Post #758379 by hodadhank on Thu, Feb 4, 2016 7:37 AM

Gung Hay Fat Choi!
Pics from our final Chinese New Year at New Chinatown in 1998 and some vintage stuff as well.

"Home of the famous Kung-Pei Room..." Designed in 1976 by Yum Kee Fu, a famous architect from Hong Kong. NC was actually a large complex of rambling attached buildings and outdoor spaces, built to feel like a Chinese "Villige". It had deep koi ponds, a pagoda dining room, an once even an animatronic panda built by a former Disneyland imagineer.



Beyond this gate was a bridge over a koi pond and a moai. A door to the dining areas straight ahead and a fdoor directly into the lounge on the right.

The "Tiki Bird" was a PNG carving


Evalani Galeai dancing to Freddie "Kekaulike" Baker. Baker and his Kama'ainas used to perform at the Aku Aku in Las Vegas' old Stardust Casino, and he and his wife Jane Ong-Baker owned Albuquerques' famous Tiki Kai Supper Club.

Any time was hula time...

Lion dancers on Chinese New Year. You can barely make out the thatch and fish floats above the sunken bar in the background.



Progress?? New Chinatown closed in 2003, reopened in 2004 as a remodeled Chinese buffet, then closed and reopened as a sushi bar, then closed and was demolished...

The original sign left standing as they build...what? A Walgreens? WTF?