It is 2006, Year of the Rooster. Chinatown, New York, still contains the aura of an undeveloped mainland China in the 1980s—trying hard to modernize but lacking the motivation and inspiration.
There is always a Chinatown (C-town) in every major city in the world. So far, I have been to the ones in San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Vancouver, Montréal, London and, of course, both Chinatowns in New York—Manhattan and Flushing, Queens. Each one carries a different aura, catering to the many different Chinese spread throughout the world.
In the Manhattan C-town, the traditional Chinese culture is so deeply embedded in the locals that some may resist modernization. Or perhaps the City of New York has been neglecting it, forgetting that Chinatown, just like Times Square, is part of New York and requires constant maintenance.
Having spent the first 18 years of my life in Hong Kong, C-town is my gateway, and only resort, for enjoying the little things that I used to take for granted while living under the comforts of my parents’ roof—the many varieties of freshly baked bread, rice casseroles, dim sum, Chinese and Vietnamese noodle soup and, my personal favorite among many others, the wonders of Shanghai cuisine. In time, I have come to accept the fact that Chinatown is and will probably stay outdated and detached from the real happenings back home.
Canal Street, the main artery running through the heart of Chinatown, is where you will find non-English-speaking Chinese immigrants selling Americanized Chinese souvenirs (or what tourists would perceive as trendy Chinese fashions) as well as real-looking antiques. What you will find most tempting are the bootleg name-brand handbags, wallets and other accessories sold straight from the sidewalks. If you ask the sellers for more merchandise, they will lead you to a dodgy backroom filled with all their goodies. You certainly cannot buy Louis Vuitton wallet or a pair of Christian Dior sunglasses for less than $18 elsewhere, unless you fly to Hong Kong and take an hourlong train ride north to Shenzhen, which is known for its perfection in piracy skills.
As you branch off Canal Street to the smaller veins and arteries of Mulberry or Mott Streets, you will find more souvenir stores and little delicacies and bakeries serving authentic Chinese cuisine. The restaurants are usually where old-timers come together during the weekends and catch up on each other’s lives over dim sum and tea, looking back on their lives wherever they came from and getting updates on family members. As you walk downhill, past the markets selling fresh live seafood, you turn the corner onto Baxter Street. There you’ll find a strip of Vietnamese restaurants, a splendid alternative if you want to try something else.
Jacob A. Riis showed his contempt toward Chinatown in his book How the Other Half Lives. He wrote about our ethnicity without having much understanding of it. Riis observed and took photos of the residents and how they lived; that did not give him permission to make generalizations about us and step on us with his words. The opium craze that swept through Chinatown was at its worst when Riis made his grand entrance. Judgments about the Chinese should not have been made so quickly. He ended a chapter with the image of an opium pipe, somehow suggesting, “Yes, this is what the Chinese are about. Nothing more, nothing less.”
To Americans, Chinatown is known as a shopping mecca. To the Chinese, Chinatown is a haven for those of us who love to reminisce about the past. The streets are a reminder of what we left behind in our old countries in pursuit of newer, better things, in the land we call the United States of America, Home of the Free—a name most of us might say out loud in sarcasm.
During my first year of college, I was at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh. I met some Chinese who had been in this country for more than 10 years but were still incapable of mastering the American English language. Their families, wishing for a brighter future for their children, if not for themselves, have chosen to settle down in this country. Like the immigrants in Upton Sinclair’s prized novel The Jungle, the Chinese immigrants are all packed in the unseen factories and sweatshops in Chinatown, trading their lives for production rates. The goal for these people is to escape the hell Chinatown created for them.
In Chinatown, you see many different faces carrying many different emotions. Some are happy to be there, some are not. Some are forever complaining about the American way of life, some are glad to be on their way to becoming the typical Americanized Chinese. In Chinatown, you see a blend of the generation who is resisting modernization and the youngsters who are fighting to break through that wall. We shall see what C-town will be like in 10 years. Even the most constant things are bound to change, right?
Kathryn Hu is a student at Rutgers-Newark. Posted September 2006.
