There are more than 50 Chinatowns of all sizes spread across the United
States, on the surface, they're vibrant cities within a city like New
York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston, bustling with tourists and
natives seeking authentic cuisines like hot pot and dim sum, herbal
medicines and tchotchkes.
Chinatown is vibrant.
There's so much energy.
The energy truly is natural in the neighborhood.
And that's because you have people coming from all parts of the world, whether
they're first-time visitors or identify as Asian-Americans who want to get some great
food or just feel connected to a community where they feel that sense of belonging
.
But Chinatowns weren't always the tourist hubs we know them to be today, what
most visitors see is just one side of their longstanding history as a cultural
tourist destination and transforming an ethnic neighborhood into a
destination wasn't without its challenges.
The story of how Chinatown originated lies within a strategy that Asian
immigrants formulated to preserve elements of their culture and create a safe haven
to escape from persecution.
These distinct enclaves were created with little to no help from local governments.
The Chinese themselves started to acquire buildings, creating business
networks that would grow Chinatown to actually be a very desirable place to live
today. That was without government subsidies.
That was without anything other than the ingenuity of the Chinese people themselves.
Today, this unique Asian-American cultural hub is coming under threat from
xenophobia, the pandemic and government inaction.
The pandemic has taken a heavy economic toll on minority owned businesses.
Asian-Americans have been hit the hardest.
This has sparked a wave of activism, with support spanning across several
generations to preserve a legacy.
Chinatowns appeared early on after the arrival of Chinese in the United
States for the same reason as many other ethnic communities formed, that is to say, they
serve as a place of comfort, familiarity, sometimes security for newly
arrived people.
In 1850, at the height of the California Gold Rush.
San Francisco became a port of entry to the first Chinese immigrants hired
for cheap labor.
Over the next 10 years, a wave of 25,000 Chinese immigrants
came to the United States, most notably for the backbreaking work of laying
train tracks for the Transcontinental Pacific Railroad.
Initially, the Chinese were welcome in the business
people. The capitalists wanted the Chinese to come to develop the West.
Most of the infrastructure of California were built by the Chinese,
including like the roads to Yosemite.
Then, in 1873, a long recession hit and Asian Americans
were scapegoated, creating a wave of anti-Asian backlash, which also
became reflected in legislation.
The Chinese being perceived as being too competitive
and willing to work for too long of a wage.
And so you have all this violence and these
laws to keep out the Chinese to lessen the competition.
The Chinese communities also began to serve as places of security from
discrimination and violence that they faced.
America's first fledged Chinatown became a safe haven for Chinese immigrants,
and since it was located in the heart of San Francisco, it quickly became a hub for
trade and commerce.
But then came the Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
After the earthquake.
City Hall wanted to get rid of the Chinese because of Chinatown is a very
valuable location, part of downtown.
But some entrepreneurial minded immigrants saw an opportunity in attracting
visitors through its unique food and culture and commissioned architects to make the
neighborhood more inviting.
The Chinese hired white contractors and architects
to do this. And this is one reason why City Hall allowed Chinatown to
be there.
Faux Chinese architecture appeared with upturned
roofs and temple like filios on top of buildings and the use of colors
unusual for the rest of part of the city to actually sel f-exoticize the Chinese
community.
So it was a vacation right in your old town, basically,
and the Chinese pushed for that,
The model of the American Chinatown has been replicated across America and around the
world. Today, there are over a hundred Chinatowns internationally.
The rise of tourism helped Chinese communities save their neighborhoods.
As cities expanded, so did their Chinatowns.
But rising property values in some of America's most popular cities are creating
tension between the community, its residents and city governments.
Historically, Chinatowns were seen as ghettos for low income workers.
Today, Chinatowns in their residents continue to be targeted for occupying prime
real estate, excluding them from funding initiatives which affect some of the city's most
vulnerable elderly populations.
And you forget that Chinatown, it's a community.
It's home to a significant amount of seniors as well, and it's its
own ecosystem. But when you look at Chinatown and how it has been represented in
the past decade, it's a tourist destination.
And when we accelerate gentrification, we're losing a sense of community that is vital.
We are at this confluence of commerce, but also it comes with a price.
There's a frustration that we have in Chinatown.
When politicians come to visit us in Chinatown, they shake hands with our business owners and our
residents. But when it really comes down to helping us, somehow we're still forgotten.
Take the Chinatown in Manhattan, for example.
The small business services of New York City pulled out a 35 million dollar
interest free loan to help low income neighborhoods of color.
But when they divided up the funds by zip code, parts of Chinatown were folded into Tribeca,
one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world where the average household income is nearly eight
hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
We are essentially a low-income community.
Still, 27 percent of everyone over the age of 65 in Chinatown lives under the
poverty line. There's a large number of those people who have mobility issues and a larger number of
those people who live alone.
The pandemic has also been financially and emotionally devastating to America's
Chinatowns, which store owners reported a 50 to 80 percent reduction
of foot traffic during the height of the pandemic and when things seemed like they couldn't get
any worse...
The Chinese virus.
Kung-Flu. The rise in violence against Asian
Americans, Hundreds of attacks against Asians across the country since the pandemic
began, The wave of attacks on people of Asian descent from the Chinatowns of the Bay
Area clear across the country to New York.
Every Chinese community in the in the mid and far west became targets of
violence and they were just destroyed.
So they became places of directed anger.
And in some sense, both those continue to exist today.
Today, the Asian-American community is facing a disturbing spike in violent
attacks propelled by anti-Asian rhetoric, coupled with a sharp decline in business.
This has caused Chinatowns, their residents and businesses to suffer.
Their business depends a lot on tourism and foot traffic
and with travel restrictions, coupled with the xenophobia that rose
from the pandemic.
Those two factors together started really affecting the small businesses.
The younger generation of Chinatown is stepping up to organize funding efforts where the government
has fallen short.
The organization said Chinatown Love is helping to digitize cash only
storefronts. And Welcome to Chinatown has raised over a million dollars for small
businesses
As Asian-American women, part of the reason why we love living here in Chinatown is
because we feel so much connection to our identity.
And so for that, that's why we just felt compelled to do something about it.
There's a lot of small businesses that keep this community's ecosystem going.
Anything that you need from copying your keys to buying, like really fresh
produce, it's here.
For as long as they've existed, Chinatowns have always been under threat,
but this resilience to overcome decades of violence lie in the ingenuity of
people, in the support of generations that have fought for it to survive.
Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, there's so much immigrant grit, they
create the vibrancy and the backdrop to what celebrates
American being this diverse place.