The making of Chinatown
The power of place as an antidote to prejudice
Most major cities around the world now host a ‘Chinatown’ as a key neighbourhood. These ethnic enclaves serve as both a home and a tourist attraction; a place for generations of Chinese migrants to be with kin, and a place for others to visit, explore and experience different cultures.
The very prevalence of Chinatowns means that we can often forget to notice them from a placemaking perspective – they’re simply part of the fabric of our cities. However, particularly in the United States, their history of prejudice, community and togetherness provide us with very important lessons in the power of place to overcome adversity.
The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), in New York’s Chinatown, helps tell this story.
The first American Chinatowns
It was the Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century that first brought Chinese immigrants to American shores. Initially based on the West Coast, predominantly male groups of working men would opt to live in small neighbourhoods together, as a way of transitioning into the new culture.
As the USA began to build the Transcontinental Railway, labour was needed further and further east. Eventually, Chinese migrants reached and settled in New York City, establishing a Chinatown right here in Manhattan.
However, while these ethnic enclaves originally developed out of choice – to be with like-minded people in an unfamiliar world – systematic prejudice soon formalised the boundaries of American Chinatowns.
Places born from prejudice
“So are ‘we’ going to be included in their sacred ‘We the People?’ Or not?”
When the Treaty of Peking was signed in China in 1860, China’s borders were opened for the first time to free movement. This caused a mass exodus of young men seeking riches abroad – in the USA, Australia and Europe.
The influx of Chinese immigrants in these hotspots soon led to the flaring of racial prejudices. In the USA and Australia, fear of the unknown became directed and labelled as ‘Yellow Peril’: a dehumanising belief that Asian migrants were in some way primitive or dangerous.
In 1882, the US federal government signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, writing into law the systematic prohibition of further Chinese labourers in the States. This divided families, deepened cultural suspicion, and worsened racial violence directed at Chinese Americans.
Chinatowns became a crucial coping mechanism for those still living on American soil.
“So, we create Chinatowns.
For them,
a diversion.
For us,
a refuge.”
The Chinatown community
During these years of desperate prejudice and persecution, Chinatowns in the USA served several important functions. First and foremost, they provided a safe haven for Chinese Americans to be together in vast community support networks. In Chinatowns across America, social clubs, sporting leagues and service organisations became a central part of the neighbourhoods’ social fabric. Even today, many Chinatowns are still defined by these very close, geographically defined, community support systems.
However, Chinatowns also developed to serve a second purpose: to accommodate Western interests and tastes. Faced with growing suspicion and xenophobia in the USA, Chinese Americans used their neighbourhoods as a way to control the narrative around their culture. Buildings, restaurants and shows in Chinatowns were developed to be deliberately fantastical: an exotic attraction that displayed an ‘acceptable face of Chinese culture’.
For many Chinese Americans who were excluded from participating in the mainstream economy, this hospitality and tourism-based outlet became a vital source of income.
While these ethnic enclaves were created in the context of prejudice and exclusion, Chinatowns gave Chinese Americans the opportunity to come together and control the narrative of their culture.
Chinatown today
Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, Chinese Americans have continued to face racial prejudice and xenophobia in the United States. During the Second World War, many Chinese Americans experienced violence in the streets, misdirected at them instead of the USA’s Japanese adversaries.
During the Cold War and in the wake of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the ‘Red Scare’ caused a deepening of racial prejudice in the USA. And today, as the world emerges from the Covid-19 Pandemic, Chinese Americans continue to face violence and verbal abuse directed at the ‘Chinese virus’.
However, the story of Chinatown is not a narrative of persecution and prejudice. Rather, it is a story of how place can help communities overcome these contexts. Manhattan’s Chinatown today is a vibrant cultural hub, broadly accepted by New Yorkers as a vital cornerstone in the experience of the city.
The neighbourhood continues to be defined by social clubs and community networks; the streets and alleyways continue to be lit by decorative lanterns; and everyone in Manhattan has a favourite dumpling restaurant in Chinatown. For, while this is a neighbourhood in which all are welcome, it is a place designed specifically to celebrate, empower and unite Chinese Americans.
