Po Yee Ung

Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Po Yee Ung

Po Yee Ung, born in Hong Kong circa 1957, immigrated to New York City at age twenty-five to accept a job offer. She settled in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. As a young career woman in Tai Po, China, Ung worked in both the garment and electronics industries. In New York City, she worked primarily as a journalist; writing for Chinese-language rint newspapers and weeklies, reporting and interviewing for Chinese-language Apple Television, and writing a column for a Chinese-language entertainment weekly. At the time of the 1993 interview, Ung was thirty-six years old, lived alone in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, and earned a living as an insurance saleswoman.

In this interview, Po Yee Ung discusses her external world. She recounts her professional life: a Hong Kong career in business, and a New York City career in journalism. Ung evaluates Eighth Avenue's potential as a business and cultural center for Chinese immigrants in Brooklyn, and its deficiencies as a community resource. Ung recounts instances of petty neighborhood crime. She describes the neighborhood's aesthetic and real estate conditions. She talks about her affinity for Spanish-speaking sections of the neighborhood; particularly Hispanic food, customs, and people. Throughout the interview, Ung declines to answer questions that she views as too personal, or which may indicate her general whereabouts. Interview in Cantonese conducted by Ka-Kam Chui.

Brooklyn Historical Society collaborated with the Chinatown History Museum (now the Museum of Chinese in America) in order to conduct a series of oral histories with residents of the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Cantonese, Mandarin, and English language interviews focused on what was then a new presence of Chinese and Asian immigrants concentrated along Eighth Avenue. Among the topics that are explored in the interviews are tensions between different groups of Chinese immigrants, crime and safety in the neighborhood, Sunset Park's relationship to Manhattan's Chinatown, and how long-term residents of Sunset Park had adjusted to the area's "newcomers."

Citation

Ung, Po Yee, Oral history interview conducted by Ka-Kam Chui, August 17, 1993, New Neighbors: Sunset Park's Chinese Community records, 1994.007.25; Brooklyn Historical Society.