Ok, we’re going to start this workshop on Chinatown development. I think that there will be more people coming in, but for the sake of time control, I’m just going to start it. I’m very happy that we have this workshop here. To my left is Mr. Kai Yin Lu who is a legal advisor for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, and a host of other community organizations. I’m not going to name all of them.
I would like to go past him and to his left is Ms. Bonnie Wong who is the President of Asian American Women in Business, and she’ll be talking about the challenges of small businesses in the Asian American community, especially after 9/11.
To my far left is Mr. Robin Mui, who is the President of the Chinese American Journalists’ Association as well as the Publisher of Sing Dao Daily. We are really delighted to have them here to talk to us about their perspective–they’ve been with the community for a long time—and to talk about their perspective about what it means to develop Chinatown, especially after 9/11. I’m going to ask Mr. Robin Mui to start the meeting by talking to us a little bit about the challenges of restaurants in Chinatown.
Robin Mui:
Ok, for the record, I am also the public relations person for the Chinese Restaurant Association, for about six years I think. The problems that we are facing, besides the ones that everybody already knows, which I don’t want to get into, have to do with the collapse of the garment factories. They have a domino effect on all other businesses in Chinatown, like restaurants, grocery stores, and banks. There have also an on-going demonstration by the restaurant workers at Jin Feng, located at 52 Bowery, who brought out coffins and used obscene words on customers. I don’t know if any of those were called for. And also the inconvenience of parking area in Chinatown. Nowadays nobody has to come to China to have a nice meal and shopping. All those areas, especially Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey, Long Island, have supermarkets and nice restaurants there, so they don’t have to spend the time to drive out to Chinatown and spend another $20 or $30 on parking. The money that they save, they can spend it on food that would offset savings that they would get in Chinatown.
The advantage of Chinatown, we all know that we have the best bargains in town on everything – jewelry, food, produce. Also the big advantage that we have right now is the size of the restaurants, Jin Feng, the former Silver Palace, now I think it’s [Chong Heng], on 52 Bowery and also the Triple Eight on East Broadway. Also, we have to know that there are a lot of big restaurants popping up in the Queens area now, especially the East Buffet, the K B Garden located on 38th Avenue, which was just bought over by the group from Jin Feng.
We are glad in Chinatown that we have so many customers from the Fujianese province, otherwise Chinatown in Manhattan would have gone down a long time ago, especially all those big associations, those senior associations in town. Also, in order to succeed nowadays in Chinatown, you have to have a different kind of menu instead of the old Cantonese cuisine. One that’s doing quite well right now is the Sweet n’ Tart, the XO Kitchen on Hester. Those are the small restaurants that have the innovative menu to attract the customers. It’s a benefit for Chinatown because we have big restaurants, the seniors on weekends like to have family get-togethers in Chinatown for Dim Sum and tea on Saturdays and Sundays.
The way to look at the revival of the Chinatown restaurant business is – I don’t know if you know that in the last two years there were about ten small dumpling restaurants or houses in Chinatown. They sell the dumplings five for a dollar or pork buns for four for a dollar, and those are one of the best bargains in town. The thing is when they open up, everybody opens up in Chinatown. They should look elsewhere instead of Chinatown. They should open up in Brooklyn, Queens and all those areas. Compared to the hamburger that they have, I think we have one of the better snacks in the city. I do need the experts to try to help them to change the ingredients a little bit to make it into a healthier snack, like more vegetables instead of the meat.
I’m glad that the Chinese Restaurant Association, with the help of the Asian American Federation, especially [Lo Wah Wang] and Cao O, they’ve been able to secure small funding from foundations. We’re going to start a program to train some of the displaced workers from the garment industry and restaurants to train them on how to make a Dim Sum. Hopefully in the future we can open up some Chinese fast food chains for Dim Sum in the city or in the state. These are some of the things that we talked about and hopefully it will take off very soon.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
This is a very small gathering, so the format is going to be like this. The presenter will make a presentation for a few minutes, and then we’ll have questions and answers. Basically we really wanted to have your opinion and your comments so that as we talk about the development, it is more meaningful. Next I would like to ask Ms. Bonnie Wong to talk a little bit about the challenges to small businesses within the Asian American community, especially after 9/11.
Bonnie Wong:
The only good thing about being old is I have a long term perspective on things, so I’ve actually seen Chinatown grow. The northern part of Chinatown was Canal Street. Do you remember that? When we really couldn’t go across Canal Street. I’ve seen it grow. At one point the northern part was Canal Street. Now, of course, we’re up to Houston Street. We’re east of Broadway, almost to the East River. Do you remember the days when a Chinatown restaurant had about 100 people. Now it’s Jin Feng with over 1,000 people. I remember when Toi Shan was the language to speak, and people make fun of you if you speak in that language. You can only speak to senior citizens in that language. And the language that we speak now is just multilingual. You have Cantonese, Fujianese… everything in Chinatown.
I’ve seen Chinatown grow. Even though I’m not living in the community, I’ve watched it throughout the years and how it’s grown, how entrepreneurial people are, how generations of immigrants move into Chinatown and their children move out, they do better and then new generations come into Chinatown. It’s that immigrant enclave, that hub that makes Chinatown so exciting. When I was doing research to do this little presentation, I’m not very good at reading things, but Tom wanted me to write things down, so I wrote some of the things down. He said he wanted to publish it, so I wrote all this stuff down.
I was doing some research to get some statistics on Chinatown and one thing that’s really interesting is that there’s nothing on Chinatown. Chinatown is a long forgotten community. That’s what has not changed since when I was a little girl on Canal Street, not crossing over into Little Italy. That has not changed. The only study I’ve seen is the recent study by the Asian American Federation of New York. That’s the only study that actually goes into Chinatown and actually looks at the broader Chinatown. All the other studies talk about Chinatown as Mott St., as 10002, that one zip code, and they don’t realize that Chinatown is huge. It’s almost like a metropolitan area. It’s not that little ten block thing around Mott Street any more.
I was really disturbed that no one is studying Chinatown or giving people the knowledge of what’s going on in this very vibrant community. We were all but forgotten until 9/11. The only thing good about 9/11 (there’s nothing good about it) is that more attention has been paid to Chinatown then every before. Now you see on TV the forgotten community. Now we have some studies and some money (maybe not a fair share, but some money is coming in). Because of 9/11, they realized that Chinatown is a forgotten community.
What I thought was really good about the Asian American Federation’s Study was that they broke down how many businesses are in Chinatown. For once, someone walked around and counted the businesses and talked to the business owners. There are about 4,000 Chinese owned and operated businesses in Chinatown. That’s a lot. If you only look at the ten blocks, obviously there’s not 4,000 but if you look at the whole metropolitan Chinatown, it’s actually 4,000 Chinese owned and operated businesses. And 38% of those are retail. If retail is the grocery stories you always see, the jewelry. There are 250 jewelry stores in Chinatown. That’s a large part of the businesses. Then personal care – there’s a lot of stuff for women, hair salons, beauty parlors, gift shops – that’s retail. That’s 38%. Then the other part of Chinatown, which is a large part, obviously it’s manufacturing. Manufacturing is not a large part of the businesses, but it’s a large part of the employment in Chinatown.
Obviously a lot of people were unemployed because of 9/11. But the problem with manufacturing is a United States problem. I was reading today in a newspaper that in South Carolina, they lost 6,000 jobs in the last two years because of manufacturing leaving South Carolina. Chinatown is no different. It’s following a national trend of manufacturing going to low cost areas, which in general is low wage areas and it’s in China, India, Bangladesh – a lot of the jobs in Chinatown are going abroad, and it’s a very hard issue to address. What will the immigrants do?
Immigrants are coming with no English language skills, no education. Where will they find employment? And I think it’s an issue someone is going to address in another workshop about retraining the many immigrants who come here, and generations will continue to come in. There’s no slacking or lack of immigrants coming and they will replace the ones that get further education, do better, move into Brooklyn, whatever. But there will always be immigrants replacing the immigrants in Chinatown and I think one of the challenges is, what do we do, how do we find employment for these hard working people? It’s not in manufacturing because manufacturing is really decreasing, and no matter how much we try…I know there’s grants and the Empire State gives us grants for manufacturing, but it’s a very hard issue because it’s really a global question; it’s not just a question of Chinatown.
Another thing that was interesting, when I was looking at statistics, was that restaurants are close to 7% of all businesses, so it is not the majority of businesses. When people go to Chinatown, they go for restaurants. But Chinatown is more than restaurants. It is only 7% of the businesses, even though it does provide employment for countless numbers of immigrants coming over from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. But what I thought was interesting was that professional and business services represents about 15% of the businesses. Those are the CPAs, the doctors and lawyers, so that is a very growing field in Chinatown.
And then it’s hard sometimes…it’s not like you go uptown and you’re in one building. You know how Chinatown is – everyone’s scattered in different buildings, but it’s a very big, growing industry and it provides more and more employment. David Louie is doing in another workshop, about how do you retrain people to accommodate growth and personal services? I think we should think about it. How do we get these immigrants who lack English language abilities and maybe they don’t have the highest education, how do we retrain them to accommodate the other industries within Chinatown who need bilingual people. Then the other things is wholesale is 6% of the businesses. Wholesale will probably be around a little bit longer because someone has to buy all the stuff and resell it to the retailers.
In the future of Chinatown, manufacturing will not really survive as well as other industries, and that is pretty clear. But tourism, which includes the jewelry industry, the gift shops – that will continue to thrive as long as we get over this hump after 9/11. The jewelry industry went down, the business went down by 50%, and continues at that level. But I think that Chinatown as a historic area, will always have those kinds of tourism businesses. Because people live there, they need services, so the professional and business services is very much a growing industry in Chinatown.
I go to California a lot, so I see the difference between Chinatowns in California and New York. There is a growth in Chinatown. No one said that everyone has to live in Chinatown New York – there Brooklyn and Queens and then if you go to California, they’ve taken over many shopping centers. You go to Texas, it’s like the Chinatown spread. There doesn’t have to be one Chinatown, and New York City now has three Chinatowns. That trend will continue because of immigration into New York. So although we’re thinking about Chinatown, there’s only a finite growth of Chinatown. If you look at the map, there’s NoLita to the north. Those trendy people are trying to take over parts of Chinatown. It’s not like Chinatown’s growing, they’re actually taking over some of the blocks on northern Mott Street. Then going east, you see the Grand Street co-ops and that’s not really a Chinatown. That’s a totally different situation. So Chinatown has a finite growth in this geographic area.
There is also growth in other areas. So even though we think about Chinatown, we should remember that there are other Chinatowns that can accommodate some of the growth in population. Professional services – there are plenty of opportunities for other things to do as long as you realize that the Chinatown is one area and that the Chinese population is so big that we will take over the world, but we take over many places around New York.
I just want to touch on one thing that several people brought up to me about Chinatown being an international trade center. It’s really hard, because as Robin was talking about the infrastructure, the bad traffic, the lack of parking…it’s very difficult for Chinatown to be this international global center as long as the traffic patterns are so bad, as long as we don’t have parking, as long as the sanitary condition are slight, as long as the city of New York doesn’t pay any attention to us.
As for infrastructure, I think it’s highly unlikely we can become that without outside help. We need help in getting more parking spaces. Somebody was telling me that on Saturdays they block parking for the court employees. But the court employees don’t go to work on Saturday, yet they still reserve the parking without considering the businesses in Chinatown.
As long as that continues, it’s really hard for Chinatown to be an international trade center. It just can’t be because of the infrastructure and the kinds of services provided to Chinatown. Anyway, my view of Chinatown is that I think Chinese people are the most entrepreneurial people I know, and I think it will continue to thrive, but with some bumps and humps after 9/11. But I think just knowing my people, we’ll do great.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
Thank you. We’re not going to open up the floor for discussion yet. We still have Mr. Liu here who will talk about the social service aspect of Chinatown. We have heard about the restaurant business, some of the general problems there, about some of the future of the small businesses and what about social services? How do we look at it?
Kai Yin Liu, Esq.:
Before that, I want to touch on something about planning, something about housing, because in my mind, it’s relevant whether you’re talking about short term planning, long term planning or more comprehensive planning. For our future, I found out that we should have a focus; we should have a starting point. Based on the population growth, immigrants and people are coming in to Chinatown, everyday. Hey, we don’t have enough housing.
On a daily basis, I used to deal with a lot of the cases in housing. People would live in the basement. It’s a violation. What about people living upstairs? Overcrowded. For our future, we have to do something in housing, so that we can keep the people in Chinatown, and then we will have our voting power and political influence. Without that, it’s really difficult. But then you may argue, hey how can you do that? What about affordable housing?
In my mind, we have to change the zoning law. Why in the world, in this city outside of Chinatown, people can build high rises, and we cannot? Why? They’re talking about the zoning laws, and then they’re talking about their street is too narrow for the traffic to go through. What about in the case of fire? Hey, change the zoning law, let the property line move a little back on both sides and we can do it. If we have enough people, we will have a voting cloud. If we have enough people, then we will have business opportunities. We will have more than enough customers. And those people can become businessmen. I guess we have to do it in that way.
Look at the old housing in Chinatown. Really dilapidated For the past 30 years, how many new houses have been coming up? To me, after finishing two business renewal area, not much. Recently AAFE could be able to put up some nice housing for low income people and I think that’s nice, but that’s not enough. We still have a focus. Other things, are they important? They are important, but we have to keep in our own mind, first thing first. Try to help all those people living in existing situations. In fact, for comprehensive planning, then we are talking about political planning, other than fiscal planning, and they have been talking about economic planning. And Tom asked me, why don’t you talk about the social service aspect? (Since I have been working for a social service agency since early in the 70s.) CPC, The Chinatown Manpower Project, Chinatown Health Clinic, and all those. But there’s a big change in Chinatown.
In the 60s when we first got money from the federal government because of President Johnson’s War on Poverty. We had CPC. And today we have many agencies, many, many organizations, or merchants associations. Hey, there are so many. There’s a saying in Chinese…. Most of the Chinese people love to be the leader. If you walk in Chinatown, for a person wearing a suit and a tie, call the person the Chairman, you won’t go wrong. There’s a slogan after September 11th, “United We Stand”. What about Chinese? Separated? Independently we stand? We cannot work together. If that’s the case, let’s let someone else represent ourselves better.
For the past city council elections, the Chinatown district got three Chinese candidates. Thank God we have one in Flushing. But I feel that we still have a future. Gradually, I still remember the days in the early 70s when we would fight really hard in order to get a Chinese speaking person to be the principle of PS 33. We lost the battle. I got burned. But then looking back a few years later, we have one Chinese-speaking person at PS 1 and then PS 2. And then the Junior High School. If we fight hard, you’ll get faster. If not, then slowly and slowly. But that’s not good for us. We have to move forward.
Talking about Chinatown development is a big topic. I just want to stop here and then answer any questions you would like and then share and exchange our ideas. But before that I want to make one point. Before September 11th, CCBA spent its money to retain Pratt Institute to do a planning study. But it suddenly got called off on September 11th. We need more statistics, more work. Thank God we have the Asian American Federation to do it, but that’s not enough.
It should be the city’s job. We pay our taxes. Looking back, look at the city planning department. For the past 25 years, we’ve had have only two Chinese studies. One was the bicentennial project. That was called the “Chinatown Street Revitalizations.” And then we have the “Manhattan Area Study.” That was released in ’79. That should be the city’s job. We pay our tax. So we are powerless. It is about time, we should stand up and ask the city planning commission to do something for us.
We need a plan. We need a solution. We need execution. United we win. Divided we continue to lose.
Thomas Tam:
Thank you very much. Now I’m just wondering, since I’m the presider, I’m supposed to ask a few questions, and of course the floor is really open to everybody and many of us have experienced working in the community and therefore I’m sure that you have your perspective about the big topic of development in Chinatown so feel free to ask a few questions. I just wanted to draw the attention to – I’m wondering if there is a sense of a cohesion within Chinatown or even with the panelists here to, say for example, the focus on developing Manhattan Chinatown versus the development of Chinatowns that are outside Manhattan. Do you want to talk about that maybe, Bonnie?
Bonnie Wong:
I didn’t understand the question too well.
Thomas Tam:
Well when you talk about the topic of Chinatown, it seems like maybe you focused a little bit on the other Chinatowns that we should talk about. Is there a inherit conflict when we talk about the development of Chinatown?
Bonnie Wong:
Well the Chinese population’s so big. There’s so many of us coming into the country, we cant possibly live in one area, so I don’t think there’s any…we should take over all of Manhattan, as far as I’m concerned. But our population, there’s no real conflict. It’s really different people. Flushing is totally different. Every area is a little different because Chinese are so diverse, so each Chinatown I think serves a good purpose. The special purpose of Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown is it’s a historic district. It’s going to be zoned one day so it’s going to be a landmark. So you can’t build once it becomes a landmark. That’s one of the problems. You cannot change the basic structure of Chinatown because the basic ten blocks have been land marked.
So it is a very special place, I think with all of us, to be able to go to Chinatown and see the history of Chinese Americans in New York. The first Chinese came here, I think it was in the early 1800s. (The first woman came in 1835 by the way.) So it’s all traced in New York. The history here is just wonderful. I don’t think there’s any inherent conflict at all. Chinese are so diverse that there is room for many, many Chinatowns.
Thomas Tam:
I would also like to say the proceeding will be published. And part of the purpose of all of this is, besides saying to academia and the community, also to people who are in power, to say this is what the general consensus or at least some of the ideas that need to be reflected. I think that Mr. Liu talked about how powerless Chinatown has been and how important it is that, for example, maybe the city government and city planning have to take on more responsibility in doing planning for Chinatown. What other things would you like to add Mr. Mui?
Robin Mui:
If we are going to come together as a community then there are signs. The first time in years, that I know of since I’ve worked in Chinatown, that we have a group from pro-Taiwan and a group from pro-communist China come to their senses that we should be working together to benefit the community . Now I have to get together with all of those non-profit organizations.
Actually, it’s hard to convince them that we have to work together instead of individually. They perceive a lot of funding that is floating around and each group is fighting for themselves. CPC, Asian American Federation, Asian Business Association. All for themselves. But we need them to come together to work with Chinatown because we need the help and the experience. Without their help, believe me, Chinatown will get nothing. We’ll get nothing.
Bonnie Wong:
We tried to do something for Chinatown and we want to collaborate and make sure everyone agrees, but there’s no real agreement in Chinatown.
Robin Mui:
You live on 34th Street. It’s like Wall Street. You guys have to come down to Chinatown to realize some of the problems that we have.
Bonnie Wong:
No, but we realize it, but sometimes you need some outside help. You do need some outside help. You can’t just do it from within you do need some outside help.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
We’re going to open up for some questionings. Yeah, this gentleman over here. Do you want to introduce yourself before you speak?
Audience Member:
[this audience member’s comments are not intelligible]
Actually, I shouldn’t be here. I am old already I’m a Social Economist Development Specialist, so everyone already knows Taiwan, Taiwan is my case, Taiwan was made by me. So the ten best projects, the infrastructure projects, I did them, for Chiang Min Guo, the economic minister, Young, was my good friend. Chiang Kai Shek had three sins: one, educating Germany. Why give secrets to Germany? I was a lawyer for 8 ½ years. Without me, there’s no… His father had no money. I made money for Taiwan. His father sent me to college because I made money for Taiwan. The next day I went to Germany, and Taiwan development was not an American idea. It’s a German idea, but American money. So they didn’t have a lawyer, I decided the ownership of the land. I was quite successful, so they sent me to Germany to follow up to learn further social development theory. Any development should be carried on. You have much of the grant industry, you have the meat industry, you have the metal industry. Whatever you have should get first seat. In Chinatown, we have a lot of great industry. I was in Germany for thirteen years. I don’t talk back. I learned English in this country for two years.
Thomas Tam:
Can you focus on Chinatown?
Audience Member:
[continued…]
I will, I will. What we are going to do, what I can do, let me tell you. If any immigrant who came to this country to work, if I can meet the person, teach this person English for [$705]. This person can go to community college. My wife lives right now in this college, nine levels in 19 months. She never learned English in Taiwan. So in Chinatown, what I can do, I can do this. If a new immigrant wants to learn English, this person can become a waiter or waitress in a restaurant and do the job very well. I produced at least 15,000 persons. I’m the best. This person can go to community college, or manage any restaurant. I could use that. He was my boss. I trained the teacher of that organization. I did that. I was not a bad teacher. The English language, there are only two sentences. One is [we] sentences. The other is action sentences. Number one, if you look up in your dictionary, you will see any word in its original form, you can use a request….
Thomas Tam:
Sir, I think that you made your point and I think learning the English language is an important aspect and maybe we can go on from there. Fred, did you want to say something? Thank you very much, sir.
Fred Teng:
Actually, on another topic. Thank you Mr. Liu for pointing out your vision and looking at the long term. Personally, I think your housing is really treatment of sanitary conditions in Chinatown, which is the garbage and all that, which is a big issue. I do have a quick question. You did point out that historically there were two studies, one in 1976 and one in 1980 that were done in terms of planning. What was the community’s reaction and were we able to take advantage of those studies? When the studies are being done, what’s the result? If we were to do more studies, what are the past learnings that we have learned from them?
Kai Yin Liu:
Good question. For the first one, the Bicentennial Project, which was released in 1976, ended up with nothing. We were trying to revitalize Mott St, but because of the position of the landlords, that was it. Then what about the other one?
Fred Teng:
So what would be your suggestion if we did more studies, how would a future study be better?
Kai Yin Liu:
That’s the reason why I felt, should we do future studies? Yeah, we need that. We need someone with authority, like the university, to stamp it and give solutions, workable solutions. We need a focus. Don’t touch everything. I’m sure we could come up with some.
Another point is the ’76 Bicentennial Project. At that time, when we did the project, Little Italy was not a special district, that was the deal. Remember two years ago when Henry Chung became president of the CCBA? Same time, same day, here he got his operation. On the other side of Mott St., which is north of Canal, the mayor’s office, headed by the assistant commissioner, with six departments and a big sanitation truck, they put the garbage can on the block of Mott St, between Hester and Grand. They put garbage cans over there on both sides of the street. And there a truck ran into the block. For all the violations, they cleaned up the belonging. But then at the corner of Hester and Mott, these days you can still find a nice looking optical company. And the city charged that company’s landlord, hey, you got a big violation. You have to move it back, like the old phase 25 years ago.
That was the so-called Little Italy district. I’m sure you are talking about, hey, there we have a plan, there they don’t have a plan. It’s just a district. But they can still keep all the way up to this time.
Fred Teng:
I’m just thinking if we do the studies, like you’re talking the merchants were against it, how are we going to put the merchants together if there’s other plans? Right now when you talk about buildings, they’re owned by different owners. We cannot tear them all down because in order to have a taller building, you cannot have a skinny, 25 foot building going 50 stories high. You need major infrastructures to be redeveloped.
The 1976 plan was to redo all the streets, repave Mott St., and no cars can come in so that it becomes a mall-like atmosphere. I think that’s what the merchants were against, but if you look at Little Italy, they close down on Saturdays and Sundays, and they get more business than ever because the restaurants can expand themselves onto the streets. But a lot of these cannot get the merchants to agree on it no matter how much good will we have. No matter how much we want to help, the merchants are still going to be against it. How can we overcome those issues?
Kai Yin Liu:
As far as I can see, at least we have to go in these two directions. First, to educate the people. Secondly, let them be farsighted, but don’t be nearsighted. Remember last year? Chinatown was trying to push for BID [business development district]. That was killed. And no doubt certain people have personality problems, right? You know and I know, but that’s not enough.
Kai Yin Liu:
Right. So the only way that will be good will be to educate those people and to have their input in the first place. If you develop a plan and ask them, too difficult. Ask them first.
Bonnie Wong:
Well that’s difficult too. They disagree.
Kai Yin Liu:
But still, you have to go in that direction of a business improvement district. Or else you won’t get anything. How do you know?
Bonnie Wong:
We really need a business improvement district, and they’ve improved the area – sanitation, security. It’s wonderful. Of course you have to collect money from the merchants or the recipients of those services. That is one of the best things that could happen in Chinatown (if it ever gets approved). There’s someone who puts in all the money to clean up Chinatown because the merchants are not chipping in. He picks out of his pocket and that’s not fair either, that one man should be responsible, with his limited money too.
Kai Yin Liu:
There’s a group, a BID around Chinatown that’s supposed to come in soon. And you ask me why, I don’t know.
Bonnie Wong:
Well around Delancy St, and Orchard St., they have a BID there too. Everyone has a BID.
Audience Member:
I’m just curious, whatever happened to the Pratt Institute Study?
Kai Yin Liu:
Well it’s in a standstill because of September 11th. We needed more money to complete the project.
Bonnie Wong:
I read the study but when is it going to be released? It does have some interesting statistics pre 9/11.
Kai Yin Liu:
That we have to ask our President and the Board. Ask Robin.
Robin Mui:
The subject will come up this Monday; we have a Board meeting.
Bonnie Wong:
I was just wondering because I knew a lot of people spent a lot of time analyzing – I know 9/11 changed it, but some of the basic facts don’t change.
Robin Mui:
It is really difficult for us to do that study. Because I understand the politics in Chinatown. So low key that people say, that guy has got the smoke but no fire.
Audience Member:
I think that you talk about all the differences in Chinatown and definitely we all appreciate that. We understand, at least superficially, how it works, and there are a lot of things that we don’t understand.
However, I think the main reason that Chinatown cannot get the attention of the politicians is that first of all, we don’t agree. I mean, there are rules of engagement that we don’t observe. Especially with all the heads, they would sabotage each other rather than proposing a way to work together. They look at differences instead of what are the commonalities. Is it something that they would be able to agree on certain things and just work on that particular thing, instead of just trying to say, I don’t agree on this and that’s why your project is no good.
Definitely I think Chinatown has to start somewhere, and one of the walking tours that I did in 1996, when I joined the leadership of New York, was in Chinatown, so you’ll see the on the first row and second row, the signs are Chinese, but if you keep looking up, then you’ll find the Jewish Heritage, and all these other – Italian immigrant. Chinatown is not static. I’m not sure that in 50 years it will still be mostly Chinese. We can assume that. But if we really wanted to be prosperous, then definitely I think the community has to work together, otherwise I don’t think we’ll come out.
Kai Yin Liu:
Yes, it must. But talking about those politicians, let me share my information with you. I served on the advisory committee for Senator Hilary Clinton. In our first meeting, when her deputy chief of staff entered the room, you know what is her question: what is your number? How many votes can you give us? When Ed Coch was the mayor, he said, how many votes can Chinatown give me? Without that, hey, forget it. You’re talking about voting power, you’re talking money power. In that meeting, we advised Senator Clinton’s staff members, by saying, hey, isn’t it true that in the past, Chinese people didn’t come to vote? Now we’ve got more in this election. Isn’t it true that we have 10% of the population in the city? But then you have to make your investment gradually, when they become U.S. Citizens and then voters, they’ll vote for you. Don’t be so nearsighted. Hey, isn’t it true that Chinese people made donations over $1.5 million. Right? Then they say, ok, right. Sit down. Let’s talk. I still believe that if we fight, those politicians would say, good I will leave you alone.
Like Congresswomen Velasquez, we asked her to come down to Chinatown. She didn’t care. I still remember the day when Congressman David Woo came all the way from Oregon to Chinatown and we asked her to show up. She didn’t. In the last minute, in the second party in a Chinese restaurant, that was her first time to show up. And the reason why, she has her own vote from her own community. Is it sorry for us?
Bonnie Wong:
You know Kai, I don’t think it’s important for politicians to show up at a fundraising dinner. We want them to do things. We don’t care if they show up. We have to have a plan to present and ask them to not show up at dinner.
Kai Yin Liu:
That’s right. That’s right. And even for all those parties, they might represent their representative. Big deal. It’s really an insult on us.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
Time is running out and I’m going to ask each of the panelists to make one comment. It seems that the fighting is an issue within Chinatown in terms of getting anything done. So my question for the panelists (please make this one comment) and in your opinion, how can we resolve that and move forward so that united we may win?
Robin Mui:
Very simple – it’s unity. Somebody’s got to come in and lead the community and all those organizations to fight together. That’s the only way we can win. Otherwise, forget about it, very simple.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
Bonnie.
Bonnie Wong:
I think it’s a constant problem with Chinatown that people don’t agree and that we have totally different views of things, but I think there’s some common ground. We could try to concentrate on the commonality of the things, and if we could over come our individual egos and who lives in Chinatown and who doesn’t (who lives on 34th Street and who doesn’t), that we could probably come up with some plan to bring more money into Chinatown. That’s all it is. But unless we do that, we’re not going to accomplish anything by pointing fingers at everybody. If we stops pointing fingers and we work together I think we could do a much better job as a community.
Kai Yin Liu:
That’s the reason that I don’t want to touch the social service area. But then, I’ll just say if we have a common ground, like the Grand Street subway station, still we can unite together. Because that’s a common ground. Then we’ve got to be humble. You’ve got to know who you are, what role you’re supposed to play, can you be the boss? If you can play that role, hey don’t rock the boat.
Leo Lee:
I just have one announcement. I guess everybody heard S.B. Woo speak this morning before lunch. We are starting an 80-20 New York Chapter, and anyone who’s interested please contact me. My name is Leo Lee. Thank you.
Dr. Thomas Tam:
Well I want to thank you very much. Time is running out and there are other workshops that you might want to get to. I want to thank you for joining us for this session. If you have comments, please visit us at our website. The whole thing is being run by Transcendent International, who are running the transcriptions for us. As soon as we get them, we’ll put them on the web. You can check back with us. I think within a month or so, we should be able to put it all up. Please check back with us at http://www.aaari.info. We’ll keep you updated. Thanks for joining us. Please give the panelists a round of applause.
Copyright (c) Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI), 2002.
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