A Postcard View Of Chinatown - My Article From the 1984 Book THE CHINESE EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA
In the late 1970s I assembled some of my historic postcards of American Chinatowns, including cards showing Chinese restaurants, into a presentation called A Postcard View of Chinatown. I gave this presentation a few times, including at the 1980 national Chinese American studies conference sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America and held at the Chinese Cultural Center in what was then the Holiday Inn in San Francisco Chinatown. In 1984, the papers presented at the conference were published in a book put out by the society, The Chinese American Experience. This is the text of the article in that book A Postcard View of Chinatown The picture postcard is the sort of everyday item that we normally don't give a second thought. Most people consider the picture postcard merely a convenient way to write the folks back home or a nice souvenir from a trip. But there is more to the picture postcard than meets the eye. As a pictori...