Artifacts and pictures, including Bruce Lee (top), are displayed at the Museum of Chinese in America, which opens tomorrow.(Photo Source: China Daily/by Wang Hao) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, Sept. 21 -- Much like the immigrants whose story it aims to tell, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) is moving up in the world.

    Having spent decades in cramped quarters the size of a three-bedroom apartment - and overshadowed by New York's famous Museum Mile - the MOCA has just completed a much needed, and long-awaited expansion. It will open the doors to its new location tomorrow, allowing the museum to broaden its presence in showcasing the Chinese community in America.

    "The history of Chinese in America is very rich. Most Chinese in Hong Kong or Taiwan or the Chinese mainland do not know that much about the history of the Chinese in America. Most Chinese in the United States don't know that much either," says Alice Mong, director of the museum. "I want (the museum) to become a major destination in the United States."

    Originally situated in a Manhattan Chinatown building and occupying a mere 2,000 square feet, the museum will now have 14,000 square feet in the heart of the neighborhood. With seven times more space, the 30-year-old museum will now be able to expand its collections, take in more visitors, and boost its preservation and display of the history and culture of Chinese Americans.

    The museum started as a project of two young men, Jack Tchen and Charlie Lai, who went around Chinatown collecting items and stories from everyday residents to keep an archive of the story of the neighborhood.

    The current expansion project came with a price tag of $15 million, and the organization has already raised $12 million of that cost. The bulk of the seed money for the project came from the Sept 11 Fund, an acknowledgement of the damage Chinatown suffered in the attacks.

    The terrorist attacks of "Sept 11 hit Chinatown hard, and we're still suffering in a lot of ways", Mong says. "We're hoping to use the museum to help with Chinatown's rebirth."

Artifacts and pictures, including Bruce Lee (top), are displayed at the Museum of Chinese in America, which opens tomorrow.(Photo Source: China Daily/by Wang Hao) Photo Gallery>>>

    Other lead sponsors for the capital expansion include the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the New York City Council and the offices of the New York City mayor and borough council president.

    Although the size of the museum is expanding, the staff member remains low, only increasing from eight to nine. Expanding the museum into a national presence requires an expansion of the membership base, which stands at 300. Mong hopes to attract 1,000 members by the end of the year.

    MOCA's new space is designed by artist Maya Lin, who became famous for designing the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, as a 21-year-old undergraduate.

    Lin's design for MOCA helps visitors take a journey through the history of the Chinese in the United States, and is itself an homage to a dying tradition in China - that of the courtyard house. Traditional homes in China are built around a courtyard, where the family gather. Surrounding the courtyard are areas of the house where family members reside, including the extended family.

    The center of the museum is an open area of exposed brick where a staircase leads to the bottom floor of the museum. The exposed brick and unfinished appearance in the central "courtyard" area is part of Lin's vision, to show the scars and rough beauty of the original space, Mong says.

    Surrounding the central area is the museum itself, filled with the pictures and stories of Chinese immigrants in America. Much of the museum is wired so that displays of antiquated photographs and text are positioned next to electronic displays of individuals telling the tales of their lives in the United States.

    The journey starts in a room dedicated to the traders who traveled to the United States for business and quickly moves to the early Chinese who came to America for work. Each room has back-lit plaques of photographs and text of various individuals and their stories. For example, one plaque shows Joseph Pierce, who was a member of the 14th Connecticut Infantry in the Civil War and fought in the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg.

The Museum of Chinese in America opens tomorrow.(Photo Source: China Daily/by Wang Hao) Photo Gallery>>>

    Another plaque shows Tom Gunn, born in 1890, the first Chinese American to earn a U.S. pilot's license.

    The rooms correspond to the various decades and lead up to the present day, where prominent Chinese Americans such as Steven Chu, the U.S. secretary of energy, and Elaine Chao, the former U.S. secretary of labor, are featured.

    The displays do not pull any punches. The more tragic aspects of the Chinese experiences in the United States are highlighted as well. One display is dedicated to the hundreds of Chinese travelers who were detained on Angel Island in San Francisco, where they had to await authorization to travel into the United States, sometimes for indefinite periods. The display includes a copy of a section of the wooden barracks where the detained people lived, carved with passages of sorrowful poetry lamenting the loss of freedom.

    The history related in the museum discusses the Exclusion Act of 1882 that prevented Chinese from becoming American citizens and the hardships that life under the Act produced.

    "The history of immigration in the United States is not always positive," Mong says. "As Chinese Americans suffered injustices, we'll show that."

    The plan for MOCA is continued growth in the future, as more people become aware of the museum and more people and organizations become involved.

    Mong hopes that people from the Chinese mainland will learn about the museum and include it on their agendas when they visit the United States and is "issuing a challenge" to Chinese companies operating in the United States to step up and help contribute to MOCA's growth.

    Until then, MOCA hopes to present each new chapter of the narratives of Chinese Americans, collecting the tales of how the previous generations overcame various hardships and contributed not only to the vibrant community called Chinatown, but to America as a whole.

    (Source: China Daily)