Places in Time: Chinatowns, Beginnings and Endings
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The 5th WCILCOS International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies Chinese through the Americas May 16‐19, 2012 Vancouver, B.C. Canada Places in Time: Chinatowns, Beginnings and Endings Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Media Cultures, College of Island, City University of New York Gary McDonogh Professor, Program in Growth and Structure of Cities, Bryn Mawr College Abstract: Research on Chinatowns worldwide has illuminated spatial boundaries and physical, social and cultural markers of distinctive urban identities in resonance with the changing position of Chinese in diverse societies and the adaptation of diasporic populations to transnational ties. Yet, the emergence of global Chinatowns from the industrial/extractive boom of the 19th century to the multilayered mercantile expansion of entrepreneurs in the 21st century also allows us to raise important unexplored questions about time and change in the city. Such questions illuminate not only Chinese experiences but also important processes of in the structures and growth of modern cities. The formation of Chinatowns in the past, for example, entails mythic markers of place (in the anthropological sense of myth). The “first” Chinese to arrive in any area may be later commemorated by historical markers, but this often embodies modern politics, whether in Philadelphia, São Paulo. Despite discontinuities in site, society and even changes among waves of immigration, the idea of the “birth” of Chinatown has been revised and revived by later Chinese claimants to rights and place in the city. The fragmentary myths of origin associated with historic Chinatowns worldwide, at the same time, raise questions about new Chinatowns now emerging as planned communities (in San José, Costa Rica, Guayaquil, Ecuador), Special Economic Zones in Africa and less-structured agglomerations taking advantage of housing and commercial opportunities (sunbelt suburban Chinatowns in the U.S. or Cyrildene, Johannesburg, South Africa). The dynamics of emergent Chinatowns illuminate social mixture, visible and invisible nodes and conflicts that are lost when history is claimed as myth. At the same time, these new enclaves draw on now-global vocabularies of Chinese identity and place – the presence of an arch or the public celebration of New Year’s as a festival of urban diversity –to transform inherited spaces into new homes. Analyses of narrative of the birth of Chinatowns must be balanced by stories of “death” of an enclave. The “disappearance” of a Chinatown may be associated with physical displacement, governance/citizenship (the movement of the Chinese with the end of apartheid restrictions in South Africa), assimilation (the suburbanization of Chinese across the Americas) and gentrification (struggles facing many North American Chinatowns). Recognizing the forces that work against Chinatowns also provides an important Chinese twist to understanding wider processes of making and remaking cities worldwide. Drawing on ethnographic and archival materials from the Americas, in dialogue with Europe, Africa and Asia/Oceania, this paper thus questions the global nature of urban temporal structures that speak not only to Chinese diaspora but also to the changing natures of modern cities. .