By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member
It was impossible to slow Busaba Yip down. Her friend Jillina Carlano tried, urging caution with the heavy luggage, backpack and two shopping bags Yip had around her arms, filled with red and gold Year of The Snake trinkets and Lunar New Year pamphlets. But the 74-year-old had other plans, leaping out of Carlano’s car at 9 a.m., scurrying around the Lahaina Comprehensive Health Center in her black slip-on shoes to set up the perfect display. Her printed flower shawl flowed behind her.
Around her neck, Yip wears brown meditation beads, a healing crystal from the Maui Medical Center, a yin and yang necklace and her beloved jade guanyin, one of the only possessions she salvaged from last August’s Lahaina fires.
Yip lost her home, her job and the Wo Hing Society — her museum of thousands of Chinese artifacts on Front Street where she hosted annual Lunar New Year celebrations. For the first time this year, she’s hosting the holiday somewhere else.
Lahaina’s Peace Love and Harmony Lunar New Year celebration on January 27 featured calligraphy, dancing, talk story and cultural presentations at Lahaina’s Comprehensive Health Center. In this new year, Yip hoped to usher in hope for Lahaina’s long-term recovery.
Burned down temple
Yip came to Maui and joined Wo-Hing in 2000 to organize and digitize their collections. Since then, she sold jewelry at the temple, prepared tea parties and lunches and fundraisers to make money for the museum. Yip planned Lunar New Year and Moon Festival celebrations and would also do lectures on Maui’s Chinese history around the island.
Fires consumed the Wo-Hing temple on Front Street last August, burning up more than 2,000 artifacts of Chinese and Chinese American history.
After the fire, Yip was on the missing list because she didn’t have a phone and no one heard from her.
Her friend Sarah Shim, who works at the Kwok Hing Chinese Temple in Kula couldn’t find Yip for a month.
“My concern was her,” Shim said, “because she has no family here. She has no one here. She only has the Chinese community that takes care of her.”
Yip stayed on the beach in a car, then in Wailuku, in Kihei, then Kula before finally moving back to Lahaina after a year.
“I really isolated myself. Be quiet. Take care of myself. I lost 10 lbs, and I have to take care my physical being and my emotional being,” Yip said.
But slowly coming back into public helped her, she said. She delivered a speech one year after the fires. And she spoke to a Chinese TV station about her experiences, describing the conversation as much-needed catharsis.
Shim took Yip back to Lahaina this August. They relaxed at Kaanapali Beach Hotel, and Shim laughs recalling how she gave Yip french fries for the first time in her life.
“It was the first time she tried french fries and she was in heaven!,” Shim said. “She said ‘I’ve never eaten this in my whole life!’”
“I said ‘here, have it all.’ I thought it was the cutest thing.”
Inviting the new
To start the celebration, Yip described Lunar New Year customs to the audience. She said families often prepare two weeks before the new year, sweeping and cleaning their entire house. Yip shared banners families can tape on the front door to invite wealth, and she walked around the room with a Lunar New Year snack platter, which can include coconut and lotus seed candies.
“Because we don’t have Chinatown here,” Yip said with a laugh, “I used a lot of what I grew in my garden.”
Her face lights up and her chest lifts with pride as she slowly moves from person to person with the candy platter, giving everyone a chance to take it in. While Yip explained the traditions, she said people can evolve the celebration to fit their family and their community.
Malia Davidson said Maui celebrates Lunar New Year in a very authentic way, passed down from the thousands of Chinese immigrants who came to work on sugar plantations in the 1800’s.
“It’s authentic and it’s from the heart,” Davidson said. “No blasting of fireworks in the sky right now, but it’s true heart.”
Davidson teaches calligraphy at the Comprehensive Health Center and made big calligraphy banners that said Peace Love and Harmony to hang on the walls.
True heart
“Can I do a dance for you guys?” Yip asks the audience, shyly clutching a music player hanging around her neck. “I’d like to check the timing because I want to respect your time,” she says quietly.
Her audience roars back in approval.
“I’d like to do a blessing and a dance,” Yip said. “I’m not a lion or a dragon. But it’s a blessing for us this year. I feel like for Lahaina we need to start the new year with hope messages. With peace, love and harmony.”
Yip beings gliding her feet on the floor as peaceful woodwinds and flute notes soar from the music player. She waves around two flowing red and yellow fabric fans in a style that pulls from the stoic postures of tai-chi and qi-gong. Tears well up in her eyes.
Yip learned the fan dance in China and would often perform at New Years and other Chinese festivals around the island. She stopped after the fires. But when she picked up her fans again, it felt like a bit of herself coming back.
“I needed this,” she said, thanking everyone profusely for coming. “We need to continue to spread this positive energy all year round. Start from here and start from today.”
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