Hawaii

by James Michener

  "Sounds sensible," Whipple admitted.

  "So the naming of this man's son has got to start Kee Chow, because that's what the poem says."

  "Then why doesn't he just add any third name he likes?"

  "Ah!" pounced the letter-writer. "There's the problem! Only a scholar can be trusted to pick that third name, for on it depends the child's entire good fortune. I'll ask Mun Ki who gave him his third name." There was a furious exchange of Chinese, after which the letter-writer reported triumphantly: "His parents summoned a learned priest from Canton. The man spent three days pondering his name. He consulted oracles and horoscopes, and finally the right name was selected. You see, a man's name can influence his entire life."

  "So the Chinese in Hawaii consult with you because you are a scholar?" Whipple asked.

  "Alas, there are some who are so ignorant they do not even know their family poems, and such people don't care what they name their sons. But Mun Ki comes from a strong family. They saw to it that he carried his family poem with him."

  The scholar now ignored Whipple and began a long conversation with Mun Ki, and after fifteen or twenty minutes he returned to Whipple and explained: "I have been inquiring of Mun Ki what his hopes are for his son, for this is important in choosing a name."

  The discussion continued for some time, and gradually the scholar began getting some paper in place and a Chinese brush, and after about an hour of speculation on the name, he reported to Whipple: "We are beginning to narrow it down. We are trying to find a word which will harmonize with Kee and Chow but at the same time add dignity and meaning. It must be a word that sounds well, looks well when written, has its own peculiar meaning, and combines well with the second word in the name. It must also express the father's hopes for his son, so you will excuse me if I concentrate on this and propose several possibilities."

  With his brush he began drafting a variety of Chinese characters, and some he rejected as too feminine for a strong son like Mun Ki's, and others because they had alternative readings that might offend. Sometimes Mun Ki refused a name, and gradually the scholar began to confine the possibilities to a few choices. At last, in triumph, he announced the boy's name: "Kee Chow Chuk, the Kee who Controls the Center of the Continent."

  He asked, "Isn't that a splendid name?" and Dr. Whipple nodded, whereupon the scholar took Mun Ki's genealogical book and on the appropriate page wrote down the bright new name, filled with parental hope. The scholar studied the handsome characters with obvious pleasure and told Whipple, "There's a name that looks good from any angle. It's what we call auspicious." He then took a sheet of writing paper and asked Mun Ki, "What's your village?" and when the cook replied, the letter-writer made a few swift strokes addressing the letter to that village, advising the elders that Kee Mun Ki was dutifully reporting the fact that he had a son whose name was Kee Chow Chuk, and in the ancestral clan book that name should be recorded. The family was going on. In remote Hawaii there was now a Kee who paid respect to his ancestors, who would in due time start sending money home, and who finally would return to the village, for to live elsewhere was unthinkable.

  And then, as Kee Mun Ki and Nyuk Tsin were leaving the Punti store, the scholar made a dramatic gesture which changed the entire history of the Kees in Hawaii. As if a vision had possessed him, the name-giver cried, "Halt!" And with slow, stately gestures he tore up the letter to the Low Village, scattering its shreds upon the floor. Trancelike he approached Mun Ki, took away the genealogical book and splashed black ink across the propitious name he had just composed. Then, in a low voice, he explained: "Sometimes it comes like a flash of lightning on a hot night. After you have pondered a name for many hours you catch a vision of what this child can be, and all the old names you have been considering vanish, for a new name has been written across your mind in flame."

  "Have you such a name for Mun Ki's boy?" Whipple asked respectfully.

  "I have!" the scholar replied, and with bold strokes of his brush he put down the fiery name: Kee Ah Chow. He repeated it aloud, awed by its splendor.

  "I thought it had to be Kee Chow Ah," Dr. Whipple suggested.

  "It does!" the scholar agreed. "But sometimes rules must be broken, and this child's name is surely Kee Ah Chow."

  The scholar handed the new name to Mun Ki and explained in Punti: "As you were leaving the store I had a sudden vision of your life. Your family's bold and you will venture far. You will have many sons and great courage. The world is yours, Mun Ki, and your firstborn must have a name that signifies that fact. So we shall call him Kee Ah Chow, the Kee who Controls the Continent of Asia. And your next sons shall be Europe and Africa and America and Australia. For you are the father of continents."

  Mun Ki smiled deprecatingly, for the words were sweet. He had always imagined himself as rather special, a man nominated by the gods, and it was good to hear a scholar confirming the fact. Giving Nyuk Tsin an imperative shove, he started to leave the store, but again the scholar stopped them, pointing imperatively at Nyuk Tsin and crying, "And her name shall be Wu Chow's Mother, for she is to be the mother of continents."

  This prophetic announcement caused embarrassment, and Mun Ki had to explain in Punti: "She is not my wife. My real wife is a Kung girl in China. This one is merely . . ."

  The scholar folded his hands, studied Nyuk Tsin, and replied in Punti, "Well, that's the way of China. Maybe it's better, seeing that she's a Hakka." He shrugged his shoulders and turned to go, then paused and added, "Let her be known as Wu Chow's Auntie." Mun Ki nodded and told his wife her new name.

  Dr. Whipple was perplexed by this exchange of words he could not understand, but he judged the matter under discussion was one of importance, and from the manner in which Nyuk Tsin stood, the blood of shame rising to her ears, he guessed that they were talking about her, but no one explained what was being said. Finally Mun Ki bowed. Wu Chow's Auntie bowed. Together they recovered the poem and the name book, and when Mun Ki handed them to Nyuk Tsin to carry he touched her hand and said proudly, "We are going to have many sons."

  The scholar, for his important role in naming the Kee's first-born, received a fee of sixty cents, and Mun Ki considered the money well spent, for he was certain that his child was properly launched; but Dr. Whipple, who was then much concerned with the manner in which his own children and grandchildren were occupying themselves in Hawaii, was even more deeply impressed by the incident. He recognized it as symbolizing one of the strengths of the Chinese: "They exist within a hierarchy of generations. Their names tell where they belong, and remind them of their parents' hopes for them. A Chinese lives within a defined system, and it's a good one. No matter where he goes, his name is listed in a village, and that's home. We Americans drift where we will. We have no name, no home, no secure address. I'd like to know more about the Chinese."

  So although he was then sixty-seven years old and preoccupied with important matters, John Whipple began his last scientific work: a study of the Chinese whom he had brought to Hawaii, and much of what we know today about those early Orientals--those strange, secret people imported to work the sugar--we know from what he wrote. It was Whipple who cast a shadow of fear across the other sugar planters by publishing an article in the Honolulu Mail: "We are deluding ourselves if we persist in the belief that these intelligent, thrifty and hard-working people will long be content to stay upon the plantations. Their natural destiny is to work as accountants and mechanics in our cities. They will be excellent schoolteachers and I suppose some will become bankers and enterprisers of great force.

  As soon as their indentures are discharged, they are flocking to our cities to open stores. More and more, the commerce of our countryside will fall into their industrious hands. Therefore, it behooves us to look about and find other workmen to take care of our cane fields for us; for the Chinese are not going to persist in a condition of servitude. They will learn to read and write, and when they have done this, they will demand a share in the government of these islands.
r />   "There may be some who decry this development, but I for one applaud it. Hawaii will be a stronger community when we use our Chinese to their fullest advantage, and just as I would never have been content to be merely a field hand, doing the same chore over and over again, so I am gratified when I see another man who, like me, is determined to better himself. At one point, when I was engaged in the business of bringing Chinese to these islands, I believed that when their indentures were discharged they would return to China. Now I am convinced that they will not do so. They have become part of Hawaii and we should encourage them to follow in our footsteps. Let them become educated. Let them initiate new industries. Let them become fellow citizens. For through them the dying Hawaiian race will be regenerated."

  Honolulu's reaction was simple and dramatic: "The sonofabitch ought to be horsewhipped!"

  Captain Rafer Hoxworth stormed: "We brought those damned Chinamen here under the specific understanding that after five or ten years in the sugar fields they'd go home. Good God! Whipple wants them to stay! It's by God downright indecent."

  Captain Janders' son, and now Dr. Whipple's partner in J & W, said, "The old man must be out of his mind! Why, one of our biggest problems in running the plantations is that as soon as the Chinese get a chance they leave us and open a store in Honolulu. I .can take you to Nuuanu Street and show you half a dozen shops started by men who ought to be working for me right now, growing cane."

  But what infuriated Hawaii most was the sly manner in which the Chinese, who had no women of their own, had been stealing Hawaiian women, and marrying them, and having babies by them. In spite of the fact that the babies were some of the most handsome ever bred in the islands, extraordinarily intelligent and healthy, the white community was outraged and passed laws to stop these criminal marriages. One edict forbade any Chinese from marrying a Hawaiian girl unless he became a member of the Christian church. The speed with which Chinese men learned the catechism was staggering, and one Chinese passed along to another the correct answers to the critical questions, so that it was not uncommon for a Chinese to utter, as his first words in broken English, the complete Nicene Creed plus explanations of the Trinity, the Virgin birth and Calvin's doctrine of predestination. One minister, after examining several such impromptu scholars, told a fellow Calvinist, "With my own ears I heard these men answer every important question correctly, and at the end I was tempted to ask one more, 'What does it all mean?' but I have never dared to ask even my Boston friends that fearful question, and I eschewed doing so here."

  Actually, the Chinese made good Christians and did so without reservation. They were determined to have women, and conversion seemed a cheap price to pay. Those lucky ones who married Hawaiian girls with land and who grew to great wealth from manipulating that land, founded substantial Christian families and supported the large churches that were built by other Chinese; but when a male grandson was born, these prudent men went quietly to the Punti store and worked out a proper Chinese name for the boy, and sent that name back to the village hall, where it was written in the clan book.

  As for the Hawaiian women, they preferred Chinese husbands to any other, for there were no men in the islands who loved women and children more than the pigtailed Chinese, and it was not uncommon to see a thin, bedraggled Chinese man, who had slaved all day on the docks for H & H, come home to where a hugely fat Hawaiian wife watched in idleness as he did the laundry, washed the children and cooked the evening meal. A Chinese husband brought presents and spent time educating his sons. He saw that his daughters had ribbons, and on Sunday he would take his whole brood to church. It became recognized in the islands that the very best thing that could happen to a Hawaiian girl was to catch herself a Chinese husband, for then all she had to do was laugh, wear fine brocades and rear babies.

  But there was a subtler reason why the Hawaiians tolerated Chinese marriages: they saw with their own eyes that Chinese-Hawaiian children were superb human specimens. When the first such girls began to mature Honolulu was breathless at their beauty. They had long black hair with just a suggestion of a wave running through it, olive skin, a touch of mystery about their eyes and handsome teeth. They were taller than their Chinese fathers, much slimmer than their copious mothers and they combined the practicality of the Chinese with the gay abandon of the Hawaiian. They were a special breed, the glory of the islands; and practically every writer from America or England who took part in launching the lively fable of the beautiful Hawaiian girl, had in his mind's eye one of these first Chinese-Hawaiian masterpieces; and they justified all that was written about romantic Hawaii.

  The boys were promising in another way. They were quick to learn, good at games, very good at business and best of all at politics. They had a shameless charm in soliciting votes for their candidates, were gifted in repartee, and had a basic honesty which the public grew to respect. So the Hawaiians, who had been a vanishing race-- 400,000 in 1778, 44,000 in 1878--suddenly received a vital impetus from the Orient and began to re-establish themselves through the Chinese-Hawaiian mixture, until in later years the part-Hawaiian was to become the fastest-growing component in the islands.

  Captain Rafer Hoxworth, watching the beginning of this miracle, spoke for all his Caucasian friends except Dr. Whipple when he said, "Any Chinese who leaves a plantation to become a peddler should be immediately deported, but any who touches a Hawaiian girl should be hung."

  In the Honolulu Mail the Hewletts reported more moderate reactions: "Hawaii is ruined. The Chinese are fleeing the plantations, and who will raise our sugar?"

  Dr. Whipple, having gained only contumely from his last public writing on the Chinese, confined his subsequent thoughts to his diary: "It was on the island of Oahu in 1824 that I first saw measles sweep through a Hawaiian village, leaving eighty per cent of the people dead, and it was soon after that I began considering what we could do to infuse new life into this lovable race which I had grown to cherish so dearly. I foresaw that only the introduction of some vital new blood could prevent the annihilation of these fine people. Erroneously, I thought that stronger Polynesians from the south might accomplish the reversal, but we imported such Polynesians and nothing happened. Later, I trusted that Javanese might suffice, and perhaps they would have, but we were unable to acquire them. And now the Chinese have arrived and they have served exactly as I long ago predicted they would. For my part in effecting this salvation of a race, I am humbly proud. At present the temper of the time is against me in this matter, so I keep my own counsel, but I am confident that the judgment of the future will support me. The best thing I ever did for Hawaii was to import Chinese."

  As he wrote in his lamp-lit study, Mun Ki and his wife, in their small house nearby, were starting another son, the Continent of Europe.

  NYUK TSIN and her husband had been in Hawaii about a year when the entire Chinese community was aroused by news filtering into Honolulu from the island of Maui, where many Chinese workers were engaged on plantations. As the Chinese got the news, this is what happened: toward dusk one hot day an elderly clergyman with a limp and carrying a cane forced his way into one of the temporary Chinese temples erected there for the use of the laborers, and disrupted worship. One woman who had been in the temple at the time reported: "The little man struck everything with his cane, knocked down the statue of Kwan Yin, tore up the golden papers and shouted words at us. When we refused to leave the temple, for it was ours and built with our effort and none of theirs, his great anger turned toward us, and he tried to strike us with his cane, shouting at us all the time. But since he was an old man, it was easy for us to avoid him."

  The Chinese generally felt that this was but one more evidence of the hard life they were to have on the plantations, and much indignation resulted from the old man's unexpected attack. Asked the Chinese, Punti and Hakka alike: "Don't the white men respect gods?" And the divergence between the Chinese and the Caucasian increased.

  To the white men, the incident at the Buddhist temple wa
s deplorable, and planters both on Maui and on other islands quickly got together small sums of money which they handed to the offended Chinese, so that some of the damage growing out of the attack was rectified. Dr. Whipple, as spokesman for the planters, went personally to Maui to mollify the laborers, and after a period of tension, reasonably good relations were restored, and all whites who employed Chinese took special pains to assure the strangers that they were free to worship as they pleased. Thus, in the mid-1860's a true religious freedom was established in the islands: Congregationalists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Mormons, Buddhists and Confucianists worshiped side by side in relative harmony.

  When peace among the Chinese had been restored, the white planters took up the problem of wizened Abner Hale, and younger offspring of the old families, men like the Hewletts, the Whipples and the Hoxworths, convened in Honolulu to see what to do about the old man. Reported one of the Hewletts, honestly: "That pitiful fanatic, bursting in that way with his cane and his shouts of 'Abomination! Corruption!' almost ruined everything we've accomplished with the Chinese. We've got to make the old fool behave."

  Years ago he did the same thing with the Hawaiians, as I understand," Bromley Hoxworth explained. "One famous night when my mother was getting married to her brother, he burst into the ceremony and lashed about with his cane, destroying idols and raising merry hell. He still thinks he's fighting the old Hawaiian gods."

  "Somebody's got to advise him that things have changed," one of the Whipple boys insisted. "Knocking down Hawaiian idols when it does no harm is one thing, but destroying Buddhas when we're trying to keep our Chinese help happy is quite another."

  The group turned to David Hale and suggested: "Can you talk to him, Dave?"

  "I'd rather not," the alert young man evaded. "I've never been able to make much sense with Father."

  "What we really ought to do is to get him off Maui altogether," Brom Hoxworth proposed. "Truly, he oughtn't to be there alone. He messes up the Seamen's Chapel and interferes with the Chinese. He's really a dreadful nuisance, and I agree with the others, Dave, that you've got to talk with him. Convince him that he ought to live in a little house here in Honolulu . . . where we could watch him."