What's New?
23rd August
Well time has flown and lots has happened with my life.
I am now a
proud father and as such site updates have been impacted I'm afraid!
CantoDict is still going strong though and I hope to find time for some useful updates soon.
On a less positive note, we are currently undergoing a spam attack, so please bear with us while we
try and deal with this.
/\dam
Last 10 posts in our forums:
Cass Phang - 一千零一晚 05/17/2024 by ♭♫
[+-]
Re: A Glimpse of Los Angeles Chinatown 05/17/2024 by ♭♫
[+-][
www.latimes.com]
Opinion: How L.A.’s Chinatown helped reinvent Southern California
If the threat of violence wasn’t enough, by the 1920s most neighborhoods across the city were covered in restrictive covenants, language in housing deeds that prevented people of color from buying homes. Middle-class white residents, however, considered the urban core less desirable, leaving these homes available.
The 1930 census identified about 3,000 Chinese in a city of more than a million people. During this decade, the Los Angeles Times mentioned Chinatown more than 1,100 times — compared with just 200 mentions of Little Tokyo, even though the Japanese American community was seven times larger. Coverage even surpassed that of the Mexican American community near the Plaza, nearly all of which predated the arrival of Anglo settlers. Alarmist media depictions contributed to the city’s decision to build Union Station on the site of Old Chinatown, displacing most of the immigrant community.
In the summer of 1938, two neighborhoods emerged as replacements to Old Chinatown. Known as New Chinatown and China City, they pushed back against leering representations of Chinatown by using nonthreatening commercialism, surface aesthetics and racial performance to shape popular perceptions of Chinese Americans. Both districts’ commodification of racial differences shaped L.A.’s image as a complex multiethnic metropolis.
China City eventually was destroyed by fire in 1948.
Today, Chinatown is one of many Asian neighborhoods across Southern California. From Little Saigon in Westminster to Artesia’s Little India and the ethnoburbs of the San Gabriel Valley, Asian American neighborhoods help define the region. Within this context, it’s easy to forget the distinct role that Los Angeles’ Chinatown has played.
Too many people dismiss Chinatown’s pagoda-style roofs, fortune cookies and wishing well as inauthentic representations of Asia and Asian Americans. Instead, we should embrace them as reminders that neither the popular image of Los Angeles nor the city itself would have developed as they are today without Chinatown.
Re: Grant Avenue Follies - 雞毛掃 05/17/2024 by ♭♫
[+-][
www.thirteen.org]
Revitalizing Nightlife in San Francisco’s Chinatown
San Francisco Chinatown’s golden era saw showgirls, Broadway stars and businessmen nightly, but by the 1970s, the entertainment scene had disappeared. Now, a multigenerational alliance has formed to revive its historical vitality.
Re: Brilliant Ideas to Bring Tourists Back to Chinatown 05/17/2024 by ♭♫
[+-]photos: [
scotscoop.com]
Quote
♭♫
Chinatown is not only about tea.
[
www.sfchronicle.com]
April 12, 2024
People converge at the night market in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Friday.
Within minutes of Chinatown’s second night market of the year opening Friday night, San Francisco resident Finesse Louie made a beeline to the famous “Dragon Papa” store.
She lined up for close to an hour with a baby strapped to her chest and toddler daughter circling her feet for a taste of the coveted dragon beard candy at the store that, she said, she thinks is the only place you can find the Chinese delicacy in the city.
“It’s really good,” she said — so good that not just Louie, but at least a couple of hundred people braved an interminable line to buy the $16 Chinese cotton candy.
The crowds at Chinatown’s two night markets — reintroduced this year after a successful run during the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit — have been so seismic as to surprise even the dragon beard candy merchant, Derek Tam, 40, himself.
Customers jostled around Tam’s tent to catch a glimpse of the master spinning rock-hard golden molasses into thousands of ivory sugar threads finer than silk. Hailing from five generations of dragon beard candymakers, Tam said the art is not just a business; it is his family tradition. He started making the treat when he was 9.
Tam’s stall is one of 30 at Chinatown’s new monthly night markets organized by the BeChinatown coalition. It would not have been possible without a $100,000 grant from the nonprofit Civic Joy Fund, Lily Lo, the coalition’s president and market organizer, said. The fund’s co-founder, Manny Yekutiel, approached her after the market’s successful APEC iteration, she said, to offer the grant.
The funds will allow the market to continue on the second Friday of every month, from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., through November.
“I’m really happy I had the opportunity to help all the small businesses in Chinatown,” Lo said. She hopes to expand the market from its current three blocks on Grant Avenue to four. And in the long-term, she said she needs to find a permanent source of funding — with permitting fees, entertainment fees, and wages for staff to put up the tents and clean up the garbage, the costs add up.
“Business is very good,” Zoey told the Chronicle in Mandarin. “I told my mom today, ‘We must come.’ I thought today would definitely have a lot of people.”
People converge around the lion dance at the night market in San Francisco on Friday.
Chinatown merchants and community members hope the market will give the neighborhood, still reeling from the pandemic’s aftermath, another much-needed boost.
Zhang said the neighborhood needs the market and more activities like it to attract customers.Quote
♭♫
The Chinatown night market should embrace multi-culturalism so that there is something for everyone.
[
www.narcity.com]
There will be traditional music and dramatic art performances, costume shows, martial arts demonstrations, and tons of "multi-ethnic performances" from Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Mexico and Canada, the performances manager for the event told Narcity.Quote
♭♫
If you are going to go out night clubbing anyway, then first make a short stop at the Chinatown Night Market for an exotic food crawl where the
Real Fun begins!
[
www.timeout.com]
Think!Chinatown, a non-profit based in Manhattan’s Chinatown, is throwing its first installment of Chinatown Night Market (formerly known as Chinatown Nights), a monthly summer series of art and food at Forsyth Plaza at the Manhattan Bridge.
Re: Anyone know any patriotic songs in Cantonese? 05/16/2024 by ♭♫
[+-][
www.cnn.com]
YouTube blocks Hong Kong protest anthem after court order
Quote
♭♫
podcast: [
www.npr.org]
This week Hong Kong's appeals court Judge Jeremy Poon ruled that "Glory to Hong Kong" should not be performed, broadcast, or reproduced.
Re: Meaning of this ritual? 05/16/2024 by ♭♫
[+-] If you find other interpretations of that photo, please post it here. [
www.youtube.com] shows the Floating Childrens (Piu Sik) Parade during the
Cheung Chau bun festival on the Buddha's birthday.
Quote
Sonny
That's very interesting. Thank you for enlightening me regarding this ritual. I learned something new today. ^____^
Quote
♭♫
This is just my forensic guess:
I think the clue to this ancient rite of passage is the
花钿 on the child's forehead. If it is not a 花钿 but instead a red dot then it could be related to an awakening of the the 3rd eye ritual.
[
en.chinaculture.org]
The First Writing Ceremony, also called Qi Meng (Enlightenment) Ceremony, was a very important ceremony for every student before they were admitted to school. During the ceremony, the teacher would put a red dot on the child’s forehead. The red dot represented opening the wisdom eye, since the words 'dot' are pronounced the same as 'wisdom' in Chinese. Children would also toll a bronze bell to start a new term. After that, they could finally sit down in their seats and begin to study.However, I would rule out the Enlightenment Ceremony because the child in the picture looks too young to be entering school.
Quote
Sonny
I was browsing on Facebook's "舊相重溫 Old photos revisit" page and came across this photo. Would anyone happen to know what is the meaning of this practice of having the child hung by the poles?
Please see link below:
[
www.facebook.com]
花和霧 flowers and fog 05/16/2024 by ♭♫
[+-]San Francisco: May 18-26, 2024.
WORLD PREMIERE — 花和霧 flowers and fog is a new inter-generational performance work between Melissa Lewis Wong and her mother Joy Chenyu Lewis - exploring ancestral healing, language and familial relationship. Performances will invite audiences to a Chinatown picnic and a live 45-min multidisciplinary in-theater experience that culminates in a mahjong game and tea.
TICKETS NOW ON SALE
NYC Preview: April 8, 2024.
Joy and Melissa shared a short preview of our project at the historic at Judson Church in NYC - on Monday, April 8 - as part of the Movement Research series.
Re: Meaning of this ritual? 05/16/2024 by Sonny
[+-]That's very interesting. Thank you for enlightening me regarding this ritual. I learned something new today. ^____^
Quote
♭♫
This is just my forensic guess:
I think the clue to this ancient rite of passage is the
中华酷 on the child's forehead. If it is not a 中华酷 but instead a red dot then it could be related to an awakening of the the 3rd eye ritual.
[
en.chinaculture.org]
The First Writing Ceremony, also called Qi Meng (Enlightenment) Ceremony, was a very important ceremony for every student before they were admitted to school. During the ceremony, the teacher would put a red dot on the child’s forehead. The red dot represented opening the wisdom eye, since the words 'dot' are pronounced the same as 'wisdom' in Chinese. Children would also toll a bronze bell to start a new term. After that, they could finally sit down in their seats and begin to study.However, I would rule out the Enlightenment Ceremony because the child in the picture looks too young to be entering school.
Quote
Sonny
I was browsing on Facebook's "舊相重溫 Old photos revisit" page and came across this photo. Would anyone happen to know what is the meaning of this practice of having the child hung by the poles?
Please see link below:
[
www.facebook.com]
Re: Meaning of this ritual? 05/16/2024 by ♭♫
[+-]This is just my forensic guess:
I think the clue to this ancient rite of passage is the
花钿 on the child's forehead. If it is not a 花钿 but instead a red dot then it could be related to an awakening of the the 3rd eye ritual.
[
en.chinaculture.org]
The First Writing Ceremony, also called Qi Meng (Enlightenment) Ceremony, was a very important ceremony for every student before they were admitted to school. During the ceremony, the teacher would put a red dot on the child’s forehead. The red dot represented opening the wisdom eye, since the words 'dot' are pronounced the same as 'wisdom' in Chinese. Children would also toll a bronze bell to start a new term. After that, they could finally sit down in their seats and begin to study.However, I would rule out the Enlightenment Ceremony because the child in the picture looks too young to be entering school.
Quote
Sonny
I was browsing on Facebook's "舊相重溫 Old photos revisit" page and came across this photo. Would anyone happen to know what is the meaning of this practice of having the child hung by the poles?
Please see link below:
[
www.facebook.com]
Meaning of this ritual? 05/16/2024 by Sonny
[+-]I was browsing on Facebook's "舊相重溫 Old photos revisit" page and came across this photo. Would anyone happen to know what is the meaning of this practice of having the child hung by the poles?
Please see link below:
[
www.facebook.com]