 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha and happy Chinese New Year, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Pauline Schachmokchen, your host for Outside In. Now today we're going to discuss the six sister city relationships China has with Honolulu with my guest Jeffrey Lau. Hi Jeff. Good afternoon Pauline. Brilliant. Okay, now we've got six sister cities we have to cover and this is in honor of the new year of the Earth Dog. That's correct. And we want to get to all of them in the time that we have, but very quickly let's start off with a little bit about yourself. Oh, I'm a practicing attorney here in Honolulu, have been for the last 40 years. But several years ago I took an interest in Chinese history and culture and over the last 10 to 15 years now I've been traveling to China anywhere from 2 to 5 or 6 times a year. Now you're known as the honorary consul for Belgium in addition to your legal work. That is correct. So how did you get involved with the management of these sister city relationships between China and Honolulu? Well that's in a completely different category. The Belgian thing came from the country of Belgium, they wanted somebody that knew about their country and my father had served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Battle of the Bulge there. Now on the Chinese side about 20 years ago my father decided that the family was so much interested in mainstream America that he thought we should all learn a little bit about Chinese culture. So all of a sudden in 1996 he said that's it, I've had enough, we're all going to China and we all looked at him like oh what are you crazy, why are we doing this? But lo and behold we went to the family villages after we toured some of the national monuments and it shocked all of us to find out that the people there in Toisan, which is now Taishan, the sea up district in southern China right above Macau, right next to Zhongsan, which is where all the Hawaii people are from, they all knew who we were and we didn't know who they were and looking up on the walls of these family homes all of our pictures were there, our graduation photos and all and we didn't know anything about these people. So that started me on another lifelong journey to try to find out about our relationships in China. After all it's almost four generations removed. Okay, okay let's start with Sister City number one. We're going to cover them in chronological order that they were made a sister city of Honolulu. So it's we're going to Hainan Island now. Yes, Hainan Dao. Yes, and the specific city is Haikou. Yes it is now Haikou. Originally it was Hainan Dao when it was part of Guangdong province, but in 1986 a fellow classmate of mine from Punahou, Li Waidu led a delegation there to create the very first sister city in mainland China with Hawaii and it was a time just the whole island now it's just the capital city of Hainan. And the date of this is 1986. 1986, that is correct. This is the oldest of the sister cities. And you also mentioned when we were talking about this earlier there is a resort city called Sanya. Oh yes. And how is that is that close to Haikou? It's at the opposite end of the island. Actually I believe they have developed a relationship with the island of Kauai, that county, but nonetheless whenever the governor or the mayor of Honolulu goes to Hainan, typically we go to both Haikou, the capital city and then we take a bus trip or a rail trip down to Sanya, which is a really beautiful resort area, very much in the making of Waikiki. Well that's what they copied anyway. One of the hotels looks just like the Royal Hawaiian. Oh I see, why did they choose to copy Waikiki? Well they were an outpost. In ancient times Hainan was where the emperor kicked people out of the country that had violated laws just like beyond the edge of the Great Wall out in the Xinjiang desert. He was sent into exile. You were sent into exile there so it was a barren land. And so when it became its own province they said what are we going to do? We can grow some crops but we have all these lovely beaches facing Vietnam and the Philippines so they decided to develop a resort tourism and so where did they copy? Hawaii. With the Hainan model it looks just like the Hawaii age except it's spelled with Hainan instead of Hawaii in a multi-colored rainbow design. I imagine that's because people from Hainan or Haikou have visited Honolulu and they found that to be the most picturesque way of creating a resort. Yes, one of my uncles actually started a series of management programs with the Communist Party leaders in China to come and visit the College of Business Administration here in Hawaii and he started an exchange program learning about Western management styles and it all started from Hainan. Later on Lee Yai set up a series of legal seminars between the attorneys in Guangdong province and with Hawaii also so we served for a number of years in that capacity also. As far as you're aware Jeff is Sanya the only resort in all of China that has mimicked Waikiki successfully? They have done the most at this time. Only the Hong Kong area and Macau would like to but they don't have the beautiful beaches that Hainan has. So has Zhou Shan Island near Ningbo across the bay and Hangzhou Bay south of Shanghai. And of course another sister city way up north the third one that we did, Chen Wandao actually talked to me about having some of our large international architect firms come in to create a Waikiki of the north where all of the Russian tourists and all of the Mongolian tourists and northern Chinese come and visit including Mao at the time. Okay that's really interesting so are a lot of the visitors to Sanya, other Chinese from the other provinces because it's not something that's probably internationally known as a resort? Yes it's booming now as a wedding location and a beauty contest location. The primary international tourists though are Russian. Oh right, they're sort of everywhere aren't they? So all the Italian foods, I mean Russian foods are there and they're taking up a lot of the beach space right now. Yes that's the same in the Mediterranean, in the French Riviera and also in Cyprus. Yes. In Limassol so it's very interesting that they've got to. Very similar. Yes, so let's move on to the second one and this is of particular closeness to Hawaii, this is Zhong Shan and this was 1986 as well. 1987, no 1997, it's 11 years later. 11 years later we have a second sister city and this is important Zhong Shan because a lot of the Hawaiians of Chinese ancestry came from this city. About 70% of all the Chinese that grew up in Hawaii come from the Zhong Shan region of China. Now if you need an idea of where this is located if you think of Horshu with Hong Kong on the northern end, Macau on the southern end and Guangzhou Canton in the middle, this would be above Macau and that's where most of the Chinese because it's a water town or near the ocean they could see all of the Portuguese, American, British sailing ships going in, playing the waters between Guangzhou and the west. So many of them got on board and came to came to Hawaii. Now it's funny because they came a little later than the original Chinese, the Toisan people, which is the next valley over toward the southwest of Macau. They all went to the United States, to the gold fields to build the railroads and as merchants to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore. So my family goes all the way back to those in Pennsylvania but nonetheless later the next group came in from Zhong Shan and they happened to be coming just about the time the Asian Exclusion Acts went into effect. So many of them were prevented from going to the US mainland so they decided to stay in Hawaii and lo and behold when Hawaii was annexed to the United States it became US citizens. That's right. And so that's how fortunate they were for all of us to be here today. Brilliant. So that's a particularly important one, that second relationship. Absolutely. Now let's move on to the third one and this becomes a sister city in 2010. This is Qin Huang Dao. And this has an interesting relationship with Chinese history because there's a link to the first emperor of China and as well as the last emperor or the Qing dynasty in China. That's correct. When I became president of the Chinese Chamber in 2010 it was the 99th to 100th year anniversary of the Chinese Chamber and I thought well we have two sister cities now in the south, Hainan, Hainan Dao and Haikou and also Zhongsan, both of them in Cantonese in the Hong Kong area. And I thought wouldn't it be great for us to expand our reach across the country. So we looked for one of the northern cities and it just so happened the year before 2009 one of our narcissist princesses, second princess had run in a number of Chinese beauty pageants in China, ran in our local pageant and came in second princess when she could hardly speak English at the time but she was such a dynamic person that we discussed the possibility of including her hometown way up north a beach town right on the Bohai sea and that was Qin Wandao and then I found out about the historical significance of that city two times in Chinese history very very important. The first was the Qin dynasty the emperor that unified all of China and he started the great wall coming out of the ocean right there in Qin Wandao. So Lao Lung To is right there where the dragon wall comes out of the water and transverses all the way across to the Tatla Macan Desert in Xinjiang all the way across China that's where it began and of course he had that search for the magic elixir of life and he sent 500 maidens and young men out to sea in search of that elixir I guess they never found it no I guess Qin Wandao has not done much since then but the Chinese are very long living absolutely and maybe that's where it comes from but many years later at the end of the Ming dynasty that location became famous again because that's where the first past under heaven is the Ming dynasty had a wall there a big fortress and there they it was there to keep the the man the manchurians out the the the Qing people and what happened was the general in charge Wu Sangui he thought the Ming emperor was too interested in his wife and he didn't like that so when the when the forces when the Ming dynasty forces were arrayed on this at the first pass under heaven they negotiated with the Qing coming in and let them through and so that they could come all the way into China fight the revolution that was going on in Beijing and that's how the Qing dynasty got started in China of course the previous Ming emperor he hung himself on Coal Hill that's right as you might know and that started the Qing dynasty in about 1400 interestingly enough Wu Sangui later on went all the way south to Yunnan and created a whole another kingdom the year he was part of the year kingdom in southern China and he had his own kingdom so that's a little bit of history so now when we decide to have this as a sister city they had all of this historical perspective beidi her which was where all the resorts for the Europeans were located from Beijing they would come and then later the communist party took that over you had Chiang Haiguan the first pass under heaven and Lao Lung told so they had terrific tourist attractions so they had contacted myself and at the time Peter Carlisle the mayor and said hey do you have anyone that can help us design a Waikiki project here up in the north and we thought about it we did talk to a number of architects but the problem is their season is like the northeast in New Jersey you have a short summer season and you couldn't do it all year round but during that summer it's packed with uh Russian tourists and Korean tourists and others the Russians go there too they're up in the north it's closer to the ocean it's much closer so that became the third sister city that we have going well right now and another beach and another beach project brilliant Jeff now we're going to just take a little quick break and we'll be back and talk about the other three cities okay just can't wait to have that happen this is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness Ted Rawson here folks you're a host on where the drone leads our weekly show at noon on thursdays here on Think Deck where we talk about drones anything to do about drones drones remotely piloted aircraft unmanned air christmas whatever you want to call them emerging into Hawaii's economy educational framework and our public life we talk about things associated with the use the misuse technology engineering legislation with the local experts as well as people from across the country please join us noon on thursdays and catch the latest on what's taking place in the world of drones that might affect you hello hon welcome back ladies and gentlemen we're discussing the six sister city relationships china has with Honolulu and we covered the first three right jeff that is correct so we're going to cover the next three but before we do that there are two relevant organizations to the scheme of these sister cities Honolulu has with china so do you want to explain those sure absolutely the city and county of Honolulu started the international city projects with which is part of a national organization although we've kind of gone independent because you're only supposed to have one per country and for the philippines japan korea and china the city and county has more than one sister city in each so as a result we have a lot more relationships in from the chinese side there are two organizations that we deal with one is c a i f c which is a china association for international friendly contacts and that deals with like the chinese chamber and other non-profit organizations that are not government they are basically made up of senior government officials from china that have been on the international relations scene as ambassadors and council generals around the world and so they have the right temperament to deal with western organizations so the chinese chamber works very closely with them bringing fighter aircraft back and forth flying tiger planes to our pacific aviation museum and other things along that line and also exchange of students a lot of now the other one is the chinese association of friendly contacts with foreign countries ffc and that is government to government more so so that would be the city and county of Honolulu's program directly with the chinese government the ongoing government people not the retired government people so those two organizations work closely together to create lifelong relationships amongst the people and the states and the political entities and with the rest of the world really and so the key behind all of this is developing friendships among people so that there's a better understanding of each other and so that we're not always at political odds with one another better understanding of each other's beach resorts among others for hawaii because everybody likes to go to the beach absolutely actually most of the people who i know who live in hawaii here they don't really go to the beach because it's something you can do any time right and we have to work hard to be able to afford to stay here yes that's true yes right now let's get to the other three sister cities and we're going to go to the world of the pandas this is chendu which is famous for the panda reservation the chinese chamber of commerce in Honolulu had a long interest in bringing a panda to our Honolulu zoo but the cost was just so prohibitive that we that we've tailed away from that at the same time we wanted to develop our ongoing relationship with them and at one point mayor peter carlyle asked me with going to chendu to see if we could establish that relationship it had started a few years earlier but it was off and on off and on it's a long way inland our first two as you know are in the south the third one chingwan dal was in the north and this is such one this was a such one province the shu kingdom way at the interior of china just at the foothills of the himalaya mountains so it's a far distance from any of our other relationships so we went out there set it up and they said they had absolutely no problem with it it's by far our largest sister city the population went from about five million to ten to twelve and now if you include the environs about fifteen million people when chongqing the former capital broke away to its own semi-autonomous region that has 35 million people we don't have a sister city relationship we stay with chengdu the original capital of the shu kingdom and did you get to hold a panda when you went oh yes yes absolutely everybody who's i'm so jealous because it's not so easy to do nowadays before you had to make an application it was fairly straightforward but now everybody wants to do it now you can't do it actually it's just been banned recently because the pandas were getting human diseases and so they kept trying to open it back up and then the pandas would get infected and then they would have to shut it down and the money that you pay to do this was really going for panda-based research for the breeding of pandas and now they have a surplus within the confines because they have a general problem breeding right in the wild they move so slowly and they don't live in pairs so even finding a mate in the wild is very very difficult for them but the last couple of years they've had 20 24 pandas a year born that's pretty good and so now they're trying to lease them out to all of the zoos around the world but still Hawaii cannot afford the price would it be i mean i'm this is not my area but it's got an awful lot of fur doesn't it so it'd be in a special condition at the zoo oh yes you pretty much need an air-conditioned facility although in parts of their environment it can get warm yeah they're pretty tough because of all that fur and padding they can fall and they can still run pretty quick but they only eat arrow bamboo and that's the real issue if you bring pandas to Hawaii you probably need a semi-air conditioned facility half indoors half outside and you'd need a research base to study whether the bamboo that we have here might be edible by those by the animals that's the sort of facility i i saw the two pandas that are held in hong kong in the ocean park yes ocean park everybody was taking it was hilarious because everybody's taking photographs of them and there's this panda just sleeping with its legs up in the air and they had a little chart of its daily activity right it was basically 85 percent eating sleeping doing nothing right yeah so that's a beautiful facility they have there what they do at ocean park is they have video cameras so you can see them closer yeah but if you go to Chengdu and you go to the panda breeding base you're this close to the baby pandas behind the glass yeah i heard about friends of mine who are chinese they got to hold one and they said once you hold one you don't want to let go of it yes a little baby one and there's also another surget called the red panda which is like a big raccoon but really really cute animal very light and at one point we were able to carry those also and they're super cute but they were getting the same human diseases as well yes that's been a problem okay so leaving the pandas aside let's go to the fifth sister let me let me say a few more things about Chengdu it's the largest sister city they have they're very dynamic foxconn and their iPhones and iPads are all now being built in Chengdu it's a booming area and it's uh it's going to be one of the big economic engines in China besides Beijing Shanghai and Guangzhou wonderful yeah it is quite sophisticated right we're very fortunate to have them as a sister city relationship and speaking of sophistication i love Shanghai this is my favorite city out of the ones i haven't seen enough yeah it's a beautiful city sometimes called the Paris of the far east that's correct the olden times and we do have a relationship but it's not with specifically Shanghai it's Fengxian district Fengxian is a suburban district way to the south at the end of the real line right on the Hangzhou Bay the mouth of Hangzhou Bay they they asked to develop a relationship which was established about 20 2013 or so so we we Peter Carlisle and I went there to visit to help establish it and it's ongoing i think presently the office of economic development Ed Hawkins is planning a trip there shortly to further the development of the relationships for Honolulu in that area okay so Fengxian is 2013 and we didn't mention Chengdu's 2011 2011 right and i'm a wood rabbit in the astrological cycle so 2011 was a rabbit year two and very successful year for Chengdu and Honolulu yes that's a rabbit is the luckiest sign so that was auspicious we probably had next to next to Junsan the Chengdu relationship is the next most busiest right now every summer we participate in the Chengdu International Youth Music Festival where their 30 sister cities come from all around the world from Russia Belgium Germany Iceland South America Africa and we all meet in Chengdu and play music for four straight days and it's a tremendous exchange for this for the Chinese high school and college students to meet foreigners from all around the world so we really love going there this will be my eighth year attending that event with last year i took miss hawaii and miss hawaii usa yeah brilliant and so they've just had a wonderful time there in and finally last but not least is Zhangzhou yes and this is the most recent yes recently made sister city and when was this that was the following year 2014 the deal was i would go with Peter Carl out to function if he would go with me to Zhangzhou and another president of the chinese chamber took his narcissus tour there Leonard cam and to establish that relationship i actually signed some of the documents and and Peter Carlile did and this is because Zhangzhou is the known as the narcissus city that is it doesn't mean they're full of narcissists it means this for the flower i want to clarify that i knew you would go there yes the narcissus flower in in chinese tradition represents prosperity goodwill and a beautiful incoming year and so after the korean war when everyone was down here in hawaii world where two had ended the korean war was wrapping up we wanted to do something in our chinese community here so the chinese chamber at the time created the narcissus festival using the daffodil which is a narcissus flower as it's a crowning glory for beauty and they had a beauty contest called the narcissus contest and that now is in its 67th or 68th year we have quite a few such festivals in hawaii that like the cherry blossom festival for the japanese but the narcissus festival is the oldest it is the oldest one it's the most prominent one we send our girls to young women to china on a tour and they also participate in many instances for a number of years and they miss chinatown usa pageant now that's being run by the chinatown merchants i believe a different organization because they were so busy so some of them will run in that pageant also in san francisco okay so these are the six sister city relationships we have between china and honolulu but we also have like the japanese with the japanese we have kyu shu as a sister state with hawaii we do have guangdong as the sister state of hawaii yes i can talk about that i remember uh linda lingo going there twice uh she invited the chinese chamber to go with her on her second trip and so we were delighted to take her there i think in 2008 or 2009 for the 30th anniversary of guangdong's sister state projects around the world it was a global event uh and it was a wonderful time at their white swan hotel uh in guangzhou uh the mayor actually came up to me and said hey next year guangzhou the city will have its 25th sister city relationship with honolulu and so he wanted to know if we would come and linda governor lingo immediately said jeff we're coming and so she accompanied me the following year and it was happened to be my year as president of the chamber and we also attended the um shanghai international exposition so it was just a wonderful year we signed the qing wan dao documents also at that same time and it was really a highlight time for hawaii relationships with china we continue to expand on that even today okay that's lovely thank you so much for explaining each of these relationships for our audience my pleasure and um we look forward to seeing you next wednesday on outside in at two p.m. all right aloha bye bye