Lots of Lum

It all started back in 1881, when Bung Yun Lum persuaded his father to let him leave China and seek his fortune in Hawaii, where his uncle was a supervisor at a poi factory.

Or maybe it really started much, much earlier, 3,000 years earlier, when the pregnant wife of a Chinese official named Pi Kan, who had confronted the emperor on matters of state, fled the death sentence handed down against the family and bore a son, starting the Lum family name.

Bung Yun Lum would be one of his descendants, coming to Hawaii in 1881 and marrying Lo Yong Chung in 1886.

The couple had 13 children, and this week more than 200 of the approximately 800 known descendants will gather for a reunion here. With a bowling tournament, a picnic on the beach and a buffet dinner, they’ll celebrate the importance of family and the significance of staying connected in the clan’s first major reunion since 1996.

"That first gathering, we had a dinner — the restaurant isn’t even there any more — at China House. We had 500 people, all related to each other," said Marion Liu, a granddaughter of the original Hawaii settlers. "It was scary."

"What started it was the siblings started to pass away," said Lovey Saludares, a great-granddaughter. "As you go to each funeral, you keep saying, ‘We need to get together before more pass away.’"

Keeping track of all the aunties and uncles in a Chinese family — not all actually related to you — is not easy. For the Lums, family ties got even more confused as time magnified the age differences between the families of the Lums’ 13 children. The eldest child, son Hung Chung, who became known as Big Uncle, was 24 years older than the youngest, Hung Heong, who went by Small Uncle. The two never met.

"Some of us cousins are closer (in age) to these younger uncles and aunts than the older ones," Saludares said.

All of this is clarified in the family genealogy, which is contained in 4-inch-thick binders that were distributed to each branch of the family. Compiled in 1996 by Arlene Lum, a great-granddaughter, the binder opens with several pages taped together that, when folded out, show the extended family tree back to the year 365 A.D. It then tells the story of Bung Yun Lum and Lo Yong Chung, detailing how they came to Hawaii, married, had children and settled at a home on Factory Street.

Arlene Lum, a former reporter and publisher for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, said she sent out forms to the heads of each branch of the third-generation descendants, asking them to provide details of the family. She compiled all the results in a computer and distributed them.

The research yielded some surprising results, she said, such as "finding people who we grew up knowing, but had no idea were relatives, were really relatives. You grow up knowing somebody, you went to school with them or sat next to them in Chinese school or were in the Girl Scouts and you find out, ‘My goodness, you’re family.’"

Briefly paging through the tome provokes laughter from family members. A reference to Bung Yun’s effectiveness as a manager because he was skilled at martial arts prompts Linda Cloward, a granddaughter, to remark, "With 13 kids, you get pretty good at martial arts."

Pictures trigger long-lost memories from family members. Evelyn Lee, another granddaughter, looking at images of the original homestead on Factory Street, remembers picking roses in the garden.

"My grandmother used to go ‘Aaah!’ because she didn’t want me to pick the flowers."

Individual branches of the family have had smaller reunions since 1996, but there has not been an attempt at a larger one in about eight years. Modern technology, in the form of social networking sites and email, has made this reunion fairly easy to plan, said Aileen Deese, a great-granddaughter.

Still, organizers started spreading word of the reunion about two years ago to give mainland family members time to save money for the trip. One relative is coming from Maine, the most distant location, Deese said.

The majority of the Lum descendants have stayed in Hawaii, pursuing a variety of professions and careers rather than following in the farming footsteps of the family back in China. They count doctors, lawyers and Ph.D.s among the descendants, as well as granddaughter Agnes Lum, who was briefly Miss Hawaii USA in the 1970s until she had to step down because she was too young. She went on to become a top model in Japan.

"She was one of the first mixed-race (Chinese-Hawaiian) girls to go over to Japan," said Cloward, Agnes Lum’s sister.

Out of the 13 original branches of the family, two are bare. One daughter had no children, and one son went to Latin America, settling in Ecuador. A brother did track him down, but since then his path has been lost.

Other trips in search of family roots, however, have been enlightening. Shortly after the 1996 reunion, Cloward’s family went back to the village near Guang-zhou City in southern China where the Lum family claims its roots. A picture shows the visitors posed in front of a gate emblazoned with the family name.

"It was really interesting to see the contrast between here (Hawaii) and these mud huts," said Kelly Cloward, Linda Cloward’s daughter. "It was like, ‘Wow, this is where I came from.’"

Another family trip was planned a few years later, but that turned out to be an example of how tenuous family ties can be. The flight, scheduled for Sept. 14, 2001, had to be canceled because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Family members hope the reunion will help keep them connected. Arlene Lum said she would like to see the next generation of the family update the genealogy, since there have been more marriages and more children in the family since 1996.

"We all need to know where we began," she said. "We need to teach our children where we began and where they began. And doing something like this is a way to remember and keep in writing what has come and will come."

» Members of the Lum family who would like to attend reunion events can visit http://goo.gl/A2B8I or call Darcy Ing at 262-7765 for information.