spinofflive
Photo: The Single Object
Photo: The Single Object

SocietyMay 6, 2021

Heavy metal afterlives: A sideways appreciation of the NZ Chinese Growers Monthly typeface

Photo: The Single Object
Photo: The Single Object

Kerry Ann Lee looks at the enduring appeal of Chinese typeface and letterpress design in the digital age.

In 1952, a slow boat from Hong Kong arrived in New Zealand carrying one metric tonne of lead type. This would be used by the Dominion Federation of New Zealand Chinese Commercial Growers Incorporated to print The NZ Chinese Growers Monthly Journal (僑農月刊) until 1972. Stories about the Chinese Growers and their journal have circulated through families for decades, and been made more accessible thanks to scholarship by Wai-te-ata Press, landmark books by Ruth Lam, Lily Lee and Nigel Murphy, and an essay by Emma Ng. A taonga that lives up to its namesake, the Growers Journal empowered the post-war Cantonese Chinese community to grow and organise in Aotearoa. As this country’s only surviving Chinese language printing typeface collection, it also stands as a glorious example of grassroots community publishing and letterpress design.

A typeface is the design of a letterform and refers to a family of fonts which display particular attributes of a typeface. Ya-Wen Ho (賀雅雯) from Wai-te-ata Press explained that the Chinese Growers type comprises of nine font variations from which there are three different Chinese character typefaces. In Cantonese, Kai She 楷書 or ‘Standard Script’ is the most common, appearing as headline and body copy, Fong Sung 仿宋, references woodblock printing and books produced during the Song dynasty; a special variation called Sheung Fong Sung 長仿宋 was used for subtitles. The first two are perfectly square while the last is long and skinny, like a stretched condensed face. 

Movable type printing was invented a thousand years ago by Bi Sheng (990–1051), propagating the written word throughout China during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Literature was a privileged pursuit, while the common person might have barely known how to write their own name. During this period, ‘Fong Number One’ as he’s apocryphally known, was first bestowed our family surname by a general, or perhaps a king after doing a good deed. I used to practise writing this family name character – over and over again. My awkward chicken-scratches exposed my hardwiring as a diasporic third culture kid. I grew into a shameless il-literati scholar, using my visual literacy in art and design and enough make-do moxie to get by. I know little about Chinese typesetting and defer to MS Unicode equivalents.

My own sideways approach to Chinese language learning involves slowing down to listen and observe, and asking a lot of questions. The “art of looking sideways”, as suggested by designer Alan Fletcher, encourages new awareness and appreciation of old forms. If language is a bridge for communication, these tiny chunks of lead type might be breadcrumbs on a trail without end, scraps I can see and grasp short of actually reading or tasting the words on my tongue. 

As a primer on Chinese typography, Ya-Wen introduced me to Mariko Takagi’s beautiful book, Hanzi Graphy: A typographic translation between Latin letters and Chinese Characters (2014). Nuance is everything. There is Hanzi (Traditional full-form characters used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau), Hanzi (Simplified characters used in China and Singapore) and Kanji (Chinese characters adopted by Japan). Takagi demystifies Chinese language type as more than just pictograms, rather a “writing system of exquisite complexity” that parallels Latin type. The Chinese Growers type follows “function over form” to dutifully communicate information unnoticed, echoing Beatrice Warde’s essay, The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible (1930), yet its stroke forms are essential. Equally so is the immense labour and love involved in letterpress typesetting and printing the publication.

Comparing apples with oranges, Latin type and Hanzi have different sizing systems. Due to the volume of characters, Chinese type pieces, or “sorts”, came in fewer sizes, with their own measurement scale from 0-7. Unlike their Western counterparts (like 12pt Times New Roman), the larger the number, the smaller the size (a “1” used for headline titles, translates to 27.75 points). Both systems have worked together in bilingual typesetting by numerous printing companies in Hong Kong, including Universal Type Founders which produced the Growers type. The Journal features English for proper nouns (people and place names) alongside Chinese characters. 

The N.Z. Chinese Growers Monthly Journal, August 1960. (Credit: Ya-Wen Ho)

The Journal was published locally in Wellington. The photograph of editor Lionel Chan (Chan Lai Hung 陳賴洪) sitting at his office desk was taken above the produce auction warehouses on Blair Street. Lionel’s children Ting and Danny were brought in to do typesetting. In its final years, the letterpress composition room moved to Lionel’s home in Newtown. The Journal served county associations (Seyip, Tung Jung and Poon Fah) and church groups who would promote their meetings and events. Lots of Wellington CBD-based businesses advertised, including importers and exporters of Chinese foodstuffs, dry goods, medicine and books. It also promoted financial services, banks, insurance and travel agents — Chinese businesses wanting to reach out to Chinese clientele. 

The Federation of Growers worked together to advance the welfare and rights of Chinese in New Zealand whether or not they were market gardeners. Significant moments of political organisation for the community, like uniting to lobby the government around rice quotas, were documented through AGM minutes or special editorials during the first decade of the Journal. When the first editor Dan Chan (陳中岳 Chan Chung Yock) came on, he was supported by David Fung (Fung Chiwei 馮智偉), Chan Sou Nam (陳秀南), Wong Cho Nam (黃灼南) and others, after which Charlie Shek (Shek Chong 石松) took over as the paper’s second editor. At its peak, 700 copies per issue per month were distributed to Federation members via postal mail. 

The N.Z. Chinese Growers Monthly Journal, Jan-Feb 1968, featuring Wellington Bamboo Branch Songs poems at the top of the page. (Credit: Kura | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection)

Since its first issue in July 1949, the Journal occasionally printed poems and stories to accompany news and advertising features. Upon receiving a government notice in 1960 to stop publishing political news from abroad, the Journal began to feature an explosion of literary pieces, under third and final editor Lionel Chan. A poet and a calligrapher who enjoyed writing, Chan penned a series of poems, Wellington Bamboo Branch Songs, and published them in the Journal under the pseudonym, A Scattered Leaf.

Ya-wen and I talked about mutual friends who run letterpress studios abroad and are keeping Chinese letterpress alive through international outreach, education, and creative revival. It’s a very literal desire and dedication to ship a metric tonne of lead type across the world with you. A few years ago, I visited the office of one of Cuba’s first Chinese community newspapers, active in the late 1930s, in Barrio Chino de La Habana, one of the oldest Chinatowns in Latin America. “There are diasporic Chinese newspaper rooms all over the globe,” said Ya-wen. “The transmission of heavy type is a parallel history to the migration of the people. Wherever they went, they wanted to take their language with them. Even in places where the language is alive and well like Taipei or Hong Kong, young graphic designers are gravitating towards it because the script is pre-digital and it has its own beauty and aura.” I can see why. The Kai She typeface is balanced, open and perfect on paper. 

These hardy workhorses from Hong Kong now have a creative afterlife at Wai-te-ata Press, where they are used by Ya-wen Ho, Sydney Shep and their studio team to print limited edition artist books, literary volumes, posters and tokens. As kaitiaki, they are also knowledge-holders of the object’s whakapapa and make this available through their community-focused publishing activities. “It’s wonderful to be reminded that different ways of being Chinese can be so expansive,” said Ya-Wen. “The metal type was made in a time before this split in the writing system — before Simplified Chinese characters even existed. When we talk about them now, we have to qualify that these are full-form hanzi but back then, they just were. Some of the characters are uniquely Cantonese and were never turned into digital fonts. They rupture your assumptions of what Chinese is. I love that because we need those moments to remind us that our current state is not immutable, and that change is still possible. ”

I caught up with my dad for yum cha on Friday after his Chinese literature group met for the first time since before pandemic. I thought of Lionel, upstairs in his office behind us on Blair Street writing poems that my dad would help translate 60 years later, and how the printed word still brings people together. 

Noticing the signage through the window, I asked him about the double character 康康’ beneath ‘Big Thumb Restaurant’. He said it’s Hong Hong in Seyip Cantonese, meaning ‘health health’, or ‘Number One’! Hong, as in the owner Chinese name, as in my granddad’s Chinese name. Locals refer to the restaurant as Hong Hong. Otherwise, he said, it would be dai siu gong, a “dead translation” meaning “the chubby appendix on your hand”.

He picked up a copy of the latest Home Voice newspaper and put it in his book bag on the way out.

The tree canopy at Western Springs Forest (Photo: Supplied)
The tree canopy at Western Springs Forest (Photo: Supplied)

OPINIONSocietyMay 6, 2021

No ‘crime against nature’ here: Why my critics are wrong about Western Springs

The tree canopy at Western Springs Forest (Photo: Supplied)
The tree canopy at Western Springs Forest (Photo: Supplied)

Last week The Spinoff published an opinion column harshly criticising Auckland Council’s decision to fell a stand of trees at Western Springs in central Auckland. Here, Auckland councillor Pippa Coom responds.

I’m currently reading my way through the almost 20,000 pieces of feedback received on the Recovery Budget, Auckland Council’s 10-year plan. A consistent concern raised by respondents is the need to protect urban trees. That’s not a surprise – since the general tree protection rules were removed by the National government in 2012 there are limited restrictions on chopping down large trees on private land. In a climate emergency, the fate of urban trees is going to come under greater scrutiny, especially when a number of high-profile protests give the impression a “massacre” is under way.

A recently updated council report provides the evidence of what is actually happening on the ground. Over the three to five-year period it covers, changes in tree canopy cover ranged from -5% to +9% at the local board level, providing a neutral gain of 0.6% across Auckland. It’s a cautiously optimistic indication that clearance of trees in urban areas is not occurring, despite the removal of tree protection rules almost a decade ago. However, the report also shows we have a lot more to do to achieve the Urban Ngahere (Forest) Strategy goal of 30% tree cover by 2050, especially in the five local board areas that are currently under the 15% minimum goal.

Last year, Auckland Council signed off Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri – Auckland’s Climate Plan, which included the undertaking to “grow and protect our rural and urban ngahere (forest) to maximise carbon capture and build resilience to climate change”. Our recovery budget backs this up with new funding to contribute to our goal of reducing Auckland’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.

This year’s proposed one-off 5% rates rise will provide an additional $14m to invest in growing our urban and rural forests, which includes:

  • Planting an extra 11,000 mature street trees.
  • Partnering with community to provide an additional 200,000 native seedlings per year to support council projects, plus community and marae planting programmes.
  • An additional 200 hectares of native forest on regional parks.

Surveying is under way to determine locations for street trees; the local board areas with the lowest canopy cover will be targeted first. This is on top of the planting programmes and ecological restoration already under way and in addition to the mayor’s 1.5 million trees initiative.

I‘m deputy chair of the council’s environment and climate change committee, and when I’m accused of supporting a project supposedly involving “wanton destruction” to native trees and a “crime against nature”, I take it very seriously. The track cut through the native understory of the Western Springs forest to fell 198 pine trees is no doubt a confronting sight, and has raised concerns about whether this is really necessary to achieve the Western Springs Native Bush Restoration Project. An alternative proposal of “low-interference ecological management” allowing natural processes to achieve native restoration appears on face value to be a logical approach. However, the case for leaving the forest untouched made in The Spinoff last week ignores relevant facts, expert opinion and context.

A well-used path runs steeply through the 3.2 hectares of native bush and pine stand. It provides a short cut down to the Western Springs Lakeside park, Te Wai Ōrea, and for many kids in the area, a route to school. When I first attempted to get the track maintained almost a decade ago, the Waitematā Local Board received advice that the pine trees had to be removed first due to the instability of the pines and the safety risk. Over the past 30 years the stand has reduced from approximately 700 trees in 1988 to 198, of which 31 were dead, by October 2020. The remaining trees in the stand were in varying condition, with the majority being in a state of decline.

Examples of dead and decaying pine trees felled at Western Springs Forest (Photos: Supplied)

As far back as the mid 90s, the advice about regenerating the area has been consistent from a multitude of experts, including more recently the Tree Council. Leaving the pines and providing for a slow transition may arguably achieve the same results in 20-30 years’ time, but that approach requires ignoring or downplaying the safety risk posed by the pines. It also fails to consider how accessing the pathway contributes to community wellbeing and health. The public hasn’t been able to enter the area since April 2018 due to the risk of harm from falling trees and other safety concerns. The risk was independently assessed by the Tree Consultancy Company in September 2020, which over several weeks individually assessed each tree. Its findings supported the decision to close the forest. It is not for politicians to determine the level of risk or ignore the potential harm.

Independent commissioners reviewed all the evidence presented as part of the project’s resource consent process and determined that removal of the pines in one operation would be a practicable approach to enhancing the indigenous biodiversity values of the Significant Ecological Area (SEA). The commissioners accepted that removal is required due to ongoing and increasing health and safety concerns in relation to the trees’ continuing decline and fail. They concluded, “The alternative option of allowing the pines to fall and the indigenous vegetation to continue to develop was considered but rejected as this would require the closure of the pine tree area and involve no access and no pest control. This will lead to the proliferation of pest plants and hinder the regeneration of the indigenous vegetation”. The resource consent was appealed to the Environment Court and the conditions were strengthened at mediation.

The decision-making report that went to the local board in November 2020, over five years after the project was first consulted on, confirmed that the project is climate positive and also contributes to Auckland’s Urban Ngahere Strategy. The native forest will provide several additional ecosystem services including improving air and water quality, reducing the impact of the urban heat island effect, and providing habitat for fauna. The removal currently under way is closely monitored and happening in accordance with the consent conditions. This will be followed by the planting of around 8,000 native trees and shrubs such as kauri, taraire, kohekohe, pūriri, tītoki, kānuka, māhoe and karamu.

Context and facts matter when describing a so-called “year of the chainsaw” with inflammatory rhetoric that escalates anti-council hatred, provokes the worst abuse I have ever experienced in 11 years on council, and creates an unsafe working environment. Professionals who are deeply committed to the urban ngahere are finding themselves attacked and defamed on social media and in emails sent directly to their inboxes. Accusations of corruption levelled at the contractor working at Western Springs are unsubstantiated, but their workers have been verbally abused and spat at; their equipment has also been urinated on by protestors.

Six pōhutukawa trees opposite the Museum of Transport and Technology in Western Springs that were saved in 2015 (Photo: RNZ/Supplied)

Another claim in The Spinoff piece was that other council projects point to widespread large tree removal across the city. That is not the case. The removal of one macrocarpa at Ash St in Avondale will make way for a 117-unit development in partnership with Marutūāhu iwi and a net gain of 21 mature trees. Council’s so-called “disdain” for “the Mataharehare pā pōhutukawa” is actually an oblique reference to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s project to build the National Erebus memorial at Sir Dove Myer Robinson Park. That project is not in fact on the pā site recognised by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and will be built with the protection of all the notable mature trees on the site. The so called “killing of another mature native tree cluster in Epsom” reads like teen fiction. In reality, council has moved urgently to save a mature tree when it was discovered that it had not been scheduled in error.

It is also incorrect to suggest that Newmarket Park and the Bullock Track are examples of how “bad” council is at restoration after pine tree removal. Restoration has only just got under way at the Bullock Track, led by volunteers in an area not controlled by council. Regional Facilities Auckland removed pine trees along the Western Springs Stadium boundary a number of years ago for safety and security reasons just as Auckland Zoo did to develop the stunning native habitat, Te Wao Nui.

This is not to say council can’t do better to protect existing urban ngahere and to work effectively with communities to find solutions. Avondale’s Canal Road is a sad example of a missed opportunity to secure trees on private land when there was still a willing land owner and council budget available, a long time before the battle to save 26 native trees got under way. There are over 500 notable trees waiting to be scheduled in the Auckland Unitary Plan and the Auckland District Plan when resources permit. Although our advocacy continues to central government to reinstate blanket tree protection powers as part of the RMA review, the limited tree protection powers available to council should be more widely used. As a council we also have to address the distrust that allows misinformation to spread and the need to build confidence in decision-making processes.

Just across from Western Springs the majestic “Pōhutukawa 6” stand proud on Great North Road. Over six years ago I was part of a group who came together to successfully save them from the chop for road widening. Despite Auckland Transport having the legal power to remove the trees, the AT Board chair at the time was convinced by the campaign – a mix of politics, activism, media smarts, technical evidence and mana whenua support – to order the road builders to put the project on hold. History has proved us right. The extra lane wasn’t needed after all to make the St Luke’s interchange work more efficiently for vehicles. The future of Pōhutukawa 6 is secure. I continue to support the Western Springs restoration project, confident we’re taking the steps necessary to enhance the urban ngahere for future generations to enjoy.