Graveyard repair major recipient of trust cash

The largest grant from the new $5 million Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust has gone towards restoration of desecrated Chinese graves, some dating from the early 1900s, in a South Island cemetery.

A total of $25,000 has been awarded to the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust for professional repair of headstones in the 114-grave Chinese section of the Southern Cemetery in Dunedin, one of the city's earliest.

Trust chairman Stewart Harvey said cemeteries recorded important New Zealand history - but some local authorities seemed uninterested in maintaining them. The Chinese section of Southern was in poor repair, and as many headstones were small - around 45cm high - they were easily damaged and lost.

Volunteers had cleared weeds and debris, and thanks to a 1982 genealogist's log of the headstones, the trust - whose members include academics and historians - knew where everything belonged and would ensure it was restored.

Poll tax trust chairman James Ng, a retired medical doctor and historian, said many Chinese had a "special affinity" with ancestral graves. They believe that a deceased person had several souls, one of which remained at the gravesite.

The trust was set up with $5 million of Government money last year.

It followed the Government's formal apology, at Chinese New Year in 2002, to descendants of Cantonese settlers who were singled out for a poll tax of £100 (in today's money, $15,226) for entering the country, and other punitive laws.

The trust's aim is to assist with initiatives which help to strengthen the identity of Chinese Kiwis and to enhance understanding of their place in New Zealand history. Part-time Cantonese language schools have done well out of this first round, with grants to the Auckland Chinese Community Centre ($6000), the Christchurch Chinese Church ($1500), the same city's Rewi Alley School ($1500) and Auckland's Chinese New Settlers Trust ($2500).

Several grants have gone towards oral histories: $5000 to Liu Sheung Wong to interview Chinese fruiterers, and $8000 to Eva Wong Ng to employ transcription help with the histories she has been collating over the past decade.