Abstract

These interviews with Chinese American performers take an intimate look at the popular nightclub era of the 1930s through 1950s. The Chinese American performers talk about their personal experiences during the era and the role that race played in entertainment.

Abstract This interview with Alice and Jip Chun, conducted by Ernest Abuba on August 21, 1984 for the Chinatown History Project, discusses Louis Chu’s novel Eat a Bowl of Tea as adapted for stage by Ernest Abuba. Alice Chun worked with Chinese-speaking patients as a public health nurse employed by the Community Service Society. Jip Chun came from a transnational merchants’ family with early roots in New York Chinatown. In the interview, Abuba asks Alice and Jip to help provide a general Chinese...

Scope and Contents Interview with Wonci Lui conducted by phone on June 7, 2003 by David Lewis Hammarstrom. Wonci was an ensemble dancer during the 1958 production of Rogers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song."In this interview, Wonci Lui talks about her experience as a dancer in the original production of “Flower Drum Song,” the opening night, and her recollection of director Gene Kelly. Lui discusses how she was cast in "Flower Drum Song," Asian stereotypes in the show, and the development of the...

Abstract Alice Eng and Anne Lee are sisters who discuss what life was like growing up in New York City in a big family. After living in Brooklyn for the first few years of their lives, their family then moved to China. However they then returned to the United States as refugees and their family then relocated to Midtown. Some of their family members fought in World War II and both women went to graduate high school, get married and become homemakers. In the interview they express their interests in...

Abstract This oral history, conducted in Cantonese with Alice Yip, was part of a greater effort by MOCA to research and record the history of Chinese Americans in the garment industry and was possibly conducted as part of MOCA’s research for its 1989 exhibition, “Both Sides of the Cloth.” Alice Yip, who grew up in Hong Kong, immigrated to the Netherlands in 1970 and then to the United States in 1976. She went to work immediately in the garment industry in New York Chinatown the day after arriving....

Abstract Blanche Leung, M.D., was born on April 16, 1970 in Queens, New York to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Canton, China. She sits down to recount the immigration story of her parents, from when they left China as young children following the Communist changeover to their time in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada and the United States, where they ultimately settled in 1969. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother was a hematology lab manager. She talks extensively about the family pharmacy...

Abstract Growing up, Cora May Chin (née Chu, born 1927) lived with her parents and two sisters at 47 Mott Street, above the apartments of her paternal grandparents and large extended family. Her father, Farn B. Chu, was a doctor with a medical practice on the third floor of the same building, and her grandfather, Chu Fook (Ng Yee Foke), was a proprietor of Mon Hing Co., a wholesale restaurant supply and grocery store at 19 Pell Street. Her mother, Mary York Tsui, taught at Chinese school, which Cora...

Abstract This interview with Dr. Paul Chu (b. 1925) was conducted by an NYU graduate student who was working with the Chinatown History Project (now MOCA) to collect stories for a workshop on earlier generations of Italian American and Chinese American students at PS 23 (Public School 23). Paul, a dentist and longtime resident of Chinatown, grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown and moved to New York in the 1930s with his parents at the age of 8 or 9. His grandfather, a merchant in San Francisco, was the...

Abstract In this interview, Dr. Sun-Hoo Foo discusses his profession as a doctor in Chinatown as well as his personal family background. Dr. Sun-Hoo Foo talks about his cultural roots, his training, his specialty as the director of neurology, and the aftermath of 9/11 and how 9/11 impacted his patients. Dr. Sun-Hoo Foo He mentions how there are multiple outreach organizations throughout America and Canada that help Chinese immigrants who are sick. He mentions the differences between Western and...

Abstract Elizabeth Ng talks about growing up in Depression Era New York City living in a big family and participating in the neighborhood church. She speaks about her brothers going to war and her parents’ relationship and histories. Growing up she went to Washington Irving high School and then Hunter College. She also reflects upon her sister dancing in the World’s Fair in Queens. After college with a degree in teaching she became a teacher in New York City. She discusses her relationships with the...