The amazing story of the Ventnor and the Chun connection

If you were watching TV3 last week you might have seen me on TV - Although I was mostly in the background.

The story being told is really amazing and I feel very honoured to be involved, so I thought I'd share!

Actually ex-Christchurch / Levin Chuns - you'll be interested because this is a real Chinese Maori story.

Watch the TV3 clip

In short, over 100 years ago a ship went down off the Hokianga. It was carrying the bodies of of almost 500 Chinese men who had died in New Zealand without having made enough money to go home. They were being returned back to their villages so they could be looked after. Most of them were from Poon Yu, but about 10 were from our county of Jung Seng. We think most of those men were Sun Gai Chans. So there's probably a few Chuns around who are related.

It was a great tragedy at the time - horrific really because it meant that the men's spirits would always be restless because they wouldn't have had family to look after them. There were stories that local Maori had gathered the bones that washed up on the shore after the shipwreck and buried them along the coast.

To skip forward to the present day, my good friend Wong Liu Shueng (who by coincidence is also Aunty Marie's cousin and who knows the family from way back - you might know her as Janice) decided to make a little film about the Ventnor - the ship that sank. She started doing some investigating and then people told her they knew where the bones were buried!!

Another coincidence - Nigel and I just happened to be going to up to the Hokianga at exactly the same time and staying exactly in the area where the boat sank and the life rafts were swept ashore over 100 years ago. Freaky eh?

We all met with the local iwi - Te Roroa, and decided we better round up some of the descendants and wider Chinese community so we could work out the proper thing to do.

Earlier this year, the weekend after our reunion, the representative group had its first meeting with two local iwi: Te Roroa and Te Rarawa. It was an amazing and moving experience - especially because the group included the Sew Hoy family reps, descendants of Choie Sew Hoy who organised the 1902 shipment and whose body was on board, and the Poon Fah Association which is the descendant organisation of the charitable association (the Cheong Sing Tong) Sew Hoy founded to administer the shipment.

Over that weekend we went to the sites where the bones were said to be buried, and were able to bai jai - offer incense the way we do at Yee Hop and Chu Lin's graves.

However, this isn't the end of the story. Our next steps are to work with iwi to set up a memorial to the men so there will always be a place to pay respects, and so we can remember those who were lost and those who took them in, and kept their memory alive for over 100 years.


This is the group at Matatini marae, a beautiful place in the Waipoua forest. The ancestors of our hosts buried our ancestors in their own burial grounds not far from this spot.










At the Matihetihe marae in Mitimiti, the whole community turned out. It was a Sunday but the school declared it a school day, and all the students came to the hui to be part of the historic event. (And to have a look at us funny people - hee hee) On the left is Janice Sew Hoy who's married to Peter Sew Hoy of Dunedin. Janice is a Bak Shek Wong - also from Jung Seng. On the far right is Lynette Shum, whose dad is Sam Shum. Wellingtonians will know Sam as the man who always looked after the sound equipment at all the community events.

There were about 200 people at Mitimiti and they put on this incredible feast. Check out the hangi wild pork, chicken, potato, kumera and stuffing. Above that is steamed pudding done in the hangi with freuit and real cream! Yum. And in that little bowl with the silver foil was some totally fresh shell fish . . . soooo good . . .








And this is the area where the ship went down.