Author goes in search of the roots of Chinese community

Lily Lee’s book brings together those who descend from the displaced and sheds light on little-known histories of Aotearoa. By

F‘Some of them didn’t know that their mothers or grandmothers were refugees . . . the majority did not have any written information about their mothers.’ LILY LEE

arewell Guangdong is a book that was never going to happen until Lily Lee, the daughter of a refugee, embarked on a search for her whakapapa.

Lee discovered she was among several hundred families who descended from the wives and children who fled Guangdong, China, during the second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.

These were families of Chinese men who were working in New Zealand during the gold rush. Although they sent remittances to their wives and children in China, many wives longed for their husbands and experienced loneliness.

The book introduces the efforts that miners in New Zealand went to to bring their close family to the safety of the land of the long white cloud, away from the thick black plumes of the war. These stories are a first glimpse into the love, humility and sacrifice at the foundation of these refugee families.

Lee puts all of this against the backdrop of discriminatory legislation around Chinese immigrants during this time, and cites the fears that the number of locally born Chinese would increase.

She reminds readers of how the New Zealand Mail wrote that ‘‘the Chinese have numbers of their women here, and their women are fecund... it is a gross and bitter evil and the malignity of it increases with every child born into this country’’.

Not only were these women seen as reproductive vessels and a threat to racial purity, but also not much more than a wife and a dependant. Although New Zealand was the only Western country to accept wives and children under a concession in 1939, they were not recognised as refugees, but instead described as ‘‘visiting husbands’’.

Furthermore, husbands had to deposit roughly the equivalent of just over $21,000 today, make a legal agreement regarding the maintenance of their family or their possible deportation, and pay a bond of about $54,000 in today’s money guaranteeing that their wife would take away any children born while in New Zealand.

Chapter 7 of the book, Refugee to Resident, provides a major turning point for these families, and for the next 300 pages, Lee compiles the stories of refugee families who settled from Northland all the way down to Invercargill.

‘‘Had the women not arrived and were allowed to stay, there wouldn’t be this Chinese community that we know it as today’’, said Lee.

Lee, who was born and raised in Ta¯ maki Makaurau, said that when she was at school she learned about China only from a geographical point of view.

When Lee went to China at the start of her teaching career, she discovered ‘‘this wonderful civilisation of 5000 years old, [having] literature and writing spanning all those centuries and I had not before that time realised that [that] exists... I hadn’t taken it in that I was part of that civilisation’’.

The book is a collection of stories from the families’ own oral histories, and brought to life by art, poems, letters and most engrossingly, old family photos. Lee tracked down 500 names of refugees from shipping lists, and found 256 wives.

Reading Farewell Guangdong is like being invited into the homes of all of these families. These stories are told through the immediacy of the descendants and readers are invited to share the grief, humanity and everyday banalities of their journey. ‘‘Some of them didn’t know that their mothers or grandmothers were refugees... and most of them, the majority did not have any written information about their mothers.’’

Lee helped families search for their whakapapa and ‘‘in that sense, they were contributing to the book’’. ‘‘It’s a community book,’’ emphasised Lee.

The book was funded by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust Fund, which is granted to projects that promote the preservation and awareness of Chinese New Zealand history.

The fund is part of the government’s monetary gesture of reconciliation for the hardship caused by the poll tax and other discriminatory legislation.

Writing the book was a joyful experience for Lee. ‘‘I’ve made a lot of friendships on the way, talking to other Chinese and hearing their experiences and identifying with them’’.

Lee hopes that the books impact will see a new generation

of Chinese New Zealanders use it as a starting point to learn about their own history.

‘‘And if other New Zealanders read it, they will have a greater understanding of our refugee

story and our background,’’ she said. ‘‘I would also like it to be out in schools and for teachers to read it now that the new history curriculum has changed.’’

In 2022, the government

announced a revised version of the New Zealand history curriculum which includes New Zealand Chinese histories. This inclusion was made with feedback when the draft

curriculum failed to include Chinese histories despite their longstanding relationships with ta¯ ngata whenua and contributions to New Zealand society.