In 1920, Walter Eng and other community members purchased the building at 26 Mott Street, Wing On Wo’s present location. After Eng’s death in 1964, his daughter, Nancy Seid, took over the store and began exclusively selling porcelain sourced through Hong Kong.

Nancy Seid. Right: A photo in the shop of her husband, Shuck, right.



Seid ran the store for years, juggling full-time work and raising a family. Her husband, Shuck, a policeman, helped set up programmes that drastically lowered the crime rate in Chinatown and allowed Chinese Americans to feel safe reporting crime.

Nancy’s granddaughter Mei Lum has run the store and managed the building since 2015.



A vase featuring the character representing happiness. Right: Guan Yu, god of war.



In 2015, faced with the prospect of the family selling the building, Mei Lum, Nancy’s granddaughter, decided to forgo graduate school and took over the management of the store and building.

Lorraine Lum, Mei’s mother.



“I grew up in Chinatown and lived above the store. It was pretty much just two rooms with five of us in the family. I’d go to school in the neighbourhood and spend my lunch hour here. In high school it was mainly just weekends at the store. Lots of family members would gather to spend time with my grandma.

At the weekend my grandfather would sell freshly roasted pork. People would come from all over the tristate to eat there Lorren Lum

“Living upstairs, my dad would burn a pack of firecrackers outside the door before the Chinese new year meal; that was our tradition. My mum took over the store when my grandpa passed away. She got into the porcelain. So many new items came into the store and she did a lot of renovations. The kitchen was really old and dark. She had new appliances brought in and we started having family dinners back here. But I know it was a struggle for her because there were a lot of men in the business before and she was the first woman to take over. The neighbourhood was still familiar, with grocery stores all around and everyone knew each other.”

Mei’s father, Gary Lum, in the wood shop downstairs, where they make household items out of the crates used to ship the porcelain.

Jan Lee, who grew up across the street.

“Our family lived across the street from their family since the turn of the century. I spent my whole life here in Chinatown. Friends and business owners are here in Chinatown and we share a lot of the same philosophies, interests and business practices. There was a time when expenses and real estate were not so onerous. Due to rising taxes a lot of people are selling off.”

The WOW Project

Inspired by her family’s long history of business, Mei Lum founded The WOW Project, a way for the community to discuss concerns about the rapid change of Chinatown.



When Lum was taking over the store, she met Diane Wong, a Cornell University doctoral candidate, who was conducting interviews for her dissertation on the gentrification of Chinatowns in the US.

Diane Wong, ethnographer, and first-generation Chinese American.



“I’m a PhD candidate at Cornell University in the department of government. I’m writing about the ways Chinese immigrants are resisting gentrification and displacement across the Chinatowns of America, including in NYC, Boston and San Francisco. Gentrification is a contested term. But roughly it is about the lives of the people who are pushed out of where they are living due to policy.”

Shortly after Wong interviewed Lum, Lum began to shadow Wong on her interviews with community stakeholders in New York’s Chinatown over three months. Lum was able to listen to the concerns of the people that make up her community and bring her family’s experience with the possible sale of Wing On Wo into context, pushing her to think more largely about the effects not only on her family, but the block comprising Mott Street and the larger Chinatown community.

Pearl Ngai, an intern for the WOW Project in 2016-17.



“I put a blog together for the WOW Project and then used it to reach out to the local community. The following year we were joined by three more interns and a project called WOW on wheels, where we build structures out of the old crates that housed the porcelain. Then we got pamphlets from everyone, from mental health to English classes. The four of us girls reached out to people not only our age but older generations too, talking about a lot of different topics that are important, like housing rights and health.”

It’s marvellous what they are doing here because they are contemporising a store that has over 100 years of history to service the community Dorothy GC Quock

The WOW Project directly responds to the community’s needs by addressing pressing concerns voiced by all generations, gender identities, and economic backgrounds. With the future of Chinatown’s multi-generational community threatened by displacement, it gives the community a stronger voice.

I’d like to say I’m Mei's biggest fan Lina Lum

Lina Lum is Mei’s older sister.



“I work with her on the WOW Project in a number of ways. Our family has a very deep history and it is invaluable to me. It feels a privilege. Being fifth generation Chinese American and having such a rich history here, I feel very rooted in NYC and specifically Chinatown. My identity is very much meshed in this place, Wing On Wo, but also in this family. Our support system growing up was always in the store. My grandma taught me how to cook and calligraphy. All of my family memories are centred here around the store.”

Resist, Recycle, Regenerate 反对－回首－再生 is a series of workshops for young Asian American women, teaching papermaking and printmaking using discarded lunar new year fireworks to recycle into hand-printed magazines. The women will conduct oral histories to map their family trajectories from China to the US. In collaboration with the Museum of Chinese in America, they learn how discriminatory immigration laws moulded Chinatown’s past and how they can intervene at local levels to shape their future as young artists and activists.

Following the Chinese new year celebrations, RRR is planning a confetti cleanup on Saturday 24 February, where the group will collect what is usually considered trash to transform into paper mulch. This recycled paper will become the raw material for the second part of the RRR project, where the women will create posters, magazines, comics, and other visual works around issues of immigration.

“Through these workshops, we are creating hands-on and accessible ways for these young women to hold conversations with friends, family and neighbours that might never occur around the dinner table or in a classroom. Though the final physical product is most certainly important, it is the young women’s process of gaining new skills and different perspectives on identity and history that is our main priority. We want to collect this debris together and use it to create something new, useful, and inspiring to keep the next generation of Chinatown’s young women leaders ready for the many fights ahead.”

Lena Sze, an arts administrator, who was born and raised in Chinatown and is brining up two children there.



“It is a political, economical, social process, where land value in the imagination and the market is perceived as something that is higher than it is. It results in the inability of existing residence and businesses to hang on. That is what it feels like to me, but it is a very complicated process that has been looked at by many professionals since the early 60s when the term was coined. I think it is the lazy shorthand for displacement.

It is great that Mei is allowing people to access that in a way that is really cool, taking advantage of the fact that her family is fortunate and smart enough to have kept this building through the generations Lena Sze

“There is not really a single Chinatown. There are many areas. This, here on Mott Street, is the longest-standing Chinese settlement. People come here with notions of what it means to live here. This part has always had investment; it has never been impoverished but it is evolving into a more luxury version of itself. Though in the past immigrants have always had a foothold here, it is much harder to hold on to now.”

Evan Louis, Mei’s cousin.



“I grew up coming to the store for holidays. There were a lot of family and friends, it was one big celebration. Coming in was a great way to learn about my culture and history. My grandparents used to take me to a temple on Mott. My grandfather used to teach me about different Chinese gods and burning incenses to them. I remember going once with Mei and shaking the fortune sticks. Only one is supposed to come out and that is your fortune, but they all came out all over the floor. The monks just stared at me.”