The Mooncake and the Kūmara Play

INFO

Name	The Mooncake and the Kūmara
Year	2015
Playwright	Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen
Type of Text	Play
Artform	Theatre

ABOUT

First written as a ten-minute play by Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen with cousin Kiel McNaughton for Oryza Foundation’s Asian Tales (2008) and later developed into a full-length work, The Mooncake and the Kūmara is based on the story of how Te Puea Hansen’s maternal goong-goong, Joe Kum Chee, travelled from Guangzhou in the 1920s and met her nan, Alice Williams (Tainui), while working in the market gardens. Incorporating Chinese and Māori myths and characters, it was the first play to be presented in Aotearoa by a Māori-Chinese playwright exploring Māori and Chinese relationships.

Taking place when the poll tax on Chinese immigrants was still in effect, Mooncake tells a wider sociopolitical story about the racist attitudes and policies impacting both Chinese and Māori communities in the 1920s and '30s. Hansen explained in an interview:

When my grandparents hooked up, around 1929, there was an enquiry into Māori women employed on Chinese market gardens (supported by Apirana Ngata). It was the intention of the government at the time to encourage Māori women away from the gardens because they were partnering with Chinese gardeners and there was a perceived risk — among other unnecessary worries — of them producing a ‘hybrid race’. I think this made me the saddest of all — that what was actually a union that worked for both my grandmother and grandfather was being analysed, questioned and challenged by people who had no idea about their lives.

Hansen’s debut play weaves together dialogue in English, Māori and Cantonese, and Hansen has spoken about the challenges and benefits of writing trilingually. “The different languages have helped me to think about character development and relationships in the play,” she reflected. “About how characters grow together and learn from one another over time.”

The Mooncake and the Kūmara premiered to a sold-out audience at Auckland Arts Festival in 2015. The NZ Herald described it as “a compelling challenge to the stark black and whites that have dominated the officially sanctioned bicultural version of New Zealand history” while Maria Ji from Tearaway praised the show for resisting translations and instead allowing context to give clarity to the trilingual play.

Hansen is currently adapting this work into a film.