Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence and racially motivated actions intended to degrade, demean and dehumanise. Discretion is advised.

The esteemed historian and goldfields expert Dr James Ng starts off volume 3 of his foundational Windows on a Chinese Past, by declaring: 'Less physical violence was directed against Chinese in New Zealand than in North America and Australia.'^[1] He then spends the next 100 pages describing the horrifying experiences that seemed to be commonplace.

The history makes for uncomfortable reading. From minor to major, there are stories of harassment, serious assault, wrongful accusations and actions resulting in death. Sometimes – although not often – there are court records or newspaper reports of the Chinese response.

Harassment was an accepted and ever-present part of Chinese day-to-day life. At the lower end, European children were generally the cause and said to be a ‘great nuisance’ - shouting names like ‘Monkey’ and ‘Ching, Chong, John’, throwing stones and stalking Chinese with catapults. They also vandalised vegetable gardens and blocked sluice pipes and chimneys. In one case, this proved fatal to an old miner in Naseby who was unwell and confined to his bed. He suffocated when his chimney was blocked and the door was barred.^[2]

However, it was adults who generally caused more serious harm. When the first Chinese miners arrived at the end of 1865, they were met fairly peacefully. Although European miners had threatened wholesale violence, this did not eventuate. But as James Ng notes, with more Chinese arriving the incidents increased, particularly in remote areas. In 1867 a group of Chinese was ‘put to flight’ in the Nevis Valley. A year later the same threats were made in Naseby. One early arrival in the town was grabbed, assaulted and put in a barrel. He was then rolled up and down Leven St, before being let go wet, cold and missing clothing. The traumatised man was later admitted to the Seacliffe Mental Asylum where he died soon after.^[3] At the time the case was a cause for much public concern. The Police Superintendent in Dunedin issued a general proclamation asking the public and the local police to keep a ‘protective watch’ on Chinese persecution in their districts, inferring that some were turning a blind eye.

Making a community: engaging with the broader community 1865–1881
Explore more

When this incident occurred in 1867 the number of Chinese was relatively small at 1,219. However, numbers were set to grow rapidly. The 1871 Census taken on 27 February recorded 2,641 Chinese. Just eight months later a Select Committee report records numbers at 4,215. The sharp increase is backed up by data from shipping records in this period.

Increased numbers may have contributed to growing levels of anti-Chinese feeling. But the more likely cause was cultural change. In New Zealand there was a burgeoning sense of nationalism following the New Zealand Wars and supported by Julius Vogel’s large-scale colonisation and infrastructure projects.

Globally, the levels of anti-Chinese feeling were also increasing. Nationalism was one driver, but there were also ideas of nativism (a belief that a country is owned by the colonists who were born there), imperialism in the British colonies and, in the United States, racial concepts of white superiority.

Anti-Chinese feeling simmered throughout the 1870s, but by the 1880s – and the great economic depression – it was coming up to full boil. All over the colonial world, countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United States introduced anti-Chinese immigration restrictions.

Allies and defenders: those who stood against the legal targeting of Chinese in New Zealand
[link to come]

Beyond the poll-tax levy and tonnage restrictions, local Chinese felt the rise in tension in multiple ways.  Jobs became harder to get following a controversy over cheap Chinese labour in the late 1870s. Many employers, like the Round Hill Mining Company, stopped employing Chinese. And in 1878 the Lake County Council (Queenstown) was one of several councils which decided to ‘debar Chinese contractors from tendering for county works’.^[4]

The idea that Chinese would work for lower pay was so prevalent that in 1879 labour contractor Thomas Chin Sing, inserted this notice in the Tuapeka Times.

Some frustrated jobseekers even resorted to changing their names. Chan Dun of Sha Chuen village, Jung Seng, arrived in Aotearoa at the age of 12. He took the name ‘Billy McNab’ to secure a job as a station cook. His employer, Mr McNab of Knapdale was shocked to find he had employed a Chinese, but kept him on as he admired his ‘canniness’.

The New Zealand Mail of 1873 reports another example:

[A] Chinese named Macpherson lately tendered for a contract. The parties empowered to accept or reject tenders —(they reside at Tokomairiro) —expressed surprise that any Chinese should be a Macpherson, and in reply, the Celestial, in English, split up into very vulgar fractions, exclaimed, ‘It’s no (adjective) use for any one to tender in this (adjective) country unless he is a Scotchman.’^[5]

Amusement aside, the effect of continual discrimination must have been harsh. In 1881 a correspondent for the Cromwell Argus describes the harassment Chinese received at the hands of European miners:

He has a penchant for knocking off their hats or parcels from their hands. He likes to pull their queues, if he has a chance; trip them up; and abuse them in an infinity of ways—unless there is a number of them, together, in which case he shows a considerable amount of (to put it euphemistically) prudence. When he has occasion to talk to them, his mode of converse resembles that of a person addressing some half-witted being, or that of a mother adapting her conversation to the simplicity of her child. These are some of the ways of the intelligent miner with the Chinese.^{[6] [7]}

Other common activities for ‘larrikins’ as they were then called, were pulling or cutting off Chinese queues, or tying Chinese to fences by their queue. Dr Ng reports that sometimes the harassment was spontaneous, as when a team of young footballers poured buckets of water over old Chinese on a freezing day.^[8]

However, it was in the 1890s-1900s that harassment and assaults reached their highest point. In Alexandra in 1895 the physical violence was especially bad, led or encouraged by a Swedish settler John Magnus. Chinese homes were set on fire and the doors barred so inhabitants had to escape via windows. There were also attempts to dynamite a hut belonging to Fon Yim.^[9]

Later that year a John Rainham was arrested for setting fire to Ah Que. As the Mount Ida Chronicle reports:

. . .whilst the complainant was lying in his hut, he heard footsteps near the hut, the door of which was a wooden frame on which was tacked a rice bag. The complainant saw the prisoner . . . strike a match. Suddenly the bag of the door was thrown into the hut in a lighted state by the prisoner, who almost immediately afterwards threw in a bottle, from which the top had been broken off, full of kerosene. The kerosene then ignited, and burnt the hand, face, and foot of complainant . . .^[10]

Luckily Ah Que survived.

In another incident Magnus and three of his employees lured a man called Wong Sing to a claim by offering him whisky. Wong had a rope used for carrying firewood. According to Magnus, Wong claimed to police that the men tried to hang him with it. What seems to be certain is that it was used to tie him and he was left ‘to roast alive’. Luckily Wong managed to squirm outside the cave where he was found the next day. The four men were convicted and fined £1 plus damages.^[11]

Elsewhere, Dr Ng reports instances of men being attacked as the slept. In one case on the Tuapeka Flat in 1888, a man was felled by a blow on the head with a kerosene tin receiving a severe cut that left him for weeks in medical care. Although five of the attackers were caught the case was somehow dismissed.^[12]

Reverend Alexander Don writes of how commonplace such events were in the early 1890s:

I know of an unoffending old man who had his face battered beyond recognition by a gang of larrikins on a public road; of another knocked senseless at the door of his hut one dark night; of another quietly cradling by the river Clutha having his whole apparatus pitched in the river by two cowards and lost beyond recovery; of another having an eye knocked out by a stone, resulting in the loss of the other eye, when he had to be sent to China by charity . . . These are a few instances. Many of the Chinese here have at their tongue’s tip a long list of cases of like treatment.^[13]

The vulnerability of the men, many of whom were old by this time and living alone, is underscored by a chilling quote from a 1948 interview with a Mr and Mrs Stevens of Clyde:

’any amount of Chinese died [and went] into the river [and no-one] knew about it  . . . there were so many of them and [we] did not know them.'^[14]

Dr Ng goes on to list four murders of Chinese up to 1905. Each were unsolved cases, with the exception being the killing in Wellington of Joe Kum Yung by white supremacist Lionel Terry.

One of the most famous cases was a man called Ah Lee who was hanged for the murder of a kindly widow, Mary Young in the Upper Kyeburn in 1880. At the time, there was a strong feeling in the European community that ‘the wrong man had been hanged’. They suspected a European man who was known to suffer from hallucinations. The case was even mentioned by a Captain Fraser in Parliament when he told members that ‘a Chinese has been hung for [Mrs Young’s murder], although it was the wrong man, the other man having the benefit of a clever lawyer’. The assertion was greeted with laughter.^[15]

However, it cannot be said the Chinese were all innocent. In 1867 a man called Ah Long was sentenced to 20 years’ of penal servitude for the armed robbery of Benjamin Harboard.

There were also cases of Europeans being killed by Chinese in self defence. In 1891 in Dunedin, two Chinese were attacked on a back street by two Europeans. The Tuapeka Times reports:

. . .  a few days ago two Chinamen [sic] returning home were attacked in a back street by two young fellows, who were apparently both pretty far gone in drink, and one in just the mood for brutal horse-play of some kind. The appearance of the two inoffensive Chinamen furnished the desired opportunity. After trying ineffectually to engage the Celestials in a row outside, they followed them into their house and made a most unprovoked and seemingly a very savage attack on them. The Chinamen naturally enough resented the unlooked-for intrusion, as well as the violence that accompanied it, and one of them seizing a long pointed bamboo charged his aggressors with it, striking one of them in the pit of the stomach with such force that he died a few days subsequently in the hospital. Both Chinamen, as a matter of course, were arrested, and one of them has been committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter under circumstances, the coroner's jury were careful to point out, of extreme provocation.^[16]

The man was later discharged.

Another similar case occurred in Wellington. In 1890 a group of larrikins in the Hutt Valley made a habit of throwing stones at a Chinese residence at night. They were surprised by three of the inhabitants. In the ensuing fight one Chinese was badly hurt and a European was fatally stabbed. Chinese all over the country contributed to the legal costs of the two Chinese sentenced for manslaughter. The 2,055 contributors, half the Chinese population of New Zealand at the time, raised over £480.^[17]‍

By the 1890s the weight of the Chinese population was shifting away from Otago to towns and urban areas in the north. Along with that shift came another more urban-based wave of anti-Chinese feeling. This manifested in increased institutional racism and multiple laws that specifically targeted both Chinese migration and the rights of Chinese already living in New Zealand.

Acts of violence continued. From unsolved murders in the early 1900s, to physical attacks on Chinese businesses that were commonplace in urban areas right up to the early 1970s - waves of physical violence went on for a prolonged period.^[18]

Although racial targeting has taken more sophisticated forms in modern times, it is difficult not to draw historical comparisons, especially considering the anti-Chinese feeling during the 'Asian Inv-Asian' years of the early 1990s and increased discrimination during the more recent COVID-19 pandemic.

‍

The harm caused by discrimination and racial targeting is real and extremely long-lasting. If you have found this story upsetting or disturbing, we encourage you to find safe spaces to talk about it. You may also want to consider reaching out to mental health services.

• Asian Wellbeing Services in Auckland (a part of Asian Family Services) offers multi-lingual counselling support from New Zealand trained and registered practitioners with an Asian background.
• Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor.
• ‍Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP).
• ‍Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat.
• ‍Samaritans – 0800 726 666
• ‍Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO).

If you're interested in mental health awareness, check out Te Papa Tongarewa's Asian Mental Health Project, a contemporary response to our communities' consistent calls for a greater focus on mental health.

‍