Pictured above is a statue of Sun Yat-sen sitting in Columbus Park, a man that is revered throughout China and Taiwan as a revolutionary responsible for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. The statue sits in a section of the park that is also named after Sun Yat-sen. The inclusion of this commemoration here is due to the location of the park as sitting in the center of Chinatown. While there have always been an increase of Chinese immigrants into the former areas of Little Italy from the late 19th century, the population of Chinatown in Lower Manhattan began to boom and completely overtake the boundaries of Little Italy by the mid-1960s as restrictions on migration from China began to be heavily lifted. Now, Chinatown is very representative of the diversity that exists within the Chinese-American community, with different sections of the neighborhood being respectively indicative of communities from Hong Kong, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Guangdong, and more.

The details on the statue itself are also very interesting, besides just the location of it. On it are Chinese characters meaning “All Under Heaven Are Equal” which are shown in Sun Yat-sen’s own handwriting, as well as having his personal stamp right next to it. The features of Sun’s clothes were made on purpose. He can be seen wearing a Tang jacket and a Manchurian dress, which shows the diversity of the ethnic groups and cultures that exist within China. There is also a dichotomy between the formal wear that he has on that are culturally Eastern with the style of shoes that he is wearing, formal attire that is reminiscent of Western attire. This shows the merging of Eastern and Western culture that exists in Chinatown in specific.

Done with Mitchell Lipyansky and Gillan Blanket