February 24, 2010 by Adam.

The below reports were forwarded to me through e-mail.

Not to be a downer but I guess those of us (myself included) who haven’t been doing the crime watch should drag ourselves back to it. But also, this didn’t happen in Chinatown in the old days and back then there was no “Crime Watch” per se. I don’t think we need to discuss those times too much except to mention that the community was more of a unit back then. Let’s redouble our efforts, this looks like it is only a couple of people causing all this trouble.

Boston Police: A-1 Downtown
Citizen Alert

Chinatown Robbery & Carjacking Advisory
Since 1/17/2010, there have been 3 carjackings and 2 street robberies committed in the Chinatown area.
·        On Sunday, January 17, 2010 @ 10:38 P.M., a 48 year-old Asian female victim reported that while at 25 Beach Street, a black male suspect, 5’10”, opened her car door and snatched her purse. When she resisted the suspect punched her in the face and stole her 2008 Toyota Corolla. The stolen vehicle was recovered the same night in the area of Hayward Place and the Harrison Avenue Extension.

·        On Friday, January 22, 2010 @ 6:45 A.M., an elderly Asian female victim was attacked at 15 Oxford Street by a black male suspect while entering the elevator. The 6’1” black male was wearing a white/tan baseball cap, black puffy jacket, dark pants and black sneakers with white soles and trim grabbed the victim by the neck, pushed her and demanded money. The victim was robbed of $100.00 US currency.

·        On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 @ 5:50 A.M., a 57-year-old Asian male was approached by two males while he was entering his vehicle at 21 Edinboro Street .  The two suspects demanded money from the victim. The suspects were described as (1) black male, dark clothing and dark hat & (2) white male 5’10”, thin, wearing a light brown jacket. The victim was punched in the face, knocked to the ground and was robbed of his wallet, US Currency and his vehicle, which was a 1995 Chevy Lumina van. The van was subsequently recovered 2/2/2010 in the Transportation Building garage by the Massachusetts State Police. The vehicle was towed and processed.

·        On Tuesday, February 16, 2010 @ 2:49 P.M., a 59 year-old Asian female victim stated that while sitting in the passenger’s side of a 2009 Jeep, at Beach Street and Harrison Avenue she was robbed by two black male suspects; possibly a white male. The victim stated that she was pulled from the car and punched in the face. The suspects fled the area in the vehicle with the victim’s purse including credit cards.

·        On Thursday, February 18, 2010 @ 7:20 A.M., a 65 year-old female victim was sitting in a vehicle at a parking lot located at Hudson Street and Tai Tung Street when she was approached by two black males ( one wearing a red jacket and the other wearing a black jacket). The suspects opened the vehicle’s door and demanded her purse. The victim refused and the suspects punched her in the face area several times before grabbing the purse and fleeing the area on foot towards Marginal Road . The suspects did get the victim’s credit cards and money during the robbery.

For more information, contact the District A-1 Detectives at #617-343-4571 and/or the District A-1 Community Service Office at #617-343-4627.

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February 24, 2010 by Chinatown Blogger.

‘Snake’ gets Chinese buzzing in Boston

Posted by James F. Smith February 24, 2010 10:05 AM

The world premiere this week of a new opera, “Madame White Snake,” has generated much excitement in the Chinese community in Greater Boston and beyond — including Boston’s Chinese sister-city, Hangzhou.

A six-member delegation from the Hangzhou municipal government arrived in Boston on Tuesday, in time for a reception by the opera’s supporters at the Four Seasons Hotel. But the main attraction for the visitors is tonight’s benefit gala performance at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. The legend of Madame White Snake, a snake-demon who becomes a woman so she can fall in love with a man, takes place in Hangzhou.

Tonight’s gala is not the official world premiere — that’s Friday night — but the first full performance of the opera provides a chance to celebrate several extraordinary collaborations. In creating the opera, librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs has fostered partnerships between the Boston arts world and the city’s Chinese community, as well as between Opera Boston and the Beijing Music Festival, in pulling off the first opera commissioned in Boston in decades.

Rehearsing “Madame White Snake.” Soprano Ying Huang works with director Robert Woodruff, and other cast members. Globe staff photo by Yoon S. Byun

I wrote an account in the Sunday Globe about Jacobs, a former corporate lawyer and prosecutor, came up with the idea and then made it happen. My Boston.com colleague Scott LaPierre produced a video about the opera, and a photo gallery of pictures by Globe photographers shows it coming together.

The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center worked with the “Friends of Madame White Snake” to create classes and seminars — including “Opera 101″ — to teach members about Western and Chinese opera over the past year. More than 1,000 school children took part, many at the Josiah Quincy School in Chinatown.

Jacobs even wrote a youth play based on the legend, entitled “When the White Snake Cries.” Hundreds of young people, many bused from Chinatown, attended the shows at the Art Barn Community Theater in Brookline, said Carmen Chan, director of development for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, one of the region’s largest social service organizations.

Giles Li, the arts director for the center, says the arts programs have been a useful way for Chinese-Americans who have moved out to the suburbs to stay connected with their community, even if they no longer rely on the neighborhood center for social services.

Selina Chow, the board president of the BCNC who focuses heavily on education programs, connected with Cerise Lim Jacobs and Hsiu-Lan Chang, a Brookline resident who as co-chair of Friends of Madame White Snake has worked non-stop to engage the community and raised funds for the three-performance run. Together they built up the community outreach efforts.

Tonight’s gala was organized by the Friends to raise funds as well as acknowledge all the community involvement. The BCNC received 100 tickets for its members, and the Friends also have donated tickets to other groups including the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts National Guard.

Carole Charnow, the general director of Opera Boston, said the opera “really has integrated the Chinese experience into the Theater District in a substantial and rich way.”

Elaine Ng, the executive director of the BCNC, said the opera project “is bringing back an element of our history and culture, and making it accessible. This is an opportunity to bring it back for Chinese immigrants, and Americans who don’t have the language. This opens up a whole new audience. It’s a whole different level of cultural exposure.”

The opera also has reawakened the mystery of the Madame White Snake legend, in Cerise Jacobs’ first English-language interpretation. “For me,” said Carmen Chan, “the demons always stood out. Now I see it as more of a love story.”

The Hangzhou delegation includes Xie Chongming, deputy director of the city’s foreign affairs office, and finance officials Zhang Zhen and Lu Bin. Hangzhou is one of  eight official sister cities for Boston. The city, located in Zhejiang Province southwest of Shanghai, is regarded as one of the most scenic and important cultural centers in China.

The opera may be performed at some point in Hangzhou. For now, it is scheduled to open the month-long Beijing Music Festival in October.

Song Tu, the program director for the festival, said by telephone that the Beijing festival’s artistic director, Long Yu, had co-commissioned the work with Opera Boston in part because “he wants Westerners to open their eyes to China, and see how we can connect with the world through the music, through creative, imaginative methods, and not only to represent the more famous traditional repertoire.”

Song Tu is himself a product of the Boston-China connection. He got his master’s in clarinet performance at Boston University in the late 1980s and lived in Boston for almost 10 years. He said he has noticed how James Levine has also widened the repertoire of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in recent years, “and he is open to more cultures and perspectives.”

“Madame White Snake”, Song Tu said, is more than just Chinese culture, but reflects “the world’s culture. It is not not purely Western, and it is not Chinese Peking opera. I’m sure there are a lot of elements in between. And this is the point.”

http://www.boston.com/news/world/worldly_boston/2010/02/snake_gets_chinese_buzzing_in.html

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