Yesterday, we looked at Chinatown as a possible opportunity for Americans to experience an authentic Chinese enclave. To support this, Kwong further describes in Chapters 5-6 how Chinatown remained an independent entity within New York City, with its own economy, politics, social services, language and cultural norms. However, the authenticity is a slightly falsified one as it appears to Americans; although Chinatown remained independent, American tourists aren’t fully privy to the realities of the norms of the place. The economy was the basis for the structure of the community and therefore corruption and manipulative leaders rose to control and represent the politics through their economic power and influence. However, Kwong notes that one of the main bodies of leadership, the CCBA “is clearly not representative of the community, nor is it a mediating force among associations” of the citizens (92). As we have discussed in class, Chinatown was ruled by capitalistic endeavors and the people in control did not reflect the nature or lifestyle of the masses. These ruling elite were “indifferent to the problems of the poor,” and “promote[d] … ethnic solidarity” in the community, although the reality was that the people were anything but unified (94). They censored publications, monopolized industry and media, and engaged in violence to maintain order and loyalty. Further, because Chinatown existed as independent form the rest of New York City, with “an unstated policy of non-intervention by U.S. government officials, the informal structure [of the CCBA and ruling elite] maintain[ed] order in the community (93). This structure was even bowed to and acknowledged by federal authorities, who would consult with them as representatives of the community.

The government ignored the community, however, only until it felt threatened by it. In the 1950s, when America feared the spread of Communism, the government actively investigated and rounded up Chinese suspected of being Communists. This phenomenon relates to our class discussions about the treatment of minorities in the U.S. and how they are largely ignored and accepted only when they are silent and not too different. Kwong explains that the relationship of ignoring this minority was mutually fueled: The Chinese were not interested in voting for United States elections and so, in turn, the politicians did not campaign there. So Chinatown remained a place that was, for the most part, untouched by America and seemingly authentically Chinese.

Some individuals broke that pattern, though. S.B. Woo, for example, ran for Delaware office in 1984, and encouraged the Chinese that if they are in America, they might as well “get involved in” America and build a future there, effectively acknowledging the path of immigrant life that acknowledges a new homeland, and assimilates to an extent. Eddie Chan is another example; he followed that path and emerged acheiving the American dream, moving from Chinese immigrant to absorbing an identity of successful Chinese-American. Yet, when Chan was accused of Chinatown organized crime, he “avoided talking to the American press, but he did grant interviews to local Chinese reporters,” which reflects the acknowledgement of a Chinatown identity as being extractable from the rest of the American sphere of life.

When the two spheres of life are kept separate, while it can offer opportunity to see Chinatown as an authentic place, it also ignores certain realities of Chinatown for the American public. When a movie was produced that actually reflected Chinatown more accurately, people complained that it “tarnished the image of the Chinese community” (122). The complainers encompassed Asian Americans as well and so we see that the desire to silence some aspects of a minority to retain a squeaky authentic version of it is maintained by both the outside, American community, and the inside, Asian community as well.

An interesting part in the article “Everything But the Chickens” by Nicholas Klein and Andrew Zitcer is the idea presented about the reframing of Chinatown.  Chinatown, as a seemingly “rambunctious” ethnic enclave, gains the status of some foreign tourist destination deserving of its own sightseeing trip.  It seems that Chinatown is a part of New York City, but also apart from New York City.  In the belief that Chinatown is counted as a part of New York City, it takes on this quality of “authenticity” for other New Yorkers as Chinatown still retains that feeling of lawlessness and inner city grime that the “Disneyfication” and gentrification efforts in the past twenty years have tried to wash away.  On the other hand, the pageantry and hoopla that often accompanies visits to Chinatown – as witnessed by the gaudy tour buses with Japanese lanterns and all – seem to imply that Chinatown is more of an exotic locale meant for people to feel as if they’ve explored China for the price of a bus token.

If we go along with the first characterization of Chinatown, ironically, New Yorkers are ascribing an “authentic” New York vibe to an area that was created by immigrants for immigrants.  All of the associations that are attached to Chinatown are mere projections from the natural born New Yorkers, or the Others as Klein and Zitcer call them.  The second characterization, while more appropriate, is still an oversimplification of the Chinese lifestyle, that consumable culture that Americans crave.  This is apparent in how “insiders,” the term for non-Chinese who ride the Chinatown bus, think they know secrets about Chinese culture that other non-Chinese could never know.  They are happy with their “chicken stories” to tell their friends and have that be there understanding of an entire culture, much like people of today listening to Gangnam Style and thinking that they know Korean culture.  As Susan Kang, a Korean pop music commentary leader said about the video, “It can’t be denied that there’s some ’look at those wacky Asians’ going on here,” which I think has happened with the Chinatown Bus.

Throughout “Everything But the Chickens: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus,” Nicholas J. Klein and Andrew Zitcer strive to define and understand the authenticity associated with the Chinatown curbside buses, arguing that the buses serve as mobile containers of perceptions of Chinatown and Chinese people. Although today there are corporate-owned competitors and it is no longer the cheapest option for travel along the Northeast corridor, the Chinatown bus remains a popular mode of transportation particularly because it is seen an “authentic urban experience.”

Klein and Zitcer offer multiple understandings of cultural authenticity. They assert the authenticity associated with the Chinatown bus largely stems from the “other,” insider-outsider, and superior-inferior mentality that developed as Chinese communities grew. By distinguishing themselves from Chinese immigrants, white Europeans maintained dominance and constructed an idea of “Orientalism” that specifically limited human encounters between the different groups. Thus Chinatown became a social idea, considered “another world” entirely, and presumed authentic-in-itself. To those outside of the community, the mobility of the Chinatown bus offers the distance to view and evaluate a neighborhood considered “exotic” – a chance to safely encounter the “other.”

In addition, Klein and Zitcer note how those within the Chinese community also aided in maintaining such insider-outsider mentality. Many participants in their focus groups desired to demonstrate insider knowledge about Chinatown and the Chinatown bus and “positioned themselves as experts.” Some even divulged “supposed secrets” about the Chinatown bus that “outsiders” would not know.  Furthermore, participants represented the Chinatown bus as existing outside of societal norms. Klein and Zitcer define such anecdotes as “chicken moments” – stories that verged on the fantastic such as when a participant described a fellow commuter “just peeing on the seats.”

The importance of these stories, however, does not lie in whether or not they are true, but rather, that they are told at all. By continuing to depict the bus as foreign and unhindered by common laws through exaggerated tales, Chinese immigrants further encourage images of Chinatown as a “place of difference, of squalor, of danger, and of otherness” – therefore, a more “authentic” and thus appealing form of travel.

As someone who heard many horror stories before purchasing my ticket for a Chinatown bus, and subsequently had a relatively mundane ride, I can understand the allure in telling interesting stories about a bus that has continuously been characterized as far from ordinary. In general, I believe humans are prone to enjoy exuberant storytelling, and in the case of the Chinatown bus, it is certainly much easier to continue fueling common perceptions of the experience as “other-worldly.” Unfortunately, as Klein and Zitcer assert, these “chicken moments” are not simply harmless storytelling. The Chinatown buses represent social relations and the social idea of Chinatown, rooted in the historical construction of a place and race. By considering the Chinatown bus  “authentic” through descriptions and stories that emphasize its “exotic-ness,” individuals unknowingly reinforce the insider-outsider mentality first instituted by Europeans to maintain power relations. Ultimately, the Chinatown bus is embedded in the socially constructed ethnic enclave of Chinatown and thus the authenticity attributed to it is a “form of cultural power,” constituting misperceptions that are lived as reality.

I was fairly surprised by this week’s readings. From Nicholas Klein and Andrew Zitcer reading to the chapter on New York’s Chinatown community a lot of the stereotypes I’ve come to know melted away. Rather a new understanding came to me while I read about the Chinese immigrants in Peter Kowng’s book. The realization that the very ubiquitous notion that every Chinese person has achieved academic success was something that was conjured up by looking only at the surface amazed me. The generalization seemed to hold true because of data already collected but the reality of it is more complex than that. Peter Kwong describes the uptown and downtown Chinese to show the polarization between the different Chinese that come to America. He shows us that the idea of the Chinese being smart comes from the census data in the 1970s. The data portrayed the Chinese as the well off, highly educated “model minority.” This data creates an average though. It does not show the clear distinction between the groups that make up the upper stratum and the lower stratum of the data. People from Taiwan with high educational standards and from Chinese elite families who came during the Cultural Revolution in China dominate the upper stratum. The lower stratum consists of many new immigrants from the People’s Republic of China. The upper stratum is very different from the lower stratum in terms of education, professions and income before and after they come to America.

What was very interesting to see from Zitcer and Klein’s study was how understanding of a different place and people is strongly framed by word of mouth. Not just from anyone but from a person with “insider knowledge.” Its hard to discern what is true or not without actually being there. The ridiculous stories that do pass through word of mouth just serve to emphasize a person’s different or lack of understanding in a given situation. The bus driver situation in a Chinatown bus bus serves this point. The non-Chinese saw the bus driver as a lunatic, who smoked and didn’t abide by the law while the Chinese saw him as a person who chain-smokes to try to stay awake during his over twelve hour shifts. Its just like how outsiders with “insiders data” since the 1970s might have seen Chinatowns as places of upward mobility and the Chinese as the “model minority.”

Peter Kwong’s chapter “A Model Minority Community?” addressed many of the complexities of the Chinese community in New York City. Stereotypically, Chinese immigrants are known for their willingness to work low wage jobs and the stress of upward mobility through education. However, the situation in New York City, according to Peter Kwong, is much more complex due to the generalization of the whole community as a minority. He stated that there is a significant difference between Uptown and Downtown Chinese communities. Specifically, most uptown and wealthier immigrants reached their levels of success through exploitation of newer and poorer immigrants. In this chapter, Kwong gives a more realistic view of Chinatown as compared to the first two chapters. Earlier, he described almost a ‘model’ community of intelligent and self-dependant immigrants. Later he explained that even though most people view the Chinese as a ‘model minority community’, the reality is much more complicated. Most immigrants in Chinatown are unable to move up in society due to their successful counterparts. Often, the lower class immigrants face the negative consequences such as limited affirmative action.

I found it interesting that the Chinese value of perseverance is the cause of either their success or failure in society. Just like my parents and many other immigrant families, the Chinese believe in working hard in order for their children to advance. In some families, the focus on education is high but as Kwong explained, some children feel too much pressure and fail while others work harder and harder, further widening the gap between the upper and lower classes. Similarly, workers in Chinatown who have faced failures in the past chose to continue working for lower wages and in worsening conditions. They fail to realize that upward mobility in the competitive community of Chinatown is rare due to everybody’s similar circumstances. These immigrants pressure themselves into worse conditions and ultimately, influence those around them to do the same.

The part of Kwong’s Chapter 4 that resonated most with me was the education discussion. I have gone to school with mostly children of Asian immigrants my entire life. I saw how much they valued education. The children worked diligently in school only to go to an after school program on the weekdays and school on the weekends to study more. I watched how my fellow students snickered when an Asian student solved a math problem that no one else in the class understood. But as I began to see when I got older (and as Kwong states in the chapter), these trends were oversimplified. First, “Asian” became the nomenclature for “Chinese”, “Japanese”, “Korean”, “Vietnamese”, etc. These people from completely different countries were being grouped into one large stereotype: Asians (Asians work hard, Asians are good students, etc.) Second, Kwong describes the differences between the Uptown Chinese and the Downtown Chinese. Among the Chinese themselves, there are many differences. The Downtown Chinese are much less likely to conform to this “Asian” stereotype since they have less opportunities in Chinatown. If there are so many differences among one “Asian” group, it is that much more wrong to combine completely different people into one false category. It is true that many Chinese, Korean, etc. people value education more than Americans, but just as we can not generalize Americans, we can not generalize these groups either. After all, some Americans value education more than the Chinese. Kwong’s discussion of education in Chinatown highlights the more general problems with the way we view the Chinese immigrants in America. I feel that we tend to 1) refer to the Chinese immigrants as extremely hard working, resourceful, successful individuals or 2) view the immigrants as living in squalid conditions with insufficient means to support themselves. As Kwon argues, it’s just not that simple. Chinatown (like every community) has many layers and is a combination of the two above conditions. If we want to better understand Chinatown, immigration, and ethnic boundaries in general, we must stop making generalizations because oversimplifying makes us closed minded.

-On a somewhat unrelated note, I found that the exploitation of the Chinese immigrants was very similar to Orsi’s description of the Italians immigrants in East Harlem. Some of the Chinese had to work in terrible conditions and endure abuse from their bosses but they could not complain because they were “lucky to have a job”. Similarly, the Italians had to endure work related injustices because if they complained, they would lose their jobs and would eventually starve. It’s such a terrible situation that I can’t imagine being in.

Peter Kwong addresses an issue that I have witnessed first hand and have had many friends fall victim to the overgeneralization of ethnicity and surveys. In chapter four Kwong introduces the difference between “Downtown” Chinese and “Uptown” Chinese. Kwong explains that the two should be considered the same or together because by taking the average, you simply end up with contradictory numbers, statistics and characteristics. While the Downtown Chinese usually know little to no English, the Uptown Chinese consisted of Taiwanese elite (mostly scholars, college graduates, or government officials).

Kwong makes a brief point of how the two, polar opposites are affected by affirmative action. Because they are both considered of Chinese or Asian descent many schools and colleges tend to have an increased number of Uptown Chinese students due to their well off background or resources. However, those who are affected by this are the Downtown Chinese who are in need of affirmative action and are unfortunately grouped together with the Uptown Scholars.

I witnessed this first hand where many of my Chinese friends whose parents immigrated to America were not as well off as other minority group’s family. However, due to affirmative action they are not considered for the extra help that they need. The college application process was frustrating on their part. Though this was only a brief point brought up by Kwong it is one that answered a question that many second generation youths of Asian descent have been asking for awhile. It is interesting that many of us don;’t realize the division even within an immigration group of the same ethnicity. It also sheds light on misrepresentation of data that can lead to results that don’t tell the full story.

Both before and after learning about the reason behind this, I still believe that affirmative action policies should change.  Kwong further proves that affirmative action should not be based on ethnicity as previous years allowed it to. New policies should consider family income or available resources because ethnicity cannot determine how well off a family is no matter how the percentage or data if we follow generalized rules regarding ethnicity, families in need of help will always be left in the dark.

–Trish Anne Roque