| Description |
Nearly ninety years ago on a New Zealand market garden, two families, one Māori and the other Chinese, became part of a romance that would uproot their lives over generations. Layered with myth and fable, The Mooncake and the Kumara tells that story, one intertwined with history, duty, secrets and the delicate balance needed to grow families. Told in a rich mixture of English, Māori and Cantonese, The Mooncake and the Kumara is the debut, award-winning play by Māori-Chinese playwright Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen. Loosely based on the story of her grandparents'’ relationship, the play started life as a ten minute entry, co-written with Te Puea Hansen'’s cousin Kiel McNaughton (Shortland Street, Auckland Daze), in Short + Sweet, where it won Best Drama. It is unique in that it is one of the very few stories of Māori-Chinese families that have been told. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Chinese men came to New Zealand to work in gold fields, leaving their wives and children in China. They then moved to market gardening. At the peak in the 1960s, Chinese market gardeners produced 80 per cent of the country's green leaf vegetables. In 2002 the Government issued a formal apology to Chinese New Zealanders for a poll tax which had been imposed on Chinese immigrants for more than 60 years. |
Event
Provide feedback on The Mooncake and the Kumara