Chinatown Arts Week closes out with an evening of Cantonese Opera and Traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony in the Bamboo Garden. Sip, learn & enjoy curated selections of opera, guzheng, & erhu performances between tea ceremonies for gaiwan, zhishahu & wenxiangbei. A reception party will follow the performances. Free admission.

Tea from Grand Tea & Imports. Thank you to DLJ for sponsoring this event.

How do we collectively remember & honor stories from our community? From the pews of the First Baptist Church, we will listen to stories told & preserved through T!C's collaboration with StoryCorps. We will be premiering animated illustrations by artists Yao Xiao and John Lee that accompany these stories from Chinatown community members. Free admission.

Explore the historic connection between Little Italy and Chinatown in this digital scavenger hunt of historic architecture created by our friends at Urban Archive. As part of the Marco Polo festival, we'll celebrate the historic relationship between these two immigrant communities.

Put on your walking shoes and bring your friends, this app will be taking you around the neighborhood. There will be prizes... We'll be meeting at Most Precious Blood Church. If you have an iPhone, please download the Urban Archive app ahead of time. If you don't have an iPhone, no worries, we'll team you up with someone who does.

Wendy will talk about her work and sign copies of “Mooncakes” – her newly published graphic novel (co-created with Suzanne Walker) from Lion Forge Comics

 “Mooncakes” is a story of love and demons, family and witchcraft. Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.

One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.

Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

“Mooncakes is spellbinding. It had everything I love in a story―magic that felt inventive, characters that became my friends, and a romance that felt truly authentic. It was one of those books that I was sad to see end. Luckily, I can always reread.” ―Tillie Walden, creator of Spinning and On a Sunbeam

"Mooncakes transported me to a gorgeous magical realm that I never want to leave, and introduced me to lovable characters who stuck with me long after I finished reading. This graphic novel is the joyful fantasy romance we all need right now, and it might just restore your faith in magic." ―Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky

“Mooncakes is heartwarming, playful and absolutely magical! A story about love and family, with a kind and powerful core that radiates through the vibrant cast of characters.”  ―Katie O'Neill, author of The Tea Dragon Society and Princess Princess Ever After

Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist with three upcoming graphic novels from Harper Collins. Her work has been featured on several websites, as part of the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibit permanently housed at the Chinese Historical Society of America, and in “Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology.” Her work has been featured on Catapult, Barnes & Noble Sci-fi/Fantasy Blog, and Tor.com, among other places. She also works as an assistant editor curating young adult and children’s books. You can find more art on her instagram: @artofwendyxu or on twitter: @angrygirLcomics

Location: Asia Roma

Make your voice heard. The Mayor's plan to close Rikers also includes building 4 new jails in NYC. For Chinatown, this would mean a 10 year demolition and construction plan for a 40+ story block-sized mega-jail. This decade-long disruption will have irrevocable impact on Chinatown's health of the seniors who live next to the site and of the ecology of small businesses in the area. Whether or not you are a resident of Chinatown, you can write your council member before they vote OCT 17.

Learn more: NUBC website

Write Council Member Chin’s Office

Practice Tai Chi and make new friends with an amazing view of the Manhattan Bridge. Shifu Sherry will take us through empty hand formations. Wear loose clothing and comfortable shoes. Suggested donation: $5-$20 cash for instruction.

NOTE: Location is Forsyth Plaza, across the street from 28 Forsyth Street on the approach to Manhattan Bridge.

When designers are tasked with public projects for our neighborhood, where do they start? What visual references should they draw on? What does it mean to design for Chinatown? Bamboo, dragons, the color red… how do we go beyond tropes to study the aesthetics of Chinatown. The term "cultural identity" is complex and layered in our community. Let's discuss, dissect & expand this topic together.

The panel will be held at Chung Pak community room which overlooks the Canal Street triangle -- the site of Department of Transportation’s proposed Gateways to Chinatown project. The open RFP for this project along with the chosen entry has prompted the urgency to discuss how designers can best approach the task of designing for Chinatown. Panelists Yin Kong (director of Think!Chinatown), Herb Tam & Andrew Rebatta (curators at MoCA), Kerri Culhane (architecture historian) will each share 8 visual concepts of Manhattan Chinatown’s aesthetics with the allowance of 88 seconds per concept. Discussion moderated by Beatrice Chen (director of ISS) will tease out overlapping themes as well as contrasts in presented concepts. Following the presentation, audience members will participate in an engagement process to indicate which images resonated with them the most. This process will result in a physical documentation of visual references that will be available to designers engaging in projects for Chinatown.

This event is part of Chinatown Arts Week and is presented by Think!Chinatown. Thank you to Chung Pak LDC for sponsoring.

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Beatrice Chen is the Executive Director of Immigrant Social Services, Inc. (ISS). She has 20 years of non-profit experience working at the intersection of arts & culture, education, and public history, including 15 years at the forefront of culture work in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Beatrice grew up in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She received a B.A. in history and international studies from Yale University, an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from Harvard University and a Masters in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Herb Tam is the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America. Herb was previously the Associate Curator at Exit Art and the Acting Associate Curator at the Queens Museum of Art. Herb was born in Hong Kong and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied at San Jose State University and earned a masters in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Andrew Rebatta is the Associate Curator at the Museum of Chinese in America. Andrew has worked on exhibitions at community-based museums in New York, Chicago and Washington, DC. In 2011, he was Curator-in-Residence at the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City, and has most recently organized exhibitions and performances for the New Forms Media Society in Vancouver, BC.

Kerri Culhane’s work has focused on the past, present, and future of the immigrant neighborhoods of New York City’s Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Bowery. In 2015, she curated the exhibition Chinese Style: Rediscovering the Architecture of Poy Gum Lee, 1900-1968 (MoCA), which examined life and career of the first Chinese American professional architect to practice in New York’s Chinatown. Kerri holds an MA in architectural history with a focus on historic preservation & planning from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MS in ecological design from the Conway School.

Yin Kong is director and co-founder of Think!Chinatown. Previously project lead of the Dashilar Project, she consulted a municipal agency of Beijing on urban revitalization strategies in the city's historic hutong core. She holds a Masters of Architecture, Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and a Bachelors of Arts, Urban Studies from Columbia University. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2016 and the Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture 2007 & 2009. This year she is a fellow of both the New Museum's IdeasCity and Coro's Neighborhood Leadership programs.

Kick off Chinatown Arts Week 2019 with short performances and art demonstrations revealing a glimpse of Chinatown’s cultural past, present and future - featuring modern puppetry and shadows by Spica Wobbe, excerpts from “The Last Emperor of Flushing” by Alvin Eng, dough sculptures by master folk artist Xun Ye, and dance and music by Ling Tang, Zhou Yi, and Miao Yimin from Ba Ban Chinese Music Society. Stay afterwards for drinks, nibbles and conversation with the artists. Enjoy tasting of liangcha from event sponsor Brooklyn Crafted. Free admission.

Performances begin at 5:45pm with a reception to follow at 7pm. Seating is first come first serve.

As a culinary warm-up to this year’s Chinatown Arts Week, Think!Chinatown brings scallion pancakes to Essex Market. Together, we’ll go step-by-step to show you how to get all the layers into those chewy crispy 蔥油餅 cong you bing/ scallion pancakes. Then we'll reward ourselves with a tea tasting from Grand Tea & Imports while we chat about what’s up in Chinatown these days.

Chinatown is coming to the Upper East Side for a fun evening of art and culture. T!C will present Cantonese Opera performances, Traditional Tea Ceremony & Tang Dynasty Poetry at the Asia Society Museum. Admission is free, and the museum stays open late from 6–9 p.m.

Kick off your weekend at First Friday and see the museum’s exhibitions for free! The museum stays open late from 6–9 p.m with exhibition tours, drink specials, late night shopping at AsiaStore, and more. Free admission. Cash bar.

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Exhibitions on View

Xiaoze Xie: Objects of Evidence, September 10, 2019–January 5, 2020
Through painting, installation, photography, and video, Xiaoze Xie traces the history of banned books in China.

Wang Dongling: Ink in Motion, September 10, 2019–January 5, 2020
The first public presentation of a large-scale calligraphy work created for AsiaSociety Museum by Wang Dongling, one of the most celebrated living calligraphers from China.

In Focus: Lakshmi, September 10, 2019–January 5, 2020
This exhibition explores the importance and worship of Lakshmi, a beloved goddess who is part of the complex Hindu culture that originated in India.