The Wing Luke Museum’s Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West takes place this week – and I’ll be helping the Seattle institution devoted to the Asian Pacific American experience file blog dispatches from the road.
Please visit the museum’s travel blog. Among the places tour participants and I will visit in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada will be the mines where Chinese immigrants once searched for gold.
It will, I think, be good stuff all around. And yes, please pass on the word about the journey and travel blog.
The Museum of Chinese in America opened its doors in Manhattan’s Chinatown in 1980 as a grassroots organization dedicated largely to preserving immigrant stories.
On Tuesday, supporters and designer Maya Lin will usher in a new phase in its history of documenting, interpreting and explaining by welcoming guests to its new 14,000-square-foot home.
Located at 215 Centre St., the museum - which reportedly cost $8 million – faces Manhattan’s Chinatown and incorporates modern lines in its entrance as well as an untouched, sky-lit courtyard in what was a machine shop.
The free public reception starts at 7 p.m. at the museum, located at 719 S. King St.
If you can’t make the reception, the show will open Friday and run through April 18.
Shimomura, a third-generation Japanese American, deals with stereotypes and how people perceive race. One central theme of the show is ”Always a Foreigner.”
Seattle author Doug Chin maintains that the transcontinental railroad was possibly the most important development in Washington state’s history.
He notes that Chinese laborers – about 15,000 of them – were the largest group to contribute to it.
Chin will talk about this chapter in the state’s history on Thursday, Sept. 3 at a Wing Luke Asian Museum reception. It will celebrate the second edition of Chin’s book, Seattle’s International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community.
The release coincides with 100 years of history in Seattle’s Chinatown International District. The 5:30 p.m. event will be held at the museum at 719 S. King St.
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