 Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and we are Navigating the Journey. Navigating the Journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices for the end of life and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about the end of life to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives at the end of our lives and it's time to communicate about what kind of care we want and what we don't want. We believe that the place to begin is not in the intensive care unit. One area we must talk about are our ancestors, our stories. And today, Lee Waidu sends love, love through the Palo Lo Chinese home. Part of his ancestors, part of the glue, the background, the legacies of Hawaii. And now, he's going to China to visit his ancestors and take a group of people with him. So, my guest today, of course, is Lee Waidu. What can I tell you? Lee Waidu is just a jewel. He's an attorney. He was on the city council. He was one of those that created the law school, UH law school. And I think if we keep going, let's see, what else did I not tell you about Lee Waidu? That's enough about me. That's enough about you. So, we are going to talk to Lee Waidu about everything. So, Lee Waidu is your grandfather. Which parent came from China and when? Both sides. Great-grandfathers. 150 years ago. Wow. I'm fourth generation. My kids are fifth generation born in Hawaii. And come on us. But we all, every person has a yearning to know their roots, to know who they are, what foundation they stand on to build for the future. And now that I'm a Cooley, I'm an old man, I think about these things a lot. And one of the very important things to think about is, what am I doing? What are we doing with the gifts that God has given us? You know, as my body deteriorates, most polio. I'm in a wheelchair. My arms are weaker than they were. I don't surf anymore, spear fish, or hike the mountains. But I have a lot of experience and I can reflect on the uniqueness of that background. And how can I use my background to continue civilization? Pass it on to the next generation. I remember many, many years ago, don't ask me how many, when I was absolutely amazed to see you in this wheelchair in the sand at Alamo Wanna Beach, just going through the sand with this wheelchair. And most of us can't figure out how to walk through the sand. And here he was. It was just wonderful. That's when I fell in love when I watched him in the wheelchair. And then he, of course, was in the city council and just made things happen. So, the Chinese were one of the first Asian cultures to come to Hawaii, were they? You know, at the turn of the last century, by 1894, half of all males in Hawaii were Chinese. Half of all males in Hawaii. That's why there are so many Hapa Chinese Hawaiians. The Chinese Hawaiians, yes, of course. The Hawaiians loved the men who cooked for them. Ah, okay, yes. And their fathers loved to have a son-in-law who would do all these things. Well, I'm proud of my ancestors who came poor, like everybody else. And they were thrived through the beautiful environment of the Hawaiian Islands. And they became citizens of the Kingdom of Hawaii, both sides, and contributed greatly to the islands. But in the course of becoming relatively stable and strong and wealthy, they helped build a new nation. China. Yes. A democracy, a republic in all of Asia. That's a good place to talk about Sun Yat-San. You've got a picture of Sun Yat-San. I sure do. I have any number of them. Yes. How about a picture of his family? Yeah. Okay. Can you see this? Now, I want to talk about Sun Yat-San because he played such a pivotal role in the revolution in China for getting the women's feet unbound in China. Oh, there's a great one. And one of those, most people don't talk about because it didn't mean anything to them because, you know, it's like people think the weekend was in the Constitution. Things that have always been there most people don't think about. But it was doing his administration in China that they had a conference from around the world and a post office conference where they made a declaration that certain cities would all be spelled alike so that you could deliver the mail around the world. So some cities we think, well, how did they get to be that? But that was the idea and it happened in his administration in China. So we take it for granted. But now talk about Sun Yat-San in Hawaii. Gladly. I'll show you his birth certificate where he claims to have been born. But besides having been born in Hawaii as, I'll show it later, one of his great saints is universal love. And it's so important that at his monument where he's buried in Nanjing, the first gate that you go through has that word universal love. That's gorgeous. Universal love. And it was written to a person from Hawaii, Yang Kwong Ka, a distant relative of mine. And Sun Yat-San now is called the father of modern China. And it's only in the last 15 years that China as the people's public of China has begun to recognize him as the father. And as they recognize him as the father of modern China, the people of Hawaii that created his life as a great career of father of China are being recognized. And Hawaii is at a great tipping point of being able to really be unique in bringing the United States and China closer together. We have a unique gift of that history. Many people as Yang Kwong Ka from Hawaii. And it was at Punahua or Iolani school. And St. Louis for a little while I've read. That he was at St. Louis. Yeah. But more important than just the schooling was all the supporters that came. And the fact that he himself felt he was close to the supporters, you know, he said overseas Chinese are the mother of the Chinese Revolution. And that Hawaii people rock the cradle of the new nation. Let's go back a couple days before this happened. In the early 1800s, the British showed up on the doorstep of China. And as other Western nations did, and the Chinese, the all of the Asians came together that is wonderful conference in Nagasaki. All the intellectuals of Asia came together. And the idea was to get rid of the Western people out of Asia because they were treating them like stepchildren. They were taking their wealth, their natural, their China, the opium, the tea and all of these things sending them back to the Western country. So these people got together and said we've got to get rid of the Westerners. They've got to go home. And included was Lenin, Lenin was included in that group. He said that Russia was Asian. It's not, it wasn't European. That's a different story. But he and Sonia San were friends. All of those people wanted the Westerners to just go home. They said it's okay, we don't have to be ugly about this, just go home. But it didn't happen. So we're still fighting that war. We're still fighting that war. Now that's a very important point because much of the Chinese thinking today in government is what shame that the Chinese had gone through for the prior 200 years, 300 years under the Manchu rule that made him wore a braid of long hair. That wasn't what people wanted to do, but they had to do it. And that China was being taken advantage of because the Manchus were so weak and taken advantage of by the Westerner. So modern China today is very conscious about being downtrodden and so pride, face, respect, equality, mutual prosperity is very important to them. And I think that when we talk about it, we need to look back that far and look at, because that is such a pivotal role in fighting a war with the Chinese over opium. Can you imagine? That's just taking all of these things. And I read this great book that Sun Yat-sen's wife, of course, after his death, there were places in Beijing where she could not live because it was segregated. Can you imagine that? This is the wife of the president, the widow. And there were places that she couldn't live because the Westerners had cordoned it off. And it's just mind-blowing to think of what they did. So all of that goes into the revolution. So we're going to take a break. And when we come back, let's talk about your trip to China and what you expect to happen. Great. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. In a program on Think Tech Hawaii, we show at 3 o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday, my guests are specialists from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Okay, we're back. And we are with Li Waidu. And he is going to homeland to China. And he's taking a group of people with you. Now, where in China are you going? We're going to a place called Zhongshan Middle Mountain right next to Macau. In fact, Macau used to be part of it. You all know Hong Kong and Macau. Yes. Macau being the Portuguese colony. Well, Zhongshan is also the name of Sanyat Sun as a nickname. So Hawaii and our people from Hawaii, everybody, has the unique gift of being right there at the core of helping start modern China. We're the Lafayettes, if you will, of helping George Washington. Without Lafayette, George Washington might never have been Cornwallis at Yorktown. And similarly so, the Hawaii people including the blood descendants of the Kamehamehas had died for that cause in China. We're going to Zhongshan, which is in Macau. And here's a brochure that we have of the flight place going. And what we'll see is activities such as the Hawaii people that had a big role in that creation. For example, the founding of the first airplane manufactured in China by the person with a coat and tie because he's American because he was born and raised in Hawaii. Is that your grandfather? Yes, that's my grandfather on my mother's side. An American. Tell us about creating the airplane. The Sanyat Sun and Song Qingling proudly have that picture everywhere. So tell us about the airplane though. And he's the son of a person who was naturalized by great-grandfather as a citizen of the kingdom of Hawaii. Very deep roots in Hawaii and being proud of it. We don't recognize in Hawaii how great our role has been. I've never heard about it very much. Because we needed so, I helped start the Sanyat Sun Hawaii Foundation. And this book, I recommend everybody use it as a Bible, outlines the great role Sanyat Sun had. Sanyat Sun claimed to have been born in Hawaii because he needed to be able to get around the Chinese Exclusion Act. And there was an enormous number of people that supported him. You just mentioned the Chinese Exclusion Act. What was the Chinese Exclusion Act? What does that mean? In 1888, the national government of America said, let's discriminate against one race, the Chinese race. Because they were taking the jobs away from white people, especially in California. The railroad workers completed the railroad transcontinental. And so they passed the law to keep Chinese out of the United States. But if you were born in Hawaii, you were an American and thus had a right to travel. So, for example, one person, Sanyat Young, the pilot, did travel and got trained as Hawaii's first pilot. And the Chinese loved it. They created a whole museum exhibit about him. And that's the type of thing that we're going to see in this coming trip. Now, when are you going? We're leaving on November 16, stopping in Shanghai, and then go to Zhongshan. And we will visit particularly the homes of Yang Qianyi, Sanyat Young from Hawaii, which is really his grandparents' homes, and the monuments, many monuments there. Also the home of Lu Huotong, whose family, the Luke family, which are Ching's and Du's here in Hawaii. That Lu Huotong was the designer of the present-day Kuomintang flag. The flag of China was related to a person from Hawaii. And son Mei, additionally, Sanyat Sen's older brother was naturalized as a citizen of the kingdom. But didn't he have a plantation or something on one of the neighbor islands? Five thousand acre ranch, he was a rancher, but had some pineapple plantations too, you know. But he gave it all to help support the revolution, and so did so many others. Hawaii is known as the place that was the birthplace of modern China's revolution. So are you taking a lot of people, your family, who's going with you to China? There's 36 people coming. Friends, as Tom Kaufman, the writer's coming, and his wife, Lois, and Gary Kubota, the star advertiser, the writer, he's coming and he's writing a play. About half of them are Du family, my grandfather. And the other half, young, the airline pilot side. But there are just a portion of the hundreds, thousands of people that helped build modern China. And that's a story that needs to be developed. You know, we're all taught to think globally, but act locally. So what I hope to do is to create bridges of sister schools for our Hawaii kids to travel and know the world, especially China, and the Chinese to be able to come here and know the world. So we could do things as we have of creating law programs, as this program is said to be the first formal program between the United States and China, done here in Hawaii. And we're soon to have the fifth program, the sisters. Is Roger Epstein part of this? He's not, but he's a great creator of all of this. Because he was talking about attorneys from China. We had a visit with him and he was talking about the Chinese attorneys coming back and forth. Had Roger's done great, China is such a big place. There are many programs. Ray Tam was one of the very early leaders as well. But Roger Epstein is terrific. His work should long continue, as well as others. This is a wonderful plaque. It's beautiful. And very heavy. It's about seven feet long, four inches thick. What does it say? And basically it says, benevolence and kindness should always be exhibited. Thank you, Du Weising, my grandfather, for raising in effect millions of dollars to help the starving people of China. When you talk about, in Chinese, the family name, Du, is the first part of the name? Is that the way? That's the last name. That's your family name. Yes. In English, it's your last name. But in China, that would be the first part of the name. In China, the principles are big first, and then graduating down to the last. So if you're saying a date, you say the year first. And then the month, then the day. Whereas we do it the other way around. So in your family, you are Du, Li, Why? I'm Li, Why, Du. I know. My mother was asked the question. Mrs. Du, what's Li, Why's name in English? And she says, Li, Why, Du? That's it. You know, we're all Americans. And proud of it being American. Yes. And as Americans who are multicultural and we should respect our roots. Now this trip to China is to come to a deeper understanding of our roots. And you feel this kind of solid, very strong and settled knowing that you can trace your genetic background over 2,500 years by the name of the person, their wife, their children, what work they did. And that came as one of my earlier trips. And all these, a great portion of Hawaii is Hawaiian Chinese. And our Hawaiian Chinese can trace their roots back 1,000 years if we just kind of open up and kind of seek that. So that way we can plan our future. I'm all for looking at the stars on top of Manakea. I think that's a wonderful idea. You know, be progressive for the future knowing that you have deep roots to stand on. Yep. Well, I have enjoyed being with you, of course, as always. And I'm looking forward to your pictures and everything once you come back from China. So we can do this again. And you can tell us all about all the wonderful things. You can tell us all those wonderful things about China. Well, about ourselves. Well, you do that. That's just, you know, because it's us that we're finding and including how my life has affected you and you affected me. Yes. Yes, it's been a pleasure having you in my life. And thank you for being with us today. And we'll look forward to seeing you again. Thank you, Mark. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha.