Top News

August 18, 2023 0

Organizers Give Update on Chinatown Master Plan

The Chinatown Master Plan was first developed in 1990 to respond to residential concerns about competing demands for affordable housing and institutional expansion in Chinatown. As we reach nearly three and a half years since the start of COVID, and the release of the 2020 version of the report, Sampan convened a discussion with Chinatown Community Land Trust Executive Director Lydia Lowe, Pao Arts Center Director Cynthia Woo, and Asian Community Development Corporation Executive Director Angie Liou to discuss successes, […]

August 18, 2023 0

Healey Declares State of Emergency to Take Care of 20,000 Refugees in Mass.

by Joanna Lin

On the second floor of an orange building on Allston’s Harvard Avenue, the muted conversations of parents and the loud chatter of young children can be heard, among suitcases and toys. In this pocket of the city that is the Brazilian Worker Center, Haitian families seek temporary refuge before continuing their long journeys to hotels or medical centers and pursuing the place where they hope to reside: a safer and more permanent home. They compose some of the 20,000 individuals, […]

August 5, 2023 0

August Moon Festival: Celebrating the Brightest and Fullest Moon of the Year

by Daniel Steinberg

Every year, millions across China and the Chinese diaspora gather to celebrate the August Moon Festival. In Chinese culture, the festival is one of the most important occasions, second only to Lunar New Year. Dating back over 3,000 years, the festival is traditionally held on the 15th day of the 8th month on the Chinese Lunar Calendar. It is meant to commemorate the brightest and fullest moon of the year. August Moon Festival, or the Mid-Autumn Festival, is a celebration […]

August 5, 2023 0

Converting Used Office Buildings Into Affordable Housing: Who are the Real Stakeholders

by Kristen Si

There is no doubt that the city of Boston is currently in the midst of a housing crisis. In the Boston Foundation’s annual report, the Greater Boston area received a failing grade in the year of 2022. The report cites confounding factors of economic growth and rising housing prices with the bottom line that middle and lower-income families will be struggling in the coming years to find affordable housing options if new policies are not adopted. The current issues will […]

August 5, 2023 0

Stay Safe as Scammers and Hackers Grow More Sophisticated

by Alina Chaudhri

Today, Scammers and hackers have found many new ways to destroy our sense of security. Whether through phone, text, or email, scammers take on identities they believe their victims will trust. As technologies become more advanced, so have the scams. Fraudsters of today have figured out ways to conceal themselves from their targets by becoming masters of deception. Posing as real identities, they hope their victims don’t notice the small details that would give them away. According to the Federal […]

August 4, 2023 0

Living Your Best Life: It Takes a Village

by Jeff Millman

A five-minute walk from the historic On Leong Chinese Merchants Association building in Chinatown brings you to the Biewend building on Tremont Street. Dr. Wei Wang, a geriatrician and primary care physician, sees elderly patients here at Tufts Medicine’s primary care offices. He told Sampan that many elderly people living in Chinatown deal with chronic medical conditions like diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. This is true of older adults more generally. In the United States, nearly 95% of […]

August 4, 2023 0

At Home in Chinatown Exhibit: An Interview with Curator Lily Song

by Harmony Witte

This reporter attended the opening reception of the exhibit called “At Home in Chinatown: A Residence Lab Retrospective” and the accompanying workshop “Remembering and Remaking Chinatown” at the Pao Arts Center on July 27th. The exhibit featured work and photographs of the processes of six local artists who participated in the Residence Lab and completed site-specific projects during the last four years of the program. There were 4 key themes on display in the show, including art as cultural belonging, […]

July 22, 2023 0

Peace, Reunification, and Healing: an Interview with Crossings Director Deann Borshay Liem on the two Koreas and Hopes for Resolution after Seventy Years

by Christopher John Stephens

Emmy Award-Winning documentarian Deann Borshay Liem’s new film Crossings examines the 2015 journey a group of female peace activists takes to call attention to the still unresolved issues between North and South Korea. It starts streaming on July 22 at midnight on worldchannel.org, WORLD’s YouTube and the PBS app ahead of the July 23 television broadcast on WORLD at 10pm ET. SAMPAN: Your work is often about identity and the repercussions of history. Crossings shows, among other things, how the […]

July 22, 2023 0

Joy Ride: A True Joy Ride From Start to Finish

by Harmony Witte

The latest film by director Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians) is aptly named as it is a true joy ride from start to finish. It tells the tale of four Chinese American friends who embark on a journey to China to find one of their birth mothers. The film is simultaneously raunchy and hilarious, with a few surprisingly poignant moments mixed in, all of that along with an exploration of identity. Along the way, the main characters all learn to […]

July 22, 2023 0

DANGEROUS WEATHER ACROSS THE U.S.: How We Must Adapt to Survive

by Jeff Millman

A severe weather pattern has been working its way across the United States over the past few weeks with a diversity of effects: heatwaves in the southwest, thunderstorms and tornadoes in the midwest, and thunderstorms and extreme flooding in the northeast. According to meteorologist Alex DaSilva, a dome of high pressure over Texas and an active jet stream pattern across the northern United States have been the driving forces of the extreme weather. Heatwaves are expected to continue to spread […]

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