that book would be great read

It is available at RENAISSANCE BOOKS

it was used as a source when Karen Stade wrote the biography of:
APPO HOCTON(1820-1920) (includes photos)
... Appo Hocton Jumped ship to become first Chinese Immigrant to New Zealand

It was an unconventional arrival for New Zealand's first Chinese immigrant in 1842. Wong Ah Poo Hoc Ting, who became known as Appo Hocton, (sometimes Hockton) left China aged nine to work on English vessels as a ship's boy. When the immigrant ship the Thomas Harrison berthed in the colony of Nelson on May 26, 1842, he joined other crew members and jumped ship.

The captain?s refusal to supply soap with which to wash his clothes is one reason given to explain Appo Hocton?s desertion from the Thomas Harrison in 1842.

The young Chinese ship?s steward hid in the hills above Nelson Haven until being caught. He appeared in court on November 4, 1842 charged with desertion and was eventually sentenced to 30 days in the ?house of correction? on Church Hill. Family stories persist that he was freed without serving his sentence, possibly assisted by the ship?s surgeon, Thomas Renwick.

Appo stayed in Nelson, becoming the first Chinese immigrant in New Zealand ... read more at link


Another site of interest for those researching the Chinese settlers:
NEW ZEALAND ASIA INFORMATION SERVICE with categories:

* No longer migrants: Southern New Zealand Chinese in the twentieth century

* Chinese settlement in New Zealand, past and present : Ng Fon and his family in New Zealand

* Choie Sew Hoy = Xu Zhaokai, Dunedin merchant and exporter, an Otago gold dredger and gold sluicer and a benefactor

* Round Hill ; Alexander Don ; Missions : Mixed marriages ; The opium evil

* Windows on a Chinese past, How the Cantonese gold seekers and their heirs settled in New Zealand ? Larrikinism and violence; Immigration issues; 20th century assimilation; biographies

* The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand and the Chinese, Includes an analysis of the missionary work of Alexander Don

* Who are the New Zealand Chinese?


A VERY interesting and informative thesis was written by Kate Bagnall entitled GOLDEN SHADOW ON A WHITE LAND - An exploration of the lives of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia, 1855-1915.
This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries
read it here in pdf file Introduction, SHADOWS