Story Night premieres five special storytelling projects produced by the Think!Chinatown team in the past year. These storytelling projects are a part of our continued journey to seek a deeper understanding of our neighbors and the history of our community. Alvin Eng will also perform a spoken rendition of “It’s Only a Paper Son,” from his memoirs. Tickets are required for entry. Please check back Saturday morning as more tickets will be made available then.
Safety information for indoor events:
Spots for all indoor events are very limited to ensure the safety of our friends and neighbors, so reserve your spot if you know you'll be there. Your reservation will also help us keep each other safe through contact tracing. If you are unable to make it, please cancel your eventbrite ticket to let us know, so we can let someone else have your spot to enjoy the event with us.
ID and vaccination card & pulse-oximeter (temperature) check are required for entry into this event. If you are feeling sick on the day of the event, please stay home and rest up. Let's continue keeping each other safe.
Art of Storytelling
Artist Christina Chung brings the story of our Chinatown neighbors, Yan Ping Zhong and Ying Wu, to life. The animated short “What I Wanted Most || 我哋即係最想得到”, Yan Ping Zhong remembers her difficult journey as an immigrant from Guangzhou, China to Panama to New York City Chinatown. Through their memories of migration and the once booming garment factories of Chinatown, Yan Ping and her daughter, Ying Wu, challenge us to demystify the promises of the American Dream and Gold Mountain (金山) that continue to bring immigrants to Chinatown and the U.S. for a better life for their loved ones. Art of Storytelling is a Think!Chinatown series working with API artists to honor the histories of our Chinatown community members.
Audio production: Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan, Video production: Hai-Li Kong, Producer: Yin Kong
Grocery Runs Across Chinatown
This video series celebrates the diversity of the Chinese diaspora found in Manhattan’s Chinatown through the lens of everyday kitchen ingredients. In this three-episode series, each video features a Chinatown aunty or uncle who will take us along on their typical grocery shopping experience in the neighborhood. They will explain to us what they buy at each location and how these products are reflective of their regional background. There’s Meemee, the sword wielding Cantonese aunty. Angle, owner of the Teochew snack shop, New York Bo Ky, and Aunty Chen and Aunty Lian, opera singers from Fujian! Each person takes us through the familiar streets of Chinatown, but shows us a slightly different culinary side.
The mission of this series is to highlight Chinatown’s small businesses and locally made delicacies. As such this is a part of and supported by the Department of Small Business Services as part of the All In NYC campaign.
Video production: Hai-Li Kong, Production support: Alice Liu, Producer: Yin Kong
An Ode to Our Generations: Remembering the Music and Memories of Yellow Pearl and Basement Workshop
"In 1972, the collective known as Basement Workshop in New York’s Manhattan Chinatown published the art book Yellow Pearl. It was originally a project meant to illustrate the music of Chris Iijima, Nobuko Miyamoto, and Charlie Chin, but grew into a 57 page compilation of writing, art, and music by over 30 Asian American artists."
In this special revival, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Treya Lam performs songs from Yellow Pearl, intertwined with the memories and hopes for the future from across generations of artist-activists in Chinatown of the past and today.
Original music: Chris Ijima, Nobuko Yamamoto, and Charlie Chin, Featured performer: Treya Lam, Audio production: Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan, Video production: Hai-Li Kong, Producer: Yin Kong
Special thanks to Arlan Huang and all the folks of Yellow Pearl and Basement Workshop, who laid the foundation for us and who continue to live on in our work today.
“It’s Only a Paper Son” conjures 1970s Chinatown through childhood memories of Sunday visits with Alvin Eng’s parents. During the day it was his mom’s world of family, dim sum and shopping, but at night it was the remnants of the fabled Chinatown Bachelor Society in the form of his father’s friends at the Rosemary Theatre. This is a chapter from Eng’s memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town: Memoir Portraits from a NYC Chinese American Life-in-Progress, to be published next year by Fordham University Press.
Artist Bios:
Christina Chung is a Taiwanese-Hongkonger-American illustrator, raised between Seattle and Singapore, and is
currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on intricacies, color and symbolism, drawing inspiration from the natural world and powerful storytelling.
Yin Kong 邝海音 is a community-based designer and curator living and working in Manhattan's Chinatown. Think!Chinatown is the culmination of her work in urban design, museum, culinary & cultural instruction, and community engagement. Yin holds a Masters of Architecture, Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and a Bachelors of Arts, Urban Studies from Columbia University. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2016 and the Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture 2007 & 2009.
Hai-Li Kong is a video producer and editor, who focuses on documentary work. She is the Video Production Lead at Think!Chinatown. She is currently working on an experimental documentary short about her own family’s history. The film will paint an intergenerational portrait of life in China and Singapore from the 1940s-1970s before her parents’ immigration to Canada. This tumultuous and revolutionary time in Asian history was privy to WWII in the Pacific Theater, Singaporean independence, and the Cultural Revolution. Exhibited works include: Ming Fay & EPOXY (384 Broadway Art Space, WhiteBox Harlem, Brooklyn Museum of Art).
Treya Lam (They/Them) is an American multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose joyously complex identity informs but does not define their work, whether solo or when collaborating with a variety of multidisciplinary ensembles. Their strident voice, politically charged songwriting and fluent instrumental prowess on guitar, piano and strings recalls Nina Simone and Ani DiFranco. Their debut album Good News was released via Kaki King’s label, Short Stuff Records. Lam is currently developing otherland - an audiovisual chamber-folk album on radical self acceptance, intersecting identities and healing in the wake of grief and loss.
Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan (She/Her) is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ based on unceded Lenape land in New York City's Manhattan Chinatown. Her work as a cultural archivist centers on engaging our communities as our classroom and fostering intergenerational relationships that celebrate art and history as powerful acts of resistance and resilience. Instagram
Alvin Eng is a native NYC playwright, performer and educator. His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, as well as in Paris, Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. Recent projects: Dixon Place Workshop Residency to develop a solo “acoustic punk raconteur” work Here Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk); National Sawdust commission for an essay and spoken word video, History, Not Nostalgia, Crossroads, 2021: For James Baldwin. Honors include: Fulbright Specialist and LMCC grants; three-time recipient of NYSCA/NYFA Fellowships––most recently in 2020 or his memoir, Our Laundry, OurTown: Memoir Portraits from a NYC Chinese American Life-In-Progress, to be published by Fordham University Press in 2022.