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127 NW 3rd Ave., 503-224-0008, portlandchinatownmuseum.org. 11 am-3 pm Thursday-Sunday. $8, students $5, children under 12 free.
A new arrival on the museum scene with its 2018 debut, the Portland Chinatown Museum provides a rich history of what Old Town meant in this city before it became a byword for government failures to help its most vulnerable residents. A winding exhibit takes visitors through replicas of Chinatown’s restaurants, laundromats and dry goods stores in the early 1900s. The exhibit artfully balances two concepts: the tightly knit, prosperous home that Chinese immigrants created in Old Town at the turn of the century, and the increasing discrimination that those residents faced as federal exclusion laws stripped them of their rights and made local discrimination more potent. By the 1950s, many of the Chinese families in Old Town moved east of the Willamette River, leaving storefronts empty and the community dispersed. That starts the story of Old Town as we know it now.
Don’t miss: One exhibit re-creates a prosperous shop called the Bow Yuen Dry Goods Store. It was co-owned by some of the more affluent Chinese businessmen in Old Town, and the exhibit has real items from the store on display: wicker briefcases, figurines, cigarette cases, writing paper, painted china bowls, and candy containers.
Will kids like it? The re-created Chinatown of yore should interest some children, but the placards are a little dense, containing historical concepts (exclusion laws, prejudice, geopolitical themes) that may be hard for kids to digest.