Being Maori-Chinese: Mixed Identities

‘This is a story whose telling is long overdue, and Manying Ip has told it beautifully and with sensitivity and respect. Most importantly she has allowed the people to tell their own story, in their own words. This book therefore provides a wonderful insight into what it means to be Maori-Chinese.’ – Nigel Murphy, NZ Chinese Association Bulletin

Being Maori-Chinese uses extensive interviews with seven different families to explore historical and contemporary relations between Māori and Chinese, a subject which has never been given serious study before. A full chapter is given to each family which is explored in depth often in the voices of the protagonists themselves.

This detailed and personal approach shows how in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Māori and Chinese, both relegated to the fringes of society, often had warm and congenial bonds, with intermarriage and large Māori-Chinese families. However in recent times the relationship between these two rapidly growing groups has shown tension as Māori have gained confidence in their identity and as increased Asian immigration has become a political issue. Being Maori-Chinese provides a unique and fascinating insight into cross-cultural alliances between Asian and indigenous peoples, revealing a resilience which has endured persecution, ridicule and neglect and offering a picture of New Zealand society which challenges the usual Pākehā-dominated perspective.

Today’s Māori-Chinese, especially younger members, are increasingly reaffirming their multiple roots and, with a growing confidence in the cultural advantages they possess, are playing important roles in New Zealand society.

Author

Manying Ip is professor of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland. Born in 1945, in Guizhou, an interior province of Mainland China, where her parents had taken refuge after the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong she completed her tertiary education in Hong Kong and Auckland, New Zealand, where she now lives. Dr Ip is a social historian who has been researching Chinese New Zealanders, and more recent immigrants from Asia, since the 1980s and was awarded the Suffrage Centennial Medal in 1993 and named ONZM (Officer of New Zealand Order of Merit) in 1996 for her services to the Chinese community. She is the well-known and respected author of several critically acclaimed books on the Chinese in New Zealand, including The Dragon and the Taniwha (AUP, 2009) and the editor of Unfolding History, Evolving Identity: The Chinese in New Zealand (AUP, 2003).