What new ideas, challenges, or other issues have you encountered with regard to your project (this might include data collection, information that contradicts your assumptions or the assertions of others, materials that have enriched your understanding of the topic or led you to change your project, etc.)? How have these ideas or challenges shaped the bigger picture of your research? Has the scope or focus of your topic changed since you began this project? If so, how?

I have shifted my project so many times that I think everyone I’ve talked to has heard about a completely different project. I have had to challenge my own notions of what research must look like and the forms that it can take. I initially thought I was going to write a traditional academic paper, but my professor pushed me to think about what would best suit my research and the reach I want it to have. There are so many pressing conversations that we have in the academic world that die in the darkness of the very insular cave of academia, and I think that this summer, I have really had to grapple with what this means as someone interested in research but also someone who is researching communities that may not even have access to the research that they are being highlighted in, whether that be because of a language barrier or general access. This has been the main reason why I have pivoted away from a traditional academic paper, as I believe the mix of my photo project and (hopeful) website will open my research to the Fuzhounese community. Research done without the community at hand being able to interact with it is, in my eyes, incomplete.

Every conversation I’ve had and every new research method I’ve heard about has pulled my research in a new direction, with the central nucleus of my own interest in the Fuzhounese Chinese community remaining the same. The scope has drastically widened, but the central core has grown stronger.

Where does your research take place--or where is a favorite place to conduct your research? Post a photo!

This is the best question that could possibly be asked for my research! Here is around the area of East Broadway, where many of the large Fuzhounese gangs once were. Many groups still hang out in the area and if you walk around the main language you'll hear is Fuzhounese.