America's Chinatowns facing land struggles

[TB4000]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070710/ts_csm/achinatown

[huangalex]

One sign of the times is a new Japanese-style restaurant on the northern border of Chinatown. The wood décor is fresh, the music Western, the chopsticks cute, and waitresses outfitted in kimono-like tops with black slacks and a polka-dot bandana over their hair.

The style appeals to the non-Chinese clientele that increasingly surrounds the neighborhood, says Judy Chow, a manager whose company owns the place.


Chinatown is not just real estate. It's a community where the roots of Asian American identity entrenched themselves for the past 150 years. If this of all places is being infected with New Orientalism, we're basically all screwed.

[AngryABCGirl]

Gentrification is never pretty for the people who live there.

I really don't like how people treat Chinatown as a tourist attraction, although acknowledging the economic benefits it brings to some neighborhoods in SF and NY. But as my New Yorker friend, a fellow Chinatown kid, said, "Tourist buses would never drop off White tourists to the city in Bed Stuy or Harlem to look at the Black neighborhood." A lot of these White tourists, inevitable from middle america or whitebread part of it, then poke and laugh at things in Chinatown. I haven't had a problem telling these people off and then they're hella surprised a Chinese can be a bitch and tell them off in fluent English.

Most Chinatowns are places where poor immigrants arrive to America to work and deserve more dignity than that as far as I'm concerned. The Chinatowns that don't have the aesthetics of the imagined "Chinatown" such as some parts of SF don't get such visitors and are avoided by outsiders. We call them bad neighborhoods and ghettos.

[yoMAMA]

I remember visiting DC last year, and saw the Chinatown surrounded by hooters, starbucks, fudruckers, one really expensive condo and united colors of benneton right next to the DC metro.

It is prime real estate, though. I'm sure some of those predatory developers wants to push out the (what remaining) affordable housing for the Chinese seniors.

gentrification is just an urban form of mindless sprawl (in a tighter space, but with the same corporate chains everywhere).

[TB4000]

It's treated as an exhibit or like an amusement park. It seriously is.

[MD2020]

I remember visiting DC last year, and saw the Chinatown surrounded by hooters, starbucks, fudruckers, one really expensive condo and united colors of benneton right next to the DC metro.

It is prime real estate, though. I'm sure some of those predatory developers wants to push out the (what remaining) affordable housing for the Chinese seniors.

gentrification is just an urban form of mindless sprawl (in a tighter space, but with the same corporate chains everywhere).

Downtown DC doesn't have a Chinatown, it's got a Chinablock, or maybe a Chinastreet. The last grocery store closed down a year or so ago and really... what's a chinatown with no chinese grocery store. I have no idea how the old Chinese people that live in places like the Wah Luck house even get groceries or anything if they don't have cars. Doubt they're using Peapod.

The hilarious part though is that all those yuppie stores have to post their sign titles in Chinese. You've got crazy shit like "Chipotle" written in 30 characters.

[LaiSteve66]

White people come to our "Chinatown" to eat/buy Asian food, nothing more.

[eos]

maybe the recent poisonings and deaths from using certain chinese-made products will curb visits to "our" chinatowns.

or we could just put up wrought-iron gates with spikes on top, a guard tower, barking dobermans, and gun-toting locals.

[snailpoo]

But as my New Yorker friend, a fellow Chinatown kid, said, "Tourist buses would never drop off White tourists to the city in Bed Stuy or Harlem to look at the Black neighborhood."

Erm, those ubiqitous, red, double decker New York Sightseeing buses go to Harlem.


It's the result of the housing boom. With the absurd amounts of money people are apprently willing to pay per square foot in Manhattan, its seems like every last square foot of Manhattan --be it Chinatown, Harlem, Alphabet City, or Wall Street -- is being converted into luxury condos. Hell, if the Regent Wall Street and the Plaza are condos, what chance does Chinatown have?

I saw 2brs (new construction) for sale on Mott St. for $1.8mm.

[sageb1]

i remember visiting a Japanese restaurant in White Rock, BC once.

the girl in the kimono didn't know how to wear her kimino and wore it like a bathrobe.

it was owned by koreans.

not that any of the white customers cared as long as the sake and whiskey flowed freely and the cuisine good.

last time i visited the area in june, that restaurant was packed.

this summer, i bet they are raking in the money.

when i went through chinatown last week, i didn't feel like going to any of the restaurants and the only vegetarian restaurant looked like it was gone. :(

[yoMAMA]

it was owned by koreans.



i was a benihana a few days ago.

all the sushi chefs speak fluent chinese.

the cooks for tariyaki chicken look hispanic.

[TB4000]

i was a benihana a few days ago.

all the sushi chefs speak fluent chinese.

the cooks for tariyaki chicken look hispanic.

So basically it's like any other asian restaurant in the urban city.

[yoMAMA]

So basically it's like any other asian restaurant in the urban city.

LOL

I was at a national italian restaurant chain a few month ago, and most of the chefs there look hispanic too.

[kimpossible]

i remember visiting a Japanese restaurant in White Rock, BC once.

it was owned by koreans.


A lot of them are.

Just to clarify that I'm not speaking on behalf of Chinese but as a shopper of some household goods, most of the stuff I need I go to the burbs for. Land is cheaper outside the city so a lot of business has moved there. At least in the NW. Example, 99 Ranch is in Kent along with the restaurant enclave. Yeah, there's the big Uwajimaya in downtown Seattle but the one in Kirkland area is always busy. So's the one outside Portland (Beaverton).

I will only go into the Portland Chinatown to eat occasionally and even then there are better restaurants on the east side. Again, cheaper land, lots of businesses opened out there. Heck, even the west side has (multiple) Taiwanese cafes and buffets these days.

[haplesshobo]

Chinatown is not just real estate. It's a community where the roots of Asian American identity entrenched themselves for the past 150 years. If this of all places is being infected with New Orientalism, we're basically all screwed.

There's a quote in Pirsing's Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, something along the lines that its not the real estate underneath a church that makes it holy, but the spirit of the worshippers inside.

And, I tend to think that you are treating its importance soley in terms of just real estate, and not as a community. Nobody's acknowledged this so far, but not a lot of Chinese people want to live in "Chinatown" anyways if you look at the population trends. LA's Chinatown has been slowly dying for years as Chinese immigrants and Asian Americans moved to San Gabriel Valley instead of Chinatown. This was happening long before any gentrification. If we have thriving chinese communities outside Chinatown, does it really matter that a lot of Chinese don't want to live in Chinatown?

People complain about the tourist aspects of Chinatown, but if it wasn't for that, Chinatown may have shut down altogether.

[haplesshobo]

gentrification is just an urban form of mindless sprawl (in a tighter space, but with the same corporate chains everywhere).

Not really. Urban sprawl refers to low-desnity growth on the outer edges of urban areas into undeveloped, rural areas without the infrastructure to support such growth. Gentrification is the opposite because its usually high density growth in the opposite direction, back into the core of the city. From an enviornmental point of view, gentrification is much better because you're recycling buildings and residents are less likely to use their cars for errands. In fact, progressives actually used to support such gov-supported projects.

[huangalex]

Gentrification doesn't usually recycle buildings; it replaces old decrepit structures with new high-value property. Its vehicles of operation include eminent domain. Property values increase for the surrounding area, but this is accompanied with a changing demographic.

When old residents are replaced, they are forced out of the "core of the city" into the "undeveloped, rural areas." In this way gentrification causes urban sprawl.