The University of Hawaiʻi dates to 1907, when the Hawaiʻi Territorial Legislature established the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Honolulu. It was renamed the College of Hawaiʻi in 1912. The elevation of the College to a University was largely due to the activism of a Chinese-American cashier at the Bank of Hawaiʻi – Honolulu-born William Kwai Fong Yap (葉桂芳 1873–1935). In 1919, Yap wrote a letter to the editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, noting that “need (for a university had) been felt for many years by a great number of poor but ambitious young men and women who have been forced to go to the mainland to get what they desire in their special line of education. Any opposition to expenditures for educational purposes is not worth consideration. Education cannot be measured in terms of dollars.”

In 1920 Yap garnered sufficient signatures to successfully petition the Hawai‘i Territorial Legislature to elevate the College of Hawai‘i to university status. The university began to offer courses in what was then called “Oriental” i.e. East Asian studies, including Chinese, making UH the fifth U.S. institution to offer the language, after Yale (1877), Harvard (1879), the University of California at Berkeley (1896), and Columbia University (1901).

The University of Hawaii’s (UH) extensive China-focused faculty resources were organized first as the Council for Chinese Studies in 1977, and then as the Center for Chinese Studies (CCS) in 1987. 

Please click HERE to visit 100 Years of Chinese Studies at UH Mānoa and know more about our history.