CHINESE SPORTS

CHINESE SPORTS "HAPPINESS TO THE REPUBLIC" CELEBRATION'S AT NEWTOWN PARK. Unique scenes were witnessed at/Newtown Park yesterday afternoon, when the local Chinese residents celebrated the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of the Chinese Republic. In business the Chinaman has shown that he can march' with the times; on. the sports field yesterday he demonstrated that he is an athlete of ability. Those who journeyed, to the Park to see the Chinese at play, and they comprised a large crowd, had expected to see sports of quite an unusual character, but they were treated to a programme much on usual lines. There were, however, several novel events. To their friends the Chinese extended hospitality, and did much to make the outing enjoyable for all. The lining up of competitors for the races created a gocd deal of interest. The line-up afforded good material for eager camera-men. The proceedings opened with addresses by Mr. Wong Tong, president of the Chinese Association, Mr. Ping Ming, a well-known Chinese resident, and the Rev. Y. P. Hi. Each made an appeal to the Chinese to always observe the tenth day of the tenth month. Pleasure -was also expressed at the large attendance of friends.. Among others present were: The newly-appointed Chinese Consul (Mr. Li Kwang Heng), the ex-president of the Association (Mr. J. B. Lum), and Mr. Nl G. Kwong, manager of the "Man Sing Times." Several of the leading men wore the badge of the party under Dr. Sun Yat Sen, awarded for services rendered, and bearing the inscription, "Leader of Kuo Mun Tang." The display of decorations at the Park included the flag of the Republic, with the New Zealand flag on either side, and a streamer bearing the message, "Happiness to the Republic." Two Chinese kites were also a source of attraction. The Consul was late in arriving, but sent, the following message "To-day is the anniversary day of the establishment of the Republic of China. lam glad to.say that the Chinese subjects in those countries where I have resided celebrated this glorious day enthusiastically, and I am glad to see that the Chinese in this Dominion are doing the same.' I hope that all the Chinese will observe this 10th day of October— the double-tenth festival—as enthusiastically as the Americans observe their memorial day, 4th July. I also hope that such celebration will not merely be considered as a formal one, but will be considered as the day to remind our Chinese of the difficulty of the success of, the great, Republic^. We should therefore unitedly love the country, so that the Government for the people, by the people, and under the people, shall not be perished from the world." Liberal prizes were awarded- for the sports events, gold and silver medals respectively, for first and second places, and. neckties for third places. The events resulted as follow:— 100 yds, under 14: Raymond Wong Tong 1, Lo Fung Hong 2, Kong Heng 3. 220vds, under 18: L. Tommy 1, Ah Ken 2. 440 yds: C. S. Fong 1, J. Kitchill 2, Joe Yew 3. In this event there was a large field! The winner was ahead at 200 yards, and, showing fine speed, won easily. High Jump: Joe Yew 1, C. S. Fong 2, J. Kitchill 3. Sack Race: Joe Jong Lun 1, J. Kitchill 2, Jem Lee 3. Two Miles Bicycle Race: James Lowe (Palmerston North) 1, C. S. Fong 2. Jem,-Lee fell,exhausted,,,and Fqng also fell, but recovered. Tug-o'-war: J. B. Lum (captain), Chung Lung, Peter Chen, and Ngan Guy i. Lue Jue, ex-champion boxer, gave exhibitions of shadow-sparring and knife juggling. Refreshments were distributed at the conclusion of the gathering, and "lollie scrambles" provided for the children. 'Much of the success of the celebrations was due to .the work of the secretary, Mr. Matthew Shun. Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 88, 11 October 1921, Page 3

Double Tenth

CHINESE HOLIDAY. ANNIVERSARY OF REPUBLIC, To-day marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the proclamation by Dr. Sun Yat Sen of the Chinese Republic. Since the alteration of the Chinese calendar to correspond with that of Western countries the occasion has been regarded as the most. important holiday of the year, and is observed as such by Chinese throughout the world. It has become known among the Chinese community as "the double tenth." In Auckland the observance has been dropped during the past few years, but in Wellington, where the Chinese consul's office is situated, some sort of ceremony was probably carried out. In Diinedin a picnic and sports meeting was arranged to take place at Evansdale. Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 241, 10 October 1936, Page 10

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