A River Rolls On: An Activist Oral History of Pearl River Mart

In 2016, Chinatown Art Brigade was invited to participate in Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s CTRL+ALT Culture Lab Pop-up exhibit in SoHo/Chinatown, NYC. Held at the former Pearl River Mart storefront on Broadway, we wanted to pay homage to this mom and pop business that opened in 1971 in response to trade wars between China and the U.S., and served as an important resource for the Chinatown immigrant community for decades. We honored their story as an important part of Chinatown’s history through this oral history recording, now accessible at the Museum of Chinese in America archives.