Late Night in the Lion's Den: Chinese Restaurant-Nightclubs in 1940s San Francisco

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-101
Author(s):  
harley spiller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social History ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Chinese Restaurant ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
The U.S

Late Night in the Lion's Den: A Social History of Chinese-American Restaurant-Nightclubs in the 1940s Restaurant menus can serve as excellent primary source material for social histories. The springboard for this article is a 1940s menu from San Francisco's Lion's Den, a Chinese-American restaurant and nightclub. A thorough review of the food and drink offerings is bolstered by an interview with a former Lion's Den dancer and emcee, Ms. Nora Wong. She tells stories of growing up Chinese in the U.S., and provides vivid insight into the real life of Chinese performers in the mid-twentieth century. The article is illustrated with period menus and the first-ever public glimpse of a telling behind-the-scene photograph from Ms. Wong's personal album. Beginning with 1930s Shanghai, the world nightlife capital that inspired imitators in the U.S., this article explores the naissance, development, heated competition, and eventual demise of Chinese nightclubs in both California and New York City. Many Chinese restaurant/nightclubs of the period are discussed, and other well-known performers are featured. Other topics discussed include the Western exotification of Asia, stereotyping, sexism, and racism.

Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization. By Peter J. Spiro. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 208p. $29.95.

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-385
Author(s):  
Jackie Smith
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Sarah Palin ◽  
Global Financial System ◽  
The U.S

Peter J. Spiro's timely and highly accessible book encourages readers to reflect upon the contemporary meaning of citizenship. It could not have come at a better time. As I read it, I watched the collapse of the global financial system, which may really be just an aftershock of even more devastating global climate, food, and energy crises. At the same time, rather than coming together in a shared effort to respond to these multiple crises, Americans were entering the most polarizing phase of the presidential election. Sarah Palin is probably the first vice presidential candidate to suggest publicly that some parts of the country are “un-American,” but her words clearly reflected the sentiments of a significant portion of the U.S. public. Although it stirred some late-night television ridicule, Palin's remarks sparked little outrage or thoughtful and sustained public reflection about the broader implications of her statement. We should hope that the aftermath of the election will afford us a chance for such a dialogue on the nature of our national political community and its relation to the wider, global community. Beyond Citizenship should be required background reading for such a conversation.

Primary Source Publishers in a Googling World

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjan van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Internet Archive ◽  
The Public ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
American Memory

In December 2004, Google Inc. announced its plans to digitize millions of books from prestigious libraries such as Harvard, Stanford, and the New York Public Library. Most of the books are in the public domain and will be available for free on the Internet. The Google initiative is one among many, including the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress, the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, and Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. All of these programs offer free access to good-quality digital materials. Another common feature is that they are heavily funded.

"The Air is Becoming Full of War"

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-366
Author(s):  
MARY ANN IRWIN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
World War ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
Jewish Americans

This article examines the responses of Jewish San Franciscans to World War I, comparing reactions of Jewish and non-Jewish Americans and considering regional differences in the Jewish response. The primary source is the Emanu-El, San Francisco's only Jewish newspaper during the war. Comparing the San Francisco experience with that of New York, the article argues that, while San Francisco Jews shared many of their fellow citizens' feelings toward the nations at war, the �ghting in Europe raised troubling issues for Jewish Americans, as well as problems they did not share with other Americans. In key respects, region mattered more than religious identi�cation: Jewish San Franciscans tended to view the war as westerners rather than as Jews, but war exacerbated tensions within American Jewry and added urgency to leaders' efforts to create consensus, especially on such controversial issues as Zionism.

Chinatown Opera Theater in North America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
American Music ◽  
American Business ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
And Migration

In this expansive project, Nancy Yunhwa Rao examines the world of Chinatown theaters, focusing on iconic theaters in San Francisco and New York but also tracing the transnational networks and migration routes connecting theaters and performers in China, Canada, and even Cuba. Drawing on a wealth of physical, documentary, and anecdotal evidence, Rao brings together the threads of an enormously complex story: on one hand, the elements outside the theaters, including U.S. government policies regulating Chinese immigration, dissemination through recordings and print materials of the music performed in the theaters, impresarios competing with each other for performers and audiences, and the role of Chinese American business organizations in facilitating the functioning of the theaters; and on the other hand, the world inside the theaters, encompassing the personalities and careers of individual performers, audiences, repertoire, and the adaptation of Chinese performance practices to the American immigrant context. The study also documents the important influence of the theaters on the Chinatown community's sense of its cultural self. Presenting Chinese American music as American music, Rao's work significantly revises understandings of American music by placing the musical activities of an important immigrant group firmly within the bounds of music identified as "American," liberating it from the ghetto of exoticism. Firmly grounded in both Chinese and English language sources, this study offers critical insight into both historical and contemporary questions of cultural identity in the American context.

Angel Island Immigration Station

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Yung ◽  
Erika Lee
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Ellis Island ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
Historic Landmark ◽  
Island Station ◽  
Immigration Station ◽  
The U.S

The Angel Island Immigration Station (1910–1940), located in San Francisco Bay, was one of twenty-four ports of entry established by the U.S. government to process and detain immigrants entering and leaving the country. Although popularly called the “Ellis Island of the West,” the Angel Island station was in fact quite different from its counterpart in New York. Ellis Island was built in 1892 to welcome European immigrants and to enforce immigration laws that restricted but did not exclude European immigrants. In contrast, as the primary gateway for Chinese and other Asian immigrants, the Angel Island station was built in 1910 to better enforce discriminatory immigration policies that targeted Asians for exclusion. Chinese immigrants, in particular, were subjected to longer physical exams, interrogations, and detentions than any other immigrant group. Out of frustration, anger, and despair, many of them wrote and carved Chinese poems into the barrack walls. In 1940, a fire destroyed the administration building, and the immigration station was moved back to San Francisco. In 1963, the abandoned site became part of the state park system, and the remaining buildings were slated for demolition. Thanks to the collective efforts of Asian American activists and descendents of former detainees, the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997, and the immigration site, including the Chinese poetry on the barrack walls, was preserved and transformed into a museum of Pacific immigration for visitors.

Hollywood

Los Romeros ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 94-114
Author(s):  
Walter Aaron Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Military Service ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The U.S

The Romeros moved to Hollywood in 1958, where they established a studio for teaching guitar. Starting in 1960, the quartet performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, and was making recordings on the Contemporary and Mercury labels. The guitar had become the dominant instrument of that period, and there was a ready market for a quartet of Spaniards playing classical and flamenco favorites. They were soon touring throughout the U.S., in cities large and small. The highlight of the 1960s was their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1967, a decade after their arrival in California and the year in which they became U.S. citizens. This was also the year in which they premiered Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto andaluz, written for the quartet. Pepe and Angel were deemed unsuited for military service and not drafted.

Reassessing Chinese American Identities

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-215
Author(s):  
Andrea Louie (吕美玲)
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Chinese Americans ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
White Families ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The U.S

AbstractComparing and contrasting two of my previous research projects, both of which focus on Chinese American youths, I examine the ways that the circumstances of their upbringings shape their relationships with China as a homeland, with the U.S. as their country of residence, and with their Chinese identities more broadly. In the process, I consider the future of diasporic relationships with the Chinese homeland as they are shaped by the politics of belonging in both the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PERC). The first project, conducted as multi-sited research during the 1990s, focuses on American-born Chinese Americans (ABCs) who participate in a Roots-searching program in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second project focuses on Chinese adoptees who, born in China, relinquished by birth families, and adopted, usually by white families in the U.S., share some similarities with ABCs in terms of the ways in which they are racialized in U.S. society.

scholarly journals Depictions of Terrorism and Islamophobia on CNN.com by U.S. Presidential Candidates

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 366
Author(s):  
Salieg Luki Munestri ◽  
S.S, M.A. ◽  
Abdiel Nugroho Adi ◽  
Okdela Nurintan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The U.S

Since the 9/11 attack in New York, the U.S. government has focused on combating terrorism by pre-emptive strategy to destroy the save haven of the terrorists and punish those supporting them. Terrorism is associated with Islam, thus, discrediting Islam and spreading Islamophobia amongst the society. In their campaigns and debates, the U.S. presidential candidates have treated terrorism as a central issue to attract more Americans to vote for one of them. Hence, this paper analyzes their opinion concerning terrorism and what resolutions they offer if they are elected as president. The primary source is limited on the CNN.com and examined through adiscourse analysisof the subject matter. The analysis shows that Trump’s policy in dealing with terrorism focuses on how to prevent the coming of terrorists by stopping the flow of immigrants, while Hillary Clinton’s policy is more aggressive and emotional.

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