[ { "id": 207719, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 107, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\nEditor\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR*\n\nJournal of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch\n\nSir:\n\nI am submitting a manuscript for publication in your Journal on King Kalakaua of Hawaii and his visit to Hong Kong in 1881. It gives a clear explanation why Hong Kong was chosen as the principal embarkation port for the Chinese labor recruitment to Hawaii. The strict administration of British regulations on emigration, the designation of an honorary Hawaiian consul in Hong Kong, and the reasonable contract between employer and employee signed in Hawaii, as documented in an appendix, all give a better understanding of the good treatment of our Chinese immigrants to Hawaii compared with the abuses in Peru and Cuba.\n\nThe first reigning monarch to make a trip around the world was King David Kalakaua of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The year was 1881. King Kalakaua, born November 16, 1836, reigned for twenty-three years (1874-1891) until his death in San Francisco on January 20, 1891.† He had already had his first experience travelling abroad in November 1874 when he called on President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington and addressed the United States Congress in fluent English. As a result of this visit, the Hawaiian government was\n\n* Mr. Char was born in Hawaii in 1905 and has had a colorful life combining business and education. A graduate of McKinley High School in Honolulu, he received his B.A. degree from Yenching University in Peking and his M.A. from the University of Hawaii, and pursued graduate studies at Columbia University. He then taught, both in Hawaii and in China. In 1938, Mr. Char and his family returned to Hawaii as refugees from the Japanese military invasion of Canton. He spent the next thirty years in the insurance business. In 1952, he became the first person in Hawaii to gain the national professional designation of CPCU (Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter) in the field of insurance. Always active in community affairs, Mr. Char served on the boards of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Hawaii Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Nuuanu YMCA, and the Board of Underwriters of Hawaii (insurance), among others, and is currently a member of a number of historical societies, including the Hawaii Chinese History Center. Upon retirement in 1969 as president of the Continental Insurance Agency of Hawaii, Mr. Char spent a year on the campus of Chung Chi College, a division of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a volunteer in student counseling and placement service. Since then, he has devoted his time to historical research and writing.\n\nMr. Char is also the author of The Hakka Chinese: Their Origin and Folk Songs and Chinese Proverbs, both published by the Jade Mountain Press of San Francisco in 1969, and The Char Family Genealogy Book, privately published in Honolulu in 1970.\n\n† See Plate 15.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207720, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 108, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n93\n\nsuccessful in negotiating a Reciprocity Treaty effective in 1876. This gave Hawaii and the United States duty-free trade with each other. For Hawaii, it meant that sugar and rice, the principal agricultural products exported to America in that period, brought about an era of prosperity to the islands.\n\nHawaii, since its chance discovery by the English explorer, Capt. James Cook, in 1778 in his search for a Northwest passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, advanced rapidly from a primitive, feudal state into a stable monarchy under Anglo-American tutelage. Beginning with King Kamehameha I in 1795, King Kalakaua was the seventh ruler of this tiny kingdom in the central Pacific Ocean, which is over 2,000 miles from San Francisco and 5,000 miles from Hong Kong. By 1898, Hawaii was annexed as a United States territory until 1959 when Hawaii became the fiftieth state of the American Union.\n\nEarly relations between China and Hawaii started soon after Capt. Cook's discovery in 1778. American and European trading vessels passed by Hawaii on their way to the Pearl River estuary. The sandalwood trade from Hawaii to China flourished from 1790-1840. To the Chinese in the Canton-Macao area, the Hawaiian Islands became known as Tan Heung Shan #2 or Sandalwood Mountains.\n\nBy the time of King Kalakaua's reign, the Pearl River delta area furnished the principal labor supply for Hawaii's agricultural development and Hong Kong had become the principal port of departure. In 1864, the Hawaiian government started to take an active part by establishing a Bureau of Immigration. The ending of the American Civil War (1861-1865) affected the sugar market favorably for Hawaii. Dr William Hillebrand, newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration, went to Hong Kong and other areas in the Far East in 1865 in search for labor suitable to Hawaii's burgeoning sugar plantations. With the help of the Reverend Wilhelm Lobscheid and the Chinese emigration agency, Wo Hang *, Hillebrand carefully selected 521 Chinese laborers, including ninety-five women and thirteen children,\n\nThey left Hong Kong in two single-deck ships, the Alberto and Roscote, arriving in Honolulu on September 23 and October 12, 1865.2 Chinese labor, both under contract or as free immigrants, contributed greatly to the agricultural economy of Hawaii.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "94\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\nThe 1876 Reciprocity Treaty with the United States increased the demand for labor. The 1876 biennial report of the Hawaiian Minister of Finance furnished some data of government expenditures for its active assistance in importation of Chinese labor. The expenditures for the aid of immigration during that past fiscal period was $8,850; of which $3,850 was to pay the passages for 154 arriving Chinese laborers and $5,000 was advanced to a firm of rice planters, Chulan and Company, who had 210 Chinese laborers on their way from Hong Kong.\n\n3\n\nLetters of credit were also given to Afong and Achuck and to Luke Asiu to assist passages of 400 laborers to come to Hawaii's sugar plantations. The Hawaiian government expected return of the money advanced by an arrangement with the plantations through payroll deductions.\n\nLabor conditions in Hawaii were strongly influenced by Christian missionary presence in Hawaii. In the 1882 report of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, it was said that missionaries kept vigilant watch on the treatment of laborers. \"A responsibility rests upon the plantations and the Christian public for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Chinese laborers who are not mere chattels but as human beings possessing rational and immortal souls and having the same natural rights as all others.\n\nThe labor supply problem was one of the concerns that led King Kalakaua to make his historic voyage.\n\nWith the affairs of his Kingdom in good order, King Kalakaua started on his world trip on January 20, 1881, on the City of Sydney which was then northbound from Australia to San Francisco. Accompanying him were Attorney General William Armstrong and the Royal Chamberlain, Colonel Charles H. Judd. Armstrong was commissioned as Minister of State, which would place him in the same rank as the Cabinet Ministers of any sovereign and entitle him to the respect and courtesies due to that rank. He was also made Royal Commissioner of Immigration to look for \"cognate\" sources of labor to solve the problem of a depleted native population. Colonel Judd, also from an American missionary family and an 1849 schoolmate of David Kalakaua at the Royal School, joined the Royal party to advise and guide the King on protocol and etiquette. Robert von Oehlhoffen, former German baron and an...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207722, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAHAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n95\n\naccomplished linguist, went as personal attendant, to make up the Royal Suite of four.*\n\nIn personal appearance, the King was a thick-set man with dark curly hair, long sideburns, and a drooping mustache. He had a striking appearance and a warm outgoing personality. His social ease and scholarly intellect brought dignity and prestige to the Hawaiian throne. To some people, however, the \"Merry Monarch” was looked upon as a spendthrift who loved card games, feasting, dancing, and horse and yacht racing,\n\n5\n\nArmstrong had the exceptional opportunity to gather information, and he recorded his observations in a book, Around the World with a King. In the Hawaii State Archives are three folders containing correspondence and reports of Armstrong and Kalakaua about this long trip. For easier reading of the King's holograph, the Hawaiian Journal of History has published \"The Royal Tourist-Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London.”7\n\nAs a farewell to the King, a Sunday morning service was held on January 16, 1881 at the Catholic Cathedral with over 1,000 people attending. The January 22nd issue of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser also reported a Sunday evening service at the Protestant Kawaihao Church which was filled to capacity. The Honorable J. N. Kapena took the occasion to note that His Majesty spoke at the church six years ago on the eve of his visit to Washington where he was successful in making the country richer and in the betterment of his people, as evidenced by new houses, ships, railways, and other improvements. This time the King was taking a Royal Commissioner of Immigration with him to look for people of brown skins to repeople these isles. Also, the King was going to observe other governments. \"The great nations now look with respect on this little Kingdom and will have still more, when they see our King travelling among them for information to benefit his people.\" With this Aloha send-off, the Royal party started their nine-month tour.\n\nHawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, W. L. Green, had already written ahead on January 15, 1881 to R. W. Irwin, Hawaiian Consul General in Japan, to anticipate the King's visit. Minister Green had also sent out a circular letter on January 17, 1881 to Hawaiian consular officials abroad about the Royal tour that \"one of the objects is to obtain the best possible information in the different", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207723, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 111, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "96\n\nTIN-YUKE CHAR\n\ncountries in the hope to find suitable people to replenish our population. We have the productive land. Sugar and rice are our main and most profitable crops.\" The letter also mentioned that the Chinese did not bring their women and that it was dangerous to give them franchise because their numbers would be a threat to the Kingdom. The suggestion was to try India where the British had been successful in using their coolies in agricultural development of the colonies. Armstrong, however, later sent a report that the East Indians were not suitable nor desirable as immigrants to Hawaii. Minister Green had also written on January 18, 1881 to William Keswick, Hawaiian Consul General in Hong Kong to expect King Kalakaua's arrival and to assist Armstrong in obtaining a good class of Chinese immigrants to be accompanied by wives and children.\n\nFrom Hawaii the party first started for San Francisco where the Chinese Consul General entertained the Royal party at Hang Fen Lou Restaurant and took the occasion to thank the King for his kind treatment of the Chinese in Hawaii.\n\nSailing for Japan on the Oceanic, the Royal party arrived after twenty-four days at the Bay of Yedo on March 4, 1881 and landed at Yokohama. King Kalakaua wrote back from Tokyo on March 15, 1881, “Our reception has been most cordial and pleasant with the Emperor [Meiji]. He extended the hospitality of being his guest during our stay in the City of Tokio, occupying the same buildings that General Grant did when he was here and other distinguished guests, Prince Henri of Germany and the Duke of Genoa.”\n\nThe subject of possible Japanese emigration to Hawaii received some consideration by the Japanese officials. And on February 8, 1885, the first group of Japanese immigrants (676 men, 159 women, and 108 children) came to Hawaii. Major credit for this successful endeavor was due to \"the personal friendship of the Emperor of Japan for King Kalakaua.\" commented the editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser.\n\nTo proceed to China, the party sailed on the Tokio Maru. Upon arrival at Shanghai, they were furnished the Pautah by the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company to take the Royal group to Tientsin. They had hopes of being received at Court in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207724, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 112, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n97\n\nPeking. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company had been doing business with Hawaii. Their two steamers, the Ho-Chung ** and Mei-Foo, ✯✯ were used to transport Chinese laborers to Hawaii in 1879 and 1880.*\n\nIn Tientsin, King Kalakaua was received by Viceroy Li Hung-chang ✶ who asked penetrating questions about Hawaii: \"How many islands are there in your Kingdom? Do you have a Parliament? You have many Chinese in your country. Do you treat them well?\" The secretary and interpreter for the Viceroy was Li Sun (Tsang Lai-sun, a graduate of Hamilton College in New York.)\n\nThe King wrote back on April 6, 1881 to William L. Green, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, that he went to North China to see Li Hung-chang \"for the purposes I had in view: First, of stopping, if possible, further immigration of Chinese to the Islands [who came alone] without carrying their wives, and Secondly:--to secure for our government the same privileges as granted to the United States Government, the right at any time to restrict, return, or remove, the large influx of Chinese to our islands. On these two subjects our mission has been successful.”\n\nThe Royal party returned to Shanghai and embarked on the S. S. Thibet for Hong Kong, arriving on April 12, 1881. Already Hong Kong officials had been informed of the King's coming and were ready to extend a royal welcome. Owing to the considerable commerce between Hong Kong and Hawaii, the King was represented as Consul General by a British merchant of high standing William Keswick of Jardine, Matheson and Co. The twelve-oared barge of Sir John Pope Hennessy, the Colonial Governor, also appeared alongside with an invitation asking the King, in the name of Queen Victoria, to be his guest. The Hawaiian King had to adjust his schedule to accept the Governor's invitation for a royal reception at the Government House. As Armstrong recorded in his book, \"While we were taking coffee, the next morning, the forts, with seven warships, fired the usual salute of twenty-one guns. From the balcony of the Government House, high above the city, we looked down on a dense mass of smoke, rolling away to the mainland, pierced with the flashing of the guns, the Hawaiian flag", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207726, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n99\n\nkindly put me in communication with the British Minister in Rome so that I can command his good offices. . . . In the matter of decorations. Sir John ranks high among the Colonial Governors of England.\" And a Grand Cross of Kalakaua was later conferred on him.\n\nHong Kong Chinese merchants who traded with the people in Hawaii came to call on the King, and told him that their countrymen in his Kingdom appreciated the opportunities in the islands and were loyal to the Hawaiian government.\n\nAt the last State banquet in Hong Kong, as Armstrong reported, \"the lifeless air and heavy food made the King drowsy. The numerous receptions and late hours had deprived the King of sleep. His eyelids dropped . . . The Governor's wife was seated on the King's right, and I was seated next to her. I feared a nasal explosion if the King's doze should deepen, and devised ways of preventing it. It was a case of emergency. I whispered to the Governor's wife what my fears were, and asked her aid in preventing a loss of royal dignity. The clever wife of the Governor whispered to me, 'Will any special piece of music waken him up?' . . . She quietly called the majordomo, and in a minute the military band in the balcony filled the air with the music of 'Hawai'i Pono'i' (the Hawaiian National Anthem).\" The King woke up and the banquet ended.\n\nPage 100\n\nOn April 21, 1881, the Royal group left Hong Kong on the ship Killarney for Bangkok. Acting Consul General F. Bulkeley Johnson sent his report to W. L. Green, \"His Majesty the King and suite arrived here on the 12th [April] and left on the 21st April for Bangkok on a visit to the King of Siam.\"\n\nAnd the King and his party travelled to Singapore, Penang, Calcutta, Suez, Cairo, Rome, London, Brussels, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Lisbon. King Kalakaua, in his July 12, 1881 letter from London, wrote of his meeting with Queen Victoria, “She came up to me and took my hand and then sat on a sofa asking me to sit down on a chair facing the sofa near her. She said that I was making a very long tour. I answered very fluently asked particularly where I learnt English as my accent was perfect.\" \n\nHomeward bound, the group crossed the Atlantic on the S. S. Celtic to New York. Then to Philadelphia, Washington, where he called on President Chester A. Arthur, and overland to California", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207728, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "A HAWAIIAN KING VISITS HONG KONG, 1881\n\n101\n\nToday, there are students from Hawaii studying in the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong; while, in Honolulu, many students from Hong Kong are studying at the University of Hawaii, continuing the tradition of cross-cultural relations. In the footsteps of the Royal Tourist, Hawaii's people today choose Hong Kong as a favorite spot on their tours of the Orient, to stop, look, and shop.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1953), Vol. II, pp. 180-181. For a reproduction of the Wo Hang Labor Recruitment Contract, see Appendix A, below.\n\n2 For a reproduction of the Hong Kong Emigration Officer's Certificate issued to the Alberto, see Appendix B, below. For a reproduction of the Plantation Labor Contract, signed in Hawaii by both employer and employee, see Appendix C, below.\n\n3 The Chinese in Hawaii (Chinese-English edition), (Honolulu: Overseas Penman Club, 1929), Chinese section, pp. 38-40.\n\n4 Norris W. Potter and Lawrence M. Kasden, Hawaii, Our Island State, (Columbus: Merrill, 1964), p. 185.\n\n5 Honolulu Magazine, February 1973, reprinted excerpt from Edward Joesting, Hawaii: An Uncommon History, (New York: Norton, 1973), pp. 208, 212. See also A. Grove Day, Hawaii: Fiftieth State, (New York: Meredith, 1960), p. 137.\n\n6 William N. Armstrong, Around the World with a King, (London: Heinemann, 1909). In addition, the State Archives of Hawaii has three folders of correspondence from Armstrong and King Kalakaua, FO & EX FILE (Foreign Office and Executive). The King's letters are of special interest.\n\n7 Richard Greer, \"The Royal Tourist — Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London” in The Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. V, 1971, pp. 75-109.\n\n8 State Archives of Hawaii. List of Arrivals of Immigrants, Hawaii Bureau of Immigration Reports, 1886, pp. 266, 277.\n\n9 Jardine, Matheson & Co. in December 1973 bought the controlling interest in Theo. H. Davies & Co., Ltd., one of the \"Big Five\" business giants in Hawaii.\n\n10 Gavan Daws, The Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, (New York: Macmillan, 1968; reprinted Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1974), p. 218.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 } ]