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Hero image for Tales of Time - Dragons in Paradise

Tales of Time - Dragons in Paradise

Web (Excerpts) – 2018

...some families were split. Like the Chinese who married Samoan women and had families...some of them were repatriated back to China.
– Ronna Lee on some Chinese labourers being forced back to China
When the New Zealand administration took over Samoa after the first world war, there were some laws that were passed to try and stop the mingling of the Chinese with the Samoan ... the first adminstrator had said the Chinese should not marry the local girls, because that would contaminate the Samoan blood, but it was okay for Englishmen to marry the Samoan girls, as they were of Aryan stock.
– Tuatagaloa Aumua Ming Leung Wai
Flogging was allowed. Flogging can be for being lazy, or for running away, or for not bowing down low enough to the European employers.
– Tuatagaloa Aumua Ming Leung Wai, on treatment of Chinese indentured labourers by German businesses in Samoa during the early 1900s
When the Germans were here, there was a system of race separation. There were the whites, and then there are the the half-whites, and then the Samoans and then the Chinese...
– Ronna Lee on race separation in Samoa
..when people start asking 'oh, why do you look Chinese," people start throwing out questions about identity, then you become aware that there is a part of you that’s a little bit different.
– Ronna Lee, speaking to Newsline Samoa about her Chinese heritage, December 2018