Critics Of Los Angeles Chinatown's Food Revival Get It Wrong

In a lengthy well written, thought provoking article posted yesterday on Eater LA, writer Cathy Chaplin addresses the intersection of the food based revival of Los Angeles Chinatown and the impact of this development on the existing community.  In particular it focuses on an organization called Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED) which chides the influx of new, independently owned eateries and other businesses into Los Angeles Chinatown for failing to address the inequities taking place on their new home turf.  This viewpoint was contested by one of the new business owners, who operates Oriel, a French wine bar, who said “Is Oriel displacing anyone? I mean it was a dilapidated building, which is being broken into and having homeless encampments, so it seems like a better use to me.” 

The problem with the position taken by CCED is that it is completely oblivious to the history of Los Angeles Chinatown.  Los Angeles Chinatown started dying decades ago when the San Gabriel Valley emerged as the magnet for Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans.  When was it when I started to feel uncomfortable in Chinatown after dark because there was little activity and the streets were dark? 30 years ago? 40 years ago? Certainly well before the time that any of the CCED members have personal recollections.  How many years did Chinatown go without any new construction?  I mean nobody is going to build anything in a dying community.  There was no way Los Angeles was going to remain a vibrant, complete Chinese community. It’s revival has been awesome.

And unlike San Francisco, Manhattan, or even Philadelphia, Boston or Chicago, Los Angeles Chinatown is not an historic one.  Historic Los Angeles Chinatown was torn down in the 1930s so they could build the new Union Station railroad terminal.  In its place "New Chinatown" on Broadway was constructed in the late 1930s to replace Old Chinatown.  (While not totally obsolete, references to "New Chinatown" today are definitely disappearing.)  Except that New Chinatown did not replace Old Chinatown as a community.  Rather New Chinatown was effectively one of the pioneering theme parks of Los Angeles, featuring curio shops, wishing wells, restaurants, the organ grinder with his monkey, and other tourist activities, but nearly devoid of Chinese residents (who largely moved to residential areas adjunct to the Chinese dominated City Market wholesale produce terminal) or everyday businesses.  New Chinatown comprised the area sometimes referred to today as Chinatown Plaza, and the southern boundary of New Chinatown was College Street, meaning that there were no streets with vehicular traffic, just pedestrian walkways with street names such as Gin Ling Way, Mei Ling Way and Sun Mun Way.  Anything in what people consider Los Angeles Chinatown today that was south of College Street was either not Chinese (quite possibly Italian), or if you headed south to Ord Street or Spring Street, a separate Chinese area that was an extension of the original Old Chinatown.  So it's no surprise that my family seldom visited New Chinatown in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s and I have very few recollections of the area.

Things changed drastically in the late 1960s as the effect of the 1965 immigration laws which effectively raised the annual immigration quota for people of Chinese descent from 105 to 20,000 took hold.  Los Angeles Chinatown saw an influx from new immigrants from Hong Kong who piled into the residential areas west of Chinatown.   Restaurants offering modern Cantonese food from Hong Kong livened the food scene.  Meanwhile, the physical gap between New Chinatown and the Ord Street/Spring Street was filled with Chinese commerce, creating the geographic Chinatown community that we know of today.  

Los Angeles Chinatown boomed in the 1970s and early 1980s, generating a never before seen level of activity, with new construction, new restaurants, and a completely new vibe.  We joined the crowds on Sunday morning waiting to get into Grandview Gardens for dim sum and cheered every new Chinese restaurant that opened, especially the opening of the complex unofficially known as Food Street, now known as Far East Plaza, and present home to eateries like Pearl River Deli and Howlin Ray's.  

But the boom didn't last that long.  With renewed immigration from mainland China years away due to the lack of diplomatic relations between the United States and Mainland China, the initial wave of post-1965 Chinese immigration originated in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the Taiwanese never showed up in Los Angeles Chinatown.  While new Hong Kong immigrants felt comfortable in Los Angeles' Cantonese speaking Chinatown, such was not the case with the Mandarin speaking Taiwanese migrants.  So they headed to Monterey Park where growing Chinese American and Japanese American communities were sprouting.  Chinese and Japanese Americans had been relegated by segregated housing patterns largely to neighborhoods in South and East Los Angeles.  But around 1960, new residential communities were developed in Monterey Park by real estate developers who were willing to sell houses to Chinese and Japanese Americans.   And by 1970, there were already 2,000 Chinese Americans living in Monterey Park.

Of course the changes did not occur overnight.  Monterey Park did not get its first authentic Hong Kong style restaurant until 1975 or a banquet sized Chinese restaurant until about three years later, so Los Angeles Chinatown still remained the dominant Chinese community for a while.  Meanwhile major Chinese restaurant openings continued in Chinatown with the 1975 opening of Miriwa (and the first dim sum carts in Los Angeles), the 1979 opening of the Food Street complex and the 1984 opening of ABC Seafood.  But then the axis turned, in my opinion in 1986 when ABC Seafood opened its gigantic Monterey Park sister restaurant NBC Seafood. 

Whether the key date was 1975, 1978 or 1986, or likely no particular year, it's clear that the San Gabriel Valley sucked the life out of Los Angeles Chinatown as it became the center of Chinese activity in the Los Angeles metro area.  The large restaurant space in the front of Food Street turned into a bank. In the 1980s and 1990s many Chinese Angelinos started denigrating Los Angeles Chinatown as being a Vietnamese, not Chinese enclave.  A generation of Chinese Americans has grown up in the San Gabriel Valley, many of whom have never set foot in Los Angeles Chinatown.   There was no direction for Los Angeles Chinatown to go but down.

So it's not like today's new eateries and stores, whether modern Asian or not Asian at all are encroaching on hallowed ground.   To the contrary, they have revitalized something which would not have revitalized organically.  It's sad to see these merchants berated for something for which they should be praised, because otherwise we would end up like Washington DC Chinatown.  In Washington DC Chinatown, every business is required to include Chinese language signage for their business.  So, for example, the Chinese name for Hooters Restaurant there translates to "Owl Cafe".  But Washington DC Chinatown also has one street referred to as "Chinablock."  That's because that block is the only thing Chinese left in Washington DC Chinatown.  At least we have a Chinatown which is still relevant to myself and many other Chinese Americans.