'Forbidden City' Revisits Little Known Era of Asian-American Entertainment

When Arthur Dong was growing up in San Francisco in the 1950s and 60s, he used to walk by a nightclub just outside of Chinatown. "I remember distinctly looking at the glass display case with all these wonderful black and white photos of Chinese people, but dressed in zoot suits and 1940s kind of gowns and tuxedos,” he said. “And I had never seen Chinese dressed like that." The club, which opened in 1938, was called Forbidden City after the imperial palace in China. It was...

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