‘A Hawaiian son’: Honolulu honours Sun Yat-sen as his landmarks vanish
Few buildings the revolutionary leader knew in Honolulu survive, but descendants of families who funded his cause are keeping his legacy alive
Eddie Flores pressed the button at a pedestrian crossing on King Street, then pointed across the road.
In the spring of 1910, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen lodged over there, on the second floor of a shop owned by a friend and fellow party member.
“It’s no longer there,” said Flores, chairman of the restaurant chain L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. “But we can more or less point out where the building is.”
Much of Sun’s Honolulu has to be found this way. The church where he worshipped as a boy was pulled down in 1909. The basement where his followers met in secret was lost in a renovation. The theatre where he called for the overthrow of the Qing dynasty’s autocratic rule is now a market. And the place where China’s first revolutionary party was founded is a car park.
