Gathered Together to Clean Up Chinatown

Ever since I was a kid and all throughout high school, my sister and I would follow my mom to Chinatown every Saturday morning to help pick up groceries for the entire week, and we usually ate lunch there before heading home. Though the trips to Chinatown were always uneventful, I look back upon those times rather fondly now.

So I jumped at the opportunity to join hundreds of other volunteers from Hawaiian Electric, American Savings Bank, Mechanics Bank, United Chinese Society of Hawaii and various other organizations at the 6th annual Chinatown Cleanup on Saturday Aug. 22, 2026. The goal of this annual event organized by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii is to ‘beautify’ Chinatown in Honolulu by picking up rubbish, removing graffiti, cleaning signs, etc.

I first heard about this event a few years ago but was never able to join due to scheduling conflicts. So, when it came up again this year and I was available, I was excited to sign up and help.

On the day of the event, our Hawaiian Electric volunteer team met up at the staging area in front of Mechanics Bank at around 8:30 a.m. The event organizers had all the cleaning supplies and tools already set up for us, including gloves, tongs, trash bags, buckets of paint, cleaning solvents, etc., and they even scoped out the places around Chinatown beforehand to identify areas that had graffiti so that volunteers would know exactly where to go and what tools to bring to tackle the various cleanup job.

After a quick briefing, everyone picked up their equipment and fanned out into small groups to start cleaning. Armed with tongs and large trash bags, I teamed up with my co-worker Haley from the social media team and set off to pick up trash off the sidewalks and curbsides of the road.

As we worked our way up and down the streets of Chinatown, we met and greeted all sorts of people going about their day, from visitors on their way to try out the local coffee shop, to residents doing their morning exercises. A few people who walked by even thanked us. After picking up all the trash we could find in the section of Chinatown we were assigned to, we returned all our tools and trash bags at the ‘collection point’ near River Street.

Overall, I had a great time cleaning up Chinatown. The weather was nice throughout; sunny but not too hot, and I got to see various parts of Chinatown with its historical buildings up close that I normally wouldn’t see if I was just trying to buy groceries. It was also nice to see and feel the sense of the community as everyone came together and volunteered during their free time to clean up Chinatown. This sense of togetherness is very similar to the themes of the recent Mid-Autumn Festival that was celebrated on Sept. 25 this year, which focuses on reunion and unity.