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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (March 21, 2016)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER March 21, 2016 Volume 26 Number 6 March 21, 2016 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2016. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): q Full year: $24 q Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): q Half year: $24 q Full year: $40 q Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): q Half year: $40 q Full year: $75 q Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): q Half year: $100 q Full year: $180 q Two years: $280 NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 q q q For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: n Dmae Roberts A tale of two exhibits Correspondence: q Half year: $14 MY TURN Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. eople of my generation didn’t learn much documents the intense interrogations and long Chinese immigrants endured, about Asian-American history growing up. detentions It simply wasn’t taught at school. I knew sometimes up to two years, at the Angel Island nothing about exclusion laws until the 1990s. I Immigration Station in San Francisco. In conjunction with the national exhibit, the OHS remember being shocked when I learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 museum opened a second exhibit and how it discriminated against — “Beyond the Gate: A Tale of Chinese laborers. Though the Portland’s Historic Chinatowns” miners and railroad workers were — that is on view through June allowed to stay in America after 21, 2016. By the 1900s, Portland’s the act was signed into law, some Chinatown was the second largest 20,000 could not return after they in the nation. went back to China to see family Jackie Peterson-Loomis, Ph.D., members because of another a retired history professor at exclusion law, the Scott Act of Washington State University 1888. Vancouver, brought the national These exclusion laws created a exhibit to the attention of OHS. society of bachelor men such as She then curated “Beyond the Ing (Doc) Hay at the Kam Wah Gate” to highlight 100 years of Chung & Co. general store in John history in Portland’s Old China- Day, Oregon, who never returned town (1850-1905) and New to China even for a visit. Many Chinatown (1905-1950). other Asian exclusion laws What I love about history is followed that barred immigration Leah Hing (1907-2001) was born and learning about personal stories. from Japan, Korea, South Asia, raised in Portland by immigrant parents OHS recently brought Judy Yung and the Philippines. to Portland to celebrate the who owned a Chinese medicine and tea Young people in Portland now store. Hing earned her pilot’s license in opening of “Beyond the Gate.” have an opportunity to experience 1934. (Photo courtesy of the Oregon Yung, the author of several books a part of history that still is not Historical Society, #ba019445) about Chinese-American women, included in many school curriculums. Luckily, the is professor emerita of American studies at the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) currently has two University of California, Santa Cruz. Yung featured important and educational displays on view. The Portlander Leah Hing, a resident of New first is a travelling exhibit that features the complex Chinatown whose story appears in “Beyond the immigration history of Chinese Americans in Gate,” in a slide presentation. relation to exclusionary laws targeting them. The Leah Hing (1907-2001) was born and raised in second was created locally and highlights the people Portland by immigrant parents who owned a and communities who were part of Portland’s two Chinese medicine and tea store in New Chinatown. Chinatowns. In the 1920s, she started an all-Chinese women’s In January, OHS hosted the west-coast premiere band in which she was a saxophone player. Yung of “Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion,” which interviewed Hing in 1982. She said Hing considered is on loan from the New-York Historical Society the band “a novelty act” with only one song in their before it is displayed in China. The exhibit, which repertoire. The band played “Happy Days Are Here runs through June 1, 2016, chronicles the early Again” to mostly white audiences during the days of China trade to the history of Chinese Depression and travelled across the U.S. and immigration and the life of Chinese Americans. Canada for two years. Eliza Canty-Jones, director of community According to Yung, Hing returned to Portland to engagement at OHS, said the national exhibit tells work in her father’s restaurant. There she met an the story of exclusionary laws against Chinese aviation instructor who wanted to start an Americans beginning with the Chinese Exclusion all-female stunt team and encouraged her to take Act of 1882, which wasn’t repealed until 1943. It flying lessons from him. Hing accepted, but was covers the history of “paper sons” — when people disappointed when her father would not let her go to circumvented unfair laws by buying false docu- China as a pilot to fight the Japanese during World ments stating they were blood relatives of U.S. War II. Another Portlander, Hazel Ying Lee, joined citizens in order to enter the U.S. The exhibit also Continued on page 11 P Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.