San Francisco native May Chin Tong was referred to as “the voice of Chinatown” for her long-running role as the anchor of The Chinese Radio Hour.
With her husband Tommy Tong, she launched the pioneering broadcast in April 1939, the first Chinese-language radio program in North America. The show spanned forty years, ending in 1979.Â
May Chin Tong would use a pair of scissors and a pot of glue to cut stories from various newspapers and paste them onto sheets of paper, creating her scripts. Â She carefully curated news from China as well as local information, aiming to give the broadcast’s audience a sense of connection to their ancestral home as well as the Bay Area.
May Chin Tong died in 2010.