This talk will retrace the footsteps of Chinese in the New England area over the past two centuries – from the first known Chinese immigrant to the recent election of Michelle Wu as the first Asian and female mayor of Boston. You will learn about:

• The first known Chinese immigrant in the area and his connection to a famous painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
• A racist incident in Boston Chinatown which later led to the biggest anti-American boycott in China
• Chinese soldiers from the area who have served the country from the Civil War to WWII
• The story of the accidental politician who became the first Asian mayor in the Boston area (and it’s not Michelle Wu) and many more stories of triumphs and tribulations

Introduction of our speaker - York Lo

York Lo is an investment management professional with over 25 years of experience in the US and Asia and a published historian with a focus on the history of the Chinese diaspora and his native Hong Kong. He is head of alternative products at John Hancock Investment Management where he has been a key member of the team responsible for manager selection and oversight of over US$200 billion for the past 14 years and earned his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He has been a board member of the Chinese Historical Society of New England (CHSNE) where he launched its Tunney Lee Memorial Lecture series and 150 Years of Chinese Students in America initiative and has been an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. Prior to his career in finance, he has worked as a US contributing writer for Forbes Zibenjia (the first Chinese edition of Forbes magazine) in the 1990s and in the past decade he was commissioned to contribute over 30 entries for the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography (HKU Press, 2011), authored the book East and West: Seven Chinese Christian Families and its Roles in Two Centuries of East-West Relations (Joint Publishing, 2012) and co-authored the book 20th Century Builders and Architects from Shanghai to Hong Kong (Joint Publishing, 2021).