New Zealand's China Experience, Its Genesis, Triumphs, and Occasional Moments of Less than Complete Success

Chris Elder is the editor of China’s Treaty Ports: Half Love and Half Hate and Old Peking: City of the Ruler of the World. He has researched extensively New Zealand’s early relations with China, and written a number of articles and research papers on the subject, and he has served twice in the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing.

An 1823 report pointing to the importance of the Chinese market -- The lives of Chinese goldminers seen by the missionary Alexander Don and the contemporary writer Alison Wong, and in the film Illustrious Energy -- First-hand reports of the bombing of Shanghai by Robin Hyde, and Mao Zedong in the Yunan caves by James Bertram -- The Chinese contractor in Dunedin who changed his name to MacPherson in order to bid successfully for Council contracts -- The New Zealand sheep flown 2,500 miles inland from Shanghai and rafted down the Yangtze to establish a breeding flock -- The New Zealand Honorary Consul in Tianjin who caused a diplomatic incident when required to remove his trousers at a Japanese checkpoint -- The ship's captain who took greenstone from Milford Sound for the China market, losing an eye and fracturing both arms in the blasting operation.