March 10th was arguably one of the coldest days of the week. The forecast for the day was expecting some snow fall, but luckily enough, it didn’t snow. Nonetheless, the temperature was still frigid. My field visit starts at the Canal Street station on Canal Street and Broadway. I met up with one of my high school friends to explore the area. We headed down Canal street towards Centre Street. Since March 10th fell on a Friday, we saw a good amount of people around Canal Street and Broadway. However, this would soon change as we walked further into Chinatown. On Canal Street we saw many commercial buildings such as banks and corporate businesses. Around Canal and Centre Street, we saw some graffiti on the building walls, though the theme wasn’t anything related particularly with Chinatown. This corner of Canal and Centre Street reeked of cigarettes, but this wouldn’t be the last place where we smelled a lot of smoke. We noticed that in the distance, we could see a lot of condominiums being build around this neighborhood.
As we walked further down along Canal Street, we saw many stores that were targeting tourists. There were many stores with the “I Love New York” tee-shirts hanging in the front. These convenience stores had almost anything in stock from hats to toys to bags. It makes sense that this tourist shop area was relatively close to the border of Chinatown, close to Soho (one of the points of interest of New York). I have noticed that Chinatown has been changing its target market in the past few years. Going from selling traditional foods and items to selling items that Westerners find more appealing. Stores are trying to renovate their property in order to have a more attractive outlook than its older self. We observed this as we walked further down the block. We started to see more family owned restaurants and bakeries, but one bakery we saw looked slightly more modern than traditional Chinese bakeries looked like. Perhaps this was Chinatown’s way of trying to adapt to the changing market conditions: young, hip and edgy environments. Within the past decade, numerous hip and trendy restaurants began to spring to life in Chinatown; particularly dessert spots. It should be noted that the prices of the pastries here in this store is slightly more expensive than that of traditional Chinese bakeries. Aside from the smell of cigarettes, a fishy smell came into the spotlight. We spotted a local supermarket near our current location where the seafood was laid out in front of the store. On the inside, other products that you would normally find in the typical American supermarket were found. The sort of things we were able to hear were a multitude of conversations going on at the same time, but mostly in Chinese. These conversations ranged from which fish was the best for soup to healthcare.
At this point we were around Canal Street and Baxter Street. We noticed that there were a lot of students in the area in groups. We also noticed that the population was a lot more diverse than we had expected. Normally Chinatown is full of people of Asian backgrounds, but we saw a good mix of ethnic backgrounds. Chinatown is becoming more and more diverse. It is no longer the neighborhood full of Chinese, but rather, it is a tourist attraction now. I think a big factor that attributes to this is the new trendy food places opening up. Some of the places opening up no longer have Chinese-only menus, but rather cater to the whole American community. English menus to flavors geared more towards Western taste, Chinatown is changing to fit Westerner’s liking. We also observed that there was a lot of sewage water on the curbs. This may have been from the rain from the previous day. What I do notice is that this sort of sewage is always present in Chinatown. Chinatown isn’t as clean as other parts of Manhattan like the financial district or places like Times Square. It kind of makes you wonder why Chinatown is treated differently than the other neighborhoods. Does it mean less to others? Does it look like it holds less value than the other neighborhoods? As we walked further down along Canal Street, we saw a lot of jewelry stores and banks. There were a sprinkle of pharmacies, skin care stores, pedicure parlors, herbal stores and also martial arts equipment stores. We turned on Mott Street and walked down the blocks. We encountered a lot of family owned businesses on this street. From noodle shops to cafes to a candy shop. This candy shop in particular was called Aji Ichiban. On the inside there was an abundance of different candies lined up on the shelves. We could see the whole spectrum of the rainbow in this store. I wanted to interview the shop keeper, but she only knew Chinese. She looked to be a sweet middle-aged to elderly woman. She was more than happy to answer any questions I had. I asked her a couple of questions pertaining to the store and the surrounding area. She said that the store was open for about 20 years and that Chinatown was nothing special to her. It was just a neighborhood with a lot of Chinese people. She did mention that in the past couple of years, the population of Chinatown has dropped. Our next stop was to a nearby park called Columbus Park. On our way to the park, we saw more and more family owned restaurants and even some floral shops. There were several funeral homes along the street of the park.
At the park, there were mostly middle-school and high-school students playing leisurely sports. On another side of the park, there were elderly people gambling and playing cards or chess. We were able to pick up another interview. This time it was with three high school students. They were not from the area, but they were familiar with Chinatown. They said that they would frequent Chinatown as little kids, but now they only come once in a while to hang out. One of them said that she came to Chinatown every week for church. From their responses, I got the feeling that Chinatown was more than just a food center and housing for Chinese people. This was a safe haven that Chinese people frequent. It is like a protected community sheltered by the people that make it. The image that I was getting from Chinatown was morphing into something much more than just food.
After this interview, my friend and I were pretty hungry so we walked around the corner to a store called C Bao Asian Bun. It was a small modern looking street food store. They specialized in steamed buns, but it wasn’t completely traditional. Traditional steamed buns are served with pork belly, but this store was taking it to the next level. They substituted the pork belly with many different kinds of meats from: Peking duck, crispy chicken, Hong Kong crispy pork, crispy fish, soft shell crab to even Korean beef bulgogi. It seemed like the store was trying to cater to a younger generation with this menu. Some traditional stores only sold a few items on the menu, but this store was trying to branch out and give more of a variety. I interviewed the store cashier. She spoke Chinese and English fluently. The other workers did not know English that well. The questions were similar to that of previous interviews. Her response was that Chinatown was like a home to her and that in recent years, many restaurants are catering towards a new market niche. They have more Americanized flavors and are more of a Asian-fusion type of restaurant than purely traditional (Much like the store she was working in). She also believed that the future of Chinatown was going to be gentrified. I do agree with her there as I can see Chinatown slowly shrinking in size on the maps. It is slowly losing its charms from the late 1900’s.
Our last stop was to a restaurant called Shanghai Asian Manor. A medium-sized restaurant with semi-bright colored walls. There was a very warm vibe to this restaurant. One thing that I noted was that the main language spoken here in this restaurant by the customers and waiters/waitresses was Cantonese. The place smelled like vinegar with infused spices. From what I know from experience, social gatherings revolved around food. From weddings to casual meet ups, it was almost usually at a restaurant. We ordered soup dumplings and scallion pancakes. These are normally breakfast items in China, but I wanted my friend to try out some of the foods that Chinatown had to offer. The food was extremely aromatic and had a strong flavor to it. We were extremely satisfied with what we had and also the price of the meal. From here, we walked back to the train station to head home. The cold weather stayed unchanged, but so did the life of Chinatown. It persisted into the night as far as we observed. What else awaits for us when we come back?
Mott St is Chinatown’s unofficial Main Street. It runs from Chatham in the south to Bleecker Street in the north. Mott Street has existed in this way since the mid 18th century. Mott Street feels like it was built around natural landscapes rather than running through or over them. One interesting featuring of Chinatown and ethnic enclaves in general, are their proximity to each other. Mott Street north of Canal Street was historically part of Little Italy. It is now predominately Chinese. This section of Mott Street between roughly Canal and Broome Streets has a number of Chinese- owned fish and vegetable markets, as well as some remaining Italian businesses. Regardless, Mott street is an important fixture in how Chinatown functions.
