ASIAN AM 370 Global Chinatowns

Modern Asian Studies, 2019

In the early twentieth century, Chinatowns in the West were ghettoes for Chinese immigrants who were marginalized and considered 'other' by the dominant society. In Western eyes, these areas were the no-go zones of the Oriental 'other'. Now, more than a hundred years later, traditional Chinatowns still exist in some cities but their meaning and role has been transformed, while in other cities entirely new Chinatowns have emerged. This article discusses how Chinatowns today are increasingly contested sites where older diasporic understandings of Chineseness are unsettled by newer, neoliberal interpretations, dominated by the pull of China's new-found economic might. In particular, the so-called 'rise of China' has spawned a globalization of the idea of 'Chinatown' itself, with its actual uptake in urban development projects the world over, or a backlash against it, determined by varying perceptions of China's global ascendancy as an amalgam of threat and opportunity.

Cambio. Rivista sulle Trasformazioni Sociali, 2013

Over the past two centuries, diverse and changing Chinatowns have become global enclaves where separation from a surrounding city and society intersects with both the construction of "Chinese" communities and the processes that integrate Chinese into wider contexts while challenging or changing these contexts. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Chinatowns in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa, the investigators highlight the tensions of segregation and communit(ies) through the lenses of physical form and boundaries, social centers, and imagery. Drawing on Henri Lefebvres's tripartite vision of the social construction of urban spaces (les espaces perçus, conçus and vécus), this article shows that Chinatowns, as distinctive spaces within a city, encapsulate intense debates about place, citizenship, rights and diversity that speak more generally to cities, nations and global urbanism.

Journal of Urban History, 2019

Planning Perspectives, 2020

2008

Sociologists claim that the ethnic Chinese community in the United Kingdom cannot be spatially defined. The first reason is that the widely scattered Chinese catering businesses–still the main source of employment for incoming Chinese migrants – makes the Chinese community too dispersed to form residential enclaves. Secondly, the evasive nature of the ethnic Chinese population towards government assistance and strong sense of ethnic solidarity also makes them an “invisible community”. The Confucian philosophy governing their way of life further reinforces patrilineal links oriented towards ancestral villages in China. Recent renewed interests in the future of London’s Chinatown as the result of a recent development plan has prompted this report to investigate whether a spatial pattern of occupation by the Chinese community exists in Chinatown, or if it is simply an intelligent urban artifice exploited for touristic and commercial purposes. Unlike its historical East End predecessor which has never been exclusively Chinese, present day London Chinatown can be qualified as a “persistent enclave”. Whilst it crucially accommodates co-ethnic businesses and facilities for the oriental population, it is not the sole centre for the Chinese community. At the outset, studies on the Chinese have been confounded by their lack of assimilation into host society, inconsistent methods of data representation from the population census and high levels of suspicion by the immigrant community when conducting fieldwork. By first understanding historical developments in London’s two Chinatowns and concepts pertaining to Chinese ethnography, this helps substantiate the demographic data, changing land use and household occupation by the Chinese community in Limehouse around 1890 and Soho today. The global and local relationship for these two areas are also analysed syntactically through spatial maps derived from Booth’s Map of Poverty of 1889 and a current axial map of London respectively. The spatially-oriented case study of Soho’s Chinatown identifies through a public survey a collective mental representation of its neighbourhood area that differs from its administrative designation. Pedestrian movement studies suggest that there is a distinct spatial and temporal pattern of occupation amongst the ethnic Chinese which differs from non-Chinese tourists and locals which can be syntactically measured. The findings support the view that a complex social and spatial relationship exists between the two disparate groups that utilise Chinatown. Whilst its commercial success is crucial to maintaining Chinatown’s public profile, it also allows it to continue to function as an important centre for the Chinese community.

2007

A bachelor society, men brought in by the shipload to labour in harsh, slave-like conditions, often for decades. Aliens despised and feared by their hosts. The hope: to return home as rich men. Thi ...

2014

The definitive version of this article is available online at:

In Bernard Wong & Tan Chee-Beng, eds. Chinatowns around the World., 2013

As a frontier for many immigrants of diverse ethnicities or nationalities, San Francisco has long been a space that witnesses or even inspires many identity-based social movements, including Asian American struggles rooted in Chinatown. In contrast to what outsiders may imagine, however, these ethnic movements have never been coherent, and the term “Chinese American,” along with the “imagined community” it conjures up, becomes highly indefinable when put under different contexts. In fact, as my article points out, the tension of racial politics within Chinatown itself rises and falls as the relationship between the U.S., PRC, and ROC changes. In order to explore this split of identification of Asian, especially Chinese, American people, the article examines the seminal film Chan is Missing, directed by Wayne Wang, a story featuring two Chinese American taxi drivers as they roam around San Francisco in search of their acquaintance Chan.