KEY POINTS:
Auckland artist Chen Weiming believes Sir Edmund Hillary will continue to help people even from his grave.
The immigrant from China, who sculpted the Sir Ed statue which has become a landmark for the township of Orewa, says Sir Ed's fame has also become his fame, and has opened many doors for him - including getting to craft an official statue of the Dalai Lama and his current teaching job in America.
Speaking from Nevada, Chen said in Mandarin: "I felt very sad, like I have lost my other half when I first heard the news of Sir Ed's death."
He said the opportunity to sculpt the Sir Ed statue had instilled him with a sense of honour and pride - both as an ethnic Chinese and an immigrant to New Zealand.
"It shows that in New Zealand there is equal opportunities, and race doesn't count," he said. "In many ways, Sir Ed epitomises this as we can see in his work with the Nepalese."
Because of the man that Sir Ed was, he felt it had been appropriate that a non-Pakeha immigrant had been commissioned to do a statue of him.
Chen said: "When I first met him, Sir Ed told me he was thrilled that a Chinese had been assigned to do a sculpture of him. We spent many hours together talking about how he wanted it done."
But the artist, who moved from Zhejiang province in China to New Zealand with his wife in 1988, confessed to not knowing anything about Sir Ed back then.
"I was only a new immigrant when I got that assignment and I was keener to prove that I could do the job - and doing it well - rather than finding out about the person I was sculpting," the 52-year-old artist said. "But over the 10-month period in 1991 when I worked on the statue, I got to know so much about Sir Ed, and the more I learned, the more I respected him."
Besides teaching the art of sculpting, Chen and his wife Er Yu also publish New Times, a weekly Chinese newspaper in Auckland, and an annual business directory, the Chinese Business Page, where he has a full page advertisement prominently featuring a picture of himself and Sir Ed and Lady June Hillary taken in Hillary Square, Orewa, with the statue in 1991.
"Sir Ed is probably the most famous New Zealander, and sculpting his statue has added to my credibility not just in New Zealand, but internationally," Chen said.
"For that, I am very thankful to Sir Ed, whose death will leave a vacuum that no one else can possibly fill."
Role model
Even with Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, his spirit of charity and hands-on approach to helping better the lives of the Nepalese continues to inspire others.
Among them is Auckland artist Amanda Tomasoa, who says she wants to be to Indonesia what Sir Ed was to Nepal. "Sir Edmund's greatest legacy is his work with the Nepalese people and [it] is a perfect example of how one person can help change the world," the Malaysian-born artist said.
Best known for his conquest of Mt Everest in 1953, Sir Ed devoted much time, energy and resources to fund-raising to build schools, hospitals, airfields and for higher education for Sherpa families.
Having lived in Indonesia since she married her Indonesian husband, Ronny, Mrs Tomasoa had witnessed the poverty of the people there. The turmoil in Indonesia under former President Suharto forced her to move to New Zealand in 1999 with her husband and son.
"Like the Nepalese, the Indonesians will continue to live in poverty unless an opportunity is given for them to break out of the cycle," she said.
Mrs Tomasoa, who is running art workshops at Bunnings Warehouse, Mt Roskill, says she has been invited to show her art in Europe and America - and intends to use the money raised from the sale of her work there to set up art schools in Indonesia, to help people break out of poverty through art.
She said Sir Ed had given her the inspiration in wanting to use her talent to help others get a better life. She will be going to Austria for an International Women's Day event in March to discuss the best way forward with other like-minded people.
