Today’s post is written by Qin Yong David Chen, our BHS summer intern from the Chinese-American Planning Council. This fall, he will be a sophomore at Stony Brook University where he studies economics and political science. He plans to attend business school after graduating.
Many people have proclaimed 8th Avenue in Sunset Park as New York City’s third Chinatown. My name is Qin Yong David Chen and I am an intern here at the Brooklyn Historical Society. My job includes many roles: I am a tour guide, a promoter, a receptionist, and an amateur historian. One task that was assigned to me was to digitize and summarize several interviews from BHS’s Sunset Park Oral History Project (1993 – 1994). The four interviews I listened to were recorded in 1993, three years before I immigrated to Brooklyn from Fujian, China. I had to digitize them and save them into a hard drive because cassette tapes can deteriorate. These interviews were recorded in Cantonese and Mandarin, two major Chinese dialects, and I am the only person here at BHS proficient with both dialects. The interviews were at times mundane, at times fascinating, and at times empathetic.
Like all of the narrators in the Sunset Park Oral History Project that I listened to, I grew up in Sunset Park. I lived two blocks away from 8th Avenue. I immigrated here to America when I was 6 years old with my family; my father came back from the States and brought us to Brooklyn.
The very first interview that I listened to was a success story of an immigrant mother’s lifetime job of juggling her video store and raising her children. The narrator, Grace Chan, at the suggestion of her friend, opened the very first Chinese video store on 8th Avenue. She talked of the risks that she had to deal with and the nervousness when opening a new business. She works 364 days a year. Her store opens early, so the grocery buyers can rent videos at the same time they are shopping, and closes late, so people who get off work can rent videos. And before she opens the store, she sends her children to school, and after she closes, she goes home to cook for her family. All of her children went through school, some private schools and some prominent public schools such as Stuyvesant High School. Finally, as she reflected back on her past, she stated that not a lot of people in the world can do what she had done.
There were two notable narrators that I fondly remember: Michael Chow and Wayne Huang. They were both 14 years old at that time of their interviews (they are around 30 years old by now). Their words, to me, became a vicarious memory: they used to play basketball in the park that my brother played basketball in, and where I played freeze tag in; they were picked on because of their Asian features; they shared the same anxiety and solitary feeling when they stepped out of their first time riding on an airplane, and when they stepped into their first day of public school; and finally, embraced the subtle joy when they found a social niche that they belonged to.
I’ve heard these stories and problems before when I was growing up in Sunset Park. After experiencing these individuals in the past, I wonder how the present turned out for them. I personally find it fitting that a college student is documenting the history of his own community. It gives me this nostalgic feeling and empowers me with a wider perspective of not only how much Sunset Park has changed, but how much Brooklyn evolved.
Visitors to BHS can listen to interviews from the Sunset Park Oral History Project (1993 – 1994) in the Othmer Library by appointment.