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THE_NEW_CHINATOWN

                                             May 24-31, 2013

   Peter Kwong,
   "The New Chinatown",
   written in the mid-80s,
   revised in the mid-90s.

   An Asian Studies academic,
   and labor activist in New
   York, writing largely about
   New York's Chinatown, which      San Francisco's is merely
   is apparently the largest        the oldest... though it does
   in the US.                       have a number of satellites
                                    like Oakland's Chinatown and
   Being a labor activist,          the Richmond district on the
   Kwong's emphasis is on           East side of SF.  But then I
   the many problems with           suspect that's true of all of
   labor conditions; the            them: NY's Chinatown has a
   autocratic nature of             satellite out in Queens.
   much of Chinatown's
   traditional "informal"
   leadership; the
   continued influence of      As Kwong describes it, the Tongs
   the Tongs; and so on.       repackaged themselves as social
                               clubs, with their strongarm
      So, one would not        division outsourced to youth
      confuse Kwong's          gangs run via a single cut-out.
      Chinatown with
      a utopian society.                 There are some interesting details
                                         in Kwong's history, for example,
      He doesn't touch                   Chinatown has played a strong role
      on the one thing                   in New York remaining prominent in
      that strikes me as                 the garment industry, with Chinese
      remarkable about                   workers taking over much of the
      the phenomena:                     manual labor.
      Chinatown remains
      Chinatown.  It's
      character is          CHINATOWN
      remarkably stable.
      Real estate booms      There are people who argue
      come and go, but       that the poor working         That may sound like
      Chinatown abides.      conditions low pay, long      a crazy stawman, but
                             hours and use of child        Kwong backs it up
                             labor that often occur in     with quotations from
   That's a pretty           Chinatown sweatshops are      Min Zou, _Chinatown:
   good trick.  If           acceptable because they're    The Socioeconomic
   you understood            cultural a Chinese thing.     Potential of an
   how they did                                            Urban Enclave_ and
   it, could you                                           Jane Lii in the New
   imitate it?                                             York Times, in 1995.

      CHINATOWN_REAL



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