In the early 1900s, Chinese immigrants on Maui founded the Wo Hing Society to keep ties with their motherland, which they had left for what they hoped would be a better life as contract workers for sugar plantations (wo means “peace and harmony” and hing means “prosperity”).
Needing a meeting place, they built a two-story clubhouse on Front Street in 1912. The Lahaina Restoration Foundation (LRF) partnered with the society in 1983 to restore and maintain the building as a museum.
The upstairs altar room is open only during special LRF events such as Chinese New Year. Among the items displayed in the ground-floor hall are antique coins, tea sets, wedding chests and jade funerary statues.
Films of island life made by Thomas Edison between 1898 and 1906 are shown in the adjacent cookhouse, and in the front yard there’s a bronze bust of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, The Wo Hing Society supported the efforts of Sun, who spearheaded the 1911-1912 revolt that toppled China’s last imperial dynasty and formed the Republic of China in Taiwan.