@NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
Post #1112875
2026-04-07 01:31 UTC
After Farewell Guangdong - book by Lily Lee
Farewell Guangdong director Lynda Chanwai-Earle
In 1939, the New Zealand government granted approval for 256 wives and a similar number of children from China to take temporary refuge here.
The women, who were fleeing war, had left their villages in Guangdong and then sought to be reunited with their husbands here.
This week, a new web series launches - Farewell Guangdong - which tells the deeply moving and sometimes unsettling stories of seven of the women who made New Zealand home.
Lynda Chanwai-Earle is the director of Farewell Guangdong and joins Susana from the RNZ Wellington studio.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-weekend/audio/2018972156/farewell-guangdong-director-lynda-chanwai-earle
Replies (1)
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@gtw@mastodon.nz 2026-04-07 02:57
@NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz My grandmother, Wong Lui Shee, was one of those 256. She and her two children left Hong Kong for Sydney aboard the SS Dandar in 1939, then completed the journey to Auckland on SS Awatea to reunite with my grandfather. (Awatea was soon after commandeered from civilian operation into military service, before being sunk by the Luftwaffe in the North African campaign, where my other grandfather was fighting with the 21st NZ Infantry Battalion. As you might infer, everybody I described survived, and afterwards my parents were born.)