ISLAND EXCURSION
Chinatown festival a sensory feast

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

Lion dancers will help celebrate Chinese New Year at the Night in Chinatown Festival on Saturday. Food and crafts booths will offer everything from gau to good-luck calligraphy. Advertiser library photo

Festivities will be from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., mostly on Maunakea Street, the heartbeat of Chinatown, which will be closed to vehicular traffic.

Food and craft booths will line the street as merchants along the corridors of Chinatown will be greeting the Year of the Horse, which begins Feb. 12.

You can savor jook, gau and other delicacies, and acquire good-luck calligraphy slogans as well as lucky bamboo arrangements.

"Chinatown has evolved ... it has become Asiatown," said Joan Namkoong, author of "Family Traditions in Hawai'i," a gatekeeper of cultural traditions in the Islands and former Advertiser food editor. "As immigrant groups come ... they seek out marketplaces similar to their homelands, and Chinatown is the closest to the open markets of Asia, so they gravitate there."

Indeed, in recent times, the Chinatown area has also become a stew of other cultures — with merchants, chefs and vendors of Japanese, Hawaiian, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Filipino and American ancestry adding a visible cosmopolitan flavor to downtown Honolulu.

A parade starts at 4 p.m., from the state Capitol down Hotel Street, concluding at River Street; participants include lion dancers, a 150-foot dragon, martial arts teams, flag units, a Marine Band and the 2002 Miss Chinatown Hawai'i and her court.

Street entertainment begins at 6:30 p.m., with music and dance.

The Chinatown Merchants Association (595-6417) is sponsoring Saturday's festivities.

Among related events:

• A celebration at the Victoria Ward centers will include lion dances beginning at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Ward Farmers Market, going on through Ward Gateway Center, Ward Warehouse, Ward Centre, Ward Village Shops, the Nordstrom Rack/Office Depot complex, and ending at Ward Entertainment Center. 591-8411.
• Namkoong discusses traditions associated with the Year of the Horse, and the reasons for fireworks, lion dances, gau, the color red and other Chinese New Year traditions, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Native Books & Beautiful Things, Ward Warehouse. 845-8949.
• A Chinatown Open House, sponsored by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, will take place at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 8 at the Chinese Cultural Plaza. 533-3181.
• A Chinese New Year's Celebration unfolds from 5:30 to 11 p.m. Feb. 8 and from noon to 11 p.m. Feb. 9, at the Chinese Cultural Plaza. 533-3181.

Parts of Nu'uanu Avenue and River and Beretania streets will be closed from 5 to 11 p.m. Feb. 8.