This blog will complement my photographic work on the Chinatowns of the United States & Canada, starting with the first solo exhibition of the project at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. The imagery stands on its own but my travels through over 50 Chinatowns in the last fifteen+ years and the stories of those whom I have met as well as the many organizations involved with this history and continuing present deserve attention. I am eager to share my journey.

Friday, March 6, 2015

SaraJaneBoyersPhoto_2015 Lunar New Year Greeting




HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!   Xīn Nián Kuài Lè!
羊 yáng


Inspired as always by my adventures in photographing for my long-term photographic project, FINDING CHINATOWN: AN AMERICAN STORY, I conducted my annual visit to the greater Southern California Chinatowns to photograph the Lunar New Year.  The dates of this 15 day celebration, the Spring Festival, vary each year as the Chinese calendar directs the start and finish of this holiday, the last day known as the Lantern Festival.  That festival just ended and we are now officially in the
Chinese calendar year, 4713.

I am in the 15th year of my FINDING CHINATOWN: AN AMERICAN STORY photographic project, one that I do not pursue as actively as before nevertheless  the Lunar New Year each year reminds me of the strong story the Chinatowns reveal that is meaningful to all of us here in North America and certainly beyond. That story is about our continuing social and cultural evolution, especially in this past 100 years with the greater opportunities for travel, combined with recognition of the very many communities in our nations.  Photographing in the greater Southern California Chinatowns reminds us of the wealth of diversity that influences what we eat, what we learn and how we approach one another.  Combined with the joy and tradition of a New Year, it is a joyous moment.

The zodiac animal of this year's celebration is a bit inexact: THE [wood] GOAT or THE RAM or THE SHEEP.  Various websites offer different interpretations of the animal symbol for this year but this one, from ChinaHighlights.com explains it well:

Chinese symbol for sheep"Is It the Year of the Sheep, Goat, or Ram?

Actually, Chinese people are also not quite sure about that. In Chinese the word 羊 (yáng) is a generic term, and can refer to a sheep (绵羊), goat (山羊), ram/buck (公羊 male sheep or goat), 羚羊 (antelope), etc. There is a lack of clear definition on the zodiac "Goat" in Chinese history.
However, most Chinese people and experts on folklore believe that the Chinese zodiac animal is the Goat, not the Sheep, and they have some evidence to support their idea...
... the Chinese zodiac is an invention of the Han Nationality, and goats were widely raised by the Han people (unlike sheep), so the zodiac animal is more likely to refer to a goat.
... a Goat image often appears on Chinese zodiac stamps, New Year paper cuttings, and New Year paintings (not a sheep).
... the Goat was one of the 12 bronze statues of the Chinese zodiac at the Old Summer Palace. Although its head was lost, its present reproduction according to historical records is the image of a goat."

For those born in this zodiac year, you are known to be artistic, gentle, kindhearted, social and relatively healthy.  For the rest of us, a year of harmony in general is promised.  Several sites to investigate:
http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-zodiac/goat.asp
http://www.china-family-adventure.com/year-of-the-sheep.html#.VO4gbsaNtQI

http://astrologyclub.org/chinese-horoscope/2015-year-sheep/
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2015ChineseHoroscope.htm


Not having many opportunities to photograph goats wandering through Los Angeles recently, I made the editorial choice to depict the sheep banner chosen by Beverly Hills for the New Year (as well as a couple of Malibu stars from my sheepherding days).  Finally and after way too long, American cities have finally awakened to the realization that there is a large and growing population of Americans of Asian descent who have been continually making substantial contribution to our knowledge, culture and wealth for at least 150+ years of our country's existence.  It seems about time.
This year, instead of a mammoth run to as many temples as we could visit and joined again by Susan and Eugene Moy - Eugene, the President Emeritus of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California - we decided to return to one or two previously visited and explore the new year's experience more meaningfully there.  We also decided to eat, using a recent LA Weekly article on the "Best Chinese Restaurants in LA." and landed at a terrific restaurant in a Rosemead strip mall: Shaanxi Gourmet, decorated by replicas of the terra cotta warriors from their central mainland province and with a menu noted for long and delicious handmade biang biang noodles and dumplings, especially from the region's capital, Xian.

Several links to this cuisine around the United States:
http://www.sfgate.com/recipes/article/Burgers-and-pasta-Chinese-style-a-taste-of-5517654.php
http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-xian-kitchen-shaanxi-city-of-industry-20141208-story.html
http://www.splendidtable.org/story/xian-famous-foods-bringing-a-little-known-chinese-cuisine-to-new-york-city
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/shaanxi/xian/xian-dumpling-dinner.htm


The majority of the evening was spent at Waken Temple, a Buddhist temple on Lower Azusa Road in El Monte.  According to tradition is it important to pray on the Eve, from around 10pm to midnight, the "first hour" of the New Year.  As distinct from many of the "family" temples, Waken offers a more substantive spiritual experience, including a lecture by the Master - here in Chinese and following in English - that exhorted us to understand not only the blessings but the mistakes and failures one encounters.  We sat on cushions, having shed our shoes at the entrance.  As the New Year is approached, incense candles are lit and deposited at the smoky altar outside the entrance and worshippers line up before the Master for a palm leaf blessing of luck and prosperity for the New Year.  Within the serene interior, simply and elegantly organized altars and images of the buddha, here the Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva; it certainly became a moment to pray.

Far from Thien Hau's traditional midnight fireworks display in downtown LA, we left Waken Temple before midnight to again honor the New Year at the Hai Nam Association of Southern California, noted for their electrified lion dancers.  It is an association I have been visiting for many years, first in downtown LA and since 2010 in their new building in El Monte.  Modeled on historic structures similar to the early Chinese temples, it is full of celebrants moving from one buddha's altar to another, lighting incense, bowing and praying before each Buddha, shaking sticks and other devices to advance lucky chances for the next year. By this time of the night, the scent and smoke from the incense candles can be overpowering while enhancing the mysticism of these symbolic rituals. Right after midnight, we enjoyed the first soup of the year, vegetarian as are all meals on the New Year day.
On New Year's Day I returned to the downtown Los Angeles Chinatown to wander and, as always, to visit the Thien Hau Temple, the building of their new building in 2005 an event that convinced me to continue with my FINDING CHINATOWN project.   Not yet understanding enough then about why I was so interested in photographing the Chinatowns of the US & Canada, Thien Hau helped reveal to me not only the history of my home Chinatown but also became symbolic of the very American story that I was capturing: the continuing and changing immigration patterns to this country of promise that drew so many of our families here.  Here is living history of the Americas, a tale of early traditions, immigration, exclusion, then inclusion (somewhat) and a gradual weaving of many strands that comprise a continually evolving fabric of our populations.

Specifically in the Chinatowns, first populated primarily by people arriving from the Guangdong province/Cantonese,  then in the last 30+ years or so many from Taiwan and Hong Kong and then again, even as later generations of the early Cantonese speakers moved out into the general national population, others from Asia and Southeast Asia arrived, taking over buildings and neighborhoods. This is a typical immigration pattern also experienced by earlier religious and ethnic groups who upon first arrival and for a generation or two gathered together in like-speaking neighborhoods, voluntarily and not-so-voluntarily, then moved on into the general population.

Thien Hau is a Los Angeles example of a second or third phase of change.  Its founding congregants were ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, part of the "boat people."   Ten/eleven  years ago, when I first visited, the large new temple was in construction, based upon an original temple in China's Camau district and built with imported materials from China by imported-for-this-project Chinese craftsmen.  Its construction signaled a new fresh approach to the aging Downtown Chinatown and where, in typical California fashion, the old building that housed ThienHau transitioned over time from a small Italian Baptist church to a Mandarin Baptist one to ultimately the small older Thien Hau Temple.  In 2005, the old temple was destroyed in very typical American fashion, to make way for a parking lot for the new temple.  There I photographed its last days.

Now, ten years later more change in coming into the downtown Chinatown as more temples have been built by ethnic Chinese from Cambodia, and yet, even as these rise, the Chinatown itself is mirroring Los Angeles downtown's residential boom with the greater population, the cost of living is rising and many of the older or the newer immigrant families have left and another city change is coming.  Such is the nature of our US cities.  Nevertheless, the New Year's day is full of good will.  Families arrive here from all over Southern California, often outfitted in traditional clothing, much of it red for good luck, coming to the temple  for prayers, for vegetarian meals, for introducing their often American-born children to the traditional ways, and the Spring Festival begins.
 
As noted, the downtown LA Chinatown is in great flux today.  This Chinatown - created when the early 20th century population was evicted from on of their first neighborhoods where Union Station now stands and moving several times to this more northwestern block, originally Italian-ethnic - again tells a history of civic transition as the recent cycle of gentrification encompassed first the mix of contemporary art galleries alongside several generational Chinese tourist emporiums, best represented by the stores and buildings on Chung King Road.  Now, change is occurring again as the art galleries and lofts that had replaced several street level shops are themselves being replaced by a wealthier, younger even more trendy demographic that is returning to downtown LA and filling it up with architecture studios, entrepreneurs, coffee shops and all the accoutrements of today.

I spent a moment with Alex Cheung, owner of the Alex Cheung Company (est. 1971), the last emporium to remain on Chung King Road.  When Alex retires it will be over and Chinatown, albeit created intentionally as a tourist attraction in the '30s, will represent another world.  While the great temples, Thien Hau among them, as well as the Chinatown Plaza will no doubt remain, many who lived and worked here have moved on into the greater fabric of the region or moved at the least into the greater modern "chinatowns" of the San Gabriel Valley. The SGV is as well, is now the place where tourists from the Mainland go.

My annual Lunar New Year visit helps me again experience this story of our world today, and not only in the Americas, for we are in a world of change with populations fitting not always perfectly but ultimately finding themselves together, acknowledging and best, enjoying the gifts we all bring each other.  It strengthens and enriches who we are and ultimately we all become our country's "nationals," not without our own distinct history if we choose but with it plus the experiences we gain in our new lands.  That is the story of who we are and in the Chinatowns, it is vibrant every day.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!


Photographic Project Updates!

PHOTO LA 2015, SarahLeePROJECTS booth: The event in January was wonderful and busy.  I exhibited with other LA-based photographers, Aline Smithson, Ann Mitchell and Martin Cox. Sarah Lee did an impressive job of curating and installing us.
Thanks to all who came out.


Opening in New York City on 26 March at the Museum of Chinese in America WATER TO PAPER: PAINT TO SKY, the traveling retrospective of 104 year old artist, Tyrus Wong. This exhibition originated in 2013 at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.  In the Maya Lin-designed building at MOCA/NYC, I am sure  it will be terrific.  The exhibition contains 10 large prints of mine capturing Tyrus, his family and friends at the Santa Monica Beach where for the last 40+ years he has come to fly his hand-designed/made kites.

I will be there for the opening and if you are in the New York area, I recommend you make a trip. The exhibit will be up through
13 September.

Previewing at ParisPhotoLA in early May is the Metropolis Books/D.A.P. book: BOTH SIDES OF SUNSET: PHOTOGRAPHING LOS ANGELES.  I will have several images in the book of Carmageddon on the 405 from my GRIDLOCK project.  I am privileged to be among a host of master photographers included in this publication. 
Excited as well about the potential opportunity to create the first exhibit my ongoing DETROIT:DEFINITION project in Europe this coming Fall. News to follow but excited about this now!

I will photographing again in Detroit at the end of this month.  If you are there, let me know.

 
As always, my thanks to members of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Chinatown communities for extending their welcome to me as I go about the New Years.

Sara Jane Boyers, March 2015