Asian Cultural Experience — Republic Café & Asian Festival
Asian Cultural Experience is committed to preserving, recording, documenting and exhibiting the history and culture of the Salinas Chinatown area where several ethnic groups have lived, worked, and gathered together since 1872. Chinatown is a historical “gold mountain.” If walls could speak, this tiny rundown neighborhood (on the other side of the railroad tracks from Old Town), would tell a rich multi-ethnic story of agricultural development, labor movements, daily life and low life, collaboration and tension, discrimination and solidarity. Culture offers an abundance to celebrate! No one culture or historical period can claim a monopoly on this neighborhood.
Community Relations
The more visible and known a movement is, the stronger its mission and impact. Newsletters, up-to-date electronic social marketing including this website, press releases and e-blasts are needed to spread the good word of the good work in Chinatown. All interested persons are invited to attend their quarterly meetings that are posted on the calendar.
Reconnection Action Team
Isolation and separation resulted from closing the at-grade crossing of several streets into Chinatown. The need is to increase access to the neighborhood by pedestrian, if not motor vehicle traffic across the tracks from Old Town Salinas. Persons who like challenges are invited to take on connecting with Union Pacific Railroad to connect two-sides of the tracks.