A corner of a foreign field

Caleb Dunn, 5, hears his mother Pam, the New Zealand Consul General, deliver a speech during an ANZAC Day Commemoration held at the Australian Consulate in Shanghai. Picture / Kenny Rodger

SHANGHAI - Trumpeter Hu Dan Feng, 25, admits he doesn't know much about New Zealand history.

But as he played, purely and sweetly, the Last Post and Reveille at an Anzac Day dawn service for 300 New Zealanders and Australians, Mr Hu was "thinking of Chinese people who died in the Second World War, so I can feel what you feel".

A student at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Mr Hu played from a balcony at the Australian consul's residence as the spring sun rose over a high-rise city packed with more than 13 million people.

April 25 is a normal working day in this city of cranes, where the stresses of noise, crowds and traffic jams are offset by smiling, energetic people.

But during the service, held on a lush green lawn behind tall walls, the incessant parping of horns, chirping of bicycle bells and the calls of street vendors receded. Everyone was home again, just for half an hour.

Among them was teacher Pepe Purcell, 36, a Samoan-born Kiwi from Auckland, who said that for many New Zealanders settled in Shanghai, Anzac Day assumed new importance; it was a touchstone in a country so different that it could be overwhelming.

She was delighted to hear New Zealand's Shanghai consul, Pam Dunn, greet the crowd in Maori: "Hearing that, I thought: thank goodness, I'm home!

"National identity becomes a lot more important [for many Kiwis] here."

The service was also attended by diplomats from Turkey, India, Canada, and the United States, all of whom laid wreaths. From the lectern, Ms Dunn reminded guests how poorly equipped New Zealand forces were when they landed at Gallipoli exactly 90 years ago: they made hand grenades out of empty jam tins.

In its solemn tone and format, the ceremony could have been anywhere in New Zealand, down to the children wearing medals. Among them was Ms Dunn's 5-year-old son Caleb, wearing three medals which belonged to his paternal great-grandfather Jim Murray, a Pakeha member of the Maori Battalion who fought in Egypt in World War II.

Asked what he understood about Anzac Day, Caleb pointed to the fabric poppy on his right breast and said it didn't matter too much if he lost that. But the medals were so precious he wasn't allowed to take them to school.

He was fascinated by the grown-ups wearing medals, among them Group Captain Peter Guy of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the next defence attache to Beijing.

The Anzac service was a welcome, if brief, return to the familiar: Group Captain Guy and wife Kathy were studying Mandarin at The People's Liberation Army foreign languages university at Luoyang, about 1000km west of Shanghai.

The couple were the first native English speakers to attend the 6000-student university. They were such a novelty that locals followed them into the local McDonald's and around the supermarket to see what they ate.

Yesterday after the service, there was a cooked breakfast, followed by freshly made Anzac biscuits. As people left the tranquillity of the garden for the bustling world outside, they stashed a few signs of home in their pockets for later.