February 4, 2010 by Adam.

Since my last demo I have been told by Master Ng, (the Feng Shui Man) that I have become a little famous in a new circle of people for being a white guy that speaks “bak wah” a term for Cantonese. Interestingly when I first heard this term years ago I though it meant English because it sounds like “White Language.” Master Ng one of the Principals at ABCD told Master Ng’s friend, “that white guy speaks better ‘Bak wah’” than you!” (This is because Master Ng and his friend speak Taishanese as their first language. In fact as Master Ng was telling me the story, the man standing next to him yelled at me that I should have spoken Taishanese instead. (My Taishanese is not as good though I can sort of fake the Doushan dialect of it.)

Anyway, more recently I did a Kung Fu demonstration  at the Peabody Essex Museum for an exclusive event for members who were top donor and their kids. Gung Kwok Asian Woman’s Lion Dance team was hired to perform a dragon dance and they referred me as someone who could do a Martial Arts demo.

I decided to bring very fake looking weapons to perform with, which ended up being a good decision. I was just thinking that maybe the parents would be a little apprehensive about the weapons if they looked real. I didn’t take into account the fact that the stuff we practice with might look like artifacts. I guess in many ways our school is living history.

I did two back to back half hour performances/workshops where  I punch, powed, cupped, tiger clawed, and crane beaked the air and then had the children and their parents do the same while speaking the Chinese Names of the forms as well. The first group had a chinese mother who helped the energy of the group tremendously. The weapons forms came with a little history from WWII and from the Three Kingdoms period.  The kids then went on to other galleries in a sort of scavenger hunt which ended in the lobby with a surprise dragon dance from Gund Kwok, a meal, and the movie Mulan on a big screen. It was a pretty cool  event to have at a museum.

The Museum itself is probably most recently famous for the old Chinese House that they dismantled and rebuilt. The video on it shows how it was going to be destroyed anyway so  the family that owns it and the ancestors would be relatively happy that the house is at least preserved given the alternative. There was a little video about the life in the surrounding village (probably not there anywmore.) that involved a lion dance for new year. It was interesting because the head looked neither northern or southern. In fact it looked like a box with colorful paper on it. It also didn’t follow a lot of the rules that the Southern Heads usually do, like backing out of the doorway instead of just leaving a house head first. But clearly the people in the village were following other strict rules when it came to making offerings to ancestors and such. It kind of made me loosen up my perspective on what a lion dance was and its place in society, if in parts of China they are almost starting anew with these traditions that might have a disconnect due to the Cultural Revolution. I guess traditionalism was hammered into me by my si hing. My Sifu cares about us following the traditional rules, but says if other people aren’t not to even care about it, just as long as we kept the traditions.

As for myself, I seem to care about tradition when it comes to Kung Fu and Lion Dance, but in other aspects of my life I don’t care at all. Or maybe in my whole life I’ve only really listened to my Sifu and now that I have a family and am not living with him, I am somewhat lost. Like that house at the Peabody Essex Museum, that used to be for living in but is now in a museum.

I guess I do these demonstrations mostly to show myself that kung fu is still living and relevant and that I am not an artifact.

-Adam

acheung-whitecrane@hotmail.com

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February 1, 2010 by Chinatown Blogger.

Boston Courant: East Berkeley Street May Get New Name
The January 29th edition of the Boston Courant reports there has been a petition by area residents and businesses to change the name of East Berkeley Street to Dover Street. A public hearing will be held Tuesday, Feb. 9th 6:30pm at Project Place, 1145 Washington Street.

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January 26, 2010 by Chinatown Blogger.

The Asian Community Development Corporation, a Boston Chinatown-based CDC non-profit, is expanding their development portfolio to Quincy, MA. ACDC is known in Chinatown as the community developers for the mixed-use buildings Metropolitan at 1 Nassau St. and Oak Terrace at 888 Washington Street. As growth in Chinatown is limited by the parcels available for development, ACDC has been actively looking at projects outside of Chinatown. The project at 6 Fort Street reflects an ongoing trend of Chinatown-based businesses and agencies expanding into Quincy to serve the growing Chinese and Asian American population. Examples of this trend include the China Pearl Restaurant on Quincy Avenue and the South Cove Community Health Center on Hancock Street

The Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) recently announced it will be providing funding for 6 Fort Street, Quincy, MA as part of a $153.9 million effort aimed at building and preserving affordable rental housing statewide.  The awards to Asian Community Development Corporation include $2,048,502 in DHCD subsidies, $765,000 in federal tax credits, and $554,000 in state tax credits.

Six Fort Street is an approximately 34-family rental residential development in Quincy, MA. The project will represent the adaptive re-use of a partially historic building in a transit-oriented, Downtown Quincy Center location. The program responds to the new Quincy Center Zoning District’s Design Guidelines, while remaining sensitive to the surrounding, smaller-scale commercial and residential neighborhood.

Community Benefits
• Restoration of a predominantly vacant and neglected
building into a vibrant residential community
• Creation of 34 new smart growth, transit-oriented rental opportunities located near schools, retails services, and public ransportation
• Activation of Fort Street with ground floor community/
commercial space
• Enhancement of the pedestrian environment along Fort
Street through improved design of street-level facade
• Careful rehabilitation of an existing structure with a
sustainable, green design
• Long-term investment in the local community through ACDC’s continued ownership and community focused
management of the property
• Consistent source of property tax revenue for the City of
Quincy

http://www.asiancdc.org/content/6-fort-street-quincy-ma

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January 22, 2010 by Chinatown Blogger.

Boston Redevelopment Authority public notice for
275 Albany Street, Boston MA

On Monday, February 8 & 22, 2010, at 6:30pm the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s will conduct a community meeting, at the Project Place, 1145 Washington Street, to discuss the 275 Albany Street proposal.  BH Normandy 275 Albany Street LLC, proposes to construct a hotel development on the 1.27 acre parcel at 275 Albany Street, between Traveler and East Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End.   The project site, which was formerly used as a parking lot by the Teradyne Corporation, is currently vacant.   The proposal suggests two (2) hotels.   One a 16-story select service hotel with a restaurant on its first floor and the other a 9-story extended-stay hotel plus a 3-level, above grade parking garage with approximately 137 parking spaces, proposed to serve both hotels uses.   The hotels together will have approximately 408 rooms.   While the split between the two types has not been finally determined, current plans anticipate approximately 210 rooms in the select service hotel and approximately 198 rooms in the extended stay hotel.  The select service hotel will include an approximately 4,000 square-foot (approximately 267-seat) restaurant in its first floor.

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January 16, 2010 by Chinatown Blogger.

Dear Storefront Library Patrons, Supporters and Sponsors,

The last day of the Storefront Library at 640 Washington St. will be Sunday, January 17, 2010. If you haven’t had a chance to come by, please do! This weekend, in addition to storytime and a special science activity, we’ll be giving tours for the American Librarians’ Association Midwinter Conference.

Thank you to Archstone for extending the donation of the storefront space into 2010. The extension let us serve more patrons, gather more evaluation data, and capture the attention of librarians nationwide coming to Boston. We’re optimistic about what happens next—both for Chinatown and for other experiments in the model of the Storefront Library.

Click the link below for a detailed description of how we will disperse some of the components of the Storefront Library to seed emerging projects in the neighborhood, including a new community reading room in development by Friends of the Chinatown Library. We’ll continue to report on the progress of these projects and ongoing efforts to bring library services to the neighborhood at storefrontlibrary.org.

Although it’s time for us to move on from this space, Boston Street Lab is already working on several new ideas that build on what we’ve learned. Watch for a new outdoor project based on the language learning programs and translation services you experienced in the Storefront Library. So, although we’re moving on, we’re not going away—let’s keep in touch.

It has been a thrill and an honor to work on this remarkable project with all of you.

Leslie and Sam Davol
Boston Street Lab

http://www.storefrontlibrary.org/2010/01/15/time-to-move-on/#more-3062

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