China-Town

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

CHINA-TOWN Literaly means "The street of the Tang People"or Tang Dynasty people.The China-Town can be found in most cities of the world.It is an urban region containing large chinese population within non chinese society.All china towns have stores,restaurants ,temples,community support groups run by chinese immigrants.By visiting China- Town one can find crowded streets,large pagoda style arches ,paper lanterns,dragons,beautiful temples & restaurants.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information. When I grew up going to Chinatown with my Chinese speaking parents as a kid, I never really realized the significance of it's name until take the class. I heard them saying we were going to "tang yen fow" (however you would spell this from Cantonese). Now, I learned about the origins of its name.

[Anonymous]

I have the impression that most of the traditional "China Towns" are dying out in the US. As Chinese immigrants become more assimulated and earn more money they are moving out of the crowded, dirty China Towns to the suburbs. My wife and I like to shop at Chinese supermarkets for seafood and Asian products, but we never go to China Town in LA. Instead we go over to Atlantic Ave. in Monterry Park. It seems the China Towns will eventually disapear the same way white ethnic neighborhoods have largely done on the East Coast.

[Anonymous]

I like visiting China Town, although I don't see many young adults hanging there. I like t o experience the different environment and different culture, but I noticed that even my friends don't find anything interesting. I tried to visit as many different neighborhoods as possible but many of my friends just like to stick to whe they know. Appearnetly it is the same for many young adults they just stick to what they know and don' tlike to explore different things.

[Anonymous]

I agree that the older chinatowns are not frequented by as many Chinese as before. There are many reasons why people used to go to Chinatown for Chinese groceries etc. Chinese were not allowed to own property outside of Chinatown until the 1960s. In San Francisco, Chinese were not even really allowed to leave the boundaries of chinatown until around that time. Thus, the established stores and events were all still done in Chinatown. Obviously, times have changed and people moved away from the historic Chinatowns. Monterey Park is one place that boomed in the 1980s when Chinese moved to the US and did not want to be in Chinatown.

[Anonymous]

I recently learned something interesting about LA's Chinatown that I did not know. Apparently the Chinatown we have today is a relatively recent creation. The original Chinatown was actually located where Union Station now is and was torn down to make room for the new station. In fact I would not be surprised if the location for Union Station was not in part chosen as a way to get rid of the original Chinatown by city leaders who probably did not want the Chinese around anyway. Some of the old Chinatown was excavated during the expansion of Union Station for the metro and subway and some of what was found is on display in Union Station now.

[Anonymous]

Destroying a neighborhood does not destroy the people. So they moved. Their traditions, food, etc. still followed them in their current or previous Chinatown. As with most west coast cities, nothing is really old anyways. The Chinatown in SF was mostly rebuilt after the great earthquake of 1906.

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