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Alvin Wong

Professor Clark

First Year Writing

25 October 2021

Profile Final Draft

Chinatown’s busy streets from before the pandemic in 2020

https://www.exp1.com/blog/visit-chinatown-a-trip-to-canal-street/

Many assume that Chinatown in New York City, the financial center of the world, is just

as prosperous as its parent. This was a reasonable assumption; prior to the year 2020, tourists

could be found exploring the streets and trying something new at a family-owned business,

whether it be food or clothing. Children would skip beside their grandparents as they walked to
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Columbus Park. On Grand St, fruit stands selling longans and lychees lined the sidewalk outside

of fish markets, bakeries, pharmacies, and banks. During festivals, lion dancers bobbed down

the confetti-coated roads with bright red and gold banners flying above as drums and cymbals

crashed rhythmically. To an outsider, NYC’s Chinatown seems to be a model community where

generations of families can grow up. In reality, many immigrants feel tied to the city and want to

get out. “She shopped there, she worshipped there, she ate there, but for her, the point was to get

out of there: To be somewhere else meant you'd made it.” (Lam).

Grand St with a fruit market and a pharmacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftFIkbfOMgs

Chinatown has never been as fortunate as the rest of Manhattan. With the start of the

coronavirus pandemic in the US, xenophobia and misguided fears caused “nearly 90% of

businesses in Chinatown [to halt] operations altogether” in New York (Hubbell). Even before

the pandemic began, an estimated “24% of residents in Chinatown [lived] below the poverty line
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– double the average of New York” (Hubbell). However, a large portion of Chinatown was

ineligible for financial aid “because it shared a zip-code with the affluent neighborhoods of

Tribeca and Soho,” which meant the zip-code based NYC LMI Storefront Loan program did not

help. (Hubbell). Business owners in the area had kept prices low so that the community would

be able to afford meals, at the cost of their own profit margins. The combination of rising

housing costs in New York and inadequate financial aid meant that closing a business could

collapse entire

families. “The

neighborhood’s traditional charms suddenly turned into liabilities with the challenge of social

distancing in cramped restaurants and shops.” (Kimmelman).

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The product of Send Chinatown Love’s “Light Up Chinatown” project at night

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/hundreds-of-paper-lanterns-are-glowing-in-chinatown-right-now-

010821

Although the pandemic has devastated countless small Asian-owned businesses and

households, the communities have also grown closer through the rise of grassroots projects. Two

notable organizations, Send Chinatown Love and Welcome to Chinatown, held fundraisers to

raise donations for the struggling businesses. Send Chinatown Love also started a project to light

up the town with hand-painted lanterns as a symbol of the new generation stepping up to

embrace Chinese history. The volunteer group raised about $48,000 for the lantern project and

over $1,000,000 for relief for struggling businesses since its founding (Send Chinatown Love).

Similarly, Welcome to Chinatown has raised over $130,000 by selling merchandise from

collaborations with lesser-known artists in Chinatown, and the organization plans to donate

$1,000,000 in grants by the end of 2021 (Welcome to Chinatown). Although families wanted
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their children to be able to leave the town to find success in college, these volunteers returned

when their home needed them.

The need to return home follows traditional Confucian family values, which were

brought over to the U.S. from China in the early 1800’s. Trading crews and their families settled

down in the port cities because of the high demand for Chinese goods. Many of these families

were from rural China, so they stayed close and worked together to survive. Communities

developed around these port towns and their family marketplace culture has been preserved to

this day. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 isolated the communities from the rest of New

York and created an even closer community that depended on collaboration to survive. In 1965,

the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed, causing a population boom with the sudden

influx of immigrants. The increased Chinese population as well as the strong sense of

community caused the area to become known as Chinatown.

Although Chinatown is an excellent tourist spot filled with shops and restaurants, it is

important to remember it is home to thousands of people, many of which live in poverty. The

increasing necessity of grassroots projects have revived a sense of community in the younger

generation, giving them a chance to give back to the town that raised them.
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Works Cited

Hubbell, Diana. “New York's Chinatown Pulls Together to Brighten the Covid Darkness.” The

Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 Jan. 2021,

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/jan/28/new-yorks-chinatown-pulls-together-to-

brighten-the-covid-darkness.
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Ingber, Audrey H. “China Town: Just like Any Other Ghetto: News: The Harvard Crimson.”

News | The Harvard Crimson, 19 May 1975,

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1975/5/19/china-town-just-like-any-other/.

Kimmelman, Michael. “Chinatown: Time Travel through a New York Gem.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 2 Dec. 2020,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/arts/design/chinatown-virtual-walk-

tour.html.

Lam, Francis. “New York City's Chinatown Looks Ahead to the Future.” Condé Nast Traveler, 8

Sept. 2021, https://www.cntraveler.com/story/new-york-citys-chinatown-looks-ahead-to-

the-future.

McKibben, Justin. Send Chinatown Love, Mar. 2020, https://www.sendchinatownlove.com/.

Tam, Jennifer, and Victoria Lee. Welcome to Chinatown, Mar. 2020,

https://www.welcometochinatown.com/.