Of all the ships wrecked off the Hokianga, few can have been carrying stranger cargo than the SS Ventnor, dispatched from the Otago goldfields in 1902 with the coffins of 499 miners who had hoped to have their bones returned to their families in China.
In the hands of playwright Renee Liang, this intriguing historical incident becomes a springboard for a powerful drama in which longing for a return to the ancestral homeland is set against the immigrants' desire to put down roots in their adopted home.
While focusing on a particular community, the play explores how this continuously evolving dialectic shapes the identity of all who arrive, then find themselves staying in a new country.
The story unfolds through a clever, multi-layered structure that swings back and forward in time and encompasses the voices of both the living and the dead.
A fifth-generation Chinese New Zealander investigating the shipwreck is drawn in to a strange encounter with the ghosts of the miners who have made a home for themselves in the Hokianga after their bones were re-buried by the local iwi.
