Interview with Ms. X

"In the past two years living in Philadelphia, I often went to Chinatown to buy bubble tea, eat out, or pick up Chinese vegetables. Outside of Weee!, it was almost impossible to find things like napa cabbage or celtuce anywhere else. For a while, I even worked at a bubble tea shop there. After chatting with the manager, I learned that most of the restaurants and shops in Philadelphia’s Chinatown are family-run businesses. Families live right in Chinatown and often pass the same restaurant or store down for generations.

This feels very different from Chinatowns in Japan. In Japan, most Chinese businesses are more like part of the tourism industry. It’s usually an investor from China who opens a restaurant in a Chinatown district and then hires local employees to run it. The atmosphere is not the same at all. In the U.S., stepping into Chinatown feels almost like going back to China itself—though I admit my idea of “back home” may be frozen in an earlier impression. In Japan, though, going to Chinatown feels more like being a customer or even a tourist.

That said, Japan still has neighborhoods where Chinese people live in large numbers. In Tokyo alone, there are whole communities in Ueno, Ikebukuro, and Odaiba."