reflection #1 - two weeks in chinatown

Alleyway Tour

Small Sites Program!

Where Sun Yat-Sen stayed for a while

Atop Ping Yuen

From Ping Yuen looking onto FiDi

SRO

Cohort at the Small Site

Chinese Christian Church of SF

This reflection (and I do cover my reflections upon the Chinatown community in my blog post and will do so in future reflections!) tries to capture my thoughts on what the Urban Institute program has exposed me to.


I applied to this program b/c I realize that I grew up and currently hold an immense amount of privilege, socioeconomically, and have not really interacted w/ the struggles that characterizes Chinatown CDC’s fight: affordable housing, senior living, open spaces, transportation justice, legal representation in immigration and housing, business development.


I grew up in San Ramon in the East Bay, just across the bay from San Francisco. When I was in Maryland for undergrad, I even told others that I was from San Francisco b/c that was the nearest city that other folks not from California would recognize – and I am slowly realizing the gross inaccuracy of that mischaracterization. My parents are immigrants from China – but part of a new wave of Chinese immigrants in the 80s that came from Communist China by the way of their education. My parents both went to top-tier universities in Mainland China, got PhDs overseas in Japan, and came here to take tech jobs here in the Valley, facilitating the upper-middle class upbringing that I was born into. I never worried about housing b/c my parents moved here before the dotcom bubble burst and were able to purchase a home and slowly pay off a reasonable mortgage over the course of my childhood, so the thought of eviction never even crossed my mind. San Ramon was a suburban town w/ open spaces, parks, and foothills seemingly every block – and so I had an amazing childhood, running and biking around. Although we had almost no public transportation, my parents owned cars – and also chose to live in a house a 10-minute walk away from school, so transportation was never an issue for me. My parents aggressively saved for retirement, so I never worried about how they would provide for themselves after their earning power declined.


My time at the Naval Academy in Maryland and studying engineering at Stanford has further cemented a feeling of ease and security. I went to perhaps the only undergraduate institution in the country that can boast a 100% employment rate after graduation – so I never worried about the marketability of my skills nor did I ever thinking about job training, re-skilling, etc. Stanford Engineering was all too familiar as well – it seemed as if all the head-hunters came to campus to try to scout out my cohort-mates and the only question was which offer to accept after graduation and that familiar Stanford complaint – which job would be most fulfilling – w/o even a worry about the sustainability or economic feasibility of a job b/c those were fulfilled assumptions - taken for granted.
​

So, it’s been emotionally challenging and intellectually stimulating to engage the Urban Institute cohort, the Chinatown CDC staff, and the Chinatown constituents. Here are some main strands of questioning that I am engaging:

1. As a believer in Christ, I’ve seen a lot of churches participate in and build up this community – from Cameron House sheltering women and children and St. Mary’s advocating to rebuild the I-Hotel to Norman, the ED, serving as a minister in the community. How does the church respond to these new attacks of urban renewal and tech boom? How does the church simultaneously economically serve and spiritually feed the community?
2. I find myself struggling to fully understand some efforts of Chinatown CDC. While I understand the need to preserve the community identity of Chinatown, especially in terms of protecting traditional retail businesses, how can Chinatown take advantage of the tech boom? From my perspective, the tech industry has made SF and the South Bay its capital and I feel like branding the tech industry as “an attack” borders on Luddism. Here in South Bay, where the Belle Haven and East Palo Alto communities also wrestle w/ Facebook, I’ve seen the birth of charter schools and full engagement / integration w/ the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation and other Corporate Social Responsibility departments to ensure that disadvantaged youth have access to tech education and opportunities.
3. I am extremely conflicted and torn b/w community development and individual responsibility. This perhaps allude to the larger debate that grips our nation about providing welfare and development programs in contrast to the conservative argument about individual responsibility and accountability. I acknowledge my privileged upbringing. I have taken a course in educational research in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford that has rigorously shown me that environmental covariates, including race, zip code, birth weight, parental status, effectively predict socioeconomic outcomes, including educational attainment, income, wealth, incarceration rates, homelessness, etc. Yet, at the Naval Academy, I was impressed w/ the importance of assuming 100% responsibility for my actions – and holding others 100% accountable for their actions as well. My parents, who would draw on traditional Chinese cultural values, would emphasize that I would be solely responsible for my actions and that I would need to work hard, save aggressively, and depend on no one else to make my way. Does providing affordable housing truly house an otherwise helpless population – how can community development align felt needs, such as housing, w/ market structures, like the industry demand for technology workers? Are senior services simply to be provided b/c seniors possess no more earning power?

My questions and musings are brutally honestly, and truthfully, I do acknowledge that my thoughts may not align completely w/ the mission of Chinatown CDC. I understand that my questions even carry embedded presuppositions. Yet, this experience and fellowship has been so enriching and stimulating for precisely that reason – to have me confront my assumptions and upbringing, to interact w/ residents and citizens who go through a completely different set of struggles, to understand a wholly different Chinese in America experience, to study alongside practitioners and students of the humanities and social sciences. I apologize in advance if my thoughts are considered offensive in any form, and I appreciate the opportunity that Urban Institute has given me to consider and reflect upon these issues.

andrew zhao