American Chinatown
“Chinatown today fulfills two essential needs: as a spiritual and historical touchstone for older generations, and as a physical home for new immigrants.” - Bonnie Tsui
Bonnie Tsui’s book American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods shines a spotlight on Chinatowns across the country — from New York City to Honolulu, Hawai’i — interweaving the stories of the people she meets with her own personal narrative. She writes in the introduction, “It becomes inevitable that I embrace the idea of a city within a city — that as big as New York is, and as large as its Chinese population has grown to be, spreading out across the boroughs, the still-small world of Chinatown is where everybody knows somebody, and, chances are, that somebody knows you. Over time, it has found itself inextricably tied to the ups and downs of the city outside. Chinatown became something the city needed, in good ways and bad.”
One reason we selected this book for our monthly Preservation Book Club series is because the idea of Chinatown is firmly rooted in the popular imagination. How closely that hews to the reality of Chinatown would depend on who you ask. But within preservation, there is a growing understanding that there are many places worth preserving and celebrating because of the cultural heritage imbued in them. As we explore what that might mean or what it might look like, Chinatowns can serve as a bridge between the idea of a historic district and the more expansive idea of a cultural district.
Early in the book, when Tsui is speaking with San Francisco-based architect and historian Phil Choy, he says:
"Many preservationists are of a mind to arrest an historic district in terms of the buildings — they think of it as a museum, therefore you can't change or touch anything. Well, Chinatown is still living. It's still growing, and progressing, and it has a lot of needs. So you can't all of a sudden stop it and make it stand still." The tension between the city's concept of historical preservation and his own, he said, is "something I have grappled with for a long time."
A common thread throughout the book is how each Chinatown has continued to change; waves of immigration, shifts in dominant languages and dialects, industry and reinvention, Chinatown, much like the larger cities of which they are a part, are constantly evolving. If the historic importance of a neighborhood is primarily based on the people who live and work there, as opposed to the built environment that supports them, how can the field of historic preservation best respond to be a resource and not a hinderance?
Earlier this week, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced their annual 11 Most Endangered Places list. Two of those sites are Chinatowns. In an interview with NPR, Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation Executive Director John Chin said, "This issue raises awareness that these rare communities of color like Chinatown still exist, and the importance of sustaining and preserving it. Chinatown is part of the social fabric of the diversity of the city. It's got a really meaningful economic and social reason to exist. Chinatowns across the country play this same role." These listings tie into the Trust’s larger America’s Chinatowns initiative. From their website: “As part of our commitment to protect America’s historic places, we at the National Trust for Historic Preservation—together with partners and communities—are researching, elevating, and building coalitions that sustain and support historic Chinatowns across the United States. Together, we can protect these vital places now and into the future to directly improve the lives of people who find belonging and connection in Chinatowns.” We’re excited to see how this project progresses. We also recommend watching this recording from the Trust’s 2022 PastForward conference, featuring a conversation between award-winning cookbook author, culinary historian, and Chinatown activist Grace Young and Di Gao, senior director of research and development at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Of course, one of the biggest threats to Chinatowns across the country, is development pressure. Chinatowns have always been a place for new immigrants and working class people to make a home. Karen Cho’s documentary Big Fight in Little Chinatown “follows Chinatown communities resisting the pressures around them. From the construction of the world’s largest vertical jail in New York, Montreal’s fight against developers swallowing up the most historic block of their Chinatown, big box chains and gentrification forces displacing Toronto’s community, to a Vancouver Chinatown business holding steadfast, the film reveals how Chinatown is both a stand-in for other communities who’ve been wiped off the city map, and the blueprint for inclusive and resilient neighborhoods of the future.”
A New York-based initiative we admire is Think!Chinatown, an intergenerational nonprofit working at the intersection of storytelling, arts, and neighborhood engagement. The kind of work they do is preservation by another name, an example of how all sorts of community groups do preservation work without calling it that. As they say in their mission, “Our projects sit at the cross-section of civic and neighborhood engagement, storytelling, and the arts. It’s hard to categorize our work sometimes, but whatever we’re working on… it’s to support what we love about Chinatown!” We love it.