Chinatown: As Much A Part of Americana As Apple Pie: Don't Let Anyone Erase Them
By Lady Khadi Madama c. 2024
Muckrack & Substack
It was the fall of 2012 and here at the Jersey shore we were expecting a storm of incredible size. Little did we know the magnitude of its destruction. Power was down everywhere along with trees. Roads were impassibly flooded causing loss of life. Everyone was told to stay in because of downed power lines and road hazards. Some people lost their mobile phone service with the affected tower outages. There were in fact, for the most part, only two things that were still up and running. Good old landline analog telephones and Chinese restaurants with eat-in or take-away service. That's because many of them have generators on their premises and such was how it was that day that when I finally got a hold of my brother who worked for a nearby county's road department. He called when he saw the warm glow of light shining through the window from within the Chinese restaurant close to his home. The door was open, the aroma of good Chinese tea and other scents wafting out into the open air and the typical sounds of the Chinese kitchen staff yelling to be heard in the fast-paced clamor of their cooking and kitchen work. It was a sight for sore eyes and a salve to my brother. And he wanted me to know he was safe. Safe in our favorite place-a Chinese restaurant. There's nothing more American than that. A Chinese restaurant in the heart of a town, is like the light of a jewel that never dims. It's a part of our culture even when we don't have Chinese ancestors. That is true of Japan-towns and Korea-towns, as well. As Kung Fu students immersed in Chinese culture, we went to the Chinese grocery every week for our favorite Chinese delicacies and would bring prescriptions for Chinese lineaments used in martial arts, and copied from books, to hand to the person behind the counter who didn't speak English.
Chinese restaurants were very familiar to me, my brother and all of our Kung Fu training brothers. Every Thursday night after our last Kung Fu training of the week we'd head straight to House of Chong in our Kung Fu uniforms. We tried to speak as much Chinese that we could and sat around savoring our dinner, eating with chopsticks, because eating Chinese food with chopsticks is like, as they say, “dotting the eyes of the dragon.” To this day, Thursday night at my house is Chinatown night with Chinese food and watching Charlie Chan movies over and over again to create the feeling of being in Chinatown while I get to see see favorite Chinese actors of a bygone era.
Even as a young girl, I was used to going to Chinatown, New York. My father was in the auto business and we would go into New York often. Chinatown was near Little Italy. It wasn't until many years later that I would discover that I have two Asian female ancestors. One from Japan, and one from China. Both taken from their homelands to Macao by the Portuguese to be sold into servitude somewhere else in the world. My grandmother emigrated from Hungary in 1907 and lived with us. As a young girl, I absolutely hated spaghetti sauce and my father couldn't figure out why, so he would carry on about what kind of an Italian kid was I? It was later that night that my grandmother pulled me aside to tell me a family secret that she never told anyone, not even my mother, who never knew that when she was eating Chinese food in Chinatown, she was part Chinese! My grandmother told me that on her side of the family, we came from the Asian race. She didn't go into detail. After all, I was only 10. But, she was clever and she knew that I would not forget the family secret. A secret that my mother never knew. I believe it was because the Hungarian community in America was very tight-knit, and had that secret come out, the family in the early 1900's and into the 1940s would have been ostracized, such was the anti-Asian/Chinese situation at that time. No wonder why my grandmother kept it a secret. And, as many Hungarians are Central Asian, no one questioned, ethnically, her family background.
Whenever and wherever I travel, the first thing I do is to find out if and where there's a Chinatown and that's where I go. Chinatown Montreal is so pristine that one feels as if one is in a Hollywood movie set. Chinatown Washington DC is not to be missed. Let's not leave out “Jewish” Chinatown, because hidden in most Jewish towns, there is a Chinese restaurant because everyone knows that Jewish people love Chinese food. Of course, the Chinese food there is kosher, but that's OK, because the food is great.
Chinese cuisine is so special that it finds it's way into Hollywood movies, TV shows, Hollywood comedy skits, ( the rotund late John Pinette and his priceless routine about being asked to leave the Chinese buffet because he's been eating the 'all you can eat buffet'' all day). I would say that when you are watching a Hollywood movie or TV show, the most featured dinner is Chinese “take away” with the disposable chopsticks and in those special wax Chinese boxes with Chinese ideograms and with little metal handles. Anything else would look boring on the big screen! And, let's not forget fortune cookies or the tea! No one anywhere, not even at the Ritz, makes tea as perfectly as the Chinese restaurant, any Chinese restaurant from New York to California, it's always perfect.
Chinese culture, comedy, and cuisine has wended its way into the American scene since the 1880s and to erase it is to wipe off part of the face of America. It's also wended and entwined the hearts of millions of Americans who can't resist the Chinese “take-away” or restaurant for special occasions.
And, that leaves me to Chinatown Philadelphia. I probably know Chinatown Philadelphia like I know the lines in my own hand. It's not that far a drive, so on any particular day, we can just drive off and go there for shopping, dinner and, of course, the martial arts store and Chinese Apothecary. I know it's changed since the late 90's and the martial arts store moved out from its original local, but Chinatown Philadelphia cannot be allowed to be erased. It's as American as apple pie. We need Chinatowns. We need their culture, their ability to pull us out of our daily rounds by entering a new world for a few hours. To erase Chinatowns would be like lights going out all over the country, like closing the eyes of the Dragon. Please leave those warm and inviting lights on in those windows, windows of a very special world.
Bio:
Khadi calls herself a fun-ologist, writing off trend subject such as Nikola Tesla, The Great Harry Houdini, Amelia Earhart, DB Cooper-coming up soon, Boxing and whatever catches her attention. She is also a descendant of Chinese and Japanese ancestors brought to Hungary in the late 1790s.