Why Chicago’s Chinatown is flourishing while others across the U.S. fade

Reporting from CHICAGO —  One of the first things Chinese immigrant Sau Fung Lam did upon arriving in Chinatown 24 years ago was go to the grocery store to try to buy an apple.

She approached the grocer and opened her mouth, as if the English words she didn’t know would, by some miracle, slip out. They didn’t. So she formed a circle with her fingers and thumbs, a gesture the grocer seemed to understand.

She was handed a large onion.

Since Lam moved from East China to Chicago in the early 1990s, Chinatown has flourished, transforming from a partially Chinese community where residents mostly spoke English into one where Lam can easily communicate in Chinese. Most businesses, restaurants and agencies operate bilingually because the majority of residents speak a Chinese dialect, and nearly 65% are foreign-born, experts say.

At a time when traditional urban Chinatowns in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia are fading because of gentrification and changing cultural landscapes, Chicago’s Chinatown is growing larger — becoming what experts say could be a model for the survival of Chinatowns in the U.S.

In Chicago, where several neighborhoods are no longer defined by the immigrant or ethnic groups that once dominated them, Chinatown is an exception, having anchored the area centered around Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue since 1912.

Leaders say Chinatown has avoided gentrification because Chinese Americans value a sense of belonging and choose to stay in the neighborhood. Few residents move out, and if they do, they sell their homes to other Chinese.

Between 2000 and 2010, Chinatown’s population increased 24% and its Asian population increased 30%. Asians make up nearly 90% of the neighborhood’s population, according to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data. Experts also say that of all the foreign-born Asians living in Chicago’s Chinatown, nearly 10% arrived in the last three years — a stark contrast to New York and San Francisco, where immigrants no longer fuel Chinatowns.

About 78% of Chinatown residents speak Chinese at home, and of that population, more than three-quarters report speaking English “less than ‘very well,’” according to a 2015 report from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Half of Chinatown residents are employed in one of three sectors: the food and hospitality industry, healthcare and social services, and manufacturing, according to the report.

The neighborhood allows Lam, now 81, to live comfortably in Chicago without having ever learned English. She spends her days eating at Cantonese restaurant MingHin Cuisine, buying savory turnip cakes from Hong Kong Market and singing alongside her sister in a Chinese choir on Wednesdays.

“I never think of Chinatown disappearing in Chicago,” she said through a translator who works for a Chinese social service agency. “If that happened, it’d be very inconvenient. Life would be difficult.”

Recognizing the national decline of other Chinatowns, city planners and Chicago organizations are committed to investing in this one, which could be why the neighborhood is thriving. In 2013, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning announced a plan to preserve Chinatown’s cultural identity by improving public education and elderly care, bolstering transportation infrastructure and creating more public parks.

And in August, the city opened a two-story, $19.1-million branch of the Chicago Public Library that has attracted about 1,500 people a day. It caters to Chinese-speaking patrons, as many residents turn to the library for English classes.

Chinatowns began forming in the U.S. after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. The law barred Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S., though exceptions were made for merchants and scholars, said Huping Ling, a history professor at Truman State University who focuses on Asian American studies. The Chinese already living in the U.S. suffered violent racism and discrimination, and were unable to assimilate into the country’s social or economic fabric. Without the means to return to China, they relied on urban clusters — Chinatowns — to survive.

The act was repealed in 1943, though there was an annual quota of 105 new entry visas, and ethnic Chinese people were still banned from owning property or businesses. It wasn’t until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, that racial immigration restrictions were lifted, Ling said.

In San Francisco’s Chinatown, the nation’s oldest, the Asian population dropped 19.3% from 2000 to 2010, though the number of Asians living in the core fell by only 3 percentage points, according to an analysis of census data.

“You can see a pattern starting to form, and eviction and housing cases tell the rest of the story,” said Cindy Wu, deputy director and planning commissioner at Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco.

Chicago differs from Manhattan and San Francisco in that it doesn’t have as high of a demand nor as tight of a supply of rentable apartments, according to a study released in 2015 by New York University and Capital One. But experts and city leaders agree that Chicago’s Chinatown could also be thriving because of its commitment to Chinese traditions, which makes it attractive to both Asians and non-Asian visitors.

Nancy Wong, 62, moved to Chicago in 1988 from Hong Kong out of fear the autonomous territory would join mainland communist China. She opened a flower shop on Archer Avenue, near Chinatown, and regularly visits Chinatown to work with clients.

She believes Chinatown’s numerous services and agencies for immigrants and Chinese speakers are what make it attractive. There are plenty of elderly housing options, employment training services and English classes, often taught at churches. Residents’ primary use of Chinese for business helps prevent the neighborhood from existing as just a tourist attraction.

“Some young people even work or live in Chinatown just to learn Chinese,” she said.

meltagouri@chicagotribune.com

Eltagouri writes for the Chicago Tribune.

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