March 15, 2024 | Vol. 53, Issue 5

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

Features

From Dick’s Desk: What’s an HSA?

Dear Dick I’ve been happily working at my current job.  I’m an electrician.  I love my co-workers.  I look forward to coming to work every day. The employee benefits are good, particularly, the health care coverage for me and my family. Everything is fine.   That is, until 5 pm last Friday. My supervisor called me into the conference room.  I lost my job along with 20 other employees.  The company needed to cut costs to remain profitable. Since then, […]

National Poetry Month2022: Musings

April’s nod to National Poetry Month is 30 days filled with recitations, incantations, slam poetry performances and spoken word gatherings that evoke the wonder of the 1950’s Beat Poetry gatherings once perceived as scandalous and impure. The fact that it fades away when May comes is less the calendar’s fault than it is our too short a love affair with poetry.. But as we impatiently wait for our flowers to blossom and for the world to stop hating, beautiful poetry […]

Yung Wing & the Earliest Chinese Students in Massachusetts

Springfield was one of the first cities in Massachusetts where Chinese arrived in the 1840s, primarily fueled by the desire for education. The start of this tale though extends back about 30 years earlier. Reverend Samuel Robbins Brown was born in 1810 in Hartford, Connecticut and in 1818, his family moved to Monson, Massachusetts, a relatively short distance from Springfield. Samuel attended the Monson academy, which prepared students for college, and he was part of the Yalecollege class of 1832. Samuel became a missionary […]

Understanding the Zeitgeist: Pachinko, Representation, and the Cultural Road Ahead

Writer Min Jin Lee is having a moment. Culturally speaking, that conclusion is the ultimate two-edged sword for any artist. Is she being embraced purely for her work, or is there something more crass beneath the discussion? Her 2017 novel Pachinko, embraced at the time for carefully balancing the lives of four Korean generations as they struggle and eventually prosper in Japan, is the basis of the currently streaming (since March 25th) Apple TV + series created by Soo Hugh and […]

When Everything Happens at Everywhere, All at Once

When the Daniels started writing their script six years ago, no one would’ve thought that a movie centering on a Chinese American immigrant family would be marketable. But it did. Ever since its release, the movie“Everything Everywhere All at Once” became a phenomenon and a hit among audiences, critics, and box offices. On Rotten Tomatoes, both ratings from the Tomatometer and the audience reached 97%. And on April 5, the movie has officially become the highest-rated movie of all time […]

Restaurant Recovery from the Pandemic

As we continue to move forward after the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate hit a two year low of 3.6% in March of 2022. The hospitality industry was the first to be devastated by COVID 19. Restaurants are gradually recovering due to easing COVID-19 restrictions allowing for higher (in some places, even 100%) indoor capacity. However, many restaurants and small businesses are still struggling with issues like inflation when it comes to hiring employees back from when they lost millions […]

From Dick’s DeskTax Credits and Deductions for College Education

Dear Dick: I have two children attending two high priced Boston colleges.  My son is a junior, and my daughter is a sophomore. So, I have two more years of tuition checks to write. Are there any tax writeoffs I can take to get some relief from the high cost of tuition expense? “Over-educated and Over-Taxed” —————————————————- Dear “Over-educated and Over-Taxed,” I agree, it costs a small ransom to send children to college these days. But you may benefit from […]

The Air That We Breathe: Testimonies From the Frontlines of Chinatown’s Air Pollution Battle

Chinatown continues to be one of Boston’s more vibrant communities. However, behind that curtain, the residents, workers, and businesses breathe the dirtiest air in Massachusetts. Joan didn’t know that Chinatown had the dirtiest air in Massachusetts when she moved here eight years ago. But when her two twin girls were diagnosed with asthma two years ago, she was shocked. She couldn’t understand why. No one in her own family had asthma and no one smoked at home. Then her children’s […]

Haruki Murakami’s “Drive My Car”- a road trip through the stages of grief

The film version of Murakami’s 2020 short story “Drive My Car” is a three hour meditation on grief, forgiveness, and redemption. A stage actor and director named Yusuke Kafuku travels from Tokyo to Horshima to mount a performance of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya. As written by Murakami and interpreted for film by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kafuku comes off as stubborn, stoic, hiding his true self. Kafuku is a prototypical Murakami make. He curates a classical music collection on […]

Origins Of The St. Paul Sandwich: A Missouri Invention?

     “The St. Paul Sandwich — comprising an egg foo young patty, slice of tomato, pickle and iceberg lettuce sandwiched between two slices of mayonnaise-laden white bread..”—Riverfront Times, November 15, 2006 If you’ve visited Chinese-American restaurants in St. Louis, Missouri, or some other Missouri cities, you might’ve eaten a St. Paul Sandwich. The origins of this sandwich are murky, but the most commonly shared legend is that it was invented by Steven Yuen at Park Chop Suey in St. Louis, possibly in the 1970s. It’s […]

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