00:00Chinatowns all across the nation have been recognized as cultural enclaves where people
00:04can live, eat authentic Chinese food, and experience cultural events. However,
00:10LA's Chinatown is currently at risk to lose all of that as gentrification,
00:14LA's car culture, and generational differences continue to evolve.
00:18To learn more, I spoke with Catherine Seppi of Phoenix Bakery.
00:21I have seen personally many changes in the neighborhood. I grew up not far from here.
00:30I wish the crowds would still come here. I'm old enough to remember when
00:34Phoenix Bakery was in the main part of the plaza before we had this building here.
00:40And we'd stay open until midnight, 1 o'clock, 1.30 in the morning. There were crowds of people here.
00:46They came here to eat, to listen to music, to shop, you know, just to hang out.
00:54Recently, many Angelenos have been calling San Gabriel Valley LA's Chinatown.
00:59That includes many young people who call it LA's modern-day suburban Chinatown.
01:04It's about 15 miles from downtown LA. But business owners and other stakeholders
01:09are fighting to preserve the significance of LA's historic Chinatown.
01:13This neighborhood holds many memories, stories, and livelihoods.
01:18Phoenix Bakery has been located in LA's Chinatown since 1938. Originally founded by F.C. Chan,
01:24today it is managed by his children, including Seppi.
01:28It's pretty much been abandoned. If you walk around Chinatown today, you see lots of empty storefronts.
01:38Okay, you see huge malls that used to be quite vibrant, completely empty.
01:44Despite the decrease in business in Chinatown, Phoenix Bakery remains prosperous because of its
01:49role as a long-established family-owned business.
01:51Now, Phoenix Bakery brings people to Chinatown because we have four generations of loyal customers.
01:59You know, we hear it every single day. I have to come here because my grandma won't have any
02:04other cake for her birthday, right? And she brought me and I bring my children and my grandchildren and
02:11loyal customers.
02:13LA's Chinatown gave Seppi's family the foothold they needed to establish a successful business.
02:18It was in 1977 when the bakery moved to a custom-built location on Broadway, where they
02:24are made today. They are famous for their sugar butterflies, almond cookies, and signature
02:28strawberry whipped cream cake.
02:29Do you see that anywhere else around here? You do not. So we're very grateful to our loyal customers.
02:38We're very grateful to the people who come and drive from the valley here to pick up a cake,
02:44that sort of thing. But I would like to see more and more businesses come to Chinatown.
02:52Historians and other experts argue that this Chinatown is irreplaceable,
02:55even as it seems to be losing traction with today's Angelenos. William Gao, a historian and
03:01professor at Sacramento State University, explained how Chinatown stands out among some of the other
03:06communities in Los Angeles.
03:08I think what makes Chinatown different from other neighborhoods and other ethnic enclaves
03:12is the place that it holds in the popular imagination, i.e. the kind of like white dominant,
03:18like American imagination. And so Chinatown holds a very, very special place as an imagined space.
03:26It's a space that has fascinated people from outside of Chinatown for quite a long while.
03:32Um, and so it's this, for me, it's this interconnection between the ethnic enclave,
03:37the lived neighborhood, and the kind of imagined space that Chinatown produces that makes it a
03:43Chinatown. Gao is the project director for the Chinatown Remembered Project, which is the Chinese
03:48Historical Society of Southern California's effort to document the history of LA's Chinatown.
03:53It focuses on the development of the neighborhood starting in the 1930s.
03:57I am a little reticent to call, uh, San Gabriel Valley a Chinatown. I would say that, uh, certainly
04:08San Gabriel Valley has, um, you know, the various Chinatowns or Chinese American communities in San
04:13Gabriel Valley have their, their ethnic enclaves. They're certainly Chinese American neighborhoods.
04:18They certainly are bounded by space, but I don't know if they have the same type of like imaginary kind
04:24of like valence that, uh, China, like LA's traditional Chinatown.
04:28Another scholar who has directly engaged with LA's Chinatown is Laureen Hom, a professor at San
04:34Jose State University. Hom has a similar mindset about Chinatown.
04:38I, I personally don't call San Gabriel Valley a Chinatown. I'm, I try to be much more mindful
04:44about its unique kind of, um, history and how it's situated within the LA region too, as well.
04:53Regardless of what scholars think, Angelinos have a mind of their own when it comes to Chinatown.
04:57And so there is a sense of unease within the community, but some remain optimistic,
05:02like Hom, who realized where Chinatown stands in LA's past, present, and future while gathering
05:07information for her book, The Power of Chinatown.
05:10I think, you know, it, it will, it will stay. I'm, I'm very positive about that, even though I know
05:15that there are folks who are very nervous about it disappearing. And I hear that a lot from the
05:22older generation and I get that. While many family owned businesses in the area have closed because
05:28the next generation was no longer interested in running them, Phoenix Bakery shows that it's
05:32possible to keep historic Chinatown alive. But Phoenix Bakery can't carry Chinatown on its shoulders.
05:39David Chan, a retired tax lawyer who has eaten at almost every Chinese restaurant in LA since 1978,
05:44has witnessed the difficulty that businesses face in surviving across generations.
05:49And in a way that's been by design because most Chinese immigrant restaurant owners don't want
05:57their kids. It's not like the, the restaurant's a business that they'd like to hand down to the kids.
06:03It's like, no, you know, we started this restaurant so we could, so you could do better.
06:08And so, you know, so all the kids went off, you know, when they go to business school or become
06:14doctors or whatever. Catherine Seppi has also observed this effect firsthand.
06:20A lot of the family owned businesses here have closed because the next generation
06:26was no longer interested in rural. San Gabriel Valley may be better suited to the car culture in Los Angeles
06:32because it has input parking. During her research, Hom also realized the role of car culture in Chinatown's
06:38decline. The historic Chinatown is actually inaccessible because of parking issues. When I
06:44talked to business leaders, they also mentioned how this kind of disrupts like wanting to go to
06:49Chinatown to eat and those kinds of things too, as well. So San Gabriel Valley though, even though it seems
06:56farther
06:56and not having those kind of like public transit access, it has that, you know, abundance of parking, right?
07:05What may be needed to save historic Chinatown is to have open conversations about its relevance and share
07:11experiences online. Here's Wei Li, a professor at Arizona State University who has been teaching classes about
07:18Chinatowns around the nation.
07:20Beyond formal education, given the importance of social media now, I would definitely encourage youngsters,
07:30when they attend an event in Chinatown or other Asian district, or they just did a casual visit as a
07:40tourist,
07:42share their experience, share. So we would have open discussion because that's the way younger generation are more
07:53being informed or are having influence on them compared to normal class.
08:00Laureen Hom is also confident that the younger generation is going to contribute greatly to Chinatown's preservation.
08:05I'm really hopeful about it because I see some really great, like organizing happening with younger folks,
08:13but also some of the older folks who were started off young and kept going through the generation. So there's
08:19this kind of constant, every generation, there's folks are really passionate about making sure that
08:25the folks who are most marginalized in Chinatown are still, are still have a platform for their voices to be
08:33heard.
08:33So I hope, you know, and I'm confident that's going to continue on in Chinatown.
08:39Today, students have also been able to appreciate the significance of having a Chinatown within the city they live in.
08:45So I've been honestly visiting LA's Chinatown since I've been really young, probably starting at age seven.
08:53So I've definitely considered LA Chinatown like a second home because I've gone so frequently over the summer to visit
09:00my grandparents.
09:00I haven't heard anything about it being less accessible. It's just that there seems to be less incentive to want
09:06to go to Chinatown.
09:07I've had the privilege to get to know some of the community organizations that do work with Chinatown,
09:12and I think that it's really imperative as youth for us to put our voices out and make it known
09:17that these are spaces that we want to maintain
09:19and communities that we want to support. So getting involved with those local community organizations would be really great.
09:25Yeah, so I got to meet with Eugene Moy on the board of directors at the Chinese Historical Society of
09:30Southern California.
09:31Yeah, I was going down there to work on a history project and that opportunity really let me see how
09:36important they are to the contemporary history of our area.
09:41And I think if they weren't around, we would be missing a lot of information that only they have.
09:48They're a very valuable part of the community in general, and I think that their presence here really allows us
09:54to go back and understand what it meant to start Chinatown and what it means to the people who live
10:01there culturally and where that came from.
10:03The Chinatown community is looking hopefully towards younger generations to continue learning about, visiting and supporting this neighborhood.
10:10Community leaders like the CHSSC have been making efforts to organize and advertise events that will bring more people to
10:18Chinatown.
10:18For now, it holds its own amongst the vibrant neighborhoods of Los Angeles and hopefully will for years to come.
10:25For now, we're going to walk down and walk up and walk up the street where the entire community is
10:29living in the town.
10:30You
