HING LEE of NEWTOWN.
Our fruit shop….
Hing Lee was situated at 243 Riddiford Street in Newtown, Wellington, and was the family home of the Chuns…..18 of them.
The building was of two storeys and adjoined another which was occupied by a family called Fraser whom I think rented from our father.
It was a place uniquely suited for the large family as it consisted of many rooms both upstairs and down with a detached wash house and toilet.
Beyond this was the back yard where slung several lines to hang the washing on and there was also sufficient area for gardening if you so desired.
Hing Lee had nothing to do with the family name but was the name of the fruit shop proper as was Sang Lee the second fruit shop of the family in Kilbirnie.
From memory the girls Ina, Ena, Rona,and Phyllis worked primarily at the Kilbirnie shop.
Arthur, Ron , Allan and Shirley looked after the Newtown business while Helen, David and myself worked after school at both.
Connie, Ray and June would have been too young to work then.
My period of recall goes back to Newtown primary school, then to Sth Wellington Intermediate and after that Wellington Technical College whereafter we had moved to the Zenith Fruit in Manners Street.
The fruit shop at Newtown was situated on the ground floor of the wooden weatherboarded building which at that time appeared to be held together by borer holding hand to hand.
Not being freshly painted gave the place a rather drab appearance and this was exposed more so when the veranda was taken down presumably on the order of the city council before it fell of it’s own accord.
However,this let more light into the shop through the large plate glass window which displayed the fresh fruit of the week.
2.
I recall Ron performing the window arrangements and put on very neat displays with hand painted cards of usually red and black water colour inks.
The cards were held by a wire that was taken from the apple case binding then cut and twisted to form a circlet that held the card and formed two pronged feet.
Oranges , apples etc were arranged usually in a square or triangular pattern and the fruit was hand polished with apple paper wraps until they shined.
Everyone wanted to buy the fruit in the window but for the most fruiterers this was ‘verboten’ and you bought from stacks inside the store itself.
When closed Hing Lee had two deep green wooden doors that were hung on right angled hooks then bolted at the top.
The doors had to be carried out from the back of the shop and it took some skill to drop the doors on the two hooks at the same time.
There was a slight step into the shop proper.
Most displays were sitting on apple or banana boxes. These containers were really utilitarian and served from anything to shelf construction to sitting on around the dinner table.
They were made of wood and served the industry for many years.
The apple boxes were supplied by the NZ Apple and Pear Marketing Board which controlled the sale and distribution of all the apples and pears in New Zealand.They contained various varieties of apples and pears.
The banana containers were imported with the product from either Fiji or Samoa and were originally very long but later they became rather squat and very heavy to carry as most literally bulged with bananas packed in singly not clustered as we see them today.
Wicker baskets or other wood containers held the fruit or produce on display and the popular ones like lettuce or sprouts were arranged around the front door.
Directly to the left of the entry was the rear of the window display which was raised about 3 feet off the ground. I remember this because I used to play under the shop window space as we called it.
So all the display had to be done from leaning into the window so that the fruit sloped upwards.
I recall Ron tried selling easter eggs with some success.
They were the handmade ones made of caster sugar and were beautifully decorated like the Faberge model.
He had one as a centerpiece that was about a twice the size of a football.
I don’t think we sold it but it certainly attracted attention.
Floor space was a requirement of the old fruit shops as this is where the customer stood and indicated what they wanted without touching the merchandise.
The floor was old and tough tongue and groove as were the walls of the shop.
There was no covering like lino or tiles but bare wood which was usually scrubbed clean every week.
Surrounding the floor area was the fruit section.
These were generally separate sections about 2 feet wide and contained stacks of apples, pears, tomatoes etc usually in triangle formation.
Shops later used mirrors behind these stacks to make them look larger but generally they were built up with a box behind lined with newspaper.
Placards were on each product and the most common description for the lot was either ‘Quality’ or “Fancy’ but they did describe the name or type of fruit and the country and sometimes the local district of origin.
In those days the public were semi educated where the best fruit or vegetables came from.
It was common for customers to ask for South Island Red Dakota potatoes or Ohakune carrots.
The best grapefruit and Chinese Gooseberries now know as Kiwi Fruit came from the Gisborne or Te Puke areas.
So on the other side of the shop were bins for potatoes and root crops and above these the leaf vegetables as silverbeet or perhaps Stringless or Broad beans.
Above these again were shelves which displayed cauliflower generally sold by size of which there would be three or four.
Cabbages were sold by weight and two or three Salter scales hung by chains from the ceiling were placed strategically around the store.
There were no electronic scales then and everything was sold by pounds and ounces and all the calculations were effected mentally as well as the continuing number of goods being purchased. No calculators…all head work.
4.
It was important to remember that there was 16 ounces to the pound [lb] so at 16 pence per pound [ one shilling and fourpence ] gave you one penny per ounce.
So at 5/6d which was 5 shillings and sixpence per pound one had to mentally calculate the value of each ounce as this was important to attain the value of say glasshouse grown grapes.
As you walked into the fruit shop the first thing that strikes you is the smell or fragrance of fresh fruit and vegetables.
The second is that you are surrounded by the fruit and produce.
You do not touch the fruit or vegetables but wait until someone comes to serve you.
The veges are wrapped in the local newspaper that is placed in a central area and manilla paper bags are placed generally in spaces under the fruit benches.
There were various sizes ranging from 1/2lb to 6lb sizes.
Most common were the 3lb bags which held 2lb of fruit nicely.
The cash was placed in a National Cash register which rung every time the amounts were pressed in and it was very important to know how to count out the change and not to place the notes into the register before giving the customer change as many would say they gave you a larger denomination.
At night the window and shop lights were switched on and these were generally 100 to 150 watt round Osram light bulbs hanging by their wires from the ceiling.
The shop usually closed at 6.00pm when all the drunks came out of the bars from the 6 O’clock swill as they called it.
On Friday the closing was at 9.00pm.
Monday and Thursday were the market days where the shop was filled with fresh stock.
Friday was very busy as most bought for the whole week and had us deliver their goods which we did mostly by pushbike.
5.
I think Hing Lee looked kinda cool in those days.
Just above the cauliflower shelves was usually another which held the aerated drinks of the day of which Thompson Lewis’s Lemonade and Orange Smash were popular.
And of course I can still remember the glorious taste of Creaming Soda made by Phoenix Aerated Waters Ltd.
Great drinks in tall glass bottles with paper labels.
The walls of the shop were very high studded. They were painted mostly a pale green or cream.
Ron covered most of the open area with posters of the boxers of the day. The New Zealand hero then was Bos Murphy and I still remember the Bos Murphy vs Vic Patrick from Australia poster on the wall.
Ron was like most fruiterers dressed in a neat shirt and trousers but wearing the perennial carpenter’s apron tied to the front.
The girls wore flowery long dresses and generally an equally flowery apron.
The rear of the shop had a door that lead inside to the main part of the house.
We used the sitting room to bag potatoes and to strip the loose outer shells off the onions.
Then there was newspapers to open and spread then cut in half. I had hands turn black from the printer’s ink coming off the paper.
We also used the room to shell peas with.
Fresh peas deteriorated quickly and it seems no one liked to shell peas at home so we shelled the peas that were not so fresh and sold them out of a large wicker basket.
Dad used to go to the market daily and we had a 1938 model Chevrolet truck with the old ratchet type hand brake and four forward gears that you had to double declutch.
The windscreen wiper would make loud scraping noises and left streaks across the two individual windscreens.No such thing as a windscreen washer until years later.
It had a flat deck tray of wood and I am sure it could go no faster than 30 mph.
6.
The seats were hard and devoid of springs and so too was the whole truck it seemed.
The headlights were I would guess about 2 candlepower and every time we stopped on an incline I had to leap out of the left hand side door to put a brick behind the wheel to stop us from rolling backwards.
It was painted what I can only describe as dirty green so I guess when we stopped by a grassy bank we became invisible.
Both the girls and guys were very polite to their customers and we had many favourites.
These customers we knew by name and it was always an address of Mr or Mrs and they in turn too were polite and friendly.
The favourites always had bananas kept for them out back as they were rationed to each shop by the amount you bought at the markets and most times there was not enough bananas to meet demand.
I think the customers also appreciated the knowledge we had of our products and to sell a soft tomato to a good customer was on the forbidden list.
There was a great rapport built up between shopper and shopkeeper.
From me down being too young to serve initially it was our job to peer through a window at the back of the shop and call ‘Shop’ loudly to someone if a customer was waiting.
There was also a push button bell to ring from the shop itself if you had too many customers to handle and you needed help.
One might ask if we were racially discriminated in those days.
Perhaps we were by some but by and large we did not get rocks thrown through the window.
We were in an area where people were people and pretty much the same hard working level as us.
There was the odd slur but then if race was an issue we would not have been patronized and survived at all.
7.
The major issues it seems was in the house of hot air where politicians created racial issues and I have said it before but do not mind repeating myself but King Dick Seddon was not a king but surely was a dick.
However, these political issues we did not really discover until the last few years when the existence of a Poll Tax became news.
Stan Chun Memoirs 5th October, 2007.
Draft 2 6th October, 2007.
