Like many Chinese families in Hawai'i, Leigh-Wai Doo's relatives were supporters of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the revolutionary who overthrew the Manchu Dynasty and helped to bring China into the 20th Century.

To this day, the ties between China and Hawai'i remain strong.

On Tuesday, Huang Hua-Hua, governor of Guangdong Province of China, arrives in Honolulu to celebrate a 20-year sister-state/province relationship between Hawai'i and Guangdong.

Doo will present him with a copy of a historic piece of calligraphy during a reception Tuesday evening at Washington Place.

Huang's trip will reciprocate a visit to Guangdong made by Gov. Linda Lingle in June, and will also serve to explore the ties that go back to before the turn of the last century, when Guangdong's most famous son, Sun Yat-sen, first traveled to Hawai'i.

For Doo, an attorney and former Honolulu city councilman, those ties have defined four generations of family.

Doo's great-grandfather, Ahin Young, a Chinese immigrant from a village not far from Sun's in Zhong Shan County, became wealthy as a rice farmer in the late 1800s, making his name in Hawai'i shortly before Sun arrived in the kingdom as a student, first at Iolani School, then at Punahou.

The young Sun went on to study medicine in Hong Kong, and to practice in Macao and Canton. When he returned to Hawai'i in 1894, the Manchu Dynasty had suffered yet another defeat at the hands of the Japanese, and Sun had come to talk revolution.

Young was ready. He hosted Sun at his home in Kapalama, served as treasurer for his Hawai'i-based revolutionary society and donated huge sums of money to Sun's plan. Some say the Hawai'i group donated up to $4,000 a month, his great-grandson said.

The revolution succeeded. In 1911, Sun was named leader of the new Republic of China, a nation with new problems to overcome as rival warlords fought for control.

The funding from Hawai'i continued, and the Young family made yet another contribution to the cause.

Ahin Young's son, Sen-Yat Young, born in the new American territory of Hawai'i, had a new technology to contribute to China's new republic, and Sun encouraged him to pursue it.

Sen-Yat Young, Doo's grandfather, was the first Hawai'i-born man to learn to fly an airplane, and the 62nd person in the United States to be certified to fly a sea plane. He finished his pilot classes in Buffalo, New York, bought an airplane and shipped it to China.

Sun put him in charge of China's new air forces, and Ahin Young donated a total of 12 airplanes to the cause. "Eight of which worked," Doo said. "The other four were spare parts."

At Ahin Young's insistence, Sen-Yat Young left behind his daughter, Florence, to be raised in Hawai'i. Florence later studied in China, and then became Mrs. Mee Chow Doo, Leigh-Wai Doo's mother.

Sen-Yat Young died in 1923 at the age of 31, killed by a bomb explosion in a factory. He is buried in the Chinese Martyrs Cemetery in Guangzhou.

The date of his death, Sept. 20, is celebrated as China's National Memorial Aviation Day, and Sen-Yat Young, an American, is known in both China and Taiwan as the father of Chinese aviation.

Sun signed a piece of calligraphy for the Young family, encouraging them to follow the example of Sen-Yat Young and "dream higher than heaven."

The scroll that Doo will give to Huang is a copy of that scroll.

Reach Karen Blakeman at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.