Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情

We’re back with season 4 of Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 at the historic newsstand on Mosco Street! Bringing it home this year, Think!Chinatown x Chinatown Records stack the lineup with Chinatown DJs new and old, as our neighborhood DJ yiuyiu 瑤瑤 trains up our next generation DJ historians to rock the block alongside her. 

First up, we welcome an intergenerational lineup: Buckley Yung 翁百里, Alice Liu 劉凱儀, & yiuyiu 瑤瑤 to soundtrack Mosco Street with Chinatown’s favorite songs from across time

Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 is a neighborhood block party for the whole family at the historic newsstand at Mott & Mosco Streets. Pulling from the ever-growing archive of the Chinatown Records project, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 shares some of her favorite Chinatown records inherited from her family and neighbors. All along the way, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 invites guest DJ’s and artists to celebrate the music, culture, and histories that connect communities, across generations and borders. 

Photos by Cindy Trinh (@cindytrinh.photo)

About the Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 : This program’s unofficial roots stem back to a 2020 Chinatown Arts Week exhibition curated by our dearly missed Corky Lee in theMosco St Newsstand. Chinatown Block Party was started by Rochelle Kwan (Chinatown Records), 8oxSet, and Think!Chinatown with dreams of carrying on this legacy of neighborhood gatherings and building upon these layers of memories, long into the future. 

OUR 2025 CHINATOWN BLOCK PARTY 夏日傾情 TEAM

Think!Chinatown is a place-based intergenerational non-profit in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts and neighborhood engagement. We believe the process of listening, reflecting and celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to work on larger neighborhood issues. By building strength from within our neighborhood, we can shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, celebrate our cultural heritage and innovate how our collective memories are represented.

Chinatown Records is a homegrown community effort to celebrate the richness of music, memory, and history that comes with inherited family collections. Made up of close to 20 music collections inherited from families, friends, and neighbors, Chinatown Records is a community-powered, living archive, spanning records, CD’s, and tapes of Chinese music and beyond from the 1920’s-2000’s. From Chinatown block parties to sonic family histories to endless listening and research, Chinatown Records is an ever-growing record of the people we love who bring all this music back to life with us.

ARTISTS

Buckley Yung 翁百里 is a longtime music lover, starting with memories of music and records that his parents loved – many that then became among his favorites, alongside his own favorites too. Starting at the age of 13, he began searching out the latest direct-from-Hong Kong records in Boston’s Chinatown record stores. When he moved to New York to begin his first urban planning job after graduate school, he regularly frequented New York's Manhattan Chinatown – the mecca for record shopping on the east coast. Today, he spends his days enjoying the nearly 1,000 Chinese pop records scattered in every nook and corner of the home that he shares with his partner, Charlie. And with every record he brings home, he remembers those happy memories with his parents that started it all!

Alice Liu 劉凱儀 is a longtime resident, intergenerational small business owner, and community organizer born and bred in NYC’s Chinatown, who loves to hang out with and learn from neighborhood aunties and uncles. She is a 90's kid who grew up alongside Mandarin and Cantonese hits that spanned from the 80's to whatever is on the radio at the moment. As an adult, whenever these songs pop back into her life, they feel like a visit from an old friend. In recent years, she has been centering this feeling when she makes playlists for family gatherings, smiling whenever she catches stoic aunties and uncles unknowingly humming along. She is currently vibing on 90's Mandarin folksongs from South East Asian songstresses.

yiuyiu 瑤瑤 is a cultural organizer, artist, and oral history educator homebased on Lenape land in NYC's Manhattan Chinatown. Taking on her childhood name yiuyiu 瑶瑶, she fills her world with the sonic histories of 30+ inherited family music collections as a DJ historian for Chinatown Records 華埠錄音 – alongside her family, neighbors, & so many loved ones, who have taught her so much. As a community-taught & -powered DJ historian, she has the most fun bringing the music out of the archive – playing records of golden songs at senior centers, leading karaoke dance floors with families & neighbors on the streets of Chinatown, & training up our next generations of DJ historians of all ages to bring the music to life with us. She will always be a dancer first.

💃 PREVIOUS BLOCK PARTIES 🕺

Sponsored by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs with support from NYC Dept of Small Businesses. Thank you to our community safety partner, Nonviolent Peaceforce.