IN SEARCH OF THE CHINESE NAME FOR "LI SUN"
TIN-YUKE CHAR*
In other pages of this Journal, the article on Hawaiian King Kalakaua and his visit to China in 1881, while on his way around the world, was based on the report to Hawaii by a member of the entourage.1 He wrote that the King was met in Tientsin by Li Hung-chang's secretary and interpreter, "Li Sun," who spoke English and gave the information that he was a graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and that he had a son who was a student at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.2
In The Sandalwood Mountains, an annotated collection of readings and stories on the early Chinese in Hawaii, was included an excerpt from this same report, written by William Armstrong who accompanied the Hawaiian King as Minister of State and Royal Commissioner of Immigration.3
Romanization of Chinese names vary confusingly because of dialectal differences in the Chinese language and because of diverse backgrounds of transliterators. Only in more recent years have writers in the English language settled on a standard style, e.g., Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Dr. Wing-tsit Chan*, hyphenating two-element given names and not capitalizing the second element. Until the Chinese characters for the romanized name are determined, one is never sure of the person's true identity. Therefore, some time was given on research for the name of an intriguing person whose name, when first came upon, was written as "Li Sun." Other romanizations found for his name were Chan Lai Sun and Tsang Lai Sun. He himself signed his name thus:
Chan Jaime
* Mr. Char (MEL), of the Hawaii Chinese History Center is a well-known researcher into that subject, and has previously contributed to this Journal.