Jenny – Part 1
When I was a child, I just knew that we were in this community. Because of the Chinese habit of giving honorifics to all the adults, I thought everyone who was Chinese was a family member, and that was a very comfortable feeling.
When I went to school at the age of five I spoke no English, and it was very confusing that first day. I can remember being given a bottle of milk to drink with a straw, and we never drank milk, certainly not cold milk. It was revolting. You know, it was that thick, creamy stuff at the top. I’ve never been that fond of milk ever since, really.
So we spoke no English, and I do remember that first day. In those days, children who could went home for lunch, and I didn’t know what the bells were. No one explained anything to me and I didn’t really understand what people were saying. I remember sitting there and a bell rang, some children lifted up their desks, and there was their lunch. I looked at mine. Mine didn’t have one because my mother was waiting at the gate to take me home for lunch. That was one of my strongest memories.
We were born and bred in Dunedin. When we went to Winton I didn’t teach because we had babies. When they were a bit older, they called me in as a relief teacher. And then gradually, I became a part time teacher. I also became the school librarian, I was in the library all the time that I wasn’t teaching a class, So I was nine to five every day. That’s when I did all the accessioning and all the other things that librarians do that nobody ever knows about. I did a lot.
I met Trevor at university, a good place to meet people, no place like Otago. I just loved it. and we’re still friends with the friend who introduced us.
We shifted to Christchurch from Winton in 1986, I sang in the Christchurch Harmonic Society. It was a lovely way of getting to know people of like mind.
Our church was really important to us. The first thing that we did, we actually said we’ll go to the First Presbyterian Church that we see. We drove down Harewood Road, turned into Papanui Road, and there was St Giles very conveniently on the corner. So we pulled up and we got out. Our four daughters got out, and we went to church, We had intended to look around, you know? It was a great welcome.
It’s very funny, you know, people look at me, ‘where are you from?’ I am very proud to be a fifth generation New Zealander. My great, great grandfather was Choie Sew Hoy, the founder of our family in New Zealand. He came to New Zealand from Victoria in Australia, having experienced the Californian gold fields. We Chinese are the only group that were actually officially invited to come to New Zealand, I’m very proud of that. They arrived in 1868. The book we have produced ‘Merchant, Miner, Mandarin’ is about that history.