In eight days time, Chinese artist Chen Dongfan transformed 200 feet of asphalt into a colorful mural titled “The Song of Dragons and Flowers.”
Doyers Street, a crooked alley in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown, was known in the early 1900s as a hotbed of Chinese gang violence. Rich in bloody history, the street is also home to New York City’s oldest dim sum restaurant, Nom Wah Tea Parlor.
“The portrait is of the past and the present of Doyers Street,” said Chen through a Mandarin interpreter to the New York Times. “When I paint a person’s portrait, I use the brush stroke to capture the internal spirit of that person. So as I was painting a portrait of the whole street, I wondered if I could capture the spirit of the street and Chinatown within my strokes.”
Chen, who graduated from the prestigious China Academy of Art, splits his time between New York City and Hangzhou, China.
The mural, funded by the city’s Department of Transportation and the Chinatown Business Partnership, is part of a “seasonal street program” that limits certain roads to pedestrian traffic during the day.
“Seasonal street closures are a great way to repurpose space during the summer months when traffic volumes are lower and the desire for public space is greatest,” reads the city’s 2016 strategic plan. The paint used is environmentally friendly and removable, according to Gothamtogo.
The entire project took a little over a week to complete. And while street merchants welcome the benefits of increased foot traffic while the artwork is on display, the installation created some logistical headaches.
The owner of the Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Wilson Tag, told the New York Times that it was “selfishly … a huge inconvenience to my business, what with scheduling deliveries and trash pickup.”
In short, the coordination between the Chinatown business partnership and the department of transportation could have been better.
The completed mural will be on display from now until November.
“I think Doyers is very symbolic of Chinatown, for some reason. I think it has to do with the curve, the interesting shape of it and it’s also stood the test of time in a lot of ways. A lot of the old feel of Chinatown is still there,” said Museum of Chinese in America curator Herb Tam to CGTN.
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