The Los Angeles Chinatown that should be filled with the hustle and bustle of a usual Chinatown is practically empty after dark. As more and more businesses close down early because of the lack of customers, the number of visitors has also been declining, especially at night. The popularity of Chinatown has been steadily declining ever since the 80’s and 90’s, when the town became stigmatized for its increased crime rate. Now, a lot of the Chinese Americans are moving to the suburbs, while the recent immigrants would rather settle at places other than Chinatown where it will be easier to make a living.

As Chinatown dies, a pocket of culture in Los Angeles is dying with it. There are some who might be less sympathetic because they criticize these cultural towns as being inauthentic and modified to suit the stereotypes that the tourists have about the Chinese culture. Whether it is authentic or not, I love places like Chinatown because they simply offer something new for us that is different from the typical suburbs. Chinatown is an emblem of the Chinese culture, although as a small town in a foreign country with its own mainstream Western culture, it only serves as a fragment or an incomplete vignette. Also nowadays, one can easily experience a new culture in any big cities with an ethnically diverse population. But a distinct cultural town is the only place in the U.S. where an entire community thoroughly embraces a single culture and people can immerse fully in the novelty of unfamiliar language and food.

The nighttime is a crucial part of this cultural fragment, because it offers another side of the city in addition to the daytime activities. The nighttime turns on the “lights,” or in other words, a new life of the city that is different from the usual murmur of the daytime crowd. And hence the name, “nightlife.” Chinatown offers its unique nightlife that seeps from its businesses and performances, those that are new and exciting because they are wonderfully different from the mainstream. In other words, people get to experience a place that is not the usual Wal-Mart or a typical city where different cultures merge and blend together into one unidentifiable mass of people.

In order to revive Chinatown, the city of Los Angeles plans to add more performance spaces, improve the facades, and promote more outdoor events. I truly hope that the efforts are successful in restoring and reviving a town that holds a crucial position in the diversity and the vivacity of Los Angeles.

Source

L.A.’s Chinatown tries to draw more nighttime visitors, Los Angeles Times