Posted on: Wednesday, June 2, 2004

OUR HONOLULU
China, Hawai'i links keep coming

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

FUJIAN PROVINCE, China — Two Hawai'i women have journeyed to search for their ancestral roots in China. What they found on a Bishop Museum tour of 6,000-year-old archaeological sites gave them chicken skin.

"It's like exploring a cave. You go back deeper and deeper," said Allison Genreau, a Bishop Museum trustee whose father is the late John Dominis Holt, a Hawaiian scholar, author and pioneer activist.

"There is no question in my mind anymore that there was migration from this part of the world to Polynesia," said Crystal Rose, an attorney who danced at age 5 in the first Merrie Monarch Hula Festival.

There is an archaeological site near the ocean in Fujian province called Tan Shi Shan, one of the places where seafaring Austronesians, ancestors of Hawaiians, may have made their first small voyage in the great adventure that took their descendants to the far reaches of the Pacific.

Archaeologists speculate that the Tan Shi Shan people were Austronesians who stayed behind in China while others sailed to the Tenghu Islands midway to Taiwan on the first leg of expansion. Those who stayed eventually died out. There are no Austronesians in China today.

A wall mural in the small Tan Shi Shan museum shows the early people chanting to the rising sun as the ancient Hawaiians did. Genreau, Rose and Marti Steel, a Micronesian from Guam, stood before the mural and emulated the ritual.

In the archaeological lab of the Fujian Provincial Museum, the Hawai'i women held an adz — an axlike tool — that may have been carried on an early voyage from the south coast of China 6,000 years ago. From its shape and composition, archaeologists can tell that it came from a quarry on the Tenghu Islands. To bring back the adz required a boat to navigate a distance equal to that between O'ahu and the Big Island.

"I have a collection of Hawaiian adzes," said Rose. "The shape is similar. To me, it clearly supports migration from China."

At two sites, the women viewed canoes more than 30 feet long that were hollowed out from single logs. The canoes do not appear to have had outriggers. They seem to be dugout canoes used on calmer waters. Archaeologists speculate that the Austronesians began their ocean voyaging on bamboo rafts. Outrigger canoes came later and led to longer voyages.

"I was curious to see the canoes," said Rose. "It was pretty amazing. I had a hard time believing that something 7,000 years old was still there. I'm a lawyer. We have all kinds of cases where wood is destroyed overnight from rot or termites."

After viewing the first canoe, she added, "I don't think they're preserving it very well."

As a Hawaiian, Rose said she faced one difficulty on the tour: viewing ancient burials at one of the sites. She said she prayed, but she became so uncomfortable that she left the group and went outside.

Genreau said she had no problem going to China to explore her roots.

"I've been to the British Museum of Mankind to see Hawaiian capes," she said. "I've gone to the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass., because they have the best ku (images).

"My father compared the mobilization of labor for pyramid building in Egypt with the construction of heiau in Hawai'i. John liked to compare Egyptian symbolism to Hawaiian, the worship of nature gods. This is very exciting. It's a discovery of our past evolving from a more ancient civilization."

She added, "Not many Hawaiians can afford to make this trip. The next best thing is to bring the artifacts to Hawai'i for an exhibit at the Bishop Museum. "

Steel, who was born in Guam, has lived in Hawai'i most of her life. She said she has traveled to many places and is usually struck by the differences between foreign cultures and the one she's familiar with in the Islands.

She added, "But on this trip, I'm mostly aware of similarities. I remember that the director of the Tan Shi Shan museum said Hawaiians are a maritime people and we are connected by this great ocean. And the minister of cultural relics in Fujian Province referred to himself as a Pacific person, not an Asian."

Under a sister museum agreement signed by directors of the Bishop and Fujian Provincial museums on the tour, it is likely that many of the artifacts may eventually go on exhibit in Hawai'i.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.