Whose Chinatown?

Mia Warren (MW): This is A Better Life? from Feet in 2 Worlds. On this podcast, we’re exploring the impact of Covid on immigrants in the U.S. I’m Mia Warren.

One weekend in the spring of 2020, I biked across the Manhattan Bridge into the city to visit New York Chinatown. I remember walking the streets and thinking it seemed like a ghost town. Restaurants were closed. Some of them were boarded up. I bought some dumplings and sat down to eat them on a patch of concrete in Columbus Park.

More than a year later, Chinatown looks and feels different. Business has picked up, tourists wander in and out of stores, maybe not as many as before, and recently, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced $20 million in funding to revitalize the neighborhood.

Chinatowns across the country are still recovering from the effect of Covid deaths and economic devastation. Violent attacks on Asian people and Asian-owned businesses also grew during the pandemic, leading to a heightened sense of insecurity among residents of these neighborhoods.

In Los Angeles Chinatown, the pandemic was felt in another way as well. Long-simmering tensions over the neighborhood’s future began to play out more visibly, and more quickly than in the past. Community leaders are having new discussions and debates on issues of development, gentrification, and generational shifts. It’s hard to know what the end result will be. But what’s certain is that Covid has helped define two very different visions for the future of LA Chinatown.

A Better Life?’s executive producer Quincy Surasmith knows the neighborhood well. He’s been talking to people on many sides of the debate and brings us this essay.

Quincy Surasmith (QS): If you’ve never been to LA Chinatown, your image of this place probably comes from TV shows and film noir movies. And even then, the movie Chinatown barely spends any time in the neighborhood. In fact, the last line of the film is “forget about it—it’s Chinatown.”

Most people in Los Angeles, unless they’re actually from Chinatown, mainly think of it as a place to get a meal — or to film scenes for those shows and movies I mentioned. But it’s a real neighborhood, with residents, businesses, and a lot more going on than you might imagine.

Now, I’m not from Chinatown. I didn’t grow up there. Though I am Asian American, with Thai and Chinese heritage, my family had no connection to the neighborhood. I spent all my formative years in a suburb a good 20 miles away.

But, over the last dozen years, Chinatown’s really grown on me. Before the pandemic, I might go there at 2 p.m. to browse the shops, or at 2 a.m. to eat after community events. I crave dishes I can only find there, like the house special tofu at Jade Wok. I even had a monthly D&D game at my friend’s family home there. So when the pandemic hit Chinatown, I was worried about the neighborhood.

Businesses and residents alike were both struggling from the impacts of Covid. People were scared. In addition to the sickness and deaths, many didn’t have food and basic supplies. Renters were worried about getting evicted from their homes, and there was talk about Chinatown businesses at risk of closing permanently.

But the thing is: a lot of those problems weren’t caused by the pandemic. They had been brewing for years. What Covid did was add to existing tensions over housing, safety, and the local economy. It highlighted and accelerated a conflict of different visions for Chinatown’s future.

There’s one person whose vision can be seen throughout the neighborhood. To understand what’s going on in Chinatown, you have to understand him.

George Yu: My name is George Yu. I’m the executive director of the Chinatown business improvement district since its founding in 2000.

QS: The Chinatown Business Improvement District, or BID for short, has a mission to bring about Chinatown’s economic and cultural rebirth.

George: Part of what we’re trying to do is to make Chinatown sustainable.

QS: When George says “we” he really is referring to himself. The Chinatown Business Improvement District is kind of a one-man show.

George: You know, I came from a private business background. I don’t have a nonprofit with a bunch of people sitting around. This is it. There’s nobody else in this office, except me at this point. You know, I have a couple of people working part-time, but they’re working from home. That’s about it.

QS: George Yu is at the center of a conflict that has been brewing for years.

What kinds of businesses and people deserve to be in Chinatown? Should the focus be on attracting new businesses and development, or should the priority be supporting long-time residents, many of whom are poor and in need of assistance?

George: In order for Chinatown to be sustainable you need a balance of new and old businesses, of young and old residents.

QS: George is the kind of guy who’s hard to reach, and stays busy. He’s constantly checking incoming texts and emails, or going through thousands of pictures on his phone — pictures of old properties, new developments, and various homeless people — all of which he feels the need to stay on top of.

George: Here’s a photo of project Room Key. Still there!

QS: He started working with his dad as a contractor in Chinatown in the 1970s, and he’s maintained both a familiarity with the neighborhood and an instinct of always looking for things to fix.

George: I’ve been in Chinatown since 1976. There isn’t a merchant that’s been in existence that I probably don’t know and have some working relationship with.

QS: When the pandemic was at its worst here in LA, there were all these calls to support Chinatown businesses. There were Instagram posts asking people to order takeout when they couldn’t dine in and google spreadsheets with lists of small businesses to patronize. But that was over a year ago.

I asked George Yu about how Chinatown businesses were recovering, and if any had closed.

George: Well you keep mentioning closure, you know, let’s talk. Give me an example of a business that’s closed in Chinatown.

Certainly, the pandemic introduced new challenges for all businesses. Was there any challenges that could not be overcome? I don’t believe so.

Look at a business like Won Kok, they have a line now. They didn’t have a line before the pandemic.

QS: Won Kok was a restaurant I knew well. I first started hanging out in Chinatown in 2009. I was less than a year out of college and had returned to live in Los Angeles. And this time I was living in the city proper, not the suburbs I grew up in.

I was unfamiliar with the city core and so eager to find my community, both in terms of people and places. And one of the places I looked was in Chinatown.

That year, I got let go from my first job out of school. That same night, I was invited to an Asian American run jam session called MidTones at the Grand Star Jazz Club in Chinatown. I started going every month, and afterward, we’d get Cantonese food at Won Kok. Mainly because they were still open at 1 am on a Wednesday.

The interior was super old school Chinese American: red vinyl chairs, dragons adorning the support posts, dim sum dumplings and buns at the front counter still steaming away late into the night, beef chow fun with black bean sauce served on fuchsia patterned plates and teapots spinning on worn lazy susans.

I was glad a classic Chinatown spot like Won Kok had survived the pandemic.

But George wasn’t only pointing to older businesses like Won Kok as an example of how well Chinatown businesses are doing.

George: The older businesses are, by and large, ready to retire. Without younger, you know, business coming in, then there’s no future.

QS: George has a reputation for courting new restaurants to Far East Plaza, the shopping center George’s company Macco owns and manages. These included restaurants run by star Asian American chefs — or ones that would soon become stars.

George: You know, food is a great equalizer in terms of bringing people in. You have a lot of young Chinese and APIs opening up businesses. And I think that’s the only way Chinatown will be sustainable.

QS: Pearl River Deli is one of the newer successful restaurants in Far East Plaza. They’ve done surprisingly well during the pandemic. I couldn’t even schedule an interview during their normal hours because they were so busy.

I caught Chef Johnny Lee on one of their prep days, it was just him and three other young cooks. Johnny was tending to a wok over a big fire while his team packed supplies and blended chili sauce.

Johnny opened Pearl River Deli in February 2020.

Johnny Lee: I mean, we barely had a month until the Shelter in Place Order in March came down. And originally, it was intended just to be a pop-up.

After Chinese year, that’s when the shutdown Shelter in Place order really came through. That’s when everything started, like, getting kind of like very slow and very, everyone started closing down, but we decided to just kind of keep it, trying it.

QS: Pearl River Deli’s been able to keep operating because they can afford to run lean with a small team, limited hours, and being flexible with their service and menu offerings.

Johnny: Because we’re a small restaurant, we’re able to maneuver fairly fast. And you know, because I’m here every day and I’m like making decisions.

QS: Johnny adapted Pearl River Deli with the now all-too-familiar safeguards: plexiglass barriers, outdoor dining with distanced tables, contactless payment.

Johnny: But we just feel bad for the customers at the time. Just because they had no place- they had to eat in their car, or they would just end up eating out of their trunk on the sidewalk.

You know, it’s not the best way to experience our food, but it is what it is.

QS: To maintain the quality of his food in the era of take-out-only dining, Johnny even started using new containers when serving soup noodles to-go.

Johnny: So you put the soup in the bowl, and then there’s another container that that stays on top of it. But keeps the noodles separated from the soup, so they don’t get soggy.

QS: Pearl River Deli recently announced that they’re moving into a larger, more permanent space in Chinatown. Stories like theirs underscore how innovative businesses were able to stay a step ahead of the pandemic and flourish.

But not all businesses are doing so well. A little over a block away, on a less busy street, Zen Mei Bistro is going through a much harder time. When I went to speak with them, even though they were open for business, the door was locked. When they let me in, the restaurant was empty. And over the course of an hour, they only seated two tables.

And this is where I started to understand that George Yu’s idea of sustainability might not be working for everyone.

Their owner Michelle told me how things were going.

Michelle: (Translation) In terms of business, it’s basically been like 20% of before so we’ve lost like 80% of our sales…

QS: She explained that their sales are down about 80 percent since the pandemic started. Before, they were running with four employees, mostly family members. They’ve reduced down to two, and even that still feels like too many.

When places like Zen Mei have to scale back, it doesn’t just impact the restaurant. The people working as cooks, servers, and bussers are also affected.

“I feel sorry to have to tell them they can’t work here anymore,” she explained.

Stories like Michelle’s, of Chinatown residents fighting to survive during the pandemic, are a major focus of a group called Chinatown Community for Equitable Development. CCED thinks about the neighborhood in a way that’s radically different from George Yu and the Chinatown Business Improvement District.

Clip: (Loving our Communities, March 2021) “If we wanna talk about violence, ask yourself: are we making the same noise and paying attention when our elders and families are being evicted from their homes?”

QS: In March 2021, a rally called “Love Our Communities,” gathered dozens of community organizations, including CCED, and hundreds of people in the Little Tokyo neighborhood to address violence and hate against Asian Americans.

TiDo, an organizer with CCED, talked about the connection she saw between the rise of anti-Asian violence during the pandemic and the drive to bring new development to Chinatown, at the cost of existing businesses and long-time residents.

Clip: (Loving our Communities Rally, March 2021) “When our full service grocery stores are pushed out? Where does that leave our elders? How can our elders be safe when what they need around them is destroyed? This is the economic violence that our working class Chinatown community has faced. This is what happens when an influx of luxury developers and city politicians value profit over people.”

QS: I remember when CCED started in 2012. Back then, they had rallied against the opening of a Wal-Mart in Chinatown. They saw a business like that as displacing other local shops and grocers. A Wal-Mart did eventually open. And then proceeded to close within a few years.

In the meantime, CCED grew to organize residential tenants and protest new developments and gentrification in Chinatown.

When the pandemic came, they pivoted to organize mutual aid efforts, partnering with another community organization to bring food, supplies, and financial assistance to elderly residents and others without access. For CCED, seeing seniors already on the brink being pushed over the edge by Covid only heightened the conflict over Chinatown’s future.

Janis Yue: Yeah, so maybe we can just talk a bit about, like, Dynasty Plaza, any immediate thoughts about, like, strategy.

QS: I met with a group of CCED organizers one afternoon after they reached out to some local shopkeepers who were worried about losing their storefronts at a shopping arcade called Dynasty Plaza.

It was a strategy session. Should they start a social media campaign criticizing the new property owners? Should they focus on the LA City Council member from the district?

Janis: We’ve already been talking about kind of doing a social media post, like, call to action.

Cynthia Cheng: Hold off until we- until we know more about their intentions. Not to, you know, be nice to them. But just so we know what to demand when we do, do it. Yeah.

QS: Meeting with CCED organizers is very different than meeting with George Yu. They tend to work in small groups and committees. The organizers I met with are in their 20s and 30s, though their full membership ranges in age from teenage volunteers to elder tenants of senior housing in Chinatown.

They often meet at places like Quickly, a cafe in Chinatown serving boba — also known as bubble tea in other parts of the country. That’s where I caught up with them.

QS: Cool. What are you guys having?

Janis: I’m having a watermelon juice, it’s Sophat’s Fave?

Sophat Phea: Yep. Except mine, I have Boba in mine.

QS: While George had spoken enthusiastically about businesses that are thriving, CCED regularly interacts with businesses at the margins, the ones struggling to make ends meet. These include owners of small shops in older shopping malls and arcades.

Janis Yue is one of CCED’s organizers.

Janis: We headed over to Dynasty Plaza, which was kind of our big outreach spot for the day because they were recently purchased by Red Car. Which is this developer that displaced folks from the shop and tore it down. And actually, some of the tenants in Dynasty Plaza were the ones from the shop.

And so there’s this looming kind of threat of them displacing those same tenants again, displacing everybody in Dynasty Plaza, and it’s the last remaining, like, shopping kind of mall in Chinatown.

QS: Dynasty Plaza is one of the places where different visions of Chinatown’s future come into sharp focus.

George Yu takes credit for bringing in the developer to renovate these run-down buildings. Especially when they were empty or housed small, older businesses.

George: You know, Redcar, at my request purchased Dynasty Center.

Or some of these newly renovated buildings by Redcar. Take a look at the transformation from a building that was abandoned, you know, to all new, retrofitted, ADA upgraded, you know, and it’s just beautiful.

QS: But George’s idea of beauty is not shared by everyone. The community organizers at CCED put a post on Instagram sharing some words from Kenny, who owns a shop in Dynasty Plaza.

Clip: (CCED Instagram Clip) “A lot of the shopping centers in Chinatown have been take over by the big group of developer, the buyer. Okay.

And then they try to purchase the Asian shopping center and try to convert them into office use or apartment. So if they keep doing this, so in the near future, maybe in the next few years, there’s no more Chinatown.

What I mean no more Chinatown is they don’t have their traditional mom & pop retail stores. So maybe someone can do something and try to stop them.”

QS: Businesses like Kenny’s rely on Chinatown neighborhood regulars: older people, immigrant families, locals who don’t speak English or maybe don’t even speak Mandarin, which is the more dominant Chinese language in other parts of the city.

But as CCED’s Janis Yue points out, many of those customers are also under pressure.

Janis: They’ve seen their clientele kind of changing and disappearing. And I think that was really exacerbated by the pandemic.

QS: In recent years, shopping malls and plazas in Chinatown such as The Shop and BC Plaza have evicted commercial tenants or closed down under new ownership. Many of their business tenants, such as Kenny from that Instagram post, have been forced to move, making it even harder to stay afloat financially.

Janis: A lot of them are also in very precarious kinds of situations with their landlords, where most of the folks we talked to have month-to-month leases. And so that left them in this very vulnerable position, where even though there’s this, quote, unquote, like eviction moratorium during the pandemic, that wasn’t actually true. And the folks from BC Plaza were evicted. They couldn’t be evicted for nonpayment of rent, but they could still be evicted for other reasons.

And I think the reason for ultimately was that the building was uninhabitable. But it was uninhabitable because of conditions that he had created. Like, yeah, not paying for the electricity, and, like, soldering bathrooms closed and, yeah. Yeah, tactics like that.

QS: CCED is fiercely protective of the community members they’re close with. They’ve held demonstrations protesting poor living conditions of elder renters and organized coupon booklets to support struggling restaurants like Zen Mei Bistro. They are equally passionate in their criticism of new businesses and development that they see as a threat.

Janis: What it’s going to take is for these businesses and gentrifiers, residential or commercial, to feel uncomfortable, and to, like, hear these stories about what’s actually happening to community members, and feel uncomfortable, because they are contributing to that.

QS: When you look through their Instagram posts and stories, they are filled with memes and graphics that talk about how new bars, restaurants, art galleries, and apartment complexes showing up in Chinatown are harming or displacing long-time residents.

Janis: They were actually invitations that took a lot of care, I think to create, to invite these businesses to really critique themselves, and to kind of come to their own answers about how they can actually support folks from being displaced from Chinatown.

QS: But to some who have seen them, these don’t seem like carefully crafted invitations to reflect.

Johnny: CCED is a little bit more controversial. They’ve been kind of like, criticizing, like, a lot of newer restaurants and, like, the younger generation coming in, try and do things, like accusing us of like, enabling gentrification.

QS: That’s Johnny from Pearl River Deli.

Johnny: I don’t really like agree with, like, their methods, because, especially like, if they’re, I assume they’re also Chinese Americans, like many of us are. I don’t think it’s very productive to look for, like, Asians to be, like, criticizing each other. And instead of being productive and trying to find solutions together, you know, especially in like this era of, like, increased anti-Asian, like, discrimination, you know?

QS: I can see where Johnny’s coming from. It took time for me to feel invested in Chinatown and to care for its people. And that happened because I found people and places in Chinatown where I felt like I could belong.

If newcomers are criticized and feel unwelcome, would it discourage them from caring about the neighborhood the same way?

But I have to admit, my interactions with CCED have also actively shaped my personal investment in what happens to Chinatown and made me reflect on my own role in the neighborhood. And no matter how much I care, I’m still mainly there as a visitor.

For people who live and work there every day, their struggles and realities can’t be put on pause. Especially when the pandemic’s impact is still being felt.

QS: As I walked with the group back to their office, they pointed out how bad things had gotten for businesses in Chinatown.

Janis: We’re walking past Plum Tree Inn now, which is this legacy restaurant that was around for decades and actually had to close permanently during the pandemic. Yeah, this is really like kind of the epitome or, yeah, an example of gentrification. And, yeah, the differences within Chinatown.

QS: This was actually one of two tours of Chinatown I had taken. The other was with George Yu. He drove me around, pointing out all the legacy businesses and organizations, like Chinese Family Associations, that are still in the neighborhood.

George: Family Association, Family Association, Phoenix bakery, Family Association, Family Association down, you know, where that, you know, that wall is.

I’m pointing this- these out because these are all buildings that will never change, that they’ll never be sold.

I think that that concern about that kind of change, fundamental change, is a little over blown.

QS: George admits that some businesses had been leaving Chinatown even before the pandemic. But he argues they were just following their customers who had moved out of the city to the suburban communities that have become new centers of Chinese and Asian American life.

This argument seems reasonable, especially when you look at Chinatown’s history.

See, what we call Chinatown now is actually “New Chinatown.” Los Angeles’ first Chinatown originated in the mid-1800s near the city’s historic center on Olvera Street. That neighborhood is where half of Los Angeles’ 200 Chinese Americans lived in 1870. It was also the site of the Chinese Massacre of 1871, where a mob of 500 people beat, robbed, and murdered 18 Chinese people.

When the city made plans to build a new train station in the 1920s, it was on land already occupied by Chinatown. By the time Los Angeles Union Station opened in 1939, Old Chinatown was no more. Only one building from Old Chinatown remains; it’s the current home of the Chinese American Museum of L.A.

Eventually, a New Chinatown was built to the north, the neighborhood we call Chinatown today. But that discontinuity meant that many Chinese Americans in Los Angeles no longer considered Chinatown their home. And as newer waves of immigrants arrived in the 60s onward, many didn’t settle in Chinatown.

Those who could afford to move left for the suburbs. But a lot of people still call Chinatown home. These include businesses that were there when New Chinatown started. And many immigrants from working-class and refugee backgrounds, especially those from Southeast Asia, still look to Chinatown as an affordable place to live, work, and start new lives.

And that history leads us back to the core question being so hotly debated: Who is Chinatown for? Who gets to belong? Who gets to decide its future?

For George Yu, the answer is obvious:

George: Anybody’s vision should, you know, should be those with skin in the game. If you own property in Chinatown, you own a business in Chinatown, you live in Chinatown. You know, you’re the property owner. And you’re legally entitled to build or not build something.

QS: George has no tolerance for anyone calling for a different vision of Chinatown, be they city planners or activists.

George: Once again you have one group of people telling you what’s best for Chinatown and the rest of Chinatown. Look, you don’t have to listen to me. Talk to the family associations and talk to the long-standing stakeholders.

I actually have a particular dislike for planners, you know, plan something, plan your own damn property.

QS: And this is something George kept going back to. He comes from a property management and contracting background. He believes in property owners and their right to literally build a prosperous Chinatown on their land.

But not everyone is a property owner, as Janis at CCED points out.

Janis: Their actions are creating a Chinatown where the most like vulnerable folks, working-class folks, can no longer thrive. And so I think there’s, there’s a tension there, where they are actually destroying this community in a lot of ways.

I think back to the roots of Chinatown, as this, this place that was for working-class folks, working-class immigrants, to really like thrive. And so I think that we want to continue to honor that vision of Chinatown. And think of community members as either working-class immigrants who still are here and know Chinatown as their home or people who support that vision.

And it’s a Chinatown where everybody, no matter who they are, has what they need to thrive.

QS: Both BID and CCED want Chinatown to thrive, to be sustainable. They both see themselves as advocates for long-time Chinatown residents and business owners. They both see themselves as insiders, working to let Chinatown determine its own future instead of being told what to do by outsiders.

The problem is: they fundamentally disagree on whose voices and interests are important and who actually needs help.

Before Covid, Chinatown was already at a crossroads between these two visions, with its key players fighting over which direction to take. For Chinatown, there is no pre-pandemic stability to return to, only a question. A question they’ve been putting off that can’t be delayed much longer: who gets to decide the fate of our neighborhood?

MW: This episode was produced by Quincy Surasmith, who is also the executive producer of A Better Life?

Jocelyn Gonzales is our technical director. Our editor is John Rudolph. Alejandro Salazar Dyer is our director of marketing. And Katelynn Laws is our intern.

Our theme music and original score are by Fareed Sajan.

A Better Life? comes to you from Feet in 2 Worlds. Since 2005, Feet in 2 Worlds has been telling the stories of today’s immigrants and training immigrant journalists. The Feet in 2 Worlds network includes hundreds of reporters and editors. Some, like me, have been Feet in 2 Worlds fellows. Others have attended our workshops and contributed to our podcast and website. Together, we’re making American journalism more reflective of the diverse communities that we serve.

To hear other episodes in this series, or to read more about the story you just heard, visit us at abetterlifepodcast.com. That’s abetterlifepodcast.com.

I’m Mia Warren. Thanks for listening to the second season of A Better Life?

John Rudolph (JR): A Better Life? and Feet in 2 Worlds are supported by The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation, the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation, an anonymous donor, and readers and listeners like you.

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