Why Some People in Chinatown Oppose a Museum Dedicated to Their Culture

In Manhattan’s Chinatown, anti-gentrification protesters are furious over funding granted to a museum that they say doesn’t represent their community.

Twice a week, Li Zhen Tan, a former dim sum server, plants herself in front of the Museum of Chinese in America in Chinatown and joins the fervent chants of dozens of others like her who have congregated there. “Bloodsuckers! Sellout!” she yelled recently, using a handkerchief to dab sweat from her face as the sun beat down. A man nearby shouted into a megaphone, alternating between English and Cantonese: “They think that because they speak better English, that they graduated from Ivy League schools, that they are better than us.” The invectives were aimed at a museum that has struggled to survive since it was founded in 1980 to preserve and exhibit the history of Chinese Americans. It received a big boost when the city awarded the institution $35 million out of $50 million distributed to local community projects in Chinatown in return for the expansion of a jail there.