The 19th century
The 19th century was the era of the Chinese goldseekers in Otago and
on the West Coast. They were rural male Cantonese who first came
over from Victoria, Australia, and later direct from China.
Initially, in 1865, they were responding to invitations to rework
the Otago goldfields; from there they spilled over to the West
Coast. Their numbers reached a peak of over 5,000 between 1874-81.
Despite their peasant background they were intrepid and determined
adventurers. Sojourners by choice, their competitiveness, different
racial origin and culture generated opposition. Their aim was to
save about 100 pounds to take home to China; their strategy to adapt
only as much as necessary until they left. They survived by their
cooperative groupings of kinsfolk, clan and counties of origin.
The next wave, who
came from the late 1880s, also established themselves throughout New
Zealand in small businesses, capable of supporting families. From
the turn of the century this led to the growing wish, despite the
'white New Zealand' policy, to bring their families here out of
danger.
Although generally
illiterate, they valued learning and even printed paper itself.
Alexander Don described, for instance, how his Chinese teacher
collected scraps of lettered paper to be burned later with ceremony
( New Zealand Presbyterian , 1 July 1884,
p.3). However, taking into account their illiteracy, their
relatively small, scattered number and their temporary outlook here,
it is not surprising that the Chinese print culture in 19th-century
New Zealand was limited. They wrote no books and founded no
newspapers. What local print culture existed was mostly
hand-executed and little has survived. In fact, what is known about
Chinese life in New Zealand in those days derives largely from the
writings and photography of Don, who was Presbyterian missionary to
them from 1879 to 1913. Don's papers are chiefly to be found in
Dunedin, in the Hocken and Knox College libraries, and in private
hands. Other important collections include those of G.H. McNeur
(Hocken Library), and of James Ng. For comprehensive bibliographies
of sources and authorities, see James Ng, Windows
on a Chinese Past (vols.1 and 4 1993, vol.2 1995).
Their only
commercial printing in this country was by means of lithography. The
one example that has survived (in the Otago Settlers Museum) is the
lithographed minutes of the meeting of the Cheong Shing Tong (Poon
Fah Association), held after the sinking of S.S. Ventnor in 1902, which resulted in the loss of 499 exhumed
bodies being returned to China.
Of handwritten
Chinese, rather more survives. However, it should be understood that
unless otherwise stated, the examples given in the course of this
brief survey represent a small selection from a more comprehensive
documentation compiled by James Ng. James Shum, a miner, wrote
autobiographical accounts for both Don and G.H. McNeur. Fragments
remain among Don's writings, and are reproduced in Jean McNeur's
thesis 'The Chinese in New Zealand' (1930). The papers of Benjamin
Wong Tape OBE, JP, were deposited in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, by
his son in 1969.
Correspondence in
Chinese must have been plentiful enough. The Statistics of New Zealand (1866) record a total of 534
letters from Hong Kong in the Otago mail. The texts of a few family
letters have survived and been printed: for example, Don printed
translations of four family letters, including one from the leper
Kong Lye to his mother ( New Zealand
Presbyterian , 1 October 1884). A boxful of envelopes, some
containing letters regarding the Cheong Shing Tong's first
exhumation (completed in 1884) was found in a shed in Sew Hoy's
store, Dunedin, in 1992. The envelopes had fascinating chop
imprints, in various artistic forms enclosing the name. In his diary
Don has described other Chinese letters; he also collected 'queer
addresses' from mail sent to him by the Post Office to decipher (see
his Diary 1899-1907, items 334, 408 and 442,
etc.).
Legal or
quasi-legal documents had their mixture of English and Chinese.
Among these were petitions, such as that addressed in 1878 to the
Otago Provincial Council concerning goldfield Warden R. Beetham's
alleged unfairness. The petition was written in English, but the
subscription list of names was in Chinese (National Archives,
Wellington).
Notices, official
and business, are another class of document. Don translated notices
in Chinese, including rules of the anti-opium Cherishing Virtue
Union ( New Zealand Presbyterian , 1 December
1888). A bilingual official notice on the Mines Act of 1877 is
referred to in the Dunstan Times of 27
January 1882. Reward posters were printed in 1880 in both English
and Chinese for information leading to the arrest of the murderer of
Mrs Mary Young (a European)—copies are in the Naseby
Museum and National Archives, Wellington.
Pakapoo lottery
tickets are plentiful in Otago museums, as are Chinese coins, but
appear to have been printed in China—illustrated in Windows on a Chinese Past (vol.1 1993).
Handwritten and
stamped calling cards in red were presented at the time of the
Chinese New Year ( New Zealand Presbyterian ,
2 April 1883, p.184). None of the cards seem to have survived, and
the New Year custom of leaving visiting cards has ceased in New
Zealand.
The Chinese
goldseekers attached red paper inscriptions bearing felicitous
phrases and poetical couplets on walls, doors, shrines, meat safes,
and in any auspicious place in a house. They may be seen in Don's
photographs. Again, none have survived. Gambling dens had white
paper inscriptions. See for instance, Don's Annual
Inland Tour 1896-97 (1897).
Wood provided a
common alternative writing surface to paper, in the shape of wooden
signs, commemorative plaques and presentation pairs of vertical
boards bearing poetical couplets, often with the donors' names
carved in smaller characters. For example, living memory recalls the
walls of the Poon Fah Association's Lawrence Joss House hung with
flags and wooden plaques. Don similarly described the Round Hill
Joss House interior in the New Zealand
Presbyterian , 1 August 1890. John Ah Tong carved for the
Queenstown Anglican Church in 1874, and the presence of other
Chinese carvers in the goldfields is confirmed by Don and in census
records. Probable examples of their work include two large yellow on
red and two small yellow on black vertical Chinese boards, each pair
bearing poetical couplets from the Poon Fah Association's Lawrence
Joss House, and now in the Otago Settlers Museum; also the Chinese
Church sign, originally hung outside the Dunedin Chinese Mission
Church in Walker, now Carroll Street, 1897, and since transferred to
the outside of the Dunedin Chinese Presbyterian Church in Howe St.
The Chinese
goldseekers also used cloth banners with embroidered or stitched-on
characters, ordered from China. One such work is the long horizontal
banner in Hanover St Baptist Church in Dunedin, presented by its
Chinese class at the turn of the century.
The only known
'Chinese' newspaper produced in New Zealand last century was Don's
weekly Kam lei Tong I Po . Kam lei Tong was
the rented premises in which Don preached at Riverton, and 'I Po'
means newspaper. The first issue appeared on 12 May 1883; it seems
to have been a handwritten sheet which he pasted up on the Round
Hill Mission Church. Don must have had the help of his Chinese
teacher. The latest mention of it is in October 1883, when Chinese
condemned its information on the Sino-French War as contrary to
their own, derived from overseas newspapers and letters, which they
also pasted up ( New Zealand Presbyterian , 1
September 1883).
Other overseas
Chinese newspapers and magazines circulated in New Zealand in the
1880s and 1890s, including the daily China
Mail ; the weekly Chinese Australian
Herald ; the monthlies Review of the
Times , Missionary Review ; and the Chinese Illustrated News , the Chinese Globe Magazine —these two
printed in Shanghai; the dailies Kwang Pao
and the Wa Tz Yat Pao . These titles are
mentioned in contemporary issues of the Christian
Outlook and the New Zealand
Presbyterian , and in Don's diaries. Copies of some of the
above magazines are among that part of the Chinese library of the
Dunedin Chinese Presbyterian Church which was deposited c.1984 in
the Hocken Library.
Surviving books in
Chinese, printed in China, from the period include two almanacs in
the Graham Sinclair collection. The Sinclair farm was next to the
Adams Flat Chinese Camp. A book on acupuncture was found in Sue
Him's orchard shed in Alexandra (now in the Alexandra Museum). The
literate used to read to the illiterate, and their books were read
'till they fall to pieces' ( New Zealand
Presbyterian , 1 January 1885). Novels read at Round Hill,
according to Don, included: Koo sz king lam
(Ancient matter—a forest of gems); and 'Vast, vast is the
mist on the ocean, while the concubine is buried in sadness'.
Classics at Round Hill and elsewhere, according to Don ( New Zealand Presbyterian , 1 October 1884),
included the Saam tsz king (Three character
classic), Saam Kwok, Lit Kwok, History of the feudal states, and
Mencius with commentary. The Chinese pharmacopoeia was used at Round
Hill, according to the same source.
In 1881 Walter
Paterson was distributing the New Testament in Wanli or conventional
Chinese script or in English, matched line for line by colloquial
Cantonese, transcribed into roman script by Paterson and a Dunedin
Chinese named Mattai. No doubt such copies were more for the use of
Europeans reading to the Cantonese goldseekers. No copies are known
to have survived, though Don noted the wide distribution of these
bibles. Paterson also published bilingual religious tracts, two of
which are preserved in Knox College Library.
Don himself
printed three bilingual booklets of hymns (Knox College Library).
His most important legacy, however, was his handwritten notebook
'Roll of the Chinese in New Zealand 1883-1913'. It records in
Chinese and English the 3628 Chinese Don met from 1896-1913 and, in
English only, some others he knew from 1883. Because Don entered
names and villages of origin in Chinese, and brief individual
histories in English, most of those named can be identified. For
example, Ng confirmed from the Roll much of the movements of the Ngs
from Taishan county in this period. The notebook is reproduced in
Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past (vol.4 1993).
New Zealand has
probably the finest cache of photographs on the Chinese goldseekers
and their origins, thanks to Don, whose hobby was photography. Some
are bilingually labelled. His collection was dispersed, but is now
largely reassembled in the Hocken and Knox College libraries,
Dunedin.
Gravestones may
also be included as print culture. Chinese examples were usually
inscribed in Chinese, bearing the name, county and village of
origin, and the time and date of death. The earlier gravestones
dated the year by the emperor's reign. Sometimes the name and date
of death were added in roman script. The Chinese also used wooden
grave markers, but none remain, and many gravestones have been
vandalised or illegally removed. The last Chinese to die on the
goldfields were probably buried in paupers' unmarked graves, but
many others are unaccounted for. The Dunedin Genealogical Society
has drawn and recorded in a booklet the Chinese gravestones in the
Southern Cemetery, Dunedin. Mrs B. Hayes has photographed the
Cromwell Chinese graves (private collection), and Len Smith likewise
those at Naseby (Hocken Library).
All the Otago
museums have items relating to their local Chinese, including items
bearing print or script. The West Coast museums are poor by
comparison. The most comprehensive collection of Chinese
goldseekers' memorabilia is that built by Graham Sinclair. The bulk
of this collection, which includes musical instruments, mining
rights documents, photographs, two almanacs, newspaper articles, all
to do with the Adams Flat goldfield, has been donated to the Museum
of New Zealand, Wellington.
