History of the Lawrence Chinese Camp, New Zealand
The Otago region of southern New Zealand remains a central area for conducting archaeological research into the Chinese Diaspora. The first major Chinese settlement in New Zealand is here, just outside the small town of Lawrence. Archaeological investigations at the Lawrence Chinese Camp (LCC) began with a surface survey by the author in 2003, and continued with three seasons of fieldwork in 2005 and 2006. The LCC was founded in 1867 with the first of three joss houses built two years later and the original Chinese Empire Hotel constructed in 1870. Part of this hotel still stands and marks the site for visitors passing through the area. The community’s peak population was reached in the early 1890s with 123 full time residents, long after the gold rush had ended in the early 1870s. The site twice suffered near destruction due to fire– once in 1882 and then again in 1898, the same year the community’s founder Sam Chew Lain passed away. By the 1940s, most of the site’s surface features were gone with only the Chinese Empire Hotel surviving and becoming a private residence in 1940. The final Joss House was moved during this time into nearby Lawrence where it remains in use as a private residence today. At the time of this writing, the Lawrence Chinese Camp Charitable Trust was in negotiations to purchase this Joss House and return it to the camp. This is part of an ongoing strategy to eventually reconstruct the camp as it existed in the 1880s.
Map of surface features at LCC
Strictly speaking, referring to the site as the Lawrence Chinese Camp is misleading as the site is outside of Lawrence, never solely populated by Chinese, and continuously inhabited for approximately sixty years. The name survives because local Pakeha (Euro-descent) and Chinese communities refer to the site as such with deep affinity and recognize its unique cultural and historical importance. The 2005 and 2006 excavations uncovered portions of the Chinese Empire Hotel, three joss houses, an immigration barracks and portions of two additional residences.
Sites in southern New Zealand are of special interest to Chinese Diaspora researchers because of Rev. Alexander Don’s ‘Role’ of Chinese. Don lived in Guangdong province in South China for two years in preparation for his Presbyterian missionary work among South New Zealand’s Chinese community. This work began in 1890s and continued for more than two decades. In order to remember with whom he had previously met during these years, Don kept a diary of every Chinese he encountered and spoke with in South New Zealand. His ‘role’ reports on the comings and goings of approximately 3,500 Chinese individuals in the Otago and Southland Regions between the years 1896 and 1913, and presents a unique picture of Chinese movements in an overseas location because it is so complete (Moloughney et al 2007).
The documents record information about home area, level of education, which ports in China and New Zealand the individual passed through, and various comments unique to each individual. This document can also be used to investigate movements of Chinese prior to these times as Rev. Don asked his informants about their entire history in New Zealand, expanding the data’s reach back to the 1860s. Don’s Role of Chinese lists 231 individuals as residents at the LCC, or as living in the nearby countryside. According to the Role, these individuals hailed from eleven counties in the Pearl River Delta region with the majority hailing from one county, Panyu (sometimes translated as Fan Yu or Poon Yue) in central Guangdong Province. These majority of residents came from two concentrations within this province. The northern concentration came from a series of towns located around Yahu while the southern community concentrations were located around the town of Nancun (Fig 08). Of the 231 individuals recorded by Rev. Don as residing at the LCC, 183 of them were from this county.
Home areas of Chinese residents at the LCC
This area was home to speakers of the Guangfu dialect of Cantonese according to the Language Atlas of China (1988). Each of these communities were located directly along major waterways; the six northern cities of Jiangcun, Banhuxu, Yahu, Taiheshi, Zhuliao and Renhexu were on the Liu Xi river while the southern town of Nancun remains an important shipping community on a major bay to the south of modern-day Guangzhou. These locations were situated halfway between several administrative towns including Guangzhou (Canton), allowing residents quick access to major transnational travel networks and information (e.g., newspapers, labor scouts, trading companies). While this area was close to Canton, it was north of more common emigrant areas in the Sanyi and Siyi and therefore represents a unique home area among the Chinese Diaspora.
Many Panyu Chinese were unique in another way; they remained on friendly terms with the Hakka minority at home and worldwide. Clan wars between the Hakka and other groups in Guangdong Province during the nineteenth century meant that Hakka were not welcome among many Chinese groups overseas (Olson 1998:92-94). Guangfu speakers from northern Panyu County were one of the few groups who maintained friendly relations with the Hakka in Guangdong and abroad. This affiliation still defines relations between some overseas groups, including Kiwi-Chinese in and around the Otago Region. Perhaps this is part of the motivation when modern Chinese groups ask archaeologists about the ethnolinguistic makeup of historic Chinese Diaspora sites (for a representative list of common questions posed by such groups see Voss 2005). Archaeologists working with the local Kiwi-Chinese community in Otago today know that Sam Chew Lain was Hakka. As the LCC’s most prominent citizen and owner of the Chinese Empire hotel, he had a lasting influence on the LCC’s near exclusive Panyu and Hakka makeup. Knowledge of this ethnic make-up at the LCC represents both a unique diasporic experience as well as the first time that historical archaeologists can frame interpretations based on intra-ethnic affiliation. Ongoing oral history research with local residents and direct descendants is confirming that the ethnic composition along Hakka and Panyu lines remained constant throughout the site’s occupation.
The information from Rev. Don’s Role provides archaeologists with a unique opportunity to situate the LCC within a serious of life histories beginning in South China, passing through the LCC, and on to a variety of other locations. These life trajectories include the full range of possible experiences common to global members of the Chinese Diaspora. A number of residents at the LCC completed their goal as sojourner and returned home. While visiting villages in Panyu, the author identified and visited emigrant areas for LCC residents. There remains in parts of modern southeast Guangzhou (the capital of Guangdong Province) clear indications of how the ‘sojourning sons of Panyu’ provided for their home villages, such as money to purchase and build grade schools. Other LCC residents did not return to China until after death, a common practice throughout the Chinese Diaspora (Chung and Wegars 2005). However, the remains of several residents from the LCC never completed the trip when the SS Ventnor sank off the North Island of New Zealand in 1902; where a total of 499 corpses being returned to China were lost at sea (Ng 1993: 66-70). This tragedy is well remembered by New Zealand’s Chinese community today and the pain of so many lost at sea still resonates with descendants across the country.
Other residents remained in New Zealand and a number of LCC residents intersected with a broader New Zealand society, for better and for worse. Information from Rev. Don allows us to follow some LCC residents who were eventually transported to the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum (Fig. 09). The asylum says much about the attitude of early New Zealand towards social misfits; it was the largest building in the country when construction finished in 1885. While some of the inmates may truly have had mental disorders, the majority of its occupants were interred because of their inability or reluctance to conform to the developing, puritanical social order of frontier New Zealand. Inmates at the asylum were typically sent there because of race, mental handicap, or sexual orientation. Today, the remains of the asylum buildings is home to a backpackers.
Seacliffe Assylum
The above is extracted from my upcoming 2011 IJHA article.
