Capturing the imagination_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Capturing the imagination

He proposes that the Yee Fow museum sit amongst the performing-arts center, retail shops and restaurants that Thomas Enterprises envisions at the old-shop buildings, a part of the fabric of a new marketplace. Yee also proposes a pedestrian overpass to Sacramento’s current Chinatown.

Yee didn’t grow up with stories of Sacramento’s Chinese history. His father assimilated out of fear, and the painter, who is also a program analyst with the California Department of Education, now thinks of himself as inhabiting the hyphen between “Chinese” and “American.” He discovered his history of Sacramento’s lost Chinatown while pursuing a more personal mystery. “My sister said to me, ‘Can you help me find out who our dad was?’”

Yee’s father was a “paper son,” a man who created his parentage out of thin air in order to come to the United States with imaginary family ties.

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California’s legacy of racism against the Chinese is poorly understood, but that may be changing. Yee points to a recently released book by author Jean Pfaelzer, entitled Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, and its accounts of everything from the violent razing of Chinatowns to legal boycotts and deportation policies.

Pfaelzer’s research stretches across California, but includes evidence that Sacramento contributed to the “driving out.” For instance, the trustees of Sacramento made it a misdemeanor for any Chinese person to reside in the city after March 1, 1886.