The Ins and Outs of Chinatown
Inside Chinatown, housing options are virtually all rented apartments. In fact, according to the Asian American Federation of New York’s census analysis, 94% of Chinatown residences were rented. These conditions were much tougher during the earlier years of Chinatown when coupled with the higher poverty rates and cramped housing.
On an educational front, there is a major generational push to uplift younger residents into schools as a means of escaping poverty. Only 40% of current Chinese immigrants in Chinatown, according to the 2000 census, were high school graduates. While public elementary schools in Chinatown are fairly good, as educational lobbyist Tahseen Chowdhury noted, many students are forced into magnet schools like Christa McAuliffe or Mark Twain intermediate schools, which are feeder schools for specialized high school like Stuyvesant High School or Bronx High School of Science.
How They Feel: Residents on Chinatown’s Issues & Culture
The gentrification within Chinatown is impacting the occupants and changing the way their neighborhood feels. Wàipó describes a Chinatown that is becoming more and more white, becoming more distant from the Chinatown she originally knew upon arrival. But she sees this as an explicitly good thing, especially when it comes to the cleanliness of the neighborhood.
I came in 1986, it was very, very dirty. It’s a lot better now. It was very smelly; the whole street would stink. When I first came to this building, there could be up to 30 people in an apartment and it would be very dirty and very nasty. But in the past five years, they got a lot of the people out and a lot more white people moved in and it’s been much more clean
– Wàipó
She understands the reality of having more affluent people living in your neighborhood, resulting in a cleaner area. Partially supported financially by her children, she is able to reap the benefits of having a neighborhood be gentrified without being on the cutting block of financial ruin. She also makes the connection between there being an increase in specifically white neighbors to her building and the neighborhood becoming more aesthetically pleasant. As Chinatown becomes more approachable to a white millennial population, rent increases and it makes it harder for restaurants and people to remain in the neighborhood.
Erin touched on the newfound trendiness of Chinatown, saying:
“When I was a kid I would go to my grandma’s a lot, and she had one white neighbor, and he was a kid and I’d play with him a lot. But now I see a lot of white people live in that building. Also, […] I’ve seen a lot of shops close and a lot of new stores open and they’re more hipster and stuff. There’s a new poke shop— two new poke shops, new ice cream places, like ten below. I’ve seen a lot of hipster trend.”
Erin
The result is that Chinatown is no longer becoming a center for low-income Asian immigrants. The textile factories that offered low skill jobs are being replaced with bubble tea shops and ice cream places. The housing is leaving the financial range of these low-skilled workers and they are being pushed into other parts of the city. Some are benefiting from the change, but the push to becoming a more expensive neighborhood is pushing people out of the community they know.
SPOTLIGHT: Knock-offs
China and knock-offs are something that go hand in hand. If there’s something that a country made, the likelihood that there’s a knock-off for it from China is pretty high due to the cultural phenomenon of Chinese citizens fooling tourists with overpriced goods. Chinatown is NYC’s hub for Knock-offs.
Uniquely, the knock-offs stem from China’s legal system which has weak support for intellectual property laws. That weak support allows businesses to legally produce low-quality knock-off products. That culture arrives with the individuals moving the United States. In addition, the networks immigrants leave behind in China often facilitate the development of these knock-offs.
Place of Worship
In Chinatown, people practice a variety of religions including Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Chinese folk religion, and Judaism. There is a large population of people in China who follow religious practices in their daily lives, but do not see themselves as part of a formal organization such as the church. One center of religious worship located in Chinatown is the Mahayana Buddhist Temple. A nice respite from the busy sounds of New York City, the temple provides a pleasant atmosphere for religious connection.
While Chinatown may first and foremost be thought of as a center for Chinese culture, it also holds the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue. This synagogue was built during a large influx of Jewish immigrants, and so it functioned as a place of worship for many. In fact, approximately 85% of Eastern European Jewish immigrants migrated to New York and about 75% of these immigrants settled on the Lower East side. This accounts for about 63.75% of these Jewish immigrants being a part of the community that formed this place of worship, celebrating an unprecedented religious freedom.
Works Cited
Esther. “Canal Street – Gucci & Prada …” New York City Trippers, New York City Trippers, 21 Apr. 2017, www.newyorkcitytrippers.com/posts/canal-street-gucci-prada.
Hung, Melissa. “Chinatowns Across The Country Face Off With Gentrification.” NPR, NPR, 15 Mar. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/15/515792846/chinatowns-across-the-country-face-off-with-gentrification.
Asian American Federation of New York. Neighborhood Profile: Manhattan’s Chinatown. Neighborhood Profile: Manhattan’s Chinatown, AAFNY, 2012.
“Lower East Side Jewish History.” Museum at Eldridge Street, www.eldridgestreet.org/history/.
