September 2019, before the Covid pandemic shut the world down, was the 75th annual North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament, involving 162 teams from across the continent who gathered to compete in the traditional Chinese American sport of 9-man volleyball. Last year’s tournament was held in Toronto, but in 2024, the tournament will come home to Boston’s Chinatown.
9-man Volleyball History
9-man volleyball is a team sport utilizing nine players per side and a slightly larger (10 x 20 meter) court that originated in Taishan, China, the homeland of the majority of Chinese working class immigrants who settled Boston and other Chinatowns in North America.
While originating in Taishan, 9-man evolved with a set of rules unique to Chinese Americans, rooted in Chinatown’s history as a bachelor society of male laborers due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Separated from their families and isolated by discrimination and racial violence, restaurant workers and laundrymen found community together with nine-man volleyball as their only healthy social outlet. The rules of 9-man were consciously designed to preserve Chinese cultural traditions, including a rule that 66 percent of team players must be Chinese.
9-man is a gritty game played in the alleys and parking lots of Chinatown, and the home of 9-man volleyball is Reggie Wong Park at the corner of Kneeland and Lincoln Streets. Teams from Boston and Providence organized the first inter-city nine-man tournament in 1938. Since then, it has grown into a popular tournament that travels between cities and brings together thousands of players and spectators every Labor Day weekend.
Reggie Wong Park, a gathering place for local sports teams
Every August, the August Moon Tournament at Reggie Wong Park brings together local teams such as the Boston Chinese Freemasons, the Boston Hurricanes, Women’s Volleyball Freemasons, and the Boston Knights Athletic Club, founded by the late Reggie Wong in 1961. Volleyball and basketball teams practice regularly during the warm weather months.
Reggie Wong, born and raised in Chinatown, was a small business consultant, proprietor of Weggie’s Pub in the Leather District, and a community leader who was known and loved not only in Boston, but in Chinatowns throughout the continent, for his work to grow the international nine-man volleyball tournament. Reggie was key to the advocacy and negotiations that led to the creation of Pagoda Park in the 1970s.
Chinatown, at the time, had the least amount of open space per capita of any neighborhood in the city. Even now, spaces tend to be passive parks and paved plazas with sparse greenery; Chinatown has 6.2 trees per acre, compared to 10.2 trees in Bay Village or 11.1 in the South End.
“When we were kids, there was an open field there, before the Wang building was built,” said Russell Eng, Reggie’s nephew and now president of Friends of Reggie Wong Park. “We would play football, baseball, and other sports. Then the park was built in the 70s, and Reggie wanted to name it Pagoda Park, to make a note of how the area was part of Chinatown.”
After Reggie Wong passed away, Chinatown and the Leather District came together to rename the park in his memory.
“I can’t think of a better way to honor him than to name this park for him,” said Chris Betke of the Leather District Neighborhood Association at the dedication in 2012, involving then-mayor Thomas Menino, state representative Aaron Michlewitz, and others. “It took on a life of its own. We put up an online petition, and, within a day or two, we had a thousand signatures.”
Following in his uncle’s footsteps, Russell and the Knights Athletic Club have been bringing teenagers to the park to teach them about nine-man volleyball, the history of the park, and the importance of Chinatown as both a neighborhood and cultural center. Chinatown restaurant workers, some living in the neighborhood and others commuting in from outlying communities, have their own teams of nine-man players.
Securing the park’s future
Reggie Wong Park was born out of the residents’ advocacy and creative search for active recreational space. Wang Electronics came and went, the Central Artery went underground, but, by hook or by crook, the park has remained for nearly fifty years. Today, the park is entering a new phase of community governance and stewardship by both local neighbors and volleyball teams committed to protecting this shared resource.
Owned by the state Department of Transportation, the park spent a number of years under City of Boston jurisdiction, but that relationship was terminated in 2009. After the renaming as Reggie Wong Park, an ad-hoc license agreement to the North American Chinese Volleyball Association allowed for its year-to-year use as a recreational area. When the Department of Transportation began soliciting bids for the land in 2016, the community worried about the future of Reggie Wong Park.
From 2016 to 2018, Tufts University researchers and Olin College of Engineering students worked with the community on studies to monitor the air quality around the park and to consider the potential for designs to improve the health, safety, and usability of the park.
In 2018, the Chinatown Community Land Trust began convening local residents and other park users to talk about ways to protect the park and spearheaded an effort to raise funds for park improvements. The City of Boston’s Community Preservation program pledged a grant of $100,000, and Leather District-based developer Hudson Group pledged a $25,000 contribution. The committee met with Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack and other DOT representatives over the past year and successfully negotiated for a 15-year renewable lease to implement improvements and govern park programming.
Reopening, improving, and collectively governing the park
The Chinatown Community Land Trust worked with Russell Eng and a committee of Chinatown residents, Leather District neighbors, and nine-man volleyball enthusiasts to found Friends of Reggie Wong Park (FRWP). FRWP is dedicated to the preservation, improvement, and stewardship of the park. Chinatown CLT’s involvement grew from its focus on community ownership and control of the land, and its commitment to building local structures for democratic governance of shared resources for the common good.
Chinatown CLT will continue to partner with FRWP to implement improvements to the park. While FRWP will be the leaseholder and govern park programming, Chinatown CLT will be represented on the board and retain the right to override a decision to relocate or make substantial changes to the park.
With the park shut down for several months during the pandemic, Massachusetts DOT is preparing for the reopening of Reggie Wong Park in the coming weeks. As FRWP prepares to take over the park, the committee also will share proposals for park improvements and involve the community in planning for the future.
Reggie Wong Park is a precious resource in the heart of the city, for Chinatown as a historic immigrant working class neighborhood and regional hub for the New England Chinese community, for the neighbors in the Leather District loft apartments and new Chinatown high rise buildings, and for the 9-man volleyball teams and others who have been core users of the park. With the reopening of Reggie Wong Park, there is an opportunity to preserve it as a historic and cultural anchor for Chinatown and 9-man volleyball, while improving the park as a welcoming space for a diverse spectrum of residents of all ages.