In this post you can read about the UNRRA documents concerning refugees and displaced persons in China after World War Two, some practical advice, as well as my general impressions about the UN Archives.
It isn’t quite the same to visit an archives in the skyscraper jungle of Manhattan than going to the ones that sit imperiously in the more flat and spread-out parts of Mainland Chinese cities. Unlike the massive yellow-tiled Municipal Archives of Tianjin between a university campus and a large waterpark or the Second Historical Archives that nestles is the old Ming palace of Nanjing, the metropolitan surroundings of the UN Archives in New York have more common with the Shanghai Municipal Archives. But while in the Pearl of the Orient the tired researcher’s wondering eyes can gorge on the colonial facades of the Bund and the modern towers of Pudong across the Huangpu, for the visitors of the UN Archives it’s a 300 m walk to reach the East River where the flat box of the UN Headquarters is soaring high.
United Nations Headquarters in New York City, view from Roosevelt Island (Wikipedia)