More than 200 descendants of a pioneering Chinese trader celebrated their family connection in Dunedin in the weekend.
Reunion organiser Jason Sew Hoy (32), of Melbourne, said 203 people attended the three-day Choie Sew Hoy family reunion, which finished yesterday.
The 203 people at the reunion included descendants who had travelled from China, the United States, Canada, France and Australia, he said.
In 1869, Choie Sew Hoy set up a store in Stafford St to supply thousands of Chinese gold miners with food and equipment and created a successful international trading business.
The reunion started with a ''meet-and-greet'' dinner at Golden Harvest Restaurant on Friday night and finished with a trip to Middlemarch on the Taieri Gorge Railway. The informal ''reconnect'' was the first time many of the family had seen each other since the first reunion in Queenstown in 2007, he said.
At the Chinese Garden on Saturday, the family did a tour and were photographed in generational and family groups.
Six generations and 14 family groups were at the reunion, Mr Sew Hoy said.
The family then had a tour of Toitu Otago Settlers Museum and were shown many of the Chinese artefacts the family had donated.
On Saturday night, they attended a dinner and a presentation by historian Dr James Ng at Otago Museum.
''Dr Ng probably knows more about our family than we do; he has written a lot about the Chinese goldminers.''
The early Otago pioneer had created a society to ship back deceased miners to be buried in China.
Tragically, the second shipment to China was in a ship that sank, Mr Sew Hoy said.
''Choie Sew Hoy passed away in 1901 and he was on the second ship they sent back. The tragedy is it sank off the coast of Hokianga.
''It hit a rock off the Taranaki coast ... for us, it was a tragedy, because being all alone in a watery grave, and not where your family is, is one of the worst things that can happen to you after you go.''
Some of the family went to Hokianga in April to hold a ceremony to honour those on the ship, he said.
