She arrived as a teenage refugee — now she’s the voice of Northeast Philly’s growing Chinese community

At first, the teenagers’ taunts weren’t enough to drive the Chinese Sister Square Dance Group of Northeast Philadelphia from their evening rehearsal space, the playground of Mayfair Elementary School. Even through the vulgarities, the women — mostly immigrants, as many as 40 a session — kept dancing.

Then came hurled water bottles, and worse. One night, a boy rode his bike through them, knocking a woman to the ground and injuring her.

Dance groups are common in China for exercise and socializing, but here, “I don’t feel comfortable,” founding member Lin Yu Jin said through a translator. “We want to get happiness, but we live in fear. Our heart is scared.”

The Chinese Sister Square Dancers didn’t go to police or local politicians for help. They turned to Mingchu “Pearl” Huynh.

“I went to Pearl because Pearl speaks English well,” Lin said. “And I knew she would be able to help.”

So does just about everyone in the neighborhoods of Oxford Circle, Mayfair, and Lawncrest. President and founder of the Northeast Philadelphia Chinese Association (NEPCA), Huynh is a Vietnamese refugee of Chinese descent who in the last three years has positioned herself as advocate, liaison, and information hub for the burgeoning Chinese population there.

The dancers’ travails, which began in 2017, helped motivate Huynh to start her organization. She speaks of the physical and spiritual benefits of dance, but doesn’t join in. Too busy, she says.

Nothing is too large or too small for her to tackle. From homeowners needing rain collectors, to undocumented immigrants seeking municipal IDs, to fearful residents now looking for the straight story on coronavirus — she helps them all.

“I’m like a string,” said the 55-year-old Huynh. “I bring all the people and the resources together, and tie them together.”

Huynh’s value to the community is so significant that State Rep. Jared Solomon wants to replicate her efforts with other ethnic groups in his district, one of the most immigrant-heavy in Philadelphia.

“It’s going to provide a new network for new immigrants coming to the Northeast to access services,” said Solomon, who represents Lawncrest and parts of Ashmead Village and Mayfair.

Affordable housing and already established foreign-born communities have turned Northeast Philadelphia, once an overwhelmingly white swath of the city, into an epicenter for immigration, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts; as of 2016, it found, a third of residents were foreign-born. The Chinese population, in particular, has grown significantly, many of them Chinese immigrants migrating south from New York City: More than 4,800 people who are either from China or identify as ethnically Chinese live in Oxford Circle/Castor and Mayfair, the largest concentration in Philadelphia, according to census data. That’s a fivefold increase since 2000.

» READ MORE: Welcome to Philly: Percentage of foreign-born city residents has doubled since 1990

Citywide, about 22,500 residents identify as Chinese.

Throughout the long course of American immigration, groups like NEPCA have helped ease the way, said Rogelio Saenz, a public policy and demography professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, benevolent societies served as an insurance system for immigrants, who paid into funds that could be tapped for medical expenses and funerals. In Texas today, he said, organizations like Casa Guanajuato help immigrants integrate, find jobs, and get training.

The primary service NEPCA provides is bridging the language gap, Huynh said.

That’s in evidence at the Imperial Business Plaza on Castor Avenue, a shared work space developed by Jason Lin, himself a Chinese immigrant, who makes desks available to NEPCA twice a week. On a Friday in February, Huynh and her assistant, Yinan “Felicia” Liu, tended to walk-ins including a woman seeking help applying for the homestead tax exemption. Another, who comes in weekly, wanted her English-language mail read to her.

“I ask my relatives, but my relatives are very busy, they have to go to work,” Li Wu Lan, 65, said, with Huynh translating. “It’s very inconvenient.”

If Huynh can’t solve a problem herself, she finds someone who can, through her network of dozens of government offices, elected officials, charitable groups, schools, and nonprofits. She also has about 1,200 direct followers on WeChat, a social media service similar to Facebook that’s popular in China. Her recent posts include public events, free chess lessons for children, and coronavirus information.

Longtime Chinese residents in the Northeast tend to hail from southeastern China, Huynh said. Those who have arrived in the last 10 years often are from the city of Fuzhou, on China’s east coast. Hard numbers on undocumented immigrants in the Chinese community aren’t available, but Huynh estimates that one of every 20 people she helps does not have legal status in the United States. She has advocated for them, too, and recently helped a father of four detained by ICE stay in the country.

“In my heart,” she said, “I always have a special place to help this group of people.”

» READ MORE: 15 percent of Philly population now is foreign-born, Pew study finds

Huynh has been a citizen for more than 30 years. But she has not forgotten an immigrant’s bewilderment at trying to navigate life in America.

She became a refugee in Vietnam after that country’s war with China made ethnically Chinese residents like herself unwelcome. She lived in a camp in Indonesia for a year before coming to the United States with an older sister at age 14 in 1980.

She spoke virtually no English. “I sit in the class and I’m dumb and deaf,” she recalled.

She roomed with other siblings, lived in a Buddhist monastery in New York City, and was put in foster care in California. She was forced to learn English in high school, she said, but she relied on public assistance until she finished college.

“I feel like I owe a lot to society to get where I am,” said Huynh, who worked in software and finance, and now relies primarily on income from real estate investments. "Making the world a better place is my mission.”

Solomon, the state representative, hopes to find more charismatic community leaders of Huynh’s ilk, around whom other immigrants groups in the Northeast can coalesce. Efforts underway, he said, have included dialogues with Masjid Al-Furqan Mosque, and with interested members of the Haitian and Latino communities.

“You strike out a lot,” Solomon said. “… Someone who has a dynamic personality and is willing to build bridges and work with our office and lead in their community — that’s a lot to ask.”

Huynh has worked hard to resolve the Chinese Sister Square Dancers’ Mayfair playground problem. She and Solomon discussed a range of solutions requiring government intervention, from added police presence to security cameras. She helped organize a neighborhood watch that includes the women’s sons and husbands standing guard during rehearsals.

Tensions between the dancers and their teenage tormentors still simmer, though, and the women long for a space they can claim as their own. They said a purse containing about $5,000 for a Mother’s Day celebration was stolen last May while they were at the playground. Occasionally, they move their rehearsals to the parking lot of an abandoned Kmart off Cottman Avenue.

Huynh is encouraging the Northeast’s Chinese residents to participate in the 2020 census so government will realize how many of them are there. By next year, she said, she’d like to see the community strong enough to stand up for itself.

“If I can find someone to inherit the work that I do, or a government agency can take up the work, then I can rest,” she said. “Then maybe I have time to dance.”