Splendid memorial to important character

MERCHANT, MINER, MANDARIN
Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew and Trevor Gordon Agnew
Canterbury University Press 

REVIEWED BY GEOFF ADAMS

Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew is the great-great-granddaughter of Choie Sew Hoy, a visionary merchant, Chinese leader and gold dredger in Dunedin and Otago in the late 1800s. With her husband Trevor they have compiled a full and fascinating description of her ancestor.

• Excerpt: Having the goods 

Richly illustrated with 120 monochrome illustrations and four maps, this heavy, large-format book has two columns of text on most of its 287 pages. There are detailed notes, an index and a further reading list that all show the authors' scholarship (research carried out by Dr James Ng for his four volumes of Windows On A Chinese Past, published 1995-1999, is also acknowledged).

We learn of Choie's early days in China before emigrating to Australia and later landing at Port Chalmers in 1869. He became one of New Zealand’s most distinguished entrepreneurs and innovators, and was awarded the title of Mandarin by Imperial China in 1888. In New Zealand his life straddled both the Chinese and European worlds.

The store Choie established in Dunedin’s Stafford St was very successful, and his revolutionary gold-dredging technology improved the fortunes of the mining industry in Otago and Southland. He backed dredging, quartz-crushing and hydraulic-sluicing ventures in the goldfields of Ophir, Macetown, Skippers, Nokomai and the Shotover. He was astutely able to spot commercial opportunities, such as sending quantities of unwanted scrap metal back to China, or joining Taranaki businessman Chew Chong’s fungus export trade.

The man quickly became known as a Dunedin character, always elegantly dressed and with legendary success in horse racing. His sharp business mind, self-assurance and charm gained him influence and entry to the echelons of the Chamber of Commerce, the Jockey Club, the Masons and even the Caledonian Society.

He also fought the racism then frequently experienced by the Chinese community. Chinese people’s arrival and success in New Zealand aroused hostility, but Sew Hoy challenged these attitudes and biased government legislation of the day. He was a philanthropic benefactor of many social causes, hospitals, as well as benevolent associations to help less fortunate Chinese immigrants.

Choie is an early example of one person breaking barriers and fighting prejudice and injustice. He died in 1901. It is a sad irony that he played a leading role in repatriating the bodies of Chinese gold miners for reburial in their home villages while his own body was among those lost when the SS Ventnor sank in October 1902. This book is a splendid memorial to an important man in our history.

Geoff Adams is a former ODT editor.