The glory days of the goldrush on the West Coast were over by the time Chinese miners arrived from late 1866. Probably the first to arrive on the West Coast was a gentleman whose name was recorded as Ah Sing. He arrived from Melbourne in 1866.^[1]  Ah Sing was followed by miners from Otago and those who came directly from Victoria.^[2]

Some of the new arrivals liked the West Coast very much. A group at Hau Hau, near Hokitika, said they preferred the climate to that of Otago, and had sent word to Otago for their friends to come and join them.^[3]  

By the mid-1870s Chinese were the largest minority group on the West Coast goldfields with numbers peaking at about 1,500. Even so, Chinese made up less than 10% of the entire West Coast population.^[4]

Some European miners resented any competition. But while there was sometimes antagonism from Europeans, it usually settled down.  Warden Fitzgerald wrote in April 1874 that:

. . . the good feeling to which I referred to in my last report as existing between the Europeans and the Chinese still continues.^[5]

Despite already resident miners disliking the competition, Chinese miners were admired for their hard work and their engineering skills, especially the way they constructed dams and breakwaters. In April 1874, Warden, Caleb Whitefoord, said in his report:

I believe the introduction of the Chinese here has been productive of much benefit, as they have reopened old-tail races long since abandoned and blocked up (and which the ordinary miners [European] would not have gone to the expense and trouble of repairing), and by so doing have drained and rendered available for mining purposes a large tract of ground besides that which is taken up by themselves. They have also erected large wing dams in the creek, and by means of these, and water-wheels, are working very wet ground that the other miners would not take up.^[6]

The systematic and thorough way that Chinese carried out their mining operations is demonstrated by the fact that during the dredging boom in the early 1900s, the Greenstone Creek Dredge found very little gold until it moved off the site of what had been a large Chinese claim.^[6]

The Chinese population fell during the late 1870s, but climbed again to nearly 2,000 in 1882, before steadily declining from 1893 onwards.^[8] At its height, the maximum number of Chinese on the West Coast was only about half the maximum in Otago (4,000 in 1873). But from the late 1880s, the numbers were about the same in both provinces, and from 1904 there were more Chinese on the West Coast than in Otago.

Although the vast majority worked as miners, particularly during the heyday of the late nineteenth century, Chinese people also had other jobs. The West Coast signatures on the anti-opium petition of 1899 show the spread of occupations and included 10 storekeepers and assistants, nine merchants, two fruiterers, two boarding house keepers, two fisherman, one accountant and one law clerk (Young Hee), with the remaining 179 signatures being from miners.^[9]

Young Hee: walking in two worlds
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Annie Ah Long: from servant to a woman of independent means
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Only a few Chinese women came to the goldfields. Most of the men were married when they left: it was thought that if they left their wives behind, they were more likely to return home quickly. In addition, most miners couldn’t afford to bring their families with them, particularly after the imposition of the poll-tax. The women who did come were usually the wives of wealthy merchants.

Five Chinese women were living in Greymouth in 1907, and Annie Ah Long was with her family in Ahaura.^{[10], [11]} Other families included those of Chow and Lily Fong (later Lily Yip), Wong Quing (in the late 1920s) and several generations of the Luey family.

Miners aimed to return to China with enough money to support their families. Most of them did so, taking with them at least £60 savings, but often £200 after seven or eight years on the West Coast.^[12] However, not all who left returned to China. Rev Alexander Don records some men moving on to places such as Wellington, Palmerston North, Whanganui and Dunedin.^[13]

By the 1910s, with few new arrivals, the West Coast Chinese community was no longer full of young energetic men, but of aging and unlucky miners. The small number remaining tried to keep mining but were increasingly dependent on charitable aid. New Zealand had introduced an old age pension in 1898, but Chinese were specifically excluded from receiving it. This legal exclusion was repealed in 1936.^[14]

Those who are still vigorous keep working diligently with the hope of making a living. As the years and months are added to their age, some make enough for food, but insufficient for clothing; if they are well clad they are then ill-fed. As for those who are frail in body, who can imagine fully their pains and toils? Within this month no fewer than seven such have entreated me to obtain charitable aid for them.
Timothy Fay Loie, Chinese Missionary, Greymouth, 14 October 1908.^[15]

When Joe Fong died at Greymouth in 1939 he was said to be ‘one of the last surviving residents of the early diggings’.^[16] By now the era of the Chinese gold miner on the West Coast was well and truly over, although there were still Chinese storekeepers in the main centres.

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