Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West

Exploring the uncovered heritage of early Chinese American pioneers over a seven-day tour

Browsing Posts in July 19 trip notes

Tour participants might not have noticed it on Day 1 of the Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West. But food and water magically appeared at different intervals as the bus rolled down the highway.

Think sandwiches, cookies, Vitamin C candy, Chinese candy, chips, chocolate mints, fruit gummies, crackers, bottled water, peanuts and granola bars (different kinds). In fact, you might have forgotten that some of these munchies existed had you not sat down on the tour bus.

So what do these supplies look like?

continue reading…

For more than an hour on Monday evening, the plates full of Chinese food – chicken with a ginger-and-green onion sauce, steamed fish with preserved olives, steamed egg - kept arriving at the Four Seas restaurant in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

Maxine Chan, a Seattle food anthropologist, devised the recipes as part of the 2010 Chinese Heritage Tour which the Wing Luke Museum and the USDA Forest Service are sponsoring.

She stood before about 90 guests and gave an overview of each dish – and how immigrants from the Toisan area in southern China brought the food they had known in the fields and rolling hills from their homeland to the American West. The kick-off meal to the 2010 Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West had drawn people to the table.

continue reading…

continue reading…

If you’re driving on a highway or backroad in the coming seven days in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada and spot a bus full of people sporting these tan baseball caps with green lettering, please give us a friendly wave.

If you see us in person, please say hello. We’ll respond in kind – in English, Cantonese, the Taishan – or Toisan – dialect of southern China and Mandarin.

We’re not a new group of conservation corps workers. We’re a group that left Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum on Tuesday. We like history. For many of us, our relatives left the Taishan – or Toisan – region decades ago.

continue reading…

Ask anyone who has traveled – either for a day or for months – about the best way to begin.

The most common answer might be: With delicious food, engaging conversation and a full belly.

As in: Chow down on gastronomical delights prepared with the best ingredients in a mouthwatering, brain-pleasing, smile-inducing, let-me-try-some-now, please-get-out-of-my-way way. In other words, cuisine prepared just-like-they-make-it-back-at-your-grandparents’ house.

For Wing Luke Museum guests and Chinese Heritage Tour participants, this evening will be one in which nine good, old-fashioned Chinese dishes will appear on tables at Four Seas Restaurant in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

To top it off, guests will hear about the links that tie food, history and places in a talk given by Maxine Chan, a Seattle cultural specialist and food anthropologist.

Pretty good, huh?

continue reading…

The Wing Luke Museum in Seattle collaborated with the USDA Forest Service for this second Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West. Beth Takekawa, the museum’s executive director, and Dale Hom, a Forest Service supervisor, take a moment to offer their greetings for this week’s tour.

Hom was instrumental in organizing the first Heritage Tour in 1994 – and this one. Takekawa and staff members at The Wing worked tirelessly to coordinate the logistics – including contacting historians, arranging lodging and putting all the sites in four Western states into historic context.

The International Examiner, a Seattle newspaper, offered a trip preview, written by Paul Kim.

In it, Cassie Chinn, the museum’s deputy executive director, talked about one reason why she participated in organizing this week’s tour. She traveled on the first Heritage Tour in 1994.

She walked away inspired.

The Wing Luke Museum in Seattle strives to accomplish one goal in all of its endeavors - connect people with Asian Pacific American history.

The lessons and stories of the past have always mattered in the United States. Sometimes, they are overlooked. Still, they are important and relevant.

The Wing – as it’s known – is undertaking a rolling history project, of sorts, with this summer’s Chinese Heritage Tour of the American West. It includes stops at historic sites in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. The last trip of its kind was in 1994.

The trip kicks off this evening in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District with an exploration of food once eaten by Chinese American pioneers. On Tuesday, participants board a bus.

We invite you to visit this blog and our Twitter feed throughout the week to get glimpses into the trip and see what participants are experiencing as history appears before their eyes.

continue reading…