1910: Chew Chong Celebrated

January 17, 2024

By AHNZ

Chew Chong, a Sino-Zelandian, was a pioneer of New Zealand’s export butter trade. He also created an industry for ‘Taranaki Wool’ by recognising that demand for this product in China was high enough to pay NZ colonists to pick it.

Chong first came to Otago for the gold rush but as an entreprener not a digger. He was a good English speaker and married into the early settler family of Joseph Whatton¹ (an English industrialist himself, who lived to be 96.) In Taranaki Chong really got going with his (eventually) prize-winning butter and the improvised industry of mushrooms.

Known as Taranaki Wool, the industry Chong created created an income for early colonists to survive during some very hard times. The Long Depression that marked The Vogel Adventure era (c.1870-1890) was a disaster that toppled many old the old giants. For example, William Larnach’s tide went out and he eventually shot himself. But the felling of these great trees cleared the way for new growth to rise up and make New Zealand great again. Henry Shacklock was such a man, Chew Chong another.

Mainstream history tends to be unfocused and look back at New Zealanders in the past as racist toward Chinese. This was true during the Liberal Unravelling era (c.1890-1912) when Chinese were indeed persecuted by men like Richard Seddon. For example, William Reeves Jr saw the Chinese as a “Yellow Peril” and viewed them as inferior, like baboons. Ref. 1896: Reeves Resigns, AHNZ

In his time, Chong was not only accepted but celebrated. He flourished during the time of the Vogel Adventure and saved us from its foolish excesses.

It was only during the Liberal Unravelling (Second Turning) that he shamed by an ungrateful mainstream public. But that time ended in about 1912 and a new era started up.

So it was that on 21 January, 1911, Chong was presented with an illuminated address signed by 85 of his contemporaries to acknowledge Chong’s work in establishing the dairy industry in Taranaki. And, the financial loss he incurred when the co-operative dairy system was introduced that changed the market under his feet to the detriment of what he had created.

“Dear Sir, We the undersigned Settlers in the Taranaki District wish to place on record our appreciation of the services which you have rendered to your adopted country. Your having on your arrival from China in the early sixties entered into the export trade in Fungus was the means of saving many a family from want and penury in the early days of settlement in the district by causing a circulation in our midst of over half a million of Foreign money and this outcome of legitimate trade and not from loan. When latter you entered into the Butter business being almost a pioneer in Factory Manufacture you led the way into what has become the mainstay of the district and helped to develop an export which naturally assisting in the prosperity of the Dominion. That this industry passed from private into co-operative hands and thereby caused you considerable…loss on your account to be deplored but cannot be traced to a want of business acumen nor to a want of desire to assist your fellow settlers on your part. We wish that we may for many years constantly meet you in our midst and that you may enjoy the rest to which your years and exertions entitle you. [Signatures]” – New Plymouth Museum

Those old racist Liberals had finally passed away by late 1910 and it was ‘safe’ for Chong’s peers, appreciative farmers, to publicly appreciate a Chinese New Zealander. This was an early act in expelling the ‘Left’ and bringing in the new high (First Turning) in New Zealand history. Ref. 1913: The Great Strike Boogaloo, AHNZ

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1 Whatton family’s contributions, Wairarapa Times-Age (2019)

Image ref. Taranaki business man Chew Chong, Alexander Turnbull Library. Enhanced by AHNZ (2024)

Ref. 1900: The Opium Petition, AHNZ

Ref. 1975: What is a New Zealander?, AHNZ

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