As the months went on, the Covid pandemic took hold. Former President Donald Trump s xenophobic rhetoric about what he dubbed the China virus spread. Lee was worried about what would happen to the neighborhood and small businesses that were so much a part of her life. I can t lose this community that means so much to me that has helped to shape me as an Asian-American female, Lee recalls feeling.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A closed sign is displayed in the window of a business in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York, U.S., on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. Photographer: Nina Westervelt/Bloomberg via Getty Images
How one group is making sure small businesses in Manhattan s Chinatown stay open By Paulina Smolinski
May 14, 2021 / 7:55 PM / CBS News
Businesses in Chinatowns across the U.S. are recovering after battling closures from the pandemic and a rise in hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Vic Lee, the co-founder of Welcome to Chinatown, is making sure Manhattan s Chinatown stays open. She recently spoke to CBS News about her work in the community.
CBS News: To start, tell me about your connection to Manhattan s Chinatown?
Vic Lee: I am a native New Yorker. I grew up in Brooklyn, and Chinatown is a really special place for me. I think of my upbringing being in Chinatown because I used to come out every Sunday with my parents and my sister. We would drive out to Chinatown where I had Sunday dinner with my grandmother. It s this very formative part of my identity. Now in my early 30s, I ve been living in Chinatown for the pa
How Welcome To Chinatown Is Preserving The Vibrancy Of Asian-Owned Small Businesses
With Welcome to Chinatown, co-founder Vic Lee offers support for New York’s Asian American community as it navigates inequities exacerbated by the pandemic.
Asian Americans Out Loud is a project highlighting Asian Americans who are leading the way forward in art and activism. You can read more by visiting our APAHM 2021 homepage.
Story By Marina Fang
Photography by Stephanie Mei-Ling
For decades, the cavernous upstairs dining room at Jing Fong has been an institution in Manhattan’s Chinatown. On weekend mornings, it’s typically packed with customers, a symphony of lively chatter, the clatter of dishes, and the squeaky wheels of dim sum carts rolling from table to table. Families have rented the room for birthdays, graduations, holidays and wedding receptions. On March 7, it served dim sum for one final time, joining a long list of Chinatown businesses to shutter during the COVID-19 pandemi
arrow Chong Bretillon and her dog Telly in Dutch Kills, Queens Jax F. Floyd
For Asian American New Yorkers, the outsized mental strain of living through the coronavirus pandemic has been exacerbated by a commensurate rise in anti-Asian sentiment. The bias swept into our region in large part due to xenophobic rhetoric connecting COVID-19 to Asian Americans, including then-President Donald Trump s habit of blaming the virus on China.
As bias incidents and hate crimes against Asian Americans increased, the nonprofit Asian American Federation set up a bias reporting form on its website to report hate crimes in the tri-state area. It tallied more than 500 reports between the beginning of 2020 and February 2021 (and estimated that the actual number is significantly higher). In the city, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism says the number of anti-Asian hate crimes reported to the NYPD rose from 3 in 2019 to 28 last year.
Redundancy does not mean the end. In fact it can be the beginning of a new chapter
7 February 2021 • 6:00am
Whatever you do next can be the making of you, says Marina Gask, 58
Credit: Clara Molden for The Telegraph
The prospect of reinventing yourself in midlife can feel daunting, especially when the run-up has been devastating. If you’ve done the same job for many years and are really, really good at it, how on earth can you let that go and, like Mr Benn donning a spaceman’s helmet, simply put on a different hat and pitch yourself headlong into a whole new career?