The Journey Wall at New York's MOCA immortalises Chinese immigrants' tales in bronze

This wall speaks. It already tells many stories about Chinese-American families, and now it is hungry for more.

The wall is located in the lobby of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), in New York's Chinatown. It is composed of more than 200 bronze tiles that were designed, together with the museum itself, by Chinese-American architect Maya Lin. Each tile has etched on its face the story of a family, with the names of its first-generation members, their hometown in China and the place they called home in the United States. That explains the structure's name: the Journey Wall.

Since 2009, when the museum moved from a dilapidated building to its new state-of-the-art space, about 60 families have secured tiles by donating between US$10,000 and US$25,000 to MOCA. This year, the museum formally opened the wall to the public, with eight tiles reserved for donors who can make the pledge by the end of next month.

MOCA president Nancy Yao Maasbach says the wall already says more than is immediately obvious. For example, two families from the same hometown in China have spelled the name of the town in different ways. The spellings, Toishan and Taishan, reflect the eras in which the families arrived in the US, with the latter becoming popular only after the Communist Party came to power.

A tile belonging to the Ho family, one of the oldest Chinese families resident in Hawaii, has three names on it: Ho Poi, Chang Shee and Chun Shee; a man and his two wives.