Extreme Hawaii Fun Presents: The First Chinese in Hawaii

Please visit our great sponsors to help support Extreme Hawaii Fun!

Hawaii: Past & Present

The First Chinese in Hawaii

Many, many years ago, the English mariners ruled the oceans of the earth. They traveled by ship to its most distant parts. They discovered most of the world as we know it today. However, one place they failed to discover first was Hawaii. Hawaii became the pride of a special breed of South Pacific resident, who later came to be called Hawaiians.

However, long before any Chinese ever came to Hawaii, a Hawaiian chief visited China. It happened in 1787, that an English merchant took a chief of Kauai, named Kaiana, to Canton, or Guangzhou, on his fur trade route. The merchant was interested in trading American furs for Chinese goods, and Hawaii was the necessary stopover on the way, as it has been ever since. On his way back to America the next year, he again stopped in Hawaii for a rest.

Traveling with him on that journey back home were 50 Chinese carpenters. It is thought that some stayed in Hawaii, on the Big Island of Hawaii, under the charge of Kamehameha the Great. Again in 1789, an American trader, with a mostly Chinese crew, stopped over in Hawaii, where a number of his crew decided to remain. Historical references of George Vancouver, noted explorer of the Pacific region, told of one Chinese man living on O’ahu at the time, and another on the Big Island, with Kamehameha.

Early in the next century, European explorers and businessmen discovered a beautiful tropical area of China named Kwangtung, or Gwangdong, the southernmost province. They found there pineapple and sugar cane growing in fertile coastal areas similar to the windward areas of the Hawaiian Islands, along with Chinese farmers, culturally adept at traveling and immigrating, and of course willing to try their hand at the productive volcanic soil in Hawaii. In 1802, Wong Tze Chun planted sugar cane on Lanai, in the middle of the Hawaiian island chain. Sugar cane existed on the islands already, but the knowledge of how to refine it and most importantly, how to make money from it came with those first Chinese in Hawaii. Wong Tze Chun’s small sugar cane experiment, although carrying the distinction as the source of the first sugar produced in Hawaii, unfortunately was doomed to failure by the dry soil of Lanai.

In 1823, Hung Tai built his sugar mill in Wailuku, Maui. However, his sugar production also failed. But the third time was a charm, and in 1835, sugar production found its home on the garden island of Kauai. The Chinese had finally brought sugar to Hawaii, and now sugar began to bring the Chinese to Hawaii.

For many years thereafter, the Chinese were the most numerous immigrants in Hawaii. They did not always find the money-making farm businesses they had came for though. They found instead hard work in the sugar plantations set up and run by the haoles (Caucasian/Europeans). It was not long though before the Chinese settlers had enough money to leave the employment of others and set up their own businesses; trade stores, rice farms, and even coffee farms.

The Chinese men who settled took wives among the local population, but it was not long before the first Chinese women also came to Hawaii. The result was the first of many pure Chinese families in Hawaii. However, of all the immigrants to the islands, the Chinese were unique in their total immersion into the local populous through free intermarriage with the Hawaiian families, merging their blood and even their names. Well, not exactly taking on Hawaiian names, but actually merging their names to form unique Chinese-Hawaiian family names like Apana and Auwae. To this day, there are no Japanese-Hawaiian or English-Hawaiian names in Hawaii.

Thus despite hardships, low immigration rates, and even outright atrocities, the Chinese have prospered in Hawaii, never forming a major population statistically, but from the very first, having a positive and powerful influence in the unique cultural experience called Hawaii.