January 3, 2025 | Vol. 54, Issue 1

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

Boston

Jon M. Chu’s ‘Wicked’ Is a Blockbuster Queer Romance Film for Our Times

“Wicked” is a blockbuster-bound love story for the ages in the grand style of Old Hollywood. This queer-coded romance tells the classic story of two enemies to lovers whose chemistry and complicated love for each other is so well known in the intimate world of female friendship. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) was born with green skin in the land of Oz and must fight to find her place in society. Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) is also looking to find herself and establish […]

Minority, Female Doctors at Teaching Hospitals Face Barriers to Job Advancement, Finds Study

Racial minorities and women face many barriers to getting promoted to advanced positions at teaching hospitals and in other academic medical jobs when compared with their white peers, found a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, “Race and Ethnicity, Gender, and Promotion of Physicians in Academic Medicine,” in fact, reveals persistent inequities in the career advancement of physicians within academic medicine. Disparities were particularly glaring for women and racial and ethnic minority groups. […]

Editorial: The Language Bullies Must Be Stopped

Two of the most damning accusations a person can face are being called a terrorist and an antisemite. It’s true, terrorism is abhorrent and antisemites are abhorrent. There is no question about either.But there is something equally as abhorrent: Falsely throwing these labels at people simply to silence them. The horrifying truth, however, is several people – especially minorities – have recently had their words incorrectly called either terrorist-related or anti-Semitic or both, and are facing real-life consequences for the […]

Review: Haruki Murakami’s ‘The City and Its Uncertain Wall’ Lacks Magic Touch

Sometimes it’s difficult to witness the precipitous quality drop of a great writer. In the case of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, the drop in quality is less disastrous than it is tedious. Murakami’s new novel “The City and its Uncertain Walls” comes six years after “Killing Commendatore,” itself an excessive mixture of perversity and magic realism. Murakami’s new novel has its origins in a short story published in 1980 and his 1985 novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the […]

Playfest 7 Looks at Generational Divide, Grief and AI Through Lens of Asian America

Playfest 7’s show at The Foundry in Cambridge last month told familiar stories of dealing with grief (and landlords), stumbling over artificial intelligence technology, and trying to get a point across the gap of generations within a family. And the all-Asian American Pacific Islander cast did so with humor, poignant dialogue and resonant performances. Written by different Asian-American Pacific Islander playwrights, the eight short plays at the seventh annual Asian American Playwright Collective Playfest built a diverse set of worlds. […]

Artist, Writer Shaina Lu Draws From Life Stories in Chinatown

In her debut graphic novel “Noodle & Bao,” artist and writer Shaina Lu offers a heartwarming and powerful story of friendship, community, and fighting against gentrification. Set in the fictional Town 99, the book follows Momo and her best friend Bao as they work to save their beloved neighborhood food cart from displacement. Lu, a queer Taiwanese-American artist and educator based in Boston, draws deeply from her experiences working with youth in Chinatown.“I wanted to write and draw a story […]

MIT ‘Bans’ Student Over Essay

Attorney Calls Action ‘Chilling’ Threat to Free Speech The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has banned a South Asian American grad student from campus and is threatening to boot him from the university for an article he published related to pro-Palestinian protesting, according to the student and his lawyer, who calls the punishment a threat to free speech. MIT banned Prahlad Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering doctoral student, earlier this month for an academic essay he penned in “Written Revolution,” a […]

AAPI Arts Summit Inspires ‘Hope’

Organizers of the 2nd Annual Asian American and Pacific Islander Arts & Culture Summit on Nov. 15 at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston say they see the event as bigger than enhancing the arts community itself: It’s about providing hope. “I think in times of uncertainty and crisis, people have always looked to the arts as a source of light and hope,” Danielle Kim, executive director of the Asian Community Fund, told the Sampan during the event.Hosted by […]

Some Immigrant Families Fear 2nd Trump Presidency

Central to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Nov. 5 was his harsh stance on immigration.Now that Trump is due to regain the presidency in January, anti-immigrant sentiment has dominated much of the news. Trump has pledged to hire 10,000 more border patrol agents—and it looks like the president-elect will hold true to his promise, as he and his team moves forward on a plan to divest certain Americans of their citizenship, part of a so-called “denaturalization” project has been in […]

Author Charles Yu Talks About His Work on ‘Interior Chinatown,’ His Start as a Lawyer

Writer Charles Yu has seen his career transform from law, to book author and now to television. That latter shift will be further proven when “Interior Chinatown” – his award-winning book – airs on Hulu and Disney Plus on Nov. 19. Produced by Taika Waititi, with a pilot that is also directed by Waititi, the edgy, fast-paced show tackles weighty themes of race, class, and immigration with a sense of humor that left the audience at the recent screening at […]

404 Not Found

404 Not Found


nginx/1.18.0 (Ubuntu)