December 20, 2024 | Vol. 53, Issue 24

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

‘Expats’: A Disappointing Exploration of Grief

I watched the first season of Expats on Amazon Prime and was sorely disappointed by the quality of the six-episode offering. Directed by Lulu Wang (Posthumous 2014, The Farewell 2019) the show is based on a 2016 novel called The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, which received mostly positive reviews. The story follows the lives of a group of expatriates living in Hong Kong and chronicles their interactions with each other, and how they navigate the unfamiliar world around them […]

Real Women Have Curves Premieres in a Funny, Poignant, and Memorable Musical

The American Repertory Theater has another big hit in the making with Real Women Have Curves: The Musical! (Book by Lisa Loomer, additional material by Nell Benjamin. The show opened recently to excited crowds and is introducing a new generation of people to the story of big dreamer, Ana Garcia. The musical is significantly different from the 2002 award-winning film (Josefina Lopez and George Lavoo’s screenplay based on the play by Josefina Lopez) in all the right ways. Aside from […]

Lunchbox Moments Interview with Artist Aime Bantz

Step into the Pao Arts Center in Chinatown before Feb 17th of 2024 and you will be greeted with colorful walls covered in metal lunchboxes with phrases painted on them. The phrases are distilled from stories by people in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community who attended workshops with artist Aime Bantz. She wrote down the encounters they shared with her during communal meal times throughout their lives. Some of these encounters were positive moments of cultural exchange, but […]

Artist Tammy Nguyen Asks, ‘What Is A Farm?’

In Tammy Nguyen’s self-titled exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, she repeats a question that was originally posed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What is a farm but a mute Gospel?” It’s a question that Nguyen is prepared to try to answer through her paintings, collage, and self-published art books in the exhibit. Nguyen is a talented artist, born 1984 in San Francisco.Her father was a Vietnamese refugee. Her work spans several disciplines across environmental, geopolitical, and spiritual […]

Sunshine Brings Science to the Screen

The Coolidge Theater screened Sunshine (2007) on November 6th as part of their “Science on Screen” programming, including a talk by Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Katharine Reeves.  The talk that accompanied the Sci-fi/horror film was on the topic “What It’s Like to Fly Through a Solar Eruption.” The audience laughed along with Dr. Reeves throughout the entire half-hour presentation as she gave a humorous and accessible lecture to a room full of moviegoers. It provided a nice introduction to the very […]

The Fortune Teller is a Heartwarming Play about Family and Destiny

This week, a heartwarming play premiered at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theaters. The Fortune Teller’s opening night was October 28th and the play runs through November 4th. It’s a story about a family through the generations, starting in the 1800s, and the destiny that lies before each of the members as they are tied together by familial legacy. The play was co-produced by CHUANG Stage, a translingual Asian American theater company in Boston, and TC Squared Theatre […]

The Boston Asian American Film Festival Gave Red Carpet Treatment To The Contribution — and Voice — of Asian American Film

Kicking off with a book launch and talk by the authors of The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America, the Boston Asian American Film Festival celebrated Asian American films in October. Traditional dances were performed by the Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy and the New England Bhangra Club. “I’m very excited to just hear about the perspectives of the Asian American community within the filming space.” said Chelsea Vuong, 2023 Miss Massachusetts, who acted as […]

Family Style: Memories of an American From Vietnam / Interview with Thien Pham

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam is the engrossing and heartfelt tale of a family that leaves Vietnam and eventually settles in the United States. It is told from the point of view of a man remembering his time from his childhood through his maturation into an adult. This biographical story is relayed in a graphic novel that Thien Pham wrote and beautifully illustrated. With its depiction of the struggles his family faced, Family Style takes an unflinching look at the realities of life for many immigrants. […]

Blue Triangle Gallery: Opens with Brash Colors and Words

There’s a new art gallery in Chinatown and it’s proving to be quite the hot spot. The Blue Triangle Gallery, at 17 Edinboro Street, invites visitors to climb a steep set of stairs to the 3rd floor and then they enter into a world of color and words The walls are currently covered in plywood and are wheat pasted from floor to ceiling with posters and framed art by prettycoolstrangers in his first gallery show and first offline art exhibition. […]

We Are the Land Tells Wampanoag History

Under the rococo gilding of the Cutler Majestic Theater, a new show was performed for two nights only, September 29th and 30th, in a limited engagement on the historic stage. We Are the Land, the story of what it means to be Wampanoag, is both a pageant and a play and gives audiences a chance to hear directly from Wampanoag people about their history as protectors of the land spanning across several eastern states (including Massachusetts) with stories focusing on […]

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