Chinese market gardens are a significant part of Oamaru's history so it is fitting The Mooncake and the Kumara will be performed in the town. Rebecca Fox talks to the play's author about its origins.
Coming from a mixed Chinese-Maori heritage meant Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen is used to feeling not quite ''Maori enough'' or ''Chinese enough''.
So hearing the response to her debut play The Mooncake and the Kumara - about a mixed-up Chinese-Maori love affair set around a market garden - was quite reassuring, she said.
''I now know there are people similar to me and that's nice,'' the Auckland playwright said.
The Mooncake and the Kumara is loosely based on her family's stories about her maternal grandfather, Joe Kum Chee, or ''Goong Goong'', as his grandchildren called him, and grandmother, Alice Chee (nee Williams), known as ''Nan''.
Te Puea Hansen knew her grandparents but they never really talked about how they met and the struggles they faced in the early days.
''We don't know exactly how they first met.''
She came from a big family - she has 35 first cousins on her mother's side and nine on her father's - so there were many versions of the family's early history.
''It wasn't so much told to me, it's what came through the aunties and uncles.''
She had been able to piece together that her grandfather came out to New Zealand in the 1920s with his father.
He was married and left behind his wife and two children, a common practice in those days.
The family believe his village in southern China had been visited by Westerners who told them there was money to be made in New Zealand and Australia that they could then send back to their families.
Many came to New Zealand to work in the goldfields and then moved into market gardening.
In the 1960s Chinese market gardening was at its peak, producing 80% of the country's green-leaf vegetables.
The pair settled in Stratford and set up a market garden.
Her grandmother was born, they think in the Waikato, but the family moved around a lot.
It was thought the pair met when her grandmother's family came to work on the market garden.
He was in his 20s and she was only 16.
''I don't think it was a romantic liaison. More about the practicalities of life. My grandfather was poor so this was a way to get together and make a family to work in the garden.''
However, out of that ''economic transaction'', Te Puea Hansen believed grew a lasting respect, a ''love of a kind''.
''She spoke Maori, my grandfather Cantonese. English was their shared language.''
It was very hard to articulate their legacy, she said.
It was a ''care and kindness'' they passed down to their children and grandchildren.
''It was so evident without a word being spoken.''
She was only in her 20s when her grandfather died and shortly afterwards her grandmother.
So after many years studying at university and ultimately attaining a PhD in Maori theatre, she decided to write about her family story.
''I think the story is a special one.''
Along with cousin Kiel McNaughton (Shortland Street, Auckland Daze) she wrote a 10-minute entry for the Short and Sweet Festival in Auckland in 2010, where it won Best Drama.
Its success spurred her to write a full-length play, one that would educate people about a community that had little written about it as well as sharing her family story, possibly with people who would not sit down and read a book about it, she said.
To do that she had to extend her research, discovering what she could about the early days of Chinese market gardening and race relations in the Waikato.
She also created an entirely fictional character of a Pakeha farmer for the play.
''The Maori community was not so keen about their kind mixing, especially with the Chinese; they saw it as diluting their culture and practices. Similarly, the Chinese saw a liaison with a Maori woman as a notch below.''
Added to that was a government inquiry into the employment of Maori women in Chinese market gardens, she said.
''There were a lot of suspicions and interest in Chinese in New Zealand. Some saw it as an Asian invasion and tried to put a stop to those liaisons.''
While she did not know if her grandparents were part of the inquiry, she was sure they were aware of it.
''It cannot have been easy at that time.''
Her grandfather also had to pay the government poll tax, which was not abolished until 1944.
It was a tax for which in 2002 then prime minister Helen Clark offered New Zealand's official apology to the Chinese community.
''He could not become a citizen for years. The laws and polices aimed to keep them in their place.''
The play, told in a mixture of English, Maori and Cantonese, had its debut at the Auckland Arts Festival earlier this year, selling out three weeks before opening night.
Te Puea Hansen, who works as a publicist and editor for the arts festival, was working on opening night and a bit distracted.
''I was caught up in my job. But it was beautiful seeing my family there. In the end, that is who I wrote it for. Some of my cousins had never been to the theatre before and found it quite emotional, overwhelming.''
It was also nice for the actors to meet the descendants of the characters they were playing, she said.
''It's very special. I'm lucky people, apart from my family, have an interest in the story.''
There were people from the Pukekohe market gardens who attended and said it brought back memories.
At another performance, a woman in her late 70s spoke of how the play seemed to tell her grandparents' story and how there had been a picture of her grandfather's Chinese wife on the wall of their house.
''I love that it's not a story exclusive to my family; that others had similar experiences. It makes me feel part of a group.''
The icing on the cake had been for the play to get funding through Pannz Touring and Creative New Zealand to tour the country this month, starting in Oamaru.
''It's such a privilege to be able to tour it. And for its debut in the South Island to be in Oamaru is great. I hope the market gardeners go and see it.''
