Post by NZBC on Jun 24, 2007 20:29:11 GMT 12
Paper presented at the ¡®Crouching TigerHidden Banana Conference,
AUT, Auckland 4 June,2005
There is a saying ¡°Wherever ocean waves touch; there are Overseas Chinese¡±. So it was in 19th Century New Zealand. Within thirty years of European settlement the Chinese arrived to become the earliest non-Polynesian, non-European arrivals.
These early Chinese came in 1866 as sojourners not settlers. They were men of peasant background from the Kwangtung Province in southern China. They headed for the goldfields of Otago where they hoped to strike it rich then return to China. However by 1866 most of the easily worked alluvial gold had been worked out by the European miners who had moved on to other goldfields. The lure of gold was irresistible and the flow of Chinese to New Zealand became a torrent. In 1881 they numbered more than 5000.
Eva Wong Ng
4 June, 2005.
www.goingbananas.org.nz/2005Papers/GREYS_AVENUE_AND_THE_AUCKLAND_CHINESE_SCENE.doc
AUT, Auckland 4 June,2005
There is a saying ¡°Wherever ocean waves touch; there are Overseas Chinese¡±. So it was in 19th Century New Zealand. Within thirty years of European settlement the Chinese arrived to become the earliest non-Polynesian, non-European arrivals.
These early Chinese came in 1866 as sojourners not settlers. They were men of peasant background from the Kwangtung Province in southern China. They headed for the goldfields of Otago where they hoped to strike it rich then return to China. However by 1866 most of the easily worked alluvial gold had been worked out by the European miners who had moved on to other goldfields. The lure of gold was irresistible and the flow of Chinese to New Zealand became a torrent. In 1881 they numbered more than 5000.
Eva Wong Ng
4 June, 2005.
www.goingbananas.org.nz/2005Papers/GREYS_AVENUE_AND_THE_AUCKLAND_CHINESE_SCENE.doc