WSA19: Hawaii: In Search of Chinese Immigrant History

Hawaii always has a special place in my heart.

In college, I took an Asian American Lit class. In class discussions, the girl from Hawaii and me, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, were the only ones who did not identify with the experiences we read in these Asian American Lit books, because we came from places where we were not the minority.

Hawaii to me, is what happens to the melting pot after 150 years. It’s a marriage of local Hawaiian culture, plus East meets West. It’s how I feel most of the time, in between cultures and experiences. Except, here, that’s the norm.

During my last trip here 20 years ago, I picked up a historical novel, set in Hawaii in the 1800s, recounting the experiences of the Chinese immigrants, as well as the greed and US business interests that helped shape Hawaii’s history. It was eye opening.

For this trip, in addition to eating all the delicious food I missed, I wanted to expose the children to this history and Hawaiian culture/history as well. I also personally wanted to see the places mentioned in the book.

Anyways, here are the highlights of our Hawaii trip. We spent 5 days here and only managed about 2 major activities plus beach and food trips. Sometimes I felt guilty for not squeezing more in. But worlschooling is a marathon and I know I have to build downtime for everyone.

How the Children Prepared for the Trip

Before the trip, the kids watched a few videos on YouTube of Hawaiian history and establishment of Hawaiian monarchy. Astroboy learned all about Kamehameha. Sadly, these videos are all in English.

Thumper read a Wikipedia post in Chinese on Hawaii and typed up an English summary.  This is how we squeeze in bilingual education now a days.  I’m honestly very surprised and amazed she understood mostly everything, and whatever words she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand the concept in general.

We also did some Evan Moore worksheets where they learned the State Bird, State flower, state fish, state flag, the total number of main islands, etc. We learned the names of the major islands in traditional Chinese:

• Big Island 大島
• Oahu 歐胡島
• Maui 茂宜島
• Kauai 可愛島

We watched 愛玩客 and 食尚玩家. It’s how we learned about Tanioka Seafood!

Toa Luau

http://www.toaluau.com

Though I’m not a big luau fan as it seemed to be more geared toward tourists, I wanted to at least have the kids experience it once. I’m so very glad I did some research and came upon this Luau in Waimea Valley that has only been operating for a year.

This luau was definitely the #1 highlight of our trip; the kids enjoyed the experience immensely, and I enjoyed the built in educational value. Just note that this is a Samoan luau instead of Hawaiian luau.

I will try and write a separate detailed review of Toa Luau as it’ll make this post too long otherwise.

I’ve never been to any luaus, but my impression is that you watch them dig up the kulua pig, eat a big hearty meal, and watch hula dances. Toa Luau is more educational. The kids participated in helping to make a part of the meal. You learn what the Samoans do when they have a feast in celebration of honored guests, including the ceremonial greeting of guests. It ends with a series of hula dances from various Polynesian countries, but the host always tells you before dance which country it’s from and some facts about the country or dance.

Of course, it still ended with a fire luau dance, which Astroboy was suitably impressed with and wanted to find out the next day how they can juggle a fire stick on their feet without getting burned.

The guests leave with a deeper understanding that not all Polynesian dances are the same and not all luaus are the same. These cultures and people don’t all “blur” together.

I highly recommend this luau if you ever decide to worldschool in Hawaii!

Tips #1: Make sure you get in line by 4:30 or earlier if you want to participate in the food preparation. This happens while they check all the guests in. We hiked to Waimea Falls and were the last in line and I was sorely disappointed we only joined in 1-2 activities before they ended the activities.

Tip #2: I don’t drink as I’m allergic to alcohol so I messaged Toa Luau on Facebook and asked them if I can get a slight discount on my tickets. They gave me a flat 20% off!

Hawaii Heritage Center Culture Tour

http://www.historichawaii.org

I wouldn’t say the children loved this walking food tour through Honolulu Chinatown. They enjoyed this 3+ hour tour because they were fed, and we weren’t with Fleur’s children.

If they’d gone with lots of other kids they would not have sat through 30 minutes of talk of Hawaiian immigrant history and 2 mile walk through Chinatown, with talks of architecture, history, and sometimes more adult appropriate material. (The fact that Chinatown is a kind of red light district at night, or pointing out why some bars were famous during WWII.)

But I personally think this is a good activity if you:

• Are willing to spend $30/adult, $15/child on a history and food tour, where the guide buys you samples of various Asian food to try.
• Want to find out more about the history of the immigrants on this island.
• Give the children a sense of the history of Chinese immigration in the late 1800’s. I remember how shocked I was to learn in high school that the Chinese helped build the railroads in the U.S., and even that was just a line or a paragraph in our high school textbook.

Did you know that Honolulu Chinatown was the first Chinatown in the US? And that despite its name, it isn’t really a Chinatown? First, 100k Chinese came (mostly from Canton and the region) to work in the fields, then 100k Japanese came when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, lastly, 100k Philippino came when the Japanese government didn’t want their people to go anymore. Plus your Scots, Greeks, and Turks who worked as the foremen in the plantations. Now a days, Chinatown has a lot of Vietnamese and Laotians.

Each wave of immigrants lived in Chinatown. In fact, it was called Japantown at one time. And you see this in the Portuguese building names in addition to Chinese and in the shops there. Only a few streets have storefronts that are like the storefronts in LA Chinatown or SF Chinatown.

In a way, Hawaii’s Chinatown reflects Hawai’i and it’s multi-cultureness.

We also heard stories of the accomplishments of the children of these immigrants. For example, did you know that La Tour Bakehouse and Ba Le Vietnamese sandwich stores are 1st and 2nd generation Vietnamese Americans of the same family? La Tour makes bread for Wholefoods.

Of course these parts went all over the kids heads, but I’ve been giving them backgrounds just based on what I learned from that interesting book I read 20 years ago, whose title I can’t remember anymore.

The food itself isn’t too too interesting if you’re familiar with Asian food. We tried some matigao 馬蹄糕, Vietnamese bubble tea, banana lumpia, and manapua (BBQ Pork buns). The guide doesn’t know everything either. But if you have questions they mostly know the answer. (I finally learned that manapua are the same as BBQ pork buns but it’s a local Hawaiian word that means “delicious food filled with pork”.)

Oh! The other thing I was so shocked to learn in my 20s was that Sun Yat Sun (孫中山), who overthrew the last dynasty in China, actually attended Punahou, the second most expensive private school in Honolulu. This time, I learned that his older brother actually owned land in Hawaii. SYS came back to Hawaii several times to raise money for his revaluation and his brother gave him all his money. Now I’m very curious as to what happened to his brother.

What I ultimately liked was it allowed me to walk all through Chinatown, into stores, traditional Asian markets, and plazas I wouldn’t have known existed or think to walk to if I’d gone by myself. It also accomplished what I wanted, to show the kids that Hawaii is not just this paradise of beaches, good weather, and fun activities; that there is a history to the people who live and work on the island.

Tip: Don’t park in the parking lot across the street! You’ll get towed within 5 minutes. Instead park down in the city parking lot down on Smith and ….

Food

The children’s favorite by far was Tanioka’s Seafood located west of the airport. They loved it so much that we went back to it a second time. They loved the spicy poke. I thought their spam musubi was the best I’ve had, so soft and warm.

We also had to try out chi chi dango, which is butter mochi. The first time I had it, I was forever sold on this type of mochi. It doesn’t have the sweet fillings of traditional mochi, just a slightly sweet, super duper soft mochi. It apparently did originate from some part in Japan, but they gave it a local twist by adding buttermilk to it. Nishhodo’s Candy Store is the place to go to try this mochi.

My favorite was the passion fruit. While Thumpers was peanut butter and eggs Astroboy the mango.

Of course, I also had to buy some manapua, another food that received its own local twist at Royal Kitchen. Instead of traditional white bao bread, it uses Portuguese soft bread. I think those are the same bread as the Hawaiian King bread rolls.

Cafe Kaila near Waikiki was a good place to have American breakfast. The kids loved the cinnamon waffle and scrambled bacon & eggs. I loved my half traditional eggs benedict and half kalua pig eggs Benedict. My sister, who lived in Hawaii for several years, recommended the place. It seems like a Japanese tourist favorite.

Lastly, we gave Musubi Iyasume in Waikiki a try the day we left. Hawaii is a good spot to check out Japanese food without going to Japan, since so many Japanese tourists go there. It’s worth a drop by if you’re in the Waikiki area. Parking is horrid otherwise. We all ordered the eel+egg+avocado spam musubi. The traditional musubi were just okay.

We also tried out tourist favs like Matsumoto Shaved Ice and Mike’s Huli Huli Chicken, both good for going once, to say you’ve gone.

Beach

I’d wanted to go to Hanauma Bay. It has a special place in my heart because we’d gone there when we first started homeschooling, and I first started spending 24×7 with the children. (We took 3 months off to deschool.) I don’t tend to play with my kids, but there was no other parent around to play with them, so I was forced to help Astroboy, then 3, swim around in the bay. I just remember being super mindful of the children for a moment, instead of living in my head like I always do. And I had actually had fun!

However, you have to leave by 7 if you want parking and we could never get to it given jet leg. Glad I didn’t go because the Great Barrier Reef is tons better!

Instead, my favorite was Ala Moana Beach Park. It was more like a super shallow swimming pool. And as a non-swimming parent, I felt completely safe just letting the kids swim out while I took a nap.

The other beach we went to was Waimanalo Beach, which also had a long sandy beach, unlike Waikiki, which just kind of drops off into deeper water fairly quickly. It’s more windy on the east side of the island, but otherwise it was a good local beach to go to.

Logistics

Lodging – Last time we stayed at Waikiki and did not rent a car. This time, I knew I wanted to drive around the island, so we stayed at an AirBnB in Hawaii Kai, which I LOVED. Hawaii Kai is super low key and has that island laid back feel. Plus it’s 5 minutes drive to Costco, Safeway, and the movie theater. The AirBnB itself was one of the better ones we’ve stayed at worldschooling. We had everything we need to live frugally if we’d wanted to not eat out much.

Car Rental – We rented through Easy Rent Cars, which has had the cheapest rates we can find throughout this Worldschooling trip.

Violin – We rented violin at Music Center of Hawaii for $20/month. I messaged the shop over Facebook to reserve a violin. You need a local Hawaiian address. But they were willing to accept my AirBnB address. The violin wasn’t as nice as our entry level J. Hayden violin, but it had a good sound and wasn’t bad like some of the cheap student violins we’ve rented in Taiwan.

Cost

So how much does 5 nights of unwinding from homeschooling cost? I knew this was going to be an expensive leg in my trip, but you know how it feels, when everything is just perfect, even though you hadn’t known what was “perfect” before you started?

I felt like the stars aligned and I’m super happy and satisfied that we decided to stop here en route to Australia. It gave us a vacation from 8 months of school, a step down in pace, and an easing into Australian time zones. It made all the experiences we had in Hawaii worth so much more than what we paid for. Money well spent.

Cost over 6 days 5 nights, 3 people.
I’ve now got 2 kids who are ordering adult entrees when we go out to eat. The average is over 6 days.