October 25, 2024 | Vol. 53, Issue 20

The only bilingual Chinese-English Newspaper in New England

Top News

Stellar Rise of Morocco at the World Cup

It’s a game so simple that children can play it. 22 people run around a field, kicking a ball to their teammates, trying to get that ball into the opposing team’s net. Like a zen koan, complexity emerges from simplicity. Life itself, with its heights of tension and emotion, heroics and failures, is played out on the pitch. The epic stories of professional association football are matched only by the tales of Ancient Greek drama. There’s a reason that close […]

Tufts Medical Center Awards More Than $1.2 Million in Grants to Support Community Initiatives

Tufts Medical Center announced on December 16th that it has awarded more than $1.2 million in grants to 20 local nonprofit organizations to address unmet needs highlighted in their 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment. Six of those organizations will form cross-sector collaborations to reach more people and amplify impact and results. The funding focuses on three core areas to improve the physical, socio-emotional and financial health of Boston residents: providing culturally competent behavioral health and substance abuse services; encouraging financial […]

The Artist in Motion: An Interview with Yun-Fei Ji

World-renowned painter and Beijing native Yun-Fei Ji has had solo and group exhibitions in such locations as worldly as Hawaii, Belgium, Iceland, and Italy. He has works in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Drawing Center in New York, the Worcester Art Museum, and Brandeis University.  SAMPAN recently had the opportunity to speak with Ji, regarding his fifth solo exhibition at the James Cohan Gallery in New York City, The Sunflower Turned Its Back, running through January 7, 2023. Ji’s stunning evocations of […]

Air Monitoring in Chinatown: Next Steps from MassDEP

Should you go for a run today? If you live in Chinatown, you may want to stick to the treadmill. The neighborhood is strangled by major highways and roads, and every day thousands of automobiles pump harmful pollutants into the air. Over the years, studies from Tufts University School of Medicine have measured high levels of ultrafine particles in Chinatown. In 2019 the area received the dubious distinction of having the worst air quality in the state. Low air quality […]

Violent Crimes in Quincy Raise Bias Concerns Among Some Activists, Academics

North Quincy resident Brian Kenney stood before the court on December 14 and received his sentence for assaulting, robbing, and hospitalizing Vietnam War veteran Liem Tran over a year ago. Kenney, 35, pleaded guilty to the crime earlier this year and was initially charged along with his wife, Angelina Kenney, 39, in March of last year. He was sentenced to three to five years in prison, along with three years of probation thereafter. During that probationary period Kenney will have […]

Malden Celebrates Passage of Transliteration Law

Officials, voters, and community groups celebrated passage of Malden transliteration law on December 15, 2022. It marked a significant step towards ensuring full access to the ballot box for Chinese-speaking voters with low English proficiency. According to a 2021 American Community Survey, 22% of Malden households speak an Asian or Pacific Island language at home. About 40% of these households are considered to have limited-English speaking proficiency.  Officials included Malden Mayor Gary Christenson, Massachusetts Senator Jason Lewis, Massachusetts State Representative […]

Asian American Elderly: Facing Poverty and Loneliness

People over the age of 50 who live alone are now one of the fastest-growing demographics in the nation. Up from 15 million in 2000, this demographic bloated to nearly 26 million this year. The causes may be connected to the changing perceptions around family and gender which resulted in high divorce and never-married rates in this generation. There were more women in the Baby Boomer generation who entered the workforce than ever before. There was also an emphasis on […]

COVID-19 Update

You may still remember the omicron surge last winter. As the temperature drops, experts warn us of another winter wave of COVID. While COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. have stayed relatively low since September, with about 37,000 new cases per day, it is hard to forget that more than 1 million Americans have died since the beginning of the pandemic. COVID-19 is still very present. The omicron subvariants have waned away, but the subvariant BA.5, dominant through October, […]

Opinion: Affirmative Action and Asian American Admissions

Some 45 years ago, I was a young Asian American college student in California, who worked with Chicano and Black students statewide to protest the first major attack on minority admissions. This grew out of a lawsuit by a rejected white applicant to UC Davis named Allan Bakke, who charged that he had suffered “reverse discrimination.”  In 1978, so many Asian American college students realized that an attack on affirmative admissions programs would be a setback for Asian Americans that […]

New Developments in Chinatown

Chinatown and downtown Boston will be going through massive changes as the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) moves forward with preparing for construction in and around the area. Some plans are currently under review and others have been approved and are slated to be underway, with the overall project set to end in the summer of 2023. Assistant Director of Communications for BPDA Brittany Comak, along with the Interim Director of Planning Kennan Rhyne, met with this reporter to […]

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