Despite the seemingly endless array of purse, jewelry and clothing salesmen in Manhattan’s Chinatown, longtime businesses are struggling to make it with increasing rents and lack of loyal clientele. With other Chinatowns in Brooklyn and Queens, Chinatown’s survival in Manhattan is in question. Many Fouzhon immigrants are living in places like Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn and Jackson Heights and Flushing in Queens, where they can have a taste of home and pay a lot less rent. 

Just a few blocks north of Chen’s crammed shop is a different world. Ten or so spacious storefronts are completely empty, with “for rent” banners on the awnings covered in dust. Some of them have been left like that for more than a year, as new tenants can’t afford the increased rents after former tenants are pushed out. Thanks to skyrocketing rents in recent years, this eerie contrast – shops crammed into tiny spaces next door to vacancies of spacious storefronts -- has become a fixed image in Chinatown. 

San Francisco’s Chinatown is the most densely populated neighborhood west of Manhattan. It’s a place of immigrants, where English is not the primary language. But as fewer Chinese migrate here, I asked Gordon Chin, What did he think was going to happen to American Chinatowns? He said with crisis, comes opportunity. “So in terms of opportunity with the growth of China, there’s pride with that, there’s economic opportunity, there’s socio and cultural ties.”

The San Francisco-based Chinatown Neighborhood Association (CNA) announced last week that it intends to file a lawsuit to overturn California Assembly Bill 376, a new law banning the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. CNA President Pius Lee told the Chinese-language newspaper Epoch Times, the association believes the shark fin ban is unconstitutional. 

Opened shortly after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for more than 100 years Chinatown’s Sam Wo restaurant dished out cheap and tasty Chinese food to customers as famed as columnist Herb Caen, author Armistead Maupin, and Dr Sun Yat-sen, the “Father of China.” It gained national fame for being home to the “world’s rudest waiter.” As a result of various health violations, the restaurant has now shut its doors.