A dramatic historical shipwreck is the starting point for The Bone Feeder by Renee Liang. Liang, a postgraduate student at the University of Auckland’s Drama department, is directing and producing her second play at the Drama Studio in late September. The Bone Feeder is a contemporary exploration of the consequences of the sinking of the SS Ventnor, which was chartered to take the remains of 499 Chinese men from Otago, Westland and Wellington to their final resting places in Canton (now Guangzhou), China.
“Back in 1902, when the Ventnor sailed, it was considered important for Chinese to return to their home villages,” Liang explains. “So the Chinese which had migrated to New Zealand to work (mainly in the gold fields), considered themselves only temporary visitors. They always intended to return home once they had made the money they set out to earn. Of course, life being harsh at that time, many of them didn’t make it. So they were buried in temporary graves while their descendants and friends raised enough money. It was believed that the bodies needed to return to their home villages in order to watch over their descendants and in return, have their graves looked after and spirits nourished.”
Unfortunately, the Ventnor struck a rock and subsequently sank near the Hokianga Harbour. The coffins and bones were lost, along with the lives of 13 crewmen. But some of the coffins and bones were washed ashore where, local stories reveal, they were found by local Maori and buried in family urupa.
“It’s a piece of NZ history which very few people have known about until now,” Liang says. “But recently some of the descendants of those lost on the Ventnor have started looking for ways to honour their ancestors.” That project, known as The Ventnor Project and led by prominent Chinese community figures in consultation with local kaumatua, is looking at ways to commemorate the incident, with appropriate ceremonies and possibly a memorial. But in the meantime Liang, a second generation Chinese New Zealander, became interested in the story.
“My family only came to NZ in the 1970s, so we’re relatively recent migrants,” she says. “None of the men who were lost with the Ventnor were my ancestors. But the story resonated within me as soon as I heard it. I started thinking about how we are all migrants one way or another, how we adapt to changing circumstances and how we all have to figure out where we fit in.”
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