There’s no shortage of activity on Hyde Street near Civic Center on a recent Tuesday morning. Workers sweep the sidewalk. Delivery drivers rush by on their motorcycles. The No. 27 bus hauls morning commuters to the Mission.
Kayan Cheung-Miaw, a comic artist and community organizer, wants to take people’s minds away from the bustle, just for a minute.
Her mural “This Asian American Life,” is the most recent in a series of works commissioned by the Asian Art Museum for the Lui Art Wall on Hyde Street.
In the series of panels, Cheung-Miaw invites the public to experience San Francisco’s Chinatown the way a child would: The aroma of a bowl of noodle soup, the feeling of a redwood leaf in one’s hand, the wonder of a wild poppy growing from the crevice of the sidewalk.
“The point of the mural was to capture the quiet, mundane moments,” Cheung-Miaw said. “When you are just walking on the street and suddenly see a beautiful wildflower, why don’t we take a pause and look at that?”
The mural was inspired by Cheung-Miaw’s six-year-old son, Jiakai, whose chubby cheek is featured in one of the panels. “He’s the one who would stop and say, ‘Hey, look at this cool bee!’” Cheung-Miaw said. (The bee made it into the mural.) “He’s the one who pays attention and notices those things and teaches adults to pay attention.”
Jiakai shows up a lot in her drawings in whimsical poses, like the time he stuck his tongue out to taste the rain. But, Cheung-Miaw said, she has also learned from his drawings — often a bunch of lines that don’t have any particular meaning. “He inspired me to remember that art is play and a vehicle to be free,” she said.
Cheung-Miaw’s own experience of American Chinatowns began in the gritty streets of New York. Born in Hong Kong, she moved there with her parents at 10.
Far from the warmth and humidity of Hong Kong, New York felt cold all the time, she remembered. The occasional playgrounds were rundown and smelled of piss.
She and her friends, however, would always find places to grab dim sum and hang out. The library was her safe space, where she got lost in books and escaped her dad’s yelling.
In Hong Kong, Cheung-Miaw had loved manga — her favorite was “Dragon Ball” — but she was too daunted by the artists’ talent to attempt her own. “I can never draw like that, you know?”
After moving to New York, she encountered underground comics like “Bitchy Bitch” by Roberta Gregory and “Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist” by Diane DiMassa. “Imagine an angry Chinese American kid growing up in New York City, angry at the world,” she recalled. “And you found these comics that call bullshit on sexism and patriarchy.”
“That gave me the audacity to do something like that to express my anger and dissatisfaction with the world,” she said.
After graduating college in 2006, Cheung-Miaw was drawn to organizing and moved to the Bay Area because it was “the mecca of Asian American movements.”
Through Chinese Progressive Association, she organized hotel and restaurant workers in San Francisco. She worked on the 2014 campaign for workers at Yank Sing, a renowned dim sum restaurant, and helped win a $4 million settlement for back pay for 280 employees.
That experience is reflected on her mural on Hyde Street, which features Chinatown workers: A bus driver waving to a passenger. A cook sitting on the curb on break, with half a dozen cigarette butts scattered next to him. It was a scene dear to Cheung-Miaw: her father was a restaurant worker who also “smoked a little too much.”
“I came from generations of workers,” she said. “Growing up, I thought, ‘How come my parents work such long hours but they can’t afford to move us to a better place to live?’ They get yelled at by their boss and come home and yell at us.”
Her mural on Hyde Street is not her first work to depict the lives of working class Chinese Americans in the city.
In 2018, Cheung-Miaw painted a mural in Chinatown named “Home,” which depicted clothes lines with hanging laundry, a restaurant cook taking a break, and a multigenerational family taking a walk. It also gave a nod to the historic U.S. Supreme Court case of Chinese laundry owner Yick Wo, which established equal protection for noncitizens.
“This was a chance to educate tourists about what our community is about, but also to have our community look at the mural and say, ‘Hey, this is me, this is my story,’” Cheung-Miaw said. “It’s not just dragons and lanterns.”
Now living in North Carolina with her family, Cheung-Miaw is still organizing. The minimum wage there is $7.25, and there is work to be done, she said.
“You can make art, you can do organizing, you can raise your child, and you can also still enjoy life,” she said. “Right now is really the time to go all in, but also, take a breath and hold on to joy as well. Don’t let oppressors take that away.”
“This Asian American Life” is on view on Hyde Street (between McAllister and Grove streets) through Sept. 28.
