Colors of Chinatown

HONOLULU — Honolulu’s Chinatown gets an early start. Before 8 a.m. shopkeepers along North King Street have stacked their boxes of fresh mountain apples, litchi, taro and lemon grass, anticipating early morning shoppers.

At the ’99 Coffee Shop, sticky pastries in colors found only in canned fruit cocktail are lined up in the front window. Elderly men, sitting alone, huddle over steaming bowls of rice soup and watch the neighborhood come to life.

Shoppers on a mission duck into the Phuoc-Thanh Market at 170 N. King St. to pick up curry beef jerky, Kaffir lime leaves and peanut candy. The latest Vietnamese CDs, bearing pictures of attractive recording artists, line one wall.

I love Chinatown. I come here often to lose myself in another culture. To be anonymous. It’s been this way since I was 13 and was sent to boarding school in Honolulu from my home on a Maui sugar plantation.

I would ride the city bus through the district, past the shabby, two-story buildings with their tin roofs and stacks of produce on the sidewalks, to visit my two uncles, attorneys with a law office on the edge of the district.

This was in the mid-1950s, and Chinatown had started to lose many Chinese who had been raised in the district to the more upscale neighborhoods of Kahala, Manoa and Nuuanu. This is not to say that they didn’t still love Chinatown. Many still returned to the herb shops, restaurants and stores on Saturday mornings to “talk story” with old friends and shop.

The Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and Filipino businesses now so prominent in Chinatown started arriving in the late 1970s and ‘80s and have brought new vitality to the district bordered by Nimitz Highway along the Honolulu waterfront to River, Maunakea and Beretania streets. Miraculously, the new Asian cultures coexist, for the most part amiably, with the old-time Chinese businesses that have stayed on.

With its pungent smells of incense and fish, Chinatown has been the heart of Hawaii’s Chinese community since the earliest settlers arrived in the late 1700s aboard sailing ships returning from Canton for more sandalwood from Hawaiian forests.

The first Chinese in the district opened shops to supply both Honolulu residents and sailing ships with goods. As the Chinese, who were imported in the 1850s to work the sugar cane, finished their labor contracts (which paid them $3 a month), they streamed into the city. Here they found familiar food, language and customs. Commerce came naturally, and they soon opened tailor shops, jewelry and dry goods stores, laundries and groceries. Before long there were herb shops, chop suey houses and gambling shacks as well.

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At the heart of Chinatown is the old Oahu Market, an open-air mix of independent stalls under one roof selling everything from red ducks and char siu pork hanging in glass boxes to pigs’ heads, tripe for stew and fresh reef fish stacked out front in plastic tubs filled with ice. The smells and sounds of the Oahu Market could be anywhere in Asia. The charm remains in the buckets of brilliant heliconias and red torch gingers outside the stalls and the noisy chatter of foreign dialects.

I get excited by the small things here: the mounds of mountain apples, watery, almost tasteless, but reminding me of childhood in a different Hawaii. I also come here for the feeling of authenticity that’s sometimes missing in an economy given over to tourism.

Not only neighborhood housewives shop the Chinatown markets these days. The young, chic chefs of the new Hawaiian regional cuisine movement, such as Sam Choy and Alan Wong (of restaurants bearing their names in other parts of the city), make regular forays to snap up the fresh water chestnuts, Thai basil and fresh strawberry papayas brought in by small farmers.

Across the street from the market, at 150 N. King St., is the Bale French Sandwich & Bakery. Cool and clean with Formica tables wedged into small booths, it was one of the first shops bearing that franchise name to spring up around the city--and it’s still the best.

It’s run by Vietnamese, who learned about French baking back home and produce buttery croissants and crusted French breads. Order them with a piping hot cup of thick French coffee mixed with rich cream, and you’re in France.

Bale is popular with the lunchtime crowd for a marinated vegetable sandwich

served on a hard French roll, and for their assortment of tapiocas in flavors such as taro, banana, coconut, papaya and almond tofu. They also serve a steamy Vietnamese noodle soup called pho (pronounced “fa”). At noon, at the corners of King and River streets, Pho To-Chau and Ha-Bien Vietnamese restaurants also serve the soup to diners while lines of customers wait outside. Vermicelli-like noodles in a rich, clear broth are garnished with meat and vegetables, then seasoned to taste with bottles of fish sauce or hot, sweet chile sauce.

Over at Indigo Restaurant at 1121 Nuuanu Ave., chef Glenn Chu and his wife, Barbara, have created a fancier Eurasian atmosphere of swirling overhead fans, mahogany-colored rattan and batik that resembles more the seedy-chic bistros of Indonesia and Thailand. Chu hauled elaborate gates back from Java and recreated a bar he had loved at his hotel in Ubud, Bali.

He faced much of the restaurant toward a small city park bordering the recently restored Hawaii Theatre. On performance nights the crowd from the heights and valleys of the city swarms to ballets and concerts. They almost always make their way next door for goat cheese wontons (about $9) and late-night drinks. This crowd, juxtaposed with the dope dealers and hookers on the street, makes for great people-watching.

If venturing into Chinatown at night makes you nervous, Chu has valet parking at the front door. Besides, the Chinatown police station is located right next door. This was the beat of the real-life detective Chang Apana, who later became the model for the fictional Charlie Chan.

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When Chu himself wants a bit of the real Chinatown he knows from childhood, he walks the block or so, past the video galleries and nude bars, to a small restaurant called Mini Garden at 50 N. Hotel St. Here the food is simple and good, and he feels anonymous. Sitting in a corner window seat, he watches the crowds and enjoys the touch of seediness.

Island artist Pegge Hopper, known for her simply drawn reclining native women, was one of the first of the chic crowd to venture into Chinatown back in 1983. Her gallery/studio at 1164 Nuuanu Ave. is minimal, cool and friendly. Two more avant-garde galleries have opened next door with work that leans heavily to multicolored chairs decorated with feathers and sequins.

Maunakea Street perhaps is known best for its lei sellers. From the corner at Beretania Street, and on down Maunakea to King Street, stalls sell freshly strung flower leis of pikake (jasmine), pungent tuberose entwined with baby pink roses, carnations, plumeria, pakalana, small purple and white orchids, and fragrant strands of green maile leaves.

Some stalls such as Sweetheart’s (69 N. Beretania St.) and Cindy’s Lei Shoppe (1034 Maunakea St.) are favorites with regular clientele, while others depend on drive-up traffic. For a few dollars you can buy one of the more common but sweetly scented leis. To wear one is to get a hit of the essence of Hawaiian life.

The nearby Maunakea Marketplace was built in the 1980s to reflect the historic nature of the district. Now about 40 vendors sell everything from fresh produce and traditional Chinese street food to the newer Spam sushi and Filipino pork adobo.

Two favorite local spots sit side by side on Maunakea Street: At Wong-N-Wong Restaurant, serving the downtown business crowd and families, the food is good, plentiful and cheap. Next door at 1027 Maunakea St. is Shung Chong Yuein, a Chinese bakery with candy and pastry piled high in trays in the window. Try the bean cakes, sponge cakes, almond cakes, or colorful candies made by sugar-coating vegetables such as carrots, water chestnuts and squash.

The Sea Fortune restaurant on King Street serves very good dim sum in the morning or for lunch. The service is sometimes abrupt and grumpily impatient. Chalk it up to ambience. There are several other good Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurants, such as Legend Seafood in the Chinese Cultural Plaza on River Street.

Shoppers after fun and funk will have a field day in the newer shopping malls along King Street. Within each mall is a series of smaller independent stalls selling jade and gold jewelry, Chinese clothing and ceramics.

One of the best places for riotous Polynesian fabrics and slinky Chinese pajamas and evening dresses is Ha Fashions at 1010 Maunakea St. The owners are Vietnamese-Chinese and very friendly and accommodating. I decided to pass on the slinky Suzy Wong-style dresses with their dragons made of gold sequins and chose instead two pairs of comfy and forgiving embroidered pajamas in periwinkle blue and lime green for $45 each. A steal.

Right next door is Imperial Tailors & Gifts at 102A N. King St. The owner’s wife is a practitioner of feng shui, or Asian geomancy (the art of placement). Here you can find all the mirrors, bamboo flutes and red tassels you will need to make your environment more harmonious. If you don’t know how, they sell a book, “Feng Shui: A Layman’s Guide.” This also is a good place to purchase Chinese greeting cards and small red offering envelopes with Chinese characters in gold wishing “good fortune” and “long life.”

Do not leave Chinatown without a stop at Aloha Antiques and Collectibles at 926 and 930 Maunakea St. Once just a small jam-packed shop selling memorabilia and Hawaiian funk, it has blossomed in the last two years into five side-by-side storefronts selling everything from hotel silver off 1950s cruise ships to Canton china and old coconut bowls. George Kurisu oversees the whole operation, which is really a cooperative of 15 vendors.

His customers like to remember their past, George says. It brings them pleasure to see things their mothers and grandmothers owned that got lost over the years. Don’t be afraid to bargain or offer a trade.

From Aloha Antiques you can see Honolulu Harbor shimmering in the late afternoon sun. Golden light bathes the two-story buildings and the heat has forced the early shoppers home into cool rooms.

Gather up your flower leis, your coconut candy and your bag of litchi, and head back to Waikiki for a cool mai tai while you watch the sun disappear into the tropical sea. It was a great way to spend a day.

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GUIDEBOOK

Asian Sampler

Getting there: There’s nonstop service LAX-Honolulu on American, Delta, United, Hawaiian Air, Northwest and Continental, at a special round-trip fare of about $270, including tax, if flown between Aug. 25 and Oct. 31. Restrictions apply.

Where to stay: Waikiki is it. Crowded, brassy and cosmopolitan. You can find rates to fit any budget. Among the best are:

Halekulani Hotel (2199 Kalia Road, Honolulu 96815; telephone [800] 367-2343) for drop-dead elegance on the beach. Superb service, exquisite and expensive dining. Rates $295-$520 double per night.

New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel (2863 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu 96815; tel. [800] 356-8264) on the beach at the foot of Diamond Head. 125 rooms and great outdoor dining on the Hau Terrace. Rates start at $110 double per night.

Royal Garden at Waikiki (440 Olohana St., Honolulu 96815; tel. [800] 367-5666) is a find. Jazz piano in the lobby at night, Japanese and Italian restaurants. Rates start at $130 double per night.

Where to eat: Indigo (1121 Nuuanu Ave., reservations [808] 521-2900) for Eurasian ambience and food. Moderately pricey, inventive cuisine in a garden setting.

Bale French Sandwich & Bakery (150 N. King St.) is perfect for a quick stop. Pick up a paper cup of thick French coffee and a giant croissant before you roam the neighborhood.

Sea Fortune restaurant on King Street a block from the Oahu Market serves dim sum, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Indifferent service. Cheap, fast and tasty.

Where to shop: Aloha Antiques & Collectibles, five storefronts next door to each other on Maunakea Street between King and Nimitz Highway.

For more information: Lyon Arboretum’s Asian culinary tours: Call Ranjit Cooray at (808) 988-3177; $15.50-$25 per person.

Hawaii Visitors Bureau, 180 Montgomery St., Suite 2360, San Francisco, CA 94104; tel. (800) 353-5846 or (800) GO-HAWAII.