies of Chinese identities, such as Choie Sew Hoy, the merchant who pioneered gold dredging in Otago in the late 19th century.
West Coast - Shantytown
Shantytown - on the South Island’s West Coast - is one of New Zealand’s leading cultural and heritage attractions, and has a strong Chinese representation dating back to the gold rushes that began in 1864.
There are 30 historic buildings in the recreated 19th century pioneer town that was inspired by the mining towns of Greymouth, Reefton, Hokitika and Westport.
Curator and Shantytown researcher Julia Bradshaw has collated Chinese names from local business directories, hospital registers and newspapers to produce a database of stories for a book on the history of the West Coast Chinese.
Bradshaw says Chinese immigrants made a unique contribution to the region as gold-miners, merchants, cooks, market gardeners, and even missionaries.
Arrowtown - Chinese Settlement
The Chinese Settlement at Arrowtown, near Queenstown in Central Otago, is also a popular destination for tourists wanting to delve into Chinese history in New Zealand, attracting 70,000 visitors a year.
From 1869, there was a small community of Chinese miners living in Arrowtown who were originally invited as workers when the West Coast gold rush depleted local labour.
Chinese, who were largely segregated from European miners, created their own settlement near Bush Creek. The population of Chinese was entirely male, and the proceeds of their labour was sent home to families in China.
The Chinese were regarded as successful miners, which was mainly due to their hard work. The Chinese Settlement was excavated and partially restored during 1983.
A planned Chinese Heritage Trail linking Arrowtown’s Chinese Settlement with goldfields and other Chinese-related points of interest - such as the Cromwell Mining Centre and the Chinese Garden in Dunedin - is likely to be completed by 2011.
http://www.newzealand.com/travel/media/features/events/culture_china-new-zealand-links_feature.cfm
Chinese were some of New Zealand’s early and most prolific immigrants and now make up the fifth largest ethnic group in the country, with nearly 150,000 residents.
The stories of Chinese migrants are deeply embedded in New Zealand history and have provided the foundation for many tourist attractions from early mining settlements to an authentic Chinese garden, constructed in Shanghai, imported and rebuilt in Dunedin in the South Island.
Chinese culture is evident throughout New Zealand today and provides a colourful element to every day life and special events like food, art, music and sporting festivals.
Traditions like Chinese New Year and the mid-autumn festival are widely celebrated and some of New Zealand’s most popular events now include the lantern festival and dragon boat races.
The Chinese community is active in many sectors of the business world and is particularly influential in the food industry as producers, retailers and food professionals. A recent Chinese New Zealand business collaboration has seen the establishment of a major oolong tea plantation in the Waikato region.
Dunedin Chinese Garden
The Chinese Garden was a gift to the city of Dunedin to commemorate the historic relations between New Zealand and China, and is a permanent reminder of the Chinese people who first came to Otago during the gold rush and stayed to establish some of the city's businesses.
The garden is the only authentic Chinese Garden in New Zealand, the first in the southern hemisphere and one of only a handful outside China.
The design, based on the private gardens in Suzhou from the 10th to the 19th centuries, is in-keeping with the Qing Dynasty 1644 - 1911.
Otago goldmining history
The first record of ethnic Chinese in New Zealand was of immigrants from Guangdong province, who arrived during the 1860s gold-rush era and settled mainly in the Otago region but also on the South Island's west coast.
At one stage there were more than 5,000 Chinese miners in Otago and Southland, and at some diggings they even outnumbered Europeans.
Their merchants and suppliers made Dunedin the headquarters not only for the Otago trade but for dealings throughout New Zealand. Since '8' is the Chinese lucky number, the eight-sided Octagon made Dunedin an exceptionally lucky city.
But few of the thousands of Chinese men who came to Otago and the West Coast realised their dream of earning a fortune to take back to their home country. Many stories were of extreme hardship and loneliness.
Northland - 'Ventnor' ship wreck
In 2009, one chapter of China - New Zealand history was closed with an unexpected discovery of a burial site, 100 years on from a tragedy at sea.
A ship called the Ventnor, which had left Otago in 1902 carrying the bones of around 500 Chinese gold miners who were being returned to their homeland, ran aground 10km off the Hokianga coast in northern New Zealand.
Chinese thought their ancestors had been lost forever but local Māori put new light on the tragedy during research for a Chinese documentary.
It transpired that when coffins from the shipwreck began floating to shore, Māori living along the remote Northland coastline pulled them in and gave the Chinese a fitting burial.
Some were interred in the sand dunes and others in nearby gravesites alongside the Māori ancestors.
Descendants of the Chinese miners said the discovery was "like finding gold" and closed the chapter on a tragedy that had haunted families for generations.
Otago Settlers Museum
The history of Chinese in Otago is well catalogued in the Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin with a gallery called ‘Windows on a Chinese Past’.
The exhibition tells the story of Otago's Chinese community from the first arrivals in 1865 through to the present day, and depicts life on the goldfields, the movement into towns and cities, and the eventual assimilation of a generation of Chinese refugee children into a New Zealand way of life.
‘Windows on a Chinese Past’ includes an extensive array of artefacts and biographies of Chinese identities, such as Choie Sew Hoy, the merchant who pioneered gold dredging in Otago in the late 19th century.
West Coast - Shantytown
Shantytown - on the South Island’s West Coast - is one of New Zealand’s leading cultural and heritage attractions, and has a strong Chinese representation dating back to the gold rushes that began in 1864.
There are 30 historic buildings in the recreated 19th century pioneer town that was inspired by the mining towns of Greymouth, Reefton, Hokitika and Westport.
Curator and Shantytown researcher Julia Bradshaw has collated Chinese names from local business directories, hospital registers and newspapers to produce a database of stories for a book on the history of the West Coast Chinese.
Bradshaw says Chinese immigrants made a unique contribution to the region as gold-miners, merchants, cooks, market gardeners, and even missionaries.
Arrowtown - Chinese Settlement
The Chinese Settlement at Arrowtown, near Queenstown in Central Otago, is also a popular destination for tourists wanting to delve into Chinese history in New Zealand, attracting 70,000 visitors a year.
From 1869, there was a small community of Chinese miners living in Arrowtown who were originally invited as workers when the West Coast gold rush depleted local labour.
Chinese, who were largely segregated from European miners, created their own settlement near Bush Creek. The population of Chinese was entirely male, and the proceeds of their labour was sent home to families in China.
The Chinese were regarded as successful miners, which was mainly due to their hard work. The Chinese Settlement was excavated and partially restored during 1983.
A planned Chinese Heritage Trail linking Arrowtown’s Chinese Settlement with goldfields and other Chinese-related points of interest - such as the Cromwell Mining Centre and the Chinese Garden in Dunedin - is likely to be completed by 2011.
http://www.newzealand.com/travel/media/features/events/culture_china-new-zealand-links_feature.cfm
Plan seeks to preserve Otago's Chinese past
A Chinese heritage trail is being considered for Otago, linking Dunedin's newly opened $7 million Chinese Garden to historic goldmining sites in the Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes districts.
The proposal this month will be discussed by Otago Forward, the region's economic development agency.
Otago Forward chairman Clive Geddes, the Queenstown Lakes District Mayor, said the idea fitted with the agency's 10-year strategy.
That strategy had identified that the best way to boost the economy was by using "existing assets" in various sectors, like tourism, and via a co-ordinated approach across the province. He was supportive of the idea because of Otago's link to the Chinese through its goldmining heritage.
"Throughout Otago, you can still find families descended from those original Chinese miners that came here," he said.
"There is no other region in New Zealand that has that link."
Dr Jim Ng, of Dunedin, one of the project's principal drivers and author of Windows of a Chinese Past, said the heritage trail would be anchored by the Chinese village in Arrowtown, the Kawarau Gorge's mining centre, a proposed Chinese camp in Lawrence and Dunedin's Chinese Garden.
"It's really a mining mecca it's so well preserved and so compact," he said. "We probably have some of the best-preserved mining relics and sites in the world."
Ng's Lawrence Chinese Camp Charitable Trust is applying for resource consent to rebuild a Chinese goldmining village beside State Highway 8. It is expected to cost between $6m and $8m, and be built over 10 years.
Private money will fund a museum and hotel nearby.
Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin said the trail was a tremendous idea.
"It's a way to showcase our history," he said. "If it were not for the discovery of gold, would New Zealand be the country it now is?"
David Kennedy, the chief executive of Destination Queenstown, said China was one of the country's fastest-growing markets, but of the 122,000 Chinese tourists who came to New Zealand last year, only about 20,000 visited the Southern Lakes.
"For an emerging market like China, to attract the high-yield end of the market, that would be beneficial for all the businesses in Queenstown."
Otago Forward is made up of the province's district and city mayors, the Otago Regional Council chairman, the Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive, the Community Trust of Otago chief executive and three independent directors.
The agency will meet in Balclutha on July 18.
Last updated 22:43 06/07/2008
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/521444/Plan-seeks-to-preserve-Otagos-Chinese-past#share
The proposal this month will be discussed by Otago Forward, the region's economic development agency.
Otago Forward chairman Clive Geddes, the Queenstown Lakes District Mayor, said the idea fitted with the agency's 10-year strategy.
That strategy had identified that the best way to boost the economy was by using "existing assets" in various sectors, like tourism, and via a co-ordinated approach across the province. He was supportive of the idea because of Otago's link to the Chinese through its goldmining heritage.
"Throughout Otago, you can still find families descended from those original Chinese miners that came here," he said.
"There is no other region in New Zealand that has that link."
Dr Jim Ng, of Dunedin, one of the project's principal drivers and author of Windows of a Chinese Past, said the heritage trail would be anchored by the Chinese village in Arrowtown, the Kawarau Gorge's mining centre, a proposed Chinese camp in Lawrence and Dunedin's Chinese Garden.
"It's really a mining mecca it's so well preserved and so compact," he said. "We probably have some of the best-preserved mining relics and sites in the world."
Ng's Lawrence Chinese Camp Charitable Trust is applying for resource consent to rebuild a Chinese goldmining village beside State Highway 8. It is expected to cost between $6m and $8m, and be built over 10 years.
Private money will fund a museum and hotel nearby.
Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin said the trail was a tremendous idea.
"It's a way to showcase our history," he said. "If it were not for the discovery of gold, would New Zealand be the country it now is?"
David Kennedy, the chief executive of Destination Queenstown, said China was one of the country's fastest-growing markets, but of the 122,000 Chinese tourists who came to New Zealand last year, only about 20,000 visited the Southern Lakes.
"For an emerging market like China, to attract the high-yield end of the market, that would be beneficial for all the businesses in Queenstown."
Otago Forward is made up of the province's district and city mayors, the Otago Regional Council chairman, the Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive, the Community Trust of Otago chief executive and three independent directors.
The agency will meet in Balclutha on July 18.
Last updated 22:43 06/07/2008
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/521444/Plan-seeks-to-preserve-Otagos-Chinese-past#share
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Snapshots of Dominion Rd
It was made famous by the Muttonbirds and now a collective of photographers have opened an exhibition capturing the vibrant makeup of Dominion Rd.
Co-curated by Mt Roskill resident Jade Min and King Tong Ho, Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape explores the cultural significance and ever-evolving nature of the thoroughfare.
"This exhibition is really for the locals," Dr Ho, an AUT arts and design lecturer, says.
"I think when you live in an area you can become so familiar with the environment that you often forget what's interesting about it."
Held at Artstation in Ponsonby, the photos are presented through the eyes of four different Chinese-Kiwi photographers.
They look at what the road means to its surrounding community. Dr Ho's photos are taken in documentary style, capturing the multicultural nature of a street.
From a cheeky picture in Hewitt's Fiddle Shop to a subtle image in Mykiwi Chinese Bookshop, photos reflect changes in living costs and ethnic makeup of many shops.
Each photographer takes a different approach to exploring life on the road.
Linda Ai's portraits focus on how inter-generational and ethnically diverse the street is, through several portraits of pregnant woman who live in the area.
"Dominion Rd is becoming a landmark of Auckland where different cultural elements blend with each other to form a unique character," she says.
The mother-of-two celebrated her daughter's first birthday on May 29 – a milestone that also marks a year since the project's conception.
Members of the exhibition have worked in their own time to bring the photos to the public, receiving no funding for the idea.
The four artists, as well as Ms Min, work under the Photowhisper Art Collective – a network of Chinese artists in New Zealand.
"I noticed in New Zealand there's a lot of Chinese artists from different generations who all have awesome ideas but not many places to exhibit their work outside of the Asian communities," says Ms Min, who has pushed the concept.
Like the exhibition, the aim of the collective is to open up discussion between Western and Eastern art communities about life in one of the world's most multicultural cities.
Dr Ho hopes to continue the project by making an online archive documenting photos which reference Dominion Rd.
Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape runs as part of Auckland Festival of Photography, on until June 26.
An exhibition talk will be held at Artstation on June 14 from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.
Visit www.photolgraphyfestival.org.nz for more information.
- Central Leader HANNAH SPYKSMA
Last updated 10:27 08/06/2011
JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax Media
IN THE FRAME: Jade Min, left, and Dr King Tong Ho, curators of the Dominion Road: The shifting urbanscape exhibition at Artstation in Ponsonby.
Co-curated by Mt Roskill resident Jade Min and King Tong Ho, Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape explores the cultural significance and ever-evolving nature of the thoroughfare.
"This exhibition is really for the locals," Dr Ho, an AUT arts and design lecturer, says.
"I think when you live in an area you can become so familiar with the environment that you often forget what's interesting about it."
Held at Artstation in Ponsonby, the photos are presented through the eyes of four different Chinese-Kiwi photographers.
They look at what the road means to its surrounding community. Dr Ho's photos are taken in documentary style, capturing the multicultural nature of a street.
From a cheeky picture in Hewitt's Fiddle Shop to a subtle image in Mykiwi Chinese Bookshop, photos reflect changes in living costs and ethnic makeup of many shops.
Each photographer takes a different approach to exploring life on the road.
Linda Ai's portraits focus on how inter-generational and ethnically diverse the street is, through several portraits of pregnant woman who live in the area.
"Dominion Rd is becoming a landmark of Auckland where different cultural elements blend with each other to form a unique character," she says.
The mother-of-two celebrated her daughter's first birthday on May 29 – a milestone that also marks a year since the project's conception.
Members of the exhibition have worked in their own time to bring the photos to the public, receiving no funding for the idea.
The four artists, as well as Ms Min, work under the Photowhisper Art Collective – a network of Chinese artists in New Zealand.
"I noticed in New Zealand there's a lot of Chinese artists from different generations who all have awesome ideas but not many places to exhibit their work outside of the Asian communities," says Ms Min, who has pushed the concept.
Like the exhibition, the aim of the collective is to open up discussion between Western and Eastern art communities about life in one of the world's most multicultural cities.
Dr Ho hopes to continue the project by making an online archive documenting photos which reference Dominion Rd.
Dominion Road: The Shifting Urbanscape runs as part of Auckland Festival of Photography, on until June 26.
An exhibition talk will be held at Artstation on June 14 from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.
Visit www.photolgraphyfestival.org.nz for more information.
- Central Leader HANNAH SPYKSMA
Last updated 10:27 08/06/2011
JASON OXENHAM/Fairfax Media
IN THE FRAME: Jade Min, left, and Dr King Tong Ho, curators of the Dominion Road: The shifting urbanscape exhibition at Artstation in Ponsonby.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Chans keep track of trams' return
They're all tram enthusiasts, Motat volunteers and they're related.
The Chan family can't wait to see trams return to the city. In fact if they had their way, the city's tramway would never have been discontinued.
Henderson resident Albert Chan is one of Motat's longest-serving tram drivers.
The 67-year-old gained his official tram licence in 1979 and has been volunteering ever since.
"I do it because I love trams, always have and always will. Motat is the only place in Auckland I can still drive them," he says.
Mr Chan's passion is one shared by his twin sons and nephew, who are all volunteers in Motat's tram division.
"When the boys were small and I was working they would ride with me for the day," Mr Chan says. "Now that they're old enough they have all joined up.
"My son Leyton drives the trams and his brother Vincent does the engineering side. Kinan is my nephew, I got him involved too. He's 18, the youngest driver we've got," he says.
Vincent, 28, works mainly on restoring the trams. A tram can take between up to five years to restore, depending on its condition, he says.
"It's not an easy job but I love it.
"A lot of the skills you need are no longer practised so we rely on our older members. You really have to spend time looking at how things were done 100 years ago," he says.
The heritage tramway project is being built along Auckland's waterfront.
The tramway route will link Wynyard Quarter to Britomart. The 1.5km loop will run clockwise from Jellicoe St to Daldy St.
"It's like reinventing the wheel," Vincent says.
Auckland had a functional tram system before it was phased out in 1956.
He says it's a shame the city did away with trams.
"Nowadays trying to get around Auckland is hopeless. Everyone is so car-oriented."
The new tramway will facilitate the movement of people around the Quarter.
Auckland Waterfront Development Agency marketing and communications manager John Gundesen says the tramway will open mid-August in time for the 2011 World Rugby Cup.
"We are well down the path and construction is going to schedule," he says. "In the early stages the tramway will be primarily a scenic route for tourists.
"It will be a bit like the Christchurch loop, locals may not ride it every day but it's a way to see the city and its surrounds," Mr Gundesen says.
"Down the track the plan is for us to put contemporary light rail on to the same tracks and connect it across to Te Wero Island in the Viaduct and Britomart."
Leyton, Vincent's twin brother, says Auckland lacks a decent public transport system and he hopes this historic tramway is the start of something bigger.
"When you travel overseas you see how good their transport systems are and back in Auckland there's really no comparison," he says.
"It's exciting too. And a great opportunity to bring trams into New Zealand that wouldn't otherwise be restored."
Just like his two sons, Mr Chan is eager to see the project take shape.
"I was at the site on New Year's Day when they started construction to take pictures. I pop by almost every day after work," he says.
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He just remembers the trams when they operated on Auckland streets.
"I used to live up on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden. My parents had a fruit shop and the tram stop was right outside the front door," he says.
Vincent says keeping people's memories of the Auckland trams alive is a major part of his role.
"The job is more than just physical labour.
"You get a lot of people coming on the trams saying: `Oh, I remember we had these 50-odd years ago. Why don't we have them now'?"
– Ashleigh McEnaney is an AUT journalism student
- Auckland City Harbour News
ASHLEIGH MCENANEY
Last updated 05:00 27/05/2011
TRAM FAMILY: Vincent Chan, his father Albert and brother Leyton are all Motat volunteers. They are standing in front of Tram 47 at Motat.
The Chan family can't wait to see trams return to the city. In fact if they had their way, the city's tramway would never have been discontinued.
Henderson resident Albert Chan is one of Motat's longest-serving tram drivers.
The 67-year-old gained his official tram licence in 1979 and has been volunteering ever since.
"I do it because I love trams, always have and always will. Motat is the only place in Auckland I can still drive them," he says.
Mr Chan's passion is one shared by his twin sons and nephew, who are all volunteers in Motat's tram division.
"When the boys were small and I was working they would ride with me for the day," Mr Chan says. "Now that they're old enough they have all joined up.
"My son Leyton drives the trams and his brother Vincent does the engineering side. Kinan is my nephew, I got him involved too. He's 18, the youngest driver we've got," he says.
Vincent, 28, works mainly on restoring the trams. A tram can take between up to five years to restore, depending on its condition, he says.
"It's not an easy job but I love it.
"A lot of the skills you need are no longer practised so we rely on our older members. You really have to spend time looking at how things were done 100 years ago," he says.
The heritage tramway project is being built along Auckland's waterfront.
The tramway route will link Wynyard Quarter to Britomart. The 1.5km loop will run clockwise from Jellicoe St to Daldy St.
"It's like reinventing the wheel," Vincent says.
Auckland had a functional tram system before it was phased out in 1956.
He says it's a shame the city did away with trams.
"Nowadays trying to get around Auckland is hopeless. Everyone is so car-oriented."
The new tramway will facilitate the movement of people around the Quarter.
Auckland Waterfront Development Agency marketing and communications manager John Gundesen says the tramway will open mid-August in time for the 2011 World Rugby Cup.
"We are well down the path and construction is going to schedule," he says. "In the early stages the tramway will be primarily a scenic route for tourists.
"It will be a bit like the Christchurch loop, locals may not ride it every day but it's a way to see the city and its surrounds," Mr Gundesen says.
"Down the track the plan is for us to put contemporary light rail on to the same tracks and connect it across to Te Wero Island in the Viaduct and Britomart."
Leyton, Vincent's twin brother, says Auckland lacks a decent public transport system and he hopes this historic tramway is the start of something bigger.
"When you travel overseas you see how good their transport systems are and back in Auckland there's really no comparison," he says.
"It's exciting too. And a great opportunity to bring trams into New Zealand that wouldn't otherwise be restored."
Just like his two sons, Mr Chan is eager to see the project take shape.
"I was at the site on New Year's Day when they started construction to take pictures. I pop by almost every day after work," he says.
Ad Feedback
He just remembers the trams when they operated on Auckland streets.
"I used to live up on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden. My parents had a fruit shop and the tram stop was right outside the front door," he says.
Vincent says keeping people's memories of the Auckland trams alive is a major part of his role.
"The job is more than just physical labour.
"You get a lot of people coming on the trams saying: `Oh, I remember we had these 50-odd years ago. Why don't we have them now'?"
– Ashleigh McEnaney is an AUT journalism student
- Auckland City Harbour News
ASHLEIGH MCENANEY
Last updated 05:00 27/05/2011
TRAM FAMILY: Vincent Chan, his father Albert and brother Leyton are all Motat volunteers. They are standing in front of Tram 47 at Motat.
Birthmark research opens field of cancer work
He saves patients from disfiguring birthmarks, scars and injuries, and hopes to cure cancer one day.
Internationally renowned plastic surgeon Swee Tan is made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
He is the director of the Gillies McIndoe Institute, based at Hutt Hospital, which is dedicated to researching birth defects, cancer and tissue engineering.
Professor Tan, 51, was swift to deflect the credit on to the team he works with. "I was surprised, because I don't expect recognition, it is just something I have always wanted to do. It should go to all the team really, because it is a team effort."
The Malaysian-born surgeon with a love of skiing is at the forefront of research into strawberry birthmarks.
Otherwise known as infantile haemangioma, strawberry birthmarks are benign tumours, caused by the abnormal growth of blood vessels.
Strawberry birthmarks usually disappear by the time a child is five years old, but in some cases they can threaten to block an airway or cause ulceration, heart failure or blindness.
Prof Tan and his team have devised a way to treat strawberry birthmarks with oral medication. Propranalol, normally used for treating high blood pressure, can stop cells within a strawberry birthmark dividing.
"The cells commit suicide, and the birthmark reduces in size very rapidly." The research could have serious implications for the treatment of cancer, Prof Tan said.
"We believe the same can also apply to a number of cancer tumour systems. We need to test the hypothesis on other cancers. We are very hopeful that the research will allow us to make the leap. We are very excited about it."
Prof Tan was in the news in February, when he was part of a team that saved Jamie Howell's damaged fingers in a 13-hour operation. The Nelson man was making a letterbox when he caught his digits on a saw. One was chopped off, and two were left hanging by a thread.
Many other people have had burns soothed, digits reattached and scars removed by the team.
Prof Tan and his wife, Sanchia, have three children, Cherise, Elysia and Michael.
He is no stranger to recognition. This year he was bestowed an award from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons for excellence in surgical research.
Last year he received the Medical Association's highest award, for his world-class research into strawberry birthmarks.
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And he was humbled at news of today's award.
"We are not supposed to say anything, but I told my wife."
- The Dominion Post PAUL EASTON http://tinyurl.com/3fxys9m
Internationally renowned plastic surgeon Swee Tan is made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
He is the director of the Gillies McIndoe Institute, based at Hutt Hospital, which is dedicated to researching birth defects, cancer and tissue engineering.
Professor Tan, 51, was swift to deflect the credit on to the team he works with. "I was surprised, because I don't expect recognition, it is just something I have always wanted to do. It should go to all the team really, because it is a team effort."
The Malaysian-born surgeon with a love of skiing is at the forefront of research into strawberry birthmarks.
Otherwise known as infantile haemangioma, strawberry birthmarks are benign tumours, caused by the abnormal growth of blood vessels.
Strawberry birthmarks usually disappear by the time a child is five years old, but in some cases they can threaten to block an airway or cause ulceration, heart failure or blindness.
Prof Tan and his team have devised a way to treat strawberry birthmarks with oral medication. Propranalol, normally used for treating high blood pressure, can stop cells within a strawberry birthmark dividing.
"The cells commit suicide, and the birthmark reduces in size very rapidly." The research could have serious implications for the treatment of cancer, Prof Tan said.
"We believe the same can also apply to a number of cancer tumour systems. We need to test the hypothesis on other cancers. We are very hopeful that the research will allow us to make the leap. We are very excited about it."
Prof Tan was in the news in February, when he was part of a team that saved Jamie Howell's damaged fingers in a 13-hour operation. The Nelson man was making a letterbox when he caught his digits on a saw. One was chopped off, and two were left hanging by a thread.
Many other people have had burns soothed, digits reattached and scars removed by the team.
Prof Tan and his wife, Sanchia, have three children, Cherise, Elysia and Michael.
He is no stranger to recognition. This year he was bestowed an award from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons for excellence in surgical research.
Last year he received the Medical Association's highest award, for his world-class research into strawberry birthmarks.
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And he was humbled at news of today's award.
"We are not supposed to say anything, but I told my wife."
- The Dominion Post PAUL EASTON http://tinyurl.com/3fxys9m
Sunday, June 05, 2011
CHINAMEN'S VEGETABLES. A FILTHY PRACTICE;
Those who are in the habit of purchasing thoir vegetables from the bland arid obliging John Chinaman have their attention drawn to a practice which is in vogue amongst come of the Chinese gardeners in bbc Arch Hill district. Mr Currie, bhe Town Clerk of the borough of Newton, inform us that yesterday he paid a viait to the Chinamens gardena at Arch Hill, aa the boundary between the Newton borough and the Arch Hill Road district. Here, in the gully which drain a portion Of Newton, Arch Hill and. Eden Terrace he found that a small creek which carries down the drainage from the Karangahape district, had been dammed back in; one of the gardens (where there was no water supply laid on), and there was every indication that some of teh Chinamen were in the habib of washing vegetables such as carrots, onions, potatoes in the foul sewerage. On the Newton side of the creek, however, the Chinese gardeners had the water supply laid on. The matter is to be brought up at the meeting of the Newton Borough Council next Monday evening. ln connecbion wibh this matter, Constable W. Walker, of Surrey Hills, made the following reporb to the Inspeobor last month
"This evening when making inquiries among the Chinamen at Arch Hill, I came across ono (whose name I could not find out) who waa washing hia vegetables in a creek which separates the districts of Eden Terrace and Arch Hill, and contains the sewerage of both these districts, and also the drainage from tho Symond-street Cemetery. From the appearance of the place I Bhould say that this hole hapdbeon generally used for the same purpose. I have reported this matter so that the Inspector may, if he thinka it advisable, bring it before the Board of Health and ao that come steps may be taken in the interests of the health of the many who use vegetables sold by those Chinamon."
This report has been aenb to the Newton Borough Council by the Inspector. Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 112, 11 May 1895, Page 2
Those who are in the habit of purchasing thoir vegetables from the bland arid obliging John Chinaman have their attention drawn to a practice which is in vogue amongst come of the Chinese gardeners in bbc Arch Hill district. Mr Currie, bhe Town Clerk of the borough of Newton, inform us that yesterday he paid a viait to the Chinamens gardena at Arch Hill, aa the boundary between the Newton borough and the Arch Hill Road district. Here, in the gully which drain a portion Of Newton, Arch Hill and. Eden Terrace he found that a small creek which carries down the drainage from the Karangahape district, had been dammed back in; one of the gardens (where there was no water supply laid on), and there was every indication that some of teh Chinamen were in the habib of washing vegetables such as carrots, onions, potatoes in the foul sewerage. On the Newton side of the creek, however, the Chinese gardeners had the water supply laid on. The matter is to be brought up at the meeting of the Newton Borough Council next Monday evening. ln connecbion wibh this matter, Constable W. Walker, of Surrey Hills, made the following reporb to the Inspeobor last month
"This evening when making inquiries among the Chinamen at Arch Hill, I came across ono (whose name I could not find out) who waa washing hia vegetables in a creek which separates the districts of Eden Terrace and Arch Hill, and contains the sewerage of both these districts, and also the drainage from tho Symond-street Cemetery. From the appearance of the place I Bhould say that this hole hapdbeon generally used for the same purpose. I have reported this matter so that the Inspector may, if he thinka it advisable, bring it before the Board of Health and ao that come steps may be taken in the interests of the health of the many who use vegetables sold by those Chinamon."
This report has been aenb to the Newton Borough Council by the Inspector. Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 112, 11 May 1895, Page 2
MUTILATING A COW.
Messes W. Duncan and H. Hammosd» justices, were engaged yesterday taking evidence in the case of Ah Chew, Ah Yum, Ah Choy, Ah Say, Ah Ching, Ah Moon, Ah Yup,' and Men Ken, who where charged with having mutilated two cows at Kings-1 land, the property of William Freeney. Mr S. Hesketh appeared for the defendants
The following evidence was taken subsequent to our going to press. Edward D. Halstead, veterinavy surgeon, deposed to having examined tho cows. One was terribly mutilated, having no less than 11 wounds," some of them 9 inches in depth/ Witness produced the piece of hide showing tho cuts. He said that the axe and knife produced might have made some of; the cuts. "-'.Kil
Detective Hughes deposed to enquiring' into the matter next morning. He saw a cow lying down alongside the creek near the Chinese gardens. He described the wounds. He jiotice'cl abouij 30 yards from where the cow lay ; he taw that the bottom rail of the fence had been broken. There were fresh cattla tracks in the Chinese garden. He found some blood in the garden and there were cattle tracks near by. An animal appeared to have been lying down there. That was about 84 yards from where the cow waa found. He also saw blood nearer to where the cow was found. There were tracks of a cow getting out of the garden 40 yards from the place where he found the blood. He found a knife with slight stains of blood on it at the house, Ah Soy said he had been using it to cub meat for the cat. He found axe (produced) in the garden. There were blood stains on the handle. Ah Soy said it was his axe.
James Alexander Pond, Colonial Analyst, that he had examined the marks on the axe, and was thoroughly satisfied that the marks were stains:of blood. t The spota on the blada were generally disconnected with each other and bore the colour and appearance of dried blood. When received the blood was not quite dry, as though recently produced. The microscopic and chemical examination both bore out the fact of the .material being dried blood and mammalian blood. On the edgo of the blade were a few white and yellowish hairs.
Constable Arthur Dewes corroborated the evidence given by Detective Hughes. Sow Mcc deposed that he was at the Chinese Garden, Arch Hill, on the 19th of February, about 5.30 o'clock. He thought between 7.30 and 8 o'clock he heard a lot o£ noise outside the house of the prisoners.' He ran out and saw Ah Yup,Ah Ching, Ah Moon, and Men Ken chasing the cow around the garden. AhYup had a long1, handled shovel, Ah Ching and Men" Ken each a garden fork, and Ah Moon a hoe. He saw them striking the .cows. One, escaped and the other did not. He; saw others chasing the cows, buft those four used the instruments. Those four were wiring into the. cow when she was down. He saw 14 or 15 Chinese chasing the cows. He could also recognise Ah Chow and Ah Yum as chasing the cows, but they had no instruments in -their hands.
Ah Noon deposed that he was a gardener residing at Arch Hill. On the night in question he saw Ah Ching, Ah Yup, Men Iven and Ah Moon chasing the cows. One got away and one fell down near the ceek. He did not seej>anyone use an axe. The other four prisoners only chased the cows, but did not use instruments.
The Bench were riot of opinion that this was a case to go to the Supreme Court, and therefore dismissed the prisoners.
Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 57, 8 March 1889, Page 2
Messes W. Duncan and H. Hammosd» justices, were engaged yesterday taking evidence in the case of Ah Chew, Ah Yum, Ah Choy, Ah Say, Ah Ching, Ah Moon, Ah Yup,' and Men Ken, who where charged with having mutilated two cows at Kings-1 land, the property of William Freeney. Mr S. Hesketh appeared for the defendants
The following evidence was taken subsequent to our going to press. Edward D. Halstead, veterinavy surgeon, deposed to having examined tho cows. One was terribly mutilated, having no less than 11 wounds," some of them 9 inches in depth/ Witness produced the piece of hide showing tho cuts. He said that the axe and knife produced might have made some of; the cuts. "-'.Kil
Detective Hughes deposed to enquiring' into the matter next morning. He saw a cow lying down alongside the creek near the Chinese gardens. He described the wounds. He jiotice'cl abouij 30 yards from where the cow lay ; he taw that the bottom rail of the fence had been broken. There were fresh cattla tracks in the Chinese garden. He found some blood in the garden and there were cattle tracks near by. An animal appeared to have been lying down there. That was about 84 yards from where the cow waa found. He also saw blood nearer to where the cow was found. There were tracks of a cow getting out of the garden 40 yards from the place where he found the blood. He found a knife with slight stains of blood on it at the house, Ah Soy said he had been using it to cub meat for the cat. He found axe (produced) in the garden. There were blood stains on the handle. Ah Soy said it was his axe.
James Alexander Pond, Colonial Analyst, that he had examined the marks on the axe, and was thoroughly satisfied that the marks were stains:of blood. t The spota on the blada were generally disconnected with each other and bore the colour and appearance of dried blood. When received the blood was not quite dry, as though recently produced. The microscopic and chemical examination both bore out the fact of the .material being dried blood and mammalian blood. On the edgo of the blade were a few white and yellowish hairs.
Constable Arthur Dewes corroborated the evidence given by Detective Hughes. Sow Mcc deposed that he was at the Chinese Garden, Arch Hill, on the 19th of February, about 5.30 o'clock. He thought between 7.30 and 8 o'clock he heard a lot o£ noise outside the house of the prisoners.' He ran out and saw Ah Yup,Ah Ching, Ah Moon, and Men Ken chasing the cow around the garden. AhYup had a long1, handled shovel, Ah Ching and Men" Ken each a garden fork, and Ah Moon a hoe. He saw them striking the .cows. One, escaped and the other did not. He; saw others chasing the cows, buft those four used the instruments. Those four were wiring into the. cow when she was down. He saw 14 or 15 Chinese chasing the cows. He could also recognise Ah Chow and Ah Yum as chasing the cows, but they had no instruments in -their hands.
Ah Noon deposed that he was a gardener residing at Arch Hill. On the night in question he saw Ah Ching, Ah Yup, Men Iven and Ah Moon chasing the cows. One got away and one fell down near the ceek. He did not seej>anyone use an axe. The other four prisoners only chased the cows, but did not use instruments.
The Bench were riot of opinion that this was a case to go to the Supreme Court, and therefore dismissed the prisoners.
Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 57, 8 March 1889, Page 2
On Wednesday last, Mr Sydenham, a resident of Archhill, found two of his cows in a mutilated condition just outside the fence of the Chinese gardens at Archhill. One cow died, its back having evidently been broken by a blow from an axe or a spade. The other cow seemed to have been stabbed in the side with a knife or some other sharp instrument. Apparently the cows had been trespassing in the Chinese gardens, as there was a gap in the fence and a number of vegetables showed signs of having been trampled upon. The matter was reported to tho police, and for the last few days Detective Hughes I has been making enquiries, but up to the present no actual clue as to the perpetrator of the outrage has been disclosed. Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 47, 22 February 1889, Page 3
Saturday, June 04, 2011
ALIENS' REGISTRATION ACT NUMBER OF CHINESE FINED
ALIENS' REGISTRATION ACT NUMBER OF CHINESE FINED
The appearance of about twenty Chinamen at the Magistrate's Court this morning aroused much curiosity as to the cause. The natural conjecture was that the police had raided a pakapoo school. When the names were called the defendants lined up good humouredly, and it was probably the largest crowd of people charged with the same kind of offence that had been seen in the Hawera Court up to that time. The charge was that being aliens they had failed to notify the registering authority of their change of address. The names of defendants were: Joe Ching, Joe Ug, Ah Cheu, Joe Gow, Joe Pong Tai, Chau Wai, Joe Ham, Hong Wong Yong, Joe' Wae Hong, Lee Ying Chong, Ug Ping Luin, Tong Nau Sye, Soo Foo, Wong Ah Gae, Wong Yet Lung, Ching Poi, Sam Yue, Jack Ling. Mr Houston, who appeared for the whole of the defendants, said that all were pleading guilty. The charge was laid under section 10 of the Aliens Registration Act, 1917, and was that they had failed to notify their changes of address within 14 days. The facts in each case were practically the same. They had duly registered under the Act, but when they changed their places of abode they failed to notify the registering authority. They now wished to comply with the requirements of the Act. It was a notorious fact that Chinese were among the most law-abiding members of the community, and those in and around Hawera were really very quiet, good citizens. He suggested that the position would be met by convicting and discharging defendants. Sergeant Henry stated that the conditions with which defendants had failed to comply were endorsed on the certificates of registration issued to them. As for their conduct, all were well behaved, and the case had been brought both as a warning to them and others. Some of the defendants had been in the town over 12 months and others only a few months. The Magistrate, addressing the defendants through an interpreter, said that the Act required aliens to notify a change of address within 14 days: For failure to do this an alien was liable to a fine of £20. He was quite satisfied that defendants had acted in ignorance, and for that reason he would not inflict a heavy penalty this time, but if any of them came before him again he would have to make the penalty more severe. The Interpreter: They want you to make the fine as light as possible. Some of the men are not working, and those that are working are only receiving 15s or 20s a week. The Magistrate: I am not fining them £5, but ss. That is not very much. The Interpreter: No, but of course they would like you to make it lighter. (Laughter) Sergeant Henry: There does not appear to be any shortage of money with them when the races are on. Each was ordered to pay in addition to the fine and Court costs is towards the interpreter's fee. As soon as the penalties had been definitely fixed the countenances of the Chinamen lost their woe-begone expression, which might have been calculated to move any magistrate. Cheerful smiles lit up their faces as they filed into the clerk's room to pay the fines. Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, 26 October 1920, Page 7
The appearance of about twenty Chinamen at the Magistrate's Court this morning aroused much curiosity as to the cause. The natural conjecture was that the police had raided a pakapoo school. When the names were called the defendants lined up good humouredly, and it was probably the largest crowd of people charged with the same kind of offence that had been seen in the Hawera Court up to that time. The charge was that being aliens they had failed to notify the registering authority of their change of address. The names of defendants were: Joe Ching, Joe Ug, Ah Cheu, Joe Gow, Joe Pong Tai, Chau Wai, Joe Ham, Hong Wong Yong, Joe' Wae Hong, Lee Ying Chong, Ug Ping Luin, Tong Nau Sye, Soo Foo, Wong Ah Gae, Wong Yet Lung, Ching Poi, Sam Yue, Jack Ling. Mr Houston, who appeared for the whole of the defendants, said that all were pleading guilty. The charge was laid under section 10 of the Aliens Registration Act, 1917, and was that they had failed to notify their changes of address within 14 days. The facts in each case were practically the same. They had duly registered under the Act, but when they changed their places of abode they failed to notify the registering authority. They now wished to comply with the requirements of the Act. It was a notorious fact that Chinese were among the most law-abiding members of the community, and those in and around Hawera were really very quiet, good citizens. He suggested that the position would be met by convicting and discharging defendants. Sergeant Henry stated that the conditions with which defendants had failed to comply were endorsed on the certificates of registration issued to them. As for their conduct, all were well behaved, and the case had been brought both as a warning to them and others. Some of the defendants had been in the town over 12 months and others only a few months. The Magistrate, addressing the defendants through an interpreter, said that the Act required aliens to notify a change of address within 14 days: For failure to do this an alien was liable to a fine of £20. He was quite satisfied that defendants had acted in ignorance, and for that reason he would not inflict a heavy penalty this time, but if any of them came before him again he would have to make the penalty more severe. The Interpreter: They want you to make the fine as light as possible. Some of the men are not working, and those that are working are only receiving 15s or 20s a week. The Magistrate: I am not fining them £5, but ss. That is not very much. The Interpreter: No, but of course they would like you to make it lighter. (Laughter) Sergeant Henry: There does not appear to be any shortage of money with them when the races are on. Each was ordered to pay in addition to the fine and Court costs is towards the interpreter's fee. As soon as the penalties had been definitely fixed the countenances of the Chinamen lost their woe-begone expression, which might have been calculated to move any magistrate. Cheerful smiles lit up their faces as they filed into the clerk's room to pay the fines. Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, 26 October 1920, Page 7
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