Scope and Contents

351 photographs digitized in 600dpi. The photographs depict pictures of the donor's family.

Scope and Contents The materials in this collection mainly consist of household items from the Chin family's apartment on Mulberry Street and business items from the Chin family's businesses (the majority of the latter items are from the Rice Bowl Restaurant and Kwong Chong and Co.). The household materials include kitchen items, artwork, clothing, sewing materials, record albums, medicinal objects, and books. The business materials include account books, furniture, and signage. The majority of the items are...

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 Charlie Lai along with Jack Tchen are founders of the Chinatown History Project, which has gone on to become the Museum of Chinese in America. In this five part interview conducted over the course of several months Charlie talks about his childhood in Hong Kong and how his family eventually decided to immigrate to the United States when he was nine years old. He talks about living with his uncle when they first arrived in the states and saying on Long Island. His family eventually moves into...

Abstract Cliff Law grew up in the town of Hastings in Upstate New York and later moved to New York Chinatown in the late 1930s. His father, Harry Law, owned a foundry that manufactured laundry equipment in nearby Kingston and a hardware store in Chinatown at 11-13 Doyers Street (likely Excelsior Laundry Machines Co.). The oral history interview begins with Cliff recalling memories of Doyers Street, as well as discussing the history of 11-13 Doyers Street, the building his father purchased after a...

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...