Chinese Society Halls on Maui
Open-knowledge reference entry
At their peak, there were six Chinese Society Halls on Maui. Operated by the Gee Kung Tong Society, these halls were created to provide services to immigrant Chinese workers, mostly working for the sugarcane plantations. All provided religious and political help, in addition to mutual aid. Only the Ket Hing Society Hall in Kula has survived. It were placed on the Hawaii State Register of Historic Places on July 30, 1982, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 1982. The Chee Kung Tong Society Hall & Wo Hing Society Hall was placed onto both State and Federal registers, but both suffered different fates; the Chee Kung Hall collapsing in 1996 & the Wo Hing Hall destroyed in the 2023 Hawaii wildfires.
Purpose
In 1852, many Chinese were brought to work on Hawaii's sugar plantations, mainly single men. When their contracts expired, some stayed behind and took up other trades. Due to the influx and distance from mainland China, Chinese Tong societies sprouted up to provide Chinese religious and political help, in addition to mutual aid, friendship, and funerary benefits upon death.
Six clubhouses or "Halls" were built.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinese Society Halls on Maui” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.