Auckland Chinese Community Centre Inc. 屋仑华侨会所

We have some strong tennis players amongst our midst. There is a tennis tournament being held with representative teams from various province in China, this month. Teams from Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian & more. NZ has fielded a team under the banner of NZ Chinese Guangdong Provincial Representative Team. Daphne Wu, says her son Anthony has been playing in that team for the last 3 years and have been winners of the tournament.
You can see them play at:

NZCT Provincial Cup 2024
Albany Tennis Centre 10th - 11th August 2024. Starting at 6pm

Jamming with our ukes. The instrument is so easy to play. Learn to play. Hours of fun. Check out your local library. There could be a group strumming there.

ACCC was a hive of activity on Sunday. The 9th Annual Mens Basketball Tournament was on it’s Final day. This year 6 teams participated. The standard of play, exciting. There were plenty of supporters as well.
By mid afternoon another crowd was arriving to attend the ACCC, AGM in the Members Lounge.

2024 ACCC annual general meeting was held today at Manger Hall.

ACCC Mah-jong competition, the winners are
1st May Young,
2nd Nick Ke,
3rd Alexander Wong

congratulations

Many thanks to our tutors Nini Knight, Johnston Luen & Jeanie Stewart. Also thanks to the tutors who couldn’t make it on tournament day, Chas Luen, Maggie Bing, Kai & Rose Luey, June Chan & Linda Young

ACCC volleyball tournament has a great turned up, it is the final day today. Team photos show the third place, runner-up and champion teams.

Candid photos around Guizhou. How to keep busy!

Fanjingshan Ancient Nature Reserve a very remote area. A bus & cable car ride took us to the first viewing point. A misty drizzly day but hot. Difficult to see past 10m most of the time. After the first 100 steps we took a break in the coffee shop. But never say can’t. David, Ida, Sabrina, Peter made it to the next level to view the giant Mushroom Stone. That was an achievement for such weather conditions. This is the area for that picture post card of a monastery perched upon two pinnacles. That is unattainable for us unless you are agile enough to hike along narrow, steep & rough steps with iron chains to Red Cloud Golden Summit. And you would need to devote a whole day for it to be achievable. Oh well, I will keep it for my dreams!

In the old days the river was the main way of transport. We visited some quaint riverside towns. Some with stone buildings & many sitting on wooden poles.

Miao & D**g ethnic area. Gaoyao Rice Tce the villages were busy at work. We enjoyed watching the ancient paper making craft.

An outback experience was needed. So we headed for Guizhou province. About a 5hr train ride NW of Guangzhou. This province is full of “dollop “ like mtns. Most unusual, and 100yrs ago very difficult to access. With modern roads, bridges & tunnels the area has opened up and benefitted. It is the ethnic minority area of the Miao & D**g people with traditions going back 2000yrs. And also the area of Big Data, where all the underground caverns provided useful accomodation for the large computers that needed to be kept cool 24hrs. Places explored. Huangguoshu Waterfall third largest waterfall in the world. Reed Flute Cave. Dragon Palace Scenic Reserve, this place had a river flowing through it and we sailed part way down but had to keep it a round trip as the high waters made it impossible to continue further.

The lure of our parents tales of delicious lychees led Kai to organise a group to see more of China whilst being able to attend the Lychees Festival & visit Zencheng (Xintang) villages from whence our parents & grandparents came from.
23 keen travellers took the fast train to Guilin which provided us with much scenic beauty. A cruise on the Li River gave us many photo opportunities.
At the Longjing Rice fields we stayed in a beautiful chalet (chinese style), perched on a cliff over looking the valley. We treked up to the first level to view the Nine Dragon, Five Tigers rice fields. With the rain falling we called it a day. Early next morning 7 strong walkers treked past the fields we saw the day before so that they could reach the Seven Stars & Moon rice tce. They were late for breakfast.
The highlight of our tour was definitely our visit to Zhangjiajie in Hunan. It was still hot, rainy & misty. There was a cable car ride, extremely long escalators to ride & paths & steps to walk before we got to the top of Tianmen Mountain. From there we made our descent to Tianmen Cave. An amazing hole in the mtn that was big enough to fly small planes through. From there we could see many people that wanted to approach the cave from the bottom. They were willing to climb 999 steps to reach the hole. Instead of those steps we took the alternatives & escalators back to the bottom. The next day we faced up to walking along the very wide Glass bridge spanning the valley. The bridge is 430m wide & 400m above the valley. Another must see area was the Avatar Mtn. Beautiful stone peaks 150m high.
Our tour took in many sights of Guizhou province. We visited Chinas largest waterfall, Ancient villages , cruised the rivers, saw amazing caves that sailed boats in the underground lakes. And we visited the Fanjingshan area.
The last leg of our tour was in Guangzhou where we managed to visit Tongme, Hok Hoi, Pandee, Sek Har, Hargee & Bak Shek Villages. Kai’s home villages has been visited 4 times by us on various occasions over the years. There was no Lychee Festival as the weather had ruined the crops but we were offered plenty of lychees to eat from the contacts of the Zengcheng Overseas Chinese Affairs Office Hok Hoi village had a fruit orchard & the ladies we met were very generous taking us down to their trees & picking bunches of lychees & bunches of a new berry called Wong Pei. The health benefits of the berry was described to me.
The tour ended, our flight to Auckland at midnight was just the thing. Satisfied that we had seen & done so much in the space of 18 days. Many thanks to Ted Wang who oversaw our whole excursion.

Auckland Chinese Community Center 64th Anniversary Dinner
at the Lucky Fortune Restaurant (532-536 Mt Albert Road, Three Kings)
on 6pm Saturday 1 June 2024. More Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=ling.john.9400&set=a.1690964161675214

An enjoyable 64th ACCC anniversary dinner shared with friends and family. Congratulations also to our young academic award winners with some many talented Chinese students paving the way for the future.

The 2nd ACCC Social Mah Jong Tournament for 2024 was held on Sunday, 26 May with an unprecedented 12 tables which is the maximum capacity for our large lounge. The event was thoroughly enjoyed by all and the prize winners were :-
1st Colleen Tang
2nd Rebecca Wu
3rd Katherine Chew

Many thanks to our kitchen volunteers expertly led by Bonnie Lynch, our event administrators, Merry Tsao & Cathrine Ming, and to Peter Pan for the donation of vegetables

ACCC 10 Pin Bowling Day was a great fun day. Thank Harry for organising this event.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the new book commissioned by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust. This afternoon Phoebe Li an historian who researched & interviewed many of the surviving families of the early chinese merchant in NZ is now about to release her book “Golden Enterprises”. She has discovered many unknown facts about how the merchants were set up. Who were the middle men? How did they trade with China? She gave an overview of the times, the political turmoil, the banditry that was being enacted there. There were many historical photos. She has done an amazing job sniffing out the tidbits for her book. I am really keen to find out more.
Thank you to the Womens Group who put on afternoon tea as well.

At the Hoyts Sylvia Park premier of Calvin Sang's new short film. "GIVE ME BABIES'' Both Entertaining and thought provoking....It's showing on TVNZ+ as the 3rd episode under " Motherhood"
Not to be missed!!
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/motherhood/episodes/s1-e3

New book The Fruits of Our Labours uncovers the forgotten world of Chinese-owned fruit shops Many of the shops have now closed and been replaced by supermarkets.

Delegation from Guangzhou visited ACCC 29-4-2024
A high-level delegation from Guangzhou is coming to Auckland 28-30 April 2024 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of sister city relationship between Auckland and Guangzhou. Delegation visited to our Mangere premises from 4.30pm to 5.30pm to discuss with us ways to strengthen people-to-people exchanges between the two cities and together contribute to closer partner city relationship. 广州市高层代表团于2024年4月28日至30日抵达奥克兰，庆祝成立35周年奥克兰与广州缔结友好城市关系。代表团在访问新加坡之后到访新西兰，奥克兰时并受到市长和副市长的亲切接待。之后他们访问了历史悠久的奥克兰华侨会所-部分图片是显示他们访问华侨会所期间。
Photos link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1670081230430174&type=3

There are more photos for the ACCC Golf Tournament Event.

Thank you Virginia Chong for a well organised fun and sociable day of golf. Great to be teamed up with Bo Li, Wayne Chui( can't believe he is in his 80's...plays like a 21 year old) and Warren Joe. Looking forward to our next ACCC tournament and need to buy some more balls....😁

What a beautiful day for the ACCC Golf Tournament today. Thank Virginia, Merry, Ida, Rean, and the team, you are the heroes to make it happen.

Wednesday morning got myself organised to meet my friends down at the wharf. Janet had organised an outing to North Head. A glorious day. Enjoyed the walk to the RNZ Naval Museum & Torpedo Bay Cafe at the bottom of the hill. The climb thru the dark tunnel & to the top of the hill was manageable for the 45 of us. About 15 of them were school children. Lunch was delicious at the cafe & the exhibition in the Naval Museum revealed a few stories I did not know about. I would highly recommend a visit.

On Wednesday Brett O’Riley, the CEO of The Employers Manufacturer’s Association gave a talk at our Rotary club. He was a very lively speaker & in question time it was revealed that NZ closed the Huntly coal mine, the Taranaki Gas Plant & Marsden Pt. But it has turned out now, we are importing inferior coal to run our thermal plant, and that we are also importing CO2 & ammonia. Maybe the decision to shut down those industrial plants were a bit hasty. Brett has had many & varied roles in his life. A Hutt boy who has grateful memories of Kai’s brother Dr Willie Luey (deceased). Brett will be retiring from his present job to spend his time developing business relationships with China & India. This is where he sees NZs opportunities are.