“婆婆，I carry the fire in your name……婆婆, I am learning to be the garden you dreamed” - Remembering Our Light, Huiying B. Chan, poet and co-curator of Homeward Bound

During the virtual celebration of Pao Arts Center exhibition, Homeward Bound: Global Intimicies in Converging Chinatown, co-curator and poet Huying B. Chan shared from their poem, Remember Our Light. Chan continued, ”I think I like the themes of what I like touchdown with like home memory honoring grandmother and like ancestors seems all like a key part and like central part of why we're in this work and an what is this work that we're doing that were not translating to like multimedia art form.”

On November 14, community members, curators, and attendees from across the United States joined together to listen, share, and connect. Community members read their personal love letters to Chinatown, curators Huiying B. Chan, Mei Lum, Diane Wong shared video, artifacts, poetry, and photos to tell the stories from some of the individuals featured in the exhibition. Together, we came together to use storytelling and creativity to cultivate our imaginations to: dream, imagine, feel, and connect with each other across the screen.

Love letters written to Boston Chinatown by community member highlighted our memories and love to our neighborhood. Ingat Kayo, who immigrated from a small city in the Philippines, shared her story about struggles in the new place and found a home feel in Chinatown, and ”Boston Chinatown will always be a place in my heart!” Eva said Chinatown’s unique culture and history let Chinese immigrates feel safe and at home. Julie Leung expressed she wanted Chinatown to know how it is important for many incoming immigrates and there was an extremely supportive community behind it that stands strong. Cherry Lim, as an academic advisor at BHCC, shared how the closing of Chau Chow City where her father worked before and how it affected her and her family stating, “gentrification is real and it affects people’s lives.”

Want to see more love letters from our community members? Explore Here

As we know, Homeward Bound is the first of its kind to honor, preserve, and build on the history and present day issues of Chinatowns through community-led and curated narratives from residents globally. As Chinatowns around the world continue to change and the diaspora is uprooted, it is imperative that stories at risk of being displaced are well preserved for future generations. The photos and stories from this exhibit spanned over 10 countries across the world and a large number of them are also in different cities in the United States or turtle islands and each of three curators have different stories and experiences that bring them to this work into collaborating together.

Curator Diane Wong shared that, photos from the part of the exhibit entitled, Resistance are tied to her own family history. Her mother is from the heart of Shanghai and grew up in what was called “弄堂”，which in Chinese translates to an “alleyway” neighborhood common in parts of urban China. They lost their home when the municipal government decided to pursue Large scale urban renewal projects in 1993.

Curator Mei Lum, a fifth generation store owner of Wing On Wo in New York’s Chinatown, discussed how a storefront could be a site of politicization while being a site of cultural production and storytelling . She talked about how she created an multimedia approach to look at the connections and cross sections of a complex layers of identity, place, and resilience.

If you missed this exhibition, explore here!