• About Chinatown

  • History of Chinatown
  • Vibrancy of Chinatown

• Memory Map

  • Digital Memory Map
  • Share Your Memory

• People

  • Elder Interviews
    • Evangeline Buell
    • Henry Chang
    • Alicia & Sherlyn Chew
    • Ted Dang
    • David Der
    • Darlene Lee
    • George Ong
    • Charles Sumimoto
    • Li Keng Wong
    • William Wong
  • StoryCorps Interviews
    • Lillian Galedo
    • Lynette Lee
    • Maria Rivera Yip
    • Francis Chang
    • Flory Bautista
    • Helen Eng
    • Weylin Eng
    • Greg Morozumi
    • Wilson Wong
    • Carolyn Yee

• Places

  • 301 Eighth Street
  • Asian Resource Center
  • Lincoln School
  • Pacific Renaissance Plaza

• Project Info

  • Bubble Tea Chats 2010
  • Past Events
  • Importance of Project
  • Past Phases (1 & 2)
    • Phase 2 (Digital Archive)
    • Phase 1 Elder Interviews
  • Support This Project
    • Support Bubble Tea Chats
  • Contact Info
  • Join the email list

December 2009

Dear Friend and Supporter of the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project,

For the last three years, the Oakland Asian Cultural Center has been actively collecting, preserving, and making accessible over a hundred stories about our Oakland Chinatown community through our archived transcripts, our gallery exhibit, and new growing website, www.memorymap.oacc.cc. These memories help to tell the larger story we all share of our immigrant community with 130 years of history. By telling this story together, we are able to build community across generations, linking me to you, to those who came before us, and to those who haven't even been born yet.

In the coming year, we will begin a new exciting third phase of the project, Bubble Tea Chats, which will encourage intergenerational dialogue about three particular blocks in Oakland Chinatown currently in the public forefront.  These blocks, the current site of the Lake Merritt BART station and Madison Park, have a long history of vibrant community life, redevelopment, displacement of residents, and now new redevelopment plans recently announced by the City of Oakland. Memories and ideas gathered from the Bubble Tea Chats will be displayed in community exhibits during the summer of 2010 and also used to inform city planners about Chinatown's unique cultural use of space in future planning efforts.

Parts of Chinatown always seem to get taken away from us, yet somehow our community continues to persevere and thrive as a vibrant, ethnically rich place.  We need to empower ourselves with this history as a way to envision the future together. -Darlene Lee, Chinatown resident

We invite YOU to be a part of this exciting new phase of the project through the following:

-    Share your story. If you have memories or photos of the three blocks prior to redevelopment in 1969 (i.e. the displaced homes, Episcopal Church, Ming Quong Girl's Home, Dragon Park) or know of others who may, please share them with us! If you are a more recent community member or youth, we'd love to hear your stories and ideas for the community's future.

-    Support this project. This project can only continue with the financial support of community members like you. We have set a goal of raising $5,000 from the community by February 2010. This fund will help pay for project costs, including the planning, facilitation, video documentation of the Bubble Tea Chats which will take place in the spring of 2010.

Donate safely online through paypal, by sending us a check made payable to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center with OCOHP in the memo line, or through OACC's Facebook causes page (a Facebook account is not necessary to use the site). Your donation will be tax deductible to the extent of the law. Thank you for your ongoing support of and participation in this vital community project which we all share.

In community spirit,
        
Roy Chan
Project Director
(510) 637-0463 / rchan AT oacc.cc

Pdf of this letter