Scope and Contents The documents in this series include bills, correspondence with accountants, customer invoices, daily receipts, drivers’ delivery route lists, laundry tickets (used and unused), ledgers, letterhead, insurance documents, operating licenses, payroll documentation, a 1982 plaque from the State Insurance Fund commemorating over twenty-five years of business, and union correspondence and membership documents. In addition, there is a payroll register from 1961-1971 with checks labelled "Lin Hop...

Scope and Contents

The documents in this series include business receipts, handwritten receipts, ledgers, insurance documents, a mortgage certificate, commercial and vehicle auto licenses, bank documents, business cards, and small notebooks, most likely account books (one of which is dated 1960-1962).

Scope and Contents

The objects in this series include items from the laundromat, specifically, a 1982 plaque from by the State Insurance Fund for its over twenty-five year business relationship with Wah Kiu Wet Wash; a stapler; a large clip; a cigar box that held laundry receipts; three large safety pins; and mesh laundry bags.

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 Daniel Chu was born in Kohanaiki, Hawaii in 1914, the tenth child in a large family of eight boys and four girls. His father’s parents were Hakka and had first migrated to Trinidad or Jamaica in the 1870s to work on rice or sugar plantations. After their contracts ended, they sent his father, who was eight years old at the time, back to their home village in Guangdong Province. When he was eighteen, they sent for him to join them where they had settled in Honolulu, Hawaii. Daniel’s mother...

Abstract Jack Tchen along with Charlie Lai are founders of the Chinatown History Project, which has gone on to become the Museum of Chinese in America. In this multiple part interview Tchen discusses growing up in Wisconsin and his family’s ties to China. He then recounts his time at Madison college and how he got more involved in activism and Asian American studies. Next he discusses his time working at Basement workshop, how he met Charlie and working on exhibitions. He left Basement workshop with...

Abstract Mr. Tam, a Toisan (Taishan) native, has worked in the laundry industry from the time he immigrated to the U.S. in 1951 to the time of the interview in 1980. Forced to flee after the communist victory in China, he was sponsored by his older brother, with whom he worked at Zhongshan Wet Wash before being able to strike out on his own in 1964. Due to U.S. immigration policy, he was initially unable to sponsor his wife and family and found being separated from them very stressful. Mr. Tam’s...

Scope and Contents

The documents in this series include items such as a Christmas card in Chinese and English, an invitation to an anniversary event for a local business, Chinese-language newspapers, and blank visa applications to China.

Scope and Contents

The documents in this series include a pack of cigars, medical receipts, unopened correspondence, photographs, and an immigration notice from Immigration and Naturalization Service.