Pandas have been admired for adorably lumbering around and eating bamboo in the mountains of China. Take advantage of the opportunity to paint these lovable animals using Chinese watercolor techniques before the winter holiday season. Relax, create, and meditate with Chinese brushstrokes—it might be one of the best gifts you give yourself this season.

Note: Taught in Mandarin Chinese only. This is a beginner, relaxed-paced class taught via Zoom.

December 12 | 2:00pm - 3:30pm

$15 per class | Students are responsible for supplies. $35 per class including supplies picked up at Pao Arts Center or mailed at additional cost.

Supply list: Chinese calligraphy brush; Chinese calligraphy black Ink; calligraphy rice paper; 12 color Chinese watercolor paint set.

About the Artist:

Xiaoyong Liu emigrated to the United States in 2008. In 2009, he started teaching children and adults Chinese painting of landscapes, flowers, and birds. In recent years, his students have exhibited their art and participated and won awards in the National Teenagers Calligraphy Contests.

Contact: Qi Cheng | 617-863-9080

Goldfish are a symbol of good luck in China. Join us for a relaxed paced, beginner brush painting class featuring happy goldfish!

Through painting goldfish we can experience basics of Chinese painting. We will learn how to control our brush, create lines, and the basics of using watercolor.

Taught in Mandarin Chinese only.

October 10 and October 17 | 2:00pm - 3:30pm

$15 per class | $35 per class including supplies picked up at Pao Arts Center or mailed at additional cost.

About the Artist:

Xiaoyong Liu emigrated to the United States in 2008. In 2009, he started teaching children and adults Chinese painting of landscapes, flowers, and birds. In recent years, his students have exhibited their art and participated and won awards in the National Teenagers Calligraphy Contests.

Contact: Qi Cheng  | 617-863-9080

Discover a new take on Asian American cultures.

See, hear, create, and connect. Together, celebrate the rich cultural fabric of Boston Chinatown through free creative activities for all.

In 2020, join in our new format as we uplift the neighborhood while ensuring health and safety for all. Throughout September, enjoy unique events and pop-up happenings through virtual and physical platforms, allowing for social distancing and leisurely enjoyment. This event is a part of the We Love Boston Chinatown resiliency campaign, a partnership with community organizations, businesses, and residents that is working together to uplift the community and support local businesses.

Map of Sites

Installations at Storefront Sites

Create your own self-paced tour with our map of sites.

Participating Sites:

Pao Arts Center: 99 Albany St., Boston, MA 02111

Wang YMCA of Chinatown: 8 Oak St., Boston, MA 02116

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center: 38 Ash Street, Boston, MA 02111

APM coffee : 99 Kneeland St, Boston, MA 02111

Liuyishou Hotpot Boston: 702 Washington St, Boston, MA 02111

Dumpling Cafe: 695 Washington St, Boston, MA 02111

Bubor Cha Cha: 45 Beach St, Boston, MA 02111

Tbaar Chinatown: 32 Kneeland St, Boston, MA 02111

Schedule of Events:

Saturday, September 5 - Monday, September 7

Artists at Work

Watch the storefronts of Chinatown comes alive as artists add their creative flair to the neighborhood.

Residence Lab Installations

Enjoy public artworks by Residence Lab artists Krina and Maria in collaboration with Chinatown residents Angela, Dianyvet, Po Chun, and Sylvia. Take a trip down memories and stories embedded in Chinatown by visiting 8 Hudson St where you’ll find a mural or pause at the Kneeland St and Harrison Ave intersection to view a window installation that addresses pedestrian safety.

September 7 – September 27

Installations at Storefront Sites

Create your own self-paced tour with our map.

Thursday, September 24

Take Out Thursday with music by Trio Gaia | 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm **

Music at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway with support from Greenway Conservancy

Musical Performance under Lantern Stories | 6:00 pm - 7:30pm
Join cellist Sam Ou and calligrapher Mike Mei under the glow of artist Yu-Wen Wu’s light-based installation Lantern Stories at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway. Meet Yu-Wen Wu and celebrate her vision. Enjoy a night of music, community stories, and public art on one of the last evenings of Experience Chinatown 2020. Supported by the Greenway Conservancy.

29 Oak Street Projections | 8:00 pm - 9:00pm

Final nigh of  text, still, and moving image artwork by local artists projected on the brick rowhouse wall of  29 Oak Street organized by Chinatown Land Trust.

Saturday, September 26 | 11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Music at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway with support from Greenway Conservancy

Violin Viiv | 11:00 am

Marko De Peralta | 12:00 noon

Aznjujube featuring Jeff La | 1:00 pm

** Performances will follow Commonwealth of Massachusetts guidelines.  Please remember to wear your masks and stay physically distant. Hand sanitizer stations will be available, and if crowds begin to form performances may be temporarily paused.  

Past Events

Thursday, September 10

Take Out Thursday  with music by Violin Viiv | 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm**

Music at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway with support from Greenway Conservancy

29 Oak Street Projections | 8:00 pm - 9:00pm (Cancelled due to rain)

Three nights of  text, still, and moving image artwork by local artists projected on the brick rowhouse wall of  29 Oak Street organized by Chinatown Land Trust.

Night one will focus on Chinatown history.

Saturday, September 12 - Sunday, September 13

We Love Boston Chinatown Virtual Run/Walk

Run or walk a 5k or 1 mile to show your love for Chinatown. Click here for details and to register.

Thursday, September 17 | 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm

Take Out Thursday  with music by Shaw Pong Liu | 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm**

With Special Guest Calligrapher Mike Mei

Music and visual art performance at Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway with support from Greenway Conservancy 

29 Oak Street Projections | 8:00 pm - 9:00pm

Three nights of  text, still, and moving image artwork by local artists projected on the brick rowhouse wall of  29 Oak Street organized by Chinatown Land Trust.

Night two will focus on artist films. 

Participating Artists

Aznjujube featuring Jeff La

Inspired by the nostalgia of the early 2000's AZN era, aznjujube is an experimental-pop project that incorporates live-looping, mandolin riffs, mountain noises, and lo-fi hip hop beats. Jeff La is a virtuosic dulcimerist who has been performing in the Boston Chinatown and surrounding areas since the 90s.

Crystal Bi Wegner and Lily Xie

Crystal Bi Wegner is an artist and educator. She teaches sound art & recording and visual art in Boston Public Schools at Margarita Muñiz Academy. She is the co-founder of Moon Eaters collective, a printed media platform for API queer narratives and Caras de Maria, an oral history project documenting experiences after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Crystal is passionate about accessibility in arts education for Boston Public School students and using art as a tool to design a more equitable society.

Lily Xie is a Chinese-American artist and educator whose socially engaged work explores radical imagination, reimagined histories, and other routes to collective resilience. Lily shares strategies adapted from her drawing and bookmaking practices as tools for community empowerment and justice. Lily is the co-founder of Moon Eaters, a Boston-based collective of queer Asian-American artists.

Cameron Chin

Cameron Chin finds her imagination to be untamable and her inner monologue nosy, which makes creating and translating her thoughts into physical existence a very comforting process. In her work, Cameron Chin is deeply inspired by the landscapes of nature, culture, and identity that both walk and cross her path. Visual art is so nuanced, and its enjoyment cannot be spread thin. Cameron Chin loves it.

Marko De Peralta

Marko De Peralta is a keyboardist/pianist, performer, and music educator in the Greater Boston area. Incredibly versatile, he plays music of all genres - from classical music to more contemporary forms of art and pop music, such as jazz, funk, rock, R’n’B, blues, and his personal favorite, Motown hits! Marko hopes to get his listeners’ hips moving and heads nodding with light, easy-listening arrangements of songs like “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones, and groovy covers of songs by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, D’Angelo and more.

Maria Fong 

Maria Fong is an artist from Berkeley, California. Maria works in hand drawn and stop motion animation, drawing, performance art, and bookmaking. She is dedicated to making work that tells silenced stories and fosters interaction between people. Her collaborative artworks explore racialized and politicized spaces, community building, and expansive Asian American identities.

Wendy Han

Wendy is currently a sophomore at Simmons University. She is a Boston-based artist, who’s projects are centered around issues that the Chinatown community faces. She focuses on digital design, but has also worked with watercolor, acrylic painting, photography, and videography. Wendy has worked at Castle Square Tenants Organization, where she created vector drawings, videos, and podcasts to raised awareness of social injustices happening around us. She is very passionate about the Boston neighborhoods and issues within each community.

Melody (Yu-Hsuan) Hsu

Melody (Yu-Hsuan) Hsu is a multidisciplinary creator from Taiwan. Melody is soulfully inspired by both her cross-cultural identity and her background in visual arts. Having designed for plays like “Abortion Road Trip,” which was nominated for the 38EVVYs award for Outstanding Scenic Design, she has also been invited to design a collection of short films, including music videos like “Get Out of My Head” by Four Years Strong, recently premiered on Billboard. 

Payal Kumar

Payal Kumar (they/them) is a diasporic dreamer working towards inclusive solidarity and liberation based on Wampanoag territory. As a multimedia artist, doula, medical advocate, and futurism fanatic, they invoke the power of interdisciplinary movement-building to construct tender new possibilities of being beyond borders and capital. Their visual work is rooted in the Desi folk art of their ancestral villages and traditional Americana tattoos to construct new in-between spaces exploring mental illness, queer intimacy, and traumas around embodiment.

Sam Ou

Praised for his "impassioned performance" (Boston Globe) and playing "with remarkable ease and clarity, while maintaining a graceful—if vociferous—line that fit well into the narrative" (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), cellist Sam Ou enjoys an active musical life in the Greater Boston area.  A recipient of the Rosemary Scales Prize for best cello concerto performance at the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, Mr. Ou has performed at several prestigious summer venues including Tanglewood, Sarasota, Musicorda, Santa Fe, and La Jolla music festivals.  He gave the world premiere performance of Larry Bell’s Cello Concerto entitled The Triumph of Lightness with the Boston Civic Symphony at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall (NEC).  Symphonically, he occasionally plays in the Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, and Boston Lyric Opera Orchestras.

Shaw Pong Liu

Violinist and composer Shaw Pong Liu engages diverse communities through multidisciplinary collaborations, creative music and social dialogue. Her project Code Listen, which she started as City of Boston Artist-in-Residence in 2016, uses songwriting and performances to support healing and dialogue around violence, racism, and police practices, in collaboration with the Boston Police Department, teen artists, family members surviving homicide and local musicians.

Krina Patel

Krina Patel is a Boston based artist and educator. Krina designs and implements a number of socially relevant arts projects that engage local communities. During the winter of 2019, Krina traveled to different neighborhoods and community organizations including BCYF to gather and record winter memories. The Winter Memories project was a winning proposal for the call from the city of Boston Mayor’s office of New Urban Mechanics.

Trio Gaia

Formed in 2018, Trio Gaia is dedicated to offering audiences dynamic, personally relevant experiences inside and outside the concert hall. Selected as a 2019-2020 Honors Ensemble at the New England Conservatory, the trio has also been recognized for sharing classical chamber music in the community, receiving both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 Ensemble Fellowship from New England Conservatory’s Community Performances & Partnerships initiative. During the summer of 2019, Trio Gaia was invited to Carnegie Hall’s Audience Engagement Intensive, offered in collaboration with Ensemble Connect, which helped the trio reach audiences across New York City with accessible, interactive performances for elementary school students and seniors alike. 

Violin Viiv

Vivian Luo throws pop-up performances of pop, EDM and hip hop mixes & mashups in Boston public spaces. A classically trained contemporary violinist/DJ known as “violinviiv,” she also brings her high energy spirited performances to local weddings, hotel openings, corporate and private clients who appreciate her raw energy and unique spin on mainstream hits.

Sophie Wang

Sophia Wang was born and raised in Queens, NY. She currently studies computer science and art at Brandeis University. Sophia is passionate about using creativity and problem-solving skills to create impactful and accessible work. She has experience in graphic product design, printmaking, and photography. When she is not coding or creating art, she enjoys hanging out with her grandparents and/or eating pineapple buns.

Yu-Wen Wu

Yu-Wen Wu is an artist living and working in Boston. Born in Taipei Taiwan, Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork. Arriving at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work in areas of migration--examining issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation and the shape of identity in a new country. Human migration and climate change are the defining issues of Wu’s work. At the crossroads of art, science, politics and cultural issues, her wide range of projects include large-scale drawings, site-specific video installations, community engaged practices and public art.

Yi Bin Liang

Yi Bin Liang is a bookbinder, illustrator and fabricator from Singapore, working in Watertown, Massachusetts. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration in 2017, and received a Diploma in Bookbinding from the North Bennet Street School in 2019.

Daphne Xu

Daphne Xu is a Chinese-Canadian artist and filmmaker exploring the politics and poetics of place, and diasporic affect through photography, film, video installation, and printed matter. Her creative practice engages observations of the everyday, and lived experiences of contested landscapes, primarily in contemporary Chinese contexts. In 2016, she co-founded Sponge Gourd Collective, an art and research collective, whose publications and video installations have been circulated and exhibited internationally.

Helen Yung

The child of Hong Kong immigrants, Helen grew up mostly just south of Boston, spending many a Sunday afternoon in Boston Chinatown after church having good food with friends. She's experienced first-hand (and seen second hand, as an ancient history nerd) how art connects communities across ages, cultures, and beliefs. She currently lives in Quincy and New York.

This event is made possible by our sponsors:

Become a Sponsor: Click here or contact Jean Quintal for more information.

4 Chinatown residents + 2 artists + 2 neighborhood spaces = Residence Lab!

Through a series of Zoom workshops and co-creation sessions, the Residence Lab 2020 cohort worked to transform some of the most notoriously underutilized and unwelcoming corners of Chinatown into beloved, resident-centered spaces. 

Come discover the creative results of bringing artists and residents together to shape a rapidly changing Chinatown.

At 35 Kneeland St: Visit window art made by artist Maria Fong and residents Sylvia Chen and Po Chun Chow, advocating for safer streets in Chinatown and a reimagining of transportation and traffic in the neighborhood.

At 8 Hudson St: Explore a mural celebrating Chinatown’s culture and character by artist Krina Patel and residents Angela Soo Hoo and Dianyvet Serrano. Also, take a self-guided  walking tour through the eyes of Krina, Angela, and Dianyvet, visiting their favorite neighborhood spots.

This program is created in partnership with the Asian Community Development Corporation and Pao Arts Center. Residence Lab is generously funded by the Barr Foundation and ArtPlace America and supported by Tufts Medical Center.

Contact: Anju Madhok

In 2020 - 2021, Pao Arts Center invited community members to celebrate and strengthen the API community of Chinatown and Greater Boston by sharing a love letter to Boston Chinatown. Individuals submitted poems, drawings, illustration and more, all inspired and dedicated to Boston Chinatown to help uplift our neighborhood.

We Invite you to experience this letters, in an interactive map, inspired by community stories and neighborhood history.

Map written and developed by: Ashley Jin

Inspired by Wing on Wo & Co’s Love Letters to Chinatown.

This project is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities, a state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC).”

 Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Enjoy these Love Letters to Boston Chinatown both in English and translated into Chinese!