A website screenshot of the Interactive Chinese American Heritage Map
An Interactive Chinese American Heritage Map (ICAHM) was released at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago last Saturday.
Developed by the United Chinese Americans (UCA), the map unveils itself as a website on the Internet, where browsers can quickly dig out any historical incident related to Chinese Americans in the past more than 200 years through key words search, timeline selection, and category selection.
Zhang Xiaoyan, UCA Chairman of Board and ICAHM Project Lead, said the significance of the map is preserving history and empowering the next generation. A thorough understanding of the 200-year history of Chinese Americans in the United States can lead to better proposals and blueprints for the Chinese communities in the country in the future.
The future world will be data oriented. Only when Chinese Americans master the data on themselves can they win the future, Zhang added.
It is learned that the interactive map is an open system where everyone can add data and historical incidents. It is still in the testing phase, collecting only 76 historical incidents. The official version will be presented to the public in September.
Zhang believes that in five to ten years, the interactive map will become a detailed database on the history of Chinese Americans, providing historical reference to the development of Chinese Americans in the United States as a whole.
