Chinese on Hawaii are different now. Two centuries of adaptation and hard work combined with changing political and economic factors have made "the smooth integration of the Chinese into the multicultural society of Hawaii one of the rare success stories in the history of world immigration," as Professor Clarence E. Glick of the University of Hawaii, noted for his research on the subject, has put it. How did it happen? Let's look at some of the highlights.

Before Captain Cook discovered the beautiful Hawaiian Islands in 1778, the outside world was unaware of their existence. Chinese people called them t'an-hsiang shan, or Sandalwood Hills, because they were a source of sandalwood during the early nineteenth century. But what attracted the first Chinese immigrants was not their exotic wood so much as prosaic crops—rice and sugar cane—and the commercial activities they generated.

Who was the first Chinese person to set foot on the islands? Although no direct evidence is available to date, Professor Glick says that this honor is generally believed to belong to a ship's carpenter who came ashore in early 1789 when his vessel was docked in the harbor for repairs.

A little while later, after news of the islands' sugar-cane fields reached southern China, a sugar refiner named Wong Tze Chun took his equipment there in 1802, but seeing no prospects for a profit he returned home a year later.

Others of his countrymen were more persistent. By 1850 Chinese immigrants had set up a few simple sugar plants on the islands and several merchants had opened up stores. At that time the nonnative population of nearly 2,000 included just 71 Chinese.

The large-scale introduction of Chinese laborers was due chiefly to a shift in property rights and investment in vast plantations. In 1840 the native Hawaiian rulers were coerced or cajoled into abandoning their traditional system of landholding in favor of Western private property rights. That gave American businessmen the opportunity to purchase large tracts of land and set up plantations.

In the beginning the fields were worked by native Hawaiians, but as the plantations grew larger and the native population was ravaged by outside diseases, the owners began to look elsewhere for a ready supply of labor. The antislavery movement was in full swing, so African slaves were out of the question. Chinese workers seemed to be the most suitable source available.

China was in turmoil, encroached externally by the Western Powers and racked internally by the Taiping Rebellion, and many young men were eager to head overseas to earn a living.

The plantation owners established a labor recruitment organization called the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society and with both parties willing to make a match, the first Chinese contract laborers were brought to Hawaii in 1852.

By 1899, when the United States annexed the islands and stopped the influx under the Chinese exclusionary laws, some 56,000 Chinese contract laborers had arrived in Hawaii to work in its sugar-cane and rice fields.

Most of the workers, Professor Glick says, came from the Pearl River delta in south China. Hearing about the offer from friends or relatives, they trekked to Canton, Macao, or Hong Kong, where they applied for free passage to Hawaii—clothing, food, and pocket money included. On arrival they were checked by immigration officials to determine their health and sent off to the plantations to work. Most of them signed five-year contracts providing for ten hours of work a day, an annual wage hike, time off for holidays, and extra pay for overtime. Food was supplied by the owners.

After their five years were up, some workers signed on again and some returned to China but most rented land and started farming on their own. Joining the shop-keepers and and skilled workers who also enjoyed a free status, they came to make up the main part of the Chinese community on Hawaii.

For a farmer the land means life itself, and most of the workers had just managed to survive as tenant farmers at home. So the fact that in Hawaii most of them preferred to rent land even though they could often afford to buy it shows that few of them planned to stay for good.

A similar attitude prevailed in questions of education and marriage.

Chinese workers with the same surname formed clan associations, which hired Chinese teachers to instruct the next generation in preparation for their future return to the land of their forebears. Some parents took the more direct approach of sending their children back home to be reared by grandparents.

Likewise, most young men of marriageable age returned home for matchmaker-arranged brides and then brought their newfound spouses with them back to Hawaii.

Another reflection of the immigrants' retrospective frame of mind was the financial support they sent friends and relatives at home once they had achieved some success on the islands. Among their numerous contributions to their ancestral homeland the most important must be considered their support for the revolution.

The Republic of China's roots in the Chinese community on Hawaii are long and deep. The major factor, of course, was the arrival in 1879 of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who nurtured a democratic way of thinking in the free atmosphere of the Iolani School.

As China's international standing sank lower and lower, many overseas Chinese came firmly to believe that the welfare of its citizens abroad could not be protected without a strong nation backing them up at home. Dr. Sun's advocacy, upon his return to Hawaii in 1894, of a nationalist revolution thus won the immediate support of the Chinese community, which was suffering from the indignities of racial discrimination.

The patriotic fervor of the Hawaiian Chinese was expressed not only in their financial support for the revolution but also in the emergency relief they sent back to China during floods and famines. Their continued concern for the situation there clearly reveals that they conceived of themselves as transient guests rather than permanent residents in their new land.

Early Chinese immigrants tended to cling tightly to their own language and way of life and resisted merging into the greater society. The process of identification was moderate and slow. Some immigrants became Hawaiian citizens as early as the midnineteenth century. Some did not fully resign themselves to permanent residency until the fall of the mainland to Communism. The admission of Hawaii as the fiftieth state of the union and the American educational system brought with it were major factors in changing their way of thinking.

The U.S. has always prided itself on being an ethnic melting pot in which each nationality gives up its own traditions in favor of the American way of life, and compulsory education laws force all school-age children to receive a U.S.. -style education. Speaking English and imbued with American life and culture, second- and third-generation descendants often find themselves separated from their elders by a generation gap.

As they came to think of themselves as one more part of Hawaii's multiethnic society, Chinese immigrants gradually gave up or altered their earlier insistence on traditional culture.

The most obvious change was in appearance. To lessen the curiosity with which they were viewed by others, they lopped off their pigtails—mandatory for Chinese men during the Ching dynasty—and exchanged their flowing robes for Western-style clothing.

These days many Chinese-Hawaiians would like to identify with their traditional culture and preserve it, but finding anything left of it is no easy matter. Fortunately some of the older members of the community have recently devoted themselves to bringing the past "back to life."

The Governor's Commission to Commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the Arrival of the Chinese in Hawaii spent several years organizing and collecting materials for a photographic exhibition telling the story of Chinese immigration to Hawaii in hopes that these evocative images might resonate in the hearts of the younger generation, that they might realize that life has not always been a round of television, electronic games, new clothes, and trips abroad, but that there is something more important. . . .

Tomb sweeping on the Ch'ing-ming Festival, visits to the temple on the first and fifteenth of the month, tracing back the family tree, learning Chinese crafts, performing lion dances and racing dragon boats are all symbols that the Chinese-Americans of Hawaii have not forgotten the Chinese blood in their veins.

Despite their desire to cherish the past, they must also face up to the realities around them. Hawaii state legislator Rod Tam expresses the feelings of most Chinese in this regard: "The Chinese on Hawaii today all share the consensus that we must strive for the common welfare of all races and not just that of the Chinese community."

They believe that life and riches are common aspirations but not ultimate goals, because those goals are limited to the family and the individual, and that is not enough. The goal should be the welfare of Hawaii, of the nation, and of mankind as a whole.

[Picture Caption]

Evocative images can perhaps attract a new generation of Chinese Hawaiians to join with the general public in learning about the history of Chinese immigration to t he islands.

Traditional Chinese stores retain much of their original appearance.

Ballast stones were used by the immigrants in many of their buildings, reminding passersby not to forget the past.

Many immigrants never returned home in glory as planned. Instead they ended their days in a faraway land.

The Hawaiian Chinese have a high life expectancy. Unfortunately, very few of the elderly live with their children.

The switch from temple to church is a big change for many Chinese.

The traditional workshops in the Chinese district have become a must sto p for tourists.

Some shopkeeper families still make offerings to Kuan Kung on the first and fifteenth of each month.

Infected by the worldwide fever for Chinese, more and more people are studying the language.

Some schools have hired instructors of traditional Chinese dance from Taiwan to go there to teach.

Step by step, the chinese immigrants marched past difficulties into a bright new land.

Traditional Chinese stores retain much of their original appearance.

Ballast stones were used by the immigrants in many of their buildings, reminding passersby not to forget the past.

Many immigrants never returned home in glory as planned. Instead they ended their days in a faraway land.

The Hawaiian Chinese have a high life expectancy. Unfortunately, very few of the elderly live with their children.

The switch from temple to church is a big change for many Chinese.

The traditional workshops in the Chinese district have become a must sto p for tourists.

Some shopkeeper families still make offerings to Kuan Kung on the first and fifteenth of each month.

Infected by the worldwide fever for Chinese, more and more people are studying the language.

Some schools have hired instructors of traditional Chinese dance from Taiwan to go there to teach.

Step by step, the chinese immigrants marched past difficulties into a bright new land.