Chinese American Museum of Chicago

This guide to the Chinese American Museum of Chicago opens with the lion dance and drums that mark lunar new year outside its doors, and the zodiac story of the clever rat outracing the ox. It traces the building itself, raised as a brick warehouse in 1896 and later home to the Quong Yick grocery and the Lee family's food business, before the Lee family bought it to found a museum in 2005. In September 2008 fire tore through the galleries, destroying nine in ten donated objects.