Feb. 5th, 2014 01:11 pm
"China...is here."
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muckefuckThis article lamenting how urban Chinatowns are becoming "playgrounds for the wealthy" annoys me, and this is why:
Talking about some of the newly-emerged and -emerging Chinatowns would've added some nice balance to the article: It's not that Chinese aren't coming here or are instantly assimilating when they step off the plane, it's just that they're settling elsewhere. This isn't a new phenomenon either: IIRC, Chicago's Chinatown relocated twice before it ended up established at Wentworth and Cermak. (It's still flourishing, btw, since property prices on the South Side can't even touch those of the Outer Boroughs, much less Lower Manhattan.) St Louis didn't have anything resembling a traditional Chinatown when I was growing up. (It got bulldozed to make way for Busch Stadium right around the time that the Hart-Cellar Act eliminated national quotas, spawning the new wave of Asian immigration.) It does now, along Olive Boulevard in U City. So do Sun Belt cities like Austin and Orlando--places which never had a critical mass of Asian immigrants before.
And when I say "added balance", I mean "made it interesting to read". Instead, it's the same old article about gentrification vs poor immigrants, Disneyfication of ethnic enclaves, blah blah blah that I've read dozens of times by now. Of course, who would really expect a BBC reporter with a plum posting in Manhattan to want to take more than a thousand steps from their hotel if it's all the same to their editors?
"Chinatowns are turning into a sanitised ethnic playground for the rich to satisfy their exotic appetite for a dim sum and fortune cookie fix," says Andrew Leong, one of the authors of a recent report that charted gentrification in New York, Boston and Philadelphia's Chinatowns.Notice anything wrong with that last sentence? "Chinatown" can be used broadly to refer to any part of town with a high concentration of Chinese businesses and organisations or narrowly to refer to specific neighbourhood with an extended history of hosting such businesses and organisations. Guess which definition the report used. Depending on how you count them, there are as many as nine Chinatowns in and around NYC, six of them within the Five Boroughs. Out-of-towners, of course, are generally only aware of the one in Manhattan. Is it really surprising that the one all the tourists go to is becoming too touristy? Moreover, everyone without a six-figure income is being priced out of Manhattan (and, increasingly, Brooklyn and Queens as well), so why should they Chinese be any different?
Talking about some of the newly-emerged and -emerging Chinatowns would've added some nice balance to the article: It's not that Chinese aren't coming here or are instantly assimilating when they step off the plane, it's just that they're settling elsewhere. This isn't a new phenomenon either: IIRC, Chicago's Chinatown relocated twice before it ended up established at Wentworth and Cermak. (It's still flourishing, btw, since property prices on the South Side can't even touch those of the Outer Boroughs, much less Lower Manhattan.) St Louis didn't have anything resembling a traditional Chinatown when I was growing up. (It got bulldozed to make way for Busch Stadium right around the time that the Hart-Cellar Act eliminated national quotas, spawning the new wave of Asian immigration.) It does now, along Olive Boulevard in U City. So do Sun Belt cities like Austin and Orlando--places which never had a critical mass of Asian immigrants before.
And when I say "added balance", I mean "made it interesting to read". Instead, it's the same old article about gentrification vs poor immigrants, Disneyfication of ethnic enclaves, blah blah blah that I've read dozens of times by now. Of course, who would really expect a BBC reporter with a plum posting in Manhattan to want to take more than a thousand steps from their hotel if it's all the same to their editors?
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