The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76
Tsang-Shing
Tsang-Shing.
The clannishness of Southern Chinese is very manifest oven in foreign lands. So it comes that, of the 600 and more gold-diggers in Westland, all but a score are P'oon-yu men, likewise the gardeners at Wanganui, Palmerston North, and Kaikorai (Dunedin), also the miners at Nokomai, Waipori, Waikaia, and Orepuki; while the 140 fruit-dealers in Wellington are nearly all from Tsang-shing, as are the Anderson's Bay (Dunedin) gardeners. On the other hand, the laundrymen in Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington are almost wholly See-yup men.
Some 2500 of our New Zealand Chinese belong to two clusters of farming villages with a total population of some 400,000. The P'oon-yu cluster, where pure Cantonese prevails, numbers about forty, and lies from 6 to 20 miles north of Canton: the Tsangshing cluster of twenty lies 35 to 40 miles east of the city. Among the former group the American Presbyterians recently opened a chapel: in the latter group the only station was that held by our own student—Mr William Chan—for six weeks last summer at Whitestone Mart.