A photo from W.E. Brown on Appo Hocton, the first recorded Chinese immigrant to New Zealand. [Photo/Collection of Nelson Provincial Museum]

Meanwhile, John McKinnon, New Zealand's ambassador to China, would like to take the panoramic exhibition to his country.

"The exhibition has a huge variety of sources, and it's perhaps the first time where the history of the Chinese in New Zealand can be seen from the beginning," he says.

"I grew up in Wellington," McKinnon says. "And when I went to a Chinese restaurant there many years ago, all Chinese people working there were from Guangdong.

"But now I find some are from Harbin (in northeastern Heilongjiang province) and some are from Chengdu (in southwestern Sichuan province), and only a few come from Guangdong."

New Zealand government statistics show there are about 170,000 Chinese in the country, but only one-quarter of them were native born, while the rest are "new immigrants" from China and elsewhere in the world.