How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
'Everyone's from somewhere else,' Balfour went on. 'Yes: that's the very heart of it. We're all from somewhere else. And as for family: you'll find brothers and fathers enough, in the gorge' (I.1.54).
You can probably count on one hand the number of characters in the novel who are actually from Hokitika or even New Zealand as a whole; most everyone else is an immigrant. The result is a big old melting pot where, according to Balfour and Moody, the same kind of divisions one might expect back in England don't apply.
Quote #2
'Chinatown' was something of a misleading name for the small clutch of tents and stone cabins some few hundred yards upriver from the Kaniere claims, for although every man hailed from Guangdong, and most from Kwangchow, together they could hardly be said to comprise a township: 'Chinatown' was home, at that time, to only fifteen Chinese men (I.9.2).
Well, maybe there's a bit more division than Moody or Balfour might be willing to admit—after all, the Chinese residents of the area near Hokitika actually all live separately from the British in Kaniere, in an area called "Chinatown" (despite the fact that it's too tiny an area to be a town).
Quote #3
The drug, for Quee Long, was a symbol, signifying the unforgivable depths of Western barbarism toward his civilization, and the contempt with which the Chinese life was held, in the face of the lifeless Western goals of profit and greed. Opium was China's warning. It was the shadow-side of Western expansion—its dark complement, as a yin to a yang (I.9.8).
While usually the book shows British characters trash talking foreigners and "othering" the Chinese, here we get the Chinese perspective on the West—and it ain't pretty. Although Ah Sook is kind of the face of opium use and abuse in the area, Quee associates the spread of the drug as a commercial item with Western power. And of course, we soon discover that it's actually Frank Carver who has brought opium into Hokitika—where he indirectly became a supplier to his mortal enemy, Ah Sook.