- Ming Wood and Yong See Gin’s Grey Lynn villa, bought in 1955, is for sale.
- The home was a key stop for Chinese migrants and hosted large community gatherings.
- The villa, with an RV of $2.975m, is marketed as a rare opportunity by Ray White.
It’s a classic Auckland villa, and while it may look unassuming from the street, it’s linked to an important family in the city’s Chinese history.
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Ming Wood and Yong See Gin bought the four-bedroom home at 122 Crummer Road, in Grey Lynn, in 1955 for around £3000, after they outgrew the two-bedroom flat above their laundry business on Pitt Street, in Auckland’s CBD.
At the time, the blocks around Pitt Street, Greys Avenue, and Hobson Street were Auckland’s unofficial Chinatown. The couple’s business, Ming Sung Laundry, had been run by Ming Wood’s father and grandfather for years before the teenage Ming Wood joined them in 1926 from his village in China.
Ming Wood returned to China in 1929 for his arranged marriage to Yong See, but it was another 11 years before they met again.
The couple’s daughter Connie Gin, 82, and son, Ronnie, 78, told OneRoof the remarkable story of their parents’ experience, as they put the family villa on the market for sale.
“Mum was pregnant, and had been left at home because at that time [Chinese] women could not come to New Zealand,” Connie told OneRoof. The couple’s first son, Ray Ming, was born in China but did not meet his father until he was 10 (the couple went on to have five more children).
“They changed the policies in 1939 and 1940 after the Japanese invasion of China, so women and children could come out,” Connie said.
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“Some men from the village had come before the 1920s. My grandfather probably came because somebody in the village told him to go to the Gold Mountain, which is what people called New Zealand. Well, after the gold rush, there were still opportunities to make money.”
Ming Wood and Yong See’s Grey Lynn home became a stopping point for Chinese migrants coming to New Zealand. Connie said the family still meets people whose parents or grandparents stayed at the villa en route to their new lives. She also remembers the huge parties her parents hosted.
Connie and Ronnie think their parents paid £3000 (about $83,000 in today’s money) for the house, which now has an RV of $2.975 million.
The couple lived at 122 Crummer Road until their deaths, Ming Wood in 1993 and Yong See in 2001. Ronnie continued to live there until just last month when he moved into a retirement home.
Connie and Ronnie were 13 and nine years old respectively when they moved into the villa, with Connie delighted to finally have a bedroom of her own.
“It was still an original villa, with scrim on the walls. There was a toilet on the outside porch, the laundry was outside. Those ceilings were 14 feet high. We lit fires to stay warm, it wasn’t until later that gas was put on,” Ronnie told OneRoof.
“There were fruit trees and dad had a vege patch, which I didn’t keep up.”
The kids went to Beresford Street Primary School, with the girls going to Auckland Girls’ Grammar and the boys to Seddon Tech (now Western Springs College) for high school.
“My parents were so open and generous with their space and home. There were lots of beds,” Connie recalled. She has continued her parents’ community work, being awarded an MNZM in 2011 for 50 years of service to the Chinese community.
Though they worked until well into their 70s, the Gins moved with the times. When the laundry business dwindled with the advent of automatic washing machines, they paired with their oldest son Ray to open The Green Parrot restaurant on Darby Street in 1959. They gave “Kiwi food” a go for three years, before turning it into a Chinese restaurant, Ming (named after father and son), which ran until 1971. Ray then opened The Orient, in the Strand Arcade, a Chinese dine-and-dance joint. He died in 2013, but the remaining siblings returned to the house for a final family photo before it went on the market this month.
Ray White agent Richard Thode, who is marketing the property with colleagues Ken Choong and Andrew Milne, said it was “a once-in-a generation opportunity”.
The 556sqm corner site property is a block from Grey Lynn Park and the house still has its elegant return verandah and much of the original gingerbread wood trims, picket gate, and windows and doors. There are three fireplaces (two modernised), an outdoor wash-house, and a garage.
Thode and Choong said the house would suit families looking for a do-up, but wouldn’t be drawn on price. “The CV is the CV. We are not sure what a property like this may go for,” Thode said.
“It’s a corner site with a decent amount of backyard space. Opportunities like this are rare.”
- 122 Crummer Road, in Grey Lynn, Auckland, has a set sale date of February 18