Time-traveling in Chinatown
Jun 19, 2009
By Samuel Tsoi
It is no secret that Boston has a wealth of history and prides itself as “America’s Walking City.” Naturally, a walk through Chinatown provides a glimpse into the city’s rich past, especially the stories and dreams of settlers coming to its shore from around the world.
As “stay-cations” become the recession alternative, one can still travel the distance of time by heading to Chinatown and viewing the neighborhood through a historical lens. The Chinese Historical Society of New England (CHSNE) offers exactly that. Every second Saturday through October, groups ranging from students, tourists, and residents are led by knowledgeable and passionate local historians illustrating early immigrant life before 1965 through the neighborhood’s boulevards and alleyways.
As helpful as it is to read archival documents and view photographs, the unparalleled experience of walking through the spaces, listening to accounts, and allowing oneself to imagine life in a different time speaks to the value of oral history and the power of story-telling.
In the early days of European settlement, Boston became a satellite of the trade between Western and Eastern societies. Before Beach Street became a street built on landfill, the seaport received commodity products such as tea and ginseng from China in the heyday of the US-China economic relations – thus establishing a small Chinese community in current-boundaries of Chinatown. Chinese-owned enterprises such as Ar-Showe in the late 1800s became successful brands in bringing Chinese tea to New England customers.
Education was the other driving force of Chinese settlement in Boston. In the mid-Nineteenth Century, missionaries brought students from China to be trained for ministry roles. In 1854, the first Chinese university student in America graduated from Yale.
As much as Boston was the hub of academic innovation, it was also the site for the American Industrial Revolution which ushered in laborers, most notably young Chinese men working on the Trans-Continental railroad and the shoe factories along South Station.
These laborers settled in tenements previously occupied by Irish and Eastern European laborers, starting the formation of the residential core of Chinatown.
Many of the buildings have had a variety of residents and functions. Walking along Essex Street, CHNSE tour guide Da Zheng pointed out a building which was first the birthplace of an early abolitionist Wendell Philips, then a Turkish bathhouse, and most recently, the site of the Chinese Golden Age Center.
The building on Harrison Avenue next to See Sun Market was one of the large factories which housed the first cohort of Chinese laborers. A son of one of those laborers, who often lived in the tight single-occupancy units, eventually became a graduate of Suffolk University and the first Chinese attorney in Massachusetts.
Ping On Alley, which is nestled between Harrison and Oxford streets, attracts narrow beams of sunlight but illuminates a part of Historic Chinatown which is rapidly being overshadowed by ongoing urban redevelopment. The small alley, unavailable for vehicular traffic, can barely fit a compact car. Zheng recounted ball games played by children of immigrants decades ago between the narrow walls.
The alley opens to a courtyard by Oxford Street featuring a giant mural of a traditional Chinese painting, which illustrates a journey along a nostalgic natural landscape. “[The painting] reflects the sentiments of early immigrants who made treacherous journeys to America, far away from their homeland,” Zheng described.
Walking towards Beach Street, the wall by the Oxford Street intersection, still bare, was actually a massive community bulletin board until the 1970s. It provided Chinese and culturally relevant information such as news about China, births, marriages, obituaries, job postings and profiles of brides for the many bachelors.
As the wall became a fixture of immigrant life, so did the myriad of family associations, regional associations, Chinese schools, and faith communities. In many ways, these social institutions sustain the fabric of Chinese culture and chronicle the changes through the generations from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the immigration growth in latter half of 20th century.
In the recent decades, the history of Chinatown was shaped by highway development and institutional expansion and gentrification. Walking across the landmark Chinatown Gate, which declares “propriety, righteousness, honesty, and humility,” brings to mind the consequences of the interstate which dissected Chinatown and other communities.
The community still yearns to sustain its story, and not become remnants of the past. Adjacent to the gate is an often unnoticed abstract painting of a junk boat, or Sampan, which this publication gets its namesake, symbolizing the immigrant community going against winds of adversity and mainstream pressures – and bringing to mind the road of perseverance, dynamism, and change Chinatown walked through and continues to pave ahead.
(90 minute tours start at 10:00am at the Office of the Chinese Historic Society of New England, Every second Saturday, May through October. 2 Boylston Street (617) 338-4339 www.chsne.org)
Sameul Tsoi is a Sampan correspondent.
It is no secret that Boston has a wealth of history and prides itself as “America’s Walking City.” Naturally, a walk through Chinatown provides a glimpse into the city’s rich past, especially the stories and dreams of settlers coming to its shore from around the world.
As “stay-cations” become the recession alternative, one can still travel the distance of time by heading to Chinatown and viewing the neighborhood through a historical lens. The Chinese Historical Society of New England (CHSNE) offers exactly that. Every second Saturday through October, groups ranging from students, tourists, and residents are led by knowledgeable and passionate local historians illustrating early immigrant life before 1965 through the neighborhood’s boulevards and alleyways.
As helpful as it is to read archival documents and view photographs, the unparalleled experience of walking through the spaces, listening to accounts, and allowing oneself to imagine life in a different time speaks to the value of oral history and the power of story-telling.
In the early days of European settlement, Boston became a satellite of the trade between Western and Eastern societies. Before Beach Street became a street built on landfill, the seaport received commodity products such as tea and ginseng from China in the heyday of the US-China economic relations – thus establishing a small Chinese community in current-boundaries of Chinatown. Chinese-owned enterprises such as Ar-Showe in the late 1800s became successful brands in bringing Chinese tea to New England customers.
Education was the other driving force of Chinese settlement in Boston. In the mid-Nineteenth Century, missionaries brought students from China to be trained for ministry roles. In 1854, the first Chinese university student in America graduated from Yale.
As much as Boston was the hub of academic innovation, it was also the site for the American Industrial Revolution which ushered in laborers, most notably young Chinese men working on the Trans-Continental railroad and the shoe factories along South Station.
These laborers settled in tenements previously occupied by Irish and Eastern European laborers, starting the formation of the residential core of Chinatown.
Many of the buildings have had a variety of residents and functions. Walking along Essex Street, CHNSE tour guide Da Zheng pointed out a building which was first the birthplace of an early abolitionist Wendell Philips, then a Turkish bathhouse, and most recently, the site of the Chinese Golden Age Center.
The building on Harrison Avenue next to See Sun Market was one of the large factories which housed the first cohort of Chinese laborers. A son of one of those laborers, who often lived in the tight single-occupancy units, eventually became a graduate of Suffolk University and the first Chinese attorney in Massachusetts.
Ping On Alley, which is nestled between Harrison and Oxford streets, attracts narrow beams of sunlight but illuminates a part of Historic Chinatown which is rapidly being overshadowed by ongoing urban redevelopment. The small alley, unavailable for vehicular traffic, can barely fit a compact car. Zheng recounted ball games played by children of immigrants decades ago between the narrow walls.
The alley opens to a courtyard by Oxford Street featuring a giant mural of a traditional Chinese painting, which illustrates a journey along a nostalgic natural landscape. “[The painting] reflects the sentiments of early immigrants who made treacherous journeys to America, far away from their homeland,” Zheng described.
Walking towards Beach Street, the wall by the Oxford Street intersection, still bare, was actually a massive community bulletin board until the 1970s. It provided Chinese and culturally relevant information such as news about China, births, marriages, obituaries, job postings and profiles of brides for the many bachelors.
As the wall became a fixture of immigrant life, so did the myriad of family associations, regional associations, Chinese schools, and faith communities. In many ways, these social institutions sustain the fabric of Chinese culture and chronicle the changes through the generations from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the immigration growth in latter half of 20th century.
In the recent decades, the history of Chinatown was shaped by highway development and institutional expansion and gentrification. Walking across the landmark Chinatown Gate, which declares “propriety, righteousness, honesty, and humility,” brings to mind the consequences of the interstate which dissected Chinatown and other communities.
The community still yearns to sustain its story, and not become remnants of the past. Adjacent to the gate is an often unnoticed abstract painting of a junk boat, or Sampan, which this publication gets its namesake, symbolizing the immigrant community going against winds of adversity and mainstream pressures – and bringing to mind the road of perseverance, dynamism, and change Chinatown walked through and continues to pave ahead.
(90 minute tours start at 10:00am at the Office of the Chinese Historic Society of New England, Every second Saturday, May through October. 2 Boylston Street (617) 338-4339 www.chsne.org)
Sameul Tsoi is a Sampan correspondent.
Article Reference: http://www.sampan.org/show_article.php?display=2004
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