April 11, 2025 | Vol. 54, Issue 7

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

Front Page

Restaurant Recovery from the Pandemic

As we continue to move forward after the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate hit a two year low of 3.6% in March of 2022. The hospitality industry was the first to be devastated by COVID 19. Restaurants are gradually recovering due to easing COVID-19 restrictions allowing for higher (in some places, even 100%) indoor capacity. However, many restaurants and small businesses are still struggling with issues like inflation when it comes to hiring employees back from when they lost millions […]

Concerns Linger Over China Initiative’s Fate

Weeks after news that the Department of Justice’s four-year-old “China Initiative” would be dissolved, some experts now warn the program that largely targeted Chinese immigrants and visiting academics could be revived as easily as it was killed–and that its influence lingers on. “The pendulum could swing back the other way on that,” Mitch Ambrose, who heads science policy newsletters and tracking resources at the American Institute of Physics, told the Sampan. “There’s clearly interest among certain Republicans in bringing back […]

From Dick’s DeskTax Credits and Deductions for College Education

Dear Dick: I have two children attending two high priced Boston colleges.  My son is a junior, and my daughter is a sophomore. So, I have two more years of tuition checks to write. Are there any tax writeoffs I can take to get some relief from the high cost of tuition expense? “Over-educated and Over-Taxed” —————————————————- Dear “Over-educated and Over-Taxed,” I agree, it costs a small ransom to send children to college these days. But you may benefit from […]

The Air That We Breathe: Testimonies From the Frontlines of Chinatown’s Air Pollution Battle

Chinatown continues to be one of Boston’s more vibrant communities. However, behind that curtain, the residents, workers, and businesses breathe the dirtiest air in Massachusetts. Joan didn’t know that Chinatown had the dirtiest air in Massachusetts when she moved here eight years ago. But when her two twin girls were diagnosed with asthma two years ago, she was shocked. She couldn’t understand why. No one in her own family had asthma and no one smoked at home. Then her children’s […]

Haruki Murakami’s “Drive My Car”- a road trip through the stages of grief

The film version of Murakami’s 2020 short story “Drive My Car” is a three hour meditation on grief, forgiveness, and redemption. A stage actor and director named Yusuke Kafuku travels from Tokyo to Horshima to mount a performance of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya. As written by Murakami and interpreted for film by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kafuku comes off as stubborn, stoic, hiding his true self. Kafuku is a prototypical Murakami make. He curates a classical music collection on […]

Air Pollution in Chinatown Continues to Alarm Residents

Do you know Boston Chinatown has the worst air quality in the state? If you are a resident of Boston’s Chinatown, your good night’s sleep is being harmed by the car exhaust in the air. If you work in Chinatown, you are probably breathing polluted air for eight or more hours a day. Even if you are a visitor to Chinatown and enjoying a delicious Chinese meal with your friends, you are breathing in polluted air filled with high levels […]

Justice Dept. Ends China Program

A Trump-era Department of Justice initiative that critics say unfairly targets Chinese Americans is ending, but some say the damage has already been done. The “China Initiative” was launched in 2018 when the DOJ was run by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The program was intended to defend the United States against what officials believed to be intellectual property theft conducted by the Chinese government, but it has been criticized for unfairly targeting Chinese scientists in the U.S., and some say […]

Local Doctor, Scientist Has Invention That Is Truly Out of This World

You could say Dr. Eugene Chan, a local doctor and scientist, has made his mark in the world of scientific and medical innovation. But that wouldn’t be quite accurate. The Massachusetts resident has, in fact, made a mark in outer space, too. Literally. Chan in February saw his company’s blood analyzer that he invented launch on a rocket to the International Space Station. Here is the story of Chan, and how this son of immigrants from Hong Kong, ended up […]

Anti-Asian Notes Target President of Harvard’s Undergrad Council

Michael Cheng, president of the Harvard undergraduate council, was the apparent victim of anti-Asian slurs at the campus late last month, in an incident that has been condemned by dozens of organizations and hundreds of members affiliated with the school. “It just crosses a line in many ways,” said Cheng, who’s pursuing a joint concentration in history and mathematics and a concurrent fourth-year master’s degree in computer science. “I just have seen casual stereotypes about Asian Americans thrown about at […]

China’s Life and Death Battle Against COVID

Even two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the contrast between case counts in the United States and China—where the outbreak began—are startling. In China, the number of total confirmed COVID cases stood at 143,624 by Feb. 14, with 5,706 deaths and 9,017 currently positive with the disease. That’s in a nation of over 1.4 billion people. By the same day, the US had clocked in a total of 79,325,576 confirmed Covid cases, a devastating 943,411 deaths, and 28,545,272 currently testing […]

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