HAPI set to host groundbreaking Chinatown Monument ceremony 

On Friday, Jan. 30, from noon to 1 p.m., the Eureka Chinatown Project (ECP) will be holding a groundbreaking ceremony for the Eureka Chinatown Monument. The public ceremony will take place on the corner of 1st and E Streets in Eureka and mark the beginning of the monument’s actualization. The groundbreaking for the monument will be a symbolic moment in the project’s timeline.

“[The groundbreaking] let[s] the community know that all of our donors, all the people that supported us, that this project is still moving forward,” ECP’s Program Coordinator Chris Chu said.

The ECP, an initiative of Humboldt Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI), has completed various other projects as a way of honoring Eureka’s historical Chinese communities, including:

• two interpretive signs containing information about Chinatown placed at the corners of F and 5th Streets, as well as the corner of E and 5th Streets,
• the naming of Charlie Moon Way, the alleyway that runs through the site of Eureka’s historic Chinatown,
• a mural titled “Fowl” located along the same alleyway in Eureka,
• a walking tour of Eureka’s past Chinatown

The planning of the Eureka Chinatown Monument started in 2021, when the ECP began brainstorming ways to bring attention to this facet of Eureka’s history. 

“We had been wanting to do something,” Chu said. “There were different ideas that were floated around on how to really memorialize this history and this story, and the monument is pretty quickly what was agreed upon.”

As with the ECP’s other projects, the monument acts as a way to commemorate the Chinese immigrant community of Eureka’s past. By establishing the monument, the ECP and HAPI hope to bring attention to the forced expulsion of Eureka’s Chinese population that occurred in 1885, and which later influenced a similar expulsion in Humboldt County in 1906.

Speakers from various groups will be present at the ceremony, all of whom have helped to push the project forward. These groups include HAPI, ECP, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the City of Eureka.

While HAPI and the ECP have most of their funding for the monument, they will continue to accept donations and volunteers to support their organization. You can find more information about them, and all their other projects at hapihumboldt.org.