Chinatown Lore Attracts Tourers

From Waikiki the No. 2 bus stops at Maunakea Street in Honolulu’s Chinatown, where No. 1 guide Yun Kui Chang begins his tour.

“Call me ‘Yankee,’ as in ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy,’ ” jokes this diminutive man through his portable amplifier mike to the group of 25. Every Tuesday morning, from 9:30 to noon, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce offers this historical insight of Oahu’s one-time commercial center.

Declared a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, Honolulu’s Chinatown is part throwback to the turn of the century, with acupuncture clinics and herbal medicine shops butting up against trendy restaurants and boutiques, near downtown.

But before pounding the pavement, we assemble in the reception lobby of the Chinese chamber offices on North King Street, where Yankee goes through his song-and-dance orientation.

A Jovial Fellow

“I take great delight in showing you the streets where I played and lived as a youngster,” beams Chang, who at 77 moves around like a trapeze artist. He’s a jovial fellow and makes the Caucasian mainlanders feel comfortable in the austere setting.

“Most of the Chinese came to Hawaii from the province of Kwantung on Mainland China in the early 1850s to work under contract in the sugar cane and pineapple fields,” says Chang, who does TV commercials and character acting. But in front of the huge mural that depicts his ancestry, from laborers to community leaders, his lines are sincere and have meaning.

Chang leads us upstairs to see priceless pieces of rosewood and teakwood furniture, with inlaid marble and mother-of-pearl once owned by wealthy Chinese merchants of the 1900s. On a wooden platform with ornately carved headrests on three of its sides, Chang reclines on his left side, explaining that this is an opium bed.

“Usually two men would lie down on their side facing each other and inhale the intoxicating residue only to a certain point of euphoria, but never to a point where they’d blow their minds or let their pupils dilate,” said Chang, as two bored youngsters nearly nod asleep on the bed next to him. Opium dens flourished in Chinatown until they were outlawed in the 1940s.

Destined for Urban Renewal

After his talk we follow Chang on narrow sidewalks, along wooden, boarded-up buildings destined for urban renewal. We turn into Kam Mau Co. that sells popular Asian foodstuffs. Jars of preserved olives, fruits and seeds, pickled, salted or sweetened, line the shelves in the middle of the store, next to dried mushrooms and baskets of thousand-year-old eggs and canned imports from the Far East.

Down a few doors, the group crams into Lai An Tong herb shop, where stacks of sacks labeled in Chinese characters fill a back wall and rows of drawers line the front. This is the place to get ill, for there are more than 3,000 antidotes for every conceivable malady, including antelope horns, animal organs, snake skins, roots, pods, seeds, flower petals, among other combinations.

For a more palatable taste of Chinatown, Chang takes us through the Shung Chong Yuein pastry shop. We watch the bakers garbed in white, flour specks on their eyebrows, roll the dough and fill the buns with bits of candied kumquat, coconut, ginger and bean.

Outside at King and Smith streets, Chang stops to chat with an unimposing-looking man in his 80s, who owns the bank building at the corner. Chang tells us that he was once a butcher but had the foresight in the early 1900s to invest in land.

A Time of Bustle

It is merchants such as this man who had vision and helped develop Chinatown’s 36-acre territory into a prosperous center during the 1920s and ‘30s when wholesaling, retailing, shipping , finance and tourism thrived. They were watchmakers, jewelers, cobblers, tailors, blacksmiths, furniture makers and grocers, among other tradesmen and craftsmen. Chinatown bustled then. It became the gateway for steamship travelers, as the main port was at the foot of Nuuanu Street.

Other ethnic groups off the boat flocked to Chinatown. First the Japanese, then the Filipinos, the Portuguese, the Koreans who arrived to work on sugar plantations during the boom years. Now there are Vietnamese and Laotians. And Chinatown, again, has taken on a new look.

Redevelopment has taken hold, and non-Asians have started businesses on the fringes, such as the Maui Mad Hatter shop that stocks almost 4,000 hats. On the same block there’s O’Tooles Irish Pub next to Tryst, a chic restaurant.

But for a sense of the old-modern Chinatown, there’s the Cultural Plaza near the Kuan Yin Temple on River Street. There senior citizens pass their days playing serious games of cards and dominoes. There’s the open-air Oahu Market, once privately owned, now a cooperative with 22 partners, each selling ethnic foods, poultry, meats, fish, produce from their stalls.

‘Anything That Walks’

Preferring to open his own store rather than join the space at the marketplace, Howard Chun, 41, doles out his famous char siu (roasted pork) to waiting customers in his new Howard’s Chinatown Market, where he sells “anything that walks.” He also sells turkey okoles (tails or backside) and pig’s head, which is slightly more expensive without the bone.

Across from Howard’s, the Yat Tung Chow noodle factory displays a sample case of its pasta products that compares the various widths, from the very thin “golden thread” style to the thick, flat “elastic” variety.

But perhaps the most conspicuous landmark in Honolulu’s Chinatown is the pagoda-like roof of the Wo Fat Chop Suey restaurant on Hotel Street, established in 1882, which still serves its popular Cantonese dishes.

One Cantonese chef, Honolulu-born, is Dai Hoy Chang, 62, who opened his Golden Dragon restaurant at the present Hilton Hawaiian Village (15 minutes from Chinatown) nearly 30 years ago. His father was also a chef, who influenced him to a certain degree.

“I’m embarrassed to say, but I never liked my father’s American-Chinese style of cooking. So what I learned from him was not to prepare food like him,” smiled Dai, who serves some of his favorite dishes at the Hawaiian Village’s buffet dinner every Wednesday.

The walking tour of Honolulu’s Chinatown has been a community project since 1958. The fee is a nominal $3 and a surcharge of $4 for the optional lunch at Wo Fat. It offers a worthwhile diversion from the sun and surf at Waikiki.

For additional information: Hawaii Chinese History Center, 111 N. King St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96817; Hawaii Visitor’s Bureau, Honolulu, Hawaii 96815.