“I’m a real honest Chinaman and I love this place,” says 84-year-old Jimmy Wong.
I think of all the years I’ve been visiting LA’s Chinatown—or more specifically, New Chinatown, and agree—I love this place. This Chinatown wasn’t born until 1938. It’s considered to be New Chinatown, and it sits snugly between Dodger Stadium and Montecito Heights in downtown Los Angeles.
“But it’s not gonna be here any longer,” Wong continues. Because when you got people with money buying it out, it’s hopeless.”
In New Chinatown, vibrant red lanterns left over from Chinese New Year hang suspended from wires crisscrossing the plaza. Colorful buildings with eaves swooping skyward cast silhouettes. Shops selling bonsai trees, bamboo, and faux silk clothing provide pops of color and texture. Children throw tiny firecrackers against the pavement, making sharp snapping pops while an elderly man plays a two-stringed erhu around the corner, its tones sweet and plaintive. But increasingly, these things are muted. Each time I visit, it seems twenty more shops have boarded up and closed, the streets growing more silent and lonely.
There have been at least four iterations of Chinatown spanning LA, from the 1860s to the present, and they all share certain qualities even as they each have their own unique identity and reason for existence. Historically in Los Angeles, Chinatown has been something of a mobile community of people who, for the most part, share a similar culture, tradition, and set of conditions. It’s best to start with some history.
The earliest version, “Old Chinatown”, was located where Union Station is now, only a few blocks away from New Chinatown, on a street that was then called Calle de los Negros, but was changed to Los Angeles Street in 1877. This community was largely populated with agricultural laborers, laundrymen, and railroad workers recruited mostly from the Canton region in southern China.
With all of its self-help gurus, easy carefree lifestyle, and tolerant reputation, it can be surprising for some to learn that early Los Angeles was a prejudiced and barbaric town, often with violent and homicidal tendencies.
Already inhabited with indigenous Native Americans, frontier Los Angeles was also largely populated by Mexicans before and after the Mexican-American War, as well as Caucasian miners looking for gold. Later, soldiers who’d fought in the Civil War moved into the area to start new lives as ranchers, farmers, merchants, and laborers. Some of these people were outlaws and gamblers who joined vigilante groups and carried out rough justice as they saw fit.
At first, Chinese immigration was encouraged. There were few women in California to perform jobs like washing and cooking—work that Gold Rush prospectors and railroad workers weren’t inclined to do themselves–so Chinese women were often recruited to fill these types of jobs. But just as railroad construction came to an end, gold mines in the area were depleted and competition for resources increased. Soon, there was pressure to exclude Chinese from these areas altogether.
It wasn’t long before anti-Chinese sentiment ran high, fomented by a movement to drive the Asian community out of California entirely. Discriminatory legislation was enacted to prevent Chinese from marrying whites, prohibit them from owning land, deny them citizenship, and ban them from various forms of employment. Legislation went further through the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was passed in 1882 to create a moratorium on immigration from China, with only a few minor exceptions.
In October of 1870, Old Chinatown erupted into chaos after two rival factions within the Chinese community came to blows over a woman. The gangs fired shots and ended up in court. They were escorted back to their homes by a law enforcement officer, but restarted their feud the next day and accidentally killed a civilian.
The few police officers who worked in Los Angeles at that time (only six officers for a city with a population of 5,728), tried to quell the situation as best they could, but it wasn’t long before hundreds of Caucasian and Mexican vigilantes set upon the scene to dispense mob justice on the Chinese community—a community with a population of only 172 people. This resulted in a massacre as the vigilantes used axes to chop their way into tenements and fired their guns indiscriminately at any and all Chinese people inside—whether those targeted were involved in the original dispute or not. Before long the mob was dragging random people from their hiding places and hanging them from nearby makeshift gallows.
The Indianapolis Evening Journal printed an eyewitness account that ran in a San Francisco newspaper only days after the event occurred. It stated that even women and children participated in the bloodthirsty incident, encouraging the vigilantes to increased violence against the Chinese. The Boston Post reprinted a report that said 21 people were murdered by the end of it all, and many accounts include in this number a young Chinese boy, not even 10 years old, who was hung from an awning.
Today, only remnants of Old Chinatown remain. It was leveled in 1933 in order to build the new art deco train terminal, Union Station. The Chinese American Museum on Los Angeles Street is still located in one of the last surviving structures of Old Chinatown.
The final decades of Old Chinatown’s existence shared the Chinese community with City Market Chinatown, a produce market, which was near Ninth and San Pedro Street. According to Los Angeles Conservancy, the site contained the largest assemblage of pre-World War II buildings used for commerce purposes in association with the Chinese community in L.A. Unfortunately, like Old Chinatown, City Market Chinatown was demolished in 2012 to make way for development—in spite of its eligibility for historical preservation.
By 1938, Los Angeles had two more Chinatown communities—China City, which was built exclusively to attract American tourists, and New Chinatown, which was built not only to attract tourists, but to support the Chinese community in a way that was of most benefit to the Chinese people themselves.
China City’s planner was a Caucasian socialite, Christine Sterling, who didn’t consult the Chinese community for her concept. Her goal was to draw Caucasian visitors to her version of Chinatown by manufacturing a stereotypical idea of what a Chinese community should be, going so far as to recycle the studio set from the film The Good Earth in China City’s design and construction. In China City, people from the Chinese community were hired to dress in clichéd costumes and perform their roles as rickshaw drivers and merchants. Ultimately, China City had only a 10-year lifespan, shutting down for good in 1949 after burning down for the second time.
New Chinatown, on the other hand, was created by Peter Soo Hoo, and although it too was designed to appeal to Caucasian American tourists and their sensibilities, the property and businesses there were owned and managed by people within the Chinese community itself. This is in stark contrast with Old Chinatown, where the property they were living on was owned by the railroad. Peter Soo Hoo formed The Los Angeles Chinatown Corporation with other individuals in the Chinese community and together they purchased the land that New Chinatown would be built on for 75 cents per square foot.
The family of New York Times bestselling author, Lisa See, has been part of the fabric of the Chinatown community for generations. Her great-grandfather, Fong See, established an antiques store in Old Chinatown, close to where the plaza at Olvera Street is now. When the railroad gave the community 24 hours to evacuate for demolition, her family was able to stay on because their shop’s location was just outside of the zone needed for building the new train terminal.
“But it was still, nevertheless, a tourist attraction,” she says of New Chinatown. “It was one of the first places to use neon as a decorative [motif]. It was considered to be the first outdoor shopping mall.” She goes on to explain that New Chinatown was in direct competition with China City at the time and the two communities opened their doors for business within two weeks of each other.
And she would know. Not only has she written several novels about the Chinese community, both in California and in China, but she also wrote a walking tour guidebook for Chinatown in LA.
One man I’ve talked to off and on over the years, Alex Cheung, showed me books, videos, and other items of interest on a recent visit to New Chinatown. He’s a walking encyclopedia, brimming with details he spills in rapid-fire speech, often punctuated with infectious laughter.
In Chinatown he is an anomaly, managing to fit in despite the fact that he came from Hong Kong. Since most of the Chinese community in New Chinatown is composed of people from the Canton region, people from other parts of China aren’t able to understand or speak the Cantonese dialect. Cheung explains that though there are many dialects spoken in China, the written language is the same and everyone can communicate with each other in writing.
Cheung came to America when he was only 18, wanting to see the world. He crisscrossed North America by bus and even hitchhiked, though he barely knew any English. In 1974 he settled down and opened a store in New Chinatown, and his family sent him parcels of Chinese antiques and artifacts to sell there.
“At that time, China was hot,” he says. “Anything Chinese you can sell at that time in the 70s. Anything from China they buy because before 1971 no Chinese items were allowed to ship to this country. Embargo. Anything after the Korean War they stopped shipping from China.”
He shows me a small plate stamped with both Hong Kong and Japanese labels, explaining that some enterprising Chinese merchants got around the embargo laws by using Hong Kong and Japanese labels—just to be safe—because it was still legal to trade with America from those places. This practice was based on the assumption that most Americans wouldn’t bother to learn that Hong Kong is in China rather than Japan.
“Sometimes some Chinese people tried to be misleading shipping to America,” he says, holding the plate for my inspection. “This is very beautiful Chinese porcelain, so they put a mark saying ‘made in Hong Kong’. After a time they say, ‘Oh! Hong Kong is also part of China, right? Oh, yeah—I better say, ‘made in Japan’.” He laughs as he returns the plate to its shelf.
According to Alex, New Chinatown was the place to go in the 70s and 80s and it was bustling from nine in the morning to 9 or 10 p.m. “Years ago, Chinatown is very beautiful. The weekend people had three places—Hollywood Boulevard, Westwood, and Chinatown,” he says.
His tone is wistful as he explains that Chung King Road, where his store is, was like a friendly village back then. Families lived above their shops and their children romped in the road, music playing through amplified speakers as people socialized and shopped. He says that these days there are a variety of organizations that claim to be helping Chinatown—but none of them are actually doing anything. “They never come to Chinatown and take a look. There’s nobody here.
Later, I find Jimmy Wong, sitting in the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association. He echoes Alex Cheung’s feelings about how things have changed. “Chinatown is no good anymore. No future.”
Wong was born 84 years ago in the Hoy Sun region of China and immigrated to America in 1946 with his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He later served in the US Army and eventually studied journalism, but was never given the opportunity to actually work as a writer. Instead, he owned five restaurants and describes himself as a gambler.
He tells me he dreams of creating a community where all people can come together. “All minds of religion. It doesn’t matter. You could be atheist, a Buddhist, a Christian, a Muslim. It doesn’t matter. Everybody’s got to be involved.”
Thinking of the White and Latino populations who live side-by-side with the Chinese in New Chinatown these days, I ask him if he thinks that might already be happening in Chinatown. “No, no, no,” he says. “Chinatown is controlled by the rich. The rent’s too high.”
He explains that investors and developers bring money to Chinatown for themselves, but that it’s not “sweat money”—it’s all “corporation money.” He says they’re waiting for people to die in hopes that the next generation will sell out. “They don’t do it for the people. They do it to make a dollar. They don’t have my concept to help the people. I’m the only man who wants to build something not for myself but for the people.”
Once upon a time, Wong owned 15 buildings in China but he tells me he doesn’t have them anymore because he doesn’t need them. “I got nothing right now. I’m the freest man in the world because I don’t have anything.”
He tells me about the Chinatown Business Improvement District (BID).
“The guy who used to run the Business Improvement District was Benjamin. I was against them from the beginning. I said, ‘Ben, you’ll be here for maybe 20 years and once you make the money, you’re gonna go laughing all the way to the bank.’ We’re paying the taxes. He cares less. He walk away. He made his money. Nobody cares about people. They only care about how much they make.”
I wanted to learn more about BID, so I spoke with Adrian Riskin, a civic activist in Los Angeles.
“In Los Angeles they’ve been turned into or created to be this really pernicious force and it’s like a way to organize this kind of social power that sort of has a harmless appearance,” Riskin says. “The property owners and the city all kind of hide under this guise of these non-profit organizations that are just trying to keep the trees trimmed. Call any of them and ask them what they do. They’ll tell you they just trim the trees in their neighborhood. And so they’ve created this impression and they’re up to some really dangerous and really bad stuff and there’s like no political control over them whatsoever.”
I ask him if he thinks the reason there’s no political oversight is because they’re connected to money. “Yeah, that’s why the city of Los Angeles has created them in such a way that there’s no political control. I do think that’s the root cause in Los Angeles,” he says.
As it happens, Riskin actually has a lawsuit against the Chinatown BID, which is currently led by a man named George Yu, because Yu won’t respond to his request for public records. “He won’t even respond to the lawsuit. He’s going to be in contempt of court very soon,” Riskin says, referring to the same George Yu who brought Walmart to New Chinatown, to the anger and dismay of the community. The store didn’t last. I reached out to George Yu but never got a response.
Lisa See also thinks gentrification is a problem for New Chinatown.
“For a long time rents were super cheap and that’s why artists and galleries were able to move in,” she says. “But I think we’re in a new phase now of big apartments—you know, that huge, huge, huge development that’s at the corner of Hill and Cesar Chavez—you know, that’s like, gigantic. And there are other places too, where it’s happening all across downtown but it has an effect and it changes the prices of things. I see that as being different from the artists and the galleries.”
We discuss how so many of the developers and landlords buying up the properties don’t live in Chinatown, and sometimes don’t even live in the U.S. This keeps them from having to see and acknowledge how they’re impacting the people living in the community.
“But this is not unique to Chinatown,” See says. “This is something that, again, is happening citywide.”
She says it’s especially problematic for more vulnerable groups, “particularly the elderly, who may have been in a place for 30, 40, 50 years.” They don’t have anywhere else to go.
One person who cares very much what happens to the vulnerable people in the community is a young Chinese-Vietnamese-American woman named Frances Huynh. She recently completed her Masters in Public Health and Asian American Studies, and has been active with Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED) for four years. Her job specifically involves working with elderly Asian and Pacific Islanders and the issues that impact their lives.
She’s the co-chair for the tenant power committee at CCED, which is involved in organizing working class tenants in Chinatown to fight unfair rent increases, evictions, and poor habitability issues. She works to mobilize people around tenant rights as well as fight for community control—as opposed to developer control. CCED challenges all of the market rate proposals coming into Chinatown in order to achieve affordable housing.
“Chinatown has one of the lowest median household incomes. It’s like under $21,000, based off of recent census data, so there’s a particular need for building truly affordable housing, but also preserving the existing affordable housing and ensuring tenants don’t get evicted,” she says.
Part of her work involves coordinating different workshops for local tenants and helping with various campaigns, like the College Station Project, which is a planned mixed-use development for both upscale retail and residential purposes. City council has approved using all 725 units solely at market rate, rather than with the proposed 5% set aside for affordable housing (only 37 units total). “By going to these meetings, I feel like the city has already made its decision before the community has had its chance to speak up, so we’re continuing to put pressure on the city to be accountable to working class tenants and their need for affordable housing,” she says.
She says that when most people look at the gentrification taking place in Chinatown they focus on the trendy new restaurants and boutiques, overlooking the fact that even though the owners might identify as being Chinese or Asian, there’s a class difference because of social capital and financial disparity.
She says that Chinatown BID’s president, George Yu, falls into the more powerful category. “He’s Chinese-American. His parents immigrated to the U.S., but he holds so much more capital than some of our residents and I feel like he’s using that capital to create a vision of Chinatown that is more profitable for him and developers and city officials, but that’s not an equitable vision of Chinatown,” Huynh says. At the end of the day there definitely needs to be more class analysis—not just looking at the racial and ethnic identity of these folks, but what kind of capital they hold and if it uplifts the working class folks.”
For some people, one alternative to this gentrification is to move to one of the main Chinatown communities out in the San Gabriel Valley. These communities–which were born in the 70s and 80s–are suburban Chinatowns, vastly different from ones historically located in the city. Monterey Park, for example, is clean, well-landscaped, and accommodates not only new housing, but also numerous hotels, theaters, supermarkets, and medical facilities.
According to Alex Cheung, who gave me a tour of the Chinatown in Monterey Park, there are at least two other main suburban Chinatown communities—Arcadia and Diamond Bar, but there are many more minor ones as well. In many ways, these communities are also culturally remote, as the Valley communities are populated not only by people who are upwardly mobile, but who, for a large part, speak mostly Mandarin, as opposed to Cantonese, which is the most common dialect in New Chinatown. The Valley communities are not tourist attractions—they are considered to be authentic Chinese neighborhoods with room to expand.
According to Cheung, both Monterey Park and Arcadia are middle class communities, but Diamond Bar is wealthier. However, for most people currently living in New Chinatown, all of those options are financially out of reach. Younger generations are sometimes able to move away and assimilate into these newer iterations of the Chinese community through education and career, but the older generations are left behind and crushed as time and progress pass them by.
“The second generation, third generation—they got money. They don’t care,” says Jimmy Wong. “Eventually, everything in Chinatown will crumble because they cannot afford the taxes. They cannot afford the rent.”
I say it makes me sad and he responds swiftly. “No, no—this is what progress is. What we are doing for good or for worse is another story, but this is changing.”
