CHEN DANCE CENTER Celebrates 1st “Chinese American Heritage Week,” 150th Anniv. Of First US Transcontinental Railroad, and Chinese American WWII Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act

H.T. Chen & Dancers will perform “South of Gold Mountain” drawing from rich oral histories of Chinese settlers and “Transparent Hinges” a journey of the first arrivals of ‘dreamers’ in the US to San Francisco’s Angel Island Immigration Station. Exhibit by photographer/activist Corky Lee. Upon reviewing the photograph commemorating the 1869 completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, the second-generation Chinese American was “struck by the fact that there were no Chinese workers in the photo depicting representative laborers. Yet two-thirds of the workforce, 15,000 Chinese, had worked and sacrificed their lives in its construction.” In 2014, as an act of “photographic justice,” Mr. Lee went to Promontory Point, Utah, to reshoot the photo with 200 Chinese Americans (including workers’ descendants) from across the country, correcting their absence from 145 years before as a “neglected and forgotten piece” of Asian American history. Two talk-backs: The first will underscore the importance of the first Chinese American Heritage Week, recognition of Chinese laborers on the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the impact of Corky Lee’s work on the Asian American community. A second discussion will focus on the Chinese American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act (signed on Dec. 2018 by President Trump, paying tribute to the 20,000 Chinese American veterans who served our country in World War II, despite prevalent discrimination at the time). Veterans of Chinatown’s American Legion Post 1291 will share stories of the men and women who enlisted in each branch of the armed services in WWII.