Chinatown Friendship Arch

This guide to the Chinatown Friendship Arch in Philadelphia follows two intertwined stories: the Philadelphia Suns, a lion dance troupe that started in 1972 as neighborhood kids shooting hoops on a nearby court, and the arch itself, raised in 1982 through a sister-city bond between Philadelphia and Tianjin. You'll hear how twelve artisans from Tianjin and Beijing spent a winter assembling the eighty-eight-ton gate by hand, mixing its colors by an old tradition to keep them from fading. Look up at the dragons chasing pearls across the roofline while you listen.