Celebrating 150 years since their forebear arrived in New Zealand, 250 people with a connection to Chinese importer and gold miner Choie Sew Hoy will descend on Dunedin at the weekend.
Marcus Sew Hoy, a currency trader, of Singapore, said the name - long associated with Dunedin - was bound not only to the business links his forebear established in the city in 1869, but also to relationships he formed with European New Zealanders of the day, when the family name was established as a uniquely Dunedin-Chinese surname.
Because the Chinese tradition of using family names first was foreign to his European contemporaries, his forebear's family name, Choie, dropped off and he became known by his given name, becoming ''Mr Sew Hoy''.
''Once, I was in Singapore, and I was staying in a dorm and someone came up to me and said 'Hey, you know there's another Sew Hoy staying at the university.' I said 'No, there's not, otherwise I would know.' And they said, 'No, for sure, I've met him before, and he's not you.' And so I went and met him and it turns out he's my cousin.''
The Sew Hoys and other relatives will be coming to the reunion from California, Australia and across New Zealand.
It will be the third family reunion since a 2007 Queenstown reunion. Mr Sew Hoy was one of a committee of 10 of the younger generation family members who organised the event over the past year. It includes, on Saturday, a walking tour of the city.
And in preparing for the event, he said he learned a good deal of history about his forerunner, who left home at the young age of 13 in search of gold, at first in California before making his way to Dunedin.
''You've got to be pretty brave to get up on a boat when you're 13 and disappear to the other side of the world with none of your family,'' Mr Sew Hoy said. ''It's something special. It's something we can all learn from. It's not the end of the world. You've got the internet; you can always fly back home nowadays. Back in those days I don't think you had any choice.''
