Kōrero: Ethnic and religious intolerance

In 1865 many of the miners in Otago departed for the newest gold rush on the West Coast. The Dunedin Chamber of Commerce decided to invite Chinese miners to Otago to keep the economy booming. Ho A. Mee, a Hong Kong Chinese who was living in Victoria, was invited to Dunedin to discuss how to bring the Chinese miners to Otago. Dunedin Punch's cartoon suggests that at that stage Chinese were seen as foreign, but not regarded with any hostility.