This page was created by Aseem Aggarwal. The last update was by Curtis Fletcher.
Fiction Story
The sun isn’t up yet, and the neon archway still glows brightly. My body still thinks it's 3 hours later than it actually is. Over the next half hour, the soft glow from the east will drown out all other lights. From my window, I see few people– a shopkeeper setting out crates of fruits and vegetables, a woman praying outside of an ornately decorated temple. In New York I left behind streets that are, right now, flush with commuters. I step outside and think of my great grandfather who once walked here too. I think of our paths’– his originating from the Pearl River Delta, mine, Queens– meeting here in Los Angeles’ Chinatown (Diego).
There is so much beauty in Chinatown but I am also forced to stop and think about our shortcomings and the hardships of life. On some days, it feels like everything around me from peoples’ lives to their houses and even my own house is on the verge of a major breakdown. The freshness of fruits and vegetables look odd amongst our fragile and worn down lives. I thought the rent in New York was high but it’s a similar story here. Everyone around me struggles to pay rent. Nobody I know owns a house. The neighborhood can be illuminating but at times stale. Almost as if I'm oscillating between the joyful memories of playing with my grandfather and on the other hand looking at his pale body after he parted ways with us. I stop to think, what does financial freedom taste like? Perhaps someday it will replicate the sweet and juicy taste of the nectarines (Aseem).
I think of my grandfather, who moved to Los Angeles in December, 1867. He arrived on a boat from Hong Kong and was crammed into a small adobe with 20 other men. Back then there was no Chinatown as I know it, no neon, no temples. Just dust and horse-buggies littering the street. The frontier. No heritage associations, no Chinese schools, just demanding landlords and inhospitable faces. His buildings can’t have felt like they were his, not like these arches and restaurants that scream “Chinese!” in lurid neon. Coming from Queens, this is supposed to feel like home to me, supposed to feel authentic, maybe hearkening back to my “Chinese past.” But all that feels authentic to me are the streets of New York, the loud merchants, the hustle. What would I build here in this Chinatown? What would I build to make people like me feel more at home? (Janis)
I wonder if my Grandfather was here today he would feel a connection to our culture through food like I do. I sometimes imagine us going out at night to the neon lit restaurant row and sitting down at a table for two at the Forbidden Palace. I like to think we would laugh and conversate over a delicious meal at the Dragon’s Den. Laughing and chatting we would continue on to share drinks at the Forbidden Palace. I would hope we would be close enough that I could just pop over to his apartment unannounced with pastries from Phoenix Bakery and of course buy him a famous strawberry cake on his birthday. This is the romance of Chinatown I’d like to remember and I love to fantasize about what that could have been like. (Jamie)