Back to All Events

Experience Chinatown Arts Festival 2023


This fall, see, hear, create, and connect. Together, celebrate the rich cultural fabric of Boston Chinatown through free creative activities.

Mural Installations

Enjoy lively murals that respond to this year’s theme, “How does a community thrive?”

Create your own self-paced tour or join a guided tour on September 30th at 11:15 am or 1:00 pm.

APM coffee: 99 Kneeland Street | A Communal Blend | Jennifer Duan

Crave Chinatown: 75 Kneeland Street | Unity | Jinyi Duan

WakuWaku: 2 Tyler Street | Welcoming Dishes | Yuan-yuan Wang 

Q Restaurant: 660 Washington Street | We Protect Each Other | Yixuan Zeng 

Happy Lamb Hotpot Boston: 693 Washington Street | Let’s Eat | Jialu Zou 

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC): 38 Ash Street | What Makes a Community Thrive? | BCNC Youth Center | Read more about their process of creating the murals

Schedule

Sunday, October 1 | 11:00 am - 3:30 pm

At Auntie Kay & Uncle Frank Chin Park on The Greenway (near Chinatown Gate) unless otherwise noted

11:00 am | Continuum Dance Project (a part of Momentum Greenway Dance Program, Presented by Amazon, 2023) | Contemporary Dance

11:15 am | Tour of Experience Chinatown murals (check-in under yellow Pao Arts Center tent)

11:30 am | Nüwa Athletic Club | Chinese Lion Dance

11:45 am | TIFFY | Singer-Songwriter

12:50 pm | Maddie Lam | Singer-Songwriter

1:00 pm | Tour of Experience Chinatown murals (check-in under yellow Pao Arts Center tent)

2:00 pm | Juk-Sing | Canto-Pop Band

3:00 pm | Encore presentation: Continuum Dance Project (a part of Momentum Greenway Dance Program, Presented by Amazon, 2023) | Contemporary Dance

11:00 am - 3:30 pm | Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany St | At Home In Chinatown: A Residence Lab Retrospective Exhibit


Experience Chinatown is part of Chinatown HOPE, a collective of eight Chinatown organizations, funded through Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Community-based Health Initiative, with the aim of coming together to leverage and build upon existing assets to have a greater, lasting impact on working class residents in Boston Chinatown.

Muralists

Jennifer (Jenn) Duan (she/they) is a Chinese American artist based in Cambridge, MA. She is inspired by how art can be used as a medium for storytelling, emotional healing, and conveying the intangible. Through art, Jenn is interested in exploring the intersections of Chinese American identity, mental health, and what it means to be part of a community. In their free time, Jenn likes running, collecting zines, and peeling tangerines. 

Jinyi Duan 

Jinyi Duan (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist who draws inspiration from the various cultures they have been a part of through their life. Responding to a world that is becoming more segregated, they hope to show the individual nuances that make up various cultures, and in turn, highlighting the connections that exist between them. Typically working visually in acrylic paint, pens, and sharpies, they specialize in line work with a limited color palette.

Yuan-yuan Wang (she/her) is a Taiwanese artist and educator based in Boston, MA. She is interested in showing personal experiences and philosophy through art, connecting deeply with texture, layers and colors. 

Yixuan Zeng (they/them) is a visual artist that passionately believes in the limitless power of storytelling for greater social change. They have collaborated at numerous film festivals to elevate underrepresented stories, formerly as Programming Director at the Boston Asian American Film Festival. As an illustrator and designer, Yixuan has worked on a variety of projects from apparel to emojis. Nowadays, Yixuan crafts murals to reclaim public spaces for local communities and to inspire collective healing.

Jialu Zou (they/them) is a non-binary Chinese American freelance illustrator based in Boston, MA. They graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in illustration. They specialize in digital illustration with a focus on bright colors and a variety of textures. Jialu’s previous professional experience includes public art, gala pieces, and various zine projects. Besides illustrations, Jialu loves cooking, book making, and most of all, spending time with their cat, Percy. 

The Youth Center provides opportunities for youth to build connections, explore and understand their community, and to put leadership skills into action. Through year-round programming centered on leadership development, education, and workforce readiness in Boston and Quincy, BCNC supports youth to thrive in school and beyond. Read more about their process of creating the murals.

Performers

Founded in 2013 by Fernadina Chan, CDP choreographers/co-directors Adriane Brayton and Fernadina Chan work collaboratively with their dancer. Continuum Dance Project pushes the boundaries of audience interaction and traditional vantage points, by presenting work in unconventional spaces.

Photo Credit: Annielly Camargo

Inspired by the Cantonese hits of the 80s and 90s, these Kwong Kow Chinese School dropouts have performed covers of Beyond, Faye Wong, and many more across the Greater Boston Area since 2018. By sharing these classics along with original songs, Juk Sing (JK Wong, Jeffrey La, and Ashley Yu) hopes to bring back some cultural nostalgia with a dream pop twist.   

Maddie Lam is a Boston-born singer-songwriter, producer, and performer. She understands music as the sound of a soul. Infused with softness, her music and performances offer a dynamic, connective and healing space for others to rest in.   

The Nüwa Athletic Club, based in Boston, MA, provides an environment for Asian American girls and women to enhance their physical and emotional development through teamwork, sportsmanship and cultural activities which includes but is not limited to lion and dragon dance.  

TIFFY is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer Tiffany Sammy. TIFFY represents what it means for genres to clash and meld in 2023, preserving a bottled-up mix of dream rock, sugar pop, and coarse punk. Often boiling the terminology down to "soft punk", her music has been featured in FADER, Paste Magazine, NPR and Vanyaland. She actively plays throughout New England with her live band.  

Sponsors

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR SPONSORS & PARTNERS FOR MAKING THIS EVENT POSSIBLE!

PRESENTING

PLATINUM

GOLD

EVENT PRESENTER

PATRON

FRIEND

COMMUNITY

PARTNERS