Chinatown Walking Tour Led By The Mott Street Girls Continue

CHINATOWN, NY — A common refrain at Stop Asian Hate rallies echoes through Chinatown as it awakens from a pandemic slumber: "Love us like you love our food and culture."

The message also reverberates with former Museum of Chinese in America tour guides Chloe Chan and Anna Huang, known as the Mott Street Girls — cheekily acronymized as "MSG" — who have been leading walking tours in Chinatown since March 2020.

Their tours never shied from the darker side of the Asian American experience, such as the 60-year-long Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law restricting a group of people from immigrating to the United States. But the dual rise of COVID-19 and anti-Asian hate makes the pair's tour even more pressing.

"We found our niche to help these small businesses stay afloat during this difficult time, Huang recently said during a discussion about anti-Asian racism impact on Chinatowns.

The "Relive Life Under the Chinese Exclusion" tour will replace the "Beyond the Storefronts" tour that the Mott Street Girls led for a month as their main venture.

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Chan and Huang hope that through the tour, a piece of Chinese and Chinese American history will be more accessible to the broader community. Jersey-born Chan, who visited Chinatown regularly since she was a child for piano lessons, has been leading the tour while Huang operates behind the scenes from her Boston hometown.

There will be 21 stops during the 1.5 hour walking tour. Highlighted sights include the Chinese Opera House, Mott Street fish market, Funeral Row, Columbus Park, the first tenement building, NYC's oldest row house and stores that date back to the 1890s. There will be recommendations for highly raved out Chinatown eateries.

Reviewers left behind positive comments on Airbnb about their experience, commenting that the Mott Street Girls are knowledgeable about the culture and history of Chinatown and Chinese immigration to the United States. One visitor said the tour is especially timely in the backdrop of raised anti-Asian sentiment.

"A lot of our audience, when they learn about what life was like under the Chinese Exclusion Act, they draw parallels to their history, the aggressions that have happened to them," Huang said. "We want to build that connection."

Both tour guides are fully vaccinated. If you're not fully vaccinated, it is recommended to wear a mask during the tour. Each tour has a capacity of 10 people.

Tickets are $22 per person. Find an upcoming tour date and purchase tickets through Airbnb here.