Chinatown still a hub of culture

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

Chinatown and its surrounding neighborhoods remain the hub of Chinese culture in Hawai'i even as growing diversity is changing racial identities in many established ethnic neighborhoods, new census numbers indicate.

A walk through historic downtown Honolulu wouldn't be complete without a stop at the Wo Fat building, constructed in 1882 and rebuilt twice after fires swept Chinatown. Advertiser library photo • Jan. 26, 1999

On the Neighbor Islands, concentrations of Chinese families are even smaller, with a high of 138 Chinese residents in the Kea'au region of the Big Island, 120 in Kula on Maui and 92 in Kapa'a on Kaua'i. The Census 2000 Chinese race classification does not include people who identified themselves as mixed race.

Last names alone are not enough anymore to tell whether someone is only one ethnicity in Hawai'i.

For Chinese-American families counting more than five generations in Hawai'i, census numbers confirm that their identity is harder to pinpoint.

"It's very difficult to identify Chinese outside of Chinatown," said Wen Lin, executive vice president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. "It's all mixed up."

At Ruby Restaurant on Hotel Street in Chinatown, regular Sun Hung Wong, nicknamed "Sunny" and known as the honorary mayor of Chinatown, makes an admission in almost a whisper: "I'm not pure Chinese," he said. "I'm a quarter Hawaiian."

	Where Chinese call home
	Of the 56,600 people in Hawai'i who identified themselves solely as Chinese in the 2000 census, here are the top five areas with the highest Chinese populations:
1.	'A'ala, just west of Chinatown, home to 1,581 Chinese
2.	Mililani, around Mililani Town Center, with 1,164 Chinese residents
3.	The Foster Botanical Garden area north of Chinatown, with 1,143 Chinese residents
4.	'Alewa Heights near Nu'uanu, with 958 Chinese residents
5.	Chinatown, with 886 Chinese residents.
	Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Chinese immigrants began arriving in Hawai'i in 1855, 30 years before the first Japanese immigrants and 50 years before the first Filipino immigrants, who came mainly as plantation workers.

Wong's grandparents came as merchants. Each generation that followed found more opportunities for education and careers. They settled in suburbs, intermarried, had children and became "local."

Wong became executive director of the Chinatown Merchants Association and beloved by people of all races. He invites them to breakfast just off the streets where the sights, smells and sounds of old Chinatown are still alive.

"This is America," Wong said. "The local way is to blend ourselves into the lifestyle."

Wallace Ching, a third-generation Chinese American whose forebears worked in rice fields on Kaua'i, said he feels lucky to live in a place free of many of the prejudices that afflict other parts of the country.

Ching, president of the Hawai'i chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, said he still looks to Chinese associations to stick close to his culture.

Hawai'i has more than 130 Chinese associations, which indicates their members are looking for something the rest of society isn't offering, said Cynthia Ning, associate director of the University of Hawai'i Center for Chinese Studies.

"The major difference is a focus on the collective rather than the individual," she said. "There's something comforting in that."

Many Chinese in and around Honolulu still look to Chinatown as the cultural center, said Yuk Pang Law, director of Hawai'i Immigrant Services there.

Law has seen the neighborhood transform from the home of bachelor immigrants of generations past to a spot of urban renewal, with younger Vietnamese and Laotian merchants taking over old Chinese-run shops.

She still sees familiar faces shopping for fruits and vegetables at the markets.

But when she teaches citizenship classes these days, more and more of her students already have moved out of what once was the neighborhood that glued their society together.

Half of her Chinese students in a class of 30 seeking citizenship told her they owned their own homes — outside the neighborhood.

The advantage of this generation of immigrants is that many established families came before them, said Chuck Lim Ho, president of the Lung Doo Benevolent Society, a Chinese community organization a few blocks from Law's office.

The honorary mayor of Chinatown considers longtime Chinese families here an example of the trend other ethnic groups will follow in generations to come, becoming more prosperous and assimilated.

While families will be more mixed, they will still find traditions to hold onto, he said.

"Chinatown will never be what it used to be when we were kids," he said. "We have to recognize that time is changing."

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.