Restored Chinese graves dedicated

Restored Chinese graves dedicated Home » News » Dunedin By Debbie Porteous on Mon, 8 Apr 2013 News: Dunedin Les Wong and Noelene Wong listen to speeches at the official opening and dedication of 114 restored Chinese graves at the Southern Cemetery in Dunedin. Photo by Craig Baxter. Les Wong and Noelene Wong listen to speeches at the official opening and dedication of 114 restored Chinese graves at the Southern Cemetery in Dunedin. Photo by Craig Baxter. Ching Ming Day was celebrated in Dunedin this year in a fashion the city has not seen for 60 years. About 50 people gathered yesterday for the official dedication of 114 early Chinese graves that have been restored in Southern Cemetery, on Ching Ming - or ''tomb-sweeping'' day. Chinese historian and project adviser Les Wong said it was great to see the Chinese traditional Ching Ming Day (the day to visit ancestors' graves and leave flowers or nuts) being celebrated in a manner not seen in Dunedin for many years. The last time so many people gathered at the Southern Cemetery for Ching Ming Day, which had faded from popularity in the 1960s, was in 1963, he said. The graves, which have taken the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust and various members of the Chinese community thousands of dollars and painstaking hours over the past nine years to restore, following neglect and their desecration over time at the hands of vandals, were each decorated with a flower, some incense and an offering of food, in Chinese tradition. Trust chairman Stewart Harvey thanked all those involved, including Mr Wong, and the late Bill Wong, whose knowledge of Chinese characters, he said, was invaluable. Among the several other speeches were words of commendation for the conservation work from consular officer Bao Bai, from the Chinese consulate in Christchurch, who was attending as a special guest with the Chinese Government's cultural consul Zhijie Xu. Mr Bai also commended Dunedin as one of New Zealand's more culturally inclusive cities. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull, who gave the dedication, said it was a day to acknowledge the failures and disservices of New Zealand to the Chinese in the past, and to take some comfort that the destruction wrought at the cemetery was in the process of being put to rights. ''Thanks for the opportunity to remember them [those buried there], may they never again be demeaned,'' he said. http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/252249/restored-chinese-graves-dedicated