In the 1930’s, Chinese culture entered the Catskills zeitgeist by way of the Jewish housewife. 🀄️

Dorothy S. Meyerson helped popularize mahjong by co-founding the National Mah Jongg League and authoring “That’s It: a New Way To Play Chinese Tiles” which went on to be published in multiple editions. The game became a such a hit in the leisure and recreation circles of the Borscht Belt that according to The New York Times, a pop song of the era complained it “frustrated neglected husbands.” Meyerson could also be found teaching the game to a wider audience on television in the 1950s.

In more recent years, the cross cultural connection was celebrated in the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s traveling exhibit Project Mah Jongg.

Chinese entertainers presumably passed through the Catskills starting as early as 1914, whenever the traveling circus performed in Kingston, New York.

Tibbals Circus Collection, 1916

Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth

By the Hair of Their Heads

These 3 Troupes of Chinese Artists Perform Their Thrilling Aerial Acts

Circus parade wagons toured the nation and helped drum up interest in faraway lands. The Asia tableau was originally built in 1903 and used through 1946 by various companies until landing in 1961 at the Circus World Museum in Wisconsin.

Brooklyn Daily, January 10, 1963

Ski Slants by Ozzie Greenberg and Arthur Kass

Ellenville—Mt. Cathalia is one of New York’s fastest developing skiing areas, already being classed as a major center…

The owner, Joe Tso, is Chinese, a refugee from Peking Communism, and served in World War II on the side of the Allied forces. He is also a graduate of Wisconson University.

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In its heyday, Mt. Cathalia became a local winter destination with night skiing and an Alpine lodge.

Few ski resorts from the era have survived to present day, and like many of its contemporaries Mt. Cathalia has been reclaimed to nature. Along the way, Tso sold the property, and its slopes served as a motocross venue in the late 1970s.

A decorated military veteran and attorney, Tso established himself as a respected community member. He also developed the area’s first Walmart Supercenter which opened in 2013.

In the mid-1950s, Joe Tso developed Mt. Cathalia outside of Ellenville as a year-round getaway featuring a playhouse theater, swimming pool, and “exotic Chinese food.”

For context, Mt. Cathalia was situated in the Yiddish Alps a.k.a. the Borscht Belt, that stretch of Sullivan and Ulster counties which once served as the summer getaway for Jewish families from the 1920s through 1960s.

Chinese-language ads for Mt. Cathalia ran in local ethnic media. Many families from Manhattan’s Chinatown made the trek in the late 50s and early 60s.

The Chinese Pagoda is a calcite formation in Howe Caverns, Schoharie County. Named such by local historian Chauncey Rickard for the attraction’s 1929 reopening, the flowstone stands 11.5 feet tall and 9.5 feet wide. Rickard pulled inspiration from exotic locales and Greek mythology when writing the tour guides’ script. The Chinese Pagoda and names of other points of interest—River Styx, Tower of Pisa, Titan’s Fireplace, Dante’s Inferno— remain largely unchanged to this day.

Some say Mohawk tribes called the underground cave “Otsgaragee” (varying translations include Cave of the Great Galleries, Great Valley Cave, or Hemp Hill). Human bones were found far past the entrance after the cave was “discovered” in 1842 by local farmer Lester Howe and developed for mining and tourism.

Though a casino bid was lost in recent years, Howe Caverns remains open to the public. In addition to classic cave tours, there are yoga classes, escape rooms, standup comedy, and the annual Naked in a Cave (naked stroll with hard hat) event celebrating body positivity.

In 1883, a steamboat carrying Chinese Sunday school students and missionary teachers traveled up the Hudson River to Iona Island, off Bear Mountain. The day trip was a PR stunt replete with firecrackers and live music to demonstrate that the Chinese were not heathens and could assimilate by learning American customs, such as picnicking. Also onboard were Tom Lee, the “mayor” of New York’s Chinatown said to be “decked out in diamonds,” Wong Chin Foo, the esteemed editor, and Henry Pearson, the Postmaster for mail from China.

The New York Times, June 12, 1883.

THE FIRST CHINESE PICNIC. Sunday-School Children Enjoying Themselves in a Modified Mongolian Style.

“…the steamer Long Branch…put out from the Battery on an excursion to Iona Island, in the Hudson. The trip marked an era in the civilization of America-resident Chinamen, for the steamer took out the first Mongolian picnic that ever disported itself on Christian turf, and it is universally conceded that the moral effect of the Sunday-school picnic cannot be overstated.”

Tabloids also reported on Chinese merchants’ “white wives and cute half-breed children" and bachelors smoking opium with their white dates. Chinese women were conspicuously absent due to restrictive immigration laws such as the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.