SUPERMUM
This is a tricky one, writing about our mother whom I cannot remember a great deal about as it would be going back around 60 years.
But someone said it is the person that I should really put pen to paper about as she would be the most important of the female members of the family.
Kirsten and Nigel have researched a lot about Mum, how Dad sought a young wife and brought her..no smuggled her into New Zealand from China at what was her age..18..??
[ Dad tried to get Mum into the country after they married in Sydney but it was Poll Tax time and anything was worth a risk to try to beat this insidious tax. They got caught but was defended by a forbear of Sir Tipene O’Regan, one Patrick O’Regan.This was back in 1917. Mr O’Regan it seems managed to keep Mum and Dad in the country but how they managed to pay the penalty of their actions I do not know.It would simply have imposed greater hardship on our father who fundamentally had to buy our mother from her family. They married in Sydney on 19th July, 1915.
I was later to see Sir Tipene at Parliament at the Poll Tax Function so I introduced myself to him and thanked him as the descendant of Patrick O’Regan for managing our father’s case successfully so many years ago after all if he failed and Mum was returned to China where would that have left us..??
It is worth contemplating on..!!]
Mum was born Van Chu Lin in 1897 in Canton , China.
In New Zealand she had the name of Mary Chun or Mrs Chun Yee Hop.
I quote now from the book “Women of New Zealand” from information I understand was researched by Nigel Murphy.[Somehow I think this was published under another title by Prof. Manying Ip of Auckland who wrote extensively of the Chun’s.] *This section was researched by Nigel Murphy and written by Prof. Manying Ip.
‘ Chu Lin was born in the Sun Tong Village of Tsengshing County in South China about 200 miles northwest of Canton. Her father was an oil vendor, carrying a pole with a bucket of cooking oil on one end and a bucket of fuel oil on the other, hawking all day in the streets.
Chu Lin was his only child and also exceptionally pretty. When Chun Yee Hop [Dad] asked to marry Chu Lin her father was initially reluctant. Chun
2.
was 28 years her senior and he already had a principal wife. Chun was insistent, for he wanted an heir and had returned to China with the explicit aim of finding a new young wife. He promised to take Chu Lin with him to New Zealand, and guaranteed generous remittances each year.
They were married in Sydney on 19th July, 1915 whilst en route to Wellington.
Chun used the name of ‘Ah Young’ who was a naturalized New Zealander. He had planned it this way so that he could bring Chu Lin into the country without sitting the English test and without paying the Poll Tax.
They arrived in August on board the Ulimaroa.
She soon became pregnant , but her first born died and then she had a miscarriage.
Meanwhile the irregularity of her entry was somehow found out, and she was only allowed to stay after a lengthy legal settlement in 1917.
Chu Lin helped her husband to run his Chinese foodstuffs store Sing On Kee, first in Lambton Quay and then Willis Street.
His political activities were quite hectic as well.
As a woman Chu Lin would be excluded from all but the public ceremonious activities, like the Double Tenth National Day Parades or the opening of the official buildings in Frederick Street.
Her full time job was in fact to procreate, and to rear the children, which she could hardly cope.
By 1921, fourteen years after she set foot in New Zealand, Chu Lin and her husband set sail on the Ulimaroa with their ten Children: seven girls and three boys, and made the homeward trip to China.
The reason was that the children should have a Chinese education. While this was perfectly valid, there must also be the basic consideration of relieving Chu Lin the burden of child-rearing.
Chun had a principal wife at home, and she could well be asked to look after his children as well as oversee their Chinese education. The cost of living in China was also considerably lower.
Within a year Chu Lin and Chun Yee Hop returned to New Zealand with the three boys leaving the girls in China to be cared for by the principal wife.The two eldest daughters were summoned back in the early thirties, the rest of them remained in China until the Japanese invasion.
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In 1940 the last of the girls arrived back in New Zealand.
One of them remarked how shocked she was to see her parents so old and how her father seemed a bit indifferent.
It was not surprising, for after leaving seven girls behind in China Chu Lin and Chun Yee Hop came back to New Zealand and continued to have more children.Apparently Chu Lin dreaded the prospect of more babies, and after her eleventh was given some contraceptive jellies which obviously were a dismal failure.
Her health suffered, and after the thirteenth child, doctors insisted she go to the hospital for the delivery[all the previous births were home deliveries and she often started work after a few hours of giving birth.] Confinement in hospital was the only holiday that Chu Lin knew and she reportedly ‘loved every minute of it’.
Chu Lin was by nature a gentle person, but the burden of so many children made her ill tempered. She was always busy, either cooking, making noodles, or going to market to buy food, or washing clothes, tending the babies, putting the children to sleep, or disciplining them.
Her daughters never remember her sitting down, except to sew or darn, and she often fell asleep over her handwork through sheer exhaustion. She also demanded that her children work hard. The older ones had to look after the younger and after working until after midnight in one of the family shops they would be woken by their mother with ‘Get up to do work’. Most of the children were pulled out of school as soon as legal. They were needed to work in the shops.
The big event for the family was Sunday dinner for which father would always do a huge and proper Chinese meal.The children all enjoyed the good food and recalled how contented their parents looked when surrounded by them all.Communication between parents and children was minimal, however, and it was usually in the form of basic commands. Chu Lin was too busy to talk to her daughters, and never verbalized how she felt about her life.
There were few social occasions although the Chinese women in Wellington knew each other very well. They simply had no time to socialize.Mrs Anne
Wong, the minister’s wife who was bilingual, was the one person that Chu Lin, like all Chinese women would turn to in times of need.
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Mrs Anne visited the Chun family often and spoke to Mum about the western religion.She was a gentle person says Doris who remembers her well and must have influenced Mum to some degree as whilst she was doing her chores she would sing and hum songs like Onward Christian Soldiers, Jesus Loves Me and Stand Up Stand Up For Jesus.Mrs Wong was the one who gave the girls their names and possibly too the boys.Doris recalled Mum dressing them neatly for church and she used to carry the baby [June..??] who was dressed in clothes sewn or knitted by Mavis.
When her husband was more advanced in years, Chu Lin had to go to the market to buy supplies for the family shop as well as shoulder more business responsibilities.If you ever ventured to the city markets you would have seen it was not a place for a woman.
All the time she was having more children.
She died at 49, survived by eighteen children and her seventy-seven year old husband.’
The above work is a vivid description of my mother and the life she lived.
You could hardly get a better insight.
When this description was given to me about 17 years ago I read it but mentally switched off as it was too much to take.
I felt that if I did not read it and absorb it then perhaps I would not feel what is was really like to exist in those days.
But tonight on rereading the words I can appreciate how much my mother, father and family experienced,a time so tough that in this day and age it would seem incredible.
Whatever, I believe those days hardened us all to later years and helped shaped our lives personally.
Our ways and in particular our work ethic was a product of the hard lean years endured by Mom and Dad.
Despite the blackness of the times I understand our father was highly respected as a person and so too was Mom. The Chinese words that I heard to describe her was ‘Kun Lik’ which translates something like extremely versatile and hard working.
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As described Mom was quite often ill tempered and you can see now the reason for this.
I had a different view of her.
She was always good to me as I think I was her spoilt one.
I did write of the time when it was my birthday in Newtown but here it is briefly again.
I was perhaps 7 or 8 and some of my brothers and sisters were huddled in the sitting room of the large old and cold house we lived in.It was usual to have a get together to listen to the serials on the radio those days.
Anyway Mom appeared from the kitchen and beckoned me in.
I did so and still can recall the big barren room taken up by a huge table which we all worked on or sat around for dinner.At the end of the table was a solitary duck egg green rice bowl covered with a saucer.
She sat me in front of it on an apple box and uncovered the bowl and there was several chunks of red Lushus jelly covered with a bit of freshly beaten cream.
It was a birthday present for me alone. She put her index finger to her lips and I knew that it meant for me not to tell the others as she could not afford to buy jellies for everyone.
But what I still remember is the beautiful smile coming from the work worn face and the sparkling eyes that looked deep into mine.
Not a word was spoken but time stood still for that moment…a time that I have never forgotten.
Then some years later she had the terrible incurable cancer that afflicted her.
She was sent home from the hospital and slept in the big front room upstairs where we also had a big bed.
She could have been in pain but did not show it.
She could have known that she was going to die but did not indicate this either.
She was struggling from the bed and trying to put on her stockings and beckoned me to help.
I went to her and saw all the horrible colonoscopy bags attached to her and her legs were so thin.
Through all this she did not complain but gave me another of her smiles as I struggled uselessly to help her. I was ten at the time.
She passed away shortly after.
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I saw Dad shed tears at the service held by E Morris Jnr in Kent Terrace Wellington.
I was speaking to sister Doris today who remembers Mom and Dad well.
She said that through all the trials and tribulation suffered by our parents she never saw them arguing.
That was really something,and would not Confucious have been proud to see this lovely lass become the obedient and dutiful wife although work weary and bone tired,yet the true and superlative mother under all those adverse circumstances.
Mom obviously suffered a short hard life and an undeserved end but she has left behind a legacy that we should all be very proud of.
She literally gave us her all…and to me a wonderful smile that is enduring.
Stan Chun
12th January, 2008.
* My gracious thanks to Mr Nigel Murphy and Prof Manying Ip who have done such a tireless and marvelous job in researching the history of our family.
I would like to mention that they were ahead of their time as from the feedback I have been receiving of my not so in depth writings of the family.There appears to be a tremendous interest from our nephews and nieces both in and outside New Zealand.
If this story of our mother does not evoke tears to their eyes then nothing will.
Now more mature than when the story was first written, and now some of them also parents in a world of modern conveniences,a parallel can be drawn to their current daily lives and of our mother’s.
If you think you have it tough folks then have another thought…!!
SC
Draft 1
Amended 12/1/08 pm
