PAPA PĀNUI TE TŪHURATIA • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
WORDS: MICHELE HOLLIS • IMAGERY: DONNA RENFREW
Claiming a place After decades of prejudice, neglect and denial, projects such as those at the Lawrence Chinese Graves Historic Area are preserving the historical fabric and dignity of the area’s Chinese heritage 10 Ngahuru • Autumn 2022
Adrienne Shaw was nine years old when she discovered her Chinese ancestry. That was in the days when local fruiterers sold their produce street to street like Mr Whippy, and children such as Adrienne and her siblings roamed their neighbourhoods making their own fun. “We weren’t thieves,” says Adrienne, but on this particular day, she says, they succumbed to the temptation of a bunch of bananas swinging jauntily from the back of a fruiterer’s van. “He came up the hill, banged on our door, and said, ‘Your little brats of kids have taken my bananas. Where’s my 35 cents?’ “So Mum finds 35 cents, meets us in the kitchen and says, ‘What do you mean by stealing those bananas?’ “And we say, ‘Oh, he’s only a Chinaman, a Ching Chong Chinaman!’ And she says, ‘You can’t say that – you’ve got Chinese in you!’.” Adrienne is a fifth-generation descendant of Chau Chu Taai (also known as Chow Tie) and Grace Kerr, who met, married and lived at the Lawrence Chinese Camp on Tuapeka Flat – boggy land on the outskirts of the town of Lawrence – and whose European residents had excluded Chinese goldminers. Chau ran the slaughterhouse and butchery there; Grace was a barmaid at the Chinese Empire Hotel, the camp’s grandest building and watering hole. In its heyday, the camp, which is now a Category 1 historic place, was home to some 500 Chinese goldminers and supporting businesses. The community operated almost solely on Chinese terms, ostracised as it was by its European neighbours in Lawrence. Adrienne’s father never wanted to talk about his Chinese ancestry, but Adrienne, now a grandmother, is working tirelessly on projects that preserve the historical fabric and dignity of Lawrence’s Chinese heritage.
Heritage New Zealand
