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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February 23, 2010 by Adam.

 Sunday the 21st was the big New Year parade in Chinatown. Not a huge turnout in terms of audience but it did feel really low stress compared to past years. It was good to see some old members of the team show up and put in a lot of effort on the head. Police presence was good in that each team had a brightly colored officer that seemed alert, but at the same time there were no squad cars or horses trying to form barricades. In other words, the police seemed like they were part of us rather than an occupying force, which many in Chinatown are still sensitive about.
The audience also seemed more festive and there seemed to be less trouble makers. Last year we had a small run in with a couple teenagers who looked like they were on drugs if they were not selling them. Neither of them were Chinese by the way.  This year I didn’t even see anyone sketchy let alone have to deal with them. In fact a few old students who caught up with us asked if they needed help to hold the audience back and I told them it just to just relax and enjoy themselves. We came close to several teams and even did “wui see”or meeting of the lion heads with a couple too. On such meeting was actually shown in the Metro.

There just was less tension between everyone in general it seemed and I saw one audience member with a baby lion head of their own. I hope to see more of that in the future.

There were also student film crews assigned to each lion team. And the Census even had a station where they put out a chiang and a red envelope for the head. Everything seemed to be in harmony and easy going.

A good start to a new year.

-Adam

 adam.cheung@bostonchinatowngateway.com

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February 16, 2010 by Adam.

Yesterday, after doing  two Lion dance performances at the Museum of Fine Arts, we also performed the opening ceremony for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association’s New Year’s Banquet. I have been doing so many workshops geared toward people of non-Chinese descent that it has been a while since I have done a lion dance in its more natural setting. We did two lion heads and I even got one of my students to do more combos with me where we jump, stack on top of each other  to make the lion appear to suddenly reared up growing inhumanly tall, and then drop down and whirl around like a snake spinning in a curling tornado.

I appreciated the effort but I wished we had been practicing and performing this all along instead of waiting until now. (Although it does mean that today and everyday this week at the MFA we will perform this techniques.)

Maybe it was because I was tired before I even started the dance and so was slightly tranced out, because we were in China Pearl like so many lion dances we have done, maybe it was because as I look back in the head to the drum I saw that my Si Bak had suddenly appeared to play the drum (his Cantonese Music Association is also part of the CCBA so he happened to be there.) But I felt like I felt when I was first starting to do lion dance as a teenager learning about my Chinese Heritage.

The difference was of course was that instead of being unclear as to what to do, I confidently called out to Wingkay Leung (CCBA President) to get the lettuce from the Lion Head, instead of being afraid to communicate what needed to be done. It helped that I knew him from Crime Watch.  I also know Karen be caused she tried to tutor me when I was a very small child. (I was a terrible student.) Of course the Lion Gave her an orange.

And our team got a table which is a rare thing at these events. That’s probably the most fun I had as an adult at a banquet where we weren’t allowed to make a ruckus. It was good to be out of the house. I suppose I have started to think like an old man if I find these banquets to be a fun night out. But getting trashed at a club isn’t really that great when you think about it anyway.

-Adam

adam.cheung@bostonchinatowngateway.com

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February 15, 2010 by Adam.

Gung Hei Faht Choi! everyone out there. I hope everyone’s been having a good New Year of the Tiger. All week Woo Ching White Crane will be doing a Lion Dance performance and workshop at the Museum of Fine Arts. Its part of their February vacation exhibition about mythical creatures.  I let them all know its Chinese New Year anyway.

Recently we have had so many lion dances and workshops that they are all running into each other. I feel like my life is one big Lion Dance and its kind of difficult getting around with my baby son. I was hoping all these performances would inspire my old students to practice and participate. I guess that has happened to a degree but they look at me so bored and tired even though I am jumping around lion dancing, kung fu ing and talking all at once. I’m tired! We performed at Uphams Corner, St. James Church, Montclair School in Quincy, Sun Life Insurance, and EMC CORP in.  Do a form to give me a break! Well at leastwe all got to see, perform and practice in some different environments. These Corporations that basically have cities in the middle of nowhere are quite impressive, and I had fun pretty getting adults to sing the drum beats and get into the Kung Fu stances just like the kids. ( I think they ha d fun too. No adult takers for trying the lion head. A few drummers though.)

Even New Year’s day when I went in I did not hear any loud Gung Hei Faht Choi’s my way. I demanded they say it before giving themthe red envelopes. After all, if I do not Faht Choi then next year the envelope I give you will still be small. But even if I start making a little more money the envelope will increase. Only one student screamed it, because he knew I was going to give him money. And it’s New Year, that’s what we all want.

New Year’s Day Before going to our St. James Church we did a lion dance  for the school, and for the CCBA building. One guy told us to come and bless his car too. He was straight from China and apparently this is always done to the cars, but I admit it was the first car I have blessed with the head. Lion Dance as a ritual is a bigger deal in China basically because they believe that the dance as well as the use of mystical/superstitious numbers in giving money will have an actual effect on the the physical world. I believe this too basically because everytime I figure certain thing won’t matter that much, the traditional beliefs are proven to me through consequences.

In China the first thing they would bless would be the water wells, and Business owners would spend a lot more money on the lion dances, hanging down not only five story lines of firecrackers that then rolled up in the ground as well, but Five story strings of money, even Hong Kong Money (which used to be worth much more) to make it even more impressive.

Speaking of handing out money, I still have quite a few hong baos left in my pocket which I plan to give to any child who comes up puts his clenched fist inside a closed palm and says in a big loud voice, “Gung Hei Faht Choi!” and hopefully also, “Sun Tai Geen Hong, Sun leen fai lock, and any other  positive new year phrase. Granted I’m not giving out Benjamin Franklins. But hey, better than nothing right? I hope I run into more kids that do this on the 21st when we will be doing the ritual lion dance for all the businesses  in Chinatown. But I’m not giving up the lai sees unless you wish I get rich. So say it loud and say it proud! Gung Hei Faht Choi!

-Adam Cheung

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