The Boston Globe, March 23, 2008
Artful Renewal in Chinatown
Hawaii's famously fusion culture owes a lot to its location. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the archipelago has always been a crossroads between East and West, and was first visited by the Chinese in 1789. In the capital here on the island of Oahu, Chinatown touches the water where the first shiploads of Chinese laborers disembarked in the 1850s, bound for the sugar plantations.

As the neighborhood took shape along Honolulu Harbor (granite blocks used as ship ballast from China became paving stones for the sidewalks of Chinatown), it continued to serve as gateway for a flood of Asian immigrants. Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Vietnamese all found a home in Chinatown. Like the rest of island culture, the neighborhood became a jumble: "kapakahi," Hawaiian for mixed up.