August 19, 2008 by Chinatown Blogger.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3RD
TIME: 12 - 1 P.M.
PLACE: AACA, 87 TYLER STREET, 4TH FLOOR, BOSTON, MA 02111

 
(Left) Dianne Wilkerson, (Right) Sonia Chang-Diaz

The Asian American Civic Association (AACA) is hosting a community forum with the 2nd Suffolk Senate candidates, incumbent Dianne Wilkerson and Sonia Chang-Diaz. Come hear the candidates for State Senate address local issues. The 2nd Suffolk Senate District includes the neighborhoods of Chinatown, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, Mission Hill, Roxbury, and South End.

RSVP 617-426-9492 ext 312 or email rsvp@aaca-boston.org Space is limited.  www.aaca-boston.org. CHINESE INTERPRETATION AVAILABLE. 該討論可安排中文詮譯

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August 18, 2008 by Chinatown Blogger.

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August 13, 2008 by Chinatown Blogger.

Voter registration drive takes multilingual feel
Neighborhood efforts focus on immigrants
By Ryan Kost and Maddie Hanna, Globe Correspondents,  August 10, 2008

Just outside the China Pearl restaurant in Chinatown, where roasted ducks dangled and pictures of bubble tea hung in the windows, Raymond Chow, 18, sat at a card table with a sign taped on it that read “Voter Registration Drive.” The words repeated seven times in various scripts and languages - including Chinese.

An older man walked up and began talking briskly with Chow in Cantonese. After a few minutes, the man left, registered to vote.

“If you have a Chinese person encourage a Chinese person to register, it’s easier,” Chow said. “Minorities, we don’t really get a lot of say in the world of politics in America.”

Chow’s card table was one of more than a dozen stations set up throughout the city from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. yesterday as part of the newly launched “Now is the Time” campaign, an effort by city and community agencies to make voter registration easier for non-English speaking residents.

“Today’s citywide registration campaign was an important step in getting new Bostonians more civically engaged,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said through a spokesman. “We want to make registration as easy and accessible as possible so that no one has an excuse not to register and vote this fall.”

The City Council has supported a proposed law that would require that ballots be translated into Chinese and Vietnamese in all elections in the city, including state and federal elections, but the measure still requires legislative approval. The city agreed to translate ballots into Chinese and Vietnamese after being sued by the US Justice Department in 2005 at least through the 2008 election, after which the agreement expires.

Not far from Chow’s table, near the iconic Chinatown gate, residents milled around and sat on benches, sipping coffee and reading the morning papers. Another registration table set up on the pavement was covered with a plastic stars-and-stripes tablecloth.

Kenny Cho, who owns a small gift shop down the street, was one of the first to register there yesterday morning.

“I had registered many years ago,” he said back at his shop through a translator. “I saw the table there and decided to reregister to make sure I can vote. It’s a civic duty as a US citizen.”

He spoke as he prepared for the day’s business, organizing boxes of jade rings and Buddha statues. Cho said he liked the idea of a non-English speaking registration drive.

“Especially in the Chinese community,” he said. “A lot of people are citizens but they don’t know how to vote.”

In East Boston, volunteers from the East Boston Ecumenical Community Council set up a table on Sumner Street outside the Maverick T Station.

The heavily Latino neighborhood has about 1,500 active registered Latino voters, and about 7,500 unregistered eligible Latino voters, said Mauro Reyes, 38, civil engagement coordinator for the council. He had the numbers printed out on a sheet of paper.

“This is my struggle,” Reyes said, circling the unregistered numbers with his index finger.

He had just recruited a new volunteer, 39-year-old Sara Aguilar, who left El Salvador for Boston in 1988 and became a US citizen in January.

Aguilar said she registered to vote about a month and a half ago, at the urging of her boss, a lawyer.

“I want to set an example for other people,” said Aguilar, whose Spanish was translated by Reyes. “I want to motivate the other people.”

“People want a good president, but they don’t participate. It’s a contradiction,” she said.

The upcoming presidential election has spurred voters to register, volunteers said. For Elis Fernandez, it pushed her parents to seek citizenship.

Fernandez, a 20-year-old East Boston resident, said her parents came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 25 years ago. They became citizens several months ago partly because they wanted to vote in November.

“This election is different than any other,” said Fernandez, who registered to vote yesterday. It’s the first time she can “make a difference in the way things are going,” she said.

Carmen Santana, a 70-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic, shared Fernandez’s enthusiasm for participating in the electoral process.

“Aye! Gracias a Dios,” she said as she stopped by a registration booth at a Fields Corner shopping center.

Santana, who has been a citizen since 1987, was already registered to vote.

“I’ve been a citizen of this country for many years, but I’ve never voted,” she said in Spanish.

Santana had not been sure how to vote, she said, and it has never mattered as much as now.

Yelithza Galvez, a volunteer at Fields Corner, told Santana how she could find her polling place. Galvez is 16, not even old enough to register let alone vote, but she was excited about the upcoming election.

“I want to get people ready to vote because November 4th is a very special day,” she said. “Especially this year.”

And especially because of Barack Obama, Galvez said, but she kept her preference to herself when she registered would-be voters.

Not too far from Galvez, Doreen Treacy was dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume. “It just makes people stop,” she said.

On her small table, she had registration cards printed in Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Vietnamese, Spanish, and English.

Treacy fanned them out and pointed to them as evidence that it shouldn’t be hard for non-English speakers to register now.

“Historically, it’s been more difficult,” Treacy said, “but the support is here.”

She stopped midconversation and shouted to a man as he walked by: “Are you registered to vote?”

Original Boston Globe article here.

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August 13, 2008 by Chinatown Blogger.

From the Wikipedia: Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival (simplified Chinese: 中秋节; traditional Chinese: 中秋節; pinyin: zhōngqiūjié), also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China’s Zhou Dynasty. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or “Mooncake Festival.”

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer’s harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.

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August 12, 2008 by Chinatown Blogger.

Just some observations on the 2008 Olympics:

1. The opening ceremony was incredible. Missed the beginning part but tuned in during the parade of nations. For those who were not aware, the opening day 8-08-08 is a lucky number. Who would have thought that 30 years, or even 20 years ago, that China would be mentioned in the same sentence along with the United States as a world “superpower”. Not an understatement from one of the NBC host who said, “This is the biggest event in modern Chinese history.”

2. Li Ning, the final torch bearer,  running in the air around the stadium walls (his shoes didn’t really touch the walls, but the effect was to simulate) while suspended on wires was amazing.

3. If you have a plasma or LCD TV capable of High Definition television, definitely get the HD service from your provider if you can afford the extra $10 a month. Watching the Olympics in HD makes the experience so much better. A cheaper solution? Get a digital antenna to receive over-the-air HD programming for free. Major stations like NBC/ABC/CBS has been broadcasting over-the-air HD for a while now.

4. DVR is great. The Chinatown Blogger understands all these expenses add up, but if you can afford the extra money for the DVR service, the Olympic events can be recorded at 2:30am and watched the next day. (The Chinatown Blogger uses Verizon FIOS with HD/DVR service and running on a 46″ 1080p LCD. The surround sound system is curently disabled due to a neighbor complaining of excessive noise during the Celtics playoff run.)

5. Hidden humor in the interview between NBC’s Bob Costas and George Bush. If you look in the background, there is a portrait of Mao Zedong overlooking the plaza. At certain angles, American audiences saw Costas, Bush and Mao.

6. Jonathan Horton was clutch. Too bad U.S. team couldn’t hold onto lead for silver, especially when his teammates were pulling in 12 and 13 points and the team needed an average of 15 to win silver.

That’s it. Enjoy the Olympics and the few weeks left in the summer!

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