After a late-evening Amtrak back to L.A., I rolled my suitcase into Union Station and spotted a display featuring historic photographs of businesses emblazoned with Chinese characters. It turns out, as I learned while reading the text, my feet were on the hallowed ground of Man Jen Low, a three-story chop suey-style restaurant that existed in the 19th century.
Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.
“The neighborhood is gone, but the memories of the community remain,” read the display, part of an exhibit called “Where You Stand: Chinatown 1880 to 1939.”
While L.A.’s Chinatown is now less than a square mile, snug between Elysian Park’s Dodger Stadium and neighboring Lincoln Heights, it used to be much bigger. For generations, it was home to families who struggled to find permanent housing elsewhere due to redlining laws. Over time, one Chinatown became three — Old Chinatown, China City and New Chinatown — and tourism became a key strategy for surviving economically. If you visit the Chinese American Museum, you’ll find old brochures and ads that describe Chinatown as a spectacle and show families exoticizing themselves to fulfill the fantasies of outsiders. For 50 cents in 1941, one could see “Outstanding Chinese talent! Magnificent oriental pageantry!”
Today, there’s tension around the question: Who is Chinatown for? There’s a fight to protect the neighborhood’s existence as a working-class immigrant ethnic enclave. Over the past decade, many Chinatown businesses moved to the San Gabriel Valley, where there is a larger Asian base. Some neighborhood staples have rapidly dwindled, like the swap meets that once spanned an entire block.
At the same time, a transformation has been underway — the longstanding Far East Plaza buzzes with energy from businesses like Filipino joint Amboy Burgers, cookbook shop Now Serving and craft coffee shop Endorffeine, all launched by new generation of Asian American creatives. A number of new projects vow to protect Chinatown’s history, such as a new mixed-use development that plans to preserve the facade of the historic movie house Kim Sing Theatre.
On an afternoon in the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but feel that Chinatown can be for everyone. A group of 50-something aunties pulled their vegetable carts on wheels. As the “45 bus” stopped at Broadway and College Avenue, a flurry of people got off. Kids left the rec center to finish their homework while tourists trickled past street vendors with hats and knickknacks on display, not too far from jewelers and a sugarcane juice stand. Classic institutions such as Phoenix Bakery and Yang Chow still stand the test of time.
William Gow, author of “Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community,” explained in The Times that it’s easy for people to forget how Chinatown helped reinvent Southern California. “Too many people dismiss Chinatown’s pagoda-style roofs, fortune cookies and wishing well as inauthentic representations of Asia and Asian Americans,” he wrote. “Instead, we should embrace them as reminders that neither the popular image of Los Angeles nor the city itself would have developed as they are today without Chinatown.”
There’s plenty to see on a walking tour of the neighborhood — learn where it’s been and where it is headed.
