Q&A: Jian (Tom) Wei, MSHP'26

Last summer, Jian (Tom) Wei (MSHP'26) interned with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, where he drew on oral histories he conducted with community members and the rich archives of the neighborhood to put together an exhibit on Chinatown’s history. He delved deeper into that history through his thesis, exploring the construction of Chinatown’s towering Pai Lou or traditional Chinese gate, known as the Friendship Gate. For his extensive work over the last year, Wei was recently honored by the Department of Historic Preservation with the Aaron Wunsch Award For Public History Of The Built Environment. The award recognizes Wei for carrying forward Wunsch’s deep commitment to building, enriching, and strengthening community through public history of the built environment. This interview was conducted while Wei was still in the process of writing his thesis, which can be found in full at Scholarly Commons. It has been edited.

How did you find Chinatown in Philly and what was your first experience there?

When I was an undergrad, I met Kaia Chau. She founded the Ginger Arts Center, and she’s the daughter of a prominent Chinatown organizer, Debbie Wei. That's how I became connected with Chinatown, especially after graduation. Studying at the University of Pennsylvania, it became easier and more affordable to visit Chinatown often. I did my undergrad thesis on LA's Chinatown in the early 20^th century, thinking that there wouldn’t be enough materials for Philadelphia. It's still difficult to find historical materials on Philadelphia’s Chinatown from the early 20th century, but for the latter half of the century, there’s a very rich collection spread throughout the city in different repositories. A lot of the prominent figures are still around, and I’ve been able to meet them. That’s how I became familiar with Chinatown academically, and in terms of participating in community activities and organizing.

PCDC does a lot of community work beyond historic preservation. How do you feel historic preservation and public history fits into part of their mission?

I think community organizations like PCDC and Asian Americans United have a very strong interest in telling history. Because PCDC is a long-standing organization, it has a lot of materials within its own archives. PCDC has a lot of things to balance. It’s difficult for them to find enough resources or time to put these materials to use. Haoyi Shang (MSHP ‘23), after joining PCDC, became very aware of the potential these materials hold. And that's how I see myself fitting into this larger story.

I think the arena fight means people once again wanted to articulate Chinatown's longtime existence in Philadelphia and how the preservation of Chinatown's built fabric is instrumental to telling its history. It’s also helpful to re-establish community memories and to remind folks how many times Chinatown has repelled development projects. Telling a better story for Chinatown community members means building confidence in what could be done, and telling a better story for those outside of the community is about articulating Chinatown's multilayered history and importance to the city.

Throughout your internship and thesis, you’ve been able to get oral histories and you're interacting with people who lived that history. How did you decide to engage in that work?

In terms of my internship, that series of oral histories was part of what I was hired to do. The last set of oral histories on Philly’s Chinatown was published in the early 2000s by the Asian Arts Initiative in the early 2000s. Dr. Kathryn Wilson did a round of interviews for her fabulous book on Philadelphia’s Chinatown, but she did not put them in a public repository. We were basically due for an update, probably a bit overdue. We hoped that it would serve the exhibit to some degree by incorporating people's stories. In terms of my thesis, that is primarily because the time period that I'm working on is close enough that I was able to find people with firsthand experience of this project, and fortunately, a lot of them I had good relationships with already. I’m very, very grateful that folks are willing and generous enough to share their stories and time with me.

Your thesis focused on the Friendship Gate and how that was a collaborative project between Chinese and Chinese-American artists. Can you share more about the connection between these groups?

The Chinese identity and the Chinese-American identity in this case are drastically different things, because the two sides came from very different backgrounds. On the Philadelphia side, none of the artisans were born and raised in mainland China. This was very different from the Chinese artisans. The two groups had very different goals and purposes in mind, and different political backgrounds. And these things were in communication with each other in the larger context of the normalization of the China-U.S. relationship and Chinatown's continuous struggle to survive in Philadelphia. And I think it was through this interaction that both sides came to a new understanding of who they are and who they are not.

One very interesting example was the language of Chinese-American architect Sabrina Soong, who led the American side of this project. In her letters to mainland Chinese officials asking for assistance, she refers to China as ‘homeland’. This was a very deliberate choice of words to establish a connection, despite her experience growing up and being educated in Taiwan. It shows how these political calculations were necessary in the early 1980s to smooth the negotiation process, or, specifically, how she believed it could serve to smooth the negotiation process.

You were able to reconnect two of the people who had worked on the gate together. What was that experience like?

Before I started the project, Debbie Wei had told me about the gate. She knew the artisans when they were here. She had this very close connection with them. She was there at their job site. They would sometimes eat and cook together, things like that. And I thought at the very beginning of the project, with all the documentary evidence I found at PCDC, it would be very helpful to find the other side of the story in China. Eventually, I was able to connect with one of the surviving members of the team of 12 artisans. I believe he's in his early 80s now. He was the founder or co-founder of one of China's earliest historic preservation programs in Beijing and specializes in classical Chinese architectural painting.

It was very unexpected. And it was also very surprising for me that both he and Debbie had so many memories of that project and remember things very, very clearly. I'm currently working on the on-the-ground experiences of how Chinatown hosted these artisans. For me it was very fortunate and satisfying that I was able to find so many primary sources documenting what their life experiences were during their two and a half month stay in Philadelphia. I found things like receipts for their furniture loans, I found receipts for their grocery shopping. It’s very rich and comprehensive. I'm still trying to make meaning out of it.

Is there anything that you particularly wanted to share or wish I had asked about?

The Friendship Gate was completed in 1984, so not that much time has passed, but already there has been a lot of ambiguity about how it came to be. For something at this level of historical significance, the first-ever Pai Lou built with China-U.S. cooperation in the United States, it needs better interpretation. I hope my work will help people see it differently the next time they pass by the gate. I hope more people can appreciate the work that went into making it possible.