Chinese immigration to Hawaii

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chinese in Hawaiʻi constitute about 4.7% of the state's population, most of whom (75%) have ancestors from Zhongshan in Guangdong. This number does not include people of mixed Chinese and Hawaiian descent. If all people with Chinese ancestry in Hawaiʻi (including the Chinese-Hawaiians) are included, they form about 1/3 of Hawaii's entire population. As United States citizens, they are a group of Chinese Americans.

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[edit] Origins

Historical records indicated that the earliest immigration of the Chinese came from Guangdong province in three initial waves of immigration: in 1778 with Captain Cook's journey, in 1788 with Kaina, and in 1789 with an American trader settled in Hawaiʻi in the late 18th century.

By 1790, a handful of them lived on the island of Oʻahu, including the 1789 group, living together with the chief Kamemhameha the Great. Because these Chinese men did not bring any Chinese women along with them, they took in Hawaiian wives instead, and frequently, adopting Chinese-Hawaiian surnames like Akaka, Ahina, etc, in which words of Chinese origin are pronounced with a soft Hawaiian tone. The practice of taking in Hawaiian women continued well into the 19th century, when Chinese women were still considered a rarity in Hawaiʻi.

[edit] Religion

Prior to the arrival of European Christian missionaries to Hawaii, the early Chinese settlers were practicers of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Some even blended aspects of native Hawaiian beliefs into their own belief systems.

Today, due to the work of Christian missionaries in the late 19th century and the 20th century, the vast majority of the Chinese in Hawaii are adherents of Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity. Still, about 100 Buddhist and ancestral Temples remain, and the loyal minority who adhere to Traditional Chinese religions pay pilgrimage to their ancestors annually. However, no accurate statistics of adherents within the Chinese community in Hawaiʻi are available.

[edit] List of notable Chinese people from Hawaiʻi

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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