NG HOR GEE (吳何安, OR WILLIAM WAH) 1914–88
Born in Guangzhou in 1914, Ng Hor Gee was the youngest son of Ng You Wah from Tien Sum village, Jung Seng (增城) county, and Lily Lowe Googan, an Australian-born woman with ties to Tong Mei village of the same county. Ng Hor Gee’s parents married in New Zealand in 1908, went back to China with their first two children, and returned to New Zealand in 1917 to open a fruit shop in Feilding. He attended Feilding Agricultural High School and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Zealand in 1939, a year after he won the Victoria University College Debating Society’s prestigious Plunket Medal for oratory.
His fluency in both English and Chinese, along with his persuasive skills and organisational abilities, led to a long and active involvement with the Chinese community. In 1937, he attended the New Zealand Chinese National Salvation Conference that founded the NZCA, and served on the executive committee until 1961. By 1939, he held the role of English secretary in the organisation and was a translator for the association’s New Zealand Chinese Weekly News, a predominantly Chinese-language paper for which he proposed an English section to bridge the communication gap in the community.
From 1940, he lobbied for the association to buy its own premises as a solution to high rental costs and to provide a permanent base for the organisation. In 1941, he helped negotiate with the government to regulate the remittance of money to China during the Sino-Japanese War. This resulted in the NZCA handling all applications for remittances, with Ng Hor Gee and treasurer Yee Kew (余求) issuing thousands of certificates between them. When the drafting of locally born Chinese for war service was raised, he helped form the New Zealand-born Chinese Association to address the issue.
In 1942, Ng Hor Gee was instrumental in the establishment of a national organisation for Chinese market gardeners, the Dominion Federation of New Zealand Chinese Commercial Growers, and continued to work with them until 1960. Along with William Kwok Sidnam, of the Auckland Chinese Sports Association, and Mollie Kwok, of the Chinese Progress Club, he was influential in organising the first New Zealand Chinese sports tournament in 1948. It was held in conjunction with the NZCA’s Double Tenth celebrations in Wellington. His involvement with the sports tournaments continued throughout the 1950s.
Ng Hor Gee was a far-sighted and capable administrator who combined his organisational and language skills with an understanding of New Zealand and Chinese mores to work for the benefit of the Chinese community. He married twice, first to Vera Harsent and then to Anne Leong, with whom he had a daughter. He died in 1988, aged 74.
Taken with permission from "Turning Stone into Jade" David Fung