A Decade in The Wairarapa

Celebrating New Sinology

十年河東，十年河西

It is ten years to the day since I drove from Wellington to the small town of Featherston in the foothills of the Remutaka Range leading to The Wairarapa. Featherston has been my home, and the base of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology, which publishes China Heritage, ever since.

As the sun was setting on that late-winter’s day, I was joined by my cats, Hupi 虎皮牆 and Quan’r 圈兒, constant companions for over a decade. A few days later, Lois Conner, the New York-based photographer whom I had met in 2016, came over from Australia to help me settle in. At that juncture, Lois’s friendship and collegiality had already been a crucial part of my life for nearly two decades. In 2026, she remains an inspiration.

Note: See The Affinities of Art 藝海因緣, an essay circulated among friends on 26 August 2016, the day that Lois Conner formally presented a painting by the celebrated Hangzhou artist Zhang Peili 張培力 to the research centre that I founded at The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. It also happened to be the day on which I moved to le Quartier Français, Featherston, in The Wairarapa, New Zealand.’

To mark this tenth anniversary, I am reposting A New York Eye on the Rapa, a selection of photographs made by Lois during those early days of The Wairarapa Academy 清漪書院.

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Hupi 虎皮牆 and Quan’r 圈兒 settling in at le Quartier Français, 28 August 2016. Photo: GRB

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When marking the fifth year since my arrival in Featherston, and in the tradition of New Sinology that I have championed since 2005, I quoted a famous poem by Su Shi 蘇軾, aka Su Dongpo 蘇東坡, the Song-dynasty scholar-official. He is said to have addressed these lines to his son shortly before his death:

廬山煙雨浙江潮，
未至千般恨不消。
到得還來別無事，
廬山煙雨浙江潮。

My interpretive translation of the poem reads:

If you never see the rain and mists of Mount Lu and the tidal bore of Zhejiang you’ll always regret it.

After visiting the rain and mists of Mount Lu and the tidal bore of Zhejiang, [you may well think]: is that all there is?

— from ‘Streams Descending Turn to Trees that Climb’ — five years of China Heritage.

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The rubric of this chapter in Celebrating New Sinology is 十年河東，十年河西, shí nián hé dōng, shí nián hé xī, an expression that encapsulates the caprice of fate and the mutability of life.

Since 2016, while some things have changed dramatically, others remain blissfully constant. In particular I am indebted to the support of Callum Smith, designer and webmaster of China Heritage, John Minford’s early inspiration and support, Lois Conner, Reader #1, Duncan Campbell, Catherine Churchman, Zhang Peili 張培力, the Hangzhou-based artist who helps sustain China Heritage with Longjing Tea, Jason Young and Andrew Wilford at Kōmaru Kura, the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, and, above all, Madam X, a dear friend who helped me find le Quartier Français, my home.

Over the years, Madam X has been a constant supporter of my endeavours and her unwavering encouragement continues to fuel this venture one that, given the setup at le Quartier Français, we only half-jokingly refer to as a ‘cottage industry’.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
26 August 2026

A New York Eye on the Wairarapa

Photographs by Lois Conner
Text by Geremie R. Barmé

A New York artist outside the Big Apple, Greytown, Wairarapa Valley — A New York artist outside The Big Apple, Greytown, The Wairarapa. Photo: GRB

In August-September 2016, Lois Conner, the New York-based photographer whose work is featured in this site, spent a week in the Wairarapa Valley. She stayed at le Quartier Français on the corner of Revans and Waite streets in Featherston, the gateway town to the valley situated at the foot of the Rimutaka Range northeast of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

The Valley has five major towns — Featherston, Martinborough, Greytown, Carterton and Masterton — and Lois visited them all to make work, as well as travelling around the valley and visiting Napier on the north-east coast with Geremie Barmé as part of early efforts to picture The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology.

A selection of the works Lois made in the Valley appear below. We are, as ever, grateful to her for her generosity and support from the earliest days of the China Heritage Project in 2005, and which continues now.

Lois Conner’s trip to the Wairarapa was partially funded by Geremie Barmé’s Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship, ‘Beijing Spectacle’.

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'Property Press', Megan J. Campbell, 2015 (property press refers to real estate listings and this work was inspired by a house near le Quartier Français and the Tarureka Estate in Featherston — ‘Property Press’, Megan J. Campbell, 2015 (Property Press is a free real estate weekly. This work was inspired by a house near le Quartier Français and diagonally opposite the Tarureka Estate in Featherston)

Megan J. Campbell, a Wairarapa-based artist who used to live at le Quartier Français, warmly supported Lois Conner’s work in the Valley and she has kindly allowed us to reproduce photographs that Lois made using some details of her paintings. Megan happens to be the sister of Duncan M. Campbell, whose essays and translations will appear frequently in these virtual pages. Duncan is also one of the founding members of The Wairarapa Academy (see the photograph of three of the founders below).

— The Editor, August 2016