A singer-songwriter has released a song about a retired Chinese gold miner killed by a white supremacist almost 120 years ago to raise awareness of racism in New Zealand.
Originally from Guangdong province in southeastern China, Joe Kum Yung was shot from behind by a man unknown to him on the night of 24 September 1905 while walking down Haining St in Wellington. Joe died later that night.
Joe had moved to Wellington after being crippled in an accident on the West Coast. Some records said he was 68 when he was killed.
Englishman Lionel Terry, who was reportedly obsessed with the so-called yellow peril, was sentenced to death before his conviction was commuted to life imprisonment. Terry died in 1952.
The story caught the attention of Auckland-based Bangladeshi singer Sabreen Islam, who first came across Joe's death in a sociology class.
"It really touched me emotionally because I had never heard about this story before," said the 22-year-old artist, who produces music under her first name.
"It really broke my heart that no one knew about this history of Asian New Zealanders as a whole because Asian New Zealanders have been here for a really long time and there's a lot of history there that's just not known."
Singer-songwriter Sabreen Photo: Supplied
Sabreen said Joe's story reminded her of the isolation and hardship faced by her migrant parents when they first relocated to New Zealand.
She was struck by how little information there was on the retired gold miner who had been killed.
In contrast, a lot had been written about Terry, including some expressions of public sympathy, she said.
With little recorded history to go on, Sabreen created a fictionalised version of Joe's life story, imagining that he owned a shop selling watermelons with his wife, to portray a wider Asian New Zealand experience.
Lynette Shum Photo: Supplied
"There's a historical bias in whose story is really being remembered here," Sabreen said.
"I wanted to draw attention to that gap in knowledge, and I wanted people to really think about why we don't really know anything about Joe," she said. "I wanted to humanise him and tell his side of the story to fix that balance."
She contacted Wellington-based historian Lynette Shum, a poll tax descendant whose uncle lived on Haining St.
It was common for a Chinese family to run a small fruit and vegetable shop around that area in Wellington at the time, Shum said, noting that she had also lived on a nearby street as a baby.
Shum helped to produce a monument dedicated to Joe, which was installed on Haining St in 2005 - a century after he was killed.
Many Chinese in Wellington endured plenty of hardship more than 100 years earlier, she said.
"You had the enactment of things like the poll tax, the tonnage restrictions and all sorts of huge legislation and policy against Chinese at that time."
Another Chinese man, Wong Wei Jung (who was called "Wong Wei Ching" in several news reports back then), was killed in his fruit shop and home on Adelaide Rd in Wellington in 1914 without police ever finding anyone guilty of his murder.
"These two are just reflective of the atmosphere at the time and ... the general feeling against Chinese," she said. "There were plenty of supporters, but the opposition to Chinese at the highest levels, such as in government, was very strong."
A poll tax certificate Photo: Archives New Zealand - Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Reference: L, 24-8, Box 1
Shum was touched by Sabreen's song and hoped it would enhance people's understanding of what things were like 100 years earlier.
"Her voice is so sweet and wistful and so you have this melody running through," she said. "But then you have the punch: about the guy, [who] would hate and ... he has accessed guns. So, you know, it has that really steely, prickly underbelly.
"That's a really amazing reference to more contemporary events, for instance, in Christchurch," referring to the 2019 mosque attacks.
Koreen Liew-Young and her family Photo: Supplied
When producing this song, Sabreen got in touch with Wong's great-great granddaughter, Koreen Liew-Young.
Liew-Young said the fact someone had written a song about Joe's murder was "quite touching".
"People don't know about this history ... and then for Sabreen to bring [it] to light," Liew-Young said.
"She is not Chinese but for her to connect with what happens based on being an Asian immigrant that arrives in New Zealand and the hardship they've been through. ... It brings up a lot of emotions."
Liew-Young has undertaken a lot of research on the history of early Chinese migrants in New Zealand.
In doing so, she has "let out her fury and expressed herself" and felt honored that Sabreen was similarly shedding light on history.
The sufferings of ancestors shouldn't be forgotten, and she would teach her young son history and learn about where his ancestors are from, Liew-Young said.
"I feel very thankful and grateful for those hardships, and I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to try and live life in a very hostile environment where you are classified as less than a human," she said.
"Looking back in retrospect, you feel sad that ... our ancestors ... would not see the benefits [of their hard work] in their lifetime - we're reaping those benefits."
Liew-Young said people were increasingly making greater efforts to understand other cultures, but some were still hostile towards those who came from different backgrounds.
"I think there's a lot of people who will stand up and bat for those people as well," she said. "I think we've come a long way. ... I think there's still work to be done."
