288 pp. April 1997
cloth, ISBN 978-0-8248-1772-5, $37.00
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Keywords: |
history, biography
Hawaii
Pacific
China |
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Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawaii
by Bob Dye
"The story of Afong ... cannot fail to intrigue anyone with a hunger to know what went before.... Dye does an excellent job." --Honolulu Advertiser
Noted Hawai`i author Bob Dye gives us a full account of Chun Afong, Hawaii's first Chinese millionaire. Afong was the subject of a popular short story by Jack London, and his colorful family--in particular his twelve beautiful daughters by a Hawaiian woman of noble descent--inspired a Broadway musical. But here at last is the real story of this elusive and charismatic man, whose business empire stretched from the Pearl River delta across the Pacific to Hawai`i and the U.S. mainland. Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains is the result of extensive documentary research and interviews with Afong's numerous descendants in Hawai`i, North America and Asia. It will give readers an in-depth account of one of Hawaii's most intriguing personalities and the role of the Chinese in nineteenth-century Hawai`i.
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