Glenfield Library’s team members are welcoming the year of the snake, Auckland Photo: Supplied / Henry Liu
Danny Karatea-Goddard celebrates the new year three times a year - on 1 January, Matariki and the Lunar New Year.
Karatea-Goddard's mother was the first to be born in New Zealand in his mixed Māori-Chinese heritage family. His great-grandfathers came from China to the south-west town of Milton, Dunedin, just as the mine rush era was ending. They ended up becoming merchants.
His father, born in Kawhia, Waikato, with a Ngāti Maniapoto lineage, fell in love with his mother after they met at a Latin class. He used to escort her back home to keep an eye on her from the American soldiers stationed in the area, Karatea-Goddard says.
"Back then it wasn't common for what we would term now as 'marrying out'. I know all of my Chinese cousins or my mother's sisters, they all married into Chinese families," Karatea-Goddard tells Afternoons.
Maru and Danny Karatea-Goddard Photo: Supplied/Danny Karatea-Goddard
"But my mother married my father, which was marrying out, and my only uncle who became the head of the family, even though he was the youngest, married out also.
"So it sort of gave permission, now when I reflect on it, for all our other cousins of my generation or younger really to marry out or become Chinese-plus."
His grandfather was not happy with their union, he says, until his mother gave birth to the first male grandchild.
"So they remarried and the family got behind that wedding."
Growing up, Karatea-Goddard mostly identified as being Chinese until he was in form three or four, he says.
"I became sort of militantly Māori … it was during the 1970s. We had the Māori land march, we had the Māori language petition at Parliament, we had Bastion Point - all those things sort of intersected. And we're in Wellington, of course, and because Wellington's the hub of politics, you know, all these things were right in your face and Dad was a bit of an activist.
"So he was a proclaimed sort of communist socialist and he sort of politicised my mother and [that is] the other reason my Chinese grandparents really didn't like my father, because they were sort of strong, nationalist, conservative type of Shanghai Xi [City] people."
Karatea-Goddard sees they were both patriots in their own way.
"Mum saw a new China, new way, where women enjoyed better rights than under the old regime, and my grandfather was a nationalist who supported nationalist China, Shanghai Xi and where that was going.
"I was a caregiver for both my grandfather and my grandmother. So I love them very much. That's why I was also lucky to pick up our local village dialect, because ... they could speak English, but they wouldn't speak English to us."
Celebrating the Lunar New Year has become extra special after reconnecting with his village and Chinese clan, he says.
"If you're in with the territory groups or the Chinese clan groups, you'll be eating every night for a week 10-course meals. So we had our first meal [on Wednesday night] and we've got a few coming up, but because of my health, I'm sort of at home at the moment, getting a bit older, so we're sort of taking the pace a bit easier."
There are similarities between the two cultures in terms of prioritising family and preserving whakapapa heritage and traditions, he says. But there are also differences which mean the two don't click sometimes.
"We have two times during the year, one during Easter and one which is now really in the new lunar year, where we … go to our ancestors' graves, we sweep them and then of course we have a drink and we eat with them ... If you're Māori, those things don't quite fit with each other.
"So I was really proud of my children and grandchildren when we came back to Wellington, we'd been away for a while, and they came up to Karori cemetery where our people are buried and they sat, they swept the graves with everyone else and they sat and ate yum cha and had a good old feed and a drink with everyone else at the graves."
Karatea-Goddard acknowledges it's not all "beer and Skittles" either, with the ongoing backdrop of division and racism.
"But I think I have a lot of hope in the younger generation who are well educated, can see through the issues ... they're so passionate about who they are and their diversity."
The growing diversity of Aotearoa New Zealand and people taking pride in their identity is an "unstoppable wave", he says.
"My wife calls it being Māori plus or Chinese plus. I'm very grateful that I've had that opportunity with my grandparents and had that sort of cultural nuances passed down.
"I'm hoping I'm doing my best, mainly through food and gatherings, to pass those little elements down to my children and grandchildren and I'm not alone. I think there's many, many people like us around the country who are Māori-Chinese and we get the most or best of two or three worlds."
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