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Sojourners and Settlers, Chinese Migrants in Hawaii: 7.: The Migrants’ Chinatown

Sojourners and Settlers, Chinese Migrants in Hawaii
7.: The Migrants’ Chinatown
    • Notifications
135

CHAPTER 7

The Migrants’ Chinatown

HONOLULU’S Chinatown did not come into being by statutory segregation of the Chinese from other ethnic groups or even because of extralegal restrictions upon the area in which they could live. The concentration of migrants there was essentially the product of those qualities of human nature that lead people in a strange environment to seek out and associate with others who speak their language and share their particular needs and desires, attitudes and habits, beliefs and practices. In fact, Chinatown in Honolulu was not so much a dis­trict as a way of life. The migrants, reared in a cultural milieu which stamped them as markedly different from other ethnic groups in Honolulu, could have more satisfying contacts there than they could have with non-Chinese. Chinatown, in this sense, was a form of ac­commodation to the experiences and problems of life in a new and strange social world. It was a place where the migrant could relax from the strain of life in a foreign land, continue contacts with the homeland, and find help in times of crisis.

Chinatown, like each individual migrant, has had a life history marked by changing phases. The Chinatown way of life constantly underwent modification and reorganization until it became only a remnant of what it was during the years when the Chinese communi­ty was primarily a community of sojourner migrants. Concurrently, the degree to which individual migrants felt themselves identified with the Chinatown social milieu varied from phase to phase in their own life cycles. Any characterization of life in Chinatown during the decades it was dominated by the migrant generation must be a gener­alized account of what a changing Chinatown meant to a number of individuals who themselves were adjusting to the immigrant experi­ence. Without doubt, the greatest changes in Chinatown occurred 136when the basic mode of life among the Chinese was shifting from that of sojourner immigrant men living alone or in groups to that of more conventional and stable families. In 1884 more than 4,500 of the 5,225 Chinese in Honolulu were immigrant men; there were on­ly about 350 families.1 By 1950, in contrast, there were more than 6,000 Chinese families and less than 6 percent of Honolulu’s 26,724 Chinese were foreign-born males. Over the years the growing num­ber of families, spread throughout Honolulu, tended to eliminate or moderate some of the more demoralizing features of the early China­town, diminish the importance of some of the older Chinatown ac­tivities and institutions, change others, and build up new ones.

In the 1880s and 1890s Chinatown life was dominated by activi­ties and organizations meeting the needs and wishes of sojourner im­migrant men. Their conception of themselves as being in Hawaii temporarily to take advantage of any opportunities they could find predisposed them to cultural isolation. Beyond the necessary and sometimes unpleasant economic relations with non-Chinese, caution about the law enforcement agencies of the “foreign” Hawaiian gov­ernment, and somewhat indifferent curiosity about the bizarre behavior and beliefs of other foreigners, the wah kiu was generally lit­tle concerned about the life going on outside his own small social world.

Many of the migrants who congregated in Chinatown, especial­ly in the evenings and on Sundays, lived in other parts of Honolulu or in rural Oahu, but Chinatown was where they could find a wel­come from kinsmen, heung li, or friends with whom they could enjoy relief from the strain of impersonal contacts and exasperating en­counters with the fan kwai. In Chinatown the migrant was not ridi­culed for wearing a queue or stared at curiously because of his long fingernails or the half-dozen long hairs growing from a mole on his face. He could hear the familiar sounds of his own dialect and did not have to strain to make himself understood in a foreign language.

To Caucasian observers the Honolulu Chinatown of the 1880s or 1890s doubtless resembled the picture Dr. A. W. Palmer, a minis­ter of the main Congregational Church in Honolulu, recalled as his childhood impression of San Francisco Chinatown:

It was dirty, overcrowded, rat-infested and often diseased. It was poor­ly built with narrow alleys and underground cellars … more like a 137warren of burrowing animals than a human city. It seemed uncanny because inhabited by a strange yellow race who wore “pigtails,” talked an outlandish lingo in high falsetto voices, were reputed to eat sharks’ fins and even rats, and to make medicine out of toads and spiders, and who sprinkled garments for ironing by sucking their mouths full of water and then squirting it out over the clothes. And Chinatown was accounted vicious because it was the haunt of gambling, opium smok­ing and lotteries….2

A Chinese observer in the late 1920s, on the other hand, points to the emotional significance of Chinatown to the Chinese immigrants themselves.

Most of us can live a warmer, freer, and a more human life among our relatives and friends than among strangers…. Chinese relations with the population outside Chinatown are likely to be cold, formal, and commercial. It is only in Chinatown that a Chinese immigrant has society, friends and relatives who share his dreams and hopes, his hard­ships and adventures. Here he can tell a joke and make everybody laugh with him; here he may hear folk tales told and retold which create the illusion that Chinatown is really China.3

Maintaining the Home Ties

One of the most important ways in which Chinatown at first met the needs of the sojourner migrant was by providing means for keeping contact with his parents, his wife if he had one, and others in his home village. No matter whether he was a laborer on one of Oahu’s sugar plantations, a worker in the rice paddies, taro patches, or banana fields, an employee in a Honolulu laundry, tailor shop, or noodle factory, or a servant in some Haole house, Chinatown was his link to the home he had left in China.

Few migrants could read or write the Chinese language. If a mi­grant wished to send a letter to his relatives at home, the chances were that he would have to find someone who could write his letter for him, and when he received a message from home he needed someone to read it to him. Men who could do this were most readily found in Chinatown. This was one reason why Chinatown was busiest on Sundays when laborers came there from rural Oahu and other sections of the city of Honolulu. The problem of maintaining contacts with home was complicated by the lack of adequate postal 138and banking systems in China. If a relative or fellow villager hap­pened to be making a trip to the native village or returning for good, the migrant might send his letter and some money with him, but such opportunities came too seldom. Thus the Chinatown store be­came an invaluable institution for the migrants. A Honolulu Chinese described how the stores in Honolulu’s Chinatown at that time were still performing these services in the early 1930s:

Take Wing Sing Wo store on Hotel Street, for example. You go in there any day and you will find a great many letters stuck into a wire rack which stands in the back of the store. These letters are for Chinese who communicate with their folks at home through this store. Sup­pose a man in Honolulu wishes to send some money to his mother in Ngai How village in See Dai Doo [Chung Shan district]. He will be likely to go to Wing Sing Wo rather than to some other firm because it has a sub-branch store in Hachak Hee, the market town in See Dai Doo nearest the village of Ngai How. If he was from another district he would go to some store in Chinatown run by people from that district. The Ngai How man goes to Wing Sing Wo and says he wants them to write a letter for him. He tells the writer of the letter what he wants said. Perhaps he can only send a little money this time: he has been out of work; times are hard; he wishes he were able to send more money. Sometimes the letter is written as the man dictates; sometimes the writer listens and then writes it later. These writers know what the proper things are to say and what this man’s folks will like to hear.

Most of the men who could write Chinese, especially in the old days, were the bookkeepers in the stores. In the old days, one used to get twenty-five to fifty cents for writing one of these letters, and many Chinese used to make pretty good money at it, for there were many Chinese who could not write a letter or who did not want to do it themselves. The professional writer uses more high-sounding phrases, so that the letter is more impressive upon the people at home who read it. I have heard some of the old men complain that they can’t make easy money anymore by writing letters. At the present time there is such a surplus of Chinese in Hawaii well-educated enough in Chinese to write letters, be bookkeepers, clerks, schoolteachers, etc., and so much competition for the business of remitting money that the stores doing this business now keep several bookkeepers and offer to write the letters free of charge. Every day that a boat is sailing for China, there are many Chinese in Wing Sing Wo’s store to get letters off and the bookkeepers are surely kept busy then. On Sundays, Chinese 139come into Honolulu from out in the country districts partly for this purpose.

Through Wing Sing Wo’s connections in Hachak Hee, the letter is delivered and an acknowledgment, perhaps an answering letter, re­turned through the same system, addressed to the man in care of Wing Sing Wo. A few days after a boat arrives from China, the stores usual­ly put in the paper a list of the names of people for whom letters are waiting at their store. It is more or less a standing joke in the Chinese community to ask a person if he isn’t expecting a letter at such and such a store, implying that he has been prosperous enough to be send­ing money to his relatives in his home village.4

The difficulty and expense of maintaining these contacts with home help to explain why most of the men wrote only when they were sending money—perhaps only once or twice a year, such as before Chinese New Year or some other festival period. This associa­tion between mail and money became so firmly established that mi­grants who were not able to send money home stopped writing alto­gether.

Chinatown as Social Center

The Chinatown store was also a social center where the migrant could enjoy intimate and personal contacts. The newcomer especial­ly felt the need for such association and soon learned the location of stores operated by people from his own or a nearby village. Here the heung li exchanged news from home, talked over old times, or re­viewed local gossip and scandal. The merchant himself was usually the best-informed person about his home village. He heard read, or read himself, the letters his heung li received. He especially welcomed visits by villagers who had only recently come from China.

The appearance at the store of an immigrant who had been home to China for a visit was as important as a personal letter. He also brought news and family tidings from the village to the immigrants in Hono­lulu. He could relate events with a personal touch and could give his views on village gossip. Sometimes he brought small bags of herbs, beans, yam flour, or sweets from the wives, parents, mother-in-laws, or godparents to the immigrants. The returned immigrant also helped to refresh memories of the village as shown by the following conversa­tion heard in a store: 140

Immigrant: “E-hee!” (as he enters the store and sees the returned immigrant) “So soon come back? You went how long?”

Returned Immigrant: “I used up the few bits (money); have to come back. Went home for thirteen months.”

Immigrant: “Have son born?”

Returned Immigrant: “Picked a daughter.”

Immigrant: “Also good. Have pregnancy when you come?”

Returned Immigrant: “Don’t know. Your family everyone peace­ful. Ah Wah (the immigrant’s son) very nice. Studies at the village school. Your wife asked you send a little more home—not enough to spend.”

Immigrant: “I make not enough! For a time, no work. Village peaceful?”

Returned Immigrant: “Very peaceful—but some small burglaries. Last month Ah Sai Pak lost a coop of seven chickens. Somebody said Ah —— stole them. Don’t know. Now in the village many young men have nothing to do. Very bad. They do whatever bad. Much gambling and eating opium.”5

Another dimension of the Chinatown store’s significance as so­cial center for the village migrant is suggested by Bung Chong Lee:

The store was a club where the immigrant had status. His words found meaning; he could be understood and his conversation appreciated. He could talk at length and be listened to. He could boast of his catching the largest cricket on a certain hill and of seeing the largest snake in a certain rice field in China. He talked of his achievements; he shared his sentiments, his experiences, his memories with his fellow villagers. Every little nook, hill, and lane, the temple, the goddesses, and the many village legends were reviewed in intimate detail. Through gossip in the stores, the village mores were reenforced, and the immigrant’s life was organized.6

The Chinatown store had frontier and village characteristics rather than those of the usual urban business establishment. The mer­chant’s Chinese customers were mostly other wah kiu who were bound to him in one way or another. He did business with them per­sonally and informally. A customer might stay to chat for an hour. The store usually had quarters where those in the business cooked, ate, and slept, and a villager coming into Honolulu from rural Oahu or from another island might be given a meal or two at the store or find lodging there overnight without paying. A heung li just arriving 141from China might put up at the store for several days until he found work and accommodations elsewhere; the storekeeper was a helpful source of information about jobs available on Oahu. A Chinese polit­ical exile could usually find some store in Honolulu’s Chinatown that would provide him temporary lodging and security, as well as a place where he could carry on propaganda freely among sympathe­tic listeners. Villagers’ clubs usually had their informal beginnings at some Chinatown store, and officers of other Chinese immigrant soci­eties which had no headquarters of their own commonly held their meetings on Sundays at the store of one of the members.

Hotels and commercial lodging houses for Chinese migrants were rare in spite of the large number of familyless Chinese men in the Islands. Migrants staying in Honolulu temporarily would seek lodging with friends or relatives, and familyless men employed in Honolulu expected to live at their place of work or another provided by the firm. As Chinese immigrant societies prospered and built their own clubhouses, members and occasionally nonmembers would be put up free or at small cost. The clubhouses became centers for in­formal friendly gatherings, games and gossip, and eating and drink­ing for members who did not live in them—especially on weekends. Many members who married and established family homes contin­ued to use their society clubhouses as social centers, much like the Elks Club.

Another informal social center in the old Chinatown was the Sunday marketplace. In South China markets were usually held at the market towns six times each lunar month, but in Hawaii most Chinese had to adjust their work schedules to fit the Westerners’ or­ganization of life around a weekly cycle. Sunday had been estab­lished as the Sabbath in Hawaii under the influence of the missiona­ries and according to Western practice, but it was not a day for religious observance and rest for most Chinese migrants. Sunday was Chinatown’s busiest day. Early in the morning Chinese farmers, gar­deners, poultry raisers, pigraisers, and others left their homes in rural Oahu and brought their produce to Chinatown’s Sunday morning market. Chinese living in Honolulu looked forward to Sunday morn­ing as the time when they could buy the choicest vegetables and meats and the freshest eggs. But buying and selling seemed almost secondary to the opportunities the market offered for meeting friends, discussing crops, gossiping about acquaintances, exchanging 142jokes, and other convivial activities of a people for whom market days in their homeland had been among their most exciting times.

The Sunday market was not a complete replica of the market­place at home. Many of the commodities sold in the South China market were missing, as well as many of its personalities. The travel­ing herbalist with his trick performances and facile sales talk; the traveling merchant; the transient craftsman who journeyed from one market town to the next—all were absent. The drugs of the herbalist and the wares of the traveling merchant were supplied by the perma­nent stores of Chinatown, where craftsmen were also located. In the Chinatown market produce and other goods were sold for cash; un­like village markets, barter was rare. For years, these cash sales in­volved haggling over the price; only gradually did but yee ga (“no two price”) become common. The presence of customers of other ethnic groups, especially Hawaiians, also made the Chinatown market dif­ferent from those in the migrants’ home districts.

Sunday was the day for other Chinatown activities too. With the formation of Chinese societies in Chinatown, Sunday noon, at the close of a busy morning, was commonly the time for the organi­zations’ business meetings or social functions. Sunday afternoons became the customary time for funerals of prominent Chinese, as it was the most convenient time of the week for the busiest people in the Chinese community.

There was little demand at first for restaurants catering to Chi­nese cash customers, but later several eating places for Chinese were established in Chinatown, and combination bakeries and teahouses became popular during the 1920s and 1930s. These eating places and teahouses, like the stores, became favorite gathering places for Chi­nese, more for the relatively sophisticated residents or workers in Chinatown than for rural (and frugal) migrants who felt more at home sitting in a dimly lighted fellow villager’s store. In the twenties and thirties the most popular teahouse was Sun Yun Wo,7 in the cen­ter of the Chinatown district, where this writer often went with Chi­nese friends. Day after day Chinese businessmen and intellectuals filled the large room on the second floor of this establishment for dim sum—second breakfast or early lunch. The tables were bare, their crosspieces well worn by the feet that had been propped up on them. Chinese bamboo stools still lined the walls for use at banquets, but common chairs had replaced them at the tables laid with chopsticks 143and Chinese crockery. Each guest prepared his own tea by pouring boiling-hot water into a bowl containing tea leaves; there were no teapots. Over the plates of such foods as siu mai, kau tse, ma tai shu, dau sa bau and over the bowls of tea, groups of Chinese conversed on many subjects. In one corner a group might be discussing the in­crease of freight rates on goods from China or the troubles of dealing with customs officials. In another corner a group of young newspa­permen might be discussing the recent turns in the political affairs of China or an editorial in the last issue of the Sun Chung Kwock Bo. At one table a group of Chinese-language-school teachers might be la­menting the lack of interest shown by their students in mastering Chinese. At another table an elderly, poorly clad Chinese man might be listening intently while a young man read to him and explained a letter from China, or translated a letter written in English by a son at­tending college on the U.S. mainland. Here was laughter and heated argument, and above the bustle and talk the waiters could be heard singing their orders down the dumbwaiter to the kitchen below. In earlier years no women would have been seen in such a place of eat­ing and leisurely conversation, but by the thirties one occasionally saw a local-born Chinese girl there, perhaps bringing some Caucasian friends seeking atmosphere of the old Chinatown. In restaurants like this Chinese societies would hold their annual banquets; the wuis would have dinners at which monthly bids were opened; the sixty-first birthdays of prominent Chinese would be celebrated; visiting friends would be entertained and famous Chinese passing through Honolulu would be honored.

Commercialized Vice

In Chinatown the sojourner migrant was exposed, often for the first time, to commercialized vice. The ordinary young man in the village of the type from which most Chinese migrants came during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s was closely supervised by older members of a dominating family or kinship group. Any individual liberty he en­joyed was the freedom to act within boundaries prescribed and ap­proved by family mores. He had no money to spend as he wanted. For most of these young men opium smoking, illicit relations with women, and serious gambling were out of the question. Villagers knew that such practices were prevalent in the cities but they did not 144approve of them within the family. It was not merely that such hab­its were considered bad for the individual; anyone who indulged in them brought disrepute to the whole family clan. Wayward behav­ior soon became a subject of village gossip.

Most of the Chinese migrants came to Hawaii from districts lo­cated only a few miles from Hong Kong, Canton, or Macao, and some villagers who went to those cities to seek their fortunes in­dulged in the pleasures they found there. C. K. Ai reports that a granduncle who had made and lost a fortune in Canton returned to live in the village where “like so many of his generation” he was a confirmed opium smoker. Macao, the Portuguese colony which was “within four hours’ walk” of Ai’s home village, had by the nine­teenth century become notorious for opium, gambling, and prostitu­tion. Ai said that although “friendly gambling” was customary among relatives at lunar New Year in his home village, excessive gambling, presumably in Macao, brought disgrace to his nephew and the nephew’s wife.8

Conditions in Hawaii were, on the whole, not favorable to maintaining village standards of morality. Here the young migrant, even if he had kinsmen in the Islands, was not under the daily sur­veillance of family members. If he went to the sugar plantations he entered a contract as an individual and was treated as one rather than as a member of a family group. Wherever he worked, he received money which he alone could decide how to spend. His personal be­havior was restricted only by plantation rules, employers’ demands, and laws of the Hawaiian government—all of them “foreign” agen­cies toward which he felt no personal or traditional obligations. In­stead of living in a stable community with strong mores, the migrant was in a world of transitory relationships and conflicting standards of conduct. The extremely abnormal age-sex ratio of the society in which the migrants lived in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s con­tributed to the spread of habits which family control would have restricted in the village.

It was easy for the migrant to start gambling and smoking opium in Chinatown. Whiling away the time at a friendly game at a Chinese store or society clubhouse not infrequently led to more seri­ous gambling. In the lodging quarters of a store or a Chinese society’s clubhouse the newcomer or visitor could be invited to join others in smoking opium. Store proprietors and older members of the society 145might disapprove, but they were not usually in a position to interfere as kinsmen in the village might have done.

As gambling and opium smoking spread, there were migrants who saw the profits to be made by exploiting these habits, and the subsequent commercialization made Chinatown the center of a net­work of gambling operators, opium importers, and opium sellers which spread throughout the Islands. The “banks” or headquarters for lotteries—chee fa and bark gup biu (“white pigeon ticket”)—were lo­cated in Chinatown;9 certain stores and runners in Chinatown and on all the islands received commissions for handling tickets and bets. At first the major operators and participants were Chinese, but it was not long before Hawaiians, Caucasians, Japanese, and others were taking part. In fact, at one time lotteries were so popular with the Ha­waiians that some chee fa tickets were made up of Hawaiian words.10 By the 1930s the number of unattached Chinese men had diminished and this form of gambling was not so prevalent among the settled Chinese family men; most of the lottery ticket buyers were reported to be Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians, Japanese, and Filipinos.11

The popular table games in the “gambling dens” of Chinatown were fan tan, pai kau, and sup chai. The “dens” were usually barricaded rooms on an upper floor; when watchers warned that the place was about to be raided, operators tried to get rid of evidence of a game before the police could break in. If the operators succeeded, the police might find the men just sitting on stools around the walls of the room, talking idly among themselves.

Some Caucasians in Honolulu protested against the gambling that was known to go on in Chinatown, but their objections were generally ineffective. English-language newspapers carried stories about lotteries, gambling dens, and arrests and convictions, and occa­sionally editorials condemned the flagrant disregard of antigambling laws in Chinatown.12 Antilottery laws were passed and from time to time the banks were raided and operators arrested, but most banks were soon back in business. Officers who were supposed to enforce the laws were themselves suspected of taking money from the gam­blers. In fact, from the 1880s into the 1920s most Caucasian resi­dents, along with lower-rank government officials who were mostly Hawaiians, were probably indifferent toward the way Chinese mi­grants spent their spare time as long as they kept to themselves. Even as late as the 1930s police appeared to have been quite tolerant 146toward gambling among the Chinese. When this writer went with two China-born students to Manoa Chinese Cemetery to observe Ching Ming ceremonies in April 1931, dozens of Chinese, mostly el­derly men, were playing fan tan and pai kau even while the ceremo­nies were being performed. Some twenty tables were set up on the edge of the cemetery—less than fifty feet away from a part-Hawaiian policeman who directed traffic but ignored the gambling that went on for several hours. The students pointed out a detective of Chinese ancestry who seemed to be enjoying the whole affair.13

As with gambling, Chinatown was the center of the opium busi­ness which extended throughout the Islands. Some storekeepers, heads of Chinese camps, Chinese labor contractors, and others were unscrupulous about the business—in fact, it has been charged that some Chinese employers of the early days forced their Chinese la­borers to accept opium as part of their wages. It is more likely that Chinese employers complacently accepted their laborers’ use of opium, obtained it for them, dispensed it to them, and deducted the price from wages. In Chinatown itself there were many places where opium could be bought and smoked. Tyhune, in business in Hono­lulu from 1833 to 1853, was said to have provided rooms for “his countrymen addicted to the use of opium.”14 Some of the Chinese imported from Amoy in 1852 were reported to be habitual opium users and some of them who came to Honolulu after leaving the plantations became involved in stealing and peddling opium from Caucasian-owned drugstores.15

Almost from the beginning, the government’s main concern was not use of the drug by Chinese but the danger that their “perni­cious habit” might be “acquired by His Majesty’s native born sub­jects,” as indicated in the preamble of an 1856 act prohibiting the importation and sale of opium except when prescribed by licensed physicians. From 1860 to 1874 the government attempted to confine the use of opium, except for medicinal purposes, to the Chinese by issuing licenses to Chinese to import and sell opium only to Chinese. Annual auctions of these licenses proved to be a lucrative source of government revenue. The extent of the trade and its profitability were demonstrated when a Chinese bid nearly $47,000 for the one license auctioned in 1874. By this time scores of Chinese migrants, in addition to the import-license holder, were profiting in one way or another from the habit among their countrymen. 147

The legislature of 1874 returned to the policy of prohibiting the importing and selling of opium except for medical treatment. From 1876 to 1892 almost every legislature was pressured to reenact an opium licensing bill. The Chinese business community was embar­rassed in 1880 when certain Chinese merchants in Honolulu were reported to have been involved in bribery concerning an opium li­censing bill. (King Kalakaua had vetoed one passed in 1878.) A more notorious case was exposed in 1887. Late in 1886 the legislature had passed a bill providing for an opium monopoly license to be sold for $30,000. The license was awarded to a Chinese who was later re­ported to have paid $80,000 to King Kalakaua through an intermedi­ary. The scandal was intensified when it was learned that another Chinese merchant and rice planter connected with one of the largest Chinese firms in Honolulu had given the king “presents” amounting to $71,000 with the understanding that he would receive the license. The legislature repealed the opium act and reenacted previous legis­lation prohibiting importation, sale, and use of opium.16

In spite of the prohibition, opium smuggling and opium use con­tinued, Each year from 1880 to 1900 hundreds of Chinese migrants were arrested and convicted on opium charges. Convicted users who were sent to jail for a few months generally resumed the habit. “Opium joints” were frequently raided, but usually they were so bar­ricaded that evidence could be destroyed or thrown down pipes into cesspools before police could force their way in. And although there was public pressure to stop opium smoking, there were periods when smoking places were protected by arrangements between police and operators. Chinese who wanted opium smuggling stopped and the use of opium reduced were generally cynical about the effectiveness of the police, who were widely believed in the Chi­nese community to accept bribes.17

After Annexation local laws against opium were reinforced by federal statutes and agencies. In spite of the higher risks, wuis contin­ued to engage in the traffic, and from time to time local newspapers reported arrests of Chinese and others charged with opium smuggl­ing.18 By the 1930s, however, the character of the opium traffic and its place in Chinatown had changed. Most of the opium smuggled in­to Hawaii reportedly was being transshipped to the continental United States or sold to members of other ethnic groups in Hawaii. Chinese opium smokers, mostly aged, unmarried men living in the 148old Chinese quarter, were still being arrested,19 but very few Island-born Chinese took up the habit. As the number of first-generation migrants dwindled away, opium smoking among Honolulu Chinese became a thing of the past. Chinese are still occasionally arrested in Honolulu on narcotics smuggling charges, but they are more likely to be from Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Bangkok than from Honolulu, and they are involved in an international traffic which is unrelated to the old opium smoking activities in Honolulu’s Chinatown.

Although Chinese migrants in Hawaii were predominantly adult males without families in the Islands, few Chinese women seem to have been brought to Honolulu for commercialized prostitu­tion.20 During the same period that Chinese tongs in San Francisco were importing women for brothels there, Chinese in Honolulu were not accused of doing so—even during the period of bitterest anti-Chinese agitation. The United Chinese Society of Honolulu, in a petition to the U.S. Congress in 1916 appealing for reopening the im­portation of Chinese labor, asserted that there were no Chinese women “in the haunts of vice … in the whole Territory of Hawaii.” The petition called attention to a recent canvass of 107 “unfortunate women” in the segregated district then existing in Honolulu and pointed out that while 82 of the women were of “oriental birth” none was Chinese.21 The petition did not claim that no Chinese men visited this district. In this same decade Dr. Khai Fai Li opened, in ad­dition to the office he and his wife had in Chinatown, an office in Iwilei on the edge of the red light district because of his concern about the prevalence of venereal disease. His patients, Chinese and non-Chinese alike, came from the plantation areas of rural Oahu as well as from Honolulu.22

Cantonese Theater

At about the time of Chinese New Year in 1879 one of Honolulu’s newspapers announced a forthcoming event with a mixture of satire and anticipation:

A great attraction will be presented shortly, that will no doubt eclipse all the theatre and circus shows of the Western barbarians. A Chinese dramatic company is about to open and will give a season. It will be ex­tremely 149interesting, as we learn that one of their plays extends over a period of more than one hundred years. The interludes consist of musi­cal entertainments—principally gongs, cymbals, and firecrackers.23

For half a century one of the great delights in Chinatown for members of the Chinese community was “Cantonese opera.” A Chi­nese theater was built in the late 1870s in the heart of Chinatown; the 1884 census reported that eighty-four Chinese men in Honolulu were “theater actors.” During that year a Chinese known as Tai On secured “public show” licenses for weekly performances in January—the Chinese New Year season—and for biweekly performances in the remaining months.

Chinese migrants were familiar with theatrical performances by troupes of professional actors who visited their home villages on spe­cial occasions—during New Year festivals or at times of ancestral or religious celebrations. At such times performances were given in an improvised open-air theater much as in the days of Elizabethan drama in England. Financial arrangements were made by the clan elders for the entire village. In Honolulu, however, the theater was more like that of the Chinese city than the village. It was a commer­cial venture undertaken by Chinese promoters, and the theater was part of Chinatown business life. Companies of actors were brought from South China, performances were billed, and tickets were sold to individual playgoers. This is the system with which Westerners are familiar, of course, but to the Chinese migrant it was another change from the clan world of his village. Nevertheless, the opportu­nity to see familiar drama in a Cantonese dialect was a magnet which drew migrants to Chinatown from other districts of Honolulu and from all over Oahu. Chee Kwon Chun and John Coulter tell about rice planters, as soon as the week’s work ended on Saturday after­noon, going on horseback “to town to see Chinese shows, provided by actors from China.”24

A Chinese student of Chinatowns on the U.S. mainland in the 1920s described Chinese drama of the type that was presented in Honolulu:

An important part of the organization of a Chinese theatre is the or­chestra. This is composed of a leader who plays the ox-hide drum, a fiddler, a banjoist, a gong player, and a cymbal player. The orchestra is 150supposed to accompany the singing, but frequently the noise which the orchestra makes is so loud that even a trained ear can hardly detect the human voice.

A man with little imagination cannot enjoy a Chinese drama. When a Chinese actor prances about, the audience must imagine he is riding a horse. When an actress knocks in the air with her fan, a sympa­thetic observer must picture in his mind a door that is locked. He must overlook a warrior or a traitor who, after suffering decapitation on the stage, calmly rises and walks away. He must, however, pay no atten­tion to the property man, who comes out again and again to put a label on a bench or chair, transforming it into a bridge, a boat or a pagoda, as the occasion demands. To an uninformed American, all these move­ments are bewildering, but the Chinese, who have been accustomed to these things from childhood, enjoy them immensely.25

It is not surprising that such a theater had little appeal to the non-Chinese in Honolulu in the late nineteenth century. Few of them would have understood (or have been interested in learning) the con­ventions of Chinese drama, and the music of the theater—particu­larly the loud beating of gongs—seemed barbarous to the Western ear. A strong puritanical element remained in the missionary com­munity to whom even Western theater had an immoral tinge, and Chinese theater was not only incomprehensible but heathen. Mi­grants attending the theater expected the performance to continue until midnight or even later, and Cantonese opera required an or­chestra. Because some Caucasian residents objected to the “noise” coming from the Chinese theater, the Minister of the Interior includ­ed a provision in the public show licenses in 1885 that the orchestra could not play after ten o’clock. A Chinese promoter applying for a license for a forthcoming production, which was to run for twenty-four nights, asked that this restriction “be removed or modified so that the use of gongs, drums and other instruments connected with the orchestra be extended to 11:30 o’clock in the evening, and all plays to cease at 12:00 o’clock in the evening, and the Theatre to be closed at 12:30 a.m.” The promoter pointed out “that in order to render effectual any play in the Chinese language, it is necessary to have the use of the gongs and drums.” He assured the minister that he would “endeavor to use the gongs and drums in such a manner as to prevent the noise from being considered a nuisance.”26

Cantonese theatrical productions remained popular from the 1880s until the late 1920s. Professional troupes en route to or from 151Chinatowns on the Pacific Coast stopped off in Honolulu where local Chinese businessmen would underwrite their performances in the Chinese Theater and share in the profits. After the Republic of China was established in 1911, women began to appear in these troupes, replacing some of the tan actors (males taking female roles). By the late 1920s, however, attendance was dropping off and the sponsors usually lost money. As late as 1930 one could attend an oc­casional performance of Cantonese opera and see whole families there—grandparents, parents, and young children—but there was not enough patronage to make regular performances profitable. The Chinese productions could no longer draw large audiences of young adult male migrants, and the older first-generation men, especially those who were financially successful, were too busy with commer­cial affairs, Chinese organizations, and family life to spend long hours watching a Chinese opera. The young Hawaii-born Chinese who had been educated in the American school system were more interested in American movies than in Cantonese theater.

Even though bringing professional troupes to Honolulu was no longer profitable, Chinatown remained for a long time the center of those dramatic and musical events that were most distinctively Chi­nese. Amateur performances of Cantonese shows were staged by local Chinese dramatic clubs organized by young adult immigrants and some of the Hawaii-born Chinese, especially those who had been sent to China for part of their schooling. Chinese dramas were also put on by students in the Chinese-language schools. When drives were held to raise money for these schools, it was customary for one of the adult dramatic clubs to put on a benefit Cantonese show. With the upsurge of Chinese national consciousness, many of these productions took on a nationalistic flavor. After 1911 a free dramatic performance was usually given at one of the language schools as part of the celebration of Chinese Independence Day (“Double Ten Day”).

Chinese movies were brought to Honolulu in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but box-office receipts were too low to pay for showing them daily or even weekly. Silent movies from China were shown occasionally, and the first Chinese talkies made their appearance in a small theater near the old Chinatown district in 1933. The synopsis of one of the silent Chinese movies, The Loo Yang Bridge, was printed on the program when it was shown at the Park Theater (“Home of High Class Chinese Movies”) on 15 June 1930: 152

This charming legend relates of the butcher of pigs, who for years had thrown the intestines of the thousands of pigs which he killed into the Loo Yang River. These intestines turn to turtles, snakes, and evil spir­its, which cause much damage to those crossing the river. During the passage of a large boat which is nearly upset, a priest hears a voice from the sea, warning to let the boat alone as an exalted person named Tsai is on board. Inquiry brings out the fact that a Mrs. Tsai is on board and the priest informs her that her expected son will become a man of great prominence. Mrs. Tsai makes a promise if this is true she will honour the occasion by building a bridge over this turbulent river for the good of all.

The son is born and in years later is told the promise his mother made; he vows to complete her promise if possible. He passes the Im­perial Literature Examinations with highest honours, is selected by the Prime Minister as son-in-law. The marriage takes place and the young couple are much in love with each other. His wife proves herself very capable and through her ability, and under the most extraordinary cir­cumstances, the bridge is finally erected, and still stands as a monu­ment, for the good of the people, erected through the unceasing ef­forts of a young couple, to whom came all they wished for because of their goodness to others and the unceasing love they bore to each other.

To members of the second and third generations, whose tastes had been formed by American movies, such a plot might have novelty but it was not likely to supplant the Hollywood variety.27

Chinatown as Source of Help

In the migrant’s personal life, Chinatown was more than a place to re­lax and keep up contacts with home—it was the place where he could find help in times of crisis. Especially for the pre-Annexation migrant, Chinatown could provide the best substitutes for the physi­cal care and spiritual assistance he would have received at home from family, clan, and village temple.

At home most of the migrant’s physical ailments had been treated by the women of his family or other women in his village. It was they who prepared the home remedies and administered the cures according to traditions handed down through generations. Herbs and other drugs were part of the household stock; water bot­tled on the seventh day of the seventh moon, when it was believed to be especially pure and to have medicinal value, was kept for use in 153times of illness. Professional or semiprofessional healers would be re­sorted to only in serious cases which did not yield to home methods. Away from home the migrant had to turn to other sources of care, and the presence of large numbers of familyless men in Honolulu provided a field for many sorts of medical practitioners in China­town.

Chinese herb stores took the place of the household supply and offered a much greater variety of remedies than the home would have had. The migrant could buy a bulky package of half a dozen or more ingredients to be brewed into a thick tea for a cold—the pack­age would even contain a piece of sweet preserved fruit for taking away the bitter taste of the tea. All sorts of remedies filled the drawers which lined these stores from floor to ceiling. Some, like the cold preparations, were made up in advance; others, more rare, like the tiny shavings from the horn of a specially killed deer, were made up on the prescription of a Chinese herbalist who owned the store. The herbalists almost invariably had learned their profession from members of the preceding generations in their clan rather than in a professional school; they were generally able to read and write Chi­nese; occasionally there was one who had taken a degree under the imperial examination system of Manchu days.28 Such herbalists had not been common in the smaller villages, although they might have been known to the migrants from the larger villages or market towns.

Sufferers from specific ailments could find other practitioners in Chinatown who would undertake to cure them. Chinese barbers were sometimes also masseurs who attempted, by tapping, knead­ing, or pommeling, to treat such troubles as headaches, insomnia, and nervousness. Others in Chinatown practiced ancient Chinese treatments for rheumatism or aches in various parts of the body. An account given in the 1920s by a Honolulu-born Chinese dentist de­scribes some of the Chinese medical treatments he had known in his youth in Hawaii:

When a patient appeared with an aching arm, from any cause whatso­ever, the “physician” would locate the nerve leading to that part of the body and apply his treatment where it came close to the surface of the body. Treatments were of two kinds, other than massaging.

One was to apply a small amount of powder [moxa] and allow it to burn slowly over the nerve until the patient became insensible to pain at the part affected. The other was by piercing [acupuncture]. 154

Dr. Chang pointed out that persons administering such treatments are not versed in medical science and might cause infections through the use of unsterilized needles or wires. He believes both practices were harmful. Both afford only temporary relief and do not go to the cause of the illness, as is often believed by the patients.29

The degree of professionalism among these various practition­ers varied from one to the other, and payment was of different sorts. The herbalist usually stipulated prices that were paid in cash, but others might or might not have set fees. Often they were repaid with gifts of food, jewelry, or li shee (money wrapped in red paper). This practice, a carry-over from the personal relationships prevailing in the village community, was familiar to the Chinese migrant.

Chinese migrants turned to Western medicine very slowly. When Dr. and Mrs. Khai Fai Li opened an office in Chinatown in 1896, it was many weeks before they had their first Chinese patient; much of their practice was with poor Hawaiians and Portuguese.30 Today, of course, most of the Hawaii Chinese go to Western-trained physicians and surgeons, but in 1979 there were still four Chinese herb stores doing business in Chinatown. Despite the reluctance of the migrant generation to be treated by Western medical methods, medicine became one of the most prestigious professions among the Hawaii-born Chinese. Although only a few doctors of Chinese ances­try now practice in the old Chinatown area, one of the most success­ful clinics, owned and staffed by Hawaii-born Chinese physicians and surgeons trained on the U.S. mainland, is close to the original Chinese quarter.

Faith healers, exorcists, and astrologers flourished in the old Chinatown along with druggists, herbalists, and practitioners of physical therapy. The line separating Chinese folk medicine from magic is hard to draw, and to the unschooled Chinese migrant there was little difference between them. Faith healers undertook treat­ment of fractured bones, epilepsy, and mild forms of psychosis along with the more common run of chronic ailments.

The Chinese temple (miu), transplanted from China though in a form not altogether familiar to the Chinese villager, was another in­stitution of Chinatown to which the migrant could turn for help dur­ing times of physical or emotional trouble. The earliest temples were established about the same time as the herb stores and were also pri­vate 155enterprises. The priests, who owned the temples, and the other temple attendants depended for their livelihood on the offerings of those who came to worship and seek the aid of the deities. K. Chimin Wong and Lien-Teh Wu’s description of an urban temple in China shows how temples served those who went to them for relief from illness:

A very common custom is to go to the temples to pray for holy medi­cine. In this practice, faith is placed in spiritual help more than in medicine, for sometimes none is given. As a rule this is resorted to as a last resource, a fair trial being first given to rational treatment, but often it is prescribed at the very beginning of an illness when the pa­tient’s family is very superstitious. Propitious days, commonly the first and fifteenth of the month, are selected for the commencement of the cure. In case of emergency, however, such things are not taken into ac­count. A fasting beforehand, that is, the adoption of certain modes of living in which no meat is allowed, the reciting of prayers, the thor­ough washing of the body and other minutiae, are supposed to im­prove one’s chance of getting the blessing, for the gods will only listen to the good and clean. After the burning of joss and other offerings, the believer takes a tube from the altar in which is placed a bundle of numbered sticks, passes it over the joss fumes several times, shakes it until one falls to the ground. This is picked up, the number read and a corresponding slip of paper given on which is printed the prescrip­tion….31

The Chinatown temples were rather different from the village temples in China which ordinarily belonged to the clan or the village and were seldom attended by priests. Rites were performed by the individual worshipers at these village temples or small, open shrines at sacred spots in the village. Urban temples in China had their priests, of course, but in his home village in China the migrant was probably not familiar with them. In Chinatown, where the migrant was much more on his own than in the village, the priests undoubt­edly were important in times of stress. Conversely, serving in the Honolulu temples was more lucrative for the priests than serving worshipers in China, as indicated in the story of a young Hawaii-born priest who took over a Chinese temple in Honolulu in 1932 from an elderly migrant priestess:

Young Siu Hin … went to China for a visit. It was there he received his message from the “Fifth Fairy Princess” that he was to become her 156interpreter—the means of communication between her and the peo­ple…. He became the village doctor and healed people, and he told fortunes. The demands were great, and the returns small so he re­turned to Honolulu for a living Village folk are so poor they gave one copper or two for his services. In Honolulu he taught [in a Chinese-language] school and helped in the Goon Yum Mew, the largest tem­ple in Honolulu, until last year…. Priest Young has four helpers in the temple, doing the odd jobs of keeping the light of the gods burn­ing, keeping the altar place clean, and making paper miniatures of of­ferings required in worship. “He is a saint. He speaks words of truth. They say he is a protégé of the Fifth Fairy Princess. I had him sing the staff of my life, and inquired of him the fortunes of my family, and it was very true.” Thus, for the last two months, Young and his helpers in How Wong Miu have become food for the women’s daily talk.32

Rites at these temples combined elements of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and survivals of ancient nature worship handed down through innumerable generations of illiterate village folk.’33 Tin-Yuke Char, discussing religion among Chinese migrants to Hawaii, says that “the common man … is polytheistic in his beliefs and practices. He embraces folk beliefs of supernatural beings, magic, charms, as­trology, fortune divinations, and deified warriors, heroes, and sages taken from legends and fables. In Hawaii, it has been difficult to label which Chinese temples and shrines are Buddhist and which are Taoist.”34

The first temple in Chinatown, in which Goon Yum (Kuan Yin), Goddess of Mercy, was the principal deity, was built in 187935—the same year in which other Chinese migrants founded the first Chinese Christian church a few blocks away. In 1887 Frank Damon, who led mission work among the Chinese in Hawaii, noted that there were “in Honolulu three Representative Idol Temples, with an immense number of shrines in private homes and stores.” He described the three temples in an account which is generally more objective in tone than that of other Caucasian observers who were condescend­ing or scornful toward what they regarded as “heathen temples”:

The largest of these temples is specially dedicated to the God How-Wong, a deity mainly worshipped by the Chinese coming from the district of Heang Shan [Chung Shan], the majority, perhaps, of our Chinese people being from this region. This Temple is quite pictur­esquely situated on the river bank at the foot of Beretania Street. It is 157most lavishly ornamented with gilding and most gorgeous colouring. In the main shrine is a carved figure of “How-Wong”; on either side are figures of two other gods, Kwan Tai and the Chinese God of Medi­cine, to whom petitions are offered in case of sickness.

Another temple, erected since the fire last year, is situated a little off King Street and is dedicated to Kwun Yam, the Goddess of Mercy of Buddhism. She is represented seated on the opened petals of the Lo­tus and occupies the most prominent position in the temple. Not far away is another temple dedicated specially to Kwan Tai, the God of War. In this temple are also idols representing Tien-How, the “Queen of Heaven,” and the “God of Medicine.” Kwan Tai is more wor­shipped on our Islands by the Chinese than any other god. His picture in a shrine is found in many stores, on the rice plantations, and in the houses of the Secret Societies….

The worshipper procures his offering and the services of an assis­tant from the temple-keeper. This assistant rings the large bell or beats upon the drum to arouse the gods, while the worshipper kneels before the table upon which he has placed his offerings of tea, wine, rice, fruit and fowl. With prostrations and incantations he devotes the essence of this food to the gods, then goes to the shrine upon which the idol re­poses and seeks the aid of the divining blocks. These two pieces of wood are thrown down until they fall, one with its oval and one with its flat side to the floor, which is considered a good omen. Then the sacred jar of bamboo splints [chim], each of which is numbered to corre­spond with the temple-keeper’s book of prayers, is shaken until one of the splints falls to the floor. The assistant marks the number with a brush pen. The number is handed to the temple-keeper, who gives the answer according to the number in his book. The paper money is lighted from the incense sticks on the shrine, then carried outside and placed in the brick or metal crematory, and as it burns, the idol re­ceives its essence. Meantime, the assistant gathers together the food, to be taken home for a feast for the friends.36

In the mid-1930s there were five temples in Honolulu, apart from the shrines on the upper floor of many of the Chinese societies. None of these temples, all privately owned by priest-caretakers, was located within the old Chinese quarter. Fires in Chinatown had de­stroyed some of the early temple buildings;37 those which were rebuilt were located close to, but not in, the old Chinatown. In two of these temples the central deity was How Wong, important to the migrants from Chung Shan who regarded him as their divine patron. Sau Chun Wong, in her study of the temples of this period, says that 158How Wong, originally a fisherman’s god, was appealed to by “peo­ple of any profession or trade … for good fortune, protection, busi­ness success, and safety in travel to China.”38 Other deities in the temples identified by Wong were Choy Sun, “god of fortune”; Yuk Wong Dai Dei, “king and ruler of heaven and earth”; Hin Tan, “con­troller of thunder and lightening”; the “Seven Sisters”; Fut Mu, the teacher of Goon Yum (Kuan Yin); and Goon Yum herself.

By this time, most of the worshipers at the temples were no longer migrant men but first-generation women. The ceremonies de­scribed in 1937 by Sau Chun Wong, a Hawaii-born Chinese who was herself an active member of a Chinese Christian church, closely re­sembled those described half a century earlier:

The ceremonials in all of the temples tend to be … of a magical char­acter designed to coerce the gods and spirits to grant the expressed desires of the worshippers [who seek] sons, happiness for departed spirits, family happiness, long life, wealth and health, and security against accident and misfortune.

A worshipper usually brings … on special holidays … a basket of food composed of some form of animal flesh, as pork, chicken, or fish (or if he is rich, all of the above), wine, tea, and three bowls of cooked rice, and a vegetable dish, as tofu [soybean curd] or “jai” [“monks’ food”]. As he enters, he hits a panel and a drum several times to arouse the gods to listen to his supplication and also to chase away the evil spirits that are lurking near. The priest may assist if the wor­shipper desires. He endeavors to get all the information he can as to the desires of the worshipper. Then he chants … while kneeling in front of the shrine…. He picks up the pair of kidney-shaped blocks and answers to questions are secured by the throw of the blocks. If both fall with the curved side up, it is a good sign; if one is flat and the other curved, it is also good; but if both fall on the flat side, the future is not propitious and one should take care.39

By the 1970s redevelopment of the old Chinatown section and the areas surrounding it, along with the decline in the number of worshipers, has reduced the number of Chinese temples to three. One of these, replacing an older one dedicated to Goon Yum (Kuan Yin), was built on a site donated by a wealthy Honolulu Chinese family. Some of the images from temples that were closed or torn down have been placed in society buildings where worship can be continued before the societies’ altars.40 159

In the late 1860s and early 1870s small numbers of migrants sought help in times of crisis at Christian centers in downtown Hono­lulu like the Reverend S. C. Damon’s Bethel Street Mission. These were mostly migrants moving into Honolulu from the enclaves of Chinese Christian laborers in certain plantation and independent farming areas, especially Hakkas who had become Christians before migrating to Hawaii. In 1879 a group of thirty-seven Chinese formed themselves into a Christian congregation which was known for years as the Fort Street Church. Interested Caucasian Christians served on the board and in other ways assisted this congregation until it became independent of the Hawaiian Board of Missions in 1919. By 1881, when the church building near Chinatown was dedicated, there were 248 members.41

Problems arose in the Fort Street Church because the immigrant members spoke one or another of two mutually unintelligible dia­lects: Cantonese and Hakka. There were further differences among them because of the diverse Christian denominations to which some members had belonged before migrating to Hawaii. Some had become Christians through the influence of German and Swiss Lu­theran missions; others had become Christians as the result of Ameri­can Protestant missionary activity in China and the western United States. It was easier for those who had been converted by American missionaries to make the transition to the Congregational services of the Hawaiian Board than it was for those converted by the Lutherans. There was no Lutheran church in Honolulu at that time, but there were Anglicans whose services were somewhat like those of the Lutherans. In 1886 a few members of the Fort Street Church began to meet in a store near Chinatown for services with a newly arrived Anglican minister and his young Hakka interpreter who had been brought to Honolulu at the age of nine and sent to Iolani School. The following year this group, mostly Hakkas, was formed into St. Peter’s Mission, later St. Peter’s Church, with their church building behind St. Andrew’s Cathedral (Anglican), several blocks away from Chinatown.42

The first Chinese Episcopal clergyman in Honolulu, Woo Yee Bew, was the son of a Chinese who had been converted to Christiani­ty in South China and had himself been baptized in a Lutheran church near Canton. He had studied theology at an Anglican college in Hong Kong before going to San Francisco and then coming to 160Hawaii in 1883. Woo worked in Chinatown with S. C. Damon’s son, the Reverend Frank Damon, and was active in the early develop­ment of the Fort Street Church before going to Kohala, Hawaii, to conduct services in Chinese for the Christians on the plantation there. After many families from St. Paul’s Mission in Kohala had moved to Honolulu, Woo returned and helped organize St. Peter’s Church in 1891.43

Though the first members of St. Peter’s Church were said in one account to be “poor, mostly cooks, yardmen, and storekeepers,” the core of this and other early Chinese congregations was made up of families—Chinese Christian families who had migrated together from China or families brought to the Islands as soon as the husband and father could manage it financially. The Chinese Christian churches undoubtedly provided their members a type of personal and moral support which the familyless migrant generally lacked. Chinatown, therefore, played quite a different role in the lives of the Christian migrants who had their families there than it did in the lives of the familyless young men who were working in the city or in other parts of Oahu.

Notes

1. Over 2,200 of these 4,500 were married, mostly to women left with kinsmen in China; others in urban Honolulu were married to Hawaiian women.

2. A. W. Palmer, Orientals in American life (New York: Friendship Press, 1934), pp. 1–2.

3. Ching-chao Wu, “Chinatowns: A Study in Symbiosis and Assimilation” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1928), p. 158.

4. Interview with Young Hing Cham, 17 February 1932.

5. Bung Chong Lee, “The Chinese Store as a Social Institution,” Social Process in Hawaii 2(1936):35–36.

6. Ibid., p. 36.

7. Sun Yun Wo, reportedly, was established in 1892; for several decades the proprietor was Hee Cho, then his son, William K. F. Hee. See Hawaii Chinese Journal, 15 September 1949; Chinese of Hawaii, 1929, p. 77.

8. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 3, 12, 17, 25, 99.

9. Bark gup biu is a Chinese phrase used locally for a lottery involving picking the winning combination of words from a printed list. See Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 84, 96; Stewart Culin, The Gambling Games of the Chinese in 373America, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, vol. 1, no. 4, 1891, pp. 1–17.

10. Hawaiian Reports 8(1891):206, The Queen vs. Kaka.

11. Honolulu Advertiser, 1 June 1930.

12. Ibid., 10, 11 March 1884; The Friend, June 1892, p. 42.

13. The May 1894 issue of The Friend, p. 37, carries a reference to gambling at this cemetery on 4 April of that year.

14. Gorham D. Gilman, “Streets of Honolulu,” Hawaiian Annual 1904, p. 77.

15. PCA, 19 February, 12 March, 22 August 1857. For supplementary details, see Lily Lim-Chong, “Opium and the Law: Hawaii, 1856–1900,” Spring 1978 (paper in files of Department of Sociology, University of Hawaii).

16. PCA, 3 January 1887; 12, 22 September 1888; Daily Bulletin, 13 January 1887; Hawaiian Gazette, 18 January, 1, 15 February, 17 May, 28 June 1887; Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 174–175.

17. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 98–99; Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 226, 302, 305.

18. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 14 November 1930; 2 February 1935; 7 February, 20 December 1936; 16 December 1938.

19. In 1933 the annual report of the Police Department, City and County of Honolulu, listed 492 arrests of noncitizen Chinese during the year; 76 of them were for drug violations, 301 for gambling. In that year there were about 2,800 foreign-born Chinese men in Honolulu.

20. Only one item concerning the possible involvement of Chinese women in prostitution in Hawaii was found in the English-language newspapers be­tween 1880 and 1920. It referred to “the case of some Chinese women who were being landed in this country for immoral purposes,” but the implication was that the attempted landing did not succeed. See Daily Bulletin, 17 August 1888. James Michener, in Hawaii, seems to imply that such a practice may have been common there as in San Francisco, but this writer found no evi­dence that the fictional Chinese Hakka woman character who is brought to Hawaii to be sold into prostitution has any basis in fact.

21. “Petition to the Administrators of the Government of the United States of America…,” 5 September 1916, p. 6.

22. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 297–299.

23. PCA, 25 January 1879.

24. Coulter and Chun, Chinese Rice Farmers in Hawaii, p. 45.

25. Wu, “Chinatowns,” pp. 179–180. See also H. B. McDowell, “The Chinese Theatre,” Century Magazine 8(1884):41; James D. Ball, The Chinese at Home (Lon­don: Religious Tract Society, 1912), p. 293.

26. Chung Pai, by Kong Leen, to Charles T. Gulick, Minister of the Interior, 28 September 1885 (AH); Hawaiian Kingdom, Reports of Decisions Rendered by the Supreme Court of the Hawaiian Islands, in Law, Equity, Admiralty and Probate, 8 (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1893), pp. 156–158. See Daily Bulletin, 23 August 1888, for a complaint about the “diabolical noise” at the Chinese The­ater. In the Supreme Court decision the Minister of Interior’s condition that the orchestra could not play after ten o’clock was declared to be “not reason­able.” 374

27. Chinese movies, produced mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, have reappeared in recent years as part of Honolulu’s cosmopolitan entertainment fare. This revival is primarily the result of the recent increase in the number of foreign-born Chinese immigrants to Hawaii. Most of the films use Kuo Yu, the Chinese national language, with English subtitles. Hence the films appeal not only to Hawaii-born Chinese who have studied Kuo Yu but to those who are interested in their ancestral culture as well.

28. Hawaiian government authorities were willing to let these men practice on the Chinese migrants, but they early saw the necessity of some regulation as shown by a law passed by the legislature in 1880 setting forth the conditions under which a person who could demonstrate his right to practice medicine in China could secure a license to do the same in Hawaii.

29. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 11 May 1928. Massage, moxibustion, and acupuncture as methods of treatment are claimed to have been practiced among Chinese for some three thousand years. See K. Chimin Wong and Lien-Teh Wu, History of Chinese Medicine (Tientsin, China: Tientsin Press, 1932), pp. 28–30. In the 1970s Honolulu had a resurgence of the practice of acupuncture; patients and practitioners included non-Chinese as well as Chinese. Concern has arisen regarding the need for more stringent regulation of persons allowed to prac­tice acupuncture.

30. Li, Life Is for a Long Time, pp. 32, 100, 105.

31. Wong and Wu, History of Chinese Medicine, p. 91.

32. Ah Huna Tong, “Young American Is Priest of Old Chinese Temple Here,” Honolulu Advertiser, 20 February 1933.

33. Sau Chun Wong, “Chinese Temples in Honolulu,” Social Process in Hawaii 3(1937):27.

34. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 181.

35. “A Honolulu Chinese Joss House,” The Friend, April 1880, p. 32.

36. “Idol Temples in Honolulu,” The Friend, October 1887, p. 85.

37. C. K. Ai, who was in business in Chinatown in 1886, says that the destructive fire of that year was started by a Chinese gambler who was careless in han­dling candles he had bought to burn before “the altar of the Goddess of Chance.” See Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, p. 96.

38. Wong, “Chinese Temples in Honolulu,” p. 29.

39. Ibid., pp. 32–33.

40. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, p. 183.

41. Chung, My Seventy-Nine Years, pp. 119, 313–318.

42. St. Peter’s Church, Golden Jubilee, 1886–1936 (Honolulu: W. W. Ahana Printing Co., 1936), pp. 1–4; Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 192–196.

43. Char, Sandalwood Mountains, pp. 230–234.

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