What I found interesting was that while the Chinatown community was essentially isolated and confined because of the government’s laws, and this made the community of Chinatown more united. As a result of the confinement, the “old-timers created their own means of survival via ethnic economies and organizations in order to avoid direct competition with native workers while also keeping alive their sojourner’s dream that one day they would return to China with gold and glory” and “such segregated living reinforced their ethnic difference and unassimilability.” As a result of this, the “old-timers” are less likely (even nowadays) to assimilate into American society. Even after all these years, you can still see how closed off the older generation in Chinatown is compared with the younger generation of Chinatown. I still see it all the time, within my own family, when my parent’s friends tell me to “stop being so American”.

The article also talked about the development of Chinese schools that weren’t competing with public schools, but instead supplemented the education. This is relevant even today – if you walk through an Asian neighborhood, there are bound to be at least five different educational institutions for any kind of standardized testing. I, myself, have been to at least 3 different ones. During my years of going there, majority of the kids were Asian. I work at one of these institutions now, and while majority of the kids still are Asian, there are definitely more kids who are not Asian present. This was something I hadn’t seen before, back around five years ago.