Chin Ting was born in Sun Gai village in 1859, one of three brothers who emigrated to New Zealand. He arrived in New Zealand in 1886, settling soon after in Pahiatua where he opened a store. He was naturalised in 1894. In 1898 he brought out his wife, marrying her on the boat in Wellington harbour as a test case for poll-tax. This successfully established the precedent that the wives of naturalised Chinese men in New Zealand did not have to pay the poll-tax, a precedent exploited to the full by many other Jung Seng men from that time on.