By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Published: 05 April 2007
Nina Wang leaves a fortune and an unsolved murder mystery
Nina Wang, Asia's richest woman, who looked like a manga cartoon character with her schoolgirl skirts, bobby socks and pigtails, has died in Hong Kong leaving an enormous property fortune and an unsolved kidnap and murder mystery.
In January, Forbes magazine named Mrs Wang, popularly known as "Little Sweetie'', the 11th richest person in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong and reckoned her wealth at well over £2bn.
Despite her fabulous riches, Shanghai-born Mrs Wang was famously frugal in her personal life - she spent just £200 on herself every month, favoured fast food over haute cuisine and was known to queue for cheap tickets when going to shows. She cut an unusual figure, even among Hong Kong's eccentric and flamboyant super-rich, with her brightly coloured, child-like clothes. This was a fashion look she held on to right until the end, aged 69. She could also be seen wearing traditional Chinese cheongsam dresses, most of them hand-stitched by her friends to save money.
"With deep sorrow and sadness the Chinachem Group announces the passing away of its chairlady Mrs Nina Kung Wang on 3 April 2007," the company spokesman said in a statement, adding that funeral arrangements would be made shortly.
Despite her frugal ways, understatement was simply not a word in Mrs Wang's vocabulary. She built Nina Tower 1 in the Tsuen Wan district of Hong Kong, the tallest building in the territory outside the central business district and the 22nd tallest building in the world. She named the tower after herself, but dedicated it to her husband Teddy, who disappeared after he was kidnapped leaving the Hong Kong Jockey Club in 1990. Mr Wang was declared dead nine years later and the internecine war over his financial legacy was the most brutal Hong Kong had ever seen. Mr Wang owned 400 companies around the world, but he left no heir, and his father was keen that his vast riches should remain in family hands. Nina Kung first met Teddy when she was a child. They were playmates - her father worked for the ICI chemical company, while Teddy's had a trading company called the China United Chemical Company, and both families were extremely close.
Nina and Teddy married in 1955, after both had moved to Hong Kong, and Teddy began his Chinachem business.
Mrs Wang always maintained her husband was alive and would eventually return. As co-director, she took control of his company and, through a series of canny deals, expanded Chinachem into Hong Kong's largest privately held property empire.
It was the second time Mr Wang had been abducted. Seven years earlier, he was released after being held inside a refrigerated lock-up after Mrs Wang paid a £5.5m ransom.
But this time, Mr Wang was not seen again. Mr Wang's father, Wang Din-shin, 96, campaigned hard to have his son declared dead, so that the estate could be settled.
Several years later, one of his kidnappers claimed Mr Wang, then 56, had been held on a sampan fishing boat and then thrown in the South China Sea.
In 1999, Wang Din-shin succeeded in having his son's death declared, and he launched a civil suit to claim his inheritance. Old Wang is quite a character himself, a former opium smoker who admits to having had a concubine and is very much a pre-Second World War kind of Chinese businessman.
But the matter was complicated by the fact that there were two, possibly three, wills.
In one will, from 1968, Mr Wang left his father everything. His father said the will was written after he told his son of his wife's infidelity with a warehouse manager. Furious, Mr Wang tore up an earlier 1960 will that split his fortune between his wife and his father.
Mrs Wang had a different version, a will from 1990 after Mr Wang had fallen off a horse, just one month before he was kidnapped. He left everything to his wife, and wrote the phrase, in English, "One love, one life".
A Hong Kong High Court judge ruled that this will was a fake, saying that part of it was "probably" written by Mrs Wang.
However, in 2005, the city's Court of Final Appeal overturned the verdict and said Mrs Wang should inherit all of the fortune.
After her death, thoughts quickly turned as to who would inherit her vast wealth. There were no details of how she died though there had been speculation for many months that she had developed ovarian cancer which had spread to her liver and other organs.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Chan Paak Yue - Hawera
Was noted in Hawera 1913, and from Sun Gai Village China. No Date of Death. Who buried him? Was it his clansmen?
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Jackie Chan launches Chinese TV show
Jackie Chan on Saturday launched a Chinese TV competition aimed at scouting out new action movie talent, saying more than 100,000 people have already signed up for a shot at kung fu stardom.
"A lot of actors are good at fighting but (their style) is not beautiful," the Chinese star and stunt man, who turned 53 Saturday, said in Beijing.
"If you can incorporate dance with an ability to perform kung fu, that would be better," Chan told an audience that included a selected 20 of the show's contestants and some Chinese celebrities.
The TV show, whose English title is "The Disciple," is jointly produced by Chan and Beijing TV Station, known as BTV.
The show will run from March to October, with 10 winners appearing in a movie to be produced by Chan, organizers said. The movie will be released before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chan said.
"The Disciple" official Web site: http://long.btv.com.cn/
Jackie Chan's official Web site: http://www.jackiechan.com
"A lot of actors are good at fighting but (their style) is not beautiful," the Chinese star and stunt man, who turned 53 Saturday, said in Beijing.
"If you can incorporate dance with an ability to perform kung fu, that would be better," Chan told an audience that included a selected 20 of the show's contestants and some Chinese celebrities.
The TV show, whose English title is "The Disciple," is jointly produced by Chan and Beijing TV Station, known as BTV.
The show will run from March to October, with 10 winners appearing in a movie to be produced by Chan, organizers said. The movie will be released before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chan said.
"The Disciple" official Web site: http://long.btv.com.cn/
Jackie Chan's official Web site: http://www.jackiechan.com
Monday, April 02, 2007
Kaiping and diaolou
Situated in western Guangdong province, the xian of Kaiping was one of the centres of Chinese emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article is concerned with the diaolou built there at the end of the Empire and in the early years of the Republic. These fortified buildings were built with money from emigrants, trying to protect their village at a time when public order was very uncertain. They are notable for their combination of Chinese and Western architectural features[1]. http://www.cefc.com.hk/uk/pc/articles/art_ligne.php?num_art_ligne=6601
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Two heroes' journey to be a moving film
5:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007
The story of how a young Englishman, George Hogg, took 60 orphans on a journey of hundreds of miles to safety across war-ravaged China in the winter of 1944 is one of the more remarkable tales of World War II.
In the town of Shandan, in Gansu province on the Mongolian border, Hogg and his friend and mentor, the New Zealand philanthropist Rewi Alley, are remembered with a statue and affection, but Hogg is little known outside China.
This is all set to change with a film called The Children of Huang Shi which is being made by the Canadian-born director Roger Spottiswoode.
With Japanese forces snapping at their heels as they made their western advance across China in 1944, and with the help of Mao Zedong's communist guerrillas, Hogg escorted the boys across 1100km of mountainous terrain in northwestern China to a temple town in Shandan. Just one year later, Hogg contracted tetanus after he injured his toe playing basketball with the students. With no medicines to stop lockjaw, he died, aged 29.
A privileged Oxford graduate, seemingly destined for middle-class security, Hogg landed in Shanghai at the tender age of 23 during a trip around the world. He worked as a journalist for the United Press news agency and among the historical events he witnessed was the brutal occupation by the Japanese of the then-capital Nanking, now Nanjing.
In China, no one talks about World War II. Instead people talk about the Anti-Japanese War, which ran from 1931, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, until 1945 when the Japanese capitulated.
The war still has political ramifications in China and relations between the two Asian powers have yet to recover fully - the Chinese believe the Japanese have never expressed proper remorse.
In 1937 marauding Japanese troops began what has become known as the Rape of Nanking, killing many thousands of Chinese civilians. The massacre remains a contentious issue between the countries: China says that 300,000 people were killed, while some Japanese researchers consider the death toll to be between 100,000 and 200,000.
Hogg became involved with Alley, who had set up a scheme known as the Industrial Co-operative, a Chinese version of the American New Deal programme of industrial development. The co-operative's slogan - Gung Ho - has passed into the English language. In 1942 Alley set up a system of schools called the Bailie Schools after his friend Joseph Bailie, an American missionary who pioneered the idea of integrating theory and practice in education in China.
Hogg, who relates the story in his book I see a New China, ran the school at Shuangshipu, around 200km west of Xi'an, in Shaanxi province, with great success, but was forced to pack up the school on carts and head for Gansu as the war encroached.
It was a dangerous journey - poor mountainous roads, and Japanese soldiers everywhere. Two boys died during the journey. In Shandan, Alley rented a few old temples and turned them into classrooms and workshops, and appointed Hogg as headmaster.
The £10 million ($28 million) movie, which features epic battle scenes, a strong emotional dimension and a sympathetic reading of recent Chinese history, is due in cinemas early next year. The Rape of Nanking is set to feature in a number of Chinese and foreign film projects this year, but while being set in the China of its time, The Children of Huang Shi is not solely a movie about the atrocities of war but of one Briton's heroism and his journey of discovery.
- Independent
The story of how a young Englishman, George Hogg, took 60 orphans on a journey of hundreds of miles to safety across war-ravaged China in the winter of 1944 is one of the more remarkable tales of World War II.
In the town of Shandan, in Gansu province on the Mongolian border, Hogg and his friend and mentor, the New Zealand philanthropist Rewi Alley, are remembered with a statue and affection, but Hogg is little known outside China.
This is all set to change with a film called The Children of Huang Shi which is being made by the Canadian-born director Roger Spottiswoode.
With Japanese forces snapping at their heels as they made their western advance across China in 1944, and with the help of Mao Zedong's communist guerrillas, Hogg escorted the boys across 1100km of mountainous terrain in northwestern China to a temple town in Shandan. Just one year later, Hogg contracted tetanus after he injured his toe playing basketball with the students. With no medicines to stop lockjaw, he died, aged 29.
A privileged Oxford graduate, seemingly destined for middle-class security, Hogg landed in Shanghai at the tender age of 23 during a trip around the world. He worked as a journalist for the United Press news agency and among the historical events he witnessed was the brutal occupation by the Japanese of the then-capital Nanking, now Nanjing.
In China, no one talks about World War II. Instead people talk about the Anti-Japanese War, which ran from 1931, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, until 1945 when the Japanese capitulated.
The war still has political ramifications in China and relations between the two Asian powers have yet to recover fully - the Chinese believe the Japanese have never expressed proper remorse.
In 1937 marauding Japanese troops began what has become known as the Rape of Nanking, killing many thousands of Chinese civilians. The massacre remains a contentious issue between the countries: China says that 300,000 people were killed, while some Japanese researchers consider the death toll to be between 100,000 and 200,000.
Hogg became involved with Alley, who had set up a scheme known as the Industrial Co-operative, a Chinese version of the American New Deal programme of industrial development. The co-operative's slogan - Gung Ho - has passed into the English language. In 1942 Alley set up a system of schools called the Bailie Schools after his friend Joseph Bailie, an American missionary who pioneered the idea of integrating theory and practice in education in China.
Hogg, who relates the story in his book I see a New China, ran the school at Shuangshipu, around 200km west of Xi'an, in Shaanxi province, with great success, but was forced to pack up the school on carts and head for Gansu as the war encroached.
It was a dangerous journey - poor mountainous roads, and Japanese soldiers everywhere. Two boys died during the journey. In Shandan, Alley rented a few old temples and turned them into classrooms and workshops, and appointed Hogg as headmaster.
The £10 million ($28 million) movie, which features epic battle scenes, a strong emotional dimension and a sympathetic reading of recent Chinese history, is due in cinemas early next year. The Rape of Nanking is set to feature in a number of Chinese and foreign film projects this year, but while being set in the China of its time, The Children of Huang Shi is not solely a movie about the atrocities of war but of one Briton's heroism and his journey of discovery.
- Independent
Horroe Denial a festering sore
Horror denial a festering sore
5:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007By David NcNeill
Chinese students mourn the victims of the 1937 massacre in Nanjing during a memorial ceremony in 2001. Photo / Reuters
The photographs are sickening, a gallery of horrors from a gruesome war where the casualties were counted in the millions: Decapitated and disembowelled bodies, dead babies discarded in ditches, hollow-eyed skulls staring from a jumbled pile of human bones.
After five minutes, the mind starts to numb; 10 and the air in this converted warehouse feels still and heavy, like the weight of history is seeping through the doors.
The newly opened Chukiren Peace Museum nestles among swathes of identikit houses in a suburb north of Tokyo, watched over by a pensioner; a foot-soldier in what Czech writer Milan Kundera calls the struggle of memory against forgetting.
The 80-year-old curator, Fumiko Niki, has spent much of her life at war with Japan's conservatives.
"We are in a very dangerous period," she says. "Awareness of Japan's role in wartime is fading."
The core of the museum's collection is the testimony of 300 Japanese Imperial Army veterans who confessed while in custody in China to committing atrocities there, including rape, torture and infanticide.
Graphic video and photographic evidence showing some of the Army's most brutal crimes is held in the archives. Ultra-rightists have already threatened to burn the museum down and the elderly staff are studying the unfamiliar world of high-tech security.
"You won't find these things in school textbooks," says veteran Tsuyoshi Ebato, who helped compile this archive. The testimonies include an account of a sergeant-major who raped and killed a Chinese woman, then cannibalised her with his unit.
Ebato says he trained recruits to use captured Chinese for bayonet practice. "Terrible things like this happened all the time," he says.
"Now people are saying that they never happened. Japan wants to keep a lid on a stinking pot."
Across Tokyo is the office of the right-wing internet broadcaster Channel Sakura. There are no pictures of war atrocities here. Instead, swords and rising-sun flags decorate the walls along with portraits of the Emperor and poems to fallen Japanese soldiers.
Since it was set up two years ago, Sakura has pumped out nationalist programmes to its small audience. Now its president is planning to direct a big-budget documentary arguing the 1937 "Rape of Nanjing" - one of history's most notorious war crimes - was a hoax.
"Nanjing is a lie, it is as simple as that," says Satoru Mizushima. "It is Chinese propaganda, backed up by left-wingers in this country."
Mizushima says the photos in the peace museum are faked, that former Japanese soldiers like Ebato were "brainwashed" by "Chinese communists" while in captivity, and that the war crimes documented there never happened. "It is all perfectly clear and we're going to prove it."
Such views have long existed on the fringes of Japanese politics, but the movie is backed by at least a dozen lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic (LDP) and opposition parties; Tokyo mayor, Shintaro Ishihara; and a panel of university lecturers. And in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the makers arguably have a leader who is closer to their world view than any Japanese premier in decades.
Abe has made no secret of his distaste for the way the history of the war in China has been recorded. Before becoming leader, he was one of a group of LDP politicians who strongly backed a history textbook downplaying or removing references to Japan's war crimes in Asia, including Nanjing.
The textbook refers to the rape of the city as "an incident" and rejects the higher casualty estimates. China claims 300,000 died; revisionist historians in Japan put the figure anywhere between zero and 40,000.
"Where did they dispose of all those bodies?" asks Mizushima, jabbing what he says are doctored photos from Iris Chang's 1997 bestseller The Rape of Nanking (Nanking is the English name for Nanjing).
"The Nazis had to build ovens to kill Jews. But we don't have the same ideology as the Nazis. We weren't trying to wipe out Nanjing or the Chinese."
Chang's book, criticised for its inaccuracies and use of doctored photos, called the rape and looting "the forgotten holocaust".
Nanjing continues to poison one of the world's most important bilateral relationships.
Over 80 per cent of young Chinese in a recent survey cited the rape as the issue they associated most with Japan. Anti-Japanese sentiment, fuelled by nationalism and government propaganda, has grown steadily in China, culminating in a series of riots and boycotts, and prompting Beijing and Tokyo to set up a joint education panel in an attempt to lay the historical ghosts to rest.
But the 20 academics on both sides admit they are struggling. "It is very difficult indeed," says Professor Shinichi Kitaoka, who is part of the Japanese delegation. "But we have to find some way of narrowing the gap between us."
Talk of hoaxes incenses Beijing. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, said recently there was "ironclad" evidence that the massacre took place.
A new United States movie on the rape, featuring Woody Harrelson, is being released and at least another half-dozen more are in the pipeline to mark the 70th anniversary of Nanjing.
Beijing plans its own film, based on Chang's book, a move that prompted Japanese politicians to announce their own "study group" to counter what they say is a looming wave of anti-Japanese sentiment.
It was the prospect of these new projects that also spurred Mizushima into action. "We cannot let these distorted views of history spread throughout the world. We're not doing it because we're anti-Chinese; we simply want to tell the truth."
He rejects all accusations of Japanese war crimes in Asia, including the sexual enslavement of 200,000 women and the forced employment of millions of Chinese and Korean labourers.
"Koreans and Chinese want to save face by saying that we enslaved them, but their own parents sold them into prostitution and slavery. They're crying like women about what happened to them."
- Independent
5:00AM Saturday March 03, 2007By David NcNeill
Chinese students mourn the victims of the 1937 massacre in Nanjing during a memorial ceremony in 2001. Photo / Reuters
The photographs are sickening, a gallery of horrors from a gruesome war where the casualties were counted in the millions: Decapitated and disembowelled bodies, dead babies discarded in ditches, hollow-eyed skulls staring from a jumbled pile of human bones.
After five minutes, the mind starts to numb; 10 and the air in this converted warehouse feels still and heavy, like the weight of history is seeping through the doors.
The newly opened Chukiren Peace Museum nestles among swathes of identikit houses in a suburb north of Tokyo, watched over by a pensioner; a foot-soldier in what Czech writer Milan Kundera calls the struggle of memory against forgetting.
The 80-year-old curator, Fumiko Niki, has spent much of her life at war with Japan's conservatives.
"We are in a very dangerous period," she says. "Awareness of Japan's role in wartime is fading."
The core of the museum's collection is the testimony of 300 Japanese Imperial Army veterans who confessed while in custody in China to committing atrocities there, including rape, torture and infanticide.
Graphic video and photographic evidence showing some of the Army's most brutal crimes is held in the archives. Ultra-rightists have already threatened to burn the museum down and the elderly staff are studying the unfamiliar world of high-tech security.
"You won't find these things in school textbooks," says veteran Tsuyoshi Ebato, who helped compile this archive. The testimonies include an account of a sergeant-major who raped and killed a Chinese woman, then cannibalised her with his unit.
Ebato says he trained recruits to use captured Chinese for bayonet practice. "Terrible things like this happened all the time," he says.
"Now people are saying that they never happened. Japan wants to keep a lid on a stinking pot."
Across Tokyo is the office of the right-wing internet broadcaster Channel Sakura. There are no pictures of war atrocities here. Instead, swords and rising-sun flags decorate the walls along with portraits of the Emperor and poems to fallen Japanese soldiers.
Since it was set up two years ago, Sakura has pumped out nationalist programmes to its small audience. Now its president is planning to direct a big-budget documentary arguing the 1937 "Rape of Nanjing" - one of history's most notorious war crimes - was a hoax.
"Nanjing is a lie, it is as simple as that," says Satoru Mizushima. "It is Chinese propaganda, backed up by left-wingers in this country."
Mizushima says the photos in the peace museum are faked, that former Japanese soldiers like Ebato were "brainwashed" by "Chinese communists" while in captivity, and that the war crimes documented there never happened. "It is all perfectly clear and we're going to prove it."
Such views have long existed on the fringes of Japanese politics, but the movie is backed by at least a dozen lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic (LDP) and opposition parties; Tokyo mayor, Shintaro Ishihara; and a panel of university lecturers. And in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the makers arguably have a leader who is closer to their world view than any Japanese premier in decades.
Abe has made no secret of his distaste for the way the history of the war in China has been recorded. Before becoming leader, he was one of a group of LDP politicians who strongly backed a history textbook downplaying or removing references to Japan's war crimes in Asia, including Nanjing.
The textbook refers to the rape of the city as "an incident" and rejects the higher casualty estimates. China claims 300,000 died; revisionist historians in Japan put the figure anywhere between zero and 40,000.
"Where did they dispose of all those bodies?" asks Mizushima, jabbing what he says are doctored photos from Iris Chang's 1997 bestseller The Rape of Nanking (Nanking is the English name for Nanjing).
"The Nazis had to build ovens to kill Jews. But we don't have the same ideology as the Nazis. We weren't trying to wipe out Nanjing or the Chinese."
Chang's book, criticised for its inaccuracies and use of doctored photos, called the rape and looting "the forgotten holocaust".
Nanjing continues to poison one of the world's most important bilateral relationships.
Over 80 per cent of young Chinese in a recent survey cited the rape as the issue they associated most with Japan. Anti-Japanese sentiment, fuelled by nationalism and government propaganda, has grown steadily in China, culminating in a series of riots and boycotts, and prompting Beijing and Tokyo to set up a joint education panel in an attempt to lay the historical ghosts to rest.
But the 20 academics on both sides admit they are struggling. "It is very difficult indeed," says Professor Shinichi Kitaoka, who is part of the Japanese delegation. "But we have to find some way of narrowing the gap between us."
Talk of hoaxes incenses Beijing. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, said recently there was "ironclad" evidence that the massacre took place.
A new United States movie on the rape, featuring Woody Harrelson, is being released and at least another half-dozen more are in the pipeline to mark the 70th anniversary of Nanjing.
Beijing plans its own film, based on Chang's book, a move that prompted Japanese politicians to announce their own "study group" to counter what they say is a looming wave of anti-Japanese sentiment.
It was the prospect of these new projects that also spurred Mizushima into action. "We cannot let these distorted views of history spread throughout the world. We're not doing it because we're anti-Chinese; we simply want to tell the truth."
He rejects all accusations of Japanese war crimes in Asia, including the sexual enslavement of 200,000 women and the forced employment of millions of Chinese and Korean labourers.
"Koreans and Chinese want to save face by saying that we enslaved them, but their own parents sold them into prostitution and slavery. They're crying like women about what happened to them."
- Independent
Map of Canton 1954 - US Army
http://www.suite101.com/external_link.cfm?elink=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/china.html
Enter
Look under Detailed Maps
China - Topographic Maps U.S. Army Map Service, Series L500 (China Series), original scale 1:250,000
Enter
Choose NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (6.2 MB)
or
NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (CANTON) AND VICINITY [verso] (3.1 MB)
Enter
Look under Detailed Maps
China - Topographic Maps U.S. Army Map Service, Series L500 (China Series), original scale 1:250,000
Enter
Choose NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (6.2 MB)
or
NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (CANTON) AND VICINITY [verso] (3.1 MB)
Saturday, February 17, 2007
History of Choy Lee Fut as told by Chen Yong Fa,
http://www.clfsd.com/hist.html My great-great-grandfather, Chan Heung was from the village Ging Mui2 in the district of Ngi Sai, the county of Sun Wui, in the Kwuntung province. From the age of seven, Chan Heung was taught martial arts by his uncle/village elder3, Chan Yuen Wu.
Ka-Shue
LYNDA CHANWAI-EARLE Ka-Shue (Letters Home) Playwright’s Note I am Eurasian by ethnicity, a fourth-generation New Zealander. Based on the Chinese side of my family (the Tung clan of BakChuen), Ka-Shue uncovers some of the last 150 years of a buried history in New Zealand. There has been a noticeable absence of a Chinese voice in this country. Perhaps it is because the Chinese community has been producing its own work for its own people, but this work has been largely inaccessible to a wider public until now. The material has often been spoken in Chinese, and not produced for mainstream audiences. In writing Ka-Shue I have focused on the personal and domestic lives of three generations of a Chinese family. Ka-Shue spans the cultures of New Zealand and China, encompassing a broad sweep of the political events between the two countries as a backdrop for the personal dramas of the characters. This play is dedicated to my family. I am aware that this play is close to the bone as far as my family history is concerned, but I hope in the end that I have attempted a universal story about immigration, about the systematic alienation of particular immigrant groups. For me Ka-Shue is also a story about immigrant women, struggling to make for themselves a sense of home and identity. The play works most effectively with minimal props and furniture, which remain on stage throughout. Descriptions such as the venetian blinds of the hotel windows or Paw paw’s graveside can be lit areas played out to the audience. Ka-Shue is set in several time frames—1939, 1941, 1945, 1959, and 1989—and the scenes weave seamlessly between them. KaShue can be played by one actor or a full cast (as a series of monologues). If one actor is used, it is preferable to use only one costume and have the actor portray character changes through voice and body. Time and place can be evoked with the help of live music (preferably
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Assassin jailed for at least 17 years
10:30AM Thursday February 15, 2007
Tam Yam Ah was killed in 2005
Related nzherald links:
Read the full story behind the murder
A hitman who murdered a triad enforcer with a single shot to his chest will spend at least 17 years in jail.
Wan Yee Chow, 55, was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years today when he appeared for sentencing in the High Court in Auckland.
A jury last year found him guilty of murdering Tam Yam Ah, 37, in July 2005.
Tam, a long-time criminal and triad enforcer, was shot dead outside his karaoke bar in Symonds Street, Auckland.
Chow drove from the Hutt Valley to Auckland, donned black clothes and headgear, then shot Mr Tam.
Prosecutor Kieran Raftery told the court the murder was "a cold-blooded Chinese gang killing".
Tam arrived in New Zealand in the late 1980s.
He beat his wife, the court heard, and she retaliated by drugging him and hitting him with a meat cleaver.
She was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder after her lawyer argued she suffered battered women's syndrome.
Tam has previously served at least two jail terms for a variety of offences.
Tam Yam Ah was killed in 2005
Related nzherald links:
Read the full story behind the murder
A hitman who murdered a triad enforcer with a single shot to his chest will spend at least 17 years in jail.
Wan Yee Chow, 55, was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years today when he appeared for sentencing in the High Court in Auckland.
A jury last year found him guilty of murdering Tam Yam Ah, 37, in July 2005.
Tam, a long-time criminal and triad enforcer, was shot dead outside his karaoke bar in Symonds Street, Auckland.
Chow drove from the Hutt Valley to Auckland, donned black clothes and headgear, then shot Mr Tam.
Prosecutor Kieran Raftery told the court the murder was "a cold-blooded Chinese gang killing".
Tam arrived in New Zealand in the late 1980s.
He beat his wife, the court heard, and she retaliated by drugging him and hitting him with a meat cleaver.
She was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder after her lawyer argued she suffered battered women's syndrome.
Tam has previously served at least two jail terms for a variety of offences.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Obituary: Eric Wong Ming
Saturday January 20, 2007 By Nigel Murphy and staff reporter
Eric Wong Ming, greengrocer, poll tax immigrant. Died aged 102.
Eric Wong Ming arrived in New Zealand in 1920, a time when Chinese immigrants were required to pay £100 as a poll tax or entry tax, the equivalent of about 10 years' wages.
They were also required to pass an education test that consisted of reading 100 words in English.
Eric raised the money by using land inherited from his father as collateral. He also took a three-month intensive English language course.
On his arrival he paid over the money and then prepared to sit his test. As he remembered it when he was 99, the Customs officer chose page one of the Fourth Pacific Reader, the standard fourth-form text in New Zealand. Eric had just begun, "Long ago, men wandered from place to place ... " when the officer stopped him, saying, "That's enough, you've passed."
Eric eventually found work in a Wellington fruit shop with a family from Jung Seng county in Guangdong, near his birthplace.
The intense racism of New Zealanders caught him so much by surprise that he considered returning home. But he realised New Zealand offered the chance of a better life so he accepted the challenge and stayed.
In 1930 Eric returned to China to get married. A number of women were paraded for his choice, but his eye fell on Wong Low She.
They married and Eric stayed in his home village of Gwa Liang for two years, but because there was no work, and because the immigration of Chinese women to New Zealand had been stopped in 1925, he returned here alone.
In 1937 he set up his own fruit shop in Blenheim and in 1940 his wife was finally able to join him, as a refugee from the Japanese war in China.
This respite was for two years only, as the law then stated that after that time the women and children, including any born in New Zealand during the two years, had to return home.
In 1947 the Government reluctantly decided to allow the refugees to stay.
Eric and his wife had four sons between 1940 and 1948. They moved to Auckland when Eric retired in 1964. He is survived by three sons.
Eric Wong Ming, greengrocer, poll tax immigrant. Died aged 102.
Eric Wong Ming arrived in New Zealand in 1920, a time when Chinese immigrants were required to pay £100 as a poll tax or entry tax, the equivalent of about 10 years' wages.
They were also required to pass an education test that consisted of reading 100 words in English.
Eric raised the money by using land inherited from his father as collateral. He also took a three-month intensive English language course.
On his arrival he paid over the money and then prepared to sit his test. As he remembered it when he was 99, the Customs officer chose page one of the Fourth Pacific Reader, the standard fourth-form text in New Zealand. Eric had just begun, "Long ago, men wandered from place to place ... " when the officer stopped him, saying, "That's enough, you've passed."
Eric eventually found work in a Wellington fruit shop with a family from Jung Seng county in Guangdong, near his birthplace.
The intense racism of New Zealanders caught him so much by surprise that he considered returning home. But he realised New Zealand offered the chance of a better life so he accepted the challenge and stayed.
In 1930 Eric returned to China to get married. A number of women were paraded for his choice, but his eye fell on Wong Low She.
They married and Eric stayed in his home village of Gwa Liang for two years, but because there was no work, and because the immigration of Chinese women to New Zealand had been stopped in 1925, he returned here alone.
In 1937 he set up his own fruit shop in Blenheim and in 1940 his wife was finally able to join him, as a refugee from the Japanese war in China.
This respite was for two years only, as the law then stated that after that time the women and children, including any born in New Zealand during the two years, had to return home.
In 1947 the Government reluctantly decided to allow the refugees to stay.
Eric and his wife had four sons between 1940 and 1948. They moved to Auckland when Eric retired in 1964. He is survived by three sons.
Delamere believed applications honest, lawful - lawyer
11:45AM Thursday February 08, 2007
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere
Related nzherald links:
Former minister in court for fraud
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere believed applications made to the Immigration Service on behalf of his Chinese migrant clients were honest and lawful, a defence lawyer told a jury today.
Delamere denies 20 fraud charges over applications made to the Immigration Service between 2001 and 2004 by his immigration consultancy, Tuariki Delamere and Associates.
On the second day of the trial in the High Court at Auckland, defence lawyer Paul Dacre, in his opening address, asked the jury to think about what was going on Delamere's mind when he made the applications.
"Was it some cynical approach or a genuine application?"
Mr Dacre said he disputed the Crown's case that the scheme was dishonest.
"Mr Delamere believed what he was doing was honest and also lawful."
Attempts to paint a scheme with a Chinese business partner as a "money-go-round" was a cynical ploy.
"It was perfectly legal, perfectly legitimate."
Mr Dacre said it was not a system that was designed to get around the Immigration Service. Documents used by Delamere were not dishonestly produced with the intention of misleading third parties, he said.
Delamere "at all times was acting legitimately, honestly and in his clients interests".
The trial is continuing
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere
Related nzherald links:
Former minister in court for fraud
Former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere believed applications made to the Immigration Service on behalf of his Chinese migrant clients were honest and lawful, a defence lawyer told a jury today.
Delamere denies 20 fraud charges over applications made to the Immigration Service between 2001 and 2004 by his immigration consultancy, Tuariki Delamere and Associates.
On the second day of the trial in the High Court at Auckland, defence lawyer Paul Dacre, in his opening address, asked the jury to think about what was going on Delamere's mind when he made the applications.
"Was it some cynical approach or a genuine application?"
Mr Dacre said he disputed the Crown's case that the scheme was dishonest.
"Mr Delamere believed what he was doing was honest and also lawful."
Attempts to paint a scheme with a Chinese business partner as a "money-go-round" was a cynical ploy.
"It was perfectly legal, perfectly legitimate."
Mr Dacre said it was not a system that was designed to get around the Immigration Service. Documents used by Delamere were not dishonestly produced with the intention of misleading third parties, he said.
Delamere "at all times was acting legitimately, honestly and in his clients interests".
The trial is continuing
Festival goes nuts over bananas
Wednesday December 13, 2006
Roseanne Liang and her husband Stephen Harris. Photo / Kelly Blizard
Auckland film-maker Roseanne Liang has won the Best Director For a Documentary Award at the Asian First Film Festival in Singapore.
The festival celebrates excellence for first-time producers, directors, cinematographers, writers, actors and documentary makers from the Asian region.
Liang's 55-minute documentary, Banana in a Nutshell, is about her falling in love with a Pakeha New Zealander and getting her parents to accept their relationship. Liang was born in New Zealand to Chinese parents. She graduated from Auckland University with a masters degree in screen writing and directing.
Banana in a Nutshell has also been awarded best documentary in the medium-length category at the NZ International Documentary Festival, and was a finalist in the AirNZ Screen Awards category for Best Digital Feature. Liang was the recipient of the SPADA New Film-maker of the Year Award last year.
Roseanne Liang and her husband Stephen Harris. Photo / Kelly Blizard
Auckland film-maker Roseanne Liang has won the Best Director For a Documentary Award at the Asian First Film Festival in Singapore.
The festival celebrates excellence for first-time producers, directors, cinematographers, writers, actors and documentary makers from the Asian region.
Liang's 55-minute documentary, Banana in a Nutshell, is about her falling in love with a Pakeha New Zealander and getting her parents to accept their relationship. Liang was born in New Zealand to Chinese parents. She graduated from Auckland University with a masters degree in screen writing and directing.
Banana in a Nutshell has also been awarded best documentary in the medium-length category at the NZ International Documentary Festival, and was a finalist in the AirNZ Screen Awards category for Best Digital Feature. Liang was the recipient of the SPADA New Film-maker of the Year Award last year.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Chinese Canadian Genealogy
http://www.vpl.ca/ccg/ The Chinese community in Canada has a long history dating back to the 19th century. The first Canadian-born baby of Chinese origin, Won Alexander Cumyow, was born in Port Douglas, B.C. in 1861. There are many resources available to Canadians of Chinese origin who would like to explore their personal connection to Chinese-Canadian history. The purpose of this website is to provide tools and information to support such research.
Japanese War Crime
Interagency Working Group Announces Press Availability for Experts on New Japanese War Crimes Records Volume and Records GuideJanuary 16, 2007http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-45.html
Nanking - The Movie
Need your support for a movie about Nanking
Dear Friends, The following is a worthwhile cause, won't cost you a penny, just two minutes of your time to sign up. The world has heard and seen the Holocaust, but not the Nanking Massacre. This is our opportunity to show what Imperial Japan did to the Chinese.Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL and owner of Washington Capitals hockey team, spent over a year and his own money to make a documentary film about the massacre in Nanking when the Japanese army invaded the city in 1937. During a two weeks period, the Japanese killed over hundreds of thousands of innocentChinese citizens and raped tens of thousands of women and young girls. It is a history that we cannot forget. But some Japanese nationalists tried to change history and deny what happened almost 70 years ago. Ted's team has done a great deal of research. They found and collected over 500 hours of historical film footage, interviewed many war survivors in China, and even talked to Japanese soldiers who took part of the killing. This is a very powerful movie. It is now accepted by Sundance Film Festival and will be shown at the festival in mid January 2007 (Check out Ted's Take - Nanking FilmAccepted at Sundance). Ted's goal of making this movie is to let every one in the world to see what the Japanese did to Chinese and he wanted the Japanese government to apologize to the Chinese people.Ted's team created a web site to educate people about the upcoming film and they wanted to collect one million petitions from people wanting to see the movie when it is coming out.Ted sent the following message to a group of people asking for help. As members of the Chinese community, I strongly encourage every one of us to support this effort by signing your own name, asking your family to sign their names, and forward the message to your friends and others in your community. I have signed my name already! Let's show the world that we care about the victims of our fellow Chinese citizens and history cannot be changed.Please visit the web
site:http://nankingthefilm.com/When you get there, please click on the following: "Please click here if you want to see this film"Then put your name, city, state, country and email to show your support for this movie.Please forward this request for support to your friends and family
Dear Friends, The following is a worthwhile cause, won't cost you a penny, just two minutes of your time to sign up. The world has heard and seen the Holocaust, but not the Nanking Massacre. This is our opportunity to show what Imperial Japan did to the Chinese.Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL and owner of Washington Capitals hockey team, spent over a year and his own money to make a documentary film about the massacre in Nanking when the Japanese army invaded the city in 1937. During a two weeks period, the Japanese killed over hundreds of thousands of innocentChinese citizens and raped tens of thousands of women and young girls. It is a history that we cannot forget. But some Japanese nationalists tried to change history and deny what happened almost 70 years ago. Ted's team has done a great deal of research. They found and collected over 500 hours of historical film footage, interviewed many war survivors in China, and even talked to Japanese soldiers who took part of the killing. This is a very powerful movie. It is now accepted by Sundance Film Festival and will be shown at the festival in mid January 2007 (Check out Ted's Take - Nanking FilmAccepted at Sundance). Ted's goal of making this movie is to let every one in the world to see what the Japanese did to Chinese and he wanted the Japanese government to apologize to the Chinese people.Ted's team created a web site to educate people about the upcoming film and they wanted to collect one million petitions from people wanting to see the movie when it is coming out.Ted sent the following message to a group of people asking for help. As members of the Chinese community, I strongly encourage every one of us to support this effort by signing your own name, asking your family to sign their names, and forward the message to your friends and others in your community. I have signed my name already! Let's show the world that we care about the victims of our fellow Chinese citizens and history cannot be changed.Please visit the web
site:http://nankingthefilm.com/When you get there, please click on the following: "Please click here if you want to see this film"Then put your name, city, state, country and email to show your support for this movie.Please forward this request for support to your friends and family
Japan
Rape of a city too barbaric to ever forget
Saturday April 23, 2005 By David McNeill
Map of China, Japan and Korea locating Japanese military occupation in Eastern China during World War II and the Chinese city of Nanjing where some 300,000 civilians were killed. Picture / Reuters
Last weekend, 15-year-old Akari Shimoda sat down in Tokyo and watched as snarling protesters in Shanghai shouting "Japanese pigs out" filled her TV screen. Does she know why they are angry? "I think Japan did something to China in the past, I'm not sure what. It was such a long time ago." Japanese children's ignorance of Asian history, thanks to a curriculum that glosses over Imperial Japan's brutal colonial adventure until 1945, has been a source of controversy in Asia for decades. The contrast in China, where every 15-year-old is taught that wartime Emperor Hirohito's brainwashed troops butchered and looted their way across their country for 14 years, could not be starker. "Even though I like Japanese culture and products, we Chinese find it hard to forgive them for what they did to us," says Alice Lee, a saleswoman in Guangzhou, southern China. On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops poured into the wartime capital city of Nanjing after suffering heavy casualties in Shanghai. They began a six-week orgy of raping, killing and looting, carrying out what the United Human Rights Council called "the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war". American eyewitness Minnie Vautrin, who kept a diary, wrote on December 16: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." Soldiers practised with bayonets on tied-up prisoners, burned others alive and set dogs on children. Pregnant women were raped and bayoneted, decapitated heads were put on spikes or waved around like trophies, hundreds of unarmed civilians were mown down with machine guns. New York Times reporter Tillman Durdin, who called the rape of Nanjing "one of the great atrocities of modern times", wrote how he tried to drive to the river front. "The car just had to drive over these dead bodies. And the scene on the river front, as I waited for the launch ... was of a group of smoking, chattering Japanese officers overseeing the massacring of a battalion of Chinese captured troops." The most famous witness was John Rabe - the so-called Good Man of Nanjing, a businessman who ran the local Nazi party but became leader of an international safety zone that reportedly saved 250,000 lives. After weeks watching children and old women being raped and murdered, he wrote in his diary that the suffering "dumbfounded" him. Exactly how many were killed in Nanjing is one of the most contested statistics of World War II. The best-known account, by Chinese-American author Iris Chang, who committed suicide this year and who said she "felt rage" and suffered nightmares during her research, claims more than 300,000 Chinese died and at least 20,000 women were raped. Her 1997 book, The rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II, was the target of a vitriolic campaign by Japanese neo-nationalists who said it was full of lies and exaggerations. Today, Nanjing is a metropolis of more than 4 million people. It memorialises the winter of 1937 in a sparse concrete bunker where the figure "300,000" is carved in 1.2m black lettering on the museum wall. Inside, an exhibition of pictures of mutilated corpses and glass cases containing the bones of the victims concludes with a guestbook. "I cried when I learned what my country did," reads a comment from one Japanese visitor. In the catalogue of Japanese war crimes in China, Nanjing is rivalled only by the experiments of Unit 731, which was then the most elaborate biological warfare programme ever created; a 6.4km complex of buildings in Ping Fang, south of Harbin that turned diseases such as typhoid, anthrax, smallpox, cholera and dysentery into mass-produced killers. Live prisoners were dissected to determine the effects of pathogens on the human body. Yoshio Shinozuka, who was just 16 years old when he was dispatched by Tokyo to help the Unit 731 scientists, remembers the first time he assisted in an experiment on one of the prisoners who were dubbed "murata", or logs. "I knew the Chinese individual we dissected alive," he recalls. "At the vivisection I could not meet his eyes because of the hate in them. He was infected with plague germs and, ... his face and body became totally black. Still alive, he was brought on a stretcher to the autopsy room, where I was ordered to wash the body. I used a rubber hose and a deck brush to wash him ... The man's organs were excised one by one." The results harvested by military scientists from these experiments were, by 1940, being used to spread typhoid, cholera and plague across China. Soldiers dumped pathogens in rivers and water supplies. When this proved too slow and soldiers ended up poisoning themselves, military brains were racked for more efficient delivery systems. Shinozuka and his colleagues were put to work cultivating fleas. When Japanese planes flew over Chongshan village in Zheijiang Province in 1942, the residents saw a black cloud descending from the skies. Within days, many came down with fevers, headaches and swollen lymph nodes - the symptoms of the same flea-borne plague that wiped out much of the European population in the Middle Ages. Within two months, about 400 people, or a third of the village's population, had died. Estimates of casualties from Japan's germ warfare in China from 1932 to 1945 vary, but the most careful English-language study, by American historian Sheldon H. Harris, says that even by late 1942 the casualty count "fell into the six-figure range". Outbreaks of disease continued long after the scientists - whose parting gift was to release thousands of disease-ridden rats before dynamiting the germ factories - melted back into post-war civilian life back home. Few Japanese students know anything about Unit 731, even though, after years of denial, a Japanese court ruled in a lawsuit three years ago that the germ warfare programme did exist. Most Chinese know the whole tale, including the bitter sting at the end. While Shinozuka and other minions were sent to Chinese prisons as war criminals, the military mandarins who had built the programme and boasted of its war-winning potential to Tokyo were protected in exchange for their research findings. In documents released over the past decade, United States military scientists emphasised the "extreme value" of the information gained in Japanese germ-warfare tests. "The value to the US of Japanese biological warfare data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from 'war crimes' prosecution," wrote one. The military seal of approval meant immunity for the key figures, including the programme's architect, Shiro Ishii, who died in Tokyo in 1959. Many had lucrative post-war careers in the medical industry. Unit 731 and its aftermath ranks, according to veteran Japanese civil rights lawyer Keiichiro Ichinose, with the worst of the Nazis' war crimes. "The Government here has got to come to terms with this before it can move forward with the rest of its Asian neighbours," he says. Japan's way of moving forward has been to sign normalisation agreements with its former enemies, ending all claims for compensation, and to hand over billions of dollars in development aid, an apology of sorts that means not having to say the word sorry. But its failure to make a clean break with the past has allowed Beijing to manipulate the issue of war guilt, ratcheting up patriotism, anti-Japanese and anti-US rhetoric as the social fallout from two decades of breakneck capitalism has grown. This patriotism threatens to take on a life of its own. As Japanese businesses and consulates in China cleaned up after the rioting, one of the sadder sights on TV was grown diplomats on both sides insisting that they had not said sorry. "It is Japan who should apologise first for its war history," said China's Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. Meanwhile, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was telling the press in Tokyo that he had not expressed "deep apologies" during a private meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing. "I said no such thing," he said. After all these years sorry, it seems, is still the hardest word. - INDEPENDENT
Saturday April 23, 2005 By David McNeill
Map of China, Japan and Korea locating Japanese military occupation in Eastern China during World War II and the Chinese city of Nanjing where some 300,000 civilians were killed. Picture / Reuters
Last weekend, 15-year-old Akari Shimoda sat down in Tokyo and watched as snarling protesters in Shanghai shouting "Japanese pigs out" filled her TV screen. Does she know why they are angry? "I think Japan did something to China in the past, I'm not sure what. It was such a long time ago." Japanese children's ignorance of Asian history, thanks to a curriculum that glosses over Imperial Japan's brutal colonial adventure until 1945, has been a source of controversy in Asia for decades. The contrast in China, where every 15-year-old is taught that wartime Emperor Hirohito's brainwashed troops butchered and looted their way across their country for 14 years, could not be starker. "Even though I like Japanese culture and products, we Chinese find it hard to forgive them for what they did to us," says Alice Lee, a saleswoman in Guangzhou, southern China. On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops poured into the wartime capital city of Nanjing after suffering heavy casualties in Shanghai. They began a six-week orgy of raping, killing and looting, carrying out what the United Human Rights Council called "the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theatres of war". American eyewitness Minnie Vautrin, who kept a diary, wrote on December 16: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today." Soldiers practised with bayonets on tied-up prisoners, burned others alive and set dogs on children. Pregnant women were raped and bayoneted, decapitated heads were put on spikes or waved around like trophies, hundreds of unarmed civilians were mown down with machine guns. New York Times reporter Tillman Durdin, who called the rape of Nanjing "one of the great atrocities of modern times", wrote how he tried to drive to the river front. "The car just had to drive over these dead bodies. And the scene on the river front, as I waited for the launch ... was of a group of smoking, chattering Japanese officers overseeing the massacring of a battalion of Chinese captured troops." The most famous witness was John Rabe - the so-called Good Man of Nanjing, a businessman who ran the local Nazi party but became leader of an international safety zone that reportedly saved 250,000 lives. After weeks watching children and old women being raped and murdered, he wrote in his diary that the suffering "dumbfounded" him. Exactly how many were killed in Nanjing is one of the most contested statistics of World War II. The best-known account, by Chinese-American author Iris Chang, who committed suicide this year and who said she "felt rage" and suffered nightmares during her research, claims more than 300,000 Chinese died and at least 20,000 women were raped. Her 1997 book, The rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II, was the target of a vitriolic campaign by Japanese neo-nationalists who said it was full of lies and exaggerations. Today, Nanjing is a metropolis of more than 4 million people. It memorialises the winter of 1937 in a sparse concrete bunker where the figure "300,000" is carved in 1.2m black lettering on the museum wall. Inside, an exhibition of pictures of mutilated corpses and glass cases containing the bones of the victims concludes with a guestbook. "I cried when I learned what my country did," reads a comment from one Japanese visitor. In the catalogue of Japanese war crimes in China, Nanjing is rivalled only by the experiments of Unit 731, which was then the most elaborate biological warfare programme ever created; a 6.4km complex of buildings in Ping Fang, south of Harbin that turned diseases such as typhoid, anthrax, smallpox, cholera and dysentery into mass-produced killers. Live prisoners were dissected to determine the effects of pathogens on the human body. Yoshio Shinozuka, who was just 16 years old when he was dispatched by Tokyo to help the Unit 731 scientists, remembers the first time he assisted in an experiment on one of the prisoners who were dubbed "murata", or logs. "I knew the Chinese individual we dissected alive," he recalls. "At the vivisection I could not meet his eyes because of the hate in them. He was infected with plague germs and, ... his face and body became totally black. Still alive, he was brought on a stretcher to the autopsy room, where I was ordered to wash the body. I used a rubber hose and a deck brush to wash him ... The man's organs were excised one by one." The results harvested by military scientists from these experiments were, by 1940, being used to spread typhoid, cholera and plague across China. Soldiers dumped pathogens in rivers and water supplies. When this proved too slow and soldiers ended up poisoning themselves, military brains were racked for more efficient delivery systems. Shinozuka and his colleagues were put to work cultivating fleas. When Japanese planes flew over Chongshan village in Zheijiang Province in 1942, the residents saw a black cloud descending from the skies. Within days, many came down with fevers, headaches and swollen lymph nodes - the symptoms of the same flea-borne plague that wiped out much of the European population in the Middle Ages. Within two months, about 400 people, or a third of the village's population, had died. Estimates of casualties from Japan's germ warfare in China from 1932 to 1945 vary, but the most careful English-language study, by American historian Sheldon H. Harris, says that even by late 1942 the casualty count "fell into the six-figure range". Outbreaks of disease continued long after the scientists - whose parting gift was to release thousands of disease-ridden rats before dynamiting the germ factories - melted back into post-war civilian life back home. Few Japanese students know anything about Unit 731, even though, after years of denial, a Japanese court ruled in a lawsuit three years ago that the germ warfare programme did exist. Most Chinese know the whole tale, including the bitter sting at the end. While Shinozuka and other minions were sent to Chinese prisons as war criminals, the military mandarins who had built the programme and boasted of its war-winning potential to Tokyo were protected in exchange for their research findings. In documents released over the past decade, United States military scientists emphasised the "extreme value" of the information gained in Japanese germ-warfare tests. "The value to the US of Japanese biological warfare data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from 'war crimes' prosecution," wrote one. The military seal of approval meant immunity for the key figures, including the programme's architect, Shiro Ishii, who died in Tokyo in 1959. Many had lucrative post-war careers in the medical industry. Unit 731 and its aftermath ranks, according to veteran Japanese civil rights lawyer Keiichiro Ichinose, with the worst of the Nazis' war crimes. "The Government here has got to come to terms with this before it can move forward with the rest of its Asian neighbours," he says. Japan's way of moving forward has been to sign normalisation agreements with its former enemies, ending all claims for compensation, and to hand over billions of dollars in development aid, an apology of sorts that means not having to say the word sorry. But its failure to make a clean break with the past has allowed Beijing to manipulate the issue of war guilt, ratcheting up patriotism, anti-Japanese and anti-US rhetoric as the social fallout from two decades of breakneck capitalism has grown. This patriotism threatens to take on a life of its own. As Japanese businesses and consulates in China cleaned up after the rioting, one of the sadder sights on TV was grown diplomats on both sides insisting that they had not said sorry. "It is Japan who should apologise first for its war history," said China's Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. Meanwhile, Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was telling the press in Tokyo that he had not expressed "deep apologies" during a private meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing. "I said no such thing," he said. After all these years sorry, it seems, is still the hardest word. - INDEPENDENT
Designer Thinks outside the square
Designer thinks outside the square using origami
Sunday January 28, 2007
Rachel Young loves creating objects out of pieces of paper. Photo / Babiche Martens
She started folding paper for fun when she was still very young. Now she spends hours folding it into interesting and intricate shapes. And she doesn't get too many paper cuts while doing so, either. But Rachel Young won't admit to being a black belt in origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding.
Because although Young runs Fold, her own company specialising in homewares based on origami, she's never really been all that into traditional origami shapes. "I haven't folded many things from books because I don't really like following instructions," she explains. "Usually it's more that they give me points to start with, that I then change into something else."
Like a lampshade. It took Young around a year to complete this, her first design; she's currently working on several other novel products, which will eventually be patented.
"I don't really draw anything anymore when I'm designing. I just fold. For ages and ages. And I love that - the idea of starting with a piece of paper and developing it into something three-dimensional."
MY 10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. Fold Lampshade. The Fold Lampshade is the first of my designs available. I began with folded paper and spent about year developing it through to its present form. I wanted to show that origami could be more than just a pastime for children. I also proved to myself that techniques from origami can be applied to functional objects.
2. Enlai Hooi paper experiments. A friend had shown me a picture of his work in the final year of my design course. It was great to see somebody else who uses origami as their inspiration. There is an amazing amount of variety, not only in the form but in function and material, and his paper experiments are worth a look.
3. Bloom card By Artecnica. Bloom cards are pop-up flower shaped cards which reveal a message in the centre. I am also interested in paper engineering and these cards are a great example. Plus they are available in a range of different styles and colours, which makes it more difficult to decide which one to buy.
4. New Design Technology. To realise my designs and make life easier I use computer-controlled machines. My favourites are the digital die cutter and the laser cutter. These cut amazingly intricate designs and are cost-effective. For instance, with a client, my dad and I had a tree gate laser-cut from steel. The detail of the leaves was impressive. And handcutting is definitely not an option these days.
5. Shanghai Tang umbrella. This umbrella was given to me as a present. Umbrellas tend to be pretty plain but what I love about this one is the unexpected black and white bamboo pattern on the inside. It's almost too nice and I still haven't had the guts to use it.
6. The Panton chair by Vernon Panton. Originally made in 1967 it was the first cantilevered chair made from one piece of plastic. The clean design mixed with experimental manufacturing makes it one of my favourites.
7. London. This would have to be my favourite city for design I have visited. I've recently been on a couple of overseas trips - to Los Angeles, London, Paris, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Macau. Seeing the different architecture, perspectives and people was a real eye-opener. But in London I particularly liked the mix of historic and modern. My favourite examples are the geometric patterns of the Gherkin and the self-contained city in the Tower of London.
8. Luminarium Levity 2 by Architects Of Air. An inflatable sculpture that came to Auckland and was installed in Aotea Square a few years ago. From the outside it looked like a mass of coloured blobs but inside it was amazing. I was surprised by it and it was definitely worth the long wait in the line.
9. Paper Cranes. The paper crane has to be my favourite origami design. This is the first fold I can remember learning. The version I like the most is the flapping crane - when you hold the front part and pull the tail gently, the wings flap.
10. My sister's pencil drawings. In this age of computers, drawings done by hand are not common which is a shame, because the skill and eye for detail that goes into them is phenomenal. Pencil drawings by my sister Ashley are some of my favourites, they look just like a photograph.
Sunday January 28, 2007
Rachel Young loves creating objects out of pieces of paper. Photo / Babiche Martens
She started folding paper for fun when she was still very young. Now she spends hours folding it into interesting and intricate shapes. And she doesn't get too many paper cuts while doing so, either. But Rachel Young won't admit to being a black belt in origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding.
Because although Young runs Fold, her own company specialising in homewares based on origami, she's never really been all that into traditional origami shapes. "I haven't folded many things from books because I don't really like following instructions," she explains. "Usually it's more that they give me points to start with, that I then change into something else."
Like a lampshade. It took Young around a year to complete this, her first design; she's currently working on several other novel products, which will eventually be patented.
"I don't really draw anything anymore when I'm designing. I just fold. For ages and ages. And I love that - the idea of starting with a piece of paper and developing it into something three-dimensional."
MY 10 FAVOURITE THINGS
1. Fold Lampshade. The Fold Lampshade is the first of my designs available. I began with folded paper and spent about year developing it through to its present form. I wanted to show that origami could be more than just a pastime for children. I also proved to myself that techniques from origami can be applied to functional objects.
2. Enlai Hooi paper experiments. A friend had shown me a picture of his work in the final year of my design course. It was great to see somebody else who uses origami as their inspiration. There is an amazing amount of variety, not only in the form but in function and material, and his paper experiments are worth a look.
3. Bloom card By Artecnica. Bloom cards are pop-up flower shaped cards which reveal a message in the centre. I am also interested in paper engineering and these cards are a great example. Plus they are available in a range of different styles and colours, which makes it more difficult to decide which one to buy.
4. New Design Technology. To realise my designs and make life easier I use computer-controlled machines. My favourites are the digital die cutter and the laser cutter. These cut amazingly intricate designs and are cost-effective. For instance, with a client, my dad and I had a tree gate laser-cut from steel. The detail of the leaves was impressive. And handcutting is definitely not an option these days.
5. Shanghai Tang umbrella. This umbrella was given to me as a present. Umbrellas tend to be pretty plain but what I love about this one is the unexpected black and white bamboo pattern on the inside. It's almost too nice and I still haven't had the guts to use it.
6. The Panton chair by Vernon Panton. Originally made in 1967 it was the first cantilevered chair made from one piece of plastic. The clean design mixed with experimental manufacturing makes it one of my favourites.
7. London. This would have to be my favourite city for design I have visited. I've recently been on a couple of overseas trips - to Los Angeles, London, Paris, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Macau. Seeing the different architecture, perspectives and people was a real eye-opener. But in London I particularly liked the mix of historic and modern. My favourite examples are the geometric patterns of the Gherkin and the self-contained city in the Tower of London.
8. Luminarium Levity 2 by Architects Of Air. An inflatable sculpture that came to Auckland and was installed in Aotea Square a few years ago. From the outside it looked like a mass of coloured blobs but inside it was amazing. I was surprised by it and it was definitely worth the long wait in the line.
9. Paper Cranes. The paper crane has to be my favourite origami design. This is the first fold I can remember learning. The version I like the most is the flapping crane - when you hold the front part and pull the tail gently, the wings flap.
10. My sister's pencil drawings. In this age of computers, drawings done by hand are not common which is a shame, because the skill and eye for detail that goes into them is phenomenal. Pencil drawings by my sister Ashley are some of my favourites, they look just like a photograph.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Lincoln Tan: Let's make NZ Idols of our real-life heroes
Lincoln Tan: Let's make NZ Idols of our real-life heroes
4:57AM Monday January 08, 2007
At A New Year gathering with fellow immigrant friends, the topic of our conversation turned to some of the challenges our children face growing up in New Zealand.
Feeling nostalgic at this time of year, we also spoke of the people we looked up to in our own growing-up years.
For me, it was a teacher who had the reputation of being able to give hope even to students who had lost faith in themselves.
He was Brother Sebastian Gabriel, from the Catholic De La Salle order, who continued to be a source of inspiration for me long after I left school.
I still have a card he made himself and gave me on my last day at secondary school. He wrote: "To make a difference in this world, be true to yourself."
In my working life, a person who I greatly admired was my first editor, T.S. Khoo.
Each time we were short on news to fill the pages, I was amazed at how the former editor-in-chief of the Straits Times in Singapore - puffing on his cigar and taking a 15-minute stroll around the block - could come up with no less than 10 good story ideas.
One of my friends at the gathering said that our children growing up in New Zealand lack real role models and heroes they can relate to and identify with.
This could put a glass ceiling on their dreams and aspirations.
Last year, in the course of some work for the Journalists' Training Organisation, I spoke to several Asian students doing media studies in New Zealand.
Although some said it had been their dream to become a journalist, one of the main reasons cited for not choosing journalism as a career was because they did not see any Asians succeeding in that field in New Zealand.
Today, a person becomes a hero in New Zealand when he dons the black jersey.
Woe to those who grow up not excelling in rugby and worse may befall those totally without interest in the game played with an odd-shaped ball.
Having the first Asian All Black is still a dream away, so where can our young people find role models to look up to?
Looking through this year's New Year Honours, there were several Asian names on the list, including Dan Chan, Elsie Ho, Ngoy Dun Meng Ly, Narayana Nair and George Wong. They could be great role models for our children, but we know hardly anything about them.
Other than hints such as services to the Chinese community and services to the migrant community, we know little of the value of their work or how they made the honours list.
Some of those honoured had stories that were inspirational, such as that of Wayne Burton (Officer of the Order of Merit) who rescued two wounded soldiers in East Timor in the middle of fierce gunfire, even though he was caught unarmed.
How Burton had to deal with the aftermath of a machete attack, where a mother of two was killed hugging one of the children, would have made a great Hollywood movie script. But in typical unassuming Kiwi fashion, we don't like to blow our own trumpet and say little of the actions of our modern heroes.
This is sad, especially at a time when many of our young people, not just young Asians, are in dire need of heroes and role models.
Contrast that to how the brazen Americans do it. When they find a hero they make sure everyone knows. When construction worker Wesley Autrey rescued a teenager who fell on the subway tracks, he was given celebrity status.
He was in news reports, on major talkshows, honoured with a Bronze Medallion at New York's City Hall, and taken by limousine to meet Donald Trump who presented him with a cheque for $10,000. As well, companies got in on the act, showering him with gifts.
People told the media that Autrey's heroism made them proud to be Americans and some said it inspired them to do good things themselves.
In New Zealand, where drug abuse, violence and crime are a commonplace for our young, and with a growing number losing interest in their studies - and even losing hope and faith in themselves - there is a desperate need for heroes and role models.
Last year, the Child and Youth Mortality review committee said the suicide trend among those aged 10 to 14 was of extreme concern, with more than 10 per cent of all deaths in that age group from suicide.
When my friends and I asked the children and teenagers who were at the luncheon who their heroes were, all of them cited fictional characters who were either from computer games or Hollywood movies.
We need to do more to identify and highlight the work of our own Kiwi heroes to bring hope and inspire our disenfranchised young so that they can have real heroes to look up to - not Yu-Gi-Oh or Superman.
In a year when broadcasters are considering whether to screen another season of NZ Idol, perhaps there could be a reality series where people can nominate their Kiwi heroes and viewers vote on who becomes the winner of the real NZ Hero.
Our heroes need not be anything super. They don't have to be Sir Edmund Hillarys or Sir Peter Blakes, but ordinary New Zealanders who excel and take pride in what they do - actors, musicians, community workers - such as those on the New Year Honours list.
4:57AM Monday January 08, 2007
At A New Year gathering with fellow immigrant friends, the topic of our conversation turned to some of the challenges our children face growing up in New Zealand.
Feeling nostalgic at this time of year, we also spoke of the people we looked up to in our own growing-up years.
For me, it was a teacher who had the reputation of being able to give hope even to students who had lost faith in themselves.
He was Brother Sebastian Gabriel, from the Catholic De La Salle order, who continued to be a source of inspiration for me long after I left school.
I still have a card he made himself and gave me on my last day at secondary school. He wrote: "To make a difference in this world, be true to yourself."
In my working life, a person who I greatly admired was my first editor, T.S. Khoo.
Each time we were short on news to fill the pages, I was amazed at how the former editor-in-chief of the Straits Times in Singapore - puffing on his cigar and taking a 15-minute stroll around the block - could come up with no less than 10 good story ideas.
One of my friends at the gathering said that our children growing up in New Zealand lack real role models and heroes they can relate to and identify with.
This could put a glass ceiling on their dreams and aspirations.
Last year, in the course of some work for the Journalists' Training Organisation, I spoke to several Asian students doing media studies in New Zealand.
Although some said it had been their dream to become a journalist, one of the main reasons cited for not choosing journalism as a career was because they did not see any Asians succeeding in that field in New Zealand.
Today, a person becomes a hero in New Zealand when he dons the black jersey.
Woe to those who grow up not excelling in rugby and worse may befall those totally without interest in the game played with an odd-shaped ball.
Having the first Asian All Black is still a dream away, so where can our young people find role models to look up to?
Looking through this year's New Year Honours, there were several Asian names on the list, including Dan Chan, Elsie Ho, Ngoy Dun Meng Ly, Narayana Nair and George Wong. They could be great role models for our children, but we know hardly anything about them.
Other than hints such as services to the Chinese community and services to the migrant community, we know little of the value of their work or how they made the honours list.
Some of those honoured had stories that were inspirational, such as that of Wayne Burton (Officer of the Order of Merit) who rescued two wounded soldiers in East Timor in the middle of fierce gunfire, even though he was caught unarmed.
How Burton had to deal with the aftermath of a machete attack, where a mother of two was killed hugging one of the children, would have made a great Hollywood movie script. But in typical unassuming Kiwi fashion, we don't like to blow our own trumpet and say little of the actions of our modern heroes.
This is sad, especially at a time when many of our young people, not just young Asians, are in dire need of heroes and role models.
Contrast that to how the brazen Americans do it. When they find a hero they make sure everyone knows. When construction worker Wesley Autrey rescued a teenager who fell on the subway tracks, he was given celebrity status.
He was in news reports, on major talkshows, honoured with a Bronze Medallion at New York's City Hall, and taken by limousine to meet Donald Trump who presented him with a cheque for $10,000. As well, companies got in on the act, showering him with gifts.
People told the media that Autrey's heroism made them proud to be Americans and some said it inspired them to do good things themselves.
In New Zealand, where drug abuse, violence and crime are a commonplace for our young, and with a growing number losing interest in their studies - and even losing hope and faith in themselves - there is a desperate need for heroes and role models.
Last year, the Child and Youth Mortality review committee said the suicide trend among those aged 10 to 14 was of extreme concern, with more than 10 per cent of all deaths in that age group from suicide.
When my friends and I asked the children and teenagers who were at the luncheon who their heroes were, all of them cited fictional characters who were either from computer games or Hollywood movies.
We need to do more to identify and highlight the work of our own Kiwi heroes to bring hope and inspire our disenfranchised young so that they can have real heroes to look up to - not Yu-Gi-Oh or Superman.
In a year when broadcasters are considering whether to screen another season of NZ Idol, perhaps there could be a reality series where people can nominate their Kiwi heroes and viewers vote on who becomes the winner of the real NZ Hero.
Our heroes need not be anything super. They don't have to be Sir Edmund Hillarys or Sir Peter Blakes, but ordinary New Zealanders who excel and take pride in what they do - actors, musicians, community workers - such as those on the New Year Honours list.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Damned Statistics
By Keith Ng - Listener December 2 2006
North & South writer Deborah Coddington’s claims of an Asian crime wave don’t stack up.
Here’s a disturbing fact,” wrote Deborah Coddington in her newspaper column, “in 2003 four of every five pregnant Asian women aborted their babies.” The implication was that we Asians, with our alien culture and inscrutable ways, have scant regard for human life, even that of our own offspring.
The week before that, she wrote in North & South that the “Asian menace has been steadily creeping up on us”, in the form of a “gathering crime tide” that Asians brought to these shores.
Coddington described herself as one who “dares point out that, contrary to what the PC brigade pretend, not every Asian is a good Asian”. Media commentator Deborah Hill Cone called her “courageous”.
I can appreciate the spirit with which Coddington is railing against supposedly uncritical reporting on Asian migrants. However, she is wrong to believe that she is under attack because Asians don’t like to be criticised or because the “PC brigade” won’t allow criticism of Asians.
For the record, it’s okay to investigate crime committed by Asians, it’s okay to investigate rates of abortions among Asian women. Asian New Zealanders face problems like everyone else, and we rely on journalists to bring these problems into the light so they can be addressed. No “PC brigade” will stand in the way of Coddington or any other journalist doing his or her job.
For her claim that four in five Asian pregnancies are terminated, she used data from a Statistics New Zealand report: “ … Asian women had the highest crude abortion ratio.” She left out the first half of that sentence: “Among women aged under 20 years … ”
Coddington took the abortion rate for pregnant teens – 824 abortions per 1000 known pregnancies – and wrongly presented it as the abortion rate of all Asian women. Applying her methodology, one would conclude that “in 2003 one out of two pregnant Pakeha women aborted their babies” – a patently absurd claim.
While Asian teens are more likely to seek an abortion when they become pregnant, they are less likely to get pregnant in the first place. When this is taken into account, their abortion rates are actually below the average for teenagers. In short, Coddington is presenting low teenage pregnancy figures as evidence that Asian women generally take a “casual approach” to contraception. Although abortion rates are higher among Asian women, Coddington’s misrepresentation grossly exaggerated the difference.
For her North & South article, Coddington looked wistfully at 2001, when Asians were 6.6% of the population but were only responsible for 1.7% of crime. Between 1996 and 2005, she is shocked to discover, Asian crime had risen by 53%. This was surely proof that the tide of Asian crime is gathering?
Fact 1: The number of offences attributed to Asians in 2001 was 3182. In 2005? 3182. Over that more recent period, the difference between the good old days and the latest figure is precisely zero.
Fact 2: Between 1996 and 2005, the proportion of Asians in New Zealand rose from 3.8% of the population to 9.3%. Asian representation in crime statistics rose much more slowly than the Asian population.
Asians went from being under-represented in crime statistics by a factor of 2 to 1 to being under-represented by a factor of 3.7 to 1. Roughly speaking, this means that an Asian New Zealander is about a quarter as likely as the average person to be a criminal.
This decrease in Asian representation in crime statistics is Coddington’s “gathering crime tide”.
Coddington interviewed senior politicians from both Labour and National. Both said they had not seen evidence that an Asian crime wave exists. Both were dismissed as “ignorant”. She contacted three prominent members of the Asian migrant communities. None of the interviews made it into the article.
Senior politicians, community members and police crime figures were in agreement – there is no Asian crime wave. Coddington refused to acknowledge the evidence. She omitted or glibly dismissed contrary voices. The figures show the very opposite of what she contended.
For pursuing a sensational claim at the expense of any regard for balance, fairness or accuracy, Deborah Coddington and North & South owe their readers and the Asian communities an unreserved apology.
North & South writer Deborah Coddington’s claims of an Asian crime wave don’t stack up.
Here’s a disturbing fact,” wrote Deborah Coddington in her newspaper column, “in 2003 four of every five pregnant Asian women aborted their babies.” The implication was that we Asians, with our alien culture and inscrutable ways, have scant regard for human life, even that of our own offspring.
The week before that, she wrote in North & South that the “Asian menace has been steadily creeping up on us”, in the form of a “gathering crime tide” that Asians brought to these shores.
Coddington described herself as one who “dares point out that, contrary to what the PC brigade pretend, not every Asian is a good Asian”. Media commentator Deborah Hill Cone called her “courageous”.
I can appreciate the spirit with which Coddington is railing against supposedly uncritical reporting on Asian migrants. However, she is wrong to believe that she is under attack because Asians don’t like to be criticised or because the “PC brigade” won’t allow criticism of Asians.
For the record, it’s okay to investigate crime committed by Asians, it’s okay to investigate rates of abortions among Asian women. Asian New Zealanders face problems like everyone else, and we rely on journalists to bring these problems into the light so they can be addressed. No “PC brigade” will stand in the way of Coddington or any other journalist doing his or her job.
For her claim that four in five Asian pregnancies are terminated, she used data from a Statistics New Zealand report: “ … Asian women had the highest crude abortion ratio.” She left out the first half of that sentence: “Among women aged under 20 years … ”
Coddington took the abortion rate for pregnant teens – 824 abortions per 1000 known pregnancies – and wrongly presented it as the abortion rate of all Asian women. Applying her methodology, one would conclude that “in 2003 one out of two pregnant Pakeha women aborted their babies” – a patently absurd claim.
While Asian teens are more likely to seek an abortion when they become pregnant, they are less likely to get pregnant in the first place. When this is taken into account, their abortion rates are actually below the average for teenagers. In short, Coddington is presenting low teenage pregnancy figures as evidence that Asian women generally take a “casual approach” to contraception. Although abortion rates are higher among Asian women, Coddington’s misrepresentation grossly exaggerated the difference.
For her North & South article, Coddington looked wistfully at 2001, when Asians were 6.6% of the population but were only responsible for 1.7% of crime. Between 1996 and 2005, she is shocked to discover, Asian crime had risen by 53%. This was surely proof that the tide of Asian crime is gathering?
Fact 1: The number of offences attributed to Asians in 2001 was 3182. In 2005? 3182. Over that more recent period, the difference between the good old days and the latest figure is precisely zero.
Fact 2: Between 1996 and 2005, the proportion of Asians in New Zealand rose from 3.8% of the population to 9.3%. Asian representation in crime statistics rose much more slowly than the Asian population.
Asians went from being under-represented in crime statistics by a factor of 2 to 1 to being under-represented by a factor of 3.7 to 1. Roughly speaking, this means that an Asian New Zealander is about a quarter as likely as the average person to be a criminal.
This decrease in Asian representation in crime statistics is Coddington’s “gathering crime tide”.
Coddington interviewed senior politicians from both Labour and National. Both said they had not seen evidence that an Asian crime wave exists. Both were dismissed as “ignorant”. She contacted three prominent members of the Asian migrant communities. None of the interviews made it into the article.
Senior politicians, community members and police crime figures were in agreement – there is no Asian crime wave. Coddington refused to acknowledge the evidence. She omitted or glibly dismissed contrary voices. The figures show the very opposite of what she contended.
For pursuing a sensational claim at the expense of any regard for balance, fairness or accuracy, Deborah Coddington and North & South owe their readers and the Asian communities an unreserved apology.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Australian Dictionary of Biography ... now online
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/adbonline.htm
Ah Ket, William (1876 - 1936)
Ah Mouy, Louis (1826 - 1918)
Chan, Harry [Chan Tien Fook] (1918 - 1969)
Cheong Cheok Hong (1853? - 1928)
Chin Kaw (1865 - 1922)
See Poy, Tom (1853? - 1926)
Young Wai, John (1847? - 1930)
Yuen, Gum (1875 - 1943)
Ah Ket, William (1876 - 1936)
Ah Mouy, Louis (1826 - 1918)
Chan, Harry [Chan Tien Fook] (1918 - 1969)
Cheong Cheok Hong (1853? - 1928)
Chin Kaw (1865 - 1922)
See Poy, Tom (1853? - 1926)
Young Wai, John (1847? - 1930)
Yuen, Gum (1875 - 1943)
Canton Provinces - Migration to New Zealand
My Family comes from the Tsang-shing area (Now Zeng Cheng aka Jung Seng)
Thursday, December 28, 2006
THE HAKKA CONTRIBUTION TO CHINA'S TRANSFORMATION
http://www.chinesejamaican.com/index_files/Page465.htm
Introduction. Any discussion of the Hakka contribution to China's transformation must begin with the Taiping Rebellion of 1851-1864. This epic event was the most devastating uprising against Confucian China until the twentieth century. Its insurrectionary power emerged from a militant religion, which merged pre-Confucian utopianism, Hakka ideals, and Judeo-Christian monotheism. The religious whirlwind intersected with the twin crises of domestic decline and foreign encroachment to inspire a potent ideology, motivation, and organization that nearly toppled the old order and heralded China's Republican, Nationalist, and Communist Revolutions.
Introduction. Any discussion of the Hakka contribution to China's transformation must begin with the Taiping Rebellion of 1851-1864. This epic event was the most devastating uprising against Confucian China until the twentieth century. Its insurrectionary power emerged from a militant religion, which merged pre-Confucian utopianism, Hakka ideals, and Judeo-Christian monotheism. The religious whirlwind intersected with the twin crises of domestic decline and foreign encroachment to inspire a potent ideology, motivation, and organization that nearly toppled the old order and heralded China's Republican, Nationalist, and Communist Revolutions.
Chinese Missionaries 1897-1917
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=202985.new#new Does anyone have any information about how to research people who worked as missionaries in the late 1800's and early 1900's.I am interested in an Edith Churcher who worked as a missionary for the China Inalnd Mission, C.I.M. She left England in 1897 to work in various parts of China including Yang-Cheo, Chefoo, Nighai and Wanhsien.I am researching her family, who lived in our house in Ipswich, Suffolk, in the 1880's. In doing so I found out that she was a teacher at St Mary's Hall school in Brighton and contacted them to see if they had any information about her. The response was amazing and I received details of her work in china from letters she sent back to England to be published in the schools Old Girls Association magazine. I would like to follow this up but am not sure where to start. I believe the C.I.M is now the OMF and this may be a good place to start.
There is a huge archive collection about the CIM held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, but from reading their site you need to apply for access. Might be worth looking into though if you are in London.http://www.mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/903.htm
The National Archives also have some documents relating to the CIM...http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/quick_search.aspx?search_text=china+inland+mission
Here is an equivalent site for the New Zealand Presbyterian Missionaries to China. They have some books available for salehttp://www.archives.presbyterian.org.nz/missions/index.htm
There is a huge archive collection about the CIM held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, but from reading their site you need to apply for access. Might be worth looking into though if you are in London.http://www.mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/903.htm
The National Archives also have some documents relating to the CIM...http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/quick_search.aspx?search_text=china+inland+mission
Here is an equivalent site for the New Zealand Presbyterian Missionaries to China. They have some books available for salehttp://www.archives.presbyterian.org.nz/missions/index.htm
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
![NF 49-4 KUANG-CHOU (CANTON) AND VICINITY [verso]](http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china/txu-oclc-10552568-nf49-4-back.jpg){kind=link}
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
A Thousand Miles of Dreams
Reviews forA Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters"Welland wisely refrains from intruding on the narration, allowing her fascinating topic to speak for itself. Scholarly and 'serious' in its depth and breadth of research, Welland's book is also highly readable and full of rich detail....This is a book that enlightens as much as it delights and remains with you long after the reading."—Seattle Times"Welland is an anthropologist with a novelist's eye for the art of both making lives and making books. She weaves biography, memoir, genealogy, social history, literary criticism, and theoretical reflection coherently, accessibly, and, indeed, beautifully."—Booklist (starred review)"Filled with fascinating glimpses of 20th-century Chinese women's intellectual history and insights into the Chinese-American and Anglo-Chinese experience."—Publishers Weekly"With magnificently fluid erudition and a compassionately wry eye, Sasha Su-Ling Welland forges the story of two remarkable women whose lives expand our knowledge of twentieth-century feminism in China, the U.S., and Britain. Weaving her own autobiographical accounts into the mix, Welland deftly depicts how the absurdities of racial and sexual constructs persist over time and place, while arguing for the resolute power of following one's heart."—Anna Maria Hong, editor of Growing Up Asian American: An Anthology"This is a wonderfully written account of two Chinese modern girls whose lives traversed the entire twentieth century from China to England and the United States. Their artistic and professional accomplishments through decades of war and exile may be legendary, but their personal lives were also filled with many human frailties. Intermixed with Welland's reminiscences of growing up in the United States as an Eurasian whose mother was partly raised by an African American housekeeper, the tales of these women weave an intricate tapestry of literary pursuit, transnational migration, an interracial affair, and middle-class domesticity. The author wields the pen of a historian, an ethnographer, and a poet, but ultimately it is the writer as a granddaughter and a grandniece that gives the story its most intimate human touch."—Shu-mei Shih, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917 to 1937"Sasha Su-Ling Welland is Heartland-born, with deep China roots. In A Thousand Miles of Dreams, she reaches back through family documents and her own scholarly reading of the historical record to create a portrait of a family's personal journey that is moving, passionate, and fully accessible."—Clark Blaise , author of I Had a Father, Time Lord, and others, and former director of the International Writers Program, University of Iowa"Sasha Welland's deft and gripping biography of her grandmother and great-aunt is elegiac but never sentimental. It is compelling, lucid, historically nuanced, and an absorbing read."—Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Underbelly of the dragon
Saturday November 25, 2006By Phil Taylor
They once were brothers, united not by blood but by the self-serving bonds that knit criminal networks. They were opportunistic, doing business in the way of mafiosi everywhere. Both were enforcers, adept in using fear and violence.
As New Zealand's Chinese population grew, some bad came with the good. Wan Yee Chow and Tam Yam Ah arrived in New Zealand during the 1980s and settled in the Otaki area, where they had family connections involved in market gardening. They represent the underbelly of the dragon.
Tam grew up in Guangzhou, China, and arrived in New Zealand as a teenager. In 1991, when he was 22, he was in court for the first time charged with two others of "demanding with menaces" - $500 from a market gardening family. Within four years of his arrival in 1988, Chow was in prison on a five-year lag.
Because they prey on their own community, their lives of crime and casual violence exist beyond the public's perception unless some dramatic act pushes it into the headlines.
Such an act exploded on July 7 last year, about 4am, in the rear carpark of a karaoke bar on the upper end of Auckland's Symonds St. Whether it was rough justice, retribution or just a job done for money, it was summary.
Chow, peering through the eyelets of a black balaclava that encased his wild and wispy hair, was not there for a discussion with his erstwhile colleague.
He said nothing when Tam asked - in Cantonese - his last question, "Who are you?" A single .45 calibre bullet ripped through Tam's tan fleece jacket [the one Tam is pictured wearing], his red sport shirt and into his chest. Chow was probably back in his accomplice's car in nearby St Benedicts St by the time Tam died. The murder and the ensuing trial lifted the veil on organised crime in the Chinese communities of Auckland and Wellington.
The writers of The Sopranos know their subject. The show follows a New Jersey Mafia family but organised crime differs little between place and ethnicity. "Human nature doesn't vary between cultures, does it?" notes Mark Benefield, a sage detective on the police investigation team.
Anything goes, says the detective senior sergeant, as long as there's money at the end of it, "fraud, illegal gambling, drug dealing, standovers."
The Top Karaoke Bar - part-owned by Tam and the scene of his murder - was previously a brothel. In the court case, paua smuggling loomed large.
Both Tam, who was 37, and Chow, 54, whom a jury found guilty a week ago of murder, were "enforcers". Tam was a member of the New Zealand offshoot of the Hong Kong triad 14 K. Police believe Chow had connections to more than one criminal network.
In her evidence, Tam's girlfriend described the pair as "brothers". Tam, despite being younger, had seniority by dint of his standing. When Tam opened his restaurant, Flower City, on Anzac Ave near the stone court building where details of his life and death were heard, Chow flew from Wellington and worked washing dishes. That was May last year. Two months later Tam was dead.
The name 14 K stands for 14 Kowloon, a district in Hong Kong. Triad is the European name given to structured organised crime gangs in China and Hong Kong which rank members and have a godfather-type character at the top, operating in a similar way to the Mafia.
The Asian Crime Unit in Auckland does not call them triads because of their loose structure here and because the original triads began several hundred years ago as underground political groups. Now, they deal in drugs, prostitution, gambling, kidnapping, protection rackets - anything that makes money.
Tam had money. After his release from his latest stint in jail - three years for a meat-cleaver attack on patrons at a karaoke bar where he was the bouncer - he was building an empire of his own - the restaurant, a share in the Top Karaoke Bar, a $600,000 house.
There were also the accoutrements: the silver BMW, the trophy girlfriend who witnessed his murder from the passenger seat of the BMW.
Dressed in a pink jacket with fluffy white trim and tight jeans, she was doll-like, perched on the edge of the seat in the witness box, as the lawyers' questions and her answers were translated, to and fro, English and Cantonese.
Tam had paid $30,000 of the $120,000 house deposit in cash, had handed over a wad of notes amounting to $20,000 as part-payment for the restaurant. He'd paid $300,000 for the karaoke bar and she said she saw large amounts of cash at their flat above the karaoke bar. Yes, Tam was also a money lender, she said.
A Wellington businessman told police he had "loaned" Tam $20,000 interest free. He was happy to do so. The court suppressed the identity of 21 people who gave evidence at the murder trial. "This was a case where people zipped their lips," said Benefield.
George Koria, a detective sergeant who heads the Asian Crime Unit in Auckland, believes the pecking order changed while Tam was last in jail. "His group were old school and had somewhat been overtaken by new faces who hadn't had dealings with Tam. I just don't think he had the respect with some of these new up-and-comers."
It is perhaps surprising Tam was shot, rather than killed with a meat cleaver, the weapon he favoured and which is popular among Chinese gangs. Overseas, it is useful for chopping off fingers, so helpful in keeping up the level of intimidation necessary in extortion.
Tam used it in the karaoke bar incident, where one of his victims required 27 stitches to close a wound down the left of his face.
"He was seen by the concierge of the City Life apartments running down Durham Lane holding a chopper above his head, chasing this guy sort of Hong Kong-style like some sort of bad movie," lawyer Graeme Newell, who defended Tam, last year told the Herald. "He'd used it on a couple of guys inside ... they were singing Taiwanese when he wanted people to be singing Mandarin."
He used it, too, on his former wife, Jai Fong Zhou, whom he married in 1990. Tam carried telling scars from the time she used the meat cleaver on him, provoked by repeated beatings and rapes. She landed nine or 10 blows, then took an overdose of the sleeping pills she'd used to stupefy Tam.
She was acquitted of a charge of attempted murder in a case that was a sensation in the early 1990s as it was the first time the defence of battered women's syndrome had succeeded in a New Zealand court. Their marriage produced a child, now aged 15.
It is unclear from the news report whether Tam used a meat cleaver in a 1997 incident in Wellington that gained him a three-year jail sentence after two people were cut with "a sharp object" in a restaurant dispute. Tam returned the next night, smashed the restaurant window then drove his car into a person who came out of the restaurant to investigate. The judge who sentenced him on charges of injuring with intent and dangerous driving causing injury, noted Tam was already serving a prison sentence for attacking a security guard.
Tam gained residency in 1989 but his application for citizenship was declined - presumably because of his offending - in 1995. Chow, however, somehow gained a New Zealand passport in his own name in 2003, despite an extensive criminal record.
In the dock this month in his daily uniform of white sandshoes, grey trackpants, and green T-shirt, his bedraggled hair flowing from a knot on top of his head, his thinness accentuated by his height (1.81m), he looked as if he could hardly blow out a candle. But his record shows he was capable of lighting one.
Convictions include committing a dangerous act with fire with intent to injure, assault with intent, wounding with intent, and demanding with menaces. Chow's longest prison sentence was five years and six months.
His feral appearance is deceiving. Chow doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, is particular about his diet, and is fit. He uses his body weight to provide resistance for exercises such as handstands and single-leg squats.
Most knew him by the Chinese name "Golo", which translates as "tall man". Police said many people they interviewed added the Cantonese word for crazy.
When police arrested him for the murder of Tam, Chow had been jailed again, this time for paua smuggling and the paua black market was a backdrop to the murder trial.
A Pakeha man, who provided key evidence against Chow in exchange for immunity against prosecution, was involved with Chow in the illicit trade of paua, or "chocolate" as the witness called it.
This man's cellphone linked the pair to the murder, betrayed their movements between Tam's restaurant and karaoke bar as they stalked him, and placed them in the vicinity when Tam was shot.
The witness said he and Chow made regular trips to Auckland supplying black market paua to Chinese restaurants. His harassment of a debtor, a Chinese man named Mark, brought him into contact with Tam.
"A Black Power member came to my house and told me if I didn't leave Mark alone he'd be back to see me," the witness testified. "He told me Mark had paid Tam $10,000 to 'trouble me, cause me trouble'."
The witness claimed to have sorted this out with Tam and denied knowing of a plan to murder him, although he acknowledged having the murder weapon before the hit, wiping it down and helping to dispose of it.
Crucially, Tam's girlfriend who was the only witness to the murder, said the killer was tall and reminded her of "Golo", whereas Chow's associate is pudgy and of medium height.
The police and Crown acknowledge that relying on testimony of a person such as Chow's associate is unpalatable but say without his evidence it was unlikely they would have had a case.
Black market gold
The legal national paua catch is 1057 tonnes but the Ministry of Fisheries estimates another 965 tonnes is traded on the black market, shipped overseas or sold domestically.
Dave Turner, the ministry's investigation services manager, describes the illegal trade as a "significant, serious problem". Domestic demand has increased with the proportion of the east and southeast Asian population.
"People talk about the trade in drugs, methamphetamine being really bad. Well, so is paua simply because the criminal gangs dealing in paua are also dealing in drugs.
"Paua is merely another commodity to make a profit on. It may be paua this week that they can make $20,000 or $30,000 on, and it might be methamphetamine the next week. All they are worried about is making dollars."
Turner is hopeful that the $11.6 million - including $2.9 million in the coming year for a "special tactics team" for covert operations - announced in September by the Government will go a long way to identifying the extent of the trade and combating it. "But it's going to take time and it's going to require patience," he says.
For all the talk of connections to the illicit paua trade in the Tam case, whether and how it was connected to his murder will probably never be known. "There is no evidence of motive, per se," says police investigator Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Benefield.
"There was a falling out between Chow and Tam at some stage. It could be personal. If it was, we don't know because Chow won't tell. It could be business. If it was, we don't know because people who use hitmen don't talk."
Author
•
More by Phil Taylor
They once were brothers, united not by blood but by the self-serving bonds that knit criminal networks. They were opportunistic, doing business in the way of mafiosi everywhere. Both were enforcers, adept in using fear and violence.
As New Zealand's Chinese population grew, some bad came with the good. Wan Yee Chow and Tam Yam Ah arrived in New Zealand during the 1980s and settled in the Otaki area, where they had family connections involved in market gardening. They represent the underbelly of the dragon.
Tam grew up in Guangzhou, China, and arrived in New Zealand as a teenager. In 1991, when he was 22, he was in court for the first time charged with two others of "demanding with menaces" - $500 from a market gardening family. Within four years of his arrival in 1988, Chow was in prison on a five-year lag.
Because they prey on their own community, their lives of crime and casual violence exist beyond the public's perception unless some dramatic act pushes it into the headlines.
Such an act exploded on July 7 last year, about 4am, in the rear carpark of a karaoke bar on the upper end of Auckland's Symonds St. Whether it was rough justice, retribution or just a job done for money, it was summary.
Chow, peering through the eyelets of a black balaclava that encased his wild and wispy hair, was not there for a discussion with his erstwhile colleague.
He said nothing when Tam asked - in Cantonese - his last question, "Who are you?" A single .45 calibre bullet ripped through Tam's tan fleece jacket [the one Tam is pictured wearing], his red sport shirt and into his chest. Chow was probably back in his accomplice's car in nearby St Benedicts St by the time Tam died. The murder and the ensuing trial lifted the veil on organised crime in the Chinese communities of Auckland and Wellington.
The writers of The Sopranos know their subject. The show follows a New Jersey Mafia family but organised crime differs little between place and ethnicity. "Human nature doesn't vary between cultures, does it?" notes Mark Benefield, a sage detective on the police investigation team.
Anything goes, says the detective senior sergeant, as long as there's money at the end of it, "fraud, illegal gambling, drug dealing, standovers."
The Top Karaoke Bar - part-owned by Tam and the scene of his murder - was previously a brothel. In the court case, paua smuggling loomed large.
Both Tam, who was 37, and Chow, 54, whom a jury found guilty a week ago of murder, were "enforcers". Tam was a member of the New Zealand offshoot of the Hong Kong triad 14 K. Police believe Chow had connections to more than one criminal network.
In her evidence, Tam's girlfriend described the pair as "brothers". Tam, despite being younger, had seniority by dint of his standing. When Tam opened his restaurant, Flower City, on Anzac Ave near the stone court building where details of his life and death were heard, Chow flew from Wellington and worked washing dishes. That was May last year. Two months later Tam was dead.
The name 14 K stands for 14 Kowloon, a district in Hong Kong. Triad is the European name given to structured organised crime gangs in China and Hong Kong which rank members and have a godfather-type character at the top, operating in a similar way to the Mafia.
The Asian Crime Unit in Auckland does not call them triads because of their loose structure here and because the original triads began several hundred years ago as underground political groups. Now, they deal in drugs, prostitution, gambling, kidnapping, protection rackets - anything that makes money.
Tam had money. After his release from his latest stint in jail - three years for a meat-cleaver attack on patrons at a karaoke bar where he was the bouncer - he was building an empire of his own - the restaurant, a share in the Top Karaoke Bar, a $600,000 house.
There were also the accoutrements: the silver BMW, the trophy girlfriend who witnessed his murder from the passenger seat of the BMW.
Dressed in a pink jacket with fluffy white trim and tight jeans, she was doll-like, perched on the edge of the seat in the witness box, as the lawyers' questions and her answers were translated, to and fro, English and Cantonese.
Tam had paid $30,000 of the $120,000 house deposit in cash, had handed over a wad of notes amounting to $20,000 as part-payment for the restaurant. He'd paid $300,000 for the karaoke bar and she said she saw large amounts of cash at their flat above the karaoke bar. Yes, Tam was also a money lender, she said.
A Wellington businessman told police he had "loaned" Tam $20,000 interest free. He was happy to do so. The court suppressed the identity of 21 people who gave evidence at the murder trial. "This was a case where people zipped their lips," said Benefield.
George Koria, a detective sergeant who heads the Asian Crime Unit in Auckland, believes the pecking order changed while Tam was last in jail. "His group were old school and had somewhat been overtaken by new faces who hadn't had dealings with Tam. I just don't think he had the respect with some of these new up-and-comers."
It is perhaps surprising Tam was shot, rather than killed with a meat cleaver, the weapon he favoured and which is popular among Chinese gangs. Overseas, it is useful for chopping off fingers, so helpful in keeping up the level of intimidation necessary in extortion.
Tam used it in the karaoke bar incident, where one of his victims required 27 stitches to close a wound down the left of his face.
"He was seen by the concierge of the City Life apartments running down Durham Lane holding a chopper above his head, chasing this guy sort of Hong Kong-style like some sort of bad movie," lawyer Graeme Newell, who defended Tam, last year told the Herald. "He'd used it on a couple of guys inside ... they were singing Taiwanese when he wanted people to be singing Mandarin."
He used it, too, on his former wife, Jai Fong Zhou, whom he married in 1990. Tam carried telling scars from the time she used the meat cleaver on him, provoked by repeated beatings and rapes. She landed nine or 10 blows, then took an overdose of the sleeping pills she'd used to stupefy Tam.
She was acquitted of a charge of attempted murder in a case that was a sensation in the early 1990s as it was the first time the defence of battered women's syndrome had succeeded in a New Zealand court. Their marriage produced a child, now aged 15.
It is unclear from the news report whether Tam used a meat cleaver in a 1997 incident in Wellington that gained him a three-year jail sentence after two people were cut with "a sharp object" in a restaurant dispute. Tam returned the next night, smashed the restaurant window then drove his car into a person who came out of the restaurant to investigate. The judge who sentenced him on charges of injuring with intent and dangerous driving causing injury, noted Tam was already serving a prison sentence for attacking a security guard.
Tam gained residency in 1989 but his application for citizenship was declined - presumably because of his offending - in 1995. Chow, however, somehow gained a New Zealand passport in his own name in 2003, despite an extensive criminal record.
In the dock this month in his daily uniform of white sandshoes, grey trackpants, and green T-shirt, his bedraggled hair flowing from a knot on top of his head, his thinness accentuated by his height (1.81m), he looked as if he could hardly blow out a candle. But his record shows he was capable of lighting one.
Convictions include committing a dangerous act with fire with intent to injure, assault with intent, wounding with intent, and demanding with menaces. Chow's longest prison sentence was five years and six months.
His feral appearance is deceiving. Chow doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, is particular about his diet, and is fit. He uses his body weight to provide resistance for exercises such as handstands and single-leg squats.
Most knew him by the Chinese name "Golo", which translates as "tall man". Police said many people they interviewed added the Cantonese word for crazy.
When police arrested him for the murder of Tam, Chow had been jailed again, this time for paua smuggling and the paua black market was a backdrop to the murder trial.
A Pakeha man, who provided key evidence against Chow in exchange for immunity against prosecution, was involved with Chow in the illicit trade of paua, or "chocolate" as the witness called it.
This man's cellphone linked the pair to the murder, betrayed their movements between Tam's restaurant and karaoke bar as they stalked him, and placed them in the vicinity when Tam was shot.
The witness said he and Chow made regular trips to Auckland supplying black market paua to Chinese restaurants. His harassment of a debtor, a Chinese man named Mark, brought him into contact with Tam.
"A Black Power member came to my house and told me if I didn't leave Mark alone he'd be back to see me," the witness testified. "He told me Mark had paid Tam $10,000 to 'trouble me, cause me trouble'."
The witness claimed to have sorted this out with Tam and denied knowing of a plan to murder him, although he acknowledged having the murder weapon before the hit, wiping it down and helping to dispose of it.
Crucially, Tam's girlfriend who was the only witness to the murder, said the killer was tall and reminded her of "Golo", whereas Chow's associate is pudgy and of medium height.
The police and Crown acknowledge that relying on testimony of a person such as Chow's associate is unpalatable but say without his evidence it was unlikely they would have had a case.
Black market gold
The legal national paua catch is 1057 tonnes but the Ministry of Fisheries estimates another 965 tonnes is traded on the black market, shipped overseas or sold domestically.
Dave Turner, the ministry's investigation services manager, describes the illegal trade as a "significant, serious problem". Domestic demand has increased with the proportion of the east and southeast Asian population.
"People talk about the trade in drugs, methamphetamine being really bad. Well, so is paua simply because the criminal gangs dealing in paua are also dealing in drugs.
"Paua is merely another commodity to make a profit on. It may be paua this week that they can make $20,000 or $30,000 on, and it might be methamphetamine the next week. All they are worried about is making dollars."
Turner is hopeful that the $11.6 million - including $2.9 million in the coming year for a "special tactics team" for covert operations - announced in September by the Government will go a long way to identifying the extent of the trade and combating it. "But it's going to take time and it's going to require patience," he says.
For all the talk of connections to the illicit paua trade in the Tam case, whether and how it was connected to his murder will probably never be known. "There is no evidence of motive, per se," says police investigator Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Benefield.
"There was a falling out between Chow and Tam at some stage. It could be personal. If it was, we don't know because Chow won't tell. It could be business. If it was, we don't know because people who use hitmen don't talk."
Author
•
More by Phil Taylor
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Shanghai Trade
NZ set as 1st advanced nation with China FTA
Chen Liying
2006-11-10
NEW Zealand is likely to be the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement with China, hopefully before April 2008, visiting New Zealand Trade Minister Phil Goff has said in Shanghai. "We look forward to working through the areas of outstanding differences and delivering an agreement that fulfills the leaders' mandate within the timeframe set in April this year," said Goff. He said the pact is set to be concluded between April 2007 and April 2008, making the country the first developed nation to sign an FTA with China. Goff was leading the largest ever New Zealand trade delegation in Shanghai from Monday until yesterday. The 120-member trade mission includes 75 Kiwi companies covering a range of areas from dairy to education. After nine rounds of FTA talks, the latest held last month in Wellington, solid progress is being made on the architecture of the agreement, said the trade minister. Talks on the FTA started in November 2004. "Chapter texts are beginning to take shape in most areas. We are beginning to traverse the details of market access for goods and services and commitments in the area of investment," Goff said. The next round of talks is planned for January next year, he added. "Removal of a range of barriers in both countries would lead to an expansion in the trade of goods and services and increased investment flows," Goff said. "The opportunities after a high-quality FTA are exciting." China is the fourth biggest trading partner of New Zealand and its fourth largest export market. Trade between the two countries totaled NZ$5.6 billion (US$3.9 billion) last year, up 9 percent over a year ago. China had invested NZ$1.4 billion in New Zealand by 2005. During Goff's visit, Shanghai and Dunedin, the Kiwi sister city, signed a deal to build a Chinese traditional garden in Dunedin as a major tourist site. New Zealand-based National Dairy Association also opened a plant in Shanghai which makes steel fabrication for the dairy and drug industries in China, he said.
Chen Liying
2006-11-10
NEW Zealand is likely to be the first developed country to sign a free trade agreement with China, hopefully before April 2008, visiting New Zealand Trade Minister Phil Goff has said in Shanghai. "We look forward to working through the areas of outstanding differences and delivering an agreement that fulfills the leaders' mandate within the timeframe set in April this year," said Goff. He said the pact is set to be concluded between April 2007 and April 2008, making the country the first developed nation to sign an FTA with China. Goff was leading the largest ever New Zealand trade delegation in Shanghai from Monday until yesterday. The 120-member trade mission includes 75 Kiwi companies covering a range of areas from dairy to education. After nine rounds of FTA talks, the latest held last month in Wellington, solid progress is being made on the architecture of the agreement, said the trade minister. Talks on the FTA started in November 2004. "Chapter texts are beginning to take shape in most areas. We are beginning to traverse the details of market access for goods and services and commitments in the area of investment," Goff said. The next round of talks is planned for January next year, he added. "Removal of a range of barriers in both countries would lead to an expansion in the trade of goods and services and increased investment flows," Goff said. "The opportunities after a high-quality FTA are exciting." China is the fourth biggest trading partner of New Zealand and its fourth largest export market. Trade between the two countries totaled NZ$5.6 billion (US$3.9 billion) last year, up 9 percent over a year ago. China had invested NZ$1.4 billion in New Zealand by 2005. During Goff's visit, Shanghai and Dunedin, the Kiwi sister city, signed a deal to build a Chinese traditional garden in Dunedin as a major tourist site. New Zealand-based National Dairy Association also opened a plant in Shanghai which makes steel fabrication for the dairy and drug industries in China, he said.
Chinese Garden in Dunedin
City group to build garden in Dunedin
Wang Jie
2006-11-09
A NEW Zealand mayor signed a deal yesterday with a Shanghai construction group to build a replica of a famous Suzhou garden in his city in tribute to its Chinese immigrants. "We will build an authentic classic Chinese garden in our city to commemorate the contributions Chinese people have made to New Zealand," said Peter Chin, mayor of Dunedin and chairman of the Dunedin Chinese Garden Trust, at a ceremony in Yuyuan Garden. The Shanghai Construction and Decoration Group will build a copy of the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu Province at a cost of about 35 million yuan (US$4.37 million), officials said. The garden will cover about 3,000 square meters in the center of Dunedin, which is twinned with Shanghai. "It is near the railway station," said Allison Rudd, deputy chief reporter at the Otago Daily Times. "Some Chinese trees and flowers will also be planted in the garden." The Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Construction and Decoration Group co-designed the garden. The group also provided free construction service. "We feel glad that the signing ceremony is being held in Yuyuan Garden," Chin said. "We hope to borrow the essence of the Chinese garden in Dunedin." Chin is on a visit to Shanghai this week as part of celebrations for the first direct flight between Shanghai and Aukland. According to the plan, the garden will be completed in 2008. Dunedin is the forth biggest city in New Zealand on the Otago Peninsula.
Wang Jie
2006-11-09
A NEW Zealand mayor signed a deal yesterday with a Shanghai construction group to build a replica of a famous Suzhou garden in his city in tribute to its Chinese immigrants. "We will build an authentic classic Chinese garden in our city to commemorate the contributions Chinese people have made to New Zealand," said Peter Chin, mayor of Dunedin and chairman of the Dunedin Chinese Garden Trust, at a ceremony in Yuyuan Garden. The Shanghai Construction and Decoration Group will build a copy of the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou in neighboring Jiangsu Province at a cost of about 35 million yuan (US$4.37 million), officials said. The garden will cover about 3,000 square meters in the center of Dunedin, which is twinned with Shanghai. "It is near the railway station," said Allison Rudd, deputy chief reporter at the Otago Daily Times. "Some Chinese trees and flowers will also be planted in the garden." The Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Construction and Decoration Group co-designed the garden. The group also provided free construction service. "We feel glad that the signing ceremony is being held in Yuyuan Garden," Chin said. "We hope to borrow the essence of the Chinese garden in Dunedin." Chin is on a visit to Shanghai this week as part of celebrations for the first direct flight between Shanghai and Aukland. According to the plan, the garden will be completed in 2008. Dunedin is the forth biggest city in New Zealand on the Otago Peninsula.
Love story of 2006 - Chinese man cuts 6,000 stairs for wife
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The tale of a 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved more than 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has won the award for China's greatest love story of 2006.
Now the local government is attempting to supply electricity to the cave, which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.
The story began half a century ago when 20-year-old Liu Guojiang fell in love with a widowed mother, Xu Chaoqing.
In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.
Desperate to escape market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the pair eloped to live in a cave in Jiangjin county in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.
Their story came atop a list of China's top 10 love stories organised by the Chinese Women Weekly, which collected tales from around the country since July.
At the beginning, life was harsh and Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him: 'Are you regretful?'
Liu always replied: 'As long as we are industrious, life will improve.'
Liu and his wife were not present at the award ceremony due to their age but their son Liu Mingsheng came with a kerosene lamp that his father had made from an ink bottle.
'My parents have lived in seclusion for more than 50 years because of their love for each other. They had no electricity and my father made kerosene lamps to lighten our lives,' he said.
'My mother seldom goes down the mountain but my father cut the 6,000-plus stairs for her convenience,' Liu said. 'It's a ladder of love.'
Dai Rong, an official of Jiangjin county, said: 'We're glad to see the story of two senior citizens won and the local government will try to connect them to the electricity supply as soon as possible.'
- By Xinhua
The tale of a 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved more than 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has won the award for China's greatest love story of 2006.
Now the local government is attempting to supply electricity to the cave, which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.
The story began half a century ago when 20-year-old Liu Guojiang fell in love with a widowed mother, Xu Chaoqing.
In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.
Desperate to escape market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the pair eloped to live in a cave in Jiangjin county in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.
Their story came atop a list of China's top 10 love stories organised by the Chinese Women Weekly, which collected tales from around the country since July.
At the beginning, life was harsh and Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him: 'Are you regretful?'
Liu always replied: 'As long as we are industrious, life will improve.'
Liu and his wife were not present at the award ceremony due to their age but their son Liu Mingsheng came with a kerosene lamp that his father had made from an ink bottle.
'My parents have lived in seclusion for more than 50 years because of their love for each other. They had no electricity and my father made kerosene lamps to lighten our lives,' he said.
'My mother seldom goes down the mountain but my father cut the 6,000-plus stairs for her convenience,' Liu said. 'It's a ladder of love.'
Dai Rong, an official of Jiangjin county, said: 'We're glad to see the story of two senior citizens won and the local government will try to connect them to the electricity supply as soon as possible.'
- By Xinhua
Peter Chin Mayor of Dunedin
Peter Chin (mayor)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter (Wing Ho) Chin born 1941 is the current Mayor of Dunedin. He was elected in 2004, replacing the retiring Sukhi Turner. Mr Chin's family owned a take-away establishment in Stuart St. Chin was a student in the 1950s at Otago Boys' High School then the University of Otago. He has worked in Dunedin as a lawyer since 1968. Before becoming mayor, he served three terms on the Dunedin City Council (elected 1995) representing the Hills Ward.
He will give up his law practice in order to concentrate on his mayoral role. Chin also serves as the head of the Gambling Commission, the government-appointed panel that regulates casinos. Married, with four children, he lives in Roslyn and is a prominent operatic singer.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter (Wing Ho) Chin born 1941 is the current Mayor of Dunedin. He was elected in 2004, replacing the retiring Sukhi Turner. Mr Chin's family owned a take-away establishment in Stuart St. Chin was a student in the 1950s at Otago Boys' High School then the University of Otago. He has worked in Dunedin as a lawyer since 1968. Before becoming mayor, he served three terms on the Dunedin City Council (elected 1995) representing the Hills Ward.
He will give up his law practice in order to concentrate on his mayoral role. Chin also serves as the head of the Gambling Commission, the government-appointed panel that regulates casinos. Married, with four children, he lives in Roslyn and is a prominent operatic singer.
Asian Artists
Asian artists finding their voice
Saturday July 29, 2006By Lynn Chen
Comic writer Ant Sang is working to cook up a new Chinese dish for New Zealand - a kung-fu saga set in ancient China.
The Chinese New Zealander and designer of characters and backgrounds for hit television show Bro'Town is best known for his serialised comic The Dharma Punks, and has been adding Chinese faces in his works.
"I made the comic character the way I look," said Sang, 35.
He is part of a new wave of New Zealand Chinese artists.
New Zealand's best known literary magazine, Landfall, now has a New Zealand Chinese editor, and art galleries such as the Adam in Wellington and Te Tuhi in Pakuranga are exhibiting a wave of young Chinese talent.
Asian creative voices will feature in a forthcoming conference on the evolving identities of so-called "bananas" - New Zealand born-Chinese, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
The "Going Bananas" conference in August will highlight the Kiwi Chinese creative voices, including film-makers, architects, visual designers and musicians, says the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Chinese Association.
"Asia's young and creative people are changing the way Auckland looks," said Alistair Kwun, spokesman for the event. "We address them and see how different communities can work together for the well-being of New Zealand."
Tze Ming Mok, novel writer and the first Chinese editor of Landfall, said: "In terms of cultural creative voices of Chinese and Asians in New Zealand - and particularly Auckland - I do believe we are present in greater numbers in the sector than ever before.
"What is interesting about these Asians entering the creative industries, is that this is an avenue for an expression of a contemporary face of Asia and international urban influences that most New Zealanders have previously not associated with Asian artists or Asian people in New Zealand."
Sang said that although Chinese or Asian art was still developing it would become more noticeable and enter the Kiwi mainstream.
This year's event is expected to attract more non-Chinese to the audience, who are developing increasing interest in the Chinese communities. Last year, nearly 250 people attended the Banana conference.
* Going Bananas: August 12 at AUT, Auckland.
Links
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Going Bananas http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=147&objectid=10393508
Saturday July 29, 2006By Lynn Chen
Comic writer Ant Sang is working to cook up a new Chinese dish for New Zealand - a kung-fu saga set in ancient China.
The Chinese New Zealander and designer of characters and backgrounds for hit television show Bro'Town is best known for his serialised comic The Dharma Punks, and has been adding Chinese faces in his works.
"I made the comic character the way I look," said Sang, 35.
He is part of a new wave of New Zealand Chinese artists.
New Zealand's best known literary magazine, Landfall, now has a New Zealand Chinese editor, and art galleries such as the Adam in Wellington and Te Tuhi in Pakuranga are exhibiting a wave of young Chinese talent.
Asian creative voices will feature in a forthcoming conference on the evolving identities of so-called "bananas" - New Zealand born-Chinese, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
The "Going Bananas" conference in August will highlight the Kiwi Chinese creative voices, including film-makers, architects, visual designers and musicians, says the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Chinese Association.
"Asia's young and creative people are changing the way Auckland looks," said Alistair Kwun, spokesman for the event. "We address them and see how different communities can work together for the well-being of New Zealand."
Tze Ming Mok, novel writer and the first Chinese editor of Landfall, said: "In terms of cultural creative voices of Chinese and Asians in New Zealand - and particularly Auckland - I do believe we are present in greater numbers in the sector than ever before.
"What is interesting about these Asians entering the creative industries, is that this is an avenue for an expression of a contemporary face of Asia and international urban influences that most New Zealanders have previously not associated with Asian artists or Asian people in New Zealand."
Sang said that although Chinese or Asian art was still developing it would become more noticeable and enter the Kiwi mainstream.
This year's event is expected to attract more non-Chinese to the audience, who are developing increasing interest in the Chinese communities. Last year, nearly 250 people attended the Banana conference.
* Going Bananas: August 12 at AUT, Auckland.
Links
•
Going Bananas http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=147&objectid=10393508
Job Door Closed
Wei Yuen Loo: Even NZ-born Chinese find job doors closed
Tuesday October 3, 2006
As a New Zealand-born Chinese who worked as a civil engineer in Hong Kong for many years and is now back home, I can confirm from personal experience that there is indeed discrimination by NZ employers against those with non Anglo-Saxon names - especially Asian names - and those who do not happen to have "Kiwi" experience.
If you happen to fall into both categories your chances of finding meaningful employment in your chosen profession start to get pretty slim.
I have Kiwi-born friends of Chinese descent who refuse to waste their time trying to further their careers in this country, mainly because they know of the difficulties they face in securing a position commensurate with their qualifications and talents.
Many consider Australians to have a far more fair and open attitude, and now some of these people have good positions in Australian companies, positions that they would never have been able to achieve in NZ unless they worked in the public sector.
Herald guest columnist Mark Berghan accuses immigrant businesses of refusing to hire Pakeha or Maori. This is a rather spurious argument. Many of these businesses are entirely family-run affairs and some are niche market businesses set up to meet the needs of foreign-language clientele and recent immigrants.
Thus you have Mandarin-speaking travel agencies, Cantonese restaurants and Hindi video shops. There would be very few native born Kiwis of any ethnic extraction who would be suitable for employment in such places.
As for Mr Berghan's time in Japan, all I can say is that as a Caucasian he would certainly have an easier time finding a job there than I would - again from personal experience. And I'm certain that he did not have to provide evidence of "Japanese experience" prior to the interview stage.
He should know that in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai and Brunei you will see many New Zealand, Australian, English and American professionals doing very well, in charge of local staff or in high management. Most have zero command, the rest only a rudimentary command, of the local language.
Of course this is because English is virtually an international language, definitely the language of business, but my point is that so-called 'cultural context' is not nearly as important as Mr Berghan would have you believe.
The technical professions such as engineering, IT, and accounting should know no borders. That is why you find New Zealand geologists working in Hong Kong and German foundation engineers in Singapore. Indian hospitality workers find their skills highly valued in Dubai. And American companies go to India to poach Indian IT and business graduates - the same type of people who here in New Zealand would have to resort to driving taxis to make ends meet.
So just why is NZ so different? Is it really prejudice - or does this country really have a unique set of cultural values and norms that immigrants, and even native born non-whites such as myself, will never be able to understand and appreciate - thus rendering us useless for anything apart from driving taxis and cooking fish and chips?
* Wei Yuen Loo is a lecturer at Unitec in Auckland
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=147&objectid=10404047
Tuesday October 3, 2006
As a New Zealand-born Chinese who worked as a civil engineer in Hong Kong for many years and is now back home, I can confirm from personal experience that there is indeed discrimination by NZ employers against those with non Anglo-Saxon names - especially Asian names - and those who do not happen to have "Kiwi" experience.
If you happen to fall into both categories your chances of finding meaningful employment in your chosen profession start to get pretty slim.
I have Kiwi-born friends of Chinese descent who refuse to waste their time trying to further their careers in this country, mainly because they know of the difficulties they face in securing a position commensurate with their qualifications and talents.
Many consider Australians to have a far more fair and open attitude, and now some of these people have good positions in Australian companies, positions that they would never have been able to achieve in NZ unless they worked in the public sector.
Herald guest columnist Mark Berghan accuses immigrant businesses of refusing to hire Pakeha or Maori. This is a rather spurious argument. Many of these businesses are entirely family-run affairs and some are niche market businesses set up to meet the needs of foreign-language clientele and recent immigrants.
Thus you have Mandarin-speaking travel agencies, Cantonese restaurants and Hindi video shops. There would be very few native born Kiwis of any ethnic extraction who would be suitable for employment in such places.
As for Mr Berghan's time in Japan, all I can say is that as a Caucasian he would certainly have an easier time finding a job there than I would - again from personal experience. And I'm certain that he did not have to provide evidence of "Japanese experience" prior to the interview stage.
He should know that in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai and Brunei you will see many New Zealand, Australian, English and American professionals doing very well, in charge of local staff or in high management. Most have zero command, the rest only a rudimentary command, of the local language.
Of course this is because English is virtually an international language, definitely the language of business, but my point is that so-called 'cultural context' is not nearly as important as Mr Berghan would have you believe.
The technical professions such as engineering, IT, and accounting should know no borders. That is why you find New Zealand geologists working in Hong Kong and German foundation engineers in Singapore. Indian hospitality workers find their skills highly valued in Dubai. And American companies go to India to poach Indian IT and business graduates - the same type of people who here in New Zealand would have to resort to driving taxis to make ends meet.
So just why is NZ so different? Is it really prejudice - or does this country really have a unique set of cultural values and norms that immigrants, and even native born non-whites such as myself, will never be able to understand and appreciate - thus rendering us useless for anything apart from driving taxis and cooking fish and chips?
* Wei Yuen Loo is a lecturer at Unitec in Auckland
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=147&objectid=10404047
Uni degree forger jailed for 4 years
Uni degree forger jailed for four years
2.00pm Friday November 10, 2006
An Auckland company director who forged university degrees so well they were "indistinguishable" from the real thing has been jailed for four years.
Rebecca Li, 35, appeared in Auckland District Court today for sentencing after a jury found her guilty last month of 49 charges of forgery.
The court heard the operation she ran for four years was "sophisticated and professional."
Some of the forged degree documents sold for $2000 each.
Li was also ordered to serve a minimum of two years in prison before she became eligible for parole, when the judge said if she was to serve the traditional one third of her sentence, it would not be enough to punish, deter and denounce her offending.
- NZPA
2.00pm Friday November 10, 2006
An Auckland company director who forged university degrees so well they were "indistinguishable" from the real thing has been jailed for four years.
Rebecca Li, 35, appeared in Auckland District Court today for sentencing after a jury found her guilty last month of 49 charges of forgery.
The court heard the operation she ran for four years was "sophisticated and professional."
Some of the forged degree documents sold for $2000 each.
Li was also ordered to serve a minimum of two years in prison before she became eligible for parole, when the judge said if she was to serve the traditional one third of her sentence, it would not be enough to punish, deter and denounce her offending.
- NZPA
Conviction caps major play in dud NZ degrees
Saturday October 14, 2006By David Eames
The conviction this week of Auckland forger and fraudster Rebecca Li has shut down a major player in the blackmarket for fake degrees and documents but police can only guess the extent of her offending.
The 35-year-old owner of Grey Lynn-based Reddix Productions spent seven years forging university degree certificates, stamps and official seals.
Hong Kong-born Li also produced fake tax invoices, fake driver licences and fake immigrant stamps, then sold them for up to $5000 apiece.
Former Asian Crime Squad detective Jimmy Jin yesterday told the Weekend Herald it was likely that numerous fake qualifications were still in circulation, but how many was anyone's guess.
The degree certificates - from numerous institutions - were likely destined overseas but scores of International English Language Testing System certificates could be used to help foreign students hoping to work or study in New Zealand.
And Li was good at it.
"I think Rebecca Li is the major manufacturer of those [types of] documents," Mr Jin said. "To be able to make those documents you need quite an in-depth knowledge of computers and programmes."
Li has a computer science degree from Auckland University, a real one.
Mr Jin said Li's services were advertised by word of mouth or through discreet placements in The Mandarin Times, but her work did not come cheaply.
She would charge about $1500 for a university degree, sold through a middleman who was free to add his own mark-up.
A fake driver's licence was worth around $300, while one man is understood to have paid $5000 for a phoney IELTS certificate.
The scale of Li's business has left Auckland University shaken.
Registrar Tim Greville said Li's offending was the first example of organised, professional forgery here.
The mass production of fraudulent degrees and other university certificates was "a major corrosion" of university credibility and he urged would-be employers to verify qualifications by checking student records.
Massey University deputy vice-chancellor Nigel Long reiterated Mr Greville's comments.
Author
•
More by David Eames
The conviction this week of Auckland forger and fraudster Rebecca Li has shut down a major player in the blackmarket for fake degrees and documents but police can only guess the extent of her offending.
The 35-year-old owner of Grey Lynn-based Reddix Productions spent seven years forging university degree certificates, stamps and official seals.
Hong Kong-born Li also produced fake tax invoices, fake driver licences and fake immigrant stamps, then sold them for up to $5000 apiece.
Former Asian Crime Squad detective Jimmy Jin yesterday told the Weekend Herald it was likely that numerous fake qualifications were still in circulation, but how many was anyone's guess.
The degree certificates - from numerous institutions - were likely destined overseas but scores of International English Language Testing System certificates could be used to help foreign students hoping to work or study in New Zealand.
And Li was good at it.
"I think Rebecca Li is the major manufacturer of those [types of] documents," Mr Jin said. "To be able to make those documents you need quite an in-depth knowledge of computers and programmes."
Li has a computer science degree from Auckland University, a real one.
Mr Jin said Li's services were advertised by word of mouth or through discreet placements in The Mandarin Times, but her work did not come cheaply.
She would charge about $1500 for a university degree, sold through a middleman who was free to add his own mark-up.
A fake driver's licence was worth around $300, while one man is understood to have paid $5000 for a phoney IELTS certificate.
The scale of Li's business has left Auckland University shaken.
Registrar Tim Greville said Li's offending was the first example of organised, professional forgery here.
The mass production of fraudulent degrees and other university certificates was "a major corrosion" of university credibility and he urged would-be employers to verify qualifications by checking student records.
Massey University deputy vice-chancellor Nigel Long reiterated Mr Greville's comments.
Author
•
More by David Eames
Triad's killing 'TV-style', court told
UPDATED 1.45pm Wednesday November 8, 2006By David Eames
A reputed triad gang enforcer was killed in a TV-style murder, the High Court in Auckland heard today.
Wan Yee Chow, 54, faces a charge of murder following the July 2005 killing of Tam Yam Ah, 37, outside the Top Karaoke bar on Symonds Street in central Auckland.
Wan is alleged to have travelled from Wellington on July 6 last year then, after visiting a number of places frequented by Tam, waited for him outside the karaoke bar.
Tam lived above the business. Wan is accused of gunning down the victim as he climbed from his silver BMW car in the early hours of July 7.
Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery described the killing as "a textbook television-type murder", in his opening address to the jury.
"It was a simple cold-blooded act of killing."
Tam - already out of the car - is understood to have seen Wan approaching him, and hurriedly locked his car to protect a woman who was still inside.
"As he got out of the car he obviously saw the man who was there to kill him," Mr Raftery told the court.
"Within seconds he was shot, within minutes he died."
The woman managed to escape after smashing her way out of the BMW window, and is due to give evidence at trial,
However, her description of Tam's killer would likely be sketchy, Mr Raftery said.
"All that she can tell you?is something about his physical appearance, because his face was covered in a balaclava."
Mr Raftery's lengthy opening address included a number of details regarding issues peripheral to the killing, but defence counsel Peter Kaye urged jurors not to be distracted by other issues.
In his opening remarks, Mr Kaye said the "crucial issue" in the trial was whether Chow murdered Mr Tam.
"Make no mistake about this... It's just about the be all and end all of this case.
"It's that important."
About 40 witnesses will be heard from during the trial, which is presided over by Justice Patricia Courtney.
It is set down for about two weeks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/story.cfm?a_id=211&ObjectID=10409732
A reputed triad gang enforcer was killed in a TV-style murder, the High Court in Auckland heard today.
Wan Yee Chow, 54, faces a charge of murder following the July 2005 killing of Tam Yam Ah, 37, outside the Top Karaoke bar on Symonds Street in central Auckland.
Wan is alleged to have travelled from Wellington on July 6 last year then, after visiting a number of places frequented by Tam, waited for him outside the karaoke bar.
Tam lived above the business. Wan is accused of gunning down the victim as he climbed from his silver BMW car in the early hours of July 7.
Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery described the killing as "a textbook television-type murder", in his opening address to the jury.
"It was a simple cold-blooded act of killing."
Tam - already out of the car - is understood to have seen Wan approaching him, and hurriedly locked his car to protect a woman who was still inside.
"As he got out of the car he obviously saw the man who was there to kill him," Mr Raftery told the court.
"Within seconds he was shot, within minutes he died."
The woman managed to escape after smashing her way out of the BMW window, and is due to give evidence at trial,
However, her description of Tam's killer would likely be sketchy, Mr Raftery said.
"All that she can tell you?is something about his physical appearance, because his face was covered in a balaclava."
Mr Raftery's lengthy opening address included a number of details regarding issues peripheral to the killing, but defence counsel Peter Kaye urged jurors not to be distracted by other issues.
In his opening remarks, Mr Kaye said the "crucial issue" in the trial was whether Chow murdered Mr Tam.
"Make no mistake about this... It's just about the be all and end all of this case.
"It's that important."
About 40 witnesses will be heard from during the trial, which is presided over by Justice Patricia Courtney.
It is set down for about two weeks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/story.cfm?a_id=211&ObjectID=10409732
Murder-accused 'was victim's mate'
Thursday November 9, 2006By David Eames
A man said to have carried out a contract killing for an Asian gang considered his victim as a "brother", at one time working for him in his Auckland restaurant, a court was told yesterday.
Wan Yee Chow is accused of shooting Tam Yam Ah as he climbed from his BMW car outside the Top Karaoke Bar in Symonds Street, central Auckland, in the early hours of July 7 last year.
Mr Tam, 37, was a part-owner of the bar. He also owned the Flower City Restaurant in Anzac Ave, ran a loansharking business, and was a reputed enforcer for the 14-k Triad gang.
The Crown says Chow, who at the time was based in Wellington, made the trip to Auckland with an accomplice to carry out the killing, but prosecutor Kieran Raftery was yesterday unsure of a motive for the killing. A paua deal gone bad was one possible explanation, retribution for money unpaid was another, he told the High Court at Auckland.
Mr Tam's murder could also have been a contract killing, he said.
"It was a simple, cold-blooded act of killing."
Chow's alleged accomplice - whose identity is suppressed - will give evidence against him later in the trial, and has been granted immunity from prosecution.
A woman who saw the killing from the passenger seat of Mr Tam's car yesterday gave her recollection of the shooting.
Mr Tam had locked her in the car after seeing his assailant approaching, the court was told, and she had to smash the passenger window to escape. Speaking through an interpreter, she said: "I felt very strange. I thought it was a robbery, and then suddenly a gun fired."
She broke out of the car to find Mr Tam lying on the ground, his killer gone. "I found he had breathing difficulties. Then I asked him what had happened. He didn't give me any answer."
Mr Tam had been shot once in the chest, and was dead before the ambulance arrived.
She said Chow had arrived in New Zealand about two weeks before the opening of the Flower City Restaurant, in May last year, and had been met at the airport by Mr Tam.
The woman - whose name is suppressed - said the pair greeted one another in a "friendly way, like a brother".
However, she said the pair appeared to have a falling out about a month before the killing, after Chow was hit in the face during an argument involving Mr Tam and an unidentified Maori man.
On the night of the shooting, the woman stared into the balaclava-clad face of Mr Tam's attacker, and yesterday told the court the man's build reminded her of Chow, who denies murder.
But under cross examination by defence counsel Peter Kaye, the woman hinted at possible gang tensions between the Triad-affiliated Mr Tam and another man connected with Taiwanese organised crime.
She agreed with an assertion by Mr Kaye that Mr Tam had been accused of destroying the Taiwanese gang's business, and creating problems between the Taiwanese and the Hong Kong-based 14-k. She also outlined some of Mr Tam's business dealings, which included a cash payment of $110,000 as part payment for the Top Karaoke Bar, and $30,000 cash paid as part of a deposit on a Mt Albert property.
The woman was to continue giving evidence today. The trial, before Justice Patricia Courtney, is set to last two weeks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10409876
A man said to have carried out a contract killing for an Asian gang considered his victim as a "brother", at one time working for him in his Auckland restaurant, a court was told yesterday.
Wan Yee Chow is accused of shooting Tam Yam Ah as he climbed from his BMW car outside the Top Karaoke Bar in Symonds Street, central Auckland, in the early hours of July 7 last year.
Mr Tam, 37, was a part-owner of the bar. He also owned the Flower City Restaurant in Anzac Ave, ran a loansharking business, and was a reputed enforcer for the 14-k Triad gang.
The Crown says Chow, who at the time was based in Wellington, made the trip to Auckland with an accomplice to carry out the killing, but prosecutor Kieran Raftery was yesterday unsure of a motive for the killing. A paua deal gone bad was one possible explanation, retribution for money unpaid was another, he told the High Court at Auckland.
Mr Tam's murder could also have been a contract killing, he said.
"It was a simple, cold-blooded act of killing."
Chow's alleged accomplice - whose identity is suppressed - will give evidence against him later in the trial, and has been granted immunity from prosecution.
A woman who saw the killing from the passenger seat of Mr Tam's car yesterday gave her recollection of the shooting.
Mr Tam had locked her in the car after seeing his assailant approaching, the court was told, and she had to smash the passenger window to escape. Speaking through an interpreter, she said: "I felt very strange. I thought it was a robbery, and then suddenly a gun fired."
She broke out of the car to find Mr Tam lying on the ground, his killer gone. "I found he had breathing difficulties. Then I asked him what had happened. He didn't give me any answer."
Mr Tam had been shot once in the chest, and was dead before the ambulance arrived.
She said Chow had arrived in New Zealand about two weeks before the opening of the Flower City Restaurant, in May last year, and had been met at the airport by Mr Tam.
The woman - whose name is suppressed - said the pair greeted one another in a "friendly way, like a brother".
However, she said the pair appeared to have a falling out about a month before the killing, after Chow was hit in the face during an argument involving Mr Tam and an unidentified Maori man.
On the night of the shooting, the woman stared into the balaclava-clad face of Mr Tam's attacker, and yesterday told the court the man's build reminded her of Chow, who denies murder.
But under cross examination by defence counsel Peter Kaye, the woman hinted at possible gang tensions between the Triad-affiliated Mr Tam and another man connected with Taiwanese organised crime.
She agreed with an assertion by Mr Kaye that Mr Tam had been accused of destroying the Taiwanese gang's business, and creating problems between the Taiwanese and the Hong Kong-based 14-k. She also outlined some of Mr Tam's business dealings, which included a cash payment of $110,000 as part payment for the Top Karaoke Bar, and $30,000 cash paid as part of a deposit on a Mt Albert property.
The woman was to continue giving evidence today. The trial, before Justice Patricia Courtney, is set to last two weeks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10409876
Visitors to this blog - please drop a line
Visitors to This Blog - I really appreciate you visiting here - please let me know if you are just passing by - or if you are a regular visitor. Leave a post here and thanks for popping in.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=ffd98428-9fa0-42e8-84b4-4a8417fb9f65
top 100 Chinese-Canadians in British Columbia
top 100 Chinese-Canadians in British Columbia
Head Tax payment - Canada
http://www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com/blog/ChineseCanadianHistory
Arms raised in triumph! Head Tax redress campaigners Victor Wong, Gim Wong, Sid Tan stand behind the second and first head tax ex-gratia payments to Thomas Soon and Charlie Quan - photo Todd Wong
Ninety-nine year old Charlie Quan recieved the very first ex-gratia cheque for Chinese head tax redress, presented by Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women. Oda and David Emerson, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacifc Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, were in town to present the cheques to Quan, Thomas Soon (aged 95) and Ah Foon Chin (aged 96) who could not attend and was represented by his daughter-in-law.
In 1923, Quan had to pay $500 to enter Canada, estimated to be the cost of a house or two years wages back then. Only ethnic Chinese were charged the head tax. It was a concerted effort to keep Canada white, and discourage Chinese from coming to Canada. Beginning in 1885, the Canadian government imposed a $50 fee on Chinese immigrants, which was raised to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903. But by 1923, Chinese were still coming, so the Canadian government passed the "Chinese Exclusion Act" which effectively banned all Chinese immigration, and was not rescinded untl 1947, after WW2,
During the head tax redress campaign, Charlie Quan repeatedly stated that he wanted his money back. Quan was interviewed for the NFB documentary " In the Shadow of Gold Mountain," written and directed by head tax descendant Karen Cho. Earlier in 2006, Quan stated that he thought a head tax redress settlement would be worth $35,000. After Quan received his cheque and posed for pictures with Minister Bev Oda, he sat down beside his friend Gim Wong, also a veteran of Chinese head tax who completed a "Ride for Redress" on his motorcycle across Canada to Ottawa in 2005 to draw attention to the head tax/exclusion act redress campaign. Wong was also featured in the movie "In the Shadow of Gold Mountain." Quan and Gim immediately looked at the cheque and began to count to check the number of "zeroes"on it. After so many years of seemingly hopeless campagining, they still found it hard to believe that redress payments were actually happening. Payments for surviving spouses will begin in November, 2006.
Arms raised in triumph! Head Tax redress campaigners Victor Wong, Gim Wong, Sid Tan stand behind the second and first head tax ex-gratia payments to Thomas Soon and Charlie Quan - photo Todd Wong
Ninety-nine year old Charlie Quan recieved the very first ex-gratia cheque for Chinese head tax redress, presented by Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women. Oda and David Emerson, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacifc Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, were in town to present the cheques to Quan, Thomas Soon (aged 95) and Ah Foon Chin (aged 96) who could not attend and was represented by his daughter-in-law.
In 1923, Quan had to pay $500 to enter Canada, estimated to be the cost of a house or two years wages back then. Only ethnic Chinese were charged the head tax. It was a concerted effort to keep Canada white, and discourage Chinese from coming to Canada. Beginning in 1885, the Canadian government imposed a $50 fee on Chinese immigrants, which was raised to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903. But by 1923, Chinese were still coming, so the Canadian government passed the "Chinese Exclusion Act" which effectively banned all Chinese immigration, and was not rescinded untl 1947, after WW2,
During the head tax redress campaign, Charlie Quan repeatedly stated that he wanted his money back. Quan was interviewed for the NFB documentary " In the Shadow of Gold Mountain," written and directed by head tax descendant Karen Cho. Earlier in 2006, Quan stated that he thought a head tax redress settlement would be worth $35,000. After Quan received his cheque and posed for pictures with Minister Bev Oda, he sat down beside his friend Gim Wong, also a veteran of Chinese head tax who completed a "Ride for Redress" on his motorcycle across Canada to Ottawa in 2005 to draw attention to the head tax/exclusion act redress campaign. Wong was also featured in the movie "In the Shadow of Gold Mountain." Quan and Gim immediately looked at the cheque and began to count to check the number of "zeroes"on it. After so many years of seemingly hopeless campagining, they still found it hard to believe that redress payments were actually happening. Payments for surviving spouses will begin in November, 2006.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Chinese Opera
Video Auckland 1961 - State Theatre Symonds Street Auckland
http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=16d7de904f2985998c88cc&skin_id=0&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=16d7de904f2985998c88cc&skin_id=0&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
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