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Click Here to Purchase a DVD copy of A Chinatown Banquet for yourself, your organization, or to share with others.
Click Here to see a map that plots the videos to the places they were filmed.
Click Here to go to the Asian Community Development Corporation's YouTube Videos page and see all of the clips.
Clips from A Chinatown Banquet
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Early Chinatown "Early Chinatown" contains the historical background of Chinese in North Adams, working for the Sampson shoe factory and setting up tents in Pingan Alley. This video also details the rigorous interrogations and screening process of immigrating into America. |
Click here to see the "Early Chinatown" video |
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Family Associations Family associations were created to provide aid to new families (find a place to stay, a job, letter writing, translation services), to bring culture and hierarchy on how to solve issues. This video also narrates the influence of family association in finding a job and talks about the current situation of family associations. |
Click here to see the "Family Associations" video |
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The Chinese Exclusion Act This video describes how the historical segregation of the Chinese contributed to the formation of Chinatown and illustrates the bachelor society that existed. |
Click here to see the "Chinese Exclusion Act" video |
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Bootlegging This testimonial speaks to the bootlegging culture during the Depression and how many Chinese families supported themselves through making whisky. |
Click here to see the "Bootlegging" video |
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Chinatown's Social Security System Chinatown's social security system illustrates the gambling society that existed during the depression and how this supported many of the residents of Chinatown. |
Click here to see the "Chinatown Social Security System" video |
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Syriantown This narrator speaks of the churches, the Syrian bakery, and the congregation places for adults and children in the 9-10 blocks of Syriantown. She speaks of the disruption of the Massachusetts Turnpike (central artery) caused on the loving and compassionate community that once was. |
Click here to see the "Syriantown" video |
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Laundrymen |
Click here to see the "Laundrymen" video |
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The Quincy School The Quincy school has been in continuous use since the mid 1850's. It used to be extremely diverse with less than 25% of the students coming from Chinese descent. |
Click here to see the "Quincy School" video |
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The Chinese Merchant's Building The Chinese Merchant's Building was merely four years old when it was reduced by a third to make way for the Massachusetts Turnpike (central artery). At the time, the Chinese community had no voice and did not stand up against the highway cutting through Boston Chinatown. |
Click here to see the "Chinese Merchant's Building" video |
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Hudson Street Stories Of the 60 or so families who were evicted from Hudson Street for the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike (central artery), 75% of them were Chinese. This displacement and construction took the soul out of Boston Chinatown and left no room for expansion of the community. |
Click here to see the "Hudson Streeet Stories" video |
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The Combat Zone The Combat Zone was the zone adopted by Boston in 1974 which housed adult entertainment. Negative effects on the neighboring Chinatown included bringing people into Chinatown who were drunk or who had anti-Asian attitudes. |
Click here to see the "Combat Zone" video |
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Parcel C Parcel C was one of the last remaining developable plots of land in Chinatown owned by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) as a part of a land swap with the New England Medical Center (NEMC). Originally proposed as a parking garage that would provide little benefit to the Chinatown community (and which conflicted with the promise of the land to become a community center), the residents of Chinatown organized a referendum resulting in withdrawal of the statement. |
Click here to see the "Parcel C" video |
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Nothing Else to Lose Nothing Else to Lose speaks of the Vietnamese Chinese who came over to Boston following the Vietnam Was as boat people for the Refugee Act. These Vietnamese Chinese took the risk to open restaurants on Washington Street which was near the Combat Zone and used to have organized crime and turned it around. |
Click here to see the "Nothing Else to Lose" video |
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It's Not Just Food "It's Not Just Food" explains how Chinese restaurants changed from the 1920's where they solely catered to Chinese to the 1930's where they began catering to the non-Chinese community. Although these restaurants were the stepping stone for new immigrants, this video seeks to dispel the image of Chinatown as merely a place to eat because people work and live in Chinatown. |
Click here to see the "It's Not Just Food" video |
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Immigrant Stories Immigrant stories are the personal narratives of immigrants and of refugees speaking of their personal experiences of courage to come to America without speaking any English, of being told to assimilate and to be white, and of the American dream of equal opportunity and freedoms |
Click here to see the "Immigrant Stories" video |