Notes

It is the anxious years of World War II. Silvey Chan lives above a shop in Auckland’s downtown Chinese district. Hers is a close-knit community with its own traditions and festivals - and even a neighbourhood ghost. For a school family project, Silvey asks her mother and her grandfather to tell her their stories of emigrating to New Zealand from China. She learns about the poverty of village life in China, about arranged marriages, and the hardships of making new lives in a strange country that often made them feel unwelcome. At the same time, Silvey writes in her diary of her fears about the war and of the American soldiers she befriends, and about Sunny, the annoying boy from the fruit shop who keeps asking her out ...