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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2019
New Chinatown museum opens in Portland
A seldom-told story
of immigrants
By KRISTIAN FODEN-
VENCIL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
The Portland Chinatown
Museum opened in Decem-
ber with the aim of illustrat-
ing the seldom-told story of
Chinese-Americans in the
Pacifi c Northwest.
It’s not a big museum
and it’s only open Thurs-
day through Sunday — in
the afternoons. But visitors
can learn a lot about Port-
land’s history as they walk
through.
The
exhibit
called
“Beyond The Gate” was fi rst
displayed by the Oregon
Historical Society in 2016.
The director there, Kerry
Tymchuck, said it uses old
Chinese opera costumes,
rare artifacts, theatrical sets
and texts to tell the story of
contact and trade between
Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Visitors get an idea of what some stores in Chinatown used to
look like.
Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Museum curator Jacqueline Peterson-Loomis is a retired historian. She said about $1 million
was spent to renovate the building and open the museum.
China and the West — par-
ticularly in Portland.
“The role of the museum
is not to be the chamber of
commerce, not to be the
tourism capital. It’s to tell
the truth. And they tell the
truth in this exhibit. And the
truth can sometimes be ugly.
And it was ugly here for
many years towards the Chi-
nese-Americans. There was
a great amount of discrimi-
nation,” Tymchuck said.
Jacqueline
Peterson-
Loomis is a retired histo-
rian and curator of the new
museum. She said about $1
million was spent to reno-
vate and open the building.
The next goal, she said, is
to pivot into a capital cam-
paign to purchase the build-
ing. They’ve been offered
an option to buy it at a fi xed
price. But they need to raise
the money within two years.
“So now we have to build
an audience,” she said.
Peterson-Loomis
said
the museum is both a labor
of love and a risky bet. She
said the whole thing was
put together by mostly Chi-
nese-American
families,
some fourth and fi fth gen-
eration, who consider Port-
land to be their cultural
home.
“One of the things that
was so sweet, I thought, in
the last month or two was
listening to these elders say:
‘You know, we wanted this
for so long and we thought it
was for us. But it’s not for us.
It’s for our grandchildren,’”
said Peterson-Loomis.
By the end of the 19th
century, Portland’s China-
town was second only in
size to that of San Francisco.
An annual family mem-
bership to the museum is
$75.
Oregon may export pot to other states
Associated Press
SALEM — Marijuana
could take the next step
toward joining pinot noir
and craft beer on Oregon’s
list of famous exports,
under a proposal likely to
go before state lawmakers
in the new year.
The Statesman Journal
reported that the Craft Can-
nabis Alliance, a business
association led by founder
and executive director
Adam Smith, is working
with legislators to let Ore-
gon start exporting pot to
other legal-weed states by
2021.
Among them is state Sen.
Floyd Prozanski, D-Eu-
gene, who said he also plans
to reintroduce provisions
from Senate Bill 1042, a
similar proposal that died in
the statehouse in 2017.
This comes as the state’s
legal weed industry has
faced plummeting prices
over the past year due to
demand not keeping up
with supply. Also at issue is
whether bad actors are fun-
neling marijuana into the
lucrative black market.
The proposals represent
how advocates are trying to
move pot onto the forbid-
den superhighway of inter-
state trade, which is fraught
with regulatory roadblocks.
Oregon demands weed
grown or sold here stay
within state borders, and
marijuana remains federally
illegal.
Wholesalers could ship
across state lines so long
as Oregon’s governor had
made a pact with the receiv-
ing state to allow those
deliveries, according to
draft language reviewed by
the Statesman Journal.
Still, opponents aren’t
convinced Oregon would
fi nd any takers. “I can’t
imagine any state would
agree to do this with Ore-
gon,” said Kevin Sabet,
president of anti-pot group
Smart
Approaches
to
Marijuana.
“It looks like a desper-
ate attempt to tackle the out
of control black market pro-
duction that has happened
in Oregon since legaliza-
tion,” Sabet said. “The state
should be focusing on how
to reduce overall demand
and supply.”
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