Q&A: Activism in Chinatown Through The Lens of One of Its Own

Teresa Shiu is an Asian-American woman, a native of Hong Kong, a Roman-Catholic, an immigrant, and a New Yorker. Born in Hong Kong, she immigrated to the United States in the early seventies when she was ten years old, and her family settled in Chinatown in the Lower East Side. Shiu’s full-time job is as AVP of Human Resources at a real estate management firm, but she has always been an activist — helping to create an Asian American Studies program at her alma mater, Cornell; volunteering with the Chinatown Health Clinic and what would become the Museum of Chinese in America; working with domestic violence survivors and helping to create the Asian Women’s Center. She’s the kind of person that will hold on to a pair of handmade earrings given to her by a client she worked with, decades after they have lost touch. (This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.) 

How did your family decide to leave Hong Kong and come over to the United States?

My great grandfather was in the United States working as a laborer in San Francisco, but his family, including my grandfather, was not allowed to come over with him [because of exclusionary laws like the Page Law]. My grandparents stayed in China until they passed away relatively young, and then my father and uncle were adopted by an aunt who had only daughters and no sons. After World War II, the Chinese Communist Revolution happened and that was a tumultuous time. My father realized there would not be much of a future in China, and so he ended up leaving everything behind to go to Hong Kong. 

And that was before he had a family?

Yes. My parents met in Hong Kong and they got married and started a family. By that time my father’s adopted sister had moved to the United States, and in the late sixties family unification policies were put into place. And that’s how my family was able to come here — because my father’s sister sponsored him. 

How long did that process take?

They started that process right after I was born. By the time we got our visas, it had been a decade. But [my parents] saw it as an opportunity. In anticipation that we might be immigrating, my mom sent us to English-language schools. While I can still speak and write Chinese, I’m a lot more comfortable in English. I was thankful for that, because as soon as you came here you had to integrate. I do remember my first day of school here.

Tell me about it. 

I was in fifth grade. On my very first day they had a math test, and my teacher said I didn’t have to take it, but she gave me the test paper in case I wanted to try. I finished the test in about five minutes. My teacher took the paper, started grading it, and she smiled and said “Come here Teresa.” She sat me down next to her and said “You’re going to be my grader.” 

I had gotten a 100% on that test, because in Hong Kong I was done with fractions by third grade. That made me feel like the transition was not so bad. 

Did you experience any tension between assimilation and retaining your culture of origin?

At the end of my first semester at Cornell, I went with a friend to a meeting of the Asian-American Coalition (AAC). At the meeting we started talking about how we were perceived. Someone might ask you “So where are you from?” And you might say I’m from New York and they will say “No, where are you really from?” And before I never thought of that as derogatory, but it is an assumption that you’re not from here, you’re not American. 

So I got involved in the AAC. We wanted to establish an Asian American Studies program, and there were two summers where I stayed at Cornell to work on proposals and read books in the field. The semester after I graduated, they offered the first Asian American Studies class! We got a letter from the dean thanking us for our work. 

You’ve talked to me before about your time spent volunteering in the Chinatown community, can you tell me more about that?

During a break from Cornell a friend and I were trying to find speakers for the Asian-American Coalition conference, and that’s how we were introduced to the Chinatown History Project. They were like us — newly graduated, and they felt there was a need to document Chinese-American history. I also was a volunteer for the Chinatown Health Clinic in high school, translating between doctors and patients. I came back during college to intern with them, and that’s how I met Patricia [Eng], and she had realized there was a big need [for domestic violence resources] because you have women who are new to the country, don’t have the language skills and are stuck in a situation of abuse. 

Pat asked me to help her start what would become the Asian Women’s Center. We started as a hotline; Pat had just finished her Master’s in Social Work so she would coach us. We started out two nights a week, using the space at the Chinese History Project, and when we would come back there would be so many voicemails. Eventually it grew from there and I did crisis counseling with women, helping them leave or prepare to leave abusive situations. 

Before we had a shelter of our own, our volunteers would offer their homes as safe-houses. One woman, who had contacted us two weeks before she gave birth, had to go to court to get an order of protection against her abuser. She couldn’t take the newborn to court with her, and so I volunteered to babysit even though I didn’t even know how to change a diaper! I kept in touch with her and celebrated her daughter’s first and second birthday. The woman was able to get an order of protection and she started taking English classes. During that time she started making jewelry to sell to support herself, and she gave me these big dangly beaded earrings that I can’t wear, but I still have them today.