Portland, OR - Chinatown Museum

Before writing about the Museum, I would encourage watching Jennifer Fang’s webinar. This wonderful webinar challenges the way we imagine history. She touches on important topics regarding the overseas Chinese, the workforce being globalized, and economic evolution. Like most Chinatowns, the area in Portland underwent redevelopment as the economic climate changed over the years.

After learning about what Jennifer has to say, it’s like dessert after dinner. What a remarkably, stunning and thoroughly impactful museum. They have thought of it all. An accurate portrayal of our ancestors who came as sojourners, those early pioneer settlers, to our Chinese American community today. This museum covers it all.

My favorite display was the herbalist of course. The museum is well organized with different displays walking one through the natural evolution of the journey of our Chinese ancestors. This is one of the rare museums that has a cremation box, which is for the Chinese bodies when they were exhumed back to China to be buried in their ancestral cemetery. There’s also a wonderful restaurant display of the Chinese-American dream. For many of the first generation of the Chinese American Born, their families provided for them by starting restaurants. This opportunity would later afford future generations with the chance to go to college and move the family lineage even further. Towards the end of the museum journey, there’s a lottery display. What ingenuity. The lottery display just shows you, even though many Chinatowns were created out of segregation, the Chinese had wonderful ways of entertaining and creating inclusivity for all ethnicities.

The Portland Chinatown Museum is located at 127 NW Third Avenue, Portland, OR 97209.