Access-American Chinese

Around 7 p.m. The Mei-Li hair salon on Tyler Street starts to close up shop for the night, giving hair washer Oi-Ping a slim margin of time to rush down Harrison Avenue to her evening ESOL class at ACCESS. Oi-Ping immigrated from Vietnam in the late 1990s, and even though she has lived in the States (1st in Washington, D. C. And now in Boston) for nearly a decade, she barely spoke a word of English before this past fall. The requirements of working seven days a week from 9 a.m. To 7 p.m. In Chinatown for a meager income render little opportunity for learning English, even for the most hardworking and well-intentioned. That is, until ACCESS opened an evening ESOL class this past September and launched a complete-tuition scholarship program in late May.