Chinatown faces change
Retail giant Wal-mart’s future ‘neighbourhood’ store stirs up debate among downtown LA folk.
ON the surface, a big Wal-mart store might seem out of place in the midst of the old-fashioned curio shops, the little dim sum eateries and the colourful lanterns and pagodas that make up one of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States.
But then so does the Catholic church that offers Sunday Masses in Croatian. Or the one that performs them in Italian. Not to mention the imposing statue of French heroine Joan of Arc that stands just a stone’s throw from the one of modern China’s founding father, Sun YatSen.
When Wal-mart announced plans earlier this year to open one of its outlets on the fringes of Old Chinatown, alarm bells went off in some quarters. The local city councilman pushed successfully for a moratoriumon opening large stores in downtown, although Wal-mart got around that by pulling its permits before the ordinance took effect.
Several business owners, meanwhile, expressed concern that WalMart, known for its cheap prices on everything from tyres to toys, would put them out of business and lead to the destruction of the area’s ambience.
Overlooked in much of the debate was that Chinatown wasn’t always Chinatown. Over the years, it has
I personally don’t buy the argument that it will bring new people to Chinatown or help to revive Chinatown. — LISA SEE
also been Frenchtown andd Littlel Italy, and a portion of it was once home to a Croatian community. Evidence of the latter is 102-yearold St Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church, located just up the hill from where the Wal-mart would go.
More recently, Chinatown’s population has seen an increase in Hispanics, who now make up about a quarter of the area’s 11,000 residents.
It’s an area that displays the city’s famous diversity and multicultural history to a remarkable degree, says Los Angeles writer Lisa See, who has drawn extensively from her own family’s Chinatown history for such books as On Gold Mountain and the 2009 best-seller Shanghai Girls.
“We as a city, I think, don’t pay much attention to that history or that diversity, but once you cover it up it’s gone for good,” added See.
Wal-mart spokesman Steve Restivo says the store won’t be one of those gigantic supercentres the company is famous for but a much smaller “neighbourhood market” about one-fifth the size. Those markets typically sell groceries, fresh produce and other items such as pharmaceuticals, deli food, stationery and dry goods.
He said the store, scheduled to open next year, is going into a building that has been vacant for years. The location was selected after WalMart determined the area was lacking in stores that sell fresh food.
Whatever the store’s impact on Chinatown, it won’t mark the first time the Chinese community has been reshaped or reinvented.
Old Chinatown, as it’s now known, was actually New Chinatown when it welcomed the public on June 25, 1938, with a gala party attended by, among many others, Hollywood’s first Chinese-american movie star, Anna Mae Wong.
Often overlooked in accounts of that opening day, however, was that New Chinatown was built from the ground up to replace OID Chinatown, which was razed to make room for another LA landmark, historic Union Station.
An entire neighbourhood of thousands of people occupying buildings dotting more than a dozen streets was packed up and moved lock, stock and wok to themiddle of what was then Little Italy and French town.
As the Chinese moved in, the Italians and French moved out, although remnants of their time there remain, including St Peter’s Italian Catholic Church and the Joan of Arc statute that stands just outside Pacific Alliance Medical Center, which until 1989 was known as French Hospital.
Some are worried that Wal-mart could drive out many small businesses, including scores of shops run by recently arrived ethnic Chinese immigrants from countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.
“If Wal-mart opens, a lot of small stores will close,” said Ocean Li, who operates a tiny herbal shop not far from the future Wal-mart.
The Chinatown Chamber of Commerce has given its blessing to the project, noting Wal-mart will bring scores of permanent jobs to the community and might also drive traffic to surrounding businesses.
“I personally don’t buy the argument that it will bring new people to Chinatown or help to revive Chinatown,” says See.
“I think when people go to a place like Wal-mart or Costco it’s a destination in and of itself, and by the time you walk out the door after you’re done you’re so exhausted you just need to go home and lie down on your couch.” — AP