Several of the more recent posts on this site come from research I did for my third book, American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949. The book is now out, and I’ll be doing a few talks about it … Continue reading
The Hawaiian-born New York journalist William Yukon Chang died on September 4, 2019, and his obituary appeared in the New York Times yesterday morning. (The online version is here. The World Journal also published its own obituary here.) I was … Continue reading
Completed in 1960, the rippling, modernist Chatham Green cooperative apartment building (165-215 Park Row) dominates the intersection of Park Row and Worth and St. James Streets to the southeast of the old core of Chinatown. Between 1928 and the mid-1950s, … Continue reading
Green-wood Cemetery is one of the most beautiful spots in Brooklyn; it’s also the final resting place of many celebrities of the past, including some who have almost completely been forgotten today. One such person is George Kin Leung (梁社乾), whose cremated … Continue reading
In 1882, Congress passed and the president signed an order barring all Chinese laborers from entering the United States for ten years and enshrining previous court decisions denying Chinese aliens the right to naturalize. In 1892, Congress extended the ban … Continue reading
Between 1905 and the 1920s, numerous Japanese art goods, import-export, and housewares businesses clustered on the southern border of today’s Upper East Side in Midtown East. The shops included the importer S. Kuwayama at 114 E 59th St., the Japan Art … Continue reading
In the early 20th century, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway did not yet cut across this somewhat unsightly section of downtown Brooklyn to the east of Cadman Plaza. The area was hardly tranquil, of course. The Brooklyn Bridge and the newer Manhattan … Continue reading
Urban renewal changed (and often devastated) many areas of postwar New York. One neighborhood that experienced almost continual transformation between 1945 and the 1970s was Kips Bay, an area on Manhattan’s East Side between East 23rd and East 34th Streets from … Continue reading
This lovely old apartment building, at 300 Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was once home to the Chinese Consul General in New York, Samuel Sung Young ( 熊崇志). A native of San Francisco, he was the son of Chinese … Continue reading
In early 1930, theater-goers in New York City enjoyed an unusual oppor-tunity: Mei Lan-fang, the most famous Peking opera actor in China, visited the city as part of a US tour to showcase his art and to make a case … Continue reading