Chinese Sports

Evening Post" Photo. the sports gathering held by Chinese residents of of the Chinese Republic. On the right, the finish of the bicycle race. Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 89, 11 October 1929, Page 7

CHINESE SPORTS AT KARORI Park

A CHINESE HOLIDAY To-morrow will be observed, by the Chinese residents of Wellington as a holiday, being the 18th anniversary of the Kepublie of China. All Chinese shops will be closed all day, and sports will be held at Karori Park, commencing at noon. Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 87, 9 October 1929, Page 13 CHINESE SPORTS AT KARORI Park.-On the left, the Chinese-Consul (Mr Ou Tainshuing) and Wellington yesterday at Karori Park in honour of the eighteenth anniversary Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 89, 11 October 1929, Page 7

The Stove

The Stove On Sunday she cleans the stove. She starts with the cloth she finds by the side of the sink, worn down by frequent scrubbing. She watches as the viscous yellow of the Palmolive seeps into the tired green fibres. Her first attack hardly dents the grease at all. The house is quiet. Wood pigeons chime in the puriri tree outside. A lawnmower roars in the distance, then suddenly cuts out. There are children’s voices coming over the fence, a backyard cricket game in progress. The smell of the first barbeque is already in the air. She’s always liked sitting up here in the kitchen. It wasn’t what you would call a million-dollar view, but there’s something grand about being on top of the ridge, looking down into the valley of houses upon houses with wrinkled rooftops and fussed-over trees. When she was a girl she used to sit by the window on Friday nights, spying on the neighbours through the orange net curtains. They always seemed to be having parties. She would watch the cars as they throbbed along the road, slowing, headlights searching out the street numbers. Sometimes they turned into her driveway by mistake, or used it to turn around, the car tyres swivelling on the loose gravel. She drizzles more of the Palmolive around the elements. Might as well use it neat, it needs a bit more grunt. Pity there wasn’t anything stronger, but she’s done a thorough search of the cupboards already. The golden scum is solid, layered with burnt onions and prawn whiskers and fallen pieces of mushroom over the years. She thinks of herself scrubbing down through the layers of family meals, like some sort of small- time archaeologist. She mustn’t be too much further than 2005 right now, the year of the last big family get together, the year that Auntie Julia had broken her leg while skiing in the South Island. That had been a big deal. “No, don’t come near me!” Auntie Julia, crabby from the lack of sleep while in hospital. “But I was just helping you into bed. Don’t you want to lie down?” Her mother, mild and concerned for once. The accident had shaken the tense rivalry she had with her sister. “Stop treating me like I’m old!” “I’m not treating you like – oh miumiu, I was just trying to be a good host.” “Pah!” And Auntie Julia had wrenched her arm away, not open to social niceties from her older sister, even in her hour of need. That had been the year too that Dai Sook had finally passed away. Her great granduncle had been in a rest home in Henderson for years, ever since his wife had been run over at a pedestrian crossing. After she died it was discovered that the old man had never learnt to cook. Her mother had taken food there for a while, exhausting her repertoire of delicacies. Then, tired of hearing the old man complain about her cooking, she called a family meeting. “But he built that house with his own hands!! It would be a crime to cast him out.” That was Uncle Trevor. He’d helped out on the family garden before it was sold to be subdivided. Uncle Trevor had made a fortune in real estate since then. He and his arty wife and their three perfect piano-playing daughters lived in a large house in Parnell. Mum used to sneer at them. “Oh look, he’s such a gweilo now.” “Well then you go and clean Dai Sook’s pee up from around the toilet then. He’s lost his sense of aim.” Auntie Julia, always the forthright one. “That doesn’t mean he has to lose his sense of dignity!” “Who’s talking about dignity?” Mum cut in. “Look at him, all alone in that big house of his. He can’t even walk up the stairs by himself now. I found him asleep on the sofa in the lounge the other day, covered in old newspapers.” The formerly green cloth is almost completely saturated in grease. She tries to rinse it out under the tap, the water beading over it. Even water shunned the dirt round here. She digs through the old apple box until she finds an empty bread bag, and drops the green cloth into it. She snaps open a new cellophane packet, shakes the bright pink cloths out. It was funny that her mother was so critical of the mess in other people’s houses, when her own was so chaotic. Old celebrity magazines, flattened toothpaste tubes, saved cardboard from the inside of toilet paper rolls, lining the corridors, making miniature CBDs of the rooms. No box that came into the house seemed to go out without doing time lining the corridor like a waiting patient. Each time her parents went to Hong Kong, they’d come back proudly lugging bags and bags of old Chinese newspapers. “We got 33 kilos through this time,” her dad would say, proudly, the sweat standing out along the deep lines on his forehead. The lines were a family legend. It was a favourite party trick of his to pick up objects using only his wrinkle lines. The papers were usually months out of date. She could tell by the pictures, though she couldn’t read what the actual articles said. “What do you want with those?” She knew the papers would end up piled around the toilet and lounge. “You won’t read them anyway.” “Yes we will,” her mother had retorted, “and if you read Chinese properly you could, too.” It always came back to that. It seemed to gall her parents that she was studying languages at University while not knowing much of her so-called traditional tongue. Je ne sais pas. No hablo chino. She’d been born in New Zealand, of course. She’d even been referred to as a banana once or twice, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. The Chinese were like that, folding up their insults as well as their compliments in layers of carefully crafted metaphors, oblique references, sideways glances. How Chinese of her to ignore the comments, swallow her retorts like bitter medicine each time she heard them. If only they knew how Chinese she really was. Somewhere in the garage there were still the old plastic crates containing the wooden blocks that her father had made for her and her siblings. They were lovingly sanded, painted with Chinese characters which had been traced carefully in pencil first. She must go downstairs and look for them before the collectors came. They would be perfect for Tony, he was getting old enough now. She sees the pair of her mum’s holey slippers still lying by the old singlet used as a footrag for the floor. Her feet are cold. Surely no one would mind. She relaxes into the worn down soles, each bump underfoot a mark of its wearer’s walk pattern. She shuffles closer to the sink and wrings out her cloth. She’s finishing off the sides of the stove, wiping the brown soapy water clean, enjoying the gleam of shiny white enamel, when she hears the front door open and a babble of voices burst in. There’s the thump of feet, the slap of shoes being taken off, someone slamming the door shut. Then a voice. “Wendy? Are you up there, Wendy? We saw your car outside.” She walks downstairs, still holding her stained pink cloth, the yellow rubber gloves seeming to glow in the dimming dusk. Her sisters and brother are standing there, with Uncle Trevor, Auntie Julia, and Dad. Dad looks at her, not seeming to see her properly. He’s aged a lot in three days. “I was just cleaning Mum’s stove.” “Whatever for? They’re not going to come to the house after the funeral. We’ve booked a hall with a caterer. You shouldn’t have bothered.” She looks down at herself, the yellow stains running down her faded T shirt, the fat rubber gloves reaching up to her elbows, one size too large as her mother liked to buy them. “I – don’t know. I just wanted to,” she says. “We should throw out that old stove anyway. Buy a better one,” says Uncle Trevor. Auntie Julia frowns. “Why bother? The whole place is a mess anyway, and Big Brother won’t be able to look after the place now he’s alone. I say he should sell up and get a smaller place. Easier for everyone to manage.” “No!” Wendy is unaware that she’s the one that’s spoken, until everyone looks at her. Her brother and sisters look surprised. “No – I mean, I can come and help out.” Dad lifts up his head and looks at her. “Sometimes,” she adds, looking down at her feet to hide the tears that have finally come, pushing their way up from somewhere deep in her belly. As the others push past her, into the house, she realises that she’s still wearing her mother’s shoes. Listener/NZCA Short Story competition winner -"The Stove" by Renee Liang The New Zealand Chinese Association (Auckland Branch) Inc and The Listener wish to congratulate Renee Liang for her winning entry, "The Stove". To read and view the winning entries visit http://www.goingbananas.org.nz.

Family business is a cultural hub on Hobson St

The Wah Lees emporium has become a cultural icon in Auckland. Reporter Danielle Street had a chat over the counter with Barry Wah Lee to try and figure out what makes the place so appealing. Barry Wah Lee has dedicated most of his life to working in the store that was opened with the help of his grandfather more than a century ago. The Wah Lees emporium on Hobson St is a rickety red building crammed with goods ranging from pickled sea slugs, to Chinese medicines, tai chi fans, lanterns, pottery, seeds and spices. The emporium began life in 1904 as a co-operative fruit store that operated in Auckland's Chinatown in Grey's Ave. "My grandfather could speak English, so they probably roped him in and got him to look after the place," Mr Wah Lee says. "It stayed with him and all the kids. The business was eventually handed down to Mr Wah Lee's father George, who moved the store up to Hobson St. "We moved up here in 1966 when they started getting rid of Chinatown and wanted to build up Aotea Square," Mr Wah Lee recalls. At that time Barry was a teenager attending Auckland Grammar School. He remembers watching his father talking to the Chinese market gardeners who would stop in and buy sauces and grains on their way home. "I loved watching Dad chat to people. He seemed to have no end of things to talk about," he says. "I loved hearing his stories of pig hunting." Behind the counter and away from the public eye there are several wild pigs' heads affixed to the wall. Each one was hunted and killed by George, whose photograph hangs beneath them. "He actually never ate the meat but there was plenty of people who would come and snap it up." Life wasn't always simple for the Wah Lee family. The shop also functioned as a bank in the early days but the money was all spent on booze and women by an uncle, Mr Wah Lee says. "So as youngsters all the hard work was to pay back all those Chinese who had their money with us." These days the emporium is an Auckland institution and draws mostly European shoppers, but there isn't so much time for chatting. However, Mr Wah Lee manages to keep up the social aspect via Facebook. The business has amassed more than 11,500 followers, no small feat for such a tiny store. "It's less than Justin Bieber though," he jokes. "I don't know where the people are coming from, maybe they don't know what they are signing up for." Many of the followers reminisce about visiting the store as a youngster. Others just seem to enjoy Mr Wah Lee's philosophical rants. One fan writes: "My big sister first took me there when I was 10 years old. I still feel 10 when I pop in for a shop. I love Wah Lee's." Despite having studied Asian politics and economics at university, it seems that Mr Wah Lee's destiny is entwined with the family business. He still lives above the shop and works there every day. "I've always been part of the shop," he says. - © Fairfax NZ News Last updated 05:00 27/03/2013 http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/east-bays-courier/8471506/Family-business-is-a-cultural-hub-on-Hobson-St JASON OXENHAM LIFE’S WORK: Barry Wah Lee lives above the family emporium and works there every day.

Second Burial New Zealand Chinese Experience 1883 and 1902

Second Burial New Zealand Chinese Experience 1883 and 1902 Helen Wong The Cantonese custom of secondary burial, the idea of exhuming the dead, cleaning the bones, and then burying them again, helps to explain why so many (overseas) Chinese were not only willing to exhume their dead but also to clean the bones and put them in containers for shipment back to China. There were two periods of mass exhumation of Chinese in New Zealand, organised for the Panyu people, by the Dunedin Sew Hoy family. In 1883, 286 Chinese from the South Island were repatriated on the Hoi How. And in 1902, 499 were aboard the ill fated Ventnor when it sank 10 miles off the Hokianga Heads. This time Panyu men from both the South Island and the North Island were included, as well as eleven Wellington men from the Jung Seng county of China. To purchase – email Helen.familytree at gmail.com NZD 12.00 Post and Packaging in NZ. Other countries - on request. ISBN 978-0-473-24298-5 To view: http://nzchinese.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=downloadattachmentpage&board=published&thread=2156&post=3928

How Ellis Island's Immigrant Artifacts Washed Up In Maryland

How Ellis Island's Immigrant Artifacts Washed Up In Maryland By: Emily Berman // March 8, 2013 Bob Sonderman is director of the National Park Service's Museum Resource Center in Landover, Md. He unpacks one of the objects from Ellis Island, currently being stored at the Landover facility. While many homeowners in the New York area are still struggling to deal with the flooding from Superstorm Sandy, so are two of the city's iconic islands: Liberty Island (home of Lady Liberty) and Ellis Island, the historic gateway to the U.S. for millions of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Liberty Island is set to reopen this summer to tourists, but Ellis Island still has a long way to go. During the storm, a large wave went over the backside of Ellis Island, knocked out lower level windows and doors and flooded the basements of the island's main buildings. Diana Pardue, the Chief of the Museum Division at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, explains all the HVAC, boilers and electrical lines need to be redone. Salt water and wiring don't mix. Most of the museum's collection was on upper floors, away from the water. But everything below the water line was covered in silt. Sending in the 'museum doctor' At times like this, the National Park Service calls in Bob Sonderman. For most of the year, Bob Sonderman manages a museum storage facility in Prince George's County. But when duty calls, he can be on the road in a matter of hours. "I pack my van full of everything I can possibly think of," he says. "I have big blower fans, I have a generator." He even brings his own gasoline, which in times of disaster, can be difficult to buy. Sonderman is head of the National Park Service's Museum Emergency Response Team. And basically what an EMT does in a medical emergency, Sonderman does in a museum emergency. They've rescued artifacts after Hurricanes Isabel and Ivan, Katrina and the Gulf Oil Spill. When Sonderman got to Ellis Island, he was shocked at the damage. "The initial response is Holy Cow! I didn't realize it was going to be this bad. All these museum objects were covered in gook and salty, ookey water, and they're still in the exhibit cases." A display case of medical equipment used to examine incoming immigrants was knocked on its side, and filled with silt. The artifacts were metal, and would soon begin to rust. Sondermen ran out to his van, took out the crowbars, and cracked open the display cases to get these objects out. "We're the best break in crew you've ever seen! " Sonderman brags, chuckling. "The longer you wait, the more in jeopardy the collection can become." Moving to Maryland The team sent the medical instruments to metals conservators in West Virginia. They froze all the wet documents, to stop mold growth. And everything else needed to be put by a fan to dry off. But, the island — and actually, a lot of New York City — didn't have power. In order to preserve the artifacts, they'd need a dry, stable environment — in other words, Sonderman's facility in Landover, Md. More than a million items were painstakingly packed and shipped down on seven semi-trucks. Some of the most fragile things, like tape of oral histories, videos and X-rays of passengers as they came off the ships are in a different room. All the items are organized by the way they were exhibited or stored in the museum on Ellis Island, to make the return trip north as easy as possible. Sonderman says it will all go back someday. Someday, but not anytime soon. At the end of January, President Obama signed the Sandy Recovery Act, designating $234 million to national parks impacted by the storm. There's still no running water, and no electricity on the island, and Diana Pardue says the museum will be closed for renovations through the rest of this year. In the meantime, Sonderman says, the island's collection will stay in Maryland, until the job is done. Photos: Ellis Island http://wamu.org/programs/metro_connection/13/03/08/ellis_islands_temporary_home_in_a_maryland_warehouse

Home as a framework for identity

When Aucklander Alyx Duncan, whose self-funded debut feature, The Red House, opens in cinemas this week, trained as a dancer and choreographer, one of her assignments was making a dance video. The minute she picked up the camera, she says, her life changed. "I was so relieved," the 35-year-old recalls. "I had a frame again. All through my childhood and high school, I painted and took photographs, but you choreograph in 360 degrees." Duncan's short films and music videos marry a highly kinetic visual sense to a formal control that verges on the austere. Her exquisite aesthetic sensibility is on show in The Red House, a languid and contemplative 75-minute film in which her father, Lee Stuart, and stepmother, Meng Jia, play versions of themselves: a cross-cultural couple living on a Hauraki Gulf island whose smooth world is ruffled by the illness of a distant parent. In this simple narrative frame, the film explores deep concerns: the nature of love; the pain of parting; the improbability of intimacy; the unknowability of another human being. The film was sparked by the older couple's announcement that they were going to pack up and leave the house of the title, where Duncan had lived until she was 10. That house, she explains, "contained all our lives" - the pre-teen Duncan's school photo puts in several appearances - and the idea of documenting it took hold. "One thing that comes up repeatedly in my work is a sense of nostalgia. Chris Jannides [the founding director of the dance company Limbs], who was a real mentor, once said of my dance work that I was a nostalgic naturalist. And when my mother told me that she was going to move, I had this real shock. "All my memories of identity were embedded in the physical objects of the house. I wondered: what would I be without the physical traces of my existence." Duncan planned a short experimental documentary in which the house was the main character and her parents - very reluctantly - agreed to be figures in the background, so that the house would not seem empty. In the event, the real-life plan to leave the house was cancelled, but the movie-life plan stayed, says the film-maker. "I realised how interesting and curious these people were, who were not so much performing as being in their natural space but in a directed way." The result is small but enchanting work, neither fact nor wholly fiction, in which the film-maker's autobiography - her sense of self, even - and her technique become indistinguishable. "To me it's a sort of artisan approach," says Duncan, touching the clay cup from which she is drinking tea. "It's something that is conceptualised and formed in the way that you form a piece of Japanese pottery. You start off with the base clay - I do have parents who are a cross-cultural couple - but then I have to carve away and decide what it is that I am looking at." Lee and Meng's reluctance to be background figures was nothing compared to their resistance to being the only characters. Duncan had to deploy all her powers of persuasion. "They really didn't want to do it," she said. "I didn't show it to them until after I had been accepted into the [2012 Auckland] film festival. "Taking it to them was the most fearful experience, because there was a lot of reluctance through the shooting process. And then I showed it to them and halfway through, my stepmother turned to me and said, 'It's a movie. It's a real movie. It's got ideas.' And I was," - she wipes her brow theatrically - "I was ... 'Phew'." Who: Alyx Duncan What: The Red House When: At selected cinemas from today Info: theredhousefilm.com - TimeOutBy Peter Calder 5:00 PM Friday Mar 15, 2013