Merchant Miner Mandarin:
the Remarkable Life of 
Choie Sew Hoy

Merchant Miner Mandarin:
the Remarkable Life of
Choie Sew Hoy (2020) 
Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew
Trevor Agnew
Canterbury University Press
287 pages, Paperback

Looking Back:

October 2020 has been a great month for our book, Merchant Miner Mandarin, about Choie Sew Hoy and his life among his fellow miners and merchants in Victorian Otago.  

The splendid review (reproduced below) written by Michele Ayers, Librarian at Motueka High School, went up on The School Library website on the same day that the book was shortlisted in the New Zealand Heritage Book Awards. 

The Heritage winner will be revealed by the NZ Society of Authors on Thursday 29th October, at St Michael and All Angels Church, 95 Oxford Terrace, Christchurch, at 7pm. (That's 7pm, not 7.30pm. The time has been changed but is definitely 7pm.) 

As part of the Word Festival, Jenny and I will be giving an illustrated talk on researching Choie Sew Hoy's life on Friday 30 October, at 3pm, at The Piano, 156 Armagh Street, Christchurch. Admission is free. See you there.

Merchant, Miner, Mandarin: The life and times of the remarkable Choie Sew Hoy

19 October 2020

What really happened in Aotearoa during the 1860s onwards?

Well known author Trevor Agnew and his partner Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew – a direct descendant of Choie Sew Hoy – have crafted a culturally relevant biography that secondary students and adults alike will find informative. Sew Hoy’s biography is woven together with aspects of entrepreneurism, trade, racism, social aspects, political bias, and employment discrepancy in New Zealand.

This nonfiction work will contribute significantly to school library collections and inform students of lesser known Aotearoa history. Year 13 History students undertaking independent research will have a comprehensive resource at their fingertips.

Sidebars throughout the book offer quick access to social conditions. In 1870 where even though the miners were barely surviving the harsh conditions in the Lake District they were quoted by the Otago Witness paper as having “… plenty wood, plenty fire, plenty tucker”. The inclusion of maps, photos and cartoons further reveal the flavour of New Zealand’s social history and attitudes towards Chinese then. A 1910 NZ Truth cartoon depicts a Chinese King with the caption ‘Long live the Chow now’ – it was a very public, racist attack on Chinese industry and success in NZ.

Gold was a get rich quick but unreliable income. Chinese were not only challenged by conditions, but often by violent opposition. Chinese miners proved industrious in mining and diversified into other industries including tree fungus trade, market gardens, scrap metal trade and new gold extraction designs (the Sew Hoy dredge).

Choie Sew Hoy’s life discloses the energy and entrepreneurship required to survive in a foreign land. There is no doubt that, additionally, negotiating and helping to improve the conditions for Chinese workers’ also contributed to Sew Hoy’s status. These aspects and many more in Sew Hoy’s biography offer a fascinating read of Aotearoa history.

Title: Merchant, Miner, Mandarin: The life and times of the remarkable Choie Sew Hoy

Author: Jenny Sew Hoy Agnew and Trevor Agnew

Illustrator: Gavin Bishop (Cover)

Publisher: Canterbury University Press

ISBN: 9781988503097

RRP: $49.99

Format: Paperback

Date of Publication: June 2020

Ages: Secondary students upwards

Do you have any advisory warnings for this book? No

Reviewer: Michele Ayres, Librarian, Motueka High School, Tasman

How are you recommending this book? Highly recommended

What’s the book’s opening sentence? It is late in the 19th century.

PREVIEW OF MERCHANT MINER MANDARIN

We are proud to announce that the first chapter of our non-fiction book

Merchant Miner Mandarin
The Life and Times of the Remarkable Choie Sew Hoy

is now available for you to read on the Coalition for Books website

http://www.coalitionforbooks.nz/first-chapters-non-fiction/

It’s the first entry in the Non-fiction section.



This means you can read the prologue and the first chapter, and admire the cover created by Gavin Bishop.

You can also see a few of the illustrations and one of the maps.

The book itself won’t be published till maybe/perhaps June.

(The exact date will of course be decided by the virus rather than the publishers, Canterbury University Press.)

The website also enables you to put in a pre-order if you wish ($49.99)

The website has the first chapter of many New Zealand books held up from publication by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Have a look at the other titles. 
In the Young Adult and Children's section you will find the first section of an amazing graphic novel/comic, The Inkberg Enigma by Jonathan King.

Why I Want to Live in Southland
by Trevor Agnew

I want to look up at night and see the stars, thousands of them.

 I want to tail lambs beside the Moderator of the Southland Presbytery.

 I want to sit on a grassy knoll at The Dunsdales and watch the wood pigeons soaring and tumbling over the bush at sunset.

I want to go on a five minute shopping trip in Winton, and take half an hour because I met friends up the street.

I want to smell the smoke from the Kingston Flyer.

I want to walk out into the bush at Borland and hear the tiny frogs whistling in the moonlight.

I want my daughters to speak with the soft Southland burr.

I want to write articles for the Southland Times.

I want to make the class I’m teaching stand up and look out the window at the sun reflecting off the upturned hull of the great Takitimu canoe, the Takitimu Mountains.

I want to drive a combine harvester once round a paddock of wheat.

I want to sit in the sunny wee cove where the Ngai Tahu pulled up their canoes at the village of Oui, and watch the falling tide reveal the cockle beds.

I want to cast dry fly on the Otapiri Stream and wet fly on the Oreti River.

I want to watch my wife win a prize for her pikelets at the Central Southland A&P Show.

I want to see the great dome of ever-changing sky over the Southland Plains.

I want to stand in the freezing rain at Turnbull Thomson Park and cheer on our daughter’s junior hockey team.

I want to go round a lambing beat at Dunearn.

I want a Hokonui farmer to show me an old whiskey still.

I want to live in a town where I know my children are safe; where I know all the gossip about my neighbours and they know all the gossip about me.

I want to see them mining coal at Nightcaps and peat at Hokonui.

I want to speak at the Anzac Day Dawn Parade at Winton and the Anzac Day morning service at Centre Bush, and drink the coffee that the RSA have spiked with rum.

I want to hear Alan Galt explain that the RSA coffee tastes funny because of the milk, “The cows have been in the swedes.”

I want to go to the graveyard at East Winton and read the names of my friends on their tombstones.

I want to catch blue cod off the coast of Stewart Island.

 I want to visit the remains of the Maori princess, dead 400 years, and still resting in her little cave on the island in Lake Hauroko.

I want to get my firewood by the trailer-load from the mill, and stack it neatly ready for the winter.

I want to teach at a school where the staff go netting flounders at Oreti beach.

I want to go to a meeting of Federated Farmers at Hokonui, with scones for supper.

I want to see the glow-worms at Te Anau and Deep Cove.

I want to walk through the ringing hard, frosty mornings that blossom into clear, sunny Southland days.

I want to dig in the sands of Te Wae Wae Bay for toheroa.

I want to eat toheroa.

I want to eat mutton-bird.

 I want to eat swedes that have had the frost on them.

I want to eat swedes that have had the frost on them, with haggis.

I want to eat swedes that have had the frost on them, with haggis, and mashed potatoes, and give the Address to the Haggis.

I want to live in Southland.

 - Trevor Agnew (2001)

  

NOTES:

Winner of a competition by ‘Country Life’ programme , Radio New Zealand.

Broadcast on 3 and 4 August 2001.
Reprinted in Christchurch Press, 18 Aug 2001
Reprinted in Southland Times, 23 Aug 2001
Reprinted in Winton Record, Sep 2001
Used in Newsgram (aerogramme for Kiwis overseas).