Parcel C was one of the last remaining developable plots of land in Chinatown. Owned by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) as a part of a land swap with the New England Medical Center (NEMC), the land was promised to the Chinatown community for a community center. However, during the...

Before the 1960s, the southern half of today’s Chinatown was a Syrian-Lebanese community. While the advent of a more affluent and mobile second generation started the exodus of the Syrian-Lebanese community to the suburbs, the construction of the Central Artery put a quick and painful end to...

Compiled by A Chinatown Banquet student Andrew Tong, these stories provide insight into Chinatown during the 1950’s. By focusing on recreation and play, the stories offer a new historical twist on the lives of first generation Asian Americans, many of whom continue to work in and shape Chinatown...

Neil Chin recalls Chinatown during the Depression, when bootlegging was a form of economic survival. He vividly recounts his encounter, at nine years of age, with police who arrived to break up his mother’s moonshine distillery. Using a sensationalistic old-time newsreel aesthetic, the video...

Boston is home to what is believed to be the only Asian women’s lion dance troupe, the Gund Kwok Asian Women’s Lion Dance Troupe. Founder Cheng Imm Tan recounts the group’s origins, the history and symbolism of lion dancing, an earlier Boston women’s dance troupe and shares what it is like to be...

The Vietnamese Chinese who fled Vietnam significantly altered a part of Washington Street previously untenable for development. They were the only group willing to risk launching businesses near the dangerous, mob-run “Combat Zone”. They brought new vitality to the area, paving the way for...

The Combat Zone is an area within Chinatown that is legally zoned as an adult entertainment district. Deriving its name from the port-of-call sailors who frequented Boston for centuries, the Combat Zone was codified and moved to Washington Street to make way for Boston’s new City Hall. During...

The area Chinatown occupies has always been an immigrant, working-class community, driven by the proximity of labor and transportation. Originally an Irish community, it later became a predominantly Syrian-Lebanese community that was also home to Jewish and West-African-Barbadian immigrants....

What most people think of Chinatown, they immediately think of food. Is Chinatown simply a place for food and services? Is it more? This piece explores these questions, the contributions of restaurants to Chinatown, how “taste” has shifted with the population’s changing demographics and...

Traced back to Southern China and the clannish nature of Chinese culture, family associations play a unique role in U.S. Chinatowns. During the Chinese Exclusion Act and in times of extreme discrimination, family associations were not simply a social haven. They provided work and housing...

Passed in 1882 and in effect until 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first U.S. law to ban immigration by race or nationality. Using images from actual Chinese Exclusion Act case files, this poignant piece discusses its ramifications and how U.S. Chinatown developed in response to racial...

Dating back to the 1880s, Boston Chinatown is one of the oldest continuous residential Chinatown communities in the U.S., a little known fact not adequately celebrated in Boston's history. This piece covers the arrival of the first Chinese immigrants in New England, brought in to break a strike...