Chinatown in San Francisco. The Reason I

¶ … Chinatown in San Francisco. The reason I chose it is because there are so many things that are appealing to me. It is the largest Chinatown in the United States and is often regarded as an Asian micro-town within America. It is a place where one can immerse himself/herself into an Asian culture -- or, so I assume (I want to find out). It is home to many attractions. One can see Chinese architecture, restaurants (try Chinese and Chinese-Western cuisine), and herbal shops where one can buy unique herbs used in Chinese traditional medicine. It is also interesting to me how citizens of Chinatown understand their identity. Do they consider themselves Chinese, American, or someone in-between? What is their lingua franca? What is their attitude toward Americans and Chinese? These are interesting questions that I would like to find out. After all, they live in the Chinatown but are still located in the United States.

I plan to visit the site several times. I have been to Chinatown once but then it did not occur to me to investigate anything specific there. I just visited it out of curiosity. My plan is to visit it as many times as necessary and go to areas that will help me find answers to the questions I mentioned above. I want to do enough sightseeing to gain insight into the aesthetics of the town; I want to learn more about the architecture. I plan to visit a couple of relatively cheaper restaurants, look at their menus carefully, and possibly interview some servants or managers. I also plan to visit a few herbal shops to observe and, again, if possible, ask questions from the sellers and owners of those shops. And finally, I want to interview random people on the street who can observe things around the town. I am thinking about Chinese food carts where a seller spends the whole day in the street, talking to people and observing the neighborhood. These people, I hope, can answer a lot of my questions.

The classes I have taken within the last year convinced me that I need to be careful with preconceived notions. I try to avoid such notions. Nevertheless, I cannot help having some preconceived notions about Chinatown and its people. I imagine everyone in town to speak Chinese. Children and teenagers perhaps are fluent in English. I imagine the citizens of Chinatown to be hardworking and frugal. They probably stick together as families and neighbors and help each other a lot. They organize traditional Chinese festivals. I assume them to be friendly to visitors and willing to talk about their hometown when asked about it by strangers (I really hope!). I think, being in Chinatown can offer a feeling of being in Asia but it will not replace it. This is still America. We will see.

I do not know precisely whom I am going to interview yet. But my plan is to find a woman in her forties-fifties, either in the Chinese food cart or a herbal shop. I want to choose this woman as the main "expert" on the town. I am assuming younger generation may know less, while those over sixty may not know much about the new generation. A woman in her forties-fifties can tell me about her experience of growing up in Chinatown and also tell about her children and their attitudes. If my "expert" was born in mainland China, it will be even better. She can then tell me contrasting and comparing stories. I eventually hope to interview two "experts" as the main sources of information on the experience of living in Chinatown.