Past – Page 2 – Chinese Historical Society of New England

ByChinese Historical Society of New England

Facing Exclusion: Pioneering Activists Harry H. Dow and Tien Fu Wu

Facing Exclusion:

Pioneering Activists Harry H. Dow and Tien Fu Wu

A one-woman performance, adapted farce, and community conversation

Opening Night & Reception: Friday, March 17, 7:30pm-10:00pm
Matinée: Saturday, March 18, 2:00pm-4:00pm
ArtsEmerson/Paramount Center, Black Box Theatre

Part of ArtsEmerson’s Community Curators program, CHSNE will present a performance of Nutzacrackin’ Immigration and Naturalization depicting a fictional immigration interrogation during the Chinese Exclusion Act. The original script was written by Harry H. Dow, a Suffolk Law School graduate who became the first Chinese-American to pass the Massachusetts Bar exam in 1929. Christina R. Chan, a local actor, playwright, teaching artist and director, adapted the script for this performance. Chan will also present a selection from her one-woman play, Unbinding Our Lives, on the lived experience of Tien Fu Wu, a Chinese women living in San Francisco at the turn of twentieth-century—also in honor of its 25^th anniversary.

Featured performers also include Eric Cheung (Yung), Tim Corbett (Chief Inspector), Alexander Holden (Dow), Sophia Koevary (Miss French), Danny Mourino (Rosen), and Josh Santora (Mulloy).

To close the program, a panel discussion and community conversation will connect this history to present day. Panelist include:

Friday
Moderator: Patricia Reeve (Suffolk)
Christina R. Chan
Ragini Shah (Suffolk Law)
Paul W. Lee (Community Leader)

Saturday
Moderator: Elisa Choi (MA Asian American Commission)
Christina R. Chan
Ragini Shah (Suffolk Law)
Stephanie Fan (Community Leader)

Click here for tickets!

All ticket proceeds to benefit CHSNE—now celebrating its 25^th anniversary!

ByChinese Historical Society of New England

Chinatown Atlas Now Online!

The Chinese Historical Society of New England is celebrating the online launch of MIT Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee’s Boston Chinatown Atlas (http://chinatownatlas.mit.edu/). The website documents and explores Chinatown’s growth and change through time as told by personal stories, photos, maps, and interactive features. Please join us at this free presentation to hear Lee speak about the creation process and plans for the future.

Boston’s Chinatown serves as the economic, social, and cultural center for one of the fastest growing populations in Massachusetts. The project and the website seeks to understand and tell the story of Chinatown’s history, dynamics, and context, and to encourage future generations to appreciate the traditions and to preserve the community’s vitality. The presented information comes from extensive archival research, census data, and interviews with community members, contextualized the the history of Greater Boston. The Chinatown Atlas concept originated more than 20-years ago between Tunney Lee and Randall Imai through a series illustrations of Chinatown.

The project hosted a panel exhibit at the former Chinatown Lantern reading room library in 2012 and the Kwong Kow Chinese School at 87 Tyler St. Imai’s illustrations were exhibited at the Boston Public Library Leventhal Map Center in 2014. The Boston Chinatown Atlas is a collaborative project led by Tunney Lee, David Chang, Randall Imai, Jonathan Wyss, Kelly Sandefer, Kye Liang, Tien-yi Lee, Chinese Historical Society of New England, Chinatown Lantern Cultural and Educational Center, UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies, and many former MIT alumni and community members.