The Most Comatose Chinatown in the USA

Save the world? Save yourself, I say!

Uncle Lau was just another Chinatown loser. Fiftyish, unmarried, wearing sandals, and sporting a T-shirt that and showed golfing implements and says, “When I die, place my balls next to my club.”  His compatriot Mr. Liu was his teacher in China and all these poor bastard “former students” ended up in Seattle Chinatown somehow. So, among the losers, Mr. Liu was a “big shot” because he was teacher to them all, besides being a calligrapher and tai chi “master.” But the only thing that is real in Seattle Chinatown is gambling and money laundering to accompany that, my fellow Seattleites.

This disorganized schizophrenia Mafia prey on recent arrivals living in tenements, while being trained to be waiters and cooks in this Chinatown’s dozens of restaurants. Chinatown rust travels from building, shop to shop. Then, white street people litter themselves in Hing Hay Square, forcing grandmothers and their grandchildren to be inside tenements above the shops on street level.

I tried to forestall the inevitable demise of Chinatown by “patrolling” the 25 square-block Chinatown with a tai chi stick made of hard wood seven feet long. I make the rounds in the morning while the grandmothers and the school children are waiting for their school buses. The kids’ parents have already gone to work. Increasingly, they are transported to the suburbs as Chinatown itself is in demise. Parking is a problem because there are two sports dome nearby. Every few months, another restaurant fails and it is face-lifted by new owners. You wonder why they have such poor business judgment. But Tai Tung café, which means “Everybody’s Café,” is the oldest continuous restaurant in Seattle Chinatown; I had been going there on and off for 45 years now. The business itself is older than that. Because of its longevity, people assume that they are patronizing the Chinatown Mafia hang out. Sure enough everybody who is anybody in Seattle has been there, including Bill Gates and Seahawk players. But I tell you if there is any funny business, I would have known about it. It is a “family restaurant” and people like to eat family style, say ordering several dishes and rice and share them. Maybe a steaming rock cod, some Mu Shu Gai Pen (mushroom chicken), some sweet and sour spare ribs and perhaps some egg foo young, etc These are the fare before the next wave of Chinese arriving in America, the Taiwanese, the Northern Chinese and so on. So, increasingly you hear the Mandarin dialect replacing the Cantonese and the Toishanese dialects. As Chins itself becomes more and more prosperous some of that wealth is spreading to American, as the tallest building now in Seattle, the Columbia Tower, is owned by a consortium from Hong Kong.

More Chinese money coming in to Seattle and vicinity does not mean that the poor immigrants are better off [I will talk about why not next installment].