Sampan is a newspaper based in Chinatown in Boston, Massachusetts. It is New England's only bilingual Chinese and English newspaper. The newspaper was founded in 1972 by volunteers of the Asian American Civic Association, then known as the Chinese American Civic Association; its slogan is "the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England." It is distributed throughout Greater Boston and covers news of Boston's Chinatown as well as the Greater Boston Asian American community.
A sampan is a flat-bottomed wooden boat, still used today in parts of Southeast Asia for fishing, transportation or even habitation. It is a metaphor, which symbolizes that this newspaper would bring news of the Chinese community, in both Chinese and English, around the city of Boston, providing a means to acquire information about the community to non-English speakers as well as non-Chinese speakers.
Sampan primarily reports on the news of Chinatown and Asian Americans of Greater Boston. As a free, nonprofit newspaper, Sampan makes its revenue almost entirely by advertisements.
Chinatown is the catch-all name for an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English, which is the de facto national language. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have declared English as an official language. The great majority of the U.S. population speaks only English at home. The remainder of the population speaks many other languages at home, most notably Spanish, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau; others include indigenous languages originally spoken by Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and native populations in the U.S. unincorporated territories. Other languages were brought in by people from Europe, Africa, Asia, other parts of the Americas, and Oceania, including multiple dialects, creole languages, pidgin languages, and sign languages originating in what is now the United States. Interlingua, an international auxiliary language, was also created in the U.S.
Manhattan's Chinatown is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, bordering the Lower East Side to its east, Little Italy to its north, Civic Center to its south, and Tribeca to its west. With an estimated population of 90,000 to 100,000 people, Chinatown is home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere. Manhattan's Chinatown is also one of the oldest Chinese ethnic enclaves. The Manhattan Chinatown is one of nine Chinatown neighborhoods in New York City, as well as one of twelve in the New York metropolitan area, which contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 uniracial individuals as of 2017.
Chinatown is a community in Southwest Houston, Texas, United States.
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta, with over 82.4 million native speakers.
Chinese American Citizens Alliance (C.A.C.A.) is a Chinese American fraternal, benevolent non-profit organization founded in 1895 in San Francisco, California to secure equal rights for Americans of Chinese ancestry and to better the welfare of their communities. C.A.C.A. is the United States' oldest Asian American civil rights organization.
Chinatown, Boston is a neighborhood located in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the only surviving historic ethnic Chinese enclave in New England since the demise of the Chinatowns in Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Maine after the 1950s. Because of the high population of Asians and Asian Americans living in this area of Boston, there is an abundance of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants located in Chinatown. It is one of the most densely populated residential areas in Boston and serves as the largest center of its East Asian and Southeast Asian cultural life.
The Seattle Chinese Times is a United States-based free bilingual weekly newspaper which was launched its first edition in May 2004 by Deng Rihua (邓日华).
New England French is a variety of French spoken in the New England region of the United States. It descends from Canadian French because it originally came from French Canadians who immigrated to New England during the Grande Hémorragie.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again.
Chinatowns in Canada generally exist in the large cities of Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal, and existed in some smaller towns throughout the history of Canada. Prior to 1900, almost all Chinese were located in British Columbia, but have spread throughout Canada thereafter. From 1923 to 1967, immigration from China was suspended due to exclusion laws. In 1997, the handover of Hong Kong to China caused many from there to flee to Canada due to uncertainties. Canada had about 25 Chinatowns across the country between the 1930s to 1940s, some of which have ceased to exist.
The Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) is a 501(c)(3) community development organization founded in 1987 with a focus on serving the Asian American community of Greater Boston. This organization is centered upon preserving the culture and revitalizing Boston's Chinatown.
The New York metropolitan area is home to the largest and most prominent ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, hosting Chinese populations representing all 34 provincial-level administrative units of China. The Chinese American population of the New York City metropolitan area was an estimated 893,697 as of 2017, constituting the largest and most prominent metropolitan Asian national diaspora outside Asia. New York City itself contains by far the highest ethnic Chinese population of any individual city outside Asia, estimated at 628,763 as of 2017.
The Chicago metropolitan area has an ethnic Chinese population. As of 2010, there are 43,228 Chinese Americans who live in Chicago, 1.6% of the city's population. This population includes native-born Chinese as well as immigrants from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and also racially mixed Chinese.
The Chinese Canadian community in the Greater Toronto Area was first established around 1877, with an initial population of two laundry owners. While the Chinese Canadian population was initially small in size, it dramatically grew beginning in the late 1960s due to changes in immigration law and political issues in Hong Kong. Additional immigration from Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and related conflicts and a late 20th century wave of Hong Kong immigration led to the further development of Chinese ethnic enclaves in the Greater Toronto Area. The Chinese established many large shopping centres in suburban areas catering to their ethnic group. There are 679,725 Chinese in the Greater Toronto Area as of the 2021 census, second only to New York City for largest Chinese community in North America.
Chinese Canadians are a sizable part of the population in Greater Vancouver, especially in the Chinese communities in the city of Vancouver and the adjoining suburban city of Richmond. The legacy of Chinese immigration is prevalent throughout the Vancouver area.
The Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) is an American non-governmental organization founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1977. The CPA is an agency that helps Chinese immigrants assimilate into American culture through citizen classes, English classes, and involvement in local activism. The organization has engaged in political action as the motive force behind Boston's Unemployed Workers Rights Campaign (UWRC) during the decade of the 1980s. Members have also protested for affordable housing in Boston's Chinatown following mass construction of luxury condos. Additionally, in 2014, the CPA has created partnerships with Boston supermarkets in order to bring job opportunities for Asian immigrants into Boston.
The Boston metropolitan area has an active Chinese American community. As of 2013, the Boston Chinatown was the third largest Chinatown in the United States, and there are also Chinese populations in the suburbs of Greater Boston, including Quincy, Malden, Acton, Newton, and Lexington. As of 2006, Boston, Quincy, Malden, Newton, Brookline, and Cambridge house about half of all of the ethnic Chinese in Massachusetts, and as a whole, Chinese constituted the largest Asian ethnic group in the state.
Tunney Lee was an architect, planner, educator, and activist known for his community engagement work primarily in Chinatown, Boston. Lee was a professor emeritus of urban planning and a former head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) within the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He is also known as the founder of the Department of Architecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), now called the School of Architecture. Lee also maintained a career in public service as chief of planning and design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority and deputy commissioner of the state Division of Capital Planning and Operations under Governor Michael S. Dukakis. He died on July 2, 2020, in Boston at the age of 88.
The Parcel C protests were a community organized grassroots movement in the Chinatown of Boston, Massachusetts led by the Coalition to Protect Parcel C for Chinatown, which formed in response to the 1993 deal between Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and New England Medical Center (NEMC) to create a hospital parking garage in Chinatown. The space in question, named Parcel C, is a small plot of land bordered by Oak Street, Nassau Street, May Place, and Ash Street. The surrounding areas were primarily residential, with a day care center directly adjacent to the plot, which raised health and safety concerns. The protest helped bring awareness to environmental injustice in urban cities and cultivated systems and methods for successful activism in a non-English speaking community.
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