With China on a fast track to modernization, it might soon be difficult to find vestiges of old China anywhere. The Lung Doo Benevolent Society, which will celebrate its 120th year with a huge banquet today, is one.

On most any morning in Chinatown, a group of Chinese seniors gathers in the society’s pagoda-shaped headquarters to read newspapers and share gossip from their homeland, the Lung Doo region of Guangdong (Canton) province. The aroma of burning incense hangs in the air as offerings of fruit are presented to a shrine of Guan Di, a second-century Chinese warrior-general who is the society’s patron saint.

Though elderly, many of them are recent arrivals in Hawaii, using family connections to emigrate here legally. The society helps them acculturate to America, and American-born members benefit in return by getting guidance in the old customs.

"We depend on people like immigrants to help us with these cultural celebrations," said Joe Young, a dentist and former society president. "They talk about the old culture, and I come here quite often to learn about that."

There are fewer and fewer of these primary sources, he said, as the Lung Doo region, once an exclusively agricultural area, industrializes and modernizes along with the rest of China. "Younger Chinese are becoming so Westernized," said Young, who has been to the area about 10 times in the past 30 years. "They want to be Westernized, so they look up to the United States."

Young said the elders know details of things like the Chinese tea ceremony and the practice of filial piety. He is a practicing Taoist but his children are Christian, so some of those traditions could be endangered if there is no one to reinforce them, he said.

The Lung Doo Benevolent Society is one of nearly 100 organizations local Chinese created to serve the local Chinese community. Its 6,000 members make it one of the largest such organizations in the state, but Hawaii is just one of many places where Lung Doo people have settled. "There are Lung Doo people in 81 countries," said society President Chung Suk Lum, listing Australia, Panama and Brazil as some of the nations where similar benevolent societies have been established.

Those who still speak Chinese use a dialect so distinct that it renders the phrase "to eat," pronounced "chi fan" in Mandarin and "sic fan" in Cantonese, into something that sounds like "hib bon" in Lung dialect. That’s a phrase that will certainly be heard during tonight’s banquet at the New Empress Restaurant, which will feature eight courses, lion dances and 70 tables of celebrants.

The only tradition likely not upheld? "No firecrackers," Young said. "They banned them."