Por Por’s Cookbook

Por Por’s Cookbook From Asian Report From Asian Report 29 October 2013 Lynda Chanwai-Earle travels to Ashburton to check out Por Por’s Cookbook, which explores the lives and recipes of 15 Chinese-New Zealand grandmothers http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/asianreport/galleries/por-pors-cookbook

NZCA Youth Leadership Camp

NZCA Youth Leadership Camp – 12 to 15 December 2013 PDF Print Following the successful inaugural Youth Leadership Camp in 2011 – NZCA Auckland is hosting a second camp on 12-15 December 2013 at Camp Adair, Hunua. The camp offers a comprehensive leadership, cultural and team building experience for over 40 college aged NZ Chinese/Asian students from across our community. In 2011 the participants came from Auckland, Wellington, Foxton, Levin, Waikato and even the Gold Coast Australia. The energy and enthusiasm of Albert King (Inspiration and Leadership Motivation Consultant), our key facilitator from Singapore, will again be present at the 2013 camp. Camp Adair is an ideal venue and the key note speakers are a great cross section of leaders across our community. An alumnus of young support facilitators will help drive a versatile outdoor and cultural programme. The activities, including confidence courses, Chinese calligraphy and Chinese traditional dance will ensure an intensive and fulfilling programme. The benefits will translate into the participants becoming more confident and capable young leaders within our community. The camp provides a stepping stone to our other NZCA leadership initiatives being the Leadership and Development Conference (for ages 18 -30) and the social business networking forum – Future Dragonz (http://www.futuredragonz.org.nz/index.html ). As part of the programme we will again have a presentation from the versatile Mayor of Gisborne, Meng Foon, as a keynote speaker. Meng is a talented NZ born Chinese leader who has grown up from a market garden background, speaks fluent Maori and Cantonese and provides a great mentoring perspective to the young attendees. Please spread the word to your family, friends, sons, daughters and wider network – and send in your expression of interest to attend to nzca.ylc.2013@gmail.com. In the interim please go to our Facebook page for some insights. http://www.facebook.com/nzcaylc Registration Form

Por Pors Cookbook by Carolyn King

Home cooking through the generations since Chinese Women Settled in New Zealand over the last 100 years This book contains over 140 recipes and 15 Chinese women’s life stories. Reviewed by: Margaret Agnew, Journalist, Past editor of The Christchurch Press, Weekend Supplement. “ Food is one of the strongest ties to our culture and this unique cookbook is an important link to the culinary past and present of our multi-generational New Zealand-Chinese community. The women (and men) have been cooking up a taste of home since they arrived from mainland China in the early 1900s. Modern Kiwis of Chinese descent will find this book especially fascinating for a taste of our Porpor’s past. A poignant and piquant slice of culinary history.” Kuan Meng Goh (ONZM, JP, Ph D, FRSNZ), Emeritus Professor, Lincoln University; Canterbury Branch President and Past National President, New Zealand Chinese Association “It is widely known that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese. According to the famous Chinese scholar and archaeologist, K.C. Chang, “Chinese people are especially occupied with food and food is at the centre of, or at least it accompanies or symbolizes, many social interactions.” Traditionally, in Chinese culture, there is always an important relationship between food and health. This book adds a new dimension to the relationship by linking the experiences of Chinese grandmothers to their recipes. The recipes as presented are not only home-proven to succeed but are also authentic and achievable. Most people enjoy Chinese food and the recipes provide the opportunity to cook these delicious dishes. “ Meilin Chong, NZCA, Auckland Branch Committee Member. “This is a beautiful, well presented and illustrated Chinese cook book which is informative combined with family stories. It brings back fond memories of childhood days and the foods that our mothers and grandmothers cooked for us.” Home cooking through the generations since Chinese Women settled in New Zealand over the last 100 years Synopsis Through the generations the recipes have been passed down by SHOW and TELL We learnt by observation not by recipe. My aim was to record these home cooked recipes that we all love to eat. When the Chinese first settled in NZ, they used whatever fresh produce was available to them and added their own flavourings and seasonings. Aim of Cook Book;--Within the recipes sections; 1. to record the Por por’s recipes as well as my own recipes. 2. to record recipes for my daughter, and generation X & Y who now live all over the world and with their busy careers eat out more than they cook BUT yearn for the meals that they were brought up on. 3. to present and record Home Chinese cooking in NZ over the last 90-100 years. 4. to provide recipes using a base of healthy food ingredients for all New Zealanders who are interested in Chinese cooking . --With 15 Biographies of Chinese women to record 1. Life stories of grandmothers of varying ages the oldest 88yrs to the youngest of 65 years. 2. Their ancestral roots as related to first arrival to NZ. 3. Interests and achievements, contributions to their community. 4. 2-3 of their family recipes and any significant events or customs of the past. Market Potential---------This book should appeal to All Foodies who love to cook. Book lovers of biographies and cooking. New Zealanders and Australians who have had contact with Chinese families in their community. New Zealanders, young and old of Chinese descent, many now reside all over the world. Internationally, those who have roots from Southern China. Anyone interested in Chinese cooking. Background Information; In the 1901 NZ census, it showed that there were 78 Chinese women to 2, 885 Chinese men. The men folk had left their villages in Southern China due to poverty caused by famines, floods, attacks from bandits and civil wars. Upon hearing of gold in NZ in the 19th century and the chance of making their fortunes, they left their wives and families and came to New Zealand. They had planned to stay a few years and return to their families and live in comfort. Unfortunately this was not so. In the 1921 census there were 2993 men and 273 women. Chinese men worked wherever they could get a job, lived frugally and when they saved enough money, set up small businesses such as market gardens, fruit and vegetable shops and laundries. As Chinese women, either born in NZ or had come to live here as the government immigration laws permitted, the families lived off the bare necessities, raised their families and worked long hours with their husbands. It was not easy as they faced verbal abuse and racial prejudice. Many New Zealanders may not have understood what hardships the Chinese endured in the earlier years up to the 1960s. I received a small monetary grant from the NZ Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust which enabled me to commence this book. My Por Pors Cookbook meets the obligations of the trust as it records the lives of Chinese women, and recipes. I hope that this book will be a fine tribute to all these great women for their fine contribution to the New Zealand Society. September 25, 2013. Carolyn King. 5 Hefford Place, Ashburton. 7700. Ph. 03 3087022 email; carolynking@clear.net.nz Downloads POR PORS Cookbook synopsis Order form Cookbook Flyer Book Launch Auckland - 1 New North Road 9 November 2013 - at 2pm

Janet McAlister: Balance, harmony and breathing space

By Janet McAllister 10:50 AM Saturday Oct 19, 2013 Thanks to Art Week I had a crash course in appreciating Chinese-style scroll painting, trotting along to Parnell's Artreal Gallery for a painting demonstration by Wei Lun Ha. I was already intrigued by Ha's kauri forests, shown at Lopdell House - it's not every day that Aotearoa is represented in a non-Maori, non-European artform. (Ha says the most nightmarish thing about switching landscapes was working out how to paint the ponga, fern tendril by fern tendril.) Nor is it every day that overt politics are shown in traditional Chinese art. But for this year's Wallace Awards, Ha painted a startling blood-red protest against shark-fin soup. Sea fauna are a current concern: in another work the traditional art subject of koi carp become snapper, as a comment on the quota debate, while a steep, stylised Rangitoto rises from fierce waves (a parody/homage of Japanese painter Hokusai's 1832 masterpiece, The Great Wave, showing Mt Fuji). Ha turns out to be a smiling, sociable 25-year-old, an art teacher happy to explain. Unlike many in New Zealand's small traditional Chinese art community he's young and not from mainland China, instead identifying firmly as Kiwi, as he has been here since he was 2. The family's ancestral roots are in China but his parents are from Cambodia and Vietnam. Ha's work is inspired by the Lingnan school, which he says uses broader brushstrokes and brighter colours than most Chinese art. Ha is happy to chat while he's working. "I'm used to kids breathing down my neck," he says cheerfully, having sketched quickfire requests at the Lantern Festival. "They shout out whatever: shipwreck, tree, Pokemon." But today Ha is interested in creating balance, harmony and movement in a depiction, about 3m long, of the Milford Sound. "Clouds and trees work with wind to create the landscape," he says, the direction of the leaves and branches being very important. A mountain sits slightly "off to the side" as the focal point. Symmetry is not the same as balance, he says. Instead, the aim is to guide the viewer's eyes smoothly through the work in a figure-eight, yin-yang movement, "like qi that never dissipates". The long scrolls - Ha's record thus far is 100m - are used because "a square space is hard to move around". Leaving white "breathing" space is important, too. Below the mountain is a vast absence of paint - a lake. It doesn't contain any reflections because he's trying to give "the feeling of something being full rather than trying to fill it up". Less is more - and more mysterious. Most of his art students are young Pakeha. Ha says that "New Zealand Chinese think they don't need to have anything to do with China." He disagrees. "China is going to be big; I see the future moving that way. If we don't learn this, how are we going to communicate?" He's not necessarily talking about learning painting itself, but the ethos that underlies many Chinese expression forms, including tai chi: balance, harmony and movement. By Janet McAllister Email Janet http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arts-literature/news/article.cfm?c_id=18&objectid=11142833

Peter Calder: Around the world in eighty stalls

At the entrance to the car park at Westfield Glenfield, they are handing out tiny pamphlets with a silver fern and the words "THE TEST" on the front. But it's not about the footy. "There's a free chocolate if you complete a small survey inside," says the woman who presses one into my hand. As someone who has always understood the phrase "we're doing a survey" to mean "I have an ulterior motive", I'm instantly suspicious. Not without reason. The survey inside invites me to tick boxes to indicate which of the five commandments they've listed I have broken. I get a perfect five. Later, I will walk past the stall where they're giving out the chocolate. People are sitting at desks deep in conversation, and I decide to pass on the treat. My mother taught me not to take sweets from strangers. The other stalls that fill the crowded covered car park don't try to dissemble about what they're selling. In any case, you can smell it before you see it. This is the Sunday night market, an event that, I suspect, I'm the last person in Auckland to become aware of. It's a riot of aromas, and it's crammed with customers. The fruit-and-vegetable stalls are few, as are the tables of cheap cellphone cases and the like, though there's everything from watch repair to wellness evaluation. Along one wall there's a tarot card reader and henna tattooist, the cultural descendants, perhaps, of the ones who plied their trade in Cook St in the 1960s. A guitarist works one end of the room and a magician busks amid the mayhem. But mostly it's a food hall on steroids. Dozens of national cuisines are represented by stalls that sell various nations' street-food staples. Before I've moved 50m, I've salivated at the sight of the extruded doughnuts the Spanish call churros and succumbed to the lure of a couple of glistening beef siu mai, those dumplings that are a yum cha standard. This is multicultural Auckland in all its gastronomic finery. Signs proclaim everything from Indo-Fijian and Thai to southern barbecue and burgers. In a stall called Falafel Bro's, Assa Kohavy keeps up a rapid-fire patter as he accumulates a stack of orders in his head ("I can multitask, sir," he says when I hesitate to add mine). Kohavy and offsider David Salama, both from the Israeli port city of Haifa, sell Israeli falafel and kofta sandwiches, much spicier than the Turkish standards thanks to a Yemeni hot pepper sauce called zhug. But interestingly, the people behind the counters often attest to a widespread cultural omnivorousness: Portuguese pastel de nata is made by Bulgarians in a stall with an Italian name; the man in charge of the churros, Damir Klun, is from the former Yugoslavia. When I ask the latter what he is doing cooking Spanish food he smiles: "It's a good business," he says, with a "what can I say?" shrug. "People like what we sell and we always have a very big queue." Next to him Fusae Kudo runs a stall selling Japanese crepes which are described as harajuku-style, after the hip Tokyo fashion district. This is not traditional Japanese food, she admits; crepes are French, but in the 1970s the Japanese filled them with fresh fruit, rolled them up and made them into food you could eat while walking. The manager of Auckland Night Market, Paul de Jonge, tells me that he and his Chinese-born wife Victoria ("the brains behind the operation") run four markets across the city: in Onehunga on Thursday, Papatoetoe on Friday and Pakuranga (the original) on Saturday as well as the Sunday Glenfield one. He was inspired by the thriving markets in Taiwan - and the long queues at food stalls in an antique market here. Each has a slightly different flavour, he explains, according to the area's demography and the night of the week: "Papatoetoe on a Friday night, a lot of people are buying their groceries; here on a Sunday night, people are out relaxing. Families often don't have a place to go that everyone likes." Marissa Bell has come from Te Atatu Peninsula with her husband Kieran and their 2-year-old son Cohen, "because I didn't feel like cooking". We normally go out south," says Kieran. "This is the first time we have come here. There's a lot of different cultures and you can try a bit of everything. It's good to do something on a Sunday night." For more information: www.aucklandnightmarket.co.nz By Peter Calder 12:02 PM Wednesday Oct 16, 2013 The Sunday night market at Glenfield, one of four across Auckland, is a riot of aromas and customers.

Former mistress Bevan Chuang known for courting publicity

Auckland Mayor Len Brown has just arrived at Government House, his first proper engagement since he confirmed he had a two-year affair with a former colleague. Mr Brown has so far refused to resign from the city's top job, following the scandal that broke just more than 24 hours ago. He refused to offer any further insight into his long-term extra-marital affair with former council colleague Bevan Chuang. Ms Chuang is known for courting publicity. "I think he should resign and I think he should put himself up for re-election to regain a mandate by the people of Auckland," says former Mana Party mayor candidate John Minto. That's echoed by voters in Mr Brown's town, south Auckland. "I think he has to step down because nobody respects him anymore," says one voter 3 News spoke to. "I've love that job with a passion," Mr Brown told Campbell Live last night. "I love this city and I want to stay in that job. So, yes, it is my intention to stay as the Mayor." His 32-year-old former mistress faces an uncertain future. She's well known in the Chinese community and chairs different boards. But it's a largely conservative community and most aren't impressed. "I'm a bit shocked and disappointed because she had a lot going for her, in terms of what she's achieving and the profile she's getting, and this is a real setback," says Chinese Community Centre chairman Kai Luey. "She will not be remembered by the good work she does but for this whole episode." Two weeks ago she tweeted a 3 News reporter about the US shutdown, saying: "Last time Monica Lewinsky overshadowed the shutdown. What's in store for 2013? Very Naughty." Ms Lewinsky had an affair with US President Bill Clinton. This morning Ms Chuang shut down her twitter account. "I'm not looking for a guy who makes a lot of money or who is really good looking," she told a Maori TV programme earlier this month. She has long courted publicity, openly talking about her love life – or lack of it – on television and radio. But since the story broke yesterday afternoon, she's laid low. She gave all her evidence to Cameron Slater's Whale Oil blog. Mr Slater's dad was the campaign manager for John Palino, Len Brown's political rival. He insists that had nothing to do with him publishing the story. "It's actually irrelevant who my father is," said Mr Slater. "I've put up with this my entire life. Frankly it's boring now." 3 News Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/Former-mistress-Bevan-Chuang-known-for-courting-publicity/tabid/1607/articleID/317495/Default.aspx#ixzz2hrXrfRED

Calvin Sang

My name’s Calvin Sang. I make movies with friends, for clients and for YouTube. Contrary to my name, I’m a terrible singer. But I’m an alright filmmaker and you can have a look at my subtly positioned awards list below. Yeah, it’s just down there. At the bottom. Sweet. I grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and I’ve been making films ever since I found our old VHS camera when I was nine. Today, I make everything from films to commercials to cakes. http://www.calvinsang.com/

Calvin Sang

Calvin Sang is 19 and lives in Auckland. The short film was filmed in the sleepy suburb of Ellerslie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyY8kqPl5Jc Published on Apr 20, 2012 The full length zombie-comedy-action-drama movie. Made with a budget of around $100, between school and during holidays. Tweet this video! http://clicktotweet.com/2A6Th Subscribe for more http://bit.ly/S3QCuw Check out http://calvinsang.com for more! Directed by Calvin Sang Starring Reuben Bray Jeremy Tant Philippa Stephens Technical stuff for the filmies: Shot on the Canon 60D using 50mm 1.8 and 18-135mm lenses. Edited on Final Cut Express, After Effects. Dir: Calvin Sang Starring: Reuben Bray, Jeremy Tant, Philippa Stevens Available: www.calvinsang.com / YouTube A Kiwi curveball that fuses a rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic with a distinctly dry sense of humour, Holdout’s impressive prosthetics, swift action sequences and budget-belying slayings all make for a satisfying snack of zombiedom. Ultimately though, it’s the sweet tale of companionship around which the carnage is crafted that makes it so commendable. Director Calvin Sang is something of an indie scene grafter: having started making films at the age of nine, even he can’t recall how many he’s produced. With such a prolific resume, he was bound to stumble into the genre sooner or later. “After I had seen Shaun Of The Dead and Zombieland, I thought ‘what the hell’ and just went for it. I have friends that are good at makeup and blood and all that so there was really no excuse not to.” The minimal funding (approximately $100) proved the biggest challenge in getting the film made. “Being the longest – and most ambitious – film that we had done, it wasn’t something we could film over a weekend like we normally did. We had to do it in the school holidays, chunks at a time, over the span of a year. One time we had to delay filming for a few weeks because one of the leads cut his hair really short. That’s the limitation of a zero/low budget film.” The convincing special effects, however, look anything but cash-starved; so just how was such a high quality achieved on such a low budget? Explains Sang: “Computers and software are so powerful nowadays – it’s kind of amazing what you can find people doing online, just in their spare time. I have some films that rely heavily on effects, like some action films on my YouTube channel. And I have character driven films that don’t have any effects at all. Holdout was a marriage of the two I guess. At the heart of it, it’s about friends and isolation. But it’s also a zombie movie, so it needs to have that kinetic, gory aspect to it as well.”

Por Por's Cook book

Por Por's Cook book - Book launch soon - Home cooking through the generations since Chinese Women Settled in New Zealand over the last 100 years This book contains over 140 recipes and 15 Chinese women’s life stories. Reviewed by: Margaret Agnew, Journalist, Past editor of The Christchurch Press, Weekend Supplement. “ Food is one of the strongest ties to our culture and this unique cookbook is an important link to the culinary past and present of our multi-generational New Zealand-Chinese community. The women (and men) have been cooking up a taste of home since they arrived from mainland China in the early 1900s. Modern Kiwis of Chinese descent will find this book especially fascinating for a taste of our Porpor’s past. A poignant and piquant slice of culinary history.” Kuan Meng Goh (ONZM, JP, Ph D, FRSNZ), Emeritus Professor, Lincoln University; Dave Canterbury (Pathfinder)Branch President and Past National President, New Zealand Chinese Association “It is widely known that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese. According to the famous Chinese scholar and archaeologist, K.C. Chang, “Chinese people are especially occupied with food and food is at the centre of, or at least it accompanies or symbolizes, many social interactions.” Traditionally, in Chinese culture, there is always an important relationship between food and health. This book adds a new dimension to the relationship by linking the experiences of Chinese grandmothers to their recipes. The recipes as presented are not only home-proven to succeed but are also authentic and achievable. Most people enjoy Chinese food and the recipes provide the opportunity to cook these delicious dishes. “ Meilin Chong, NZCA, Auckland Branch Committee Member. “This is a beautiful, well presented and illustrated Chinese cook book which is informative combined with family stories. It brings back fond memories of childhood days and the foods that our mothers and grandmothers cooked for us.” Home cooking through the generations since Chinese Women settled in New Zealand over the last 100 years POR PORs COOKBOOK Carolyn King Order enquiries Email: carolynking@clear.net.nz