Features

February 7, 2025 1

Developing Chinatown’s Future: A Conversation With ACDC’s Executive Director, Angie Liou

Walking through Chinatown today, you will encounter layers of its identity: the memories of a Chinatown long gone, the visions of a Chinatown that could have been, the Chinatown that remains a home for long-term residents, and the Chinatown being reshaped for tourists and transplants. In a neighborhood that has been created and stewarded by immigrant Asian American residents, luxury developments now dot the landscape – raising rents, and displacing residents. At the same time, those developments have exacerbated the […]

February 7, 2025 0

Don’t Say ‘It Won’t Affect Me’: Immigration Expert Gives Take on Trump Crackdown on Immigrants

by Adam Smith

In just the past few weeks, the second administration of Pres. Donald Trump has issued a barrage of executive orders and efforts — as long promised — around immigration enforcement as well as sweeping attempts to upturn rights promised in the U.S. Constitution, such as birth-right citizenship. Most recently his pick for longtime South Dakota governor and former lawmaker, Kristi Noem, as the 8th Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, has stirred concerns from some groups, because […]

February 7, 2025 0

Panel of Doctors Agree: Climate Change, Vaccine Distrust Pose Grave Health Risks

by Esther Wang

Climate change, the rise of the “anti-vaccination” movement and several viral diseases are current threats to healthcare and humans, according to a diverse panel of doctors who presented at a Jan. 10 Ethnic Media Services online briefing.The panel of guests included Dr. Nahid Bhadelia from the Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases at Boston University, Dr. Peter Chin Hong from University of California San Francisco, Dr. Benjamin Neuman from Texas A&M University, Dr. Maurice Pitesky from UC Davis, and Dr. William […]

January 30, 2025 0

Newest Asian Restaurant, Grocery Hub? Brookline

by Yuchen Hong

Buttoned-down suburb of Boston sees an explosion of Chinese, Japanese and Korean food, shopping spots For Asian international students like Nikki Song, Newbury Street used to be her go-to spot to hang out. “It was our only option,” said Song, a Chinese international student studying at Northeastern. But then she discovered an unlikely alternative: Brookline, a town once mainly viewed as a quiet and stodgy suburb with dining options that mostly included family restaurants, a couple of Irish bars and […]

January 30, 2025 0

Tangled Up in Art: Chatting With ’Ravel’ Sculptors Jongeun Gina Lee and Verónica Pérez

by Harmony Witte

About a decade ago, while in grad school, artist Verónica Pérez received a strange gift: a trash bag full of hair. And they immediately put the furry find to good use. “That was my foray into using hair to represent a human or a body, without actually putting a body into the piece,” says Pérez of their method of creating sculptures. Since that time, the artist’s main medium has become artificial hair. Perez is among the 14 artists who are […]

January 24, 2025 0

Emotions Run High as City Reveals Proposals to Change Zoning Rules

by Ava Belchez

Voices in English, Cantonese and Mandarin overlapped and echoed throughout a theater room at the Josiah Quincy Upper School on Jan. 18 at a city-sponsored meeting on rezoning plans for Chinatown. Property owners, business owners, and community leaders had various – and often conflicting – opinions about the rezoning proposal. One of the most contentious issues was a set of plans to dramatically change zoning heights for some types of buildings in Chinatown, which has seen several high-rise luxury housing […]

January 24, 2025 0

Doctor’s Prescription for Injustice: Speak Up

by Adam Smith

While at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health a couple years ago, Dr. Yipeng Ge faced a dilemma – and the decision he would make would profoundly influence the following years of his life.Already outspoken on the genocide of indigenous people and racism in North America, Dr. Ge discovered the Palestine Program during graduate studies at Harvard. Also taking courses in the Kennedy School and Harvard Law, he then soon found out about Palestine Trek, or PalTrek. In […]

January 24, 2025 0

How I Led Natick’s 1st Lunar New Year Festival

by Doris Yu

During my Sophomore year in high school, I sat down with my beloved Chinese Culture Club adviser to begin planning one of the most significant events our school club has ever held: a townwide Lunar New Year celebration. I am now a junior at Natick High School, and have been president of the Chinese Culture Club since my sophomore year. In the town of Natick, an unremarkable little suburb a fifth the size of Boston, town-wide holiday recognition only really […]

January 24, 2025 0

Activism Through Art: Interview With Carlos Hernandez Chavez

by Adam Smith

You could say that artist Carlos Hernandez Chavez has taken a bit of the Mexican Muralist Movement of the 1900s to modern-day New England. But his path to painting on walls and buildings here after growing up in Mexico was a winding one. In the mid-1960s, Chavez devoted his education to the arts while still in Mexico. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas-UNAM at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico and INBA’s Escuela de Pintura y […]

January 24, 2025 0

A Year in Film Review

by Harmony Witte

Looking back on 2024, Sampan’s arts writer, Harmony Witte, compiled the following list of influential and important films of the year with connections to immigration in some way, or with foreign cast members. Some have immigration-focused stories, others have immigrant directors or actors or other cast members. Witte’s list includes hard-hitting documentaries, a martial arts adventure, both tense and funny crime stories, a surreal art romp and even a big-budget mystery thriller.“This selection of films,” writes Witte, “is of the […]

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