Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Scholars have written detailed studies of evolving European interpretations of the changing environment of Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as producing a sizeable body of work on Māori systems of thought as tangata whenua (Indigenous people of the land).While several studies have examined the environmental history of the Chinese in New Zealand, with one exception, we simply do not have any knowledge of the environmental views of nineteenth-century New Zealand's third-largest ethnic group.This short exploratory article examines the plurality of environmental perspectives of the Cantonese migrants who came in increasing numbers to Aotearoa from the mid-1860s.It highlights the manner in which Cantonese deployed concepts such as fungsui/fengshui 風水 (literally, wind and water) to interpret Aotearoa environments as well as the importance of imported deities in drawing New Zealand into Chinese cosmologies.
Author: James Beattie
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4403629343