Elizabeth Song | Chinatown is more than a tourist destination

When I was 8, I decided to renounce fortune cookies, Communism and Jackie Chan forever. This involved declaring to my parents that I hated being Chinese.

Being an Asian kid in Southern suburbia wasn't "cool." In the pre-Lucy Liu era, I learned to live with Barbie dolls and the Disney princesses. Growing up in the Bible belt, I hated how we were the only house on the block that didn't put up Christmas lights.

Chinatowns, on the other hand, were some of the few places where it was okay to be Asian in America. They satisfied my childhood curiosity, and allowed my parents to connect to a scattered Asian community. Here in Philadelphia, Chinatown fulfills largely the same role.

Take the Blue Line down to Market East Station, walk north to Race Street, and you'll find yourself in the heart of Philly Chinatown. If you explore a bit further, you'll see the landmarks that define this small inner-city community: a charter school, a funeral parlor, a Buddhist temple, a Catholic church, and a fire station.

But Philadelphia's Chinatown is a tiny community in need of help - the 2000 census reported that annual salaries in the area hover around $8,400 (that's one-quarter of the average city income and one-fifth of your Penn tuition). Not surprisingly, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that 74 percent of Chinatown children live in poverty, and the unemployment rate there is twice the city average.

Debbie Wei is the principal of the only public school in Chinatown. This year, 98 children of the 334 enrolled in her school failed their eye exams. Because most families have no medical insurance, they cannot afford corrective lenses for their children, she said. The elementary school itself is situated next to a rehab facility for sex offenders. "There are sexual predators just two blocks away from us," Wei said.

The charter school, which was created through an arduous uphill battle, is one of the few publicly funded institution in Chinatown. No health clinics, no recreation centers, no libraries, no parks and no playgrounds exist for local residents. Why has this area been so neglected by city planners?

The answer is partly because people don't see Chinatown as a community. Most visitors fail to look past the gaudy storefronts or the trash-littered alleys and see the area as a real neighborhood that's desperate for affordable housing, health clinics for its elderly and playgrounds for its children.

This intimate community has been boxed in on all four sides by development projects like the Convention Center, the Gallery, Independence Mall and the Vine Street Expressway. Only after vehement protests from residents did the city drop plans to bulldoze parts of Chinatown and build a baseball stadium in 2003. The city's earlier proposal to build a prison next to a local church was scrapped after urgent local complaints. "As long as Chinatown doesn't have political power - and it doesn't - it will be viewed as convenient dumping ground," Wei said.

Another problem is that Asian Americans are rarely the visible face of urban poverty.

Here on campus, we're so used to seeing those Asians who are upwardly mobile that we've forgotten that another community exists. We're too obsessed with tracking down the Asian prodigies with perfect SAT scores to really care. In the movies and on the news, we almost never see homeless Asians. American society remains unwilling to even acknowledge the existence of a poor Asian underclass - especially compared to their "model minority" peers.

As new residents in town, we often take what we see at face value. We appreciate Chinatown for its cheap food and for its super-cheap bus services.

However, we need to remember that we are situated in the middle of living communities. If Philadelphians fail to see Chinatown as a community rather than a tourist attraction, then those with power like Mayor Street and city policymakers will continue to ignore them.

Next time you find yourself lingering on the fringes of Chinatown in the Gallery or waiting to board the buses on Filbert Street, take a moment to visit a local restaurant, step inside a bilingual bookshop, walk into a grocery market, and explore the heart of a vibrant community.

Elizabeth Song is a College sophomore from Clemmons, N.C. Her e-mail address is song@dailypennsylvanian.com . Striking a Chord appears on Thursdays.

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