One hundred years old and still going strong......
Two sisters in laws, both reaching 100 years within
a few days of each other and both living at the Shona McFarlane retirement home in Lower Hutt is an unusual situation.
Dolly Wong (nee Ting) and Molly Ting (nee Lowe ) are sister in laws. Dolly is
the fourth daughter of Chan Moon Ting, the first president of the Tung Jung
Association and Molly married Dolly’s brother Joseph Ting.
Dolly’s birthday came first on 28th October and the Tung Jung Association
committee went to the home to congratulate her and Molly ( her birthday was on 3rd November) on attaining their 100 years. Our visit there clashed with the Wong family visit and an afternoon tea planned by the home for her, so we joined in with the celebrations!
The next day she joined her family for lunch at the Amazing 5 Restaurant, and the following is adapted
from the speech made by her grand-daughter on that occasion.
When Dolly, my Nan, was born in Wellington, George the Fifth sat on the throne; the Republic of China
had just been founded; NZ’s population was about 1 million people ; and the fastest way to travel between Auckland and Wellington was a 20-hour train trip on the Main Trunk line.
Nan is the 8th of 13 children, the fourth daughter of James Chin Ting of Sun Gai, and his wife Ng Shee Ting of Nga Yiel.
She grew up over the shop of the family’s Te Aro Seed Company in Courtenay Place, opposite the Wellington gasworks; attended Clyde Quay School as one of the “water rats”; and enjoyed learning ballet and sneaking in fish and chips for her older sisters Daisy & Lily, without her Dad findingout.
In 1928, when she was 16, she took the long sea trip to Guangzhou with her parents, joining her brothers Arthur & Leslie to complete their education by learning to read and write Chinese and to recite the classics. The three years in China werelonely, life was much stricter – she missed her freedom, she missed her friends, she missed cream doug hnuts!
When she was 19, she asked her Dad if she could take a job in the library at Sun Yat-sen University where her cousin Alice Chan had worked. He refused, telling her that he’d arranged for her marriage to Willie Wong. Luckily,she met Goong before the wedding, so knew that he was good-looking and that he’d lived in NZ since he was a boy.
Nan was the only one of her sisters to have a traditional Chinese wedding. She was carried out from the house in Sun Gai,passing through the doorway under a pair of her elder brother Joe’s trousers – because she had got married before him.
Nan & Goong returned to NZ and in 1938 as WWII was brewing, they took over the General Store at Utiku.
What followed were years of hard work and happiness as they raised their family of five children and became involved in the local community. Goong had the cream and mail runs and kepta large garden; visitors and extended family came to stay. Nan learnt to drive on the hills around Taihape; she knitted and sewed; played the piano and the ukulele; and each year took a trip with Joyce Chan to the shopping mecca of Wellington
for a couple of weeks of R & R.
After their eldest son Ken drowned in the Rangitikei River in 1950, Nan and Goong moved down to Lower
Hutt and in 1956 opened the Rata Fruit Supply in Naenae – a shop they kept until retirement. During this time NZ gave up the pounds and went decimal; High Chaparral and Z-Cars began broadcasting on our new black & white TVs; the Beatles visited to much screaming and fainting; and Nan and Goong’s daughters were married and their five grandchildren were born.
Nan and Goong returned to China in 1980 with Helene, this time by plane, visiting David in Vancouver on the way. They took the trip down the Li River in Guilin, and visited Shatou, Goong’s village where they were married
almost 50 years before.
Nan’s first great-grandchild, Calvin, was born in 1994, a couple of years before Goong passed away. By
the new century,Nan had moved to the retirement village at the sprightly age of 89, and recently her sixth great-grandchild, Kahanu, was born in Germany.
Towards the end of every year, Nan rings me up and the conversation goes like this:
“Lisbeth, have you bought the ham for Xmas yet?” “No, Nan, not yet, it’s only November.” “Well, closer to the time, could you get one on the bone, with lots of fat? You know the kind I like. And I’ll pay for it.”
And then she always adds, “If I’m still here.” Elisabeth Ngan
Molly Ting and Dolly Wong
www.tungjung.org.nz/images/stories/newsletters/2011/Summer_Issue_2011.pdf
