Choie Sew Hoy, (; 1836–1901) also known as Charles Sew Hoy, was a New Zealand merchant, Chinese leader, gold-dredger and a New Zealand Business Hall of Fame laureate. He was born in the village of Sha Kong in the Poon Yu District (now part of Baiyun District, Guangzhou) of Guangdong Province, China, in about 1838.
Early life Choie Sew Hoy was the eldest of four sons of Choie Bing Sum, a farmer in the village of Sha Kong (Altar Hill), in the Upper Poon Yu (Panyu) district of Canton (Guangdong) Province, China. Because of war, famine and poverty, some families in Canton Province used their access to the international ports Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong to send young men overseas to work.
In the second half of the 19th Century, these men formed a living chain of migrant labourers. They sent money back, guided other family members and, sometimes, returned home relatively wealthy. Following the California gold rush, Choie Sew Hoy was one of thousands of Cantonese who went to Gum San, "the gold mountain" of California.
When the rush to Dai Gum San, the "big new gold mountain" of Australia, began, Choie Sew Hoy went to the goldfields of Victoria, but he took part in the Victorian gold rush as a merchant rather than a miner.
In 1865 the Otago Provincial Council invited Chinese miners in Victoria to come to the Otago goldfields, and Choie Sew Hoy moved his enterprise to Dunedin, New Zealand in 1869.'Memorial of Mr Sew Hoy' 1873/2576 NZ Archives, Wellington (included in R 24939652 ACGO 8333 IA1 719 1897/929)
Career as a merchant In 1869, Choie Sew Hoy set up his business in Dunedin providing Chinese miners in Central Otago with supplies and equipment and also acting as a wholesale supplier to Chinese shopkeepers on the goldfields. His combined store and warehouse was in Stafford Street, not far from Dunedin's Rattray Street wharf and close to the coach depot for Central Otago.
Choie Sew Hoy named his company Sew Hoy and signed documents as Sew Hoy, so most non-Chinese knew him as Mr Sew Hoy. Meanwhile, his fellow Chinese in Otago knew that his family name was Choie. The black and gold sign which hung outside his store said 'Sew Hoy' in Roman letters but 'Choie Sew Hoy' in Chinese characters.
Choie Sew Hoy became a naturalised New Zealand citizen in 1873.New Zealand Tablet, 27 Sep 1873, p.6 He had a good command of English, speaking at meetings and sometimes interpreting at court hearings.Otago Daily Times, 1 Aug 1885, p.10. He was quoted by the New Zealand press on topical issues, such as immigration and the poll tax.
The Sew Hoy company imported and sold the specialised Chinese food and goods required by the Chinese, many of whom, like Choie Sew Hoy, were from the Poon Yu district. Choie Sew Hoy also imported items to sell to Dunedin's European settlers. His store's newspaper advertisements offered tea sets and tea pots, as well as a range of teas. Also on sale were crystallised fruit, Chinese silks,Otago Daily Times, 20 Feb 1884, p.3 cane chairs, blinds, bird cages and 'real Chinese gongs.'Otago Daily Times, 21 Feb 1885, p.3
In 1873 Choie Sew Hoy and several other Chinese merchants of Dunedin were the first Chinese to charter a ship to sail direct from Otago to Hong Kong. The barque Harriet Armitage carried cargo and 116 Chinese passengers from Otago to Hong Kong in March 1873.Otago Daily Times, 24 March 1873, p.2.Tuapeka Times, 27 March 1873, p.7. Sew Hoy's contribution to her cargo included scrap metal and 78 bales of fungus. Forty-five of the Chinese passengers, it was reported, "took with them 2,740 oz [ounces] gold, of the value of £10,000, which, we believe, represents the result of little more than three years' hard work".Bruce Herald, 1 April 1873, p.7
The Harriet Armitage made her return voyage to Dunedin in October 1873Otago Daily Times, 18 October 1873, p.2. The Customs list for Harriet Armitage included 1,498 packages imported by Sew Hoy, 2,842 packages by Kum Goon Lee and 478 packages by Sum Sang Lee. with what New Zealand newspapers described as "a cargo of China notions"Star [Christchurch], 18 October 1873, p.3 which was "consigned to the principal Chinese firms" in Otago.Otago Daily Times, 18 October 1873, p.2. Among the four Chinese passengers the Harriet Armitage carried to Dunedin was Choie Kum Yok, Choie Sew Hoy's oldest son, aged 18.
In 1876 Choie Sew Hoy and another Otago Chinese merchant, Kwong Sing Wing, chartered the North German barque Anna Dorothea to make a return voyage from Otago to Hong Kong.Otago Daily Times, 19 Jan 1876, p.4. Freshly fitted out to carry passengers the Anna Dorothea sailed from Port Chalmers with 104 Chinese passengers, who took with them 1646 ounces of gold.Otago Daily Times, 28 Feb 1876, p.2
The majority of Chinese miners in Otago were from the Poon Yu district and Choie Sew Hoy was often their spokesman. In 1876 he protested to the Minister of Customs about the high duties on such Chinese foodstuff as green ginger, where the duty amounted to 200%.Otago Daily Times, 9 Dec 1876, p.3 He also persuaded the Otago Chamber of Commerce to call for an end to the import levy on rice.Otago Daily Times, 12 May 1887, p.3. Choie Sew Hoy's imports, mainly from Hong Kong, were considerable. Dr James Ng, Choie Sew Hoy's biographer, believes that Choie Sew Hoy was the Dunedin Chinese merchant who wrote in 1871 that in a period of some six months, his firm had paid about £2,000 on duties to H.M. Customs.James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol 1, p.150
In 1874 Choie Sew Hoy was one of six Chinese merchants of Dunedin who arrived in an open carriage at Dunedin's exclusive Fernhill Club to present an address of welcome to the Governor, Sir James Fergusson, 6th Baronet on his first visit to Dunedin.Otago Witness, 3 Jan 1874, p.4. The other Chinese merchants were William Ah Chew, Kum Goon Lee, Sun War On, Lo Keong, Chin Shing and Mee Wah.
In export matters, Choie Sew Hoy was a very enterprising merchant, sending oats to Australia,Otago Daily Times, 21 May 1883, p.2. 143 sacks of oats by the Wakatipu for Sydney frozen mutton to Great BritainClutha Leader, 26 Oct 1883, p.6, Otago Daily Times 4 Jan 1884, p.1, Otago Daily Times, 25 Aug 1884, p.2. and scrap metal to China.Otago Daily Times, 20 November 1871, Page 2 Just like his friend and fellow merchant, Chew Chong of New Plymouth, Choie Sew Hoy purchased dried fungus (Auriculeria polytricha or "wood ear," known to the Chinese as muk u or muk yeeNg James, Windows on a Chinese Past, Volume 3, 1999, pp. 313.). He paid 3½d per pound for dried fungus and advertised widely in the Otago, Nelson and Wanganui regions.Nelson Evening Mail, 29 Jan 1880, p.1; Wanganui Chronicle, 2 Apr 1880, p.3. Choie Sew Hoy exported the fungus to Hong Kong, as well as to Chinese in Australia and California. An Otago reporter commented on Choie Sew Hoy's fungus: "This peculiar, dry-looking article the Chinese manufacture by some mysterious process into an article of food, no doubt palatable enough to them, but which would, I anticipate, be quickly rejected by fastidious European stomachs."Tuapeka Times, 27 Mar 1873, p.7. Many farmers, however, found that gathering and selling the fungus, which grows on dead trees in the New Zealand bush, enabled them to weather a financially difficult period. Fungus remained an important New Zealand export to China until World War 2.
The profits from his role as a merchant enabled Choie Sew Hoy to travel back to his home village of Sha Kong, where he arranged the construction of a memorial marker for his father's grave and a sturdy brick family home, both of which are still standing. Then he did something no other New Zealand Chinese merchant had done – he made major investments in New Zealand gold-mining.
Gold mining By the late 1870s the easily accessible gold deposits in Otago and Southland had been worked out and individuals could no longer win gold with the simple placer mining methods of using gold pans, cradles and sluice boxes. Large-scale methods such as hydraulic sluicing and quartz processing required large sums of capital for the construction of water races and purchase of crushing machinery. Many companies were floated to work promising claims and Choie Sew frequently invested in such mining ventures. He was for example on the board of directors of several companies which carried out quartz reef mining at Macetown in the 1880s. These included the Premier Gold-Mining Company, the Queen Victoria Gold-Mining Company and the Tipperary Mining Company. Dr James Ng's research shows that Choie Sew Hoy was involved as a shareholder or director in at least a dozen gold mining and water-race ventures, from Waitahuna to Skippers.Ng, James (1993). Windows on a Chinese Past, Volume 1. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago Heritage Books. pp. 315–316. .
Choie Sew Hoy also made mining claims in his own right, sometimes making dual applications for mining consents with his son Choie Kum Yok. They combined in 1889, for example, to apply for two adjoining claims on the Cardrona RiverOtago Daily Times, 31 August 1889, p.13; Lake Wakatip Times, 18 October 1889, p.3. and in a failed attempt to obtain a pair of claims at Netherby near Naseby in 1886.Mount Ida Chronicle, 15 April 1886, p.3.
Choie Sew Hoy and the Otago gold-dredging boom In 1888 Choie Sew Hoy changed the face of gold mining in New Zealand. In his own account of his innovative Big Beach venture, Choie Sew Hoy told how both European and Chinese miners, who had worked the lower Shotover River near Arthurs Point, were aware that the large river flat known as Big Beach was still rich in fine alluvial gold, despite being worked over several times and abandoned.Otago Witness, 12 September 1889, p.11.
The problem was that the gold was below the water level in deep shingle, inaccessible to conventional mining methods. Choie Sew Hoy obtained mining rights for 140 acres at Big Beach and nearby Arthurs Point for 'C. Sew Hoy and Company'. He originally proposed "to put a tunnel in through the rocky point at the Gorge" and divert the Shotover River at an estimated cost of £4000 to £5000. The river flat would then be worked by "paddocking and sluicing". Choie Sew Hoy estimated he would be investing £20,000 in working the claim.Lake Wakatip Mail, 15 July 1887, p.2.
"The claim will be worked by a combination of European and Chinese labour, a new departure in mining," noted an Otago newspaper.Otago Daily Times, 15 September 1887, p.3.
Choie Sew Hoy's Dunedin engineer, L.O. Beal, did a survey of the site with him in September 1887 and they concluded that a tunnel beneath Racecourse Terrace at Arthurs Point would not be practicable.Lake Wakatip Mail, 9 September 1887, p.2.
Choie Sew Hoy's mind then turned to using a gold dredge. Several attempts at dredging for gold had been made both in California and New Zealand but with limited success.
James Gore, a former Mayor of Dunedin later described how Choie Sew Hoy "called together a few gentlemen" and proposed to them a scheme for working by dredges the well-known Shotover Big Beach. Despite the doubts about dredging that some expressed, a privately owned company, the Shotover Big Beach Gold Mining Company, was formed, "the shareholders putting their money into what I considered an experiment".Otago Daily Times, 9 September 1889, p. 3. Letter to the Editor, by James Gore.
Choie Sew Hoy apparently drew inspiration from watching the two dredges operated by the Otago Harbour Board, the bucket dredge Vulcan, which began dredging in 1877, and the bucket dredge 222, which was built in Scotland and began work in 1882. 222 had a hopper system so the spoil from its buckets could be collected.Davis, R.M. 'Short History of Harbour Dredging',pdf,hh pp 5-7; (2009), Information Services, Port Otago Ltd; Otago Regional Council website pdf,hh pp. 5–7 http://www.orc.govt.nz/accessed 15 May 2016.