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By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
FUJIAN PROVINCE, China — It began as an upscale China tour of Bishop Museum patrons to view the archaeological sites of remote Polynesian ancestors. It ended in a historic sister-museum agreement between Bishop and an important museum in China.
The agreement links the elegant new Fujian Provincial Museum — on the south China coast where the ancestors of Polynesians may have begun their great adventure into the Pacific — with the Bishop Museum in Hawai'i, one of the farthest reaches of Polynesian exploration.
Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser
Both museums are committed to exchange exhibits, engage in cooperative research and promote friendly exchange between China and the United States. Judging by the party that followed the signing, the museum directors consider the agreement a major coup.
Bishop Museum president Bill Brown and Kwan Pei Sheng, director of the Fujian Provincial Museum, sign a historic agreement.
The first hint of the surprise alliance came after a lively exchange of bragging rights between Bishop president Bill Brown and feisty Kwan Pei Sheng, director at the Fujian. When Brown mentioned casually that Bishop Museum houses a collection of 14 million artifacts, Kwan looked skeptical.
He asked pointedly if Brown counted every bone in every skeleton in the collection. Some energetic comparisons of staff and researchers followed. Brown poured oil on the troubled waters. He said the important thing was not how many artifacts each museum owned, but cooperation between them.
Kwan bounced right back with the suggestion for a sister-museum agreement, and offered to draw one up. Brown answered that he would be delighted to enter a sister-museum agreement with an institution so distinguished as the Fujian Provincial Museum. Everybody applauded.
At lunch the next day, the Bishop party took a call on a cell phone from the Chinese, asking if a signing might be arranged at a banquet the following night before the Bishop Museum party departed for home. Brown answered that he'd be happy to sign if he could review the agreement first.
The enthusiasm of the Chinese reflected the feelings of Bishop Museum trustee Jean Ariyoshi, wife of former Hawai'i Gov. George Ariyoshi. She told Kwan she looked forward to an exhibit in the Fujian museum of the artifacts of ancestral Polynesians excavated in China, and hoped the two museums could set an example for U.S.-China relations.
Then came the celebratory banquet that began after Kwan and Brown inked the agreement at the head table. This time, handsome and suave Fang Wang Fu made an appearance. All of his titles together make him the minister of cultural relics, with jurisdiction over all the museums in the province.
He told Brown that he envied him the passionate private supporters of Bishop Museum. In China, only the government supports museums. Fang (pronounced Fong) said he had never been so excited by a project, and added that he considered himself a "Pacific man."
Brown was just as euphoric.
He said: "Our new partnership is an extraordinary opportunity to link with China on shared history of the Pacific. The Bishop Museum welcomes this vision of adventure in science that has long defined its reputation." So the banquet began on an optimistic note.
Chinese banquets rival Hawaiian 'awa ceremonies as ritual diplomacy, except that Chinese wine is a lot stronger than Hawaiian 'awa. Local diplomats are well advised to become familiar with the term "ganbei" before attending a Chinese celebratory banquet. It means "bottoms up." So challenged, a diplomat has to chug-a-lug a glass of wine or beer.
Our guide said it is normal for each male guest to consume at least three bottles of wine at a banquet. Women are permitted to drink slightly less. The official count for the sister-museum-agreement banquet was 20 bottles of wine and 18 large bottles of beer. With 11 men at the banquet, each must have matched the national average. Except for me. I drank tea.
Another adventure occurred in Fuzhou, where the Fujian Provincial Museum is located. On a previous science trip to China, archaeologists Barry Rolett and Tianlong Jiao introduced Dwayne Nakila Steel and me to the health benefits of a Chinese foot massage. Ladies on the Bishop Museum tour were eager to experience this medical marvel. They insisted that their husbands come, too.
Rolett found a foot massage salon and brought back business cards that instructed taxi drivers how to get there. A caravan of taxis set out after a banquet. However, a wrong card must have gotten mixed in. The last two taxis didn't arrive at the foot massage salon.
Instead, they stopped at an establishment where comely ladies in scanty attire asked everybody to take off their clothes. A man in the Bishop party saw red lights in the windows of the next building.
"I think we're in the wrong place," he said.
Next to viewing archaeological sites and attending banquets, shopping constituted the most strenuous activity on the tour. The Bishop Museum party cleaned out every museum gift shop on the route, in addition to the China Friendship Store in Shanghai, antique stores and tailor shops. The ladies looked stunning as they modeled their new clothes at dinner each night.
For further details, consult members of the tour. Next year's Bishop Museum safari will go to New Guinea, where scientists will point out the exotic flora and fauna.
(Wednesday: Two Hawaiians go back 6,000 years to their ancestral roots in China.)
