How Second-Generation Young Professionals in Silicon Valley Negotiate the Changing Cultural-Commercial Landscape of San Francisco’S Chinatown

Identity Formation Through Cultural Consumption: How second-generation young professionals in Silicon Valley negotiate the changing cultural-commercial landscape of San Francisco’s Chinatown

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in Sociology under the advisement of Matt Kaliner

May 2020

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To everyone who has ever — in all possible definitions — fed me.

Whenever I think of:

- Gentle follow-up emails - Carbonara and local ciders - Wayfinding signs in a new city - Suave Shampoo - Eerily accurate Youtube recommendations - Outlaw country - Gratuitous misspellings of my first name - Humid and rainy summers - The aesthetic of suburban office parks - Impeccable calligraphy - Notifications timestamped at 3am EST - The scent and sound of swishy eucalyptus - Rick Steves and other travel guidebooks - A cat perched on the windowsill - A cat anywhere - Manual transmission - Insects and plants; familiar but unidentifiable

I remember all of the things. Thank you for feeding me so well and so often. You have my endless gratitude.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

Chapter One: 5 A Brief History of Chinatown

Chapter Two: 9 Literature Review

Chapter Three: Research Design and Methodology 20

Chapter Four: 29 Childhood Communities and the Role of “Asian Suburbs”

Chapter Five: Privilege and Social Capital of Authenticity 38

Chapter Six: Shifts in Perception of Authenticity 45

Chapter Seven: Awareness and Actions 48

Chapter Eight: The Future Role of Chinatown 52

Chapter Nine: Reflexivity and Limitations 57

Chapter Ten: Discussion and Conclusion 61

INTRODUCTION

As of the time of writing, the term “diaspora” has become loaded with various associations anywhere from spoken word poetry, to internet memes, to receiving surgical masks in the mail from a faraway family member. As a diasporic person, I grew interested in San

Francisco Chinatown as a potential space for myself, a second-generation Chinese American to feel a greater spatial physical to the area in which I was born and raised. Through my search to establish a sense of belonging to the San Francisco Bay Area’s history, I grew curious as to whether other second-generation Asian Americans who possess cultural connections to San

Francisco Chinatown chose to use this community as a way to further understand their identities.

Firstly, it is necessary to define what second-generation means in the case of this study. While the field of sociology defines second-generation as the generation of children born in a country to their first-generation immigrant parents, this thesis also includes children in the “1.25 generation category”, where two participants who immigrated at a young age to the United States identified as relating more to their second-generation peers.

A few years ago, I had volunteered at the Chinese Historical Society of America and observed the changing cultural and commercial landscape of the space. As a community created with resources to meet the shifting needs of its ever-in-flux residents, it came as no surprise to me that the evolving retail and culinary ecology was making room for upscale establishments, given the young upwardly mobile population of Asian Americans in San Francisco. The changing setting of Chinatown 2019 is studded with new establishments and can be viewed as a sounding board to understand how this young and upwardly mobile demographic of Bay Area residents who work in or adjacent to the tech industry understand the complex tensions between

identity and consumption power, and whether cultural connections can play a role in connecting the two.

While it may be tempting to oversimplify this connection, hypothesizing that this upwardly second-generation demographic can discover a sense of belonging or cultural connection through the newly-upscale landscape of Chinatown, there are many other factors besides social values or consumer ideologies that paint a more complex picture of the unique situation that this demographic faces. For starters, it’s equally probable that this group will have no interest in Chinatown and it’s cultural attractions, given their long hours at work in tech.

The first chapter provides a brief overview of Chinatown’s history as a background so that readers are able to sufficiently understand the historical context and cultural landscape this thesis depicts. The following chapters discuss the role of Asian suburbs in the socialization of participants, the perception of authenticity through privilege, and the role of reflexivity.

Additionally, during certain sections of the thesis, I will switch to a first-person narration style in order to most effectively convey my thoughts on the relationship between myself and my topic of choice.

CHAPTER ONE A Brief History of Chinatown

Introduction:

In order to understand the contemporary existence of San Francisco Chinatown, a brief history of the community will be outlined below. Around the early to mid-1800s, California experienced a Gold Rush that brought migrants from all around the world, including a number of mostly single men from China’s Pearl River Delta (Community Organizing Amidst Change in

San Francisco’s Chinatown 2015, 1). Chinese immigrants were also required to segregate from white communities and were forced to congregate together in homogenous neighborhoods that are now known as Chinatown. Although these communities included self-sufficient institutions consisting of banks, retail institutions, and food services, they could not prevent high rates of poverty and unemployment. From 1882-1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred the high volume of migration from China, so the relative size of Chinatown remained relatively constant with the structures created by the earliest groups of laborers who migrated during the Gold Rush era.

Post-Earthquake of 1906:

In 1906, a massive earthquake and fire in San Francisco caused immense damage to the city of San Francisco, and Chinatown was especially in a state of disrepair. Mayor Eugene

Schmitz proposed that instead of repairing the damage in Chinatown, the community should be moved and rebuilt at Hunter’s Point, a location that was difficult to access. However, many

Chinatown residents strongly opposed this suggested displacement, and community leaders such as Look Tin Eli instead suggested rebuilding Chinatown in a new way. In a letter published in

The Chinese Digest, an English-language newspaper that for many years published articles related to Chinatown affairs by Chinatown residents — Look and his fellow Chinatown

community leaders proposed reimagining Chinatown as an exotic fairy palace and “New Oriental

City”. Chinatown today, with its orientalized architecture and decorations was constructed through a compromise with the commercial interests of both the local community and political leaders as a way to preserve the Chinese community by exoticizing their streetscape.

The exotification of Chinatown was born out of a need in order to ensure its future survival as a neighborhood for its residents to both live and work. In 1930, renowned actor

Chingwah Lee among many other esteemed Chinatown residents wrote hoped to convey the idea that Chinatown ought to distance itself from other ethnic “slums” by turning it into a tourist destination and captured this idea in his “Seven Steps to Fame” guide (1935, 56). The work by these community leaders is significant because it marks the beginning of a tourist-friendly

Chinatown that included annual parades, Chinese architectural features such as pagodas and lanterns, as well as the catering of services and commodities to non-Chinese visitors. This change was not solely performed out of a desire to connect with the cultural aspects of their

Chinese identities; rather, it was also strategically conducted to ensure the community’s survival

(1901, 90). As stated in a letter from the local Chinatown community, leader Look Tin Eli advised the political leaders of San Francisco, “our cultural life is something to look up to, a heritage not common in America. Let us turn to any other field of endeavor, and see how many of us can find employment outside of Chinatown” (1935, 56). Cultural pride and survival go hand in hand when cultural tourism was essentially seen as a means to escape displacement and poverty. Essentially, Chinatown’s community leaders realize the necessity of preserving heritage through any and all means possible, especially since Chinatown’s residents are simply unemployable outside of Chinatown. Once again, the end goals that Chinatown’s former leaders

kept in mind while pushing for the redesigning of Chinatown into a touristic wonderland were no more than community profit and survival.

Chinatown Today:

The year 1965 began a period of resumption for Chinese immigration due to the overturning of the Chinese Exclusion Act, bringing new Chinese families to San Francisco.

During the decades between 1970 and 1990, the Chinese community continued to spread beyond

Chinatown, and areas such as Chinatown North were established in North Beach, Polk Gulch, and Russian Hill. As the years progressed, expansion continued towards areas farther away from

Chinatown, such as the Sunset District, and even outside the city of San Francisco to suburbs of the Bay Area.

Today, the area known as Old Chinatown contains a residential density of 85,000 people per square mile according to a 2015 study led by UC Berkeley’s Center for Community

Innovation, and the areas surrounding old Chinatown have faced drastic increases in property value. With the rising property values of the areas surrounding Chinatown due to San

Francisco’s overall rising property value coupled by Chinatown’s proximity to the financial district, the question of this ever-changing community once again becomes contested (2015, 2).

The rapidly growing tech industry that attracts high-income young professionals that not only increases the property rent, it also contains the potential to shift the fabric of the commercial landscape in order to cater to a demographic with greater amounts of buying power. From its conception, Chinatown has been seen as a contested and hybrid space birthed from symbols created by residents to denote identity, while also meeting the need to appease tourists and San

Francisco’s elites.

The knowledge of survival contributes greatly to the contemporary knowledge of San

Francisco Chinatown and provides one with the understanding that one’s contemporary belief of authenticity has been historically contested and manufactured over time, providing ample room to analyze how these ideas play out today. Beyond looking at Chinatown as an economic and ethnic enclave, one can also understand how Chinatown is viewed differently by different informants. The group that I am focusing on in particular consists of second-generation Asian

Americans who possess a pre-existing cultural connection to Chinatown. This demographic, to varying degrees, does not view Chinatown as a conveyer of cultural authenticity, despite the fact that it was born out of the community's sheer need to survive. Due to these tensions between the differing interpretations of authenticity, perceptions of Chinatown appear worthy of analysis.

Whatsmore, as San Francisco and other locations in the Bay Area population welcome higher populations of Asian Americans, the importance of Chinatown remains precarious (2015, 7).

CHAPTER 2 Literature Review

Introduction: There is no shortage of literature written about the experience of the identity formation processes of second-generation Americans, and even more recently, second-generation Asian

Americans. However, the unique experiences of second-generation Asian Americans in the tech industry have yet to be explored. In this literature review, I will begin with a discussion of The Three-Generations Hypothesis by Bernard Lazewitz and Louis Rowitz (1964). Here, the authors discuss the experiences of European immigrants and religious heritage during the 1960s. In this scheme, the first generation is responsible for arrival and settlement, the second seeks to assimilate and abandon their faith and cultural heritage, while the third-generation often returns to the first generation’s beliefs and mother tongue.

Sixty years after the publication of The Three-Generations Hypothesis, second-generation Asian Americans now make up a significant portion of the immigrant population in the United

States and the body of work reflects this shifting demographic as well. The Changing Face of Home by Mary Waters and Peggy Levitt extend upon the work of Lazewitz and Rowitz to examine the identity formation experiences of the Asian diaspora. Meanwhile, in Curry as Code: Food, Race, and Technology by Madhavi Mallapragada, the author focuses on the specific ways that Asian migrants on the H1-B visa, specifically Indian, workers in the tech industry are racialized through the food they choose to consume in the workplace. The relationship between how the choices in consumption for H1-B visa holders remain relevant in comparison to how the choices in consumption for the second-generation population.

While these three works reflect the progressing discussion on diasporic experiences in the

United States, placing the perspective of micro-sociologist Erving Goffman into the discussion with the latter three pieces of writing sheds light on how the performance of one’s own culture can be seen as a strategic tool for upward mobility. These signifiers of upward mobility can be understood in the context of neighborhoods such as Chinatown or other Asian dominated spaces through the lens of social capital.

I. Reconsidering the Definition of the Diaspora

In The Changing Face of Home by Mary Waters and Peggy Levitt, the authors address whether this “global diasporic consciousness” of second-generation Americans would allow for selective acculturation or neglect for the diasporic American’s ancestral home” (18). Among those whom the authors classified as Chinese, 63 percent had visited China, Taiwan, and Hong

Kong - a surprisingly high number given the distance and difficulty of travel. However, few had visited more than three times (106). The authors also cite “low levels of transnationalism among

New York’s Chinese young people”. Furthermore, for second-generation Americans, both assimilation and connection to their diasporic identities stem from an increased identification of the collective identity of being Asian Americans.

II. Diaspora and the Tech Industry

Understanding the history of racializing non-white bodies in the context of the tech industry can provide context on the experiences of second-generation American demographic — a group whose identity formation and negotiation processes have overall resulted in the establishment of consumption and behavior patterns that create an upwardly mobile sense of self.

Although the topic of the Asian diaspora and the tech and tech-adjacent industry has been

explored due to a significant amount of immigrants workers in these industries, less information is available regarding the experiences of young second-generation Asian Americans working in high tech. Curry as Code can be read in order to understand how although H1-B visa holders, whom by definition, are not yet American citizens, let alone second generation, traditionally signifies a high-earning demographic, their financial status may not translate over into high social status since certain habits and practices of these workers may be seen as deviant or unhygienic from mainstream Americans.

In the article Curry as Code: Food, Race, and Technology, Madhavi Mallapragada provides a brief history of the H1-B visa, which allows US employers to hire foreign nationals to work in the country. In accordance with the Department of Labor, when a qualified American cannot be found, a company has the ability to hire and sponsor a foreign worker (Mallapragada

267). These foreign workers are required to possess at least a Bachelor's degree in a

“specialized” occupation, mainly consisting of the sciences, such as healthcare and engineering, although a few other occupations are occasionally included under special circumstances. Since these “specialty occupations'' tend to fall under a traditionally higher-earning class bracket, the

H1-B visa targets immigrants who already possess a high education level at the time of migration as well as the potential to enter the upper and upper-middle echelons of American society once the migration has complete. By winnowing in the groups of immigrants who are seen as desirable, these employment-based preferences are also classifying certain types of immigrants as desirable since they can provide unique services to the US.

The author then emphasizes how despite the high education level and relatively high income that the H1-B visa holders possess in comparison to the average American, certain

aspects of their identity that relate to food are being racialized and scrutinized. Mallapragada concludes that “while immigrant labor can be represented invisible in popular accounts of the information technology industry, their food is what seems to make them suddenly “real” and visible” (2016, 273). Through food that is consistently racialized through comments regarding the foreignness of the odors by their white coworkers (the majoritarian population), the consumption habits of these H1-B visa workers lower their social cache in the eyes of their peers. Again, although the stories of H1-B visa immigrants are empirically separate from the story of these second-generation participants, one can see how H1-B visa holders are unable to transfer their financial capital into social capital due to certain behavioral practices carried over from the homeland that are considered deviant in the United States.

This narrative is distinct, yet not unrelated to the stories of the second-generation demographic who, having been socialized in the United States, possess the ability to selectively uplift certain aspects of their cultural identity that H1-B visa holders cannot. This ability for the second generation demographic to highlight chosen elements of their identity essentially allows them a greater amount of agency to negotiate the elements of their identity they would like to present. To better understand this process, Goffman’s work on identity construction also ought to be considered.

III. Identity Construction Through Self Presentation

Erving Goffman’s ideas regarding self-presentation reveal how all social actors are performers, adapting and adjusting their presentation of self in order to avoid embarrassment, which in this case, is similar to a social “faux-pas”. To do so, the performer will conceal their true wants and remain silent on matters less important to themselves and there exists a dynamic dialogue between participants, as the performer relies on stimuli - manners and functions - to warn themselves of the interaction that is expected of the performer. According to Goffman, this process is so deeply embedded and baked into ourselves, that individuals sincerely believe in their performances.

In his book “On Face Work”, Goffman defines the term as the act of maintaining face, another method for performers to avoid embarrassment. The performer is able to maintain face by maintaining four strategies of avoidance: defensiveness, politeness, prevention, and ignorance. In order for these strategies to work, the audience is required to participate, another example of the symbiotic roles the performer and audience play while in dialogue with each other. However, all these norms and rules of interaction can only be utilized by those who have access to them, which can be seen as a form of social control. Those who do not have access to these norms, or those who are from backgrounds with diverging norms will be seen as deviant.

Putting Goffman in dialogue with the target demographic, one begins to understand how the need for adapting one’s lifestyle habits and interests is crucial to surviving in a highly-competitive industry that relies on remaining socially relevant. To extend his argument, performance can be seen not only as a way to negotiate the perception of self for others’ but also for oneself as a means of identity construction. This understanding will be further empirically

developed in the chapters that follow through examples regarding the selective consumption of

Chinatown by participants.

IV. Authenticity and the Asian Suburb

In Trespassers: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia, Willow Lung-Aman describes the Bay Area’s self-functioning Asian malls to serve as the main gathering point for members of the upper-class second-generation Asian American community. Interestingly, as I will show in the chapters that come, every interviewee who was born and raised in the Bay Area raises points that echo Lung Aman’s thesis. Specifically, the fact that Chinatown is not central to their lives, and these suburb-dwellers perceive it with some distance and uneasiness. Instead, there are other suburban outlets serving the Asian community that the suburb’s residents are comfortable and familiar with. The Bay Area is home to a highly-educated Asian American population and the children of these immigrants have learned other ways to access their culture, often in a manner that better matches their socioeconomic status. This dissemination of

Asian-ness in the Bay Area allows for aspects of the interviewee’s heritage to be found within the community itself, rather than relegated to a confined physical space such as Chinatown.

V. Perceptions of Authenticity

To understand the changing commercial landscape of Chinatown, one can turn to the blues music scene in Chicago to understand the flexible nature of authenticity. As a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago, David Grazian began to frequent blues clubs in order to escape from the academic vacuum of his campus. These weekend outings eventually compelled Grazian to formulate a series of observations about how his own craving for an authentic experience could be understood. He noticed how there existed a divide between blues

clubs that operate in upscale areas near downtown Chicago and “These bars compete with a variety of blues-oriented entertainment franchises located in the downtown area, where painstaking attempts are made to blur the boundary between high-society consumption and the countrified mystique of the old South” (2005). To draw distinctions over what qualifies as

“high-society” and the “countrified” old South, Grazian describes the types of food these establishments serve. Examples of “gentrified” versions of Southern cuisine are often found on the menus of many establishments, both upscale and modest, in downtown Chicago.

In Blue Chicago: The Search For Authenticity Through Urban Blues Clubs (2005), David Grazian takes a nuanced approach to the social construction of authenticity and its eventual commodification through capital. The author describes how both tourists and Chicago-residents have developed a fabricated notion of what authenticity must look like. For many Americans, the blues represent an authentic form of musical expression that runs counter to mainstream pop culture. However, Grazian argues that the rising popularity of the blues has led consumers of blues music to search for true authenticity even within Chicago’s blue’s scene. One way that

Grazian defines authenticity is through “the ability of a place or event to conform to an idealized representation of reality: that is, to a set of expectations regarding how such a thing ought to look, sound, and feel” (10). Due to this preconceived notion, visitors often seek out blues clubs located outside of Chicago’s main entertainment district. To visitors, authenticity lies outside of heavily commercialized clubs that tourists frequent; these patrons are now given the option to customize their visits to an urban district whose character they would want to associate themselves with. Each respective urban commercial district is provided with its own ethos and visitors are able to walk in with a set of aesthetic and social expectations that will be satisfied. A

predetermined definition of blues music does not exist and for those involved in the Chicago music industry, the categorization of blues music exists to satisfy the varying expectations of tourists and locals alike.

Grazian cleverly does not define authenticity; rather, he engages with blues artists and aficionados through ethnographic research to understand the reflexive relationship between cultural production and consumption. To him, authenticity is reinforced through cultural production and exists as a shared set of values. “When cultural products valued for their authenticity -- traditional music and art, exotic foods, handmade artifacts -- become transformed into commodities and souvenirs, their consumers often respond by searching even more persistently for the authenticity once symbolized by such objects” (8). The relationship between pursuer of authentic experiences and authentic experiences themselves is ever-changing, being shaped by social perceptions; in other words, authenticity is not inherent, it is socially constructed

Grazian concludes his study by posing a question about the potential of leveraging authenticity for a city’s commercial future as they “blend vestiges of their authentic pasts with images of an imagined future” (231). This question reveals an unexplored future — one can continue ruminating about the true definition of authenticity, but communities are actively changing and putting our contested definitions of authenticity into practice. In the case of

Chinatown, these explorations remain particularly relevant since — as stated earlier in the chapter about Chinatown’s history — the community’s entire streetscape was essentially constructed to reflect a non-resident’s orientalist fantasy following the 1906 earthquake. Today, the elements that are most often associated with authenticity about Chinatown were indeed

fabricated as a way to appeal to San Francisco’s political elite over a century ago. Placing this historical context with the fact that the demographic of tech workers whose interviews will be later discussed were largely unaware or dismissive of this to history makes the discussion regarding authenticity increasingly salient.

VI. Renegotiating Authenticity Through Alternative Forms of Capital

In “The Forms of Capital” (1986), Pierre Bourdieu expands upon Karl Marx’s definition of capital, stating that capital can take multiple forms, not purely economic. To Bourdieu, social and cultural capital are considered to be just as influential as economic capital, and it is through the distribution of capital that the structure of the social world is represented. Cultural capital is defined as an inherently privileged notion, since wealthy children are socialized into their proper form of cultural capital from the very beginning, and those born with less cultural capital must seek other ways to attain it. There are both objectified and institutionalized forms of cultural capital - the objectified forms are harder to attain - since they are a result of a lifetime’s accumulation of exposure to cultural institutions such as international travel and social awareness.

Social capital, according to Bourdieu “is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network” (450). This type of capital can take the shape of family connections, group memberships, and alumni organizations that allow access to elite social networks. Here, we can see how although cultural and social capital are distinct from economic capital and financial wealth, those with bountiful cultural and social capital can maneuver them in order to convert their social capital into economic capital by making proper use of their social connections. Bourdieu claims that economic capital is still the underlying root

of all forms of capital, and it is through the transformation that social and cultural capital can be turned into economic capital. However, since Bourdieu’s cultural capital framework was not created for this demographic in mind, it may be difficult to translate how cultural, social, and financial capital apply directly to the interviewees who hold vastly different cultural backgrounds. Whatsmore, while Bourdieu was much less of a historical-materialist than Marx,

Bourdieu still upheld the idea that social capital and cultural capital, although important, ultimately were to be exchanged for financial capital.

Since these tech workers are currently in no shortage of financial capital Prudence L.

Carter’s theories on non-dominant capital, a form of capital contrary to Bourdieu’s dominant cultural capital could be applied. In a Bourdieuian sense, social capital is inherently derived from and can always be traced back to financial capital, a theory that anchors Prudence Carter’s discussion on alternative forms of social capital — alternative forms of capital can be established and cemented within a community. Non-dominant capital asserts that for the Black community, certain resources may be considered of higher capital if they emphasize the ideas of authenticity that the community has agreed on (138). Authenticity, as described by Carter, can also be determined within specific communities that have established their own sets of norms and values. Carter’s definition of authenticity can be applied to Chinatown through the lens that what is well regarded within Chinatown might not convey the same benefits among elites outside.

Though at first this eclectic array of classical sociological theorists, urbanists, and Asian

Americanists may seem rather disjointed, it also offers a clearer picture of how the concepts of identity, authenticity, and performance are intertwined with the local community and the broader world. The identity formation experiences of this demographic while remaining unique, are

inseparable from the structural history of US migration. It is only through this hybridized series of negotiations — acknowledging one’s diasporic identity while also seeking to acquire their financial privilege — that one can attempt to fully capture the ever-evolving experiences of this second generation demographic.

CHAPTER 3 Research Design and Methodology

Introduction

To understand perceptions of authenticity and performance among second-generation

Asian Americans with cultural connections to Chinatown, I sought to conduct in-person interviews and ethnographic research. Since the primary goal of this research required an in-depth understanding of an individual’s experience, I selected the semi-structured in-depth interview as the primary method of data collection for this thesis. Before determining where I would seek out participants, I first had to define the characteristics of the demographic. In order to qualify as a second-generation American, I initially required each participant to have been born and raised in the United States. However, upon communicating with interested participants who were born in another country but immigrated at a young age and therefore chose to self-identify as “second-generation”, I decided to widen the threshold to all those who immigrated before the age of eight.

In regards to the ethnicity component of the demographic, I had initially hoped to recruit

Chinese and Taiwanese American, since the Chinatowns that I had experienced in San Francisco and Boston catered most heavily to these two ethnicities. After a few brief conversations with interviewees over email, I realized that many individuals interested in being interviewed identified with Chinatown in a more nuanced manner that could not directly be connected to ethnicity alone. One interviewee preferred to identify as Cantonese, which one parent from Hong

Kong and one from China. Others identified as Malaysian, Burmese, but still felt a cultural tie to

Chinatown without wanting to classify themselves as belonging to either ethnicity. Rather than choosing to close off the interviews with those who do not fit within the two preconceived ethnic groups, I decided to expand my previous “ethnicity” demographic to any Asian American identifying individual who felt a cultural connection to Chinatown. Hence, I will be calling my sample the “target demographic” rather than the simply Chinese American or Taiwanese

American.

The majority of data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Between

June and August of 2018, I conducted thirty-two in-person interviews in various Bay Area locations. From the beginning, I wanted to collect qualitative data to achieve a richer understanding of each participant’s individual experience. I then decided to conduct in-depth interviews because I was and remain intrigued by how these participants' thought processes unfolded and even slightly shifted throughout the duration of their interviews. Since the interview’s themes are inseparable from the participants' own identity formation processes, their reflections would often draw out sensitive themes that I could further probe and prompt, leading to the construction of richer narratives regarding their lives.

I recruited my subjects from Facebook groups for Asian Americans in San Francisco.

The first participant also suggested posting in various Asian American related Facebook groups.

Her main suggestion included Subtle Asian Traits - Bae Area Edition (SADBAE). The SADBAE Facebook group proved instrumental to my methodology, as it allowed me to reach out to a broader Asian American audience than the Wellesley by the Bay and Wellesley Silicon Valley Facebook groups had. Once the post received approval from the moderators, it received a fair amount of engagement from a diverse group of members. Notably, many of the posts One

particular commenter who did not grow up visiting Chinatowns asked a clarifying question — how did I define the second generation — a question that set off a short debate in the comment section until I interjected with my definition. The interviews with members of SADBAE accounted for the majority of my participants and I would also ask each participant, upon the conclusion of the interview, to refer me to any friends, colleagues, or acquaintances that would fit the demographic requirements. In turn, my posting was forwarded to the Slack channels of various companies, distributed in chain emails to Bay Area networking groups, as well as forwarded to individual friends, colleagues, and even neighbors.

Below is the post I made on the SADBAE Facebook group:

Hi everyone - I’m a student researching cultural consumption and Chinatown experiences among second-generation Chinese and Taiwanese American tech workers in Silicon Valley ages 22-39. Those who identify as such, would you be willing to be briefly interviewed? This interview will be conducted in August at a location of your choice and all participants will receive a $5 coffee shop gift card. If you’re interested (or have friends who may be), please email for more information. Thank you! (This post was approved by [admin name]).

Before providing a potential participant with the materials necessary for a full-length interview, I informed each person that their interview could last anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours, depending on how long they were comfortable and interested in speaking. However, I also suggested blocking out at least ninety minutes for the interview from start-to-finish. The rather lengthy duration of the interview proved to be less of a concern for recruiting the participants that I had previously anticipated, a result that I attributed to the fact that this would be my second time reaching out to the participants. Initial contact consisted of a brief email asking if they would be interested in a brief interview. In regards to the interview location, I

offered to meet the participant at a location most convenient for them, so long as it was relatively private and quiet.

After a participant expressed their initial interest in an interview, I would send out an introductory email consisting of a waiver of documentation, which also served as a brief introductory guide to their role in my research. I also attached an interview guide that included a brief synopsis of the overall purpose of my research as well as a list of guiding questions.

Below is a copy of the waiver of the documentation and interview guide presented to each participant. All participants were assured that their personally identifiable information (name, age, hometown, and occupation) would remain confidential.

Dear [Participant Name],

Thank you for taking the time for the interview! Our discussion will help greatly contribute to the research process while hopefully providing an interesting experience for you as well. This thesis aims to understand a demographic of Bay Area residents that consists of second-generation Chinese or Taiwanese Americans who are now employed as young professionals in or adjacent to the tech industry in Silicon Valley.

As a participant, you can ensure that your response will be kept completely confidential. Your voice recording will be deleted following transcription and all personally identifiable information will be replaced with ID codes while your interview is being transcribed and analyzed. Additionally, please feel free to let the interviewer (myself) know if there are responses you would prefer to remain unrecorded, and I will simply pause the recording device. You are also under no obligation to answer every question.

If you have any questions/comments/concerns any time after the interview, or, if you would like to receive a copy of the research conclusion, please reach out to me. If you have any further research questions, please feel free to contact my advisor as well, Professor Matthew Kaliner: [email protected].

Sincerely, Christie Li

Interview Questions: (This is a very preliminary guide for the general direction of the interview and not at all meant to be comprehensive or restrictive.)

Family Background: ● Who in your family were the original immigrants? ● Where would your family go to celebrate? ● Tell me about the family friends you celebrated with? ● Describe the type of shops or restaurants your family would frequent growing up Chinatown Today: ● If you could create any space here in Chinatown that you and your friends would ● like to spend time in, what would it look like? ● Are there any spaces in Chinatown that you think already resemble the space you described above? ● Are there any aspects of Chinatown that you wish you could change? How ● and why? Authenticity: ● What do you consider to be the most “Chinese” part of Chinatown? Why? ● Are you currently aware of any political issues occurring in Chinatowns today? ● How do you see your own identity reflected in parts of Chinatown?

The above questions provided to the participants were written intentionally open-ended to avoid influencing their responses. I chose not to include any of my probing questions in the interview guide in hopes that my participants’ responses would allow me to create personalized follow-up questions during the interview. I was able to rely on my knowledge and previous experience of conducting qualitative research to successfully extract the information from their individual narratives. However, after my first three interviews, I decided that it would be necessary to design a pre-set list of probing questions in order to standardize the coding and analyzing process. To streamline these interviews, I wrote a comprehensive list of questions

(shown below) to serve as a guide for myself during the interview process.

Extended Interview Schedule:

Background: ● Who in your family were the original immigrants? ● Occupation, education of family? ● Where did they come from? ● Do you know why they left? ● Tell me about why they chose [insert name of community]? ● How did you learn about this family history? ● What was the most common ethnicity where you grew up? ● Did you speak a language other than English at home growing up? ● Tell me about the food you ate growing up ● Where would your family shop for groceries? ● What about on special occasions? Where would your family go to celebrate? ● Tell me about the family friends you celebrated with? ● Describe the type of shops or restaurants your family would frequent growing up? ● Follow-up: How often do you and your family frequent these businesses today? Chinatown Today: ● If you could create any space here in Chinatown that you and your friends would like to spend time in, what would it look like? ● Are there any spaces in Chinatown that you think already resemble the space you described above? ● Are there any aspects of Chinatown that you wish would change? How and why?

Authenticity: ● What do you consider to be the most Chinese part of Chinatown? Why? ● Are there any parts of Chinatown you would consider to be less Chinese? Why? ● How do you define what your ethnicity means to you? ● How do you define the Chinese-ness you see in Chinatown? ● Compare and contrast the role of Chinatown today to the role of Chinatown while you were growing up? ● Tell me about some of the political situations occurring in Chinatown today? ● How do you see your own identity, if at all, reflected in parts of Chinatown? ● What could we do to make Chinatown more representative of your experience? ● Describe the story that you think Chinatown, as of right now, is telling: ● And what about in the future. What do you think Chinatown should represent for future generations? ○ How should this story be told? ● Who has the right to call themselves a member of the Chinatown community?

I soon noticed that a pattern was emerging in the participants’ responses regarding how the Section III of the interview (authenticity) intersected with the perceptions of their own identity. As the summer progressed and I completed more interviews, I was able to identify five

“deeper level” themes that anchored the responses of each interviewee. These themes, as will be discussed in following chapters, are structured around the ideas of the authenticity versus accessibility of a community, leveraging whiteness for social and cultural capital, palletizing and westernizing food, culture as an ever-evolving concept, and who gets to determine the definition of “authentic”. While the responses of certain participants were able to touch upon the five themes during Section II of the interview (Chinatown), the majority began to address the themes when directly prompted with language regarding authenticity and cultural preservation. During the interview, which mostly lasted over one-hour, the participant would often ask to “alter” their previous responses by adding to their earlier claims or even justifying previous thoughts with new opinions that emerged throughout the course of our conversation.

Ethnography

To supplement my in-depth interviews which were often conducted in the participant’s home, a suburban coffee shop, or the workspace of the participant, I also chose to conduct ethnography of Chinatown itself in hopes of gaining a clearer understanding of the types of people that used the space.

I selected five different establishments to frequent over the course of the summer. I attempted to do this in various spaces in SF Chinatown this summer. And it worked to some degree. I frequented two upscale and well-acclaimed restaurants, Mr. Jiu’s and China Live; one upscale milk tea shop called “Steap Tea Bar”, and one called Moongate Lounge, an addendum to

Mr. Jiu’s, and one upscale clothing boutique. To find out what constituted as an “upscale establishment” like the ones I just described, I spoke with local characters who I’ve labeled

“Aunties and Uncles” since they tend to fall in the older demographic as opposed to the younger restaurateurs, and therefore are long-timers in the community who have built many relationships to other business owners. These various shop owners of what we would consider “non-upscale establishments”. Generally, these stores sold food or souvenirs at a much lower price point and the shop owners or managers, by virtue of being involved in the community and taking part in the local gossip circles could identify the relative location, the storefront design, or the owners of the store.

To provide a brief description of these upscale establishments - they took shape in the form of elevated restaurants with higher price points attracted young customers that would arrive on foot or in rideshares, while the boba shop was filled with both local customers passing by or those from other parts of the Bay who sought it out on Yelp due to its modern and sleek design, according to my short and informal conversations. (I could not tell you about the demographic that patronized the clothing boutique because I very seldom saw anyone in there.)

Limitations of Research

One limitation of my research involved my sampling methodology. Since I first posted my message in Facebook groups, the self-selecting individuals who chose to respond to my post were far from a random sample and likely had a pre-existing interest in the topic. Furthermore, by utilizing snowball sampling, the participants that were referred to me from earlier participants often worked at the same company, attended the same university, and could possess other similarities that may have accounted for the overlapping sentiments echoed in their responses.

However, due to the fact that the nature of my topic called for a rich narrative of the participant’s thoughts and experiences and the types of detailed, even personal topics of conversation that emerged throughout the interview, all participants revealed richly-developed perspectives that evolved during our conversation.

CHAPTER 4 Childhood Communities and the Role of “Asian Suburbs”

Introduction

Although the focus of this study is on the participants’ experience with consuming

Chinatown as a young professional, it is first necessary to understand their experiences growing up in suburban environments and how their transition to adulthood may be connected. To begin, it must be acknowledged that all participants grew up in relatively financially privileged environments and were all, at some point in their childhood, middle class, or above. These rather rarefied dimensions where participants were protected from financial fear during their formative years allows for the exploration of how suburban identity and assimilation and consumption play. What is first apparent from my sample is that none of the informants I recruited grew up in Chinatown itself, San Francisco's or otherwise. Though the hometowns of interviewees ranged from various locations all across the US, there appears to be a distinction between those who raised in suburban communities with high East and Southeast Asian populations and those raised in suburban communities without. This portion will focus on the experiences of participants who call Asian dominated suburbs their childhood home.

Socialization in the Suburb

As the informants describe, those who grew up in Asian-dominated suburbs often had access to Asian grocery stores and did not have to make the trek out to a Chinatown to access foods reminiscent of their cultures. Below is a reflection from Torie, an informant from

Cupertino, California. A Bay Area suburb populated by East and South Asians working in

Silicon Valley, Cupertino has become the epitome of a wealthy Bay Area ethnoburb.

“Yeah, because I think like Cupertino on average mostly felt like — you know, how there are white suburbs? Cupertino felt like an Asian suburb. And it's literally a suburb built around the community. And the community was Asian, so there are a lot of Asian supermarkets there too.” ( Torie)

The role of the Asian American suburb is key to understanding why Chinatown did not play as relevant of a role in the everyday consumption patterns for informants who grew up in upper-middle-class Asian-dominated communities. Within these neighborhoods, diasporic families could conveniently congregate in predesignated cultural spaces to experience familiar faces, languages, and foods. Within these suburbs, the participants and the families were able to and access their culture having to leave the perceived security of their own suburban homes.

For participants who grew up in communities where Asian Americans made up the majority of the residential population, socialization with other members of their same racial backgrounds occurred naturally through the pre-formed social groups that their parents formed.

One participant, Ruth, recalled that she participated in “piano parties”, events that she described as gatherings of children formed by the pre-existing social groups of parents who shared similar cultural backgrounds.

We did this really weird thing called piano parties. Oh my god, I can't believe they happened. At the time they seemed so fun and so normal, but it was just like monthly gatherings of people around my age, whether or not I knew them. Sometimes the parents just knew each other for whatever reason and would, month by month, take turns hosting a piano party, where they invite the kids and the parents. Then we would do a mini-recital where every kid would play a small set of pieces, and everyone would politely applaud. Then the kids and the parents were dispersed to do whatever they wanted. So usually what it was also a potluck situation, and the kids would always be off playing video games together.

Ruth, who grew up in Fremont, California, a wealthy Bay Area suburb with a majority of its residents identifying as Asian. Due to the high concentration of East Asians in her community, she grew up surrounded by families who shared a similar heritage and

second-generation background. These Asian-dominated suburbs are essentially producing social circles composed of children and parents that share a great cultural affinity. These gatherings were often outlined by the country or geographic region that their family originated from.

Geoff, a Taiwanese American participant from Saratoga, another upper-middle-class Bay

Area suburb recounts a childhood spent with other close-knit families that also originated from

Taiwan. “We would go on vacations together. Most commonly road trips, camping, and skiing.

We somehow went a couple of times overseas. Most of the family friends we had were

Taiwanese, so we'd meet up in Taiwan as well.” Geoff’s family and friend gatherings also consisted of other Taiwanese families whose gatherings exceeded beyond the home sphere, even traveling with one another. Most interestingly, Geoff and his family friends would “meet up in

Taiwan”, taking a tour of the ancestral homeland. In Geoff’s scenario, the sense of cultural connection to his heritage arose not from experiencing Chinatown, but by visiting Taiwan, the home country of his parents. What makes his situation even more unique is that he would also

“meet up” with his fellow second-generation Taiwanese American friends from his hometown.

Torie, yet another informant from the Bay Area grew up in Cupertino and has vivid memories of gathering together with fellow Cantonese speakers at Cantonese restaurants in the

Bay Area. Her family would seldom make the trip up to the Cantonese restaurants in San

Francisco because of the strong Cantonese community that her parents had established in

Cupertino.

My family friends are all Cantonese. Essentially all of them were either one of two categories; either they were longtime friends of my parents that moved from San Francisco down to the South Bay or my dad's badminton friends. He's been playing for as long as I can remember, so he has a group of friends and they also all speak Cantonese, so it's just basically two different groups of Cantonese people. It was always dim sum or the nighttime version at the same restaurant.

Torie’s recollections reflect the migration of Cantonese speakers from urban regions such as San Francisco to the South Bay suburbs. Once these Cantonese speakers started families, they simultaneously established another form of community through family activities that were centered among their personal hobbies, children, and common language. They found ways to access their shared culture without having to enter Chinatown. The Asian suburb essentially serves the same function; it is a space for people of a certain demographic to live and carry out their daily affairs with other people who more or less have a cultural affinity with one another.

Leah, yet another participant who was raised in a Bay Area suburb recalls her

Shanghainese-speaking parents celebrating holidays by hosting gatherings with other

Shanghainese speakers. In a region with such a diverse portfolio of diasporic Asians, Leah’s family was able to seek out other local families who shared the same hometown in China as her own. This choice was made possible from the high density of immigrants located in the Bay

Area that makes it possible to access not simply other Chinese families, but Shanghainese families in particular.

“These were Shanghainese family friends. I think it alternated between people's houses and restaurants, but to me, it's a very classic Asian experience in that, there is the adults’ table, there is a little kids table. And it always seemed like the adults had a great time; we would be there for hours and the whole conversation was always in Shanghainese. Shanghainese people, I think, are also known for speaking in a very boisterous way. And so as always a loud conversation, sometimes argument, but it wasn't like a hostile argument. It was just the style of conversation.”

When prompted about the family-friend gatherings that her families would attend, Leah specifically alludes to how Shanghainese colored her experience at these events. The

Shanghainese language takes on an identity of its own in Leah’s recollections and shapes her childhood memories as a “boisterous” sound. Interestingly, despite specifying Shanghainese as

the main language at these events, Leah also considers this memory of hers to be a “classic

Asian” experience, one that could be shared among many other Asian Americans. Growing up in an area with a significant Asian population and now living in San Francisco, Leah is able to generalize this childhood memory as routine and commonplace for herself and her peers.

Whether this “classic” experience really rings true or not for other participants will be further discussed, but Leah’s comment speaks to the secure sense of self that participants who grew up in Asian suburbs possess.

Conversely, participants who lived in areas with lower Asian populations often lacked the sprawling social circles that informants such as Ruth, Torie, Geoff, and Leah experienced while growing up. Maggie, a participant who grew up in a majority-white suburb of Boston recounted that for most of her childhood, holidays, birthdays, and other milestones were marked by gatherings in the individual family unit.

I don’t have a huge family at least in Massachusetts. So not a whole lot of huge get-togethers or anything like that. It'd be different if we went back to Hong Kong when my grandma was still around, like everyone in the entire extended family would get together. It’d be like a huge family banquet. But here it was different because the family was far away.

Maggie’s justification for her absence of large cultural gatherings during her childhood rests on the fact that her extended family lives in Hong Kong. On the other hand, Ruth, Geoff,

Torie, and Leah did not grow up with extended family nearby yet still partook in cultural gatherings with family friends that lived in the same Asian dominated suburb. The absence of a tight-knit Asian community in Maggie’s scenario reveals the importance of residing in a locality with a high population of people from a similar culture during childhood.

Comparing Maggie’s childhood with the experiences of Ruth, Geoff, Torie, and Leah, the

Asian dominated suburb plays a key role in the community-forming process for these second-generation families. The formation of these suburban communities by members that share cultural ties allows families to establish social and professional relationships with each other, relationships often inherited, and continued by their second-generation children.

Consumption in the Suburb: Asian Grocery Stores

As earlier stated by one participant, another key aspect of the Asian Suburb includes

Asian grocery stores, the easy availability of foods from the participants’ cultures. Being located near grocery stores that stocked traditionally Asian products often dictated where a family needed to travel. Ruth recalls that while growing up in Fremont, the Chinese supermarkets located near her neighborhood fulfilled her family’s grocery needs without having to venture out of her neighborhood.

Anything that we couldn't get at Costco we would go to the Chinese supermarkets, which at first was Lion Supermarket. But as more Chinese supermarkets sprung up in our area, we now frequent 99 Ranch and Marina. My personal favorite right now that I shop for myself is Marina.

Here, the participant documents the convenient role that these local Asian suburban supermarkets fulfilled during her childhood and also how that has carried on to her adulthood. At least in regards to grocery shopping, suburban supermarkets were able to fulfill the role of

Chinatown. Another Chinese American informant named Allan grew up in an area colloquially as the “626” — a suburb of Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley known for its sprawling

Asian American community — grew up with food not from Asian grocery stores, but from specialized Asian vendors.

If you ever go to the 626, there are a lot of seafood markets dotted along Rosemead and Rowland Heights. My mom somehow has a working knowledge of the prices of any

given seafood at any moment, so she would go to all these places across the 626. She has a favorite butcher shop where she gets fresh chicken and a variety of places like that, not 99 Ranch Market.

Rather than shopping at 99 Ranch Market, a staple Taiwanese American grocery store popular among Asian communities, Allan’s family took advantage of the 626’s thriving East

Asian culinary scene to cultivate relationships with the individual vendors. He mentions how “a lot of this food just like magically appeared in the fridge or on the table”. Instead of making special trips to Chinatown or even the local Asian supermarket, Allan’s experience with the

Chinese food of his childhood is seen as routine and commonplace. In a suburban community such as the 626 where the dominant cultural narrative of recent centers around the Asian

American experience, the cuisine that others may have traditionally associated with Chinatowns or other ethnic enclaves becomes a part of one’s everyday life.

Consumption in the Suburb: Non-Asian Grocery Stores

While all participants had varied ways of accessing Asian foods during their childhood, two participants also shared anecdotes about Whole Foods, a high-end grocery store that does not specialize in Asian products. One participant recalled that shopping at high-end grocery chains such as Whole Foods became a common practice among her family as she entered high school. Torie from Cupertino, California recalls a transition from shopping in an Asian supermarket in her Bay Area suburb to shopping almost exclusively at Whole Foods following a family health situation.

“When my dad got cancer in 10th grade [my mom] became like a super health fanatic after that. I remember asking her when my school took a field trip to Whole Foods, ‘why don't we buy organic if it's better for us?’ And my mom's like, ‘we don't want to spend money on that.’ But afterward, in high school, she became really really into it and became a huge health nut. So she buys like

organic food and like the farmers market, and like Whole Foods, and like all of that stuff.”

Facing a chronic health issue, consuming at a Western grocery store appeared as a safe choice. Additionally, the allure of organic food appealed to informants even without health crises and often was seen as a step-up. Maggie, the participant from the majority-white suburb of

Boston even made a bonding exercise out of the high-end grocery store experience, revealing how “my dad and I would just go to Whole Foods and check out the fancy snacks for fun…. I guess it was sort of aspirational” (Maggie). Certain organic stacks had become imbued with significance; consuming Whole Foods snacks meant both access to better health as well as the ability to purchase expensive organic products. Consuming at a store such as Whole Foods provided a space for Maggie and her father to connect over their mutual aspirations of affording such snacks with ease one day.

The presence of Whole Foods in both Maggie and Torie’s experiences serve as a foil for

Asian supermarkets and may be viewed as an establishment where one can begin an aspirational ascent towards health and wealth. However, despite their family’s adherence to or admiration of the organic-grocery-store experience, they take note of the prominent role that Asian food played in their childhoods, a theme that remains consistent in the recollections of all thirty-two informants. What stands out among these informants who grew up in Asian dominated suburbs, however, is the vast availability of cultural foods to the point where establishments specializing in these foods are considered a natural and integral part of their community’s commercial landscape.

Altogether, the Asian-dominated suburban environments that the informants consider their childhood homes serve as stark contrasts to Chinatown. However, they bear resemblance to

all ethnic enclaves in the way that these communities were established to serve as comfortable landing grounds for the target demographic, which in this case take the form of middle and upper-middle-class immigrants and their second-generation children. A microcosm consisting of the establishments — as well as the families themselves who patronized them and hosted community gatherings — enveloped the informants within a comfortable bubble, allowing them to grow up amongst their fellow second-generation peers.

CHAPTER 5 Privilege and Social Capital of Authenticity

The nature of defining authenticity in relation to Chinatown and the forthcoming ability for informants to strategically highlight certain elements of the neighborhood as more or less authentic coincides with how this presentation of authentic identities portrayed the participant as a well-informed and self-aware individual. While all interviews revealed strong opinions on what elements of Chinatown were considered most and least authentic, only a few interviewers also acknowledged that socioeconomic status played a role in influencing authenticity.

One participant named Vienna who describes her California hometown as an upper-middle to the upper-class community of Chinese Americans recounts how her parents held staunchly negative views of Chinatown dwellers. Her parents were aware of the distinct class difference between the working-class Chinese Americans of Chinatown and the wealthy Chinese

Americans that they considered themselves to be a part of.

My experience has been one of a wealthy Chinese American, which is very different than the experience of a poor or less wealthy Chinese American because a lot of the things that people talk about with superstitions, drinking strange concoctions, or having their parents like to set up an altar in their home, burning incense, putting oranges out, I don't really do any of it. And I think a lot of that is... my guess is that there is a higher correlation with wealth and whether or not you've stuck to superstitions like that. My parents were very eager to... they kept a lot of traditions.. but they weren't super anal about them. And I think this has something to do with them wanting to try to be as American as possible, make sure their kids got integrated, make sure they weren't too Chinese. They could separate themselves from the poor Chinese people by being wealthy and by being more American. And I see that divided in Chinatown too because. That's why parents hated Chinatown. They thought this is a poor representation of what their experience of being Chinese was, but also because they wanted a different brand of Chinese. They wanted to be the wealthier, more educated ones.

Vienna’s reflections on her childhood support the claim of the majority of informants who would consider most authentic and indigenous to San Francisco Chinatown to be associated with poverty and grime. However, where most informants were unaware of their negative associations of Chinatown’s authenticity, Vienna is frank and open about her parents’ class prejudices of San Francisco Chinatown. To them, denying and decrying aspects of Chinatown’s culture such as spirituality and traditional medicine would distinguish their upper-class Chinese

American backgrounds from Chinatown residents.

Although not all informants grew up parents who bluntly made their children aware of

Chinatown’s lower-class associations, many participants were still able to deduce that the

Chinatown environment that they occasionally were thrust into looked vastly different from their suburban homes and experienced a sense of discomfort.

“I remember in Chinatown being like, “well, nobody is going to make fun of me here. They might yell at me for other reasons just because it's loud and it's Chinatown, but I will never be singled out because of the people here.” So, I liked that aspect of it and because it was quite close to home but was still kind of like novelty. It was and is still a very different environment. It felt like a little getaway or a little family outing, so that in that sense, it was a fun thing to do. But I also remember being very relieved every time we got home and it'd be quiet again so I could relax.”

The above anecdote was shared by Lauren, the informant from a suburb of Connecticut who reveals that as a child, she possessed a keen understanding of the differences between herself, a second-generation Chinese American, and her majority-white classmates. Chinatown, although vastly different from her quiet neighborhood, in a way presented itself as a shield by granting Lauren the ability to blend in with her surroundings. Despite this clear advantage of spending time in Chinatown, it is evident from her recollection that she was never fully at ease in

Chinatown due to the noise and “different environment. Ultimately, Lauren considered herself

more as a visitor of Chinatown, a place that provided temporary comfort on an outward level but ultimately could not substitute the stability and familiarity of her upper-middle-class suburban hometown.

Karen, an informant and Bay Area native recalls occasionally visiting Chinatown with family as a child. However, as an adult living and working in the Bay Area, she believes that San

Francisco’s Chinatown has remained unchanged, socioeconomically. Despite the opening of upscale establishments such as China Live and Boba Guys, the less desirable aspects of San

Francisco Chinatown still dominate the narrative.

I don't think Chinatown is changing very much. It's always been like that to me and it's still like that like walking around it's still like that like maybe China Live is there like maybe Boba Guys it's like on the edge, but like, those are singular establishments and Chinatown has a lot of its own issues. I don't know, like how much human trafficking is going on there and like, or, it's dirty and it seems like a lot of people there who don't speak English. And that makes me curious, why don't they speak any English. Things like that. The South Bay is a lot more representative of what Chinese communities actually are like today, and it's much more representative of China's development too. And I think Chinatown like those people live in Chinatown. Like I don't think those are new immigrants. I think those are people that came a long time ago to stay there.

According to Karen, the opening of upscale establishments is responsible for the very gradual change of socioeconomic status occurring in San Francisco Chinatown. Karen also disassociates herself and her peers — (who also grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs of the

South Bay Area) — from the working class locals of San Francisco Chinatown. By placing the most authentic elements of San Francisco Chinatown — dirt and non-English speakers — at a contrast with the most authentic elements of the modern-day Chinese community — the South

Bay suburbs — Karen draws a distinction between herself and Chinatown by focusing on the differing socioeconomic status and education level.

Unlike Karen, as the majority of this demographic reached adulthood and converged in the Bay Area, past associations of discomfort and unfamiliarity regarding Chinatown gradually shifted into a prideful, if not cautious embrace of the affiliated culture. A careful presentation of one’s diasporic identity remains imperative if one wanted to strategically utilize Chinatown’s culture for social gain. This sentiment was echoed by other informants who cautioned from bringing friends from outside the community (usually white friends) to various hole-in-the-wall

Chinatown establishments, preferring an upscale and Westernized restaurant as the safer choice.

Amanda describes this avoidance as a way of protection and self-preservation; by safeguarding certain aspects of her identity that may be less palatable for these friends, she is able to curate an image of her Chinese American identity that she wants others to see.

Eating Chinese food, in general, is a huge part of my identity; it’s what I grew up with. And I feel like I always want to bring my white friends like nicer places because I only want to give them a nice perception of Chinese food and culture. And I don't want them to see the not so glamorous parts.

Amanda’s acknowledgment of the way she chooses to present her culture reveals the complicated relationship between acknowledging authenticity in Chinatown while being in a position of privilege. Despite her education level and career, Amanda remains cognizant of the fact that the “less glamorous parts” of her culture that are displayed in Chinatown are considered less socially acceptable for a person of her social status to frequent.

While Amanda discussed the limited influence of Chinatown’s hole-in-the-wall restaurants for accruing social capital, other informants asserted that Silicon Valley’s East

Asian-heavy world of second-generation tech workers, in order to be considered part of the upper-middle-class Asian American in-group, certain norms have been established regarding consumption. Once again, since members of this demographic are young, highly-educated, and

upwardly-mobile tech workers, it is necessary for them to consume mindfully, ensuring that their consumption habits are in line with what millennial culture has deemed to be high in cultural capital. Lauren, the earlier participant who grew up in Connecticut rediscovered her love for boba tea, a concoction invented in Taiwan, and made popular among the Asian American community. In particular, she cites one example involving Boba Guys, the popular gourmet boba chain operated by a group of young Asian American entrepreneurs.

There's a little bit of pride that comes with [Boba Guys] because I know boba’s entering the mainstream and people all know about it. It's not just for my community anymore, it's really popular with everyone. And even if you look at their spaces it's very integrated into the surroundings. It's just something about the branding that just blends in with all the other millennial culture stuff.

Lauren’s perception of Boba Guys can be understood in direct comparison to Amanda’s earlier example of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that targets a working-class demographic.

Establishments like Boba Guys are able to utilize aesthetics and appeal to “millennial culture”, allowing them to “integrate into the surroundings” and therefore appear a natural extension of the mainstream culture imbibed by young urban professionals. Boba’s Guys’s appeal, according to

Lauren, lies in their ability to marry aspects of the participant’s Asian culture along with the upper class aesthetic coveted by the informants.

The multi-faceted perception of utilizing Chinatown’s authenticity to generate social capital is revealed when the majority of participants — who almost all associate authenticity with

Chinatown’s working-class environment — feel proud of their ability to consume at a hole-in-the-wall establishment frequented by Chinatown locals. Mike, a Chinese American participant who on one hand describes himself as the type of person who frequents elevated cuisine, also finds it gratifying to bring non-Asian friends to hole-in-the-wall establishments.

If I'm introducing them to...a working-class place, the fact that I am... that I do what I do and...the usual topics I'm interested in. I think I don't feel a need to express my difference with this restaurant intentionally because I feel like I'm already very different. I know I'm an outsider. But ironically, I want my friends to feel like I'm an insider. Insider, as I have knowledge about this and that and I can go into this thing that's a little more inaccessible to them and bring them something new.

Here, Mike takes pleasure in knowing that he is on the “inside” and has knowledge of the cuisine and culture that his friends do not. He is able to perform as an ambassador or broker of sorts; by introducing outsiders of the second-generation community to cuisine that he considers authentic, Mike is at a position of power with his insider status. That status, however, can only be afforded with privilege, privilege which Mike possesses due to the education that allows him to understand shared “topics” that an ordinary working-class Chinatown resident would not.

However, with their high education and overall high-income levels, there is a freedom to enjoy spaces with a sense of placated sentimentality. The financial privilege affords sentimentality and the ability to proudly consume at local establishments with lower price points intended for the working class. Privilege is acquired in many ways — through confidence speaking the English language with fluency, through a series of intangible experiences during college and young adulthood that money can buy, and even by being born to parents that instilled a sense of cultural understanding from a young age through trips, language lessons, and media exposure.

To know that one’s experience at a “hole-in-the-wall” establishment is just that; an experience, rather than part of one’s everyday routine. The ability to step into experiences characterized as “authentically Chinatown” — though not necessarily as performative as the experiences of tourists who lack cultural connections to the place — could still be characterized

as an indulgently sentimental practice for this demographic that possesses the ability to, at the end of the day, step out. After all, to have a sense of place in the world and put into practice the understanding one’s unique social position is a rare commodity

Overall, the informants consider Chinatown and its residents to occupy a lower socioeconomic status; this understanding that has been reinforced beginning from childhood trips and continued throughout adulthood. While the working class nature of Chinatown’s community may have initially felt like a negative reflection on the informant’s own culture, one may also consider Chinatown as a gateway towards a unique and authentic cultural experience that is otherwise impossible to access within other aspects of the informant’s lives.

CHAPTER 6 Shifts in Perceptions of Authenticity

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of how these informants perceived authenticity in relation to the constantly changing neighborhood of San Francisco Chinatown, the physical and spatial aspects of the neighborhood must be discussed. The vast majority of informants at first deemed the decorative and architectural features of the neighborhood — the

Dragon Gate, oriental style buildings, lanterns hung in shop windows — to be less authentic.

While these physical features serve as key markers of inauthenticity, demographic features of

Chinatown’s residents, in turn, serve as key markers of authenticity. Many informants cited the non-English speaking elderly population as bastions of authenticity living and working in an inauthentically constructed space. One crucial point to consider, however, is the distinction between the informant’s perception of certain elements of Chinatown as authentic, and whether this recognition of authenticity leads to a greater sense of connection to Chinatown. While informants may be quick to label certain aspects of Chinatown as authentic, they do not necessarily feel a sense of closeness to the aforementioned aspects of Chinatown.

It warms my heart to see the grandparents but I don't necessarily connect with it. My grandparents don't live nearby and almost all of them have passed away so it was something that I recognize but it just wasn't as personal to me as seeing families or parents and kids. In Queens there are a lot of parents and kids together and it felt like there were a lot more people going through that same experience as our family. Like maybe you don't live in Chinatown, but you would go in and do your giant grocery load. There are a lot of people doing that huge grocery haul in Queens and I was like, "you're definitely also from out of town and just stocking up like we are.” There was a lot of that shared experience. I didn't see as much of that in San Francisco Chinatown. I didn't get to see any Chinese families roaming the streets and maybe it's just the older demographics, but I didn't really see some of the things that I like cognitively connected to my Chinatown back in the East Coast.

Lauren, the above informant reveals that although she enjoys seeing the elderly population of San Francisco Chinatown and deems them to be authentic to the working-class neighborhood, their presence in Chinatown does not lead to a greater sense of emotional connection with the space. Her vivid childhood memories of making weekly “grocery hauls” to

Chinatown for food, treats, and haircuts with her family have shaped the ways in which she connects with Chinatown today. Again, Lauren demonstrates how the elements that are most authentic and indigenous to the Chinatown community are not necessarily the ones she can see herself reflected in. While informants such as Lauren may possess attachments to certain aspects of Chinatown, many young and well-educated informants who have less distinct memories of childhood visitations. To them, Chinatown not only is irrelevant to their day-to-day lives but also serves as a physical relic of a painful past.

If you want to get authentic food, you don't go to Chinatown because all you get is either Americanized Chinese food or like Hong-Kong-style Western food. And I guess we always saw Chinatown as sort of this caricature that existed as a remnant of the past, to entice or to appease white people. Like people in my circle, we didn't go to Chinatown because Chinatown wasn't real Chinese culture. It was what white people thought China looked like.

Here, Allan’s recollections of Chinatown summarizes how many members of this upwardly mobile demographic do not necessarily see Chinatown as a point of pride or even familiarity. A reminder of the struggles faced by earlier generations of immigrants, Chinatown will always be ladened with the connotations of a neighborhood meant to “entice or appease” the majoritarian population in power, despite its contemporary inhabitants. These sentiments were echoed by another informant who in particular expressed fears over how the majoritarian population would perceive the diasporic Chinese community through Chinatown.

I don't want someone wandering through Chinatown and thinking about the reason how fake this space looks is because we couldn't preserve the authentic cultural heritage that

we brought with us to the States. I'm only second generation and have no direct attachment to Chinatown, but it definitely feels like we all came, if you trace far back enough, from a very similar story of crossing the Pacific Ocean and landing in a space where we're definitely not the standard face or culture. In order to create a space for us, we behaved in a way that was not necessarily deemed acceptable, and this space now ended up not being for us. I don't want that to be read as a failure because it was inevitable in many ways because of history. But it's like it's just all tangled and so nuanced. I don't want visitors to feel that way. But they probably do.

Like Allan, Ruth is a second-generation American and has no distinct connection to the earliest residents of Chinatown. Ruth however possesses a realization of this shared migration identity, which has led her to feel somewhat personally connected to and concerned with

Chinatown's portrayal. Her comments reveal a sense of protectiveness towards the common migrational identity that was shared between Chinatown’s forbearers as well as her own family and second-generation community. To Ruth, it is the shared closeness between their experiences that leads to concerts regarding authenticity.

CHAPTER 7 Awareness and Actions

While the majority of interviewees came to the realization during the progression of the interview that Chinatown’s cultural and commercial landscape was rapidly changing, their responses varied. Some expressed a sheer lack of concern while others called for a change in the regional government. Overall, participants demonstrated a vast understanding of the theoretical and practical implications of displacement; however, few actively adjusted their consumption of lifestyle as a way to take action. One interviewee admitted that “I like [Chinatown] the way it is, but you know, I feel like things happen for a reason. I try to keep my expectations low, so I’m not disappointed.” Other informants expressed their views with more nuance, specifically referring to their knowledge of gentrification and applied it to their observations of San

Francisco Chinatown’s situation.

I think one thing that did bother me was seeing how the young people who were not necessarily people who are putting down roots there... I don't know, it just made me think about this being gentrification adjacent... just the sheer amount of transformation that happened and people that have been pushed out so that trendy hotpot places for young rich people or fancy co-working spaces could exist and things like that.

The term “gentrification adjacent” reveals that Lauren is aware of the displacement of family-owned businesses in favor of upscale establishments and also has the language to verbalize this change. This knowledge, however, did not necessarily prompt her to take part in community service or activism. Likewise, David, a participant from New Jersey also expresses his thoughts regarding displacement in Chinatown.

I do like the idea of it being more for people who plan to be there long term regardless of what kind of a person you are. I guess that is very idealized. I think you have to naturally adapt to whatever the needs are for people who live there. I just don't like the idea of businesses popping up only to serve only to serve tourists or only to serve people who are passing through. I think if I were to put myself in the shoes of the people who are living there, that would be frustrating to me. Yeah, I don't have much of a vision or suggestions.

David claims to understand the frustration of Chinatown’s working-class residents and demonstrates his empathy towards their plight. He then realizes that he does not “have much of a vision”, revealing that he has not been compelled to utilize his knowledge to create change and instead recognizes the limitations of his “idealized” vision. He does, however, mention his volunteer work in tutoring students from a similar socio-economic background to many of

Chinatown’s residents.

I try to do outreach to students in East Palo Alto. Especially being here, I’m very aware of the fact that I’m benefitting while communities that are here are suffering quite a bit. So that’s just something that I just try to stay aware of but don’t let it ruin my day constantly or anything. I feel the same way in Chinatown as I do tutoring students in East Palo Alto who are failing elementary school or middle school.

East Palo Alto, a majority Black and Latinx working-class suburb may not bear any resemblance to Chinatown in terms of racial, cultural, or geographic features; however, the low socioeconomic status of both localities is what prompts David to draw a comparison. Despite childhood memories of visiting Chinatowns in New York City, David does not feel a strong enough connection to involve himself in volunteer work with San Francisco Chinatown. David ultimately reaches the conclusion that Chinatown’s shift is ultimately a response to the struggle of survival in a capitalist society, a society that he has little influence over.

Whenever I see something that is upscale with influences from another country, generally it means that the original inspiration has been taken and then watered down, and then a lot of Westernized elements have been incorporated. I assume that to be true of most things, of restaurants, of most cultural landscapes, that I would see in the US. So, capitalism says that things that make the most money succeed. And as a capitalist country, these things succeed. I feel really strongly to not attach a moral or greater sense to these kinds of things. Like, if it works it works, and that’s kinda all there is.

Again, David actually demonstrates a certain understanding behind the complexities of how cultures evolve and are appropriated, yet is firmly rooted in his resolve that there is little he

can do in the face of the greater capitalist system. To him, taking action would pose a futile challenge to the current system. On the other hand, Aaron, a second-generation Taiwanese

American from Florida and recent Bay Area transplant pinned Chinatown’s struggles as a result of the current government system. Unlike David, however, Aaron addressed the displacement in

Chinatown as a fixable issue attributed to the Bay Area’s negligent governing body.

To an extent it's not something that I can solve as an individual, it's symptomatic of a larger problem. I think there's a lot of failure of the regional governments to provide additional housing and be able to handle the population growth of the Bay Area. There's a lot more work that could be done by the local government level to really be able to provide more housing. For me at least — I know there's a lot of activists and other people who have different opinions on this — but I do think the big thing is to build more housing. If you stop building housing, more people are coming and now they're displacing the lower-income residents. So my take is that the local government should do a lot more to build housing and reduce the increases of supply in order to reduce the cost of housing in the Bay Area.

Aaron also recognizes that the issue of displacement in San Francisco Chinatown is a result of a greater problem that affects many neighborhoods in San Francisco. Although he was not prompted into taking direct action, by placing San Francisco Chinatown in context with the socio-economic concerns of the greater working-class community, Aaron demonstrates a concrete understanding of Chinatown’s potential in the realm of community activism.

Another participant, Ruth, takes Aaron’s ruminations a step further by inserting herself into the larger problem of displacement and finds a way to take a personal stake in the topic.

Like Aaron, she attributes many of the symptoms Chinatown is currently facing to the common ailment of gentrification. Ruth additionally asserts her own agency as a social actor and takes the initiative to align actions with principals by deliberately choosing to avoid renting property in gentrified areas.

Gentrification is always a relevant topic when it comes to Chinatowns anywhere. Part of the reason I'm not [moving] is that I am afraid of contributing to this problem of

gentrification. I know, I'm just one data point among many, but I don't want to feel like I've personally added to the wave. If I can avoid it, like if I had the option to not, then like, why would I? I know that if I were to move out, I would probably end up in a place like the Mission District in SF, places I can afford on the lower distribution, but more expensive than what the people living there can afford. And that's how gentrification happens; when people look for cheaper housing but come from higher-income distributions than the people they're pushing out. And I don't want to be part of that. So in that sense, I think about it a lot. Like I think about what my responsibility is.

These anecdotes illustrate Ruth’s personal commitment to equity and social change, as well as how Chinatown can be seen as another cause that aligns with her values. Similar to

Aaron and David, she shows that she is well aware of the systemic issues regarding the shortage of housing that Chinatown faces. Unlike the former two informants, however, she chooses to make concrete decisions in her life in order to not contribute to the growing problem, no matter how small her contribution may be.

CHAPTER 8 The Future Role of Chinatown

When prompted with a question regarding the role ought to Chinatown play in the lives of future generations, informants displayed complicated feelings about the tensions between allowing a culture to evolve naturally or remain preserved. Certain participants believed that culture ought to be allowed to change and gave little thought to what preservation would entail.

I don’t really feel that way about Chinatown. I feel like the question you're asking typically leads to something along the lines of “the preservation of culture” or something like that. I feel like that’s an angle that someone might answer with...But that’s not something I really feel strongly about either. Just because culture changes constantly. I don't really feel that Chinatown necessarily needs to be preserved or needs to exist as a district or area in SF

This informant possessed a rather hands-off approach to the future of Chinatown and advocated for the natural evolution of culture. Other informants, however, had more pointed duties for Chinatown to fulfill and considered turning Chinatown into a living museum.

I think Chinatown should serve as a historical site, showing the struggles that immigrants have undergone during their journey. Like the racism that immigrants initially faced when they started coming to the US, and how they've opened up these little shops and restaurants to keep up their livelihoods. I think we should be reminded of this initial struggle before their kids or their kids’ kids started working in tech and essentially pursuing these higher-paying careers like there was that first struggle.

Here, a sort of museumification of Chinatown would occur and the community would exist as a living memory and relic of the past struggles. While members of the demographic, as well as their future descendants, would be, as the informant claims, “pursuing high paying careers”, Chinatown could serve as a humbling reminder of one’s roots.

As all thirty-two interviews progressed, however, the nature of Chinatown’s future appeared less relevant, as many participants articulated that they could not foresee themselves

introducing their future generations to Chinatown and would opt to access their culture through other avenues.

I wouldn't feel like they needed to have a relationship with Chinatown. I imagine that’s just because of my attitude towards culture and being an Asian American. They would probably have similar thoughts to it as I would. Or they see it more of a socioeconomic area rather than its cultural significance.

Here, the informant draws a correlation between his attitude towards his Asian American identity and attachment towards Chinatown. Despite having visited frequently as a child, he holds a more pragmatic view of the changing nature of culture and feels little preemptive nostalgia at the prospect of a disappearing Chinatown. Additionally, the potential for Chinatown to bear its significance as an area of low socioeconomic status rather than a historic ethnic enclave with a low socioeconomic status reveals that the cultural significance of Chinatown is nonexistent for a college-educated and upper-middle-class person such as him.

The significance of Chinatown’s culture to the upwardly mobile second-generation demographic is meager at best. For Silicon Valley’s second generation of tech workers who are currently young and in possession of a stable income, camaraderie can be found through other more expensive and exciting avenues, such as the electronic dance music (EDM) scene.

I spend a lot of money on his live music like raves and concerts. I'm really into electronic dance music and I realize a lot of my Asian friends are too. We spend like hundreds of dollars every month to go to these music shows and the crowd is oftentimes heavily Asian. My personal theory is that electronic dance music doesn't really have a cultural component. If you have reggae, for example, that's owned by the Caribbean community, but the Chinese community doesn't really have their own genre. I think they kind of adopted EDM as their way to do something that's socially cool and makes them seem really cool.

Jordan, the above informant discusses how many upwardly mobile second-generation youth are looking towards other popular avenues of self-expression to form their identities.

Being upwardly mobile allows for this demographic to splurge or concert tickets and live music.

Chinatown is neither wanted nor needed, as the EDM scene also provides a safe space for second-generation youth to discover themselves among members of their community.

Thinking ahead to the future, as these young second-generation tech workers grow older and turn into parents, Chinatown appears to play an even less significant role in their lives and the lives of their future families. The nature of the Asian suburban community returns, as

Asian-ness becomes disseminated into their everyday lives.

I'll probably be a suburban mom in ten or twenty years and live somewhere where there's enough Asian people. So there's a critical mass of grocery stores and restaurants that I can go to. My guess is that where people will collect are PTA meetings, like at your school, or maybe other extracurricular curriculum classes that me and my future children might be attending. I feel like those are the places that adults end up congregating, which are centered around their children's lives. If I didn't have kids it might be like wherever I end up volunteering, or just like places where I go to be social, but I don't think of it as a very specific place like Chinatown.

Vienna reveals that In addition, she clearly draws a distinction between a place such as

Chinatown and a place where she would “go to be social”. She has a clear vision of the importance of suburbs and Karen, another informant born and raised in the Bay Area agrees that the sense of culture that is created in suburban communities is much more suitable for members of their socioeconomic status.

I would bring them to Chinatown but I don't think it would be like something I would do very often with my children. I think there are better ways to immerse myself in that community through Chinese school. I feel like Cupertino is way more like a Chinatown. There are restaurants, but then there's also the Chinese music lessons or art classes...I speak Mandarin and spent a lot of time in Cupertino taking lessons of various sorts so that just feels a lot more familiar. Versus, I think Chinatown is very monotone. It's like a hole in the wall. And Cantonese. But I think Cupertino has nicer places and still there's a lot more to go do there.

Especially in a geographical region such as the Bay Area where Asian communities are abundant and increasing, Chinatown’s relevance seems precarious. After all, if other neighborhoods offer comparable resources and community, then Chinatown would have little to entice second generations within a higher socioeconomic status.

I think Chinatown is kind of like losing its purpose. Growing up in the 90s, it was a place to find your culture but the whole Bay Area is more Asian now. The reason why it's becoming more touristy is that it's for tourists to go and walk around. I think it's mainly for outsiders versus for like actual Chinese people because it's just too touristy, it's just too gimmicky, it's just too singular, and you can find the same thing in the South Bay, which feels more like daily life. It feels more family-friendly and kid-friendly. Maybe in other cities, Chinatown is still serving its purpose but I think here it's mainly just a symbol.

The notion of Chinatown remaining a symbol is striking in its imagery — a symbol, similar to the notion of a living museum, serves its main purpose as a reminder of the past rather than a living, breathing, and evolving community.

CHAPTER 9 Reflexivity and Limitations

Introduction:

This thesis is as much about the participant’s identity construction and process of self-discovery as it is about Chinatown’s urban and commercial transition. That being said, I must also acknowledge how my presence as the interviewer has shaped both my relationship with the participants throughout the duration of their interviews, as well as the way I am choosing to absorb and analyze the resulting data produced from their narratives. When I began thinking through my research question in March of 2018, I was unaware that the very questions I would be asking my interviewees would affect me so deeply as well.

Reflexivity and Positionality:

Prior to the interview, all participants were aware of my positionality in relation to my questions. They knew that I was a college-educated Asian American who had spent significant amounts of time in the Bay Area. And as we can see from these two quotes -they often acknowledged these identities of mine in their interviews and made it apparent how my identities are related to theirs. One participant, in the middle of a question about her childhood, made a reference to my own behavior while discussing the behavior of her family. She commented that

“I didn't realize that some of the things that my family does, like the fact that you asked for warm water like, these aren’t one-off things, right? This interaction can be seen as an example of a cultural connection due to my position as a fellow Chinese American. For context, during the beginning of the interview, the participant offered me a drink and I requested a glass of warm water. This interaction took place outside the formal setting of our interview, even before I

pressed “play” on the recorder, yet she still recalled my comment and drew an example that compared her identity formation process to that very exchange.

During a separate interview, another participant referenced another aspect of my identity that we shared in common “...versus people like us who grew up here. Our roots are very deep.”

From this brief statement, it is evident how a sense of place such as a shared hometown also establishes camaraderie among participants. This participant makes use of inclusive pronouns such as “us” and “our” that allow the conversations to feel more intimate, providing both myself and the participant with the sense of being insiders during the interview process. The ability for myself to feel like an insider who shares cultural and geographic ties with each participant arose from the recognition and affirmation of my own identity through someone else’s story. In this case, the story in question was found through these in-depth interviews where I found myself indulged in our shared experiences.

Reflexivity and Limitations of Research:

With the ability to carefully establish camaraderie with participants also comes with the necessity to reassess my objectivity as the researcher. As is evident from the above paragraphs, the very choice of this thesis topic itself arose partially from my personal life experiences. While my positionality in relation to both the participants and the topic indeed provides me with a unique point of departure to begin exploring this topic, it also limits my capability to explore how the second-generation negotiate their identity with Chinatown. Understanding that I myself partially fulfill the demographic qualifications of the participants I am interviewing, I gradually found myself gently yearning to continue maintaining a friendly rapport with the interviewees,

perhaps focusing the interviews on topics we both found interesting and relatable to our identity rather than branching out to other subjects.

The conversation was undeniably enriched by our similarities, allowing participants to express themselves openly with less hesitation of whether I would be cognizant of or sympathetic to their references and recollections. However, since the subject matter of the interview remains very closely related to identity, I found myself experiencing further identity-related questions about myself and my own motives in undertaking this research.

Attempting to separate this research from my own identity work amidst the major events affecting the diasporic Asian community from 2019 to 2020 has been, to say the very least, quite emotionally taxing and confusing. Nevertheless, learning to negotiate the tensions that occur during the process of identity work has taught me that research, for better or for worse, can never fully occur in vacuum sealed-off from the researcher and the rest of the world.

Role of Chinatown:

As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, my volunteer work at CHSA the Chinatown - based nonprofit initially helped guide my interest in the Chinatown community. In regards to the outcome of this research, it is my hope that my findings can serve as a resource for potentially-interested stakeholders in Chinatown to understand this demographic. I am also satisfied that after a long interview in which questions were asked from both ends during the debriefing process, that all but two of the participants demonstrated further interest in furthering their engagement with Chinatown.

“Yeah, I'm really excited to see what results from this. Man, I'm like half-tempted to go poking around in Chinatown more actually, because I've been looking for a videography project for myself. If I could maybe take a look at architecture more seriously. And conduct some ethnography research Yeah, this has been an inspiring conversation”

Through the narrative arc of the interview structure that I established, most of these participants emerged to find something in our discussion that they considered to be worth a second thought, even compelling them to take action, once again allowing this research to be used as a vehicle for change.

I now believe, more strongly than ever, in the importance of understanding the impact that one’s research has on the researcher, participants, and most important of all, the community.

Hearing the participants express further curiosity in a changing San Francisco Chinatown — whether it be brainstorming projects involving the local community or simply start a conversation the next time a colleague mentions Chinatown — can actually be seen as a rather ideal outcome in regards to future effects of this research. For the participants to become inspired about Chinatown and grow in their own identities from our conversations, for me to slowly and cumbersomely learn about myself from this process as well, and ultimately, for this research to be returned back to the community, the community that has been preparing me with the inspiration and space to do this work for many years in the making.

CHAPTER 10 Discussion and Conclusions Discussion

At the start of each interview, informants revealed information about their backgrounds and childhoods through the discussion of family and food. One can see how the relationship between growing up in a heavily Asian community and its impact on social relationships and friend groups heavily impacted these informants’ childhood experiences. This dissemination of

Asian-ness in the suburb allows individuals to experience their heritage in other aspects of their lives, rather than relegating it to the physical space of Chinatown; this is especially evident for participants who call these Asian suburbs their home. If there were no need for San Francisco

Chinatown to exist in its current form as an urban neighborhood, Chinatown’s purpose could potentially evolve into one of preserving social and cultural relics, or another type of high-end destination playground.

Meanwhile, members of the second generation demographic are able to extract social capital from a historically low socioeconomic community such as Chinatown. By pointedly selecting certain elements of the working-class community and entering the neighborhood as an observer or visitor rather than a familiar figure, members of the second generation demographic can strategically use their knowledge of Chinatown to their advantage. The selective curation of authenticity by informants who want to appear as “insiders” to a culture allows them to garner social cache from the knowledge of hole-in-wall establishments.

Conclusion

The purpose of existing for the purpose of fulfilling a quaint fantasy ought to be considered inauthentic at the very least, as the participants vehemently state. After all, this is the straightforward narrative that Asian Americans and the children of immigrants have learned to ingest during our lives. But what happens when the landscape that was created by a community in order to survive has now become a part of the community’s history? There are two possible considerations to keep in mind — to listen with generosity and understand that for a newly upwardly mobile demographic, Chinatown does serve as a setting for identity formation rather than a community to find belonging. However, that does not negate the fact that this demographic also remains quite open to understanding through discussion, the individual and structural issues as to why they view Chinatown the way they do, and as to why they choose to consume the way they do. In research that so closely involves the lives and values of the informant, there remains a need to put oneself in the informant’s perspective in order to fully understand their intentions. By approaching the stories of informants with generosity in order to more fully understand and empathize with their backgrounds, one can attempt to view their interviews in more generous light. One must understand the implications of research as not only the analysis of the informants’ narratives, but also the labor that is undergone by both researchers and informants to bing each other a greater understanding of their own responses.

Every reader possesses the awareness to think of Chinatown beyond a collection of restaurants and residents, even beyond an ethnic enclave that operates as an independent unit. In a practical lens, Chinatown must be understood as one of many working-class communities struggling to remain afloat against the potential waves of displacement. Therefore, it requires

institutional support and protection to ensure that it can remain what it always has been, an ever-evolving safe haven for newcomers and working-class residents.

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