KEY POINTS:
Nancy Chen never met An An Liu. But she knows her story better than most. She's lived it.
Like An An, 40-year-old Nancy emigrated here from China, eager to take advantage of the opportunities on offer in New Zealand.
Shortly after arriving in Auckland she met a man,
they married and for a brief period were happy.
"He was deeply suspicious," Nancy remembers. "I could not go out or do anything. There were times he would punish me by leaving me outside the house for hours at a time.
"I would plead for him to let me back in, but he would say no."
Things came to a head one night last year when Nancy was beaten and strangled by her husband.
She was referred by police to Auckland's Shakti Asian Women's Refuge and ended up spending three months there.
She has not seen her husband since.
"I knew then if I didn't leave he would kill me. I could so easily have ended up like Annie. We lived the same lives almost."
Refuge spokeswoman Shila Nair says the story is a familiar one with violence coupled with social isolation and language difficulties pushing women like Nancy to breaking point.
Integrating into a new society and way of life is difficult for many migrants and, while New Zealanders are generally accommodating, there is still a fear of people who speak little English, she says.
Grace Xue understands how overwhelming these feelings of isolation can be. She is the stepdaughter that An An Liu never met and also half sister to abandoned Qian Xun.
Eight years ago, Grace's father, the now-fugitive Nai Yin Xue (who divorced her mum when Grace was 12) wel- comed the 19-year-old to Auckland from her home in China. Within a few weeks he had abandoned her with no money.
She had grown up in Fushun in the Liao Ning province of China and after a dispute with her mother arrived in New Zealand speaking little English. Xue did not tell her where he was going or when he would return and so she struggled on in a new country lost, alone and juggling jobs at KFC and Pizza Hut.
Months after he left, she tracked him down begging for help. He refused, and it was the last time she spoke to him.
Since, the 27-year-old has gained a B Comm with distinction from Auckland University, got engaged and had a son, Edward, who turned one on Friday.
Grace first saw her half sister on the television when police were trying to find the identity of the child abandoned in Melbourne. Grace recognised her father but had no idea that she had a little sister.
"When I first saw little Pumpkin on television I thought how much she looked like me, especially her eyes and mouth. She was really cute. I thought 'how could anybody do that to her'," Grace says.
"I saw a lot of myself in her... the abandonment, the loneliness and having nowhere to go in this whole world she can call home."
Grace has fallen out with her mother too, claiming that she owes her and her fiance $60,000 after they brought her to New Zealand from China.
Grace has yet to talk to Pumpkin but hopes when the child's grandmother arrives in Auckland that they will all have a chance to meet. "My fiance and I have discussed the idea of adopting Pumpkin. It's not that simple at this stage. It's too early, I haven't met her or the grandparents... I just want everyone to sit down and discuss what's best for her."
And Grace has only one thing to say to her missing father: "Face up to your consequences, step forward."'
