Category: Reflection Papers

Chinatown, for  me is a mixed neighborhood just like any other. In Chinatown and beyond: The Chinese Population in Metropolitan New York, it states that a longitudinal study of the rate changing racial or ethnic composition of New York Chinatown cannot be done because of the lack of data, and it made me pause. It reminds me of the repressive governments that we used to and continue to live under. It also makes me have more hope for the future, in regards to how new and open minds can tackle the problem. That we can continue to try and rectify the mistakes of our past. In the past it was stated that the entire triangular space of Mott, Pell, and Doyers Streets including Chatham Square was basically for people from China. While many would characterize it as a self-imposed segregation, I would refer to it as a form of self-preservation from others. That same area is still the core of Chinatown but it’s starting to give way to a mixed neighborhood. Regardless of make up, Chinatown is probably more diverse than some states in the union.

Chinatown in New York provides recreational, financial, and other services for east Asians in the metropolitan area. My experience in Chinatown observing them and speaking to certain people have guided my belief that this ethnic enclave indoor for time to come make stronger decisions on what will happen in the future. However, Chinatown is changing as people with higher income, education, occupation tends to move near the city. Students also tend to live around institutions of higher education which are mostly uptown as opposed to downtown/ Lower East Side where Chinatown exists. As the younger generation tends to move away from Chinatown as it attempted to be a land of tradition as opposed to a land of the future where many Chinese Americans who become enveloped in the idea of Americanism begin to downplay the importance of some portions of their cultural heritage. I would assume that in the future the Chinese population will be dispersed over the metropolitan area.

Chinatown is a site that structures and also signifies the incorporation of Chinese immigrants inter-American society. As an urban area, New York’s Chinatown is familiar for its residential tenant buildings, loft manufacturing sweatshops, restaurants and street markets. The district is jammed vigorously into the southern pocket of Manhattan’s lower East side. The labor power of its industrious people have constructed an ethnic enclave that is the center of economic and social life for the Chinese population through out the New York City metropolitan area. To the people that live in Chinatown, it represents not just a productive arena but, from what I heard after speaking with a shopkeeper, a place of “cultural significance” and a quote “community of symbolic and sentimental value”.

For many who live outside of New York’s Chinatown, Chinatown has historically been inscribed as an overcrowded, dilapidated place, plagued with vice and social wretchedness. Personally, I tack that onto the anti-Oriental images of the late 19^th-century. However, the end of ongoing durability of negative mental constructions is evident in a variety of ways. In many of the prime time television shows that are placed in New York, Chinatown has been viewed as an are hiding its crime, Implicating Chinatown as a place beset with social problems as well as undocumented immigrants. Even last year Fox News approached elderly Asian people and mocked them on television. After approaching many other Chinese Americans who lived in Chinatown for decades, I met a woman that I purposely kept out of my field notes. She spoke to me about how the US immigration policies in 1965 were the set of laws that provided the opportunity for American Chinatown to become family centered communities. New York’s Chinatown began to grow expansively in the nation’s largest Chinese American settlement, absorbing both legal and illegal migrants. I believe that the source of the changes from the United States government’s outlook on Chinese migrants is born from the alliance between the United States and China during World War II because it created a favorable diplomatic climate and Congress had rescinded the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943(King).

 Chinatown is a very singular place in the way that it created a home away from home for its people. After traveling through Chinatown and feeling like an outsider looking in, I believe that there’s so much that every culture has in common with another. While the foods and language may be different, the sense of family remains. My ideas about Chinatown weren’t challenged because I already knew that there was nothing wrong with it.  Chinatown will continue to an area of immense importance to Chinese Americans regardless of gentrification and revamping(Sze). I am of the mind that Chinatown is just going to evolve, and that the next generation will care more for its protection.

Works Cited

• Yuan, D. Y. “Chinatown and Beyond: The Chinese Population in Metropolitan New York.” 27.4
  (1966): 321-32. Web. 7 Apr. 2017.
• Lin, Jan. Reconstructing Chinatown: ethnic enclaves and global change. Vol. 2. U of Minnesota Press, 1998.
• King, Haitung, and Frances B. Locke. “Chinese in the United States: A Century of Occupational Transition.” The International Migration Review, vol. 14, no. 1, 1980, pp. 15–42.,
• Sze, Lena. “Chinatown Then and Neoliberal Now: Gentrification Consciousness and the Ethnic-Specific Museum.” Identities, 17:5 (2010): 510-529, EBSCO. Web. 4 Apr. 2017.

The project on Chinatown was an interesting one. It definitely had a significant impact on my perspective of Chinatown. Coming into this project, Chinatown was simply a comforting place for me to grab traditional food, but through this project, I have come to learn that Chinatown is much more than that and that  it is slowly fading away; at least what I considered to be Chinatown. Had it not been for this project, I would have stayed ignorant about the deeper meanings that Chinatown has and also what it truly means for the people living in it.

Coming into this project, I knew that there were several smaller sects of Chinatown in Flushing and in Sunset Park. These were places that contributed a significant part of my childhood because of its comforting environment. Visiting Chinatown, Flushing or Sunset Park felt more like a visit to China or Taiwan than it did to going to another neighborhood. These places are practically my second home because of how tight of a community it is. There were several cases where restaurant/store owners would know our family personally because of how frequently we came back to these places. I knew that these “Chinatowns” were cultural centers that preserved what was brought over from Asia. From food, to festivals to even language. I find it amazing that Chinatown was able to preserve many of its traditions despite the growing pressures from Americans and other ethnic influences.

The history of Chinatown is quite an interesting one. However, it didn’t start in New York. The origins of Chinatown goes back to the mid-1800’s when Chinese immigrants migrated to America in hopes of striking big with the gold rush. A large number of immigrants went to California and overtime, these immigrants migrated eastward in hopes of better opportunities. Some of these immigrants only came to America for a short time to profit a little bit of pocket change and then headed back to China. Others went into businesses in these gold hot spots such as textile workers, restaurant owners, and tobacco rolling. Unfortunately for the Chinese, they were heavily discriminated against by others because of the amount of jobs that they were taking. This discrimination is one of the biggest reasons for why Chinatown was formed. Chinese immigrants were more accepting of their own kin because of the fact that no one else was. Chinatown served as a sort of haven for Chinese people to live in. Even though there was not a lot of living space for the immigrants, Chinatown continued to thrive. This however, was quickly shut down when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, calling for the barring of naturalization for many Chinese immigrants, including the ones already in the United States. Because of this act, there was a huge hatred brewing in America for the Chinese and it persisted well into the early parts of the 1900’s. The act was lifted around World War 2 and this finally let the Chinese populace continue to grow. The Chinatown that we know of in New York, developed when a massive amount of Chinese immigrants bought out some land near Little Italy and flipped it to cater to the businesses they were trying to open. Some opened laundromats, some opened restaurants and other opened markets. There are other varieties, but the more general stores were the ones listed above. I have always wondered why most laundromat store owners and textile store owners were Chinese. A conclusion that I have reached through this project is that they were just the market-need at the time and the Chinese immigrant workers filled the niche. There is no particular reason for why they opened it other than just trying to make some money to survive in the brutal, harsh world they moved into. One of the biggest learning moments in this project for me was realizing the hardships and burden that the Chinese immigrants had to go through when first settling into Chinatown here in New York. I had always thought that the Chinese immigrants lived together in a neighborhood like that because they felt more comfortable doing so. I could not be more wrong about that. They had no choice as they were facing discrimination almost to the point of segregation. It was the only place where they can settle. The reason that there is a Flushing and Sunset Park “Chinatown” is because of overcrowding in the Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. The fact that two smaller Chinatown’s emerged from the original one just goes to show that there were a lot of Chinese immigrants in New York, but not enough room to house them all in one place.

Many of the stores in the early 2000’s were observed to be family owned businesses and were passed down from generation to generation. What I observed through this project, was that there was a shift in the market geared towards Westernization of Chinese traditions and culture. Even in my field visits, I had observed that many traditional stores were slowly closing down as corporate buildings, lavish building complexes and trendy stores for younger people took over the neighborhood by storm. In my first visit, most of the stores that I saw were traditional stores that had been in Chinatown for decades, but as I walked to the edges of Chinatown, most of the stores looked relatively new and had more of a Western atmosphere feel to it. Through this project, I have come to the conclusion that a major part of this shift in the target market was influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China. Post-Cultural Revolution, immigrants were still flowing into the United States in the thousands. The damage caused by the Cultural Revolution led to a new era for Chinese people everywhere. There seemed to be an invisible, but strong disconnect between the younger generation and the generations preceding it. The interest in traditional culture was slowly dropping in number as younger generations wanted to be more involved in Western cultures. Since the appealing of the Exclusion Act of 1882, relations with the Chinese immigrants have gradually rekindled meaning the integration of Chinese culture into American culture. However, this is still an issue that remains today as Chinese people are not fully integrated into American society. Chinese people still face issues in the food industry, movie industry and much more. In the case of food industry, Chinese food has only been viewed as dumplings and noodles, but a large portion of Chinese food is still unappealing to the vast majority. In the movie industry, many Chinese actors and Chinese based-stories are white-washed. Another issue that has been more recent is the resurgence of hate for the Chinese because of the recent presidential campaign. Trump’s campaign consisted of making America great again, which included bringing back jobs to America and a lot of bashing on China. Because of this campaign, there seemed to be a revival in disapproval of Chinese-Americans and Chinese immigrants living among us. A lot of these issues frustrate me when I read about it in articles or on the newspapers. This project helped guide me in the direction to the root of the problem. This sort of apartheid present in America stems back all the way to when Chinese immigrants first arrived in the mid-1800’s. Just like any other issue that has roots stretching back centuries, it will be an issue that will take some time to resolve.

To conclude, Chinatown has a long history of struggle and it there are still remnants of that struggle here today, just not as visible as it was back then. Chinatown’s struggle should be a story that everyone knows about because only then, can we truly appreciate what Chinatown has to offer.

Sources Used to Guide Reflection

• “New York Chinatown History.” New York. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2017
• Cuozzo, Steve. “Chinatown Slowly Losing Its Charm – and Its Restaurants.” New York Post. New York Post, 09 Feb. 2017. Web. 17 Mar. 2017
• Chu, Peter. “‘The Best Coffee in Flushing’ Shuts Down.” Showcasing the Best of the Community and Ethnic Media. Voices of NY, 1 Mar. 2017. Web. 07 Apr. 2017
• China’s Millionaire Migration. Youtube. SBS Dateline, 7 June 2016. Web. 1 May 2017