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A legacy: Chinese in the Hub By Jason Beerman - 03/02/2008 The Boston Globe More Info on This Book: Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965
The Boston neighborhood is changing yet again: High-rise condos sprout amid its dense blocks of low-slung buildings, new restaurant facades gleam, and a newly constructed park leads to the Chinatown gate, the neighborhood's symbolic entrance. Compare today's street scenes with the ones in a new book chronicling the tiny neighborhood's first century, and you can see just how far Chinatown has come. The book is "Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965" by Wing-kai To and the Chinese Historical Society of New England. In 2004, Peter Kiang and Stephanie Fan, then copresidents of the historical society, urged To, an associate professor of history and the coordinator of Asian studies at Bridgewater State College, to take on the project. Using archival photographs, prints, advertisements, newspaper articles, and lithographs, many from the society's collection, To assembled a rich portrait of the community's establishment and evolution, and he hasn't ignored its setbacks and dark times. "It was good cooperation," To said, "because, as a historian, I have the skills and knowledge and experience and interest in the study of Chinese-American history. As a community organization, the Chinese Historical Society of New England has a lot of contacts with local community members and they have come up with archival material." One of the society's goals is to "preserve and promote the stories of people and institutions who are part of the Chinatown fabric," said Caroline Chang, the society's cofounder and its part-time managing director. Gathering the 200 images for the book was a cooperative effort, Chang said, as it required extensive searches of various library and newspaper archives, as well as the generosity of community members to share their personal collections that portray the neighborhood's history. Boston's Chinatown was first settled by Chinese immigrants in the late 1870s. They populated the South Cove landfill area, where Irish, Syrian, Italian, and Jewish immigrants had settled in the earlier part of the century. The completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 made it easier for Chinese immigrants to travel to Boston from the West, where, as laborers, they had been lured by the California Gold Rush. A scan of a Chinese language newspaper dating from 1892 indicates the existence of a stable Chinese community in Boston; scenes from the early 1900s show the city's first Chinese eatery, the Hong Far Low Restaurant, as a center of social life; photos show an elevated railroad over Beach Street, built in 1899; a story about a Chinatown immigration raid in a 1903 edition of the Boston Herald documents the anti-Chinese sentiment during the era that followed the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act by Congress in 1882. In the first three decades of the 20th century, Chinatown persevered and grew, as new laundries, restaurants, and groceries expanded the neighborhood's scope and its boundaries. Family associations, founded as fraternal antidotes to the bachelor society that resulted from the lack of women and children in the initial wave of immigration, grew in social and civic importance, and continue to thrive today as benevolent organizations. The ongoing push and pull of assimilation is exemplified in the photos of Chinatown during World War II, with Chinese and American nationalism coexisting in images of Chinese-American servicemen and in parade scenes of support for Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party. "They were always in a kind of balancing act," To said, "whether it was good to support China or become American." By the 1950s and '60s, Boston's Chinatown was firmly entrenched, as second- and third-generation Chinese settled in the enclave where their parents and grandparents had lived. The Quincy School, a public school that flourishes in Chinatown today, embodied this phenomenon. "After the 1950s," To said, "the Syrians moved away, the Italians moved away, so the Chinese population [of the Quincy School] increased from about 20 percent to the majority." But the '50s and '60s also brought great turmoil to the area, as the construction of both the Central Artery and the Massachusetts Turnpike extension literally carved into the heart of the neighborhood. The book documents these incursions; there is no mention, however, of another challenge - the notorious Combat Zone, which festered at Chinatown's edge for decades. The Zone "was at its height from 1974 to 1985," said To, who said he chose to put his emphasis on the neighborhood's formative years. The highway construction, To said, spurred political and social mobilization, and helped create a new Chinatown. It has come full circle today, as the completion of the Big Dig has freed up a swath of land, the so-called Parcel 24, that had been claimed by the Turnpike extension, and neighborhood activists are fighting to reclaim that slice and reconstruct a portion of the Chinatown that was. "I think Chinatown has a pretty good future," said the historical society's Chang. "And I would like to see it, because it is also the place that provides a safe haven for new immigrants until they are established and can move and go to the communities outside of Chinatown." To said: "We tend to forget about the long history of the Chinese community in Boston. Everyone talks about the Irish, the Italians, and they tend to overlook the Chinese." The North End as an Italian enclave "and Chinatown developed around the same time. So the Chinese are one of the older groups, and in the book, we try to present that." The book sells for $19.99 and may be purchased at area bookshops or directly from Arcadia Publishing (arcadiapublishing.com). Buy It Now: Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965 $21.99 |
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