China Town Idea" Analysis "The

¶ … China Town Idea" Analysis "the Chinatown Idea:" Chinatown as a concept and geographical location In his essay, "The Chinatown Idea," author Eric Liu analyzes the concept of a 'Chinatown' within major metropolitan areas. Liu's approach is intriguing, given that the existence of 'Chinatowns' is something many people take for granted, without assessing their ideological implications. Visitors to cities often come to gawk at Chinatowns as tourist attractions, even though 'real' people live there, and conduct their daily lives there.

The language of Chinatowns, the appearance of signs in Chinese characters creates a vision of an 'otherworldly' place for outsiders and a sense of a different country and place for both Chinese and non-Chinese observers. Chinatown is thus an epistemological concept as well as a geographically-bound entity -- it is a physical area, true, but it also provides comfort to the residents and visitors that something outside of the laws and restrictions of mainstream culture is preserved.

It manufactures its own unique culture as a neighborhood, yet isolates Chinese culture as a museum piece for those who might find such an alternative culture to be threatening. One of the central metaphors Liu uses is that of an island: he observes that Chinatown is "an island of eternity in a sea of modernity" (Liu 172), indicating its preservation of traditional Chinese practices in a country that is constantly changing.

The island does not threaten the 'mainland' of modernity, only streets away, as it is governed by different rules that do not spill over into the larger world. This idea of Chinatown as an exotic country is reinforced by another metaphor -- that of a nation occupied by a colonizing power with some limited ability to govern itself: traditional "Chinese ways" determine how life progresses, as Chinatown is "a zone of 'home rule,' where "the natives govern themselves" (Liu 173).

In the perception of non-residents, Chinatown is foreign, intriguing and largely irrelevant, given that Chinatown is usually in a small sector of a city, a mysterious town or realm of surprises of "meaning and moral import" but utterly separate (Liu 172). On one hand, this experience may be frightening to 'non-natives,' that is Caucasian non-residents, but on the other hand, Chinatown provides a kind of safety valve.

The presence of a Chinatown suggests that there is no need to integrate the inhabitants: they live according to their own rules and do not want to follow the rules of mainstream society. This is why the habits of Chinatown residences are often condemned and criticized, even while observers flock to witness these practices performed in the flesh. Good examples of this are what type of animals are consumed and how animals are slaughtered and prepared.

While newspapers may condemn the 'fresh killing' of animals in public as a health hazard, this often stimulates the desire of the public to see it in action. Somehow public health questions do not seem to matter as much in Chinatown.

There is also a kind of otherworldly quality to Chinatown, a sense of historical timelessness, as if the residents are not real, but kind of historical automatons, like something like the characters of an animated ride in Disneyworld: The residents of Chinatown "are not so much alive as animated" and "exist mainly so that American characters may move past them, through them, around them" (Liu 173).

There is a romantic charm in the notion that outsiders only 'pass through' while residents are in a kind of stop time, insular and part of the background, not part of the larger cultural narrative. Thus the Chinatown idea is fundamentally that Asia is 'different' -- exotic, of another world, rather than part of 'America.' This has often subverted the ambitions of those residents who do wish to become more a part of American society, who may struggle acquiring English skills, for example.

The existence of Chinatown reinforces the perception that Chinese segregation is self-imposed and that a complex array of social factors such as culture and discrimination have no impact upon mobility and advancement. The persistence of Chinatown also questions the ethics of what it means to tour another culture -- an issue that also arises when an individual contemplates the ethics touring an Amish village, for example. These seemingly alien cultures are strangely dependant upon the larger culture, as they market their differences for paid consumption.

What seems different -- a Chinese dragon, a whole duck roasting in a window -- inspires the desire to tour and eat in the area, yet also a mixture of contempt in the outsider. What does Chinatown communicate to the outsider? It is both real to the residents, yet an Epcot center in its presentation to tourists. A quick Google of San Francisco Chinatown's website reveals a dual presentation to outsiders, as the site's content spans everything from information designed.