Abstract Spring Wang is an independent developer who was born in China and raised in Taiwan. In this oral history, she discusses her experience of moving to the United States in 1968, where she attended college and became a Marxist heavily involved in political and social movements. One organization with which she associates herself is Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a group devoted to talking about social services, equal employment opportunities, and housing development. She reflects on her...

Abstract S.W. Sang is a local Chinatown jewelry merchant who arrived in the United States during the 1970s. In this interview, he talks about his life as a migrant, moving from country to country, including China, Macau, and the Dominican Republic before finally settling in New York City. Sang was trained as a jeweler at a young age in the Dominican Republic and would eventually establish his business in Manhattan, operating stores in Harlem and Chinatown. As Sang expanded his business in Chinatown,...

Abstract Toby Turkel is a Jewish woman who was born and raised in East New York, Brooklyn, and moved to Chinatown in the mid-seventies. She is an active community member, serving as the president of Chatham Towers, a co-op in Chinatown, as well as the vice president of Synagogue for the Arts. During this oral history, she begins by discussing her childhood in East New York and her personal journey that led her to live independently on the Lower East Side beginning in the sixties. Turkel later got...

Abstract Tony Wong, General Manager at Sino Television, was born and raised in Hong Kong. He immigrated to the United States to study broadcasting at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Tony recalls his initial struggles as a student coming from a poor economic background and how he eventually moved to New York City, receiving a job offer at NBC right after graduation. During his time at NBC and in Sino TV as a part-timer, Tony would learn a myriad of skills including production, directing,...

Abstract William Chiu, born in 1952, begins this interview recalling his childhood growing up, learning and working in Hong Kong. He talks about his father’s work as a chef and his father’s fateful opportunity to immigrate with his family to the United States. He describes his education and reasoning for desiring to go to the United States. William recounts his first job working as a waiter in training before beginning to work with his father in the restaurant business. He also describes the working...

Abstract Wilson Tang was born in 1978 and grew up in Queens, New York. Tang’s parents decided to move out of Manhattan Chinatown to Queens for a better work environment. Tang later found his way back to Chinatown when he attended college at Pace University. After college, he went into a finance career, as parents wished. After working for a few years, he realized that he wanted to run a business. Thus, he opened a bakery at his father’s building on Allen street. The bakery ran from 2004 to 2007 and...

Abstract Tomie Arai and Janice Lau sit down with Wing Lee to discuss his life and his experience growing up in and around New York City’s Chinatown in the ‘60s through the ‘80s. Wing talks about what it was like as a kid being raised in the US with Chinese parents, and growing up on the streets of Chinatown. He talks about the schools he went to in the area, and all the spots the neighborhood kids used to hang out. Later on in his late teenage years, he describes the experience at a popular...

Abstract Wing Ma (Ma Wing Guo) was born in China to a poor farming family who moved to Hong Kong as refugees when he was age two. Wing talks about his life growing up in Hong Kong with his mother working in the garment industry and his father working as a chef in Manila. He studied until post-secondary school before moving to the United States to train and work as an engineer. Wing would eventually join the garment industry as a factory owner, and describes the industry’s decline over time due to...

Abstract In this interview, Yan Chen talks about her life in Mainland China where she was born and grew up; the family home, farm, her family, extended family, and many farm animals. Chen recalls how, at age ten, she and her family came to the United States through the help of extended family. She remembers that her parents were hoping to make a lot of money in America without having to work too hard. The interview mainly consists of Chen discussing her relationship to the two areas where she...