Today, Explained - A Tale of Two Chinatowns

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Residents of Philadelphia’s Chinatown have mobilized against plans for a new arena in their backyard. To find out how their concerns might bear out, Today, Explained reporter Miles Bryan heads to DC’s Chinatown, where a similar story played out 30 years ago. This episode was reported and produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a big week on the calendar. You got Super Bowl Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras and Carnival, Valentine's Day. And if you're Chinese, you got an entirely new calendar. Happy Lunar New Year. Happy unless you live in Philadelphia, where this year is shaping up to be stressful. The Philadelphia 76ers are trying to build a new arena right next to Philly's Chinatown. The Sixers say it will revitalize the whole area, but Philly's Chinatown's worried that it'll be the end of Chinatown. If only there were a way to know how this might all play out.

Actually, Sean, there might be. Today explains Philadelphia Bureau Chief Miles Bryan. What are you doing here? Well, I'm going to tell you about Philly, of course, but I also want to tell you about a similar situation that played out in Washington, D.C., your backyard, 30 years ago. That's right. You're right. A tale of two Chinatowns coming up on the show today. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long.

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This story is about Chinatown, so let's start in Philly's Chinatown. Philly Chinatown is a small area, right? It's about seven blocks. It's right in the heart of Philly's downtown. And you know, I've been on the show a few times this right? It's about seven blocks. It's right in the heart of Philly's downtown. And you know, I've been on the show a few times this past year to talk about how downtowns across America have struggled post-COVID. You know, streets feeling empty and sad, that sort of thing. But Philly's Chinatown is very much the opposite of that. It's really alive. It's packed with restaurants and cafes and vegetable stands. It sounds delicious. In Chinatown, you see people all the time. You see people walking all the time. That's Su Lin. He co-owns a restaurant here. You know, there's people doing grocery shopping,

people doing deliveries, come out to eat. There's all kinds of activities. Did you eat at his restaurant? I actually did not. It's a sushi restaurant and I was in the mood for soup that day. Anyway, I met up with Sue because he's worried about the future of his neighborhood. The Philadelphia 76ers, our NBA team, want to build a massive new basketball arena right next to Chinatown. The proposal calls for putting the arena not too far from City Hall along the block of 10th to 11atown. The proposal calls for putting the arena not too far from City Hall along the block of 10th to 11th streets. The entire inspiration is similar to how Madison Square Garden in New York City is in the mix of everything. So it's not in Chinatown. The proposed

site is technically in a different part of Philly's downtown, an area called Market East. But it's like it's literally right across the street from where Chinatown begins. Look at the first business in Chinatown. That's one story. Yeah. You know, the arena is going to tower over the first business of Chinatown. And that's just a little variety store. Right. They said, you know, it's not in Chinatown. It's not in Chinatown. It's in our face. Hold the phone here, Miles. I know people are always averse to change, but building an arena next to Chinatown feels like it could be good for business. What is Su Lin worried about?

Yeah, fair question. First off, Su and other activists fighting this arena say Chinatown has seen this movie before. Hmm. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown. Yeah, the first time I heard about the Sixers' proposal, I was shocked and then I was angry.

It was just like, here we go again. There is a long history of Philadelphia city officials and developers trying to put big projects in or right next to Chinatown against the residents' wishes. You know, there's a highway that cut Chinatown in two in the 1980s. The city's convention center displaced hundreds of residents when it was built in the 1990s. Chinatown fought off a proposed baseball stadium in the early 2000s.

And you know, a couple years later, they fought off a casino. There is a history here. Like every other few years, they want to put something in Chinatown that other people don't want. And, you know, there are specific concerns Su and other activists have about a new arena right next to Chinatown. They're worried about traffic and parking. The churches already suffer every time something happens. We can't get our people to church. Can you imagine when they're bringing 17,000 people into this arena and there's no parking? You know, they're worried about construction chaos and noise and road closures deterring customers. Who want to eat in a neighborhood where pollution and noise are a constant issue?

And they're worried about gentrification. Protesters say the arena would cause a number of problems, including rising rents for homes and businesses, which would drive people out of the neighborhood. It will impact the business and also push people out of Chinatown. And, you know, I think you got to know a little bit of Su's backstory to understand his passion here. So Su is 39 and he immigrated from China when he was 16 with his family. He enrolled in a big Philly high school and immediately starts getting into fights. Like every other day. And then I realized this is not what I expected.

Why was that? Like, why were you getting into so many fights? Well, the kids in our school were just picking on immigrant kids, Asian kids, you know. I can relate, Miles. Yeah, yeah. So, Su's got this really rough transition into life in America, and it almost breaks him. Every time we went to school, we went outside. We always had to be careful. We always had to watch our back. We could never just walk the street and feel like it's safe. We're feeling okay to speak our language.

But this family settled here in Chinatown, and that ended up being kind of a saving grace. Chinatown was always the community we could come back to and, you know, just exhale and be like, okay, we're home now. We are safe. Okay. I totally get why he doesn't want to see an arena just dropped down on what's been a safe harbor for him. But what are the people who want this arena next to Chinatown in Chinatown in Philly saying?

Yeah, you know, a lot of people are stoked about the arena and think it could be great for the city and Chinatown could thrive alongside it. I asked Dan Pearson to make the case. He grew up in Philly. He's the son of a pastor. And now he's an editorial writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. Any time that people are betting on Philadelphia, that's really exciting for me. And for that to be happening in the midst of this post-pandemic landscape,

when a lot of people are kind of naysaying cities in Philadelphia, is even more exciting for me. So Dan gave me a tour, too. He took me to an empty lot in the Market East part of downtown. Remember, that's just a couple of blocks from Chinatown. And Dan took me to a lot known as the Disney Hole. The Disney Hole. The Disney Hole. So this is what people call colloquially the Disney Hole. So in the 1990s, Disney was opening these kind of mini indoor theme parks called Disney Quest. They opened one in Atlanta and Chicago. Welcome to the virtual jungle cruise here in the Explore Zone area of Disney Quest.

It is a virtual adventure land. Sounds fun. Yeah, you know, Philly's mayor at the time saw this and was like, this is great. This is the perfect idea to revitalize this part of downtown. But it never happened. And it's just been empty. There's actually a lot of empty blocks along this corridor. Unfortunately, they're all too small to put an arena.

And, you know, I like the Disney hole example because, first off, it's funny. And second off, it's indicative of the state of this whole stretch of downtown. You know, many years ago, it was Philly's retail hub. But it's been struggling for a long time, and it's gotten way worse since COVID. And now the Sixers want to come in and revitalize a corner of it. Yeah, exactly. They want to replace most of a massive, struggling mall called the Fashion District just a block or so away from the Disney Hole.

They're going to call it 76 Place, located on a portion of the current site of the fashion district, Philadelphia, and serve as an anchor to Center City. That's cool, 76 Place, like 1776, right? Yeah, like the Philadelphia 76ers. Chance at 70. Embiid. Coast to coast for 70!

Now, to be fair, the Sixers' ultimate motivation here is definitely profit. You know, they think they can make more money with a shiny new downtown arena they own instead of the one on the fringes of the city they currently rent from Comcast. But the team has pledged they won't take any public funding from the city, and they'll spend more than a billion dollars building the thing. So lots of construction jobs. And people like Dan see the arena as being a big shove towards a more walkable, vibrant post-pandemic future. You know, the Sixers are going to build apartments on top of the arena, and the whole thing will sit on top of a giant, currently underused train station. I view this arena proposal as something that could bring people downtown who haven't gone

downtown. And I also view it as a potential way to revive this Markadees corridor, which is just very, very far away from what it could be doing in terms of jobs and revenue for the city and its residents. But did you ask him about Su's concerns about, you know, the loss of heritage, the loss of a cultural landmark for him? Yeah, you know, he and others argue that most fans coming to games will take public transportation and that those that drive can park in some of the many lots that already exist in the area. So parking concerns are a bit overblown. Dan says many buildings in Chinatown are owned by Chinese and Asian Americans,

not big corporate developers. Essentially, he argues that the arena would be a rising tide that lifts all boats. You know, I understand the approach of some people who say, I'm always going to be with what the community says. But it's, you it's not always possible because you have to govern and write for what the city's interests as a whole are. But you know, there is one other thing that Sue brought up with me. It's something that he and other anti-arena folks point to as the most concrete evidence that shows this whole thing

is a bad idea. We study other Chinatowns in North America. Every time a big project comes in, the community either disappears or shrinks. The closest example is D.C. Chinatown.

D.C. Chinatown, yes. definitely one of America's Chinatowns. Yeah, D.C.'s Chinatown, as we're going to talk about in a couple of minutes, has seen better days. And its story parallels in some really interesting ways what's been happening in Philly. You know, 30 years ago, downtown D.C., which includes D.C.'s Chinatown, was also struggling. And D.C. also turned to an arena as a way to reverse the decline. And they built it in Chinatown.

Today explained heads home to the District of Columbia when we return. Thank you. one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her

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defend reproductive freedom, fight discrimination, and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms. This Giving Tuesday, you can support the ACLU. With your help, they can stop the extreme Project 2025 agenda. Join the ACLU at aclu.org today. Today Explained is back through the magic of audio storytelling. We have gone from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., right down the Northeast Corridor, still with Miles Bryan. Miles, what did you find in Chinatown, District of Columbia? Yes, I went and I'm back. And I'm here to tell you that D.C.'s Chinatown is like Philly's in that it's right in the middle of downtown. But that's basically where the comparison ends.

You're going to see a lot of storefronts that are empty. There's a lack of foot traffic, high crime, drug use. That's Richard Wong. He's a senior director at the 1882 Foundation, a Chinese and Asian American advocacy group. He's been working in D.C.'s Chinatown since the 1970s, an era when the streets were packed with dim sum spots and banquet halls. There's a lot of, you know, Chinese restaurants that's still here, 1970s, an era when the streets were packed with dim sum spots and banquet halls.

There's a lot of, you know, Chinese restaurants that's still here, but most of them have disappeared or have been bought out. Yeah, yeah. D.C.'s Chinatown, famously not even the best place to get Chinese food in the D.C. area. Yeah, man. Most of the restaurants and cafes and retail that are active in Chinatown are chain stores, you know, Dos Toros Taqueria or Hip City Veg, not Chinese at all. But there's this super weird detail that I noticed as soon as I got into the neighborhood, and I'm sure you remember, which is that every business has its name spelled

out in Chinese characters under the English sign. Hey, are you making fun of our Chinatown? Go back to Philly. Yeah, I mean, hey, the city of DC required it to make Chinatown feel like a Chinatown, go back to Philly. Yeah, I mean, hey, the city of D.C. required it to make Chinatown feel like a Chinatown. But in reality, it mostly just seems sad to me. You know, Richard said a lot of the translations are bad, too, like the one for Capital One Cafe, which is operated by Capital One, the bank, but it's not a bank. It's a cafe. And there isn't a translation into Capital One. So because it's a cafe, it's a cafe. And there isn't a translation into Capital One, so because it's a cafe, it's the number one cafe, it's the number one bank, and it's got good food.

Well, it's not a bank. That's not a description for bank. Incredible. But nobody cares. I don't think it's that people don't care, Miles. I think it's that people don't know. Yeah, fair. But, you know, it wasn't always like that.

When Richard moved here in 1978, it was a vibrant community. It was a neighborhood. You know, we all knew each other. We went from home to home. You know, we played in the streets. We played in the alleys. And I say this jokingly, but this is a fact. We did not have a day where we were hungry.

Because our families, our relatives worked in restaurants. All right. After school, you know, we'd pop into a restaurant or we would joke around. Well, whose family should we rip off today for lunch? Sit down and, you know, auntie and uncle would feed us. All right. That was the community, you know. And I could take it you're not popping into Hip City Veg and getting a meal on the house. Oh, no, no, no, not at all.

Matter of fact, I hardly frequent these places now. You know, Miles, as a DC resident, I have heard tell of this bygone Chinatown. If I had a DeLorean that could travel through time, I would immediately go see. DC's Chinatown in its prime. I don't have a DeLorean, but I can tell you about it.

Please. So, Richard's nostalgic about the late 70s, but D.C.'s Chinatown had actually started losing Chinese residents to the suburbs years before Richard got there in the late 60s,

after the riots that followed the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of people just started moving out of D.C. People's parents were buying homes in Silver Spring, mostly. In the 1980s, in another parallel with Philly, D.C. built a convention center in Chinatown, which displaced a lot of residents. My uncle had a carryout on 9th Street,

right where the convention center was. When he got kicked out and by eminent domain, he retired. And by the early 1990s, D.C.'s Chinatown was struggling, largely for the same reasons as the rest of downtown D.C. was struggling, the crack epidemic and a wave of violence. In 1990, Washington, D.C. saw more than 470 homicides, earning it the label murder capital of the U.S. But then eventually, if I'm not mistaken, they would build an arena where I would go see the Washington Capitals play hockey.

Right. So this is when the arena enters the stage in the early 1990s. D.C. officials reached a deal with Abe Pollan, the owner of the Washington Capitals hockey team, and the NBA team now known as the Wizards, to move their teams from the Burbs to an arena in Chinatown. Matt Blitz is a reporter at DCist who wrote a really thorough history of Chinatown and the arena. They were talking a lot about how the arena is going to change everything, right? This is a quote from a story in 1994. This shows we're making a comeback.

We're telling everybody that the lights are still on here. And I think it will change a lot, add towards to what our city is about. And I'm getting deja vu here, Miles, because this is, of course, the exact situation Philly's in right now. D.C. was in it, whatever, 30 years ago. Did the locals in Chinatown oppose this arena the way locals in Philly are right now? Yeah, I mean, it's worth pointing out that in D.C., they proposed to build the arena right in Chinatown, whereas in Philly, it's just nearby. But there was reaction from the Chinese community in D.C. at the time. It was more mixed than what's been happening in Philly. I talked to some Chinese

business owners in D.C. who said that they supported it in the 90s because the neighborhood was struggling and they thought it would be good for business. I know other community members were worried about change and gentrification, but the city didn't seem particularly tuned into the Chinese community and the project went ahead full steam. its gates on December 2nd, 1997. The newly christened Fun Street lived up to its name as hundreds lined the block in front of the MCI Center to watch. Fun Street? Is that where they kept the Disney hole? The Disney hole never made it as far south as D.C., for better or for worse. Sad. But what was definitely not fun was for some Chinese businesses who were forced out when the city of Washington, D.C.

used eminent domain to seize some land around the arena. The arena, affectionately nicknamed the phone booth, transformed its surroundings almost overnight. All of a sudden, it was green light go for opening restaurants and night spots, and it radiated out across that part of D.C. instantly. Like you heard in that quote, you know, when the MCI arena opened in 1997, it kicked off a lot of commercial growth in the area. Violence fell, you know, more people came in to see games, and that made the neighborhood more attractive to new groups. The Chinese population fell.

In 1990, about two-thirds of the residents in the Chinatown area were Asian, according to the census. But 20 years later, less than a third were. But, you know, Richard says this story is more complicated than that stat would suggest. There was a lot of developers that came in and offered Chinese owners a large sum of money, you know, for the properties. And you can't fault them for not taking those offers. You know, I don't fault them for taking those offers.

So people talk about gentrification, the forcement of Chinese out of the areas. But this was also an opportunity for second and third generation Chinese to accumulate wealth. Okay, so people got paid. Yeah, exactly. And this is what I think is so interesting about the story is that it's gentrification, but it's gentrification that heavily benefited Chinese people. You know, they made good on their investments

and they moved out to the suburbs. Now, most of the remaining Chinese people living in DC's Chinatown live in an affordable housing development for the elderly called the Wa Luck House. And those residents now have to take a bus into the suburbs just to go to a Chinese grocery store. There's, you know, Asian communities in Maryland and Virginia that has literally replaced Chinatown. You know, they've got the large grocery stores, you know, restaurants and so forth.

But I think if you look at community-wise and trying to be more inclusive, you can't forget history. And, you know, there's one other lesson from the saga of D.C.'s Chinatown and its sports teams, which is sports teams moved to the suburbs too. Yeah, don't remind me. Since D.C.'s Chinatown and its sports teams, which is sports teams move to the suburbs too. Yeah, don't remind me. Since D.C.'s Chinatown Arena opened, it's hosted the Washington Wizards and the Capitals,

the NHL team, but apparently not for much longer. The team's owner is moving them out of the city to the suburbs in 2028. What do you say to D.C. residents who say they feel like they're being abandoned? I understand. And the future is going to be fantastic. And we're three and a half miles away. Which, of course, is another strike in the column for this 76ers arena in Philly, right next to its Chinatown. Are people paying attention to what might happen in D.C. and saying, here's another reason to not build in Philly? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know,

Philly and D.C. are not the same. You know, something else I heard from nearly everyone I talked to is that the fate of D.C.'s Chinatown has also been driven by the fact that it's no longer a destination for new Chinese immigrants. You know, the people most likely to work the kitchen jobs or open a restaurant themselves. And the opposite is true for Philly. It's become a magnet for new Chinese immigrants. So I think Philly may be able to have it all, a new arena and a revitalized Market East

and a thriving Chinatown. But it is worth pointing out that the kind of rich tapestry of urban life that the Philly Arena's supporters are hoping it can cultivate already exists just a couple blocks away in Philly's Chinatown. And one thing I think the D.C. example does show is that that is a really fragile thing, really easily lost. For Su Lin from Philly, who we started the episode with,

that makes it just not worth the risk. I want Chinatown, you know, for Chinese Americans. You know, Chinatowns in America came out of racism and resistance to racism. You know, the society did not, they wanted our labor.

They did not want us to stay. They did not want us to stay they did not want us to have offsprings um we stayed we fought we did business um within our community we helped each other we persisted you know my kids are born here so i want chinatown to be here for them i want chinatown to be here for my mom and her generation. You know, she speaks limited English and Chinatown is her comfort. Chinatown is her community. Well, I hope for Su Lin's sake and for his mom's sake that if this 76 town or whatever it's called goes through in Philadelphia, that it can succeed where D.C. kind of failed and not displace its Chinatown.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. The Philly City Council is supposed to vote on whether the arena can move forward sometime later this year. Well, in the meantime, I guess go Sixers because the Wizards are hopeless. Yeah, I think if there's one thing we can all agree on is that the Wizards suck and the Sixers are great.

Go Sixers. Ha ha ha! Our show today was edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd. It was reported and produced by Miles Bryan, Philadelphia Bureau Chief, Today Explained. Thanks for watching!