This wasn’t quite the headline in June 1899, but it was pretty close. This raid took place at the home of Chin Sing, in Tuam Street, a site we investigated a bit after the earthquakes. We didn’t find any evidence of Chin Sing’s occupation (we didn’t find much of anything) but it’s since provided me with an entry point for learning more about the Chinese presence in 19th century Christchurch, and the Chinese experience of life in the city. This 1899 raid was not the first on Chin Sing’s property (or on the Chinese in general), but what happened next was a little bit different. Before we get onto that, though, let’s look at Chin Sing himself in a little more detail. Or, at least, in as much detail as it’s possible to find out. Fair warning, there’s not a lot.
One of the few advertisements Chin Sing placed in the paper, indicating that he had sufficient custom without having to advertise. Image: Star (Christchurch) 4/3/1885: 2.
I don’t know where in China Chin Sing came from, when he came to New Zealand or how he ended up in Christchurch. Chances are that he had come from southern China to work on the goldfields in either Otago or on the West Coast, as a significant number of Chinese men did in the 1860s (Ip 2015). By 1883, he had taken up residence on Tuam Street, where he established himself as a cabinetmaker (Wises 1883-84: 92). His premises were on the north side of the street, just east of the corner with High Street, and they had previously been occupied by Yee Quong, another Chinese cabinetmaker (Wises 1878-79: 71). Chin Sing’s premises were demolished and replaced in the early 20th century, so I don’t know what they looked like, but I do know that he leased Part Town Sections 976 and 978, and so it’s possible that he lived in one or other of the buildings extant on those sections in 1877.
Chin Sing’s premises were on the rear of Town Sections 976 and 978 (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2). Image: Strouts 1877.
Chin Sing operated his business in Tuam Street until c.1902, at which point it’s not clear what happened to him. It’s possible he went back to China – many of the Chinese men who came to New Zealand in the 19th century did so with the intention of making some money and then returning to China with it. For this reason, they were often described as ‘sojourners’ (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 55). When anti-Chinese sentiment (i.e. racism) began to rear its head, this was one of the factors that white New Zealanders cited when stating why Chinese should be kept out of New Zealand (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 48, Fairburn 2003: 77).
I know, also, that Chin Sing had two sons (Star (Christchurch) 21/5/1896: 3, Press 6/1/1898: 3). I found no mention of a wife, and it is possible that he had left his wife in China – most Chinese men who came to New Zealand did not bring wives (perhaps because their intention was always to return), and few married while here (although I did find an example of a Chinese man who married a white New Zealand woman; Fairburn 2003: 77, Lyttelton Times 23/4/1879: 4). The poll tax – established in 1881 and increased significantly in 1896 – made it less likely that men would bring their wives with them, due to the costs involved (Fairburn 2003: 77). Certainly, the sense I gained of the Chinese community in Christchurch through my research was that it was a masculine one, but that could just reflect the general difficulties of finding women in 19th century newspapers.
The first raid on Chin Sing’s premises for a fan-tan game came in 1891, but this was by no means the first raid during a fan-tan game in Christchurch (that seems to have been in 1882, in case you’re curious about dates; Globe 27/2/1882: 3, Press 21/5/1891: 3). Fan-tan was a Chinese gambling game (you read more about how it’s played) and thus was technically illegal under the Gaming and Lotteries Act of 1881. As newspaper correspondents noted after almost every raid on a Chinese fan-tan game, in reality it was little different from playing poker or betting on horse, and where were the prosecutions of people doing that? (Each fan-tan raid did seem to provoke a series of letters to the editor, some in support of the arrested Chinese men, others railing against them.) What’s of interest about this particular raid is that Chin Sing had been dobbed in by one Ah Quong, whom Chin Sing may or may not have refused credit for opium (it was a he said, he said kind of situation – but confirms that the Chinese living in Christchurch were smoking – and dealing in – opium; Press 30/7/1891: 2). In another raid on a fan-tan game, the police were also tipped off by concerned members of the public – well, concerned employers, actually, who were apparently worried that their employees were gambling away their wages (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). Whether or not this is actually what they were concerned about remains lost in the mists of time. Anyway. In 1891, the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence and Ah Quong was ordered to pay the solicitor’s fee (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). It’s a seemingly odd detail, but one of the details that emerged from this case was that Chin Sing had a boarding house on his section in Tuam Street (Press 17/3/1890: 3).
A letter to the editor noting the hypocrisy of arresting Chinese for gambling, given the gambling that Europeans indulged in. Image: Lyttelton Times 26/9/1888: 3.
In 1899, it wasn’t so much a tip-off that led to the raid, but more that the police knew that the following day was a Chinese feast day, and thus that the men would have gathered for gambling (there was some suggestion that they were gambling to raise money to pay for the feast, rather than for personal profit; Press 15/6/1899: 3). The arrested men – the 32 Chinese and four Europeans referred to at the start – were then taken to the lock-up and the Chinese men were refused bail, something that had not happened following previous raids (these raids seemed to happen at reasonably regular intervals). In this case, the excuse given was that bail couldn’t be allowed because how on earth would the (white) policemen recognise the arrested men once they had been released (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2)? This meant that the men were kept in the police cells in fairly grim circumstances – it was the middle of winter, and they were given about one blanket between every four or five men. They were also barely fed enough for one person for the time period, let alone enough for 36 men (Lyttelton Times 17/6/1899: 8). Bail was in the end arranged, but not until the end of the following day. In the end, most of the men arrested were convicted and fined (Press 15/6/1899: 3).
What was different about what followed was the involvement of the Reverend J. J. Doke, the minister at the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. Doke knew a number of the Chinese men involved, some of whom were learning about Christianity – in fact, there was a room in Chin Sing’s house that contained bibles and hymn books, in which Doke taught any who were interested (Press 15/6/1899: 3). While Doke was certainly concerned with converting these men, he was also instrumental in bringing the conditions in the cells at the police lock-up to light, and in providing further insight into the lives of the Chinese in late 19th century Christchurch. Following the raid, he preached a sermon on this very matter, which was reproduced in the Lyttelton Times. In particular, he noted that the Chinese found it hard to find accommodation anywhere in the city, because people were unwilling to rent rooms or buildings to them (thanks to racism, pure and simple, although the stated reasons were that Chinese people were dirty and immoral and carried diseases). I suspect that this is why Chin Sing and another of the local Chinese, James (Lee) Goon, ran boarding houses. Doke went on to state that there were few places for the Chinese to congregate and socialise, and thus Chin Sing’s house filled a valuable role in this regard (and that it was inevitable that they would play fan-tan). It was Doke who accused the police of deliberately targeting this particular night, and suggested that some of those arrested and charged may well have been innocent. He also accused the police of previously watching games of fan-tan at Chin Sing’s house, but doing nothing about them, beyond warning him not to let Europeans play (Lyttelton Times 19/6/1899: 6).
The Rev. J. J. Doke. Image: www.findingmatters.org.
Doke’s sermon provides an insight into the reality of Chinese lives in 19th century Christchurch and the ways in which racist attitudes played out. As Miles Fairburn has noted, little is known about this sort of everyday racism, because it so often went unreported and unrecorded (acknowledging that Manying Ip’s work has gone some way to address this; Fairburn 2003: 66). It is clear that the Chinese community here in the city kept to themselves, a situation in part forced on them by the effects of racism (i.e. white New Zealanders refusing to rent them property), and in part a response to the more physical effects of that racism. Few seem to have spoken English to any great extent, which may have added to the relative isolation of the community. A number ran businesses, although it is not clear to what extent these were patronised by Europeans, but the advertisements placed in newspapers suggest that Europeans were part of their target market. Others worked as gardeners or hawkers. There were clear examples of racists attacks targeting the community, including both vandalism and personal violence (while racism is never mentioned in the cases of the former, I’ve researched numerous Christchurch business owners and none have had this problem; Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3, Star (Christchurch) 15/11/1887: 2). There were also a surprising number of examples of Chinese people taking other Chinese people to court, including for theft and the failure to pay wages (for example, Press 20/12/1883: 3, Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3).
Although much everyday racism may have gone unreported, this article is clear evidence of it. Image: Star (Christchurch) 24/9/1888: 2.
The underlying causes of the racism against the Chinese community are hard to pin down (Fairburn 2003). Brian Moloughney and John Stenhouse (1999) have argued that it born of the growth in colonial nationalism witnessed in New Zealand in the late 19th century, and particularly a desire to keep New Zealand white and preserve the ‘integrity’ of this South Pacific paradise. Several things about Moloughney and Stenhouse’s article are striking, one being the parallels between the nationalist views expressed in 1890s New Zealand and those that have been heard in Trumpian America. The other is how these views were promoted by otherwise liberal thinkers, including both William Pember Reeves and Robert Stout (Gattey 2018, Stenhouse 2018). The anti-Chinese views of these men, and others like them, were widely published in newspapers in the late 19th century, and racism against Chinese people seems to have been tacitly accepted (although not always without protest). This would not have been an easy world for Chin Sing and his compatriots to occupy, and the on-going fan-tan raids (and the publicity around them) are just one example of the difficulties they would have faced, one that was both a result of the attitudes of the time and contributed to the continuation of those views in 19th century society.
Katharine Watson
References
Fairburn, Miles, 2003. “What best explains the discrimination against the Chinese in New Zealand, 1860s-1950s?” Journal of New Zealand Studies 2/3: 65-85.
Gattey, Emma M., 2018. “Sir Robert Stout as Freethinker and Eugenics Enthusiast.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 195-218.
Globe. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
Ip, Manying, 2015, “Chinese – the first immigrants”, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/chinese/page-2 (accessed 10 August 2023).
Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
Moloughney, Brian and Stenhouse, John, 1999. “‘Drug-besotten, sin-begotten fiends of filth’: New Zealanders and the Oriental other, 1850-1920.” New Zealand Journal of History 33(1): 43-64.
Press. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
Stenhouse, John, 2018. “Undesirable Bill’s undesirable bill: William Pember Reeves and Eugenics in Late-Victorian New Zealand.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 129-152.
Wises New Zealand Post Office Directories. Available via ancestry.com.