Search

This study explores the linguistic landscape of a new unofficial 'Chinatown' in Kathmandu, Nepal. Located in the tourist hub Thamel, this Chinatown came into being recently because of globalisation and China's outbound tourism boom. Using authentic photographic data, this study examines how the use of Chinese and various semiotic elements (e.g. colour) contributes to the making of a commodified ethnic enclave and space of consumption, where a foreign culture is inscribed and embedded in the existing built environment. Unlike the traditional old-world Chinatowns, simplified Chinese characters are omnipresent in this Chinatown and many Chinese-run business names are highly up-to-date and reflect the latest trends in their home country. The exclusive use of monolingual Chinese is also commonplace. Interestingly, awkwardly hand-copied Chinese and Google translated Chinese are used as part of local businesses' marketing repertoire in what can be called 'linguistic jugaad'. Additionally, some local businesses resort to creative, affective and playful language to attract and engage with Chinese tourists. Contributing to research on ethnic enclaves and urban sociolinguistics, this study highlights language as commodity in transforming/constructing a cosmopolitan transnational space in our globalised and mobile world, illustrating how South-South population flows can leave material traces in a place's linguistic ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese quarters developed significantly during the eighteenth century along the coasts of East and Southeast Asia, exhibiting a common urban milieu in cities such as Manila, Batavia, Hoi An, and Nagasaki. Sharing similarities, they can be found both in states ruled by Asians and by Europeans, allowing for a comparison. This paper aims to prove that urban and architectural approaches of Chinese enclaves in these ports were similar in the eighteenth century and clearly referenced historic water towns of southern China. To do this, historical plans and textual sources of the aforementioned four overseas cities will be used. These results aim to be valuable as an historical basis for studies on acculturation processes in contemporary Chinese quarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II, thousands of Chinese soldiers were sent to India for training. Many of them deserted from the army and made a new life in India. Chen Ching Lin was one of these deserters. Following the course of his journey in India from 1943 to 1946, this article not only unearths the little-known experiences of the Chinese deserters in India, but also explores how the Chinese Nationalist Government's aim to discipline the overseas Chinese communities conflicted with the agenda of British geopolitics. It further contends that modern Chinese and Indian history could be integrated into a single narrative framework from subaltern perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the population of Asian Americans in cities and towns in Northern California from the 1840s through the 1960s, with a particular focus on Chinese Americans. An overview of Chinatowns in Northern California, including the Chinatown within Holt, California and Yreka, California, is provided.

The article discusses the history of Asian Americans in the Central Valley and Sacramento Delta regions of California between 1880-1950, focusing on how they represented their culture here and speculation on population decline in the regions. Other topics include the immigration of Chinese and Japanese to California towns including Isleton, Walnut Grove, and Courtland in the mid to late 1800s, the economic conditions and business activity of Asian Americans, and the development of Chinatowns.

In the early twentieth century, Chinatowns in the West were ghettoes for Chinese immigrants who were marginalized and considered 'other' by the dominant society. In Western eyes, these areas were the no-go zones of the Oriental 'other'. Now, more than a hundred years later, traditional Chinatowns still exist in some cities but their meaning and role has been transformed, while in other cities entirely new Chinatowns have emerged. This article discusses how Chinatowns today are increasingly contested sites where older diasporic understandings of Chineseness are unsettled by newer, neoliberal interpretations, dominated by the pull of China's new-found economic might. In particular, the so-called 'rise of China' has spawned a globalization of the idea of 'Chinatown' itself, with its actual uptake in urban development projects the world over, or a backlash against it, determined by varying perceptions of China's global ascendancy as an amalgam of threat and opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike virtually all other old immigrant enclaves in North American cities, the historic downtown Chinatowns of big cities in the United States and Canada largely survive, though not for lack of plans to destroy them. City Beautiful era plans, development projects, and other public and private interventions displaced or sought to eradicate Chinatowns, from Los Angeles to Victoria to Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Urban renewal era projects destroyed large portions of many Chinatowns, and some entirely. This article traces these broad patterns and trends of planned and realized destruction and preservation across 15 of the major cities in twentieth-century Canada and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the large number of Chinese immigrants in Paris originally from the Wenzhou region in China's Zhejiang Province, this research focuses on two case studies of Wenzhou restaurants situated in different Paris Chinatowns. It seeks to identify the ways in which the Wenzhou owners mark their presence in the Parisian linguistic landscape through the signage of their shopfronts and premises. By infusing existing multimodal analysis with ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis (ELLA), this study examines the ways in which two Wenzhou restaurateurs display their specific cultural and ethnic identity in the linguistic landscape. The analysis of the signage of their premises, combined with ethnographic interviews, unveils the restaurateurs' strategies to enact their cultural and ethnic Wenzhou identity through their shopfront signs, menus and premise decorations, and how they distinguish themselves from their Chinese competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the rise and decline of Lagos' China Town and its role as a locus of interactions between Chinese migrants and the Nigerian state. I argue that the rise and fall of Chinese private investment in Lagos' China Town is explained by the Nigerian state's adjustment to its own entry into the global market. While some Nigerian government officials formed a shared interest of community with Chinese traders via allowing smuggling and grey customs clearance, others frequently raided China Town in the name of protecting local industries. I also argue that Nigerian traders' and consumers' perspectives on substandard made-in-China products differed sharply from those of the Nigerian state and manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addiction genealogy has tended to center isolated figures of diseased will and the disciplinary powers that seek to reform them. Yet advances in the governance of habit in the late nineteenth-century US did not always single out discrete persons. Local and national drug control regimes were first developed in response to a racialized scene of contagious appetites—the opium den. It was the effort to regulate group scenes, more than the drama of lost mastery encased in the figure of the addict, that accounts for the criminalization of drug habits. To reassemble that other history of addiction, this essay tracks the shifting arrangement of opium scenes in medical theory, state regulatory profiles, and narcotourist mediascapes. Across these archives there emerge strategies of aesthetic containment, but also a logic of moral panic incited by transsensory drift. Both aimed to restrict the transit of appetite to settler capitalist circuits of accumulation and the cycles of chronic dispossession on which they rest. Although unable to dissolve those circuits, I argue that opium joints could nonetheless shelter the transient uncoiling of appetite from the reproduction of settler-national time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each ethnic enclave has its own idiosyncrasies, leading to disagreements as to the functions they serve for the migrants inhabiting them. However, three main functions may be identified across scholarly literature: shielding, economic and cultural. This article explores to what extent the spatial organization of the ethnic enclave is necessary for fulfilling these functions by taking the case of the Chinese international students in a Norwegian town. These students comprise a relatively cohesive group, and their conational social networks serve most of the same purposes of ethnic enclaves without the need for a separate neighbourhood. While most of their material needs are met, the students still express a lack of belonging, a need for a place that is 'for us', and they present an example of how an ethnic space is constructed without the need for a traditional 'Chinatown'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of modern Chinese schools in Singapore may be traced back to the early 20th century, when efforts to provide vernacular education in the British colony were made by community leaders across Chinese dialect groups, with support of the Qing Empire. Only a handful of these were selected as elite schools for bilingual education under the Special Assistance Plan (SAP) introduced in 1979 in independent Singapore. This paper examines the historical trajectories of these early schools from early association with Chinese nationalism to becoming multi-ethnic schools or simply defunct. It will focus on the case of the former Yeung Ching School in 'Chinatown' catering to the Cantonese community, to explore how the legacy of a Chinese school may be impacted by state formation and urban development since the 1950s, and also to point out a gap in current heritagisation pertaining to the role of education in shaping cultural identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study developed and evaluated a visual approach to promoting environmental health literacy about highway pollution. The Interactive Map of Chinatown Traffic Pollution was the centerpiece of a communication approach designed to make complex scientific information about traffic-related air pollution comprehensible to Chinese immigrants with limited English proficiency. The map enabled visualization of the spatial distribution of ultrafine particles (less than 100 nanometers in diameter), a toxic and invisible form of air pollution, in Boston Chinatown. A university-community partnership enabled design of intergenerational training sessions aimed toward empowering community members to take health-promoting actions that reduce exposure to ultrafine particulate pollution. A mixed methods approach was taken to evaluation. Nine high school youth learned to use the map and then tutored adults recruited from English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and from a community workshop. Seventy-three of these adults completed a pre-post survey measuring change in three domains: pollution knowledge, attitudes toward environmental issues, and self-efficacy in using maps. Adult participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in all three domains (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, all p < 0.01). Seventeen adults and nine youth participated in interviews. Interview participants reported adjusting daily routines to reduce exposure to pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the history of the Mazu worship in Beigang, Taiwan and Chinatown in San Francisco, California. Topics discussed include the history of the Mazu temple in Beigang, the tradition of temple division, connection between the Ma-Tsu Temple in the U.S. and Chaotian Temple in Beigang, sociopolitical context of Chinese American history and the legend of Tianhou, the Empress of Heaven also known as Mazu.

Building on the growing literature on new immigrant destinations, this paper examines new employment patterns of low-skilled Chinese immigrants in the United States. We identify an important channel of employment in new destinations for the case of Chinese low-skilled immigrants: employment agencies in New York City's Chinatown. We carried out two surveys of employment agencies during 2010–2011. Our findings suggest that there has been a profound change in settlement patterns of low-skilled immigrants: moving away from traditional Chinatowns in major American cities toward non-gateway destinations and rural areas. These new settlement locations are characterized by a low unemployment rate and low crime rate. Contrary to predictions from ethnic economy and mainstream economic perspectives, Chinese restaurant jobs tend not to be in places with a high concentration of Chinese immigrants, but rather in places with a high proportion of non-Hispanic whites. In addition, the farther the jobs are from New York City, the higher the salary. We discuss the implications of this fundamental change for re-conceptualizing the immigrant labor market and immigrant socioeconomic mobility in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The survival of Chinatowns and other ethnic enclaves in cities is largely determined by who owns property. Ethnic enclaves such as Chinatowns have traditionally played important economic, social and cultural functions as places for recent immigrants to live and work, though Chinatowns have long faced redevelopment pressures. In North America, as Chinese immigrants and their descendants settle in the suburbs, and as historic Chinatowns’ locations close to revitalising downtowns attract increasing investment, the future of these historic enclaves is shaped by various, often intense and divergent, forces. This article describes changes in the patterns of property ownership in Boston and Philadelphia’s downtown Chinatowns over the last decade (2003–2013) and relates them to changes and continuities in these neighbourhoods’ population, commercial activities and building stock. The trends we observe simultaneously reinforce and complicate debates about gentrification and longstanding efforts to preserve these Chinatowns as ethnic Chinese residential, commercial, and cultural centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right in Amsterdam’s picturesque Canal Zone, on and around Zeedijk, Chinese entrepreneurs have carved out a presence in what seems like the local Chinatown. The businessmen have been targeting Asian and non-Asian customers by offering products that – to an extent – can be associated with Asia, China in particular. Since the early 1990s, individual entrepreneurs and their business organisations have campaigned for official acknowledgement of Zeedijk as an ethnic-only district and for governmental support of the enhancement of Chineseness. Following Hackworth and Rekers. [(2005). “Ethnic Packaging and Gentrification. The Case of Four Neighborhoods in Toronto.” Urban Affairs Review 41 (2): 211–236], we argue that this case challenges traditional understandings of ethnic commercial landscapes. In sharp contrast to the current orthodoxy, which would conceive the proliferation of such an ‘ethnic enclave’ as part of a larger process of assimilation, we have approached Amsterdam’s Chinatown first and foremost as a themed economic space: Chinese and other entrepreneurs compete for a share of the market and in doing also for the right to claim the identity of the area. What is the historical development of the Zeedijk area, how did Chinese entrepreneurs and their associations try to boost Chinatown and negotiate public Chineseness, and how did governmental and non-governmental institutional actors respond to those attempts? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the urban development of the contemporary cities in Asia. Topics discussed include the interconnection of cities through formulation and circulation of ideas, border-crossing urban practices as mobile urbanism, and urban modeling. Also being discussed are the travel trajectories of Chinatowns.

Chinatowns have traditionally functioned as ethnic enclaves that were despised by the dominant Western culture, while functioning for Chinese immigrants as a refuge from the hostile white society they were surrounded by. In today’s globalised world, the meaning of Chinatowns has been transformed, as they have become more open, hybrid and transnational urban spaces, increasingly interconnected within the broader Asia-Pacific region. For Asian Australians, Chinatown may be a site of conflicting memories of Australia’s racist history and of cultural marginalisation and ethnic survival, but it is also—in today’s multicultural and cosmopolitan age—an area to be claimed for the expression of new Asian Australian identities. In Sydney’s Chinatown, public art projects by Asian Australian artists such as Jason Wing and Lindy Lee articulate some of the complexities and ambiguities of what it means to be Asian in Australia today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ethnic entrepreneurs in America often carve out an economic niche in the food and beverage industry, showcasing restaurants as an authentic experience especially in American Chinatowns. The main goal of this research is to offer a visual analysis in explaining how design elements found in San Francisco's Chinatown restaurant signage contribute to their gastronomic identity. A total of sixty-three restaurants were analyzed using a framework based on the interactions between elements, their characteristics and their interactions as put forth by designer and educator John Bowers. Ninety percent of the eateries positioned Chinese characters above and before English alphabets on their main signboards, fostering a visual significance in contributing to the gastronomic identity of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eastern Europe has witnessed an influx of Chinese newcomers. Yet this region is oftenoverlooked by scholars of overseas Chinese. Similarly, the Chinese remain largely absent from European migration studies. In the work that has been done, the Chinese are often depicted as a community that keeps to itself. I examine this claim by highlighting the results of surveys conducted in Bulgaria, Croatia, and Hungary. These surveys, the largest ever done in each country, focus on three broad explanations for why the Chinese seem to be isolated, which I summarize as "need not, want not, and cannot." The results identify significant differences between the three communities -- but not because of want. Instead, the community in Hungary is the least isolated because it needs to interact with the locals; conversely, the community in Bulgaria is the most isolated because of the barriers its members face in the host country. This essay calls attention to the Chinese in European migration studies and to the region of Eastern Europe among overseas Chinese scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the legal, racial and economic foundations of gentrification at the Chinatown in New York City. Discussed is the area's history of racialization, racial-capitalist framework, commodification, civilization and social hierarchy. Examined is the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Throughout Australia’s history, successive governments have lamented the clustering of non-English-speaking migrants in ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’. From the early Chinatowns of the 1800s till today, urban concentrations of ethnic groups have raised concerns and fears in local populations and authorities alike, despite decades of international research which suggests that ethnic residential clusters actually aid long-term assimilation and adjustment. Many of the ethnic residential clusters in contemporary Australia have been claimed to be a direct consequence of the migrant hostels and reception centres which operated between 1948 and the 1990s. This paper traces migrant settlement patterns in South Australia in rich detail, revealing the complexities of lived experiences that shape migrant settlement decisions. Against the background of public and scholarly debates over ‘ethnic enclaves’, and drawing on quantitative and qualitative historical research on the lived experiences of former hostel migrants, it analyses how migrant hostels and reception centres contributed to the settlement experiences of diverse migrants. We conclude that migrant hostels were just one among various factors that led to the growth and maintenance of ethnic residential clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines object-based and existential authenticity using a multidimensional approach to perceived value. The effects of value perceptions on satisfaction are also examined. Data was collected from tourists at the Singapore Chinatown heritage precinct. The findings revealed that object-based authenticity, existential authenticity, and perceived monetary value positively influenced overall perceived value and subsequently, satisfaction. This paper provides researchers with a theoretical framework of authenticity and perceived value for future empirical studies in the heritage tourism context. It also provides insight into how destination marketers and policy makers can develop effective and sustainable strategies for heritage destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the potential of the LL to evaluate ethnically-defined spaces. Focusing on the area referred to as ‘Chinatown’ in central Liverpool, it examines the relationships between space, representation, and identity. Interviews with actors and passers-by indicate that the location and definition of Chinatown are interpreted inconsistently. As the article argues, however, the LL contains useful information for locating and qualifying the ethnic space. Scrutinizing both interview data and an empirical corpus of all the texts visible in the space, the article aims to define the borders of Chinatown, and the expression of ethnic identity therein. Whilst testifying to the commodification of aesthetic ideals and symbolic imagery, the LL simultaneously reveals an in-group community representative of authentic Chineseness. Exploring the dynamics of linguistic exclusion and accommodation, the data indicate not only that the identity of Chinatown is multi-layered, but also that its borders are subjective and not definable spatially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Hungary could benefit from the economic growth and development of China. Topics covered the influence of Chinese in other Asian countries as observed in the so-called Chinatowns, the reason Chinatowns, or Chinese districts, did not evolve in Hungary and the evolution of the Chinese community in Hungary in parallel to the process of changing the system in the country.

The article investigates the technical rationality behind Bangkok's recent land use zoning plans. It does so through the example of Chinatown. The plans, intended to promote urban sustainability, introduce zoning techniques such as (1) land use subcategorization to hierarchize urban districts, and (2) density zoning to encourage intensive development around transit stations. The case of Chinatown foregrounds the discussion in this article, which then, in turn, explores the two zoning techniques. I argue that both techniques are formulated through a functionalist rationality, and thus omit place-specific conditions of land, such as local practices, histories and land tenure. Worse yet, the landed elite uses them to justify displacement and eviction. The article theorizes Chinatown as a space of difference, pointing to particularities that are unseen and thus at risk of being unmade by what is often passed off as technical expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on Chinatowns stresses the spatial aspects of their production as communal urban spaces. This is particularly evident in the prevailing rhetoric of ethnic ‘enclaves’ that is common in the literature on Chinatowns. This article stresses the importance of taking into account the temporal dimensions of the examinations of space and migrants’ relationships with the city. The argument maintains that, although Manchester Chinatown incorporates many layers of time, only some of them are acknowledged. This view ties both space and people into a particular temporality that is associated with a predetermined culture and tradition. The article shows how relocation from Chinatown to a non-ethnically defined urban area makes it possible for community organisations to depart from the essentialised ethnic, cultural, and social associations produced through dominant understandings of migrant communal space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at the transformation of Milan's Chinatown in the years following the April 2007 revolts and how these changes have been affected by conflicting interests. More specifically, I look at the political economy of urban space and the role of Chinatown in the dynamics of urban restructuring in Milan. Milan's Chinatown today is neither a Chinese residential area, nor a tourist district; rather, it is an ethnic economic and commercial enclave in a gentrified area near the city centre, where businesses owned by Italians and foreign nationals coexist. Since the revolts, Chinatown has become an increasingly contested space characterised by the presence of conflicting agendas. On the one hand, Italian businesses, the autochthonous population and local authorities regard Chinatown as a ‘problem’ and have attempted to reclaim the area. On the other hand, Chinese retailers and workers claim the right to use this urban space and carry out their businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the history of Chinese immigrants in Cuba since 1847 has been investigated by a number of studies that have focused primarily on the coolie trade and on the immigration wave of the 1920s, the history of Chinese immigrants and their descendants in revolutionary Cuba after 1959 still remains a field of study worthy of exploration. During the first years of the Cuban revolution a class struggle developed that hit the Chinese community in Havana's Chinatown and overlapped with the ideological and political disputes stemming from the Chinese revolution. This article shows how the struggle for power in this Chinese migrant community was shaped by the agency of its members that partly got enlisted in a "Chinese Popular Militia" and how this clash was framed by national and transnational dynamics. At the same time, the aim of this article is to elucidate whether and how ethnic identity was used as a political resource, and describes the different ways in which ethnic self-attribution on a personal level and constructions of identity on a national level entangled and interacted in this dynamic setting. This is of special interest, as the demands of national unity under the flag of a new revolutionary identity did not necessarily seem compatible with the self-attributions of individuals that also stressed their personal identity, as did many Chinese Cubans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After World War II, a remarkable, self-conscious process of community building has taken place in U.S. Chinatowns, especially when the institution of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 led to the eventual abolition of Asian quotas. New York’s Chinatown presents a case study of the postwar transformation that was related to both the global geopolitical changes and domestic urban economic restructuring. With the liberation of immigration laws, the Chinese population in New York has been continuously growing and becoming diversified. Illustrating the way notions of identity and heritage function to (re)assert spatial identity, the article examines the contested process of landscape construction in New York’s Chinatown and the underpinning social agendas, cultural and political implications in the process of identity-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]