This week The Star reporter Simon Henderson uncovers the story behind this humble building.
Tucked away on a side street is a small dwelling that symbolises Dunedin’s early ties with the Chinese community.
A small church, now a private home in Carroll St, was built by Rev Alexander Don in the 1890s as the Chinese Mission Church.
Presbyterian Research Centre archivist Rachel Hurd said Mr Don, originally from Australia, arrived in New Zealand in 1879, hoping to be a missionary for the Presbyterian Otago and Southland church.
Not long after his arrival he was asked to be a missionary to Chinese miners who had migrated to work the gold mines of Otago and Southland.
To prepare for his new role, he travelled to China and spent about a year learning Cantonese.
Upon his return, he ministered to Chinese communities at the Round Hill goldfield in Southland.
Despite his limited success in converting the gold miners to Christianity, he continued working with the Chinese.
After spending some time in Lawrence, another significant Chinese gold mining location, he moved to Dunedin.
He established the Chinese Mission Church in Carroll St, then called Walker St.
In addition to Mr Don’s efforts to establish a Chinese church in Dunedin, he conducted inland tours, walking great distances across Central Otago, West Otago and Southland.
"He was talking to any Chinese miners that he met, or Chinese settlers who were there."
An "incredibly methodical" man, he recorded details of every single Chinese person he met, Ms Hurd said.
His archive of notes is housed in the rare books room at the centre and "is listed in the Unesco Memory of the World because it has such detail".
Mr Don also began focusing his efforts on mission work in China, laying the groundwork for the Presbyterian church’s Canton Villages Mission.
From 1901-51, missionaries worked to serve Chinese communities, hoping to convert them to Christianity, but also providing educational and medical activities.
Along with fellow missionaries Rev George McNeur and Rev William Mawson, Mr Don expanded the church’s efforts to China, including building hospitals and schools.
The mission built a hospital in Ko Tong and recruited doctors and nurses, Ms Hurd said.
This building no longer stands, but a second hospital building constructed at Kong Tsuen still survives, but not as a hospital.
Dunedin’s Presbyterian Research Centre houses a treasure trove of several thousand photographs the missionaries took, providing a rare glimpse into village life in pre-revolutionary China.
They were taken to illustrate the daily life of the church’s mission, and were then shown to parishes in New Zealand, encouraging fundraising to help continue the mission’s work.
In World War 2, when Japan invaded China, the mission faced significant dangers.
Photographs captured bombed buildings, wrecked trains, the wounded and dead.
The missionaries wrote back to the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand and especially to parishes which they had close relationships with to tell them about what was happening.
They lobbied the New Zealand government to allow Chinese families to seek refuge during the war, which helped some families come on a temporary basis during World War 2.
"They were initially told ‘you can only stay for a couple of years because you are going to go back ... after the war finishes’," Ms Hurd said.
At the end of the war, many families were settled in the country and few wanted to return to what would soon become the People’s Republic of China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
During the period that the Chinese families were petitioning to be allowed to stay in the years immediately after the war, there was civil war and general unrest in China.
Restrictive policies such as the Chinese Immigrants Act, and later restrictions on migration and residency, meant although Chinese men had been coming to New Zealand since the 1860s, most families of Chinese men working in New Zealand prior to World War 2 remained in China.
In July 1947, Mr McNeur travelled to Wellington to meet prime minister Peter Fraser to plead the case of the Chinese families, Ms Hurd said.
"In the end it is decided that they can stay and that is the beginning of Chinese communities and families in New Zealand."
The new Communist government in China expelled all foreign missionaries in 1951, ending 50 years of the mission.
Ms Hurd said because so much was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the photographs provided an insight into a region that was now completely changed.
"It is this view into a whole different world which doesn’t exist any more."
