Post by NZBC on May 24, 2007 21:55:07 GMT 12
GREAT BRIDGE-BUILDERS BETWEEN NEW ZEALAND AND CHINA ¨C Prof Bill Willmott
When people talk about NZ-China relations these days, they usually think in terms of trade, which now stands at around a billion dollars in each direction. However, my interest in China has been in people rather than dollars, so I am pleased to write about the great men and women who built the bridges between our two countries that now benefit all those who move from one country to the other. As the Chinese saying goes, ¡°When you drink water, you should remember the well-diggers.¡±
Nevertheless, the beginning of contact between our two countries was trade, not people. And it started with an act of the British parliament in 1784: the Computation Act lowered the duty on tea from 112% to 12%, immediately halving the price of tea on the British market. The demand for tea, which previously only the elite could afford, went up dramatically, and it soon replaced ale as the daily drink of the British masses.
At that time, the only source of tea was China, so traders immediately sought high-value goods that could be sold for tea in Canton. The British East India Company hit upon opium, but the ¡°free traders¡± searched for other trade goods. Sandalwood sold well, which brought traders into the South Pacific. Along the coast of Fiordland they found fur seals, and within two decades, from 1790 to 1810, they had decimated the fur-seal population of New Zealand. In 1806 one ship alone brought 60,000 skins to Sydney en route to Canton!
The fur-seal trade did not contribute to building bridges, of course, and it was much later that Chinese came to New Zealand and even later that New Zealanders went to China. The first Chinese to settled in New Zealand was a Mr Huang Xueting, a 23-year-old Cantonese steward on one of the ships bringing colonists to Nelson in 1842. His name in Cantonese was Wong Hok-ting, but he was known as ¡°Ahpoo¡±. With the help of the ship¡¯s surgeon, Dr Thomas Renwick, Ahpoo jumped ship and worked for the good doctor for five or six years, then set up his own carting business with a horse and cart. In those days, one had to be a British subject to buy land in New Zealand, so he became naturalised in 1852 under the name of Appo Hocton. In 1856 he married William Rowling¡¯s widow Jennifer and had a son William Rowling Hocton. Alas, Jennifer died soon after giving birth, so Hocton married Ellen Snook the same year and had four more children with her.
Appo Hocton became a successful property developer and lived to the age of 98. He died in 1920 and was buried is in the Dovedale cemetery, where I have visited his grave. His life is recorded in the NZ Dictionary of Biographies.
More than twenty years after Mr Huang arrived, numbers of Chinese came to the Otago gold fields--and it¡¯s important to know that they came by invitation. In 1865, Otago was facing a crisis, with Dunedin receiving less than half the gold that had been bought only two years before.
www.sistercities.org.nz/Editable/Archived/Speeches/BillWillmott.html
When people talk about NZ-China relations these days, they usually think in terms of trade, which now stands at around a billion dollars in each direction. However, my interest in China has been in people rather than dollars, so I am pleased to write about the great men and women who built the bridges between our two countries that now benefit all those who move from one country to the other. As the Chinese saying goes, ¡°When you drink water, you should remember the well-diggers.¡±
Nevertheless, the beginning of contact between our two countries was trade, not people. And it started with an act of the British parliament in 1784: the Computation Act lowered the duty on tea from 112% to 12%, immediately halving the price of tea on the British market. The demand for tea, which previously only the elite could afford, went up dramatically, and it soon replaced ale as the daily drink of the British masses.
At that time, the only source of tea was China, so traders immediately sought high-value goods that could be sold for tea in Canton. The British East India Company hit upon opium, but the ¡°free traders¡± searched for other trade goods. Sandalwood sold well, which brought traders into the South Pacific. Along the coast of Fiordland they found fur seals, and within two decades, from 1790 to 1810, they had decimated the fur-seal population of New Zealand. In 1806 one ship alone brought 60,000 skins to Sydney en route to Canton!
The fur-seal trade did not contribute to building bridges, of course, and it was much later that Chinese came to New Zealand and even later that New Zealanders went to China. The first Chinese to settled in New Zealand was a Mr Huang Xueting, a 23-year-old Cantonese steward on one of the ships bringing colonists to Nelson in 1842. His name in Cantonese was Wong Hok-ting, but he was known as ¡°Ahpoo¡±. With the help of the ship¡¯s surgeon, Dr Thomas Renwick, Ahpoo jumped ship and worked for the good doctor for five or six years, then set up his own carting business with a horse and cart. In those days, one had to be a British subject to buy land in New Zealand, so he became naturalised in 1852 under the name of Appo Hocton. In 1856 he married William Rowling¡¯s widow Jennifer and had a son William Rowling Hocton. Alas, Jennifer died soon after giving birth, so Hocton married Ellen Snook the same year and had four more children with her.
Appo Hocton became a successful property developer and lived to the age of 98. He died in 1920 and was buried is in the Dovedale cemetery, where I have visited his grave. His life is recorded in the NZ Dictionary of Biographies.
More than twenty years after Mr Huang arrived, numbers of Chinese came to the Otago gold fields--and it¡¯s important to know that they came by invitation. In 1865, Otago was facing a crisis, with Dunedin receiving less than half the gold that had been bought only two years before.
www.sistercities.org.nz/Editable/Archived/Speeches/BillWillmott.html