Chan Sook Yee, wedding outfit

This beautiful qun gua was worn by Chan Sook Yee when she married Chan Jue Kwong in Canton in March 1954. It was hand-stitched and embroidered by a local Cantonese tailor and its hem is lined with delicate silver filigree. The symbolic flowers and butterflies adorning the qun gua represent hopes for a happy marriage and long life. This combination of a slim black (or later, red) jacket and red skirt was common attire for brides in Guangdong Province in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

Sook Yee’s life in Aotearoa New Zealand

Sook Yee had strong family connections to Aotearoa through her new husband, Jue Kwong. Jue Kwong’s uncle had arrived in New Zealand in 1906 and his father Chan Li Hum (known as Henry Chan) had also come here in 1916. Henry would return to China in 1922 to marry, but came back to New Zealand when Jue Kwong was around 11 years old. Due to the Poll Tax targeting people of ethnic Chinese heritage at the time, Jue Kwong and his mother were left behind.

In 1957, after Sook Yee, Jue Kwong, their three-year-old daughter Anna and one-year-old son Colin successfully secured passage to Hong Kong, the family made the big decision to migrate to New Zealand. At first Sook Yee, who was only 23 years old, was reluctant to leave her own family behind. Her father-in-law Henry, however, eventually wrote and persuaded her that she should come to New Zealand for her children's sake. This wedding outfit was one of the few possessions Sook Yee brought with her in the one suitcase her family took to Aotearoa in 1958.

In her first few years in New Zealand, Sook Yee (now also known as Sue) struggled to cope as a young mother in an unfamiliar new country, especially after the birth of two more sons, Dennis and Jerome. After returning to Hong Kong to visit her family in 1963, her wellbeing began to improve. Sook Yee’s family, however, experienced many struggles in the following years as their property in China was confiscated during the Cultural Revolution.

After Jue Kwong’s death in 2001, Sook Yee gave her wedding dress to their daughter, Anna. In 2021, 15 years after Sook Yee’s own death in 2006, Anna and the Chan family made the decision to donate Sook Yee’s qun gua to Te Papa for future generations to admire and to highlight the history of early Chinese settlers to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Additional reading

Manying Ip, Home away from home: Life Stories of Chinese Women in New Zealand (Auckland: New Women’s Press, 1990).