September 29, 2025 • 32 mins
This episode explores the story of the Ah Chee market garden and how Chinese families like theirs shaped the land and communities of early Aotearoa, while navigating laws and attitudes designed to exclude them.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Growing Auckland transcript
(00:01):
Gabriel Tongaawhikau 00:02
This podcast is brought to you by Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Ian Proctor 00:14
From the late 1800s through to the early 1900s, part of Pukekawa Auckland Domain, where the Museum stands today, was home to a number of expansive and successful market gardens, including one run by the Ah Chee family. They were part of a wave of Chinese immigration to Aotearoa during the 19th century, many of whom came in search of opportunity during the Otago goldrush, later turning to market gardening as a more sustainable livelihood. Chan Ah Chee and his family cultivated a wide range of fresh produce on this land, supplying much of Auckland with vegetables, playing a vital role in feeding the growing city. Hundreds of years later, Ah Chee’s descendants continue his legacy, from tilling the fields to getting the first tills ringing at Foodtown, one of our earliest modern supermarket chains. Theirs is a story of hard work, resilience and cultural contribution in the face of discrimination and increasingly strict immigration laws. Kia ora, I'm Ian Proctor, your host for this episode of The Amp, the podcast from Auckland Museum that amplifies the incredible stories from our collections, our mahi and our place in the Pacific. In this episode, we delve into the lesser-known story of the Ah Chee Market Garden and explore how families like theirs helped to shape the social and agricultural fabric of early Auckland, and how their legacy still lingers beneath the manicured lawns and sports fields of the domain today. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in New Zealand in December 1865 after the discovery of gold in Central Otago, by 1867 there were just over 1200 including Chan Ah Chee.
Lucy Mackintosh 02:05
Ah Chee was really part of the Chinese diaspora at that time, where there was a lot of migration to America to Canada, to Australia and New Zealand, and you had the gold rush, and so there were a lot of Chinese who were coming to New Zealand at that time. Many of them only intended to stay for a short period. A lot of them kept up their contacts back in China, and they were sending money back to China, and many of them did eventually return to China.
Ian Proctor
That's Lucy Mackintosh, Senior Research Fellow at Auckland Museum.
Lucy Mackintosh
Well, Chan Ah Chee came from the Guangdong Province, or the Canton Province, which was a farming area, and it had a very long history of immigration to other parts of the world, and specifically to the gold fields of California and Australia and New Zealand. So, Ah Chee and his two brothers apparently were intending to go to the Otago gold fields, but they got seasick and they got off the boat in Auckland. So, when they arrived in Auckland, there were very few Chinese living in Auckland. There were a few market gardens that were established in the 1860s but Ah Chee apparently started working in gardens and selling vegetables door to door before he took on the lease for the property at the bottom of the domain in 1882, so he was one of the early market gardeners in Auckland.
Ian Proctor
Unlike what might have greeted them in the target gold fields, they'd moved to a town where they didn't necessarily have the benefits of an established Chinese community or business network.
Lucy Mackintosh
There were a number of Chinese market gardens in the domain during this period, and that was related to the volcanic soils, the very rich soils in that area. But also really important was the fresh water source as well for growing the vegetables, for washing the vegetables. So you had several rivers running through the domain at that time. But also it was the proximity to town, to the markets in town, and also the railway had been built in the 1860s as well. There was also the wharves of mechanics Bay and commercial Bay, which is at the bottom of Queen Street as well. So, it was a site that was very close to town and that had ideal conditions.
Ian Proctor 04:48
Ah Chee’s first Market Garden was known as Kong Foong Yuen, or the Garden of Prosperity. Family history records tell us that they were growing vegetables on the land as early as the 1870s, but official land registry records show that the land was not formally used to Ah Chee until 1882 the same year he became a New Zealand citizen.
Lucy Mackintosh 05:11
So four years after he arrived, Chen Ah Che married Chong Chu Lee, also known as Rain Si. She arrived in the country only a month before. She was one of the first Chinese women in New Zealand. She was very well educated. She could understand English. It was believed to be one of the first Chinese weddings in Auckland, so it was actually described in quite a lot of detail in the newspapers. A lot of the European families were moving out to the suburbs at that time, and there was cheap land that could be leased for market gardening practices that Ah Chee and other families took advantage of, but I think that proximity to town was really important for them for getting their goods to the market.
Ian Proctor
By capitalising on the suburban drift and leasing land close to the centre, they kept themselves within reach of transport routes, industrial hubs and bustling markets, the lifelines of any successful business,
Lucy Mackintosh
(00:22):
Ah Chee was not only growing things on the site and using it as a depot for all of the produce being imported from China. But he also opened a number of fruit stores. He had several in Queen Street, and then eventually he opened another one in Newmarket and in other places as well. But he also opened a number of dining rooms in the central city as well, which was for people who were coming to visit the city, so people could stay and have dinner there. And the other thing that Ah Chee was doing during this period was supplying all of the cruise ships that were arriving in Auckland that time as well. So he was really taking advantage of the expanding city and of its expanding transport networks.
Ian Proctor
As Ah Chee grabbed opportunity after opportunity, business grew so successfully that he was able to invest in his own fleet of cars to transport produce across the city.
Lucy Mackintosh
By the end of the 19th century, there were a number of market gardening areas in Auckland, in Parnell, in new market in the Great North Road area. And there was a reasonably established Chinese community in Auckland. So you also had the development of areas like Gray Street, which became known as Chinatown, where you had the Wah Lee store, which imported a lot of Chinese goods. So there was a small but very vibrant Chinese community in Auckland at that time, and they did continue their links with China over that period.
Ian Proctor
The Ah Chee’s connections to Auckland business and society ran deep.
Lucy Mackintosh
The Ah Chee family integrated into New Zealand society through their business operations. So Chan Ah Chee had several business operations in partnership with European businessmen. So he developed a muscle or tohiroa exporting business. He also developed a tobacco business with one of the tobacco growers in Auckland, so he was in business with a lot of of the European settlers. The Ah Chee children went to the local schools. They went to Auckland Grammar. And the Ah Chee children were keen motor car racers. They used to go out to Muriwai regularly and race their cars along the beach there. They were very involved with with the local community practices in Auckland. They donated regularly to community fundraising, to war fundraising. But as well as integrating into the Auckland community, they also maintained their own cultural practices as well. So one of the really interesting things that was found by the archaeologists is that the Ah Chee house was oriented in a different way to all of the other European houses on the property, but also oriented differently to the boundaries of the property, and what they interpreted from this was that the Ah Chee family had actually designed their house along the lines of the principles of Feng Shui, so they were incorporating their own cultural beliefs and systems into the ways that they were living in Auckland.
Ian Proctor 09:29
Chan Ah Chee’s story is one of remarkable upward mobility. From his beginnings as an itinerant market gardener, he rose to become part of Auckland's politically aware and influential merchant class, a respected figure whose success reflected both hard work and sharp business acumen. But how do we know all of this?
Lucy Mackintosh 10:00
I was doing my research for my PhD thesis, which eventually became a book, and that was looking at landscapes of Auckland and the stories that they tell you about the histories of some of the people of Tamaki Makaurau Auckland. One of the areas that I was focusing on was Pukekawa Auckland Domain, and I knew that there were some histories here that were not well known and yet were really important for the history of Auckland. It was, it was a lovely combination of archaeological research and historical research and family research that gave insights into a community in Auckland that has had a big impact for a long time on the city, but that hasn't often made it into the historical record. So I was really interested in those gardens because of the the material and tangible remains that were there that can tell you a lot about history that you often can't find in the written record.
Voice actor
They're still inside Australia's house, so they've got a great chance here to attack…
Ian Proctor
After Carlaw Park sports stadium was demolished in 2007 archaeologists, Hans Bader and Janice Adamson had a rare opportunity to dig beneath the surface – literally. What they uncovered was a treasure trove of artifacts from a time long before eager fans filled the stands.
Ian Proctor 11:24
For nearly 40 years, this land had been a thriving market garden, and the excavation revealed hundreds of everyday objects that told the story of the people who worked the soil, their tools, their routines and their resilience.
Lucy Mackintosh 11:40
According to the archaeologists, it's very rare to find a site that can be connected with a particular family, so it gave a really wonderful insight into the Archie family and their business pursuits. So what it showed was what they were growing for sale in the Auckland markets, but it also showed what they were importing as well from China. So it gave a huge insight into the business world of the Ah Chee family, but also into the domestic life of the Ah Chee as well. What they had in their cupboards, they had a mixture of Chinese and European ceramics in their kitchen cupboards. It showed what they were eating on a day-to-day basis. It showed the tools and the implements that they were using, and it showed how they were using the site as well, which was quite different to the way a European market garden might work, and that the house itself was not separated from the gardens. Normally, in a European site, you'd have some separation between the House side the domestic site and the business side of it, but the gardens came right up to the to the exterior of the house. So it also showed, I think, the ways that a 19th century Chinese family lived and worked in Auckland at that time.
(00:43):
Ian Proctor
Some of Archie's descendants were invited along to the dig too, not just to observe. They actually helped the archaeologists with processing some of the artefacts.
Louise Chin
Chan Dah Chee is my great granddad, and he had three sons. And so our grandfather is Clem Ah Chee or Clement, but we never met him, unfortunately, because he died before, before, two years before I was born. So it's such a shame that we never got to to see him.
Ian Proctor 13:39
That's Chan Ah Chee’s great granddaughter, Louise Chin, from an earlier family history interview Lucy did with her and her sister, Bonnie Lynch.
Louise Chin
We are from his his second wife. She had two children, our dad and Auntie Betty, soit's got quite an extended family, yeah, and it's just lovely to see all these things and learn about history through the archaeological dig, which we didn't know anything about before. On the site, did you we helped to clean them? We were allowed to dig around, yeah, but we didn't know what we were doing. And when we when I arrived, I looked at and I thought, it's just a bunch of mud. And we went because Hans Bader was going to talk. When he spoke, I just could not believe what he told us about the history of why they were farming there, and that pile of bricks was a hearse. And what they found was absolutely astounding me. I just then I thought, ‘Oh, I really need to look into a bit more of the history’.
Bonnie Lynch 14:52
So the bricks were the foundation of the house, and he showed us where the kitchen was, where the fireplace would have been, where they did their cooking. And he said the back door would have probably been here so that they could get the water. You know, he showed us that this was probably a bedroom. It was sort of quite incredible to see that.
Louise Chin
I couldn't believe that he said about the food that he found, like oyster shells and pork and chicken and bone. And duck bones. And when I spoke to Auntie Mae, because she was still alive, then she said, Oh, they did. They lived lavishly. They ate really well.
Ian Proctor 15:35
The dig opened up a world that had largely been left out of the histories of Auckland, as well as being erased from the land. But what did they find?
Lucy Mackintosh 15:44
A lot of storage containers. So food and liquid containers known as brown ware. There was Chinese green glazed ware as well, which was also used for food. There were rice bowls. There was Chinese porcelain, Ginger jars, little spouted bottles. So there was a lot of ceramics found on the site, but there was also a lot that related to the gardening practices of the Ah Chee family. So they found gardening implements enriched soil there as well that had pollen that had come from a lot of the vegetables that they'd been growing there. There was also the remains of the house there as well, including the hearth to the house. So there was a lot relating to their domestic life as well. So a lot of the items were left on the site because they were partly used to build up the ground in the first place to create the gardens. It was a reclaimed site. It was quite a swampy area. So what the Ah Chee family did was they covered over and filled out some of the buildings, the pits from the tannery and from the rope works, etc, they filled those with some of their brown ware and and some of their other rubbish to fill it up. And then they imported soil and laid that over the top, and then enriched the soil. So it was partly to build up the site to begin with, so that it drained better and it didn't flood. But I think also, as the business expanded, they would also dispose of, you know, of old rubble and old waste in parts of the gardens as well. So that's why there was so much found on that site over a period of almost 50 years, of disposing of their waste and building the site up,
Ian Proctor 17:41
One of the items found in the archaeological dig was a little unexpected.
Lucy Mackintosh 17:46
They found English teacups and fragments of an English teapot, and as one of the archaeologists mentioned, Janice Adamson, it's often what's not found on a site that's as significant as what is found. So there was no Chinese teaware found on the site. It was just English teaware. So what the archaeologists thought was that this English teaware was used as a way of engaging with some of the English members of the society.
Ian Proctor 18:21
(01:04):
The teapot and cups were made by Dalton and Co, later Royal Dalton, and decorated in a blue Willow pattern. In some ways, it's considered the archetypal English country kitchen tableware. Maybe you even have an image somewhere on the back of your mind of it displayed proudly on a wooden kitchen dresser. But a closer look reveals an array of Chinese motifs, like a weeping willow tree, the curved roof of a pagoda, an arched stone bridge with three figures in traditional dress and a river boat with two doves circling above. This blue and white pattern was a standard of almost all British pottery manufacturers in the 19th century, but it actually derived from 18th century Chinese porcelain designs. The use of English teaware sort of suggests that the Archies were conforming to the expected protocols of a predominantly British colonial settler society. The tea set itself serves as a reminder of mutual borrowing and exchanges between Asia and Britain over many centuries. The family probably used this European teaware for entertaining. One such occasion was recorded in the newspaper in 1894 when Lady Glasgow, wife of the governor of New Zealand, and her daughters, paid a visit to Mr. And Mrs. Ah Chee at their home. The motivations for the visit are unclear, but the article doesn't shy away from drawing clear distinctions between the classes and races of all in attendance.
Voice actor 19:53
On a recent Monday afternoon, Lady Glasgow sent a note to her green grocer, Ah Chee, that she and her daughters would. Pay him a visit at his home, at Mechanics Bay gardens on the following day, at the time appointed the ladies Julie arrived and were entertained by Mrs Ah Chee. The ladies Boyle played and sung, partook of afternoon tea, fruit, etc, and the whole party (yellow and white) had a good time. Lady Glasgow requested a photo of the Chee family group for her album, and the delighted Chee immediately ordered a splendid enlarged photo. Ah Chee forwarded Lord Glasgow a present of half a dozen silk handkerchiefs from the flowery land. Aren't the opposition greengrocers just mad,
Ian Proctor 20:37
While the Ah Chee family followed the British norms of drinking tea on the occasion of the Glasgow visit. This may have been linked to the traditional Chinese practice of Guanxi.
Lucy Mackintosh
Guanxi is a system of relationships and mutual dependencies that are developed through obligation and indebtedness and their connections that were based on clans, on families and with business associates as well, and involved at the exchanging of gifts and of favours and giving banquets. So really, what you can see here are that these Chinese concepts of how to do business were used very successfully in a colonial context in Auckland.
Ian Proctor
As Lady Glasgow and Mrs. Ah Chee brought their teacups to the lips on that brief social occasion in 1894 the willow patterns hovered between them, telling their own story of the long history of Chinese influence on British culture and practices. Despite sharing cucumber sandwiches with the governor's wife and participating fully in the social and cultural lives of European settlers, they also suffered instances of racial abuse, which reflected New Zealand's wider attitudes towards the Chinese community at the time.
Lucy Mackintosh
The Chinese were incredibly industrious. They got up early, they worked long hours, they worked for low pay, and many of the European settlers in New Zealand saw them as a threat to their own jobs and wages. So they faced an enormous amount of racism and discrimination while they were here.
Ian Proctor 22:10
Just two years before the tea party, Ah Chee faced prosecution for receiving stolen goods in 1892 which he denied knowledge of, but thanks to the defence resting largely on testament to his good character from ten of the leading citizens of Auckland, the case was dismissed. Ah Chee was also attacked in his gardens in 1885 five years later, he was throttled under the railway bridge just down the road from the museum here in Parnell. Thankfully, he survived. The abuse suffered by Ah Chee and others reflected a wider antagonism towards the Chinese community. Although Chinese miners had initially been welcomed to the country when there was a shortage of labour, anti-Chinese prejudice soon resurfaced.
Lucy Mackintosh 22:53
In 1881 the Chinese immigrants Act was was introduced so that included a tax called a poll tax of 10 pounds for everybody that came into the country, which is around about the equivalent of about $2,000 today. That increased over time to 100 pounds, which is around about $20,000 that they had to pay coming into the country, and it restricted the number of immigrants who could arrive as well.
Ian Proctor 23:16
From 1881 ships arriving in New Zealand were restricted to one Chinese passenger per 10 tons of cargo. In 1896 at the same time as the poll tax was increased, this ratio was reduced even further, to one passenger per 200 tons of cargo, as most men, could not afford the extortionate poll tax to bring their wives over. The Chinese community was predominantly male, until after World War Two, the norm was for them to make home visits every few years. Later on, many tried to send for their sons, brothers and nephews, particularly when they needed help in the gardens or shops. The Ah Chees maintained close links with China, and as the business expanded, they supported many Chinese workers to come and live and work in their market gardens in Auckland, often sponsoring them by paying their travel expenses and poll tax. For decades, laws and policies were deliberately designed to marginalize Chinese people, denying pensions, citizenship, residency, even the right to come and go freely. And these official barriers were matched by an undercurrent of racism in public life, an insistence that Chinese New Zealanders did not belong and that the histories were not part of the national story. This is why families like the Ah Chees are so important to remember. Their visibility and success disrupted the narrative that Chinese were temporary sojourners destined to remain outsiders. Yet for too long. These stories have been left at the margins of our collective memory. To bring them forward now is to challenge that long standing exclusion and to recognise that the history of Aotearoa has always been richer, more diverse and more interconnected than the myths of a purely European past. Allow one of the ways that Auckland Museum is keeping stories like these fresh in our collective consciousness is through a new resource called collections to classrooms, which draws on taonga from the museum to unearth some of the lesser-known stories of Tāmaki Makaurau. The work came out of discussions with organizations like the National Library Te Papa and the Ministry of Education around how we could share resources for students learning the new Aotearoa Histories Curriculum.
James Taylor 25:54
My name is James Taylor, and I'm the Online Collections Information and Partnership manager here at the Museum. We know that teachers are time poor, and we also know that the resources for this new curriculum required a local angle to them, and it's institutions like ours that can kind of provide the meat for the bones of the curriculum. But we also wanted to make the resources engaging and accessible for use in the classroom too.
Ian Proctor
It was created to help students from years seven to 13 learn about their local history.
(01:25):
James Taylor
The big national topics in New Zealand were quite well covered by online resources, by websites like New Zealand history net and Te Ara, the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. But it was the local histories where there were content gaps, and the teachers said to us that we could also fill those gaps with our resources and that they would prefer online resources. About 70% of the teachers said that they'd prefer online resources because it's easier for high school teachers to work with their classes in the classroom, rather than bringing them up to the museum. There are seven objects. They each speak to different content, parts of the curriculum, and they each involve different stories from the museum's collection. Each object has a couple of videos associated with it. So one of the videos has generally has museum staff talking about the objects. So that's like a curatorial or a museum perspective. And then one of the other videos is actually with knowledge holders who are connected and associated with the resource.
Ian Proctor
In the case of the Ah Chee collection, this was his great grandchildren, Louise Chin, Bonnie Lynch, and their brother, Merv Ah Chee.
James Taylor
And one of the reasons for providing these two different videos, was that it gives multiple perspectives on the video and on the content. And that's one of the things that is really important in the new curriculum, is getting across different perspectives on New Zealand histories. There's also short written text. We also have 3d scans of some of the objects, because, again, in the research that we've done, that's something that's come through quite quite strongly that people want to see. And we also have really high definition imagery that our museum photographers have taken so that students can get a really good close up look at the textures, and, you know, the different parts of objects as well.
Ian Proctor
Through these objects, students are invited to explore the big ideas of the history curriculum, colonisation and settlements, the use and misuse of power, different perspectives and the ways communities interact.
James Taylor
The initial feedback that we've had from teachers has been really positive. One of the other interesting things that came out of the research that we did with teachers was that the museum was seen as a really trusted source of information, and some of the history teachers that we worked with were really excited about the content that we were making available, and the way in which we tried to make it as accessible as possible for teachers and for students.
Lucy Mackintosh 28:57
We wanted to use the Ah Chee collection because it tells the story of a community that hasn't been well represented in our published histories about Auckland, the material things that the remains that were found in the gardens tell wonderful stories about the Ah Chee family and about the wider Chinese community that haven't been written down.
Ian Proctor 29:25
The Ah Chee story doesn't just sit in the past. It provides rich context for thinking about culture and collective identity, the importance of place and environment and the role of economic activity in shaping belonging in Aotearoa. Ah Chee and his wife moved back to China in the 1920s but their children continued the family business.
Lucy Mackintosh
Chan Ah Chee’s grandson, Tom Ah Chee established the first food town in New Zealand, which was the first American style supermarket in New Zealand, which then became known as countdown more recently and he also started Georgie Pie as well, which is a fairly iconic brand in New Zealand
Ian Proctor 30:00
When we talk about the Ah Chee family's success, it's important to recognize the wider context they were navigating. Their rise from market gardening to running a fleet of produce shops at Central Auckland wasn't simply a story of hard work, it was an achievement against the tide of exclusion for Chinese families like the Ah Chee’s, everyday life in Aotearoa was shadowed by laws designed to exclude and restrict from 1898 they were denied a pension, a stark reminder that their years of hard work would not be recognised by the state. New arrivals faced an English reading test, while those who wished to leave the country even briefly had to carry a thumb printed re-entry permit, as though their very identity was in question. For nearly half a century, Chinese people were barred from becoming naturalized citizens, shutting them out of full belonging. By 1920 every new arrival required an entry permit, and by 1926 even the right to permanent residency was denied. These rules made it clear Chinese people were never meant to feel at home here. And yet, despite this, the Ah Chee family built businesses, raised children and carved out a new life in Auckland, testament to a resilience that defied the barriers placed in their way.
That was ‘Growing Auckland’ brought to you by Auckland Museum, supported by the Tennyson Charitable Trust, written and produced by Laura Skerritt and hosted by me Ian Proctor. Sound design by Sara O'Brien, with production support from Annabel Walker. The executive producer was Teresa Cowie from Connect Content. Thanks to our guests, Lucy Mackintosh and James Taylor, and to Chan Ah Chee’s great grandchildren, Louise Chin, Bonnie Lynch and Merv Ah Che for letting us use snippets from their family history interviews. A huge thank you also to the archaeologists, Hans Bader and Janice Adamson, whose research into the history and archaeology of the Ah Chee Market Garden helped us write this episode.
To find out more about the Ah Chee family, visit the links in our show notes, where you'll find a link to the archaeologists paper about Ah Chee, our collections to classrooms, resource and information about Lucy's book, Shifting Grounds (01:44):
Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, all of which were really useful for us when we were writing this episode. If you're enjoying The Amp, please help others to find us by sharing with friends or whānau or leaving a review.
Growing Auckland transcript
(00:01):
Gabriel Tongaawhikau 00:02
This podcast is brought to you by Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Ian Proctor 00:14
From the late 1800s through to the early 1900s, part of Pukekawa Auckland Domain, where the Museum stands today, was home to a number of expansive and successful market gardens, including one run by the Ah Chee family. They were part of a wave of Chinese immigration to Aotearoa during the 19th century, many of whom came in search of opportunity during the Otago goldrush, later turning to market gardening as a more sustainable livelihood. Chan Ah Chee and his family cultivated a wide range of fresh produce on this land, supplying much of Auckland with vegetables, playing a vital role in feeding the growing city. Hundreds of years later, Ah Chee’s descendants continue his legacy, from tilling the fields to getting the first tills ringing at Foodtown, one of our earliest modern supermarket chains. Theirs is a story of hard work, resilience and cultural contribution in the face of discrimination and increasingly strict immigration laws. Kia ora, I'm Ian Proctor, your host for this episode of The Amp, the podcast from Auckland Museum that amplifies the incredible stories from our collections, our mahi and our place in the Pacific. In this episode, we delve into the lesser-known story of the Ah Chee Market Garden and explore how families like theirs helped to shape the social and agricultural fabric of early Auckland, and how their legacy still lingers beneath the manicured lawns and sports fields of the domain today. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in New Zealand in December 1865 after the discovery of gold in Central Otago, by 1867 there were just over 1200 including Chan Ah Chee.
Lucy Mackintosh 02:05
Ah Chee was really part of the Chinese diaspora at that time, where there was a lot of migration to America to Canada, to Australia and New Zealand, and you had the gold rush, and so there were a lot of Chinese who were coming to New Zealand at that time. Many of them only intended to stay for a short period. A lot of them kept up their contacts back in China, and they were sending money back to China, and many of them did eventually return to China.
Ian Proctor
That's Lucy Mackintosh, Senior Research Fellow at Auckland Museum.
Lucy Mackintosh
Well, Chan Ah Chee came from the Guangdong Province, or the Canton Province, which was a farming area, and it had a very long history of immigration to other parts of the world, and specifically to the gold fields of California and Australia and New Zealand. So, Ah Chee and his two brothers apparently were intending to go to the Otago gold fields, but they got seasick and they got off the boat in Auckland. So, when they arrived in Auckland, there were very few Chinese living in Auckland. There were a few market gardens that were established in the 1860s but Ah Chee apparently started working in gardens and selling vegetables door to door before he took on the lease for the property at the bottom of the domain in 1882, so he was one of the early market gardeners in Auckland.
Ian Proctor
Unlike what might have greeted them in the target gold fields, they'd moved to a town where they didn't necessarily have the benefits of an established Chinese community or business network.
Lucy Mackintosh
There were a number of Chinese market gardens in the domain during this period, and that was related to the volcanic soils, the very rich soils in that area. But also really important was the fresh water source as well for growing the vegetables, for washing the vegetables. So you had several rivers running through the domain at that time. But also it was the proximity to town, to the markets in town, and also the railway had been built in the 1860s as well. There was also the wharves of mechanics Bay and commercial Bay, which is at the bottom of Queen Street as well. So, it was a site that was very close to town and that had ideal conditions.
Ian Proctor 04:48
Ah Chee’s first Market Garden was known as Kong Foong Yuen, or the Garden of Prosperity. Family history records tell us that they were growing vegetables on the land as early as the 1870s, but official land registry records show that the land was not formally used to Ah Chee until 1882 the same year he became a New Zealand citizen.
Lucy Mackintosh 05:11
So four years after he arrived, Chen Ah Che married Chong Chu Lee, also known as Rain Si. She arrived in the country only a month before. She was one of the first Chinese women in New Zealand. She was very well educated. She could understand English. It was believed to be one of the first Chinese weddings in Auckland, so it was actually described in quite a lot of detail in the newspapers. A lot of the European families were moving out to the suburbs at that time, and there was cheap land that could be leased for market gardening practices that Ah Chee and other families took advantage of, but I think that proximity to town was really important for them for getting their goods to the market.
Ian Proctor
By capitalising on the suburban drift and leasing land close to the centre, they kept themselves within reach of transport routes, industrial hubs and bustling markets, the lifelines of any successful business,
Lucy Mackintosh
(00:22):
Ah Chee was not only growing things on the site and using it as a depot for all of the produce being imported from China. But he also opened a number of fruit stores. He had several in Queen Street, and then eventually he opened another one in Newmarket and in other places as well. But he also opened a number of dining rooms in the central city as well, which was for people who were coming to visit the city, so people could stay and have dinner there. And the other thing that Ah Chee was doing during this period was supplying all of the cruise ships that were arriving in Auckland that time as well. So he was really taking advantage of the expanding city and of its expanding transport networks.
Ian Proctor
As Ah Chee grabbed opportunity after opportunity, business grew so successfully that he was able to invest in his own fleet of cars to transport produce across the city.
Lucy Mackintosh
By the end of the 19th century, there were a number of market gardening areas in Auckland, in Parnell, in new market in the Great North Road area. And there was a reasonably established Chinese community in Auckland. So you also had the development of areas like Gray Street, which became known as Chinatown, where you had the Wah Lee store, which imported a lot of Chinese goods. So there was a small but very vibrant Chinese community in Auckland at that time, and they did continue their links with China over that period.
Ian Proctor
The Ah Chee’s connections to Auckland business and society ran deep.
Lucy Mackintosh
The Ah Chee family integrated into New Zealand society through their business operations. So Chan Ah Chee had several business operations in partnership with European businessmen. So he developed a muscle or tohiroa exporting business. He also developed a tobacco business with one of the tobacco growers in Auckland, so he was in business with a lot of of the European settlers. The Ah Chee children went to the local schools. They went to Auckland Grammar. And the Ah Chee children were keen motor car racers. They used to go out to Muriwai regularly and race their cars along the beach there. They were very involved with with the local community practices in Auckland. They donated regularly to community fundraising, to war fundraising. But as well as integrating into the Auckland community, they also maintained their own cultural practices as well. So one of the really interesting things that was found by the archaeologists is that the Ah Chee house was oriented in a different way to all of the other European houses on the property, but also oriented differently to the boundaries of the property, and what they interpreted from this was that the Ah Chee family had actually designed their house along the lines of the principles of Feng Shui, so they were incorporating their own cultural beliefs and systems into the ways that they were living in Auckland.
Ian Proctor 09:29
Chan Ah Chee’s story is one of remarkable upward mobility. From his beginnings as an itinerant market gardener, he rose to become part of Auckland's politically aware and influential merchant class, a respected figure whose success reflected both hard work and sharp business acumen. But how do we know all of this?
Lucy Mackintosh 10:00
I was doing my research for my PhD thesis, which eventually became a book, and that was looking at landscapes of Auckland and the stories that they tell you about the histories of some of the people of Tamaki Makaurau Auckland. One of the areas that I was focusing on was Pukekawa Auckland Domain, and I knew that there were some histories here that were not well known and yet were really important for the history of Auckland. It was, it was a lovely combination of archaeological research and historical research and family research that gave insights into a community in Auckland that has had a big impact for a long time on the city, but that hasn't often made it into the historical record. So I was really interested in those gardens because of the the material and tangible remains that were there that can tell you a lot about history that you often can't find in the written record.
Voice actor
They're still inside Australia's house, so they've got a great chance here to attack…
Ian Proctor
After Carlaw Park sports stadium was demolished in 2007 archaeologists, Hans Bader and Janice Adamson had a rare opportunity to dig beneath the surface – literally. What they uncovered was a treasure trove of artifacts from a time long before eager fans filled the stands.
Ian Proctor 11:24
For nearly 40 years, this land had been a thriving market garden, and the excavation revealed hundreds of everyday objects that told the story of the people who worked the soil, their tools, their routines and their resilience.
Lucy Mackintosh 11:40
According to the archaeologists, it's very rare to find a site that can be connected with a particular family, so it gave a really wonderful insight into the Archie family and their business pursuits. So what it showed was what they were growing for sale in the Auckland markets, but it also showed what they were importing as well from China. So it gave a huge insight into the business world of the Ah Chee family, but also into the domestic life of the Ah Chee as well. What they had in their cupboards, they had a mixture of Chinese and European ceramics in their kitchen cupboards. It showed what they were eating on a day-to-day basis. It showed the tools and the implements that they were using, and it showed how they were using the site as well, which was quite different to the way a European market garden might work, and that the house itself was not separated from the gardens. Normally, in a European site, you'd have some separation between the House side the domestic site and the business side of it, but the gardens came right up to the to the exterior of the house. So it also showed, I think, the ways that a 19th century Chinese family lived and worked in Auckland at that time.
(00:43):
Ian Proctor
Some of Archie's descendants were invited along to the dig too, not just to observe. They actually helped the archaeologists with processing some of the artefacts.
Louise Chin
Chan Dah Chee is my great granddad, and he had three sons. And so our grandfather is Clem Ah Chee or Clement, but we never met him, unfortunately, because he died before, before, two years before I was born. So it's such a shame that we never got to to see him.
Ian Proctor 13:39
That's Chan Ah Chee’s great granddaughter, Louise Chin, from an earlier family history interview Lucy did with her and her sister, Bonnie Lynch.
Louise Chin
We are from his his second wife. She had two children, our dad and Auntie Betty, soit's got quite an extended family, yeah, and it's just lovely to see all these things and learn about history through the archaeological dig, which we didn't know anything about before. On the site, did you we helped to clean them? We were allowed to dig around, yeah, but we didn't know what we were doing. And when we when I arrived, I looked at and I thought, it's just a bunch of mud. And we went because Hans Bader was going to talk. When he spoke, I just could not believe what he told us about the history of why they were farming there, and that pile of bricks was a hearse. And what they found was absolutely astounding me. I just then I thought, ‘Oh, I really need to look into a bit more of the history’.
Bonnie Lynch 14:52
So the bricks were the foundation of the house, and he showed us where the kitchen was, where the fireplace would have been, where they did their cooking. And he said the back door would have probably been here so that they could get the water. You know, he showed us that this was probably a bedroom. It was sort of quite incredible to see that.
Louise Chin
I couldn't believe that he said about the food that he found, like oyster shells and pork and chicken and bone. And duck bones. And when I spoke to Auntie Mae, because she was still alive, then she said, Oh, they did. They lived lavishly. They ate really well.
Ian Proctor 15:35
The dig opened up a world that had largely been left out of the histories of Auckland, as well as being erased from the land. But what did they find?
Lucy Mackintosh 15:44
A lot of storage containers. So food and liquid containers known as brown ware. There was Chinese green glazed ware as well, which was also used for food. There were rice bowls. There was Chinese porcelain, Ginger jars, little spouted bottles. So there was a lot of ceramics found on the site, but there was also a lot that related to the gardening practices of the Ah Chee family. So they found gardening implements enriched soil there as well that had pollen that had come from a lot of the vegetables that they'd been growing there. There was also the remains of the house there as well, including the hearth to the house. So there was a lot relating to their domestic life as well. So a lot of the items were left on the site because they were partly used to build up the ground in the first place to create the gardens. It was a reclaimed site. It was quite a swampy area. So what the Ah Chee family did was they covered over and filled out some of the buildings, the pits from the tannery and from the rope works, etc, they filled those with some of their brown ware and and some of their other rubbish to fill it up. And then they imported soil and laid that over the top, and then enriched the soil. So it was partly to build up the site to begin with, so that it drained better and it didn't flood. But I think also, as the business expanded, they would also dispose of, you know, of old rubble and old waste in parts of the gardens as well. So that's why there was so much found on that site over a period of almost 50 years, of disposing of their waste and building the site up,
Ian Proctor 17:41
One of the items found in the archaeological dig was a little unexpected.
Lucy Mackintosh 17:46
They found English teacups and fragments of an English teapot, and as one of the archaeologists mentioned, Janice Adamson, it's often what's not found on a site that's as significant as what is found. So there was no Chinese teaware found on the site. It was just English teaware. So what the archaeologists thought was that this English teaware was used as a way of engaging with some of the English members of the society.
Ian Proctor 18:21
(01:04):
The teapot and cups were made by Dalton and Co, later Royal Dalton, and decorated in a blue Willow pattern. In some ways, it's considered the archetypal English country kitchen tableware. Maybe you even have an image somewhere on the back of your mind of it displayed proudly on a wooden kitchen dresser. But a closer look reveals an array of Chinese motifs, like a weeping willow tree, the curved roof of a pagoda, an arched stone bridge with three figures in traditional dress and a river boat with two doves circling above. This blue and white pattern was a standard of almost all British pottery manufacturers in the 19th century, but it actually derived from 18th century Chinese porcelain designs. The use of English teaware sort of suggests that the Archies were conforming to the expected protocols of a predominantly British colonial settler society. The tea set itself serves as a reminder of mutual borrowing and exchanges between Asia and Britain over many centuries. The family probably used this European teaware for entertaining. One such occasion was recorded in the newspaper in 1894 when Lady Glasgow, wife of the governor of New Zealand, and her daughters, paid a visit to Mr. And Mrs. Ah Chee at their home. The motivations for the visit are unclear, but the article doesn't shy away from drawing clear distinctions between the classes and races of all in attendance.
Voice actor 19:53
On a recent Monday afternoon, Lady Glasgow sent a note to her green grocer, Ah Chee, that she and her daughters would. Pay him a visit at his home, at Mechanics Bay gardens on the following day, at the time appointed the ladies Julie arrived and were entertained by Mrs Ah Chee. The ladies Boyle played and sung, partook of afternoon tea, fruit, etc, and the whole party (yellow and white) had a good time. Lady Glasgow requested a photo of the Chee family group for her album, and the delighted Chee immediately ordered a splendid enlarged photo. Ah Chee forwarded Lord Glasgow a present of half a dozen silk handkerchiefs from the flowery land. Aren't the opposition greengrocers just mad,
Ian Proctor 20:37
While the Ah Chee family followed the British norms of drinking tea on the occasion of the Glasgow visit. This may have been linked to the traditional Chinese practice of Guanxi.
Lucy Mackintosh
Guanxi is a system of relationships and mutual dependencies that are developed through obligation and indebtedness and their connections that were based on clans, on families and with business associates as well, and involved at the exchanging of gifts and of favours and giving banquets. So really, what you can see here are that these Chinese concepts of how to do business were used very successfully in a colonial context in Auckland.
Ian Proctor
As Lady Glasgow and Mrs. Ah Chee brought their teacups to the lips on that brief social occasion in 1894 the willow patterns hovered between them, telling their own story of the long history of Chinese influence on British culture and practices. Despite sharing cucumber sandwiches with the governor's wife and participating fully in the social and cultural lives of European settlers, they also suffered instances of racial abuse, which reflected New Zealand's wider attitudes towards the Chinese community at the time.
Lucy Mackintosh
The Chinese were incredibly industrious. They got up early, they worked long hours, they worked for low pay, and many of the European settlers in New Zealand saw them as a threat to their own jobs and wages. So they faced an enormous amount of racism and discrimination while they were here.
Ian Proctor 22:10
Just two years before the tea party, Ah Chee faced prosecution for receiving stolen goods in 1892 which he denied knowledge of, but thanks to the defence resting largely on testament to his good character from ten of the leading citizens of Auckland, the case was dismissed. Ah Chee was also attacked in his gardens in 1885 five years later, he was throttled under the railway bridge just down the road from the museum here in Parnell. Thankfully, he survived. The abuse suffered by Ah Chee and others reflected a wider antagonism towards the Chinese community. Although Chinese miners had initially been welcomed to the country when there was a shortage of labour, anti-Chinese prejudice soon resurfaced.
Lucy Mackintosh 22:53
In 1881 the Chinese immigrants Act was was introduced so that included a tax called a poll tax of 10 pounds for everybody that came into the country, which is around about the equivalent of about $2,000 today. That increased over time to 100 pounds, which is around about $20,000 that they had to pay coming into the country, and it restricted the number of immigrants who could arrive as well.
Ian Proctor 23:16
From 1881 ships arriving in New Zealand were restricted to one Chinese passenger per 10 tons of cargo. In 1896 at the same time as the poll tax was increased, this ratio was reduced even further, to one passenger per 200 tons of cargo, as most men, could not afford the extortionate poll tax to bring their wives over. The Chinese community was predominantly male, until after World War Two, the norm was for them to make home visits every few years. Later on, many tried to send for their sons, brothers and nephews, particularly when they needed help in the gardens or shops. The Ah Chees maintained close links with China, and as the business expanded, they supported many Chinese workers to come and live and work in their market gardens in Auckland, often sponsoring them by paying their travel expenses and poll tax. For decades, laws and policies were deliberately designed to marginalize Chinese people, denying pensions, citizenship, residency, even the right to come and go freely. And these official barriers were matched by an undercurrent of racism in public life, an insistence that Chinese New Zealanders did not belong and that the histories were not part of the national story. This is why families like the Ah Chees are so important to remember. Their visibility and success disrupted the narrative that Chinese were temporary sojourners destined to remain outsiders. Yet for too long. These stories have been left at the margins of our collective memory. To bring them forward now is to challenge that long standing exclusion and to recognise that the history of Aotearoa has always been richer, more diverse and more interconnected than the myths of a purely European past. Allow one of the ways that Auckland Museum is keeping stories like these fresh in our collective consciousness is through a new resource called collections to classrooms, which draws on taonga from the museum to unearth some of the lesser-known stories of Tāmaki Makaurau. The work came out of discussions with organizations like the National Library Te Papa and the Ministry of Education around how we could share resources for students learning the new Aotearoa Histories Curriculum.
James Taylor 25:54
My name is James Taylor, and I'm the Online Collections Information and Partnership manager here at the Museum. We know that teachers are time poor, and we also know that the resources for this new curriculum required a local angle to them, and it's institutions like ours that can kind of provide the meat for the bones of the curriculum. But we also wanted to make the resources engaging and accessible for use in the classroom too.
Ian Proctor
It was created to help students from years seven to 13 learn about their local history.
(01:25):
James Taylor
The big national topics in New Zealand were quite well covered by online resources, by websites like New Zealand history net and Te Ara, the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. But it was the local histories where there were content gaps, and the teachers said to us that we could also fill those gaps with our resources and that they would prefer online resources. About 70% of the teachers said that they'd prefer online resources because it's easier for high school teachers to work with their classes in the classroom, rather than bringing them up to the museum. There are seven objects. They each speak to different content, parts of the curriculum, and they each involve different stories from the museum's collection. Each object has a couple of videos associated with it. So one of the videos has generally has museum staff talking about the objects. So that's like a curatorial or a museum perspective. And then one of the other videos is actually with knowledge holders who are connected and associated with the resource.
Ian Proctor
In the case of the Ah Chee collection, this was his great grandchildren, Louise Chin, Bonnie Lynch, and their brother, Merv Ah Chee.
James Taylor
And one of the reasons for providing these two different videos, was that it gives multiple perspectives on the video and on the content. And that's one of the things that is really important in the new curriculum, is getting across different perspectives on New Zealand histories. There's also short written text. We also have 3d scans of some of the objects, because, again, in the research that we've done, that's something that's come through quite quite strongly that people want to see. And we also have really high definition imagery that our museum photographers have taken so that students can get a really good close up look at the textures, and, you know, the different parts of objects as well.
Ian Proctor
Through these objects, students are invited to explore the big ideas of the history curriculum, colonisation and settlements, the use and misuse of power, different perspectives and the ways communities interact.
James Taylor
The initial feedback that we've had from teachers has been really positive. One of the other interesting things that came out of the research that we did with teachers was that the museum was seen as a really trusted source of information, and some of the history teachers that we worked with were really excited about the content that we were making available, and the way in which we tried to make it as accessible as possible for teachers and for students.
Lucy Mackintosh 28:57
We wanted to use the Ah Chee collection because it tells the story of a community that hasn't been well represented in our published histories about Auckland, the material things that the remains that were found in the gardens tell wonderful stories about the Ah Chee family and about the wider Chinese community that haven't been written down.
Ian Proctor 29:25
The Ah Chee story doesn't just sit in the past. It provides rich context for thinking about culture and collective identity, the importance of place and environment and the role of economic activity in shaping belonging in Aotearoa. Ah Chee and his wife moved back to China in the 1920s but their children continued the family business.
Lucy Mackintosh
Chan Ah Chee’s grandson, Tom Ah Chee established the first food town in New Zealand, which was the first American style supermarket in New Zealand, which then became known as countdown more recently and he also started Georgie Pie as well, which is a fairly iconic brand in New Zealand
Ian Proctor 30:00
When we talk about the Ah Chee family's success, it's important to recognize the wider context they were navigating. Their rise from market gardening to running a fleet of produce shops at Central Auckland wasn't simply a story of hard work, it was an achievement against the tide of exclusion for Chinese families like the Ah Chee’s, everyday life in Aotearoa was shadowed by laws designed to exclude and restrict from 1898 they were denied a pension, a stark reminder that their years of hard work would not be recognised by the state. New arrivals faced an English reading test, while those who wished to leave the country even briefly had to carry a thumb printed re-entry permit, as though their very identity was in question. For nearly half a century, Chinese people were barred from becoming naturalized citizens, shutting them out of full belonging. By 1920 every new arrival required an entry permit, and by 1926 even the right to permanent residency was denied. These rules made it clear Chinese people were never meant to feel at home here. And yet, despite this, the Ah Chee family built businesses, raised children and carved out a new life in Auckland, testament to a resilience that defied the barriers placed in their way.
That was ‘Growing Auckland’ brought to you by Auckland Museum, supported by the Tennyson Charitable Trust, written and produced by Laura Skerritt and hosted by me Ian Proctor. Sound design by Sara O'Brien, with production support from Annabel Walker. The executive producer was Teresa Cowie from Connect Content. Thanks to our guests, Lucy Mackintosh and James Taylor, and to Chan Ah Chee’s great grandchildren, Louise Chin, Bonnie Lynch and Merv Ah Che for letting us use snippets from their family history interviews. A huge thank you also to the archaeologists, Hans Bader and Janice Adamson, whose research into the history and archaeology of the Ah Chee Market Garden helped us write this episode.
To find out more about the Ah Chee family, visit the links in our show notes, where you'll find a link to the archaeologists paper about Ah Chee, our collections to classrooms, resource and information about Lucy's book, Shifting Grounds (01:44):
Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, all of which were really useful for us when we were writing this episode. If you're enjoying The Amp, please help others to find us by sharing with friends or whānau or leaving a review.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.