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WHEN A-MEI STRUCK SILVER IN LANTAO
Ho A-mei also maintained an interest in mining.
After his return from Australia in 1868, his first position was at Canton with the Chinese Imperial Customs Service. It was not to his liking, for after six months, as he says, he "threw it up in disgust." He then intended to return to New Zealand to see if he could not recoup the money he had paid out on the labourers he had introduced. While he was in Hongkong waiting for a ship, he was offered the position of clerk and interpreter in the office of the Registrar-General.
He philosophised about his acceptance of the offer. "It is a little more remunerative than the one at Canton, but it may be designated the same ‘a mere living.' No doubt it is not exactly to my liking. Still, taking into consideration the untoward circumstances and hard trials which I had already experienced through the many stages of my life, I surmised a halt here would not be amiss, as it is a mere step of self-denial and of biding my time” for new opportunities.
He regarded Hongkong as a good listening post for “anything fresh that may be turned up at any time in the colonies in which I am more or less interested.”
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The only thing that turned up was the opportunity in 1870 and 1871 to despatch groups of emigrants to New Zealand. He did hear, however, that the Fiji islands might be an area seeking Chinese labour, and in a letter to Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1871, he suggested that “should any of your well-to-do companies desire to embark their surplus capital in speculating upon Chinese labour for that quarter, perhaps you will not fail in recommending me to the post of agency for the procuring of the labour."
In 1872, he resigned his post in the Hongkong Registrar-General's office. His activities as an emigrant agent placed him in a position open to a conflict of interests. There was also a rumour that he had been having some shady dealings with the Chinese Customs authorities.