Taking the first step into the International District/Chinatown community gave me a somewhat peaceful and calm atmosphere. It differs from the Chinatown in our city of San Francisco in terms of population density. In contrast to the dense population in SF Chinatown's, we see less people on the streets of Seattle's Chinatown. Our tour was given by a non-profit organization named SCIDpda, starting at the Hing Hay Park, which some of us saw as Portsmouth Square at the first sight. Although it is not as crowded as Portsmouth Square, Hing Hay Park serves as a community hub for the Chinese community. Next we were lead to the International Children Park, where we saw the open space designated for children and other age groups to utilize. The park to me was fairly big and had adequate space for many people to use. Besides the children playground, my favorite spot within the park is the resting area. The designs of the chairs and umbrella shade struck my eyes at the first sight. I hope to bring some of these ideas and apply similar concepts to the designs of our open space facilities and infrastructures in San Francisco. As we walk along the Chinatown streets, we saw that many of the buildings are similar to the building style in SF: a mix-used of business and commercial buildings. In fact, throughout the city of Seattle most of the buildings were built this way in order to conserve space. The final stop for our tour was an alleyway called the Canton Alley, one of the three alleyways in Seattle. Once a very lively space, this alley consists of many shops and small businesses that sell a variety of accessories and many other merchandises. Today, there are many dumpsters in the alley, which is one of the main usage besides a short cut for people to walk through in Chinatown.
After the tour, Ching, our tour guide lead us into the work office. In the conference room, she gave us a presentation of how their organization work collaboratively with many other different organizations and programs to do city and urban planning. There are three main departments in SCIDpda, and they are property development and management, senior services, and community development. From the presentation, I learned the original design of the International Children Park, in which the center of it was a design of the "yin yang" image with grass and the hard ground. Although it was a nice design, people saw it as a design that took up too much space in the park. Therefore, the redesign and reconstruction of the grass land later on created more open space for people. Throughout the planning process, many organizations worked together to collect ideas and opinions from the public in order to do street design and city planning. One of the most important aspect of urban planning is to have the favor of the majority of the public. A city can maintain its sustainability when the public enjoys the city space! Overall, today was a very tiring yet fun day! Besides from the tour and presentation, we also had a somewhat DIY buffet style Thai lunch. Later in the day, we also had a fun time exploring the central public library in Seattle which is 11 floors tall! We then headed back to Chinatown to meet with the youth group WILD, which stands for Wilderness Inner-City Leadership Development. Similar to our youth program, the WILD youth are engaged in the community and also interacts with many senior residents living in and around the area. One thing that I found special about their program is that they have many camping trips throughout the year, and that they would bring seniors to camp with them. However, the seniors don't stay overnight with the youth. Besides from that, we also had a great time playing games and getting to know each other through our conversations. It was a nice experience that we had the opportunity to share our own stories and listen to the stories of others. I learned a lot about the history and community building and organizing of the Chinatown in Seattle, and I hope to bring some of their ideas and concepts back to San Francisco to strive for a better community! - Shirley Tsang
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Today, we went to visit the international district and its recently formed nonprofit organization as well as other organizations such as WILD, wilderness international leadership program. Walking the streets of Seattle, International District made me realized that sometimes there are people with less advantages than we do, but advocacy is nothing to belittle. Just like your teachers and professors at school and your advisors, the people in charge wouldn't know about your problems or your communities' problem until people address their issue. In the international district, the wild group and sidpda demonstrated this by working with seniors from SROS to protect their parks and public spaces. They gathered seniors to help create successful community meeting as well as holding an alleyway feast.
Although the Hing Hay park and Dragon park of the International district in Seattle are quite small and less attractive compared to the Portsmouth Square and Willie Woo Woo park of the San Francisco Chinatown, groups like ideal and wild have been implementing resources to improve their park and community. -Steven Jiang Our first destination for the day: Hing Hay Park. Hing Hay Park is the parallel to San Francisco's Portsmouth Square but for whatever reason, it feels as if they have more disparities than similarities. We arrived around 11:00am and I couldn't help but immediately notice the lack of people(let alone seniors). The space, in comparison to Portsmouth is obnoxiously small and aside from the ping-pong table and the bulletin board, there is nothing unique or fascinating about the space. Or so i thought—perhaps it is a bad idea to judge a book by its cover.
We were given a fantastic tour by Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda), which in retrospect is quite similar to CCDC as a non-profit organization focusing on property management and community development. I was told by Qing, our tour guide, that Hing Hay Park sees its most prosperous hours later in the afternoon, especially as kids get off from school. As much as I would love to see myself, I'll just have to take Qing's word for it. The second site we visited is the International Children's Park. I consider this place significant not for its scenery, but for its story. It is a remarkable sight to see people banding together to fight for their community, and that's what happened in this park. Through 7 years of efficient advocation and undying passion, the park transformed from a dangerous hangout to a safe, open-space environment. Once again, I did not get to see the park in action as kids were in school but it is what it is. The next two topics I'll cover more briefly as they are projects in development. First is "Green Streets," or streets modified with the intent of minimizing car usage and promoting pedestrian safety primarily through the thinning of streets. Next are the alleys, which see continuous development but remain deserted and barren. If Seattle is passionate about creating an alleyway system, perhaps SF is the best place to look. I see promise in International District/Chinatown's community. They seem to be passionate in keeping the community their community, but questions still remain. Qing mentioned in her tour the planned extension of Hing Hay Park and while that is great, she also mentioned that the artist's charisma is sometimes valued more than the voice of the community. Even with community opposition, an artist is allowed to express as he wishes. This is dangerous—a single man should not be allowed to bypass the values of a community. I'm going to stop for a bit and talk about co-working spaces. The idea itself is wonderful, but it also poses an enormous threat to certain communities. I'm all for co-working spaces; freelance artists and photographers need working space and it is often incredibly difficult for them to find it. I do believe though, that they should only be created in appropriate areas. SF's chinatown, and I believe this quite firmly, is not the place for it. It is essential for it to remain as a service hub and residential area for low-income people, as it is now, and the implementation of co-working spaces threaten that. Still, I'm not against co-working spaces as a whole. I believe that its effects vary drastically depending on the community it is affecting. Perhaps in I.D, it will turn out beneficial—it will be interesting to study since it just launched. Anyway, my blog is getting pretty long so I'll try to be brief. We stopped by Seattle's main library and all I can feel is envy. There are 10 massive floors filled with people and books. Oh—and computers. Did I mention that there is a space with over a hundred computers that is completely full? I cry a little bit thinking back to SF's libraries. Still, this makes me wonder. Does Seattle have the budget to pull these things off while we don't, or do we just not budget in the right things? Oh well, at least we'll never have to walk up 10 floors to check out a book. Alright, I'm almost done I promise. We met up with youth group "Wilderness Intercity Leadership Development", or WILD to complete our day, and I'm not going to go In depth about what they do as it is not too different from what we do at AAA. I don't have too much to say, other than that they're a great program with fantastic volunteers. Keep at it WILD! McDonalds count : 6 -David Yi During my exploration in International Chinatown, I observed that spaces were used among different age groups. For example, seniors,workers, and performers played games, rested, or performed at Hing Hay Park. As for children, they played on the structured at the International Children Park with their families or friends.
The projects made the community engage with the planning process since a organization called Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority hosted meetings so that the community members like family associations and property owners can give their opinions about the projects. Also, Wilderness Inner-City Leadership Development (WILD) Program, a youth program, brought seniors to the meetings share their feeling toward the projects that impacted their community. A lesson that I would bring back to San Francisco for open space would be making sure that the spaces are suitable for the locals that are living in an area close to the open space. Another lesson would be to design open spaces with the opinion from the community so that the usage of the spaces would be efficient with satisfaction. -Stephanie Chan Day 1
Our first day of the trip and everything went somewhat smoothly and according to plan. Everything was okay until we found out that the LINK was unable to reach our hostel and that we had to transfer to the LINK’s temporary replacement, the 97, which was as an enjoyable sight to see a different bus format whereas the bus had different seats which I still don’t understand much of. Especially about why some seats are more elevated than the rest. Then we went to the Pike Place Market and saw scenes that were similar to SF’s Fishermen’s Wharf. The smell of fish everywhere and the familiar sight of tourist weren’t as unusual, maybe because we could had been considered as tourists ourselves. Probably scholastic tourists would had been a better word. Anyways, the Pike Place Market had of course many tourist attractions and tourist traps. Some included the sourdough bread and clam chowder and of course the first ever Starbucks that also came with an extremely long line. Our next stop was the Wing Luke Museum to attend a tour to learn about the history of the International District. In this tour we walked through buildings that were worn down and torn up but out of all these buildings the Yink Fung Import Store. This store interested me so much because it's just history. During the Gold Rush, many immigrants that had just arrived to the United States would usually end up on the 2nd floor of the Yink Fung Import Store surrounded by 29 other immigrants, 30 including the immigrant themself. They would be waiting for days, weeks, for the owner of the store, Uncle Jimmy’s dad, to help the immigrant find a job and to start them off in a foreign land. This sort history impacted me so much that when I heard of it, it brought me an imminent flashback to the Family Associations in Chinatown but more importantly a flashback to Donaldina Cameron. In all three cases, the immigrants were all helped to start their life In the United States. Of course, in Donaldina Cameron’s case, the women were forced to work already but she freed them from forced captivity and helped them find a new and better life. All 3 cases were all in a time of racial discrimination and showed how the will of a single person , or family , is able to impact a majority of people for the better. This really messes around with my feelings. This ends my first report of the trip. Thanks for reading! -Aaron Dong On June 7, I flew out of San Francisco to Seattle without my family for the first time. I was excited to travel on an airplane since I haven't ridden an airplane for more than a decade. Once I arrived at Seattle, I rode on a LINK light rail that functions just like BART in San Francisco and transferred to bus 97 in order to go to our hostel called Green Tortoise. After I arrived to my hostel, I walked to the Pike Market. At the market, I thought about how the atmosphere of the market was similar to Fisherman's wharf in San Francisco since the market was packed with tourists and locals.
After I explored the market, I went to Wing Luke Museum for a tour. Throughout the tour, the tour guide told us about the history of Seattle's Chinatown. While I listened to the tour, I noticed how the historical context was similar to San Francisco's Chinatown. Many Chinese immigrants who were mainly men came to Chinatown during the Gold Rush because they wanted to support their families back in China by getting better paying jobs in the United States. Another fact that stood out to me was the relocation of Asian residents. In Seattle, white people pushed anyone who was Asian to Chinatown. Likewise, Asian citizens were relocated into Chinatown in San Francisco. This shows how Asian people in the United States were receiving similar treatments in different places. When the tour ended, I headed to Uwajimaya supermarket. As I was walking to the supermarket, I saw how the built-environment in Chinatown was different from San Francisco. The Chinatown in Seattle doesn’t have a lot of restaurants and cafes. In addition, it has a low number of pedestrians walking around Chinatown. On the contrary, San Francisco's Chinatown has many stores and restaurants with crowded streets. Despite the difference in their environment, they shared common factors which includes open spaces and single room occupancy housings. Although Chinatown in Seattle and San Francisco has different exterior, their interior has resemblance. -Stephanie Chan Waking up at 4 is not part of my daily routine as this might apply to some certain people. After meeting up with everyone in front of the Alaska Airlines counter, we headed inside to wait for the boarding. We landed in the Seattle Airport a little less than two hours for the plane ride. While we started to do our urban observation on the streets of Seattle, we made our way to the Green Tortoise Hostel located near the Pike Place Market, which is the equivalent of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. Since the hostel is located at the center of downtown, which is a very busy district, surrounding our hostel are shops and restaurants which makes it very convenient for us to get food or to buy any supplies or daily commodities. While we were waiting for our rooms, we visited and toured around the Pike Place Market to explore and to look for food. Similar to Fisherman's Wharf, the Pike Place Market has many fresh seafood and food for sell such as clam chowder, which is also popular in SF. What struck me the most in the market was the place that sold olive oil with the samples provided. I found this special because of the many different flavors of the olive oil that they have. Despite the population dense in the market, it was a very nice place to visit!
After we settled down in our hostel, we headed to the Wing Luke Museum, which is located in the International District/Chinatown. We were scheduled for a tour given by a tour guide named John in the museum. During the tour, he told us information about the Asian American history, especially about the immigrants who came to America. The struggles that the immigrants went through were somewhat similar to the ones in San Francisco. When many of the immigrants first arrived to this new country, they had a hard time adapting to the new living environment and working condition. Similar to the case in San Francisco, many immigrants in Seattle also settled in small living spaces such as SROs (Single Room Occupancies). Due to the limited amount of money they had, these were what most immigrants can only afford to live in. When I first heard the word SRO on the tour, it brought up my attention and awareness. I was a bit surprised when I discovered that SROs also took place in the history behind the Seattle's Asian American community. This part of the tour stood out to me because I can relate this back to the history of our community in our own city. Similar to SF, Seattle also had a Manilatown designated for Filipino immigrants. However, since there are not much Filipinos in its city today, Manilatown no longer exist. Back in Seattle's history, waves of immigrants arrived in the city working in poor working condition and low wages, since they were limited in the field areas of work that they are capable of doing. Another difficult task for immigrants to do was to assimilate into American culture that they were unfamiliar with in the beginning. In history, this time period was known as benevolent assimilation. In order to be considered as Americans, these immigrants took the time to learn to adapt to the new culture, meanwhile preserving and continuing to practice the culture and traditions of their own nations. Of course, during this process, racism and stereotypes occurred, and that was one of the reasons why the family associations were created. Like the ones we have in San Francisco, Seattle also has many family associations in which they were created and formed by those who shared the same last names to help and support each other. These family associations helped people to preserve their community and advocate for what they want. They also served the purpose of bringing people together in a union to create a stronger force that reflects their power. This is similar to the case of San Francisco back in the history, where many family associations also united together to fight for what they need and to preserve their community. Seattle's Chinatown is a more peaceful and calm neighborhood compared to the one in San Francisco. Personally, I am used to the more lively and thriving atmosphere in our own Chinatown, and I believe that most of us feel the same way too. The crowded Chinatown neighborhood is a sign of our homeland of San Francisco, with it being one of our city's most popular dense neighborhood. SF's Chinatown is often described as a square, literally a four by six block area. There are many restaurants and stores that sell merchandise, groceries, poultry, etc. Many local Chinatown residents and people from different neighborhoods all over the city would come to this neighborhood daily, or at least often enough, to buy reasonable and cheap priced groceries and other commodities. Besides this, SF Chinatown is also a very friendly place for tourists to travel around. In the neighborhood, there is a street that is designated for local residents, and another street for tourists to buy their souvenirs and explore the area. Overall, the Chinatown in SF is a place of prosperity as well as a "home" to me. Every time I step into Chinatown, I feel as if I'm going back home, although I live in a different neighborhood, one that takes about a one hour commute time to this second home. In contrast to SF's, Seattle's Chinatown has less people lingering around the area. While walking on the streets of Seattle's Chinatown, we obviously see less people on the streets. There are a few stores and restaurants in the neighborhood, but from what I observed, there weren't many grocery shops. Unlike SF's Chinatown, it doesn't seem to be that there are any rush hour periods in Seattle's Chinatown, whereas in our city, the neighborhood is packed with people everyday in the morning and the late afternoon. It would be somewhat hard for us if we were to adapt to this new environment in Seattle's Chinatown. I feel that Seattle's Chinatown is a quite pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, with its respective street designs and some greenery around the neighborhood. Similar to SF's, I feel that Seattle's Chinatown provides a warm welcoming feeling to its visitors. Overall, I feel that Seattle's Chinatown is lacking the prosperity that many of us need and which is already used to in our own city, but despite that it is a warm and welcoming community! After visiting the Wing Luke Museum, we went to explore the International District. We walked into several stores and places, including a book store and the Uwajimaya supermarket. We also decided to eat hot pot for dinner on a very hot day and experienced the Boiling Point in Seattle together. Our final stop for the first day of the trip was the well-known Seattle Space Needle in which we travelled to the top of the building with a 41 second elevator ride. The Space Needle is a spectacular observation landmark that allows people to view the city from all different angles since it is a 360 degrees platform. We stayed at the Space Needle from around sunset until the night. Seeing the city transforming from daytime to nighttime was a very nice experience to observe the city from high above. Enjoying the beautiful and grand scenery from the highest point in the city of Seattle was a great way to end our day! - Shirley Tsang This is my first time in Seattle and it was fun. Today we heard and learned a lot of the history and stories in the Chinatown community of Seattle, and many of these relate back to cultural and individual identities. So it brings us the the questions of "what does it mean to be an American" and "why is it so hard to accept a different ethnicity?"
From the past to the present, a lot of people immigrated to America to seek better opportunities or to chase the American Dream but what they find here is the American nightmare. When they first arrived at the shore, they see an unfamiliar sight and they were faced with discrimination and segregation. So, with the constant oppression, the only option they had was to form their own community by banding together to create a family association, to defend themselves and in the process, assimilate and adapt to American culture. The problems that both Chinatown face is gentrification and the difference between the community is Seattle's Chinatown is not only Chinatown but it consist of other ethnicities and communities; also known as the International District. San Francisco Chinatown is a mixed of tourism, grocery shopping, and residential. Also, in the alleyways of SF's Chinatown, it is more vibrant and lively compared to Seattle's because San Francisco's Chinatown alleyways are back doors to many people's homes, playground for kids, and shortcuts. Therefore, the life and character of each Chinatown is different but the reason of its creations are similar. -Lisa Yu I would say I went through two rude awakenings today. I stayed at David Trang's house on the day prior to the trip, and let me tell you: i was freezing on his couch. To make things even better, at 4:00 in the morning, I got woken up abruptly oblivious to my surroundings and I get urged out of the house. Great start to the day.
The airplane ride, I would say, went extremely well until I encountered my second rude awakening. I slept through a majority of the plane ride, though I was somewhat conscious during the descent. Still, I managed to fall asleep and I was starting to enter the dream world when suddenly: BOOM. Until then, I have never been asleep during landing and it is not pleasant. At all. Sleep is good for you friends. I must say, we entered Seattle on a good day. Their transit system seemed to be going through renovation, and the 97 shuttle bus was deployed as a temporary band-aid. Great news for us—it was free and got us, for the most part, where we needed to go. Our first destination is none other than the Chinatown-International District, home to the spectacular Wing Luke museum. We were given a tour of the museum by John, a rather upbeat fellow that lifted up my mood. Seattle's I.D. Is surprisingly similar to SF's Chinatown. Many of the struggles that we faced have also been faced at one point by Seattle's I.D. Discrimination against both communities led to the formation of Family Associations as a defense mechanism. I'm not too sure about the prevalence of I.D's Family Associations today though, especially in comparison to SF's. There's a lot of other similarities between the I.D. and SF's Chinatown but before I get carried away, I must note that the I.D. represents a huge array of races and ethnicities. The majority of the population is Chinese, but there is also a significant Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, White, and Black population. International District is truly an "International District." What struck me the most during the tour is Yick Fung Co, an import/export shop created with the purpose of benefiting the Asian-Canadian people. Many Canadian immigrants were left in bad condition after their journey, as tickets were awfully expensive. Effectively, Yick Fung Co. worked as a Steamship agent. There are many other parts of the tour, but I can't talk about all of them for a plethora of reasons. From what I have seen, SF's Chinatown seems extremely similar to ID in terms of historic struggles, but the outcome of these struggles are quite different. Just take a look at both of them at 10:00am, the difference is unreal(I'll gradually explain this in my future blogs). Anyway, the rest of the day was smooth sailing. We visited the Seattle Space Needle and the view is beyond spectacular. That's all I have for today. McDonalds count - 4 -David Yi Day 1
For our first day on our trip, we were considerably busy. The minute we got there, we went through a maze of transit, transferring from one to another. Although we were incredibly tired from waking up early for the plane, checking into our hostel, and everything else, we still wanted to learn more about their Chinatown or to be more precise the International District. There, we were provided an amazing tour from a young tour guide from the Wing Luke Museum. He brought us from historical shops to historical figures to historical alleyways throughout the historical neighborhood. During the tour, the one thing that, really, stood out to me was the large emphasis of Family Association in the neighborhood. These Family Association provided housing, community organizing, and many more things for the community. They were a large influence in the both the neighborhood and the city itself. They were so prominent that even the late, Dr. Sun Yat Sen came to visit in hopes of raising awareness of the Civil War back in China, but now today, they do things like provide scholarships for students, held banquets for holidays, rent tour buses for Qing Ming, and things on that scale. Seattle’s Family Associations are very similar to ours in San Francisco. They were both very important organizations in the development of their respective neighborhoods. Like our Consolidated Benevolent Association, they both did community advocacy, help be a political body for the community, and provide help for the community itself. The International District was able to be protect itself against a series of attacks of gentrification through the Family Association, and our San Francisco Chinatown continues to preserve itself through community organizations like Chinatown Community Development Center. The International District built-environment is very much different from San Francisco’s Chinatown. Unlike how our streets are crowded and cramped, their streets are wide and empty. Also, the alleyways of the International District is considerably underused compared to our Chinatown's alleyways. This probably is due to the neighborhood being deemed a historical neighborhood, which helped allowed the neighborhood be kept where it is and people in it, but at the same time stopped the neighborhood from improving and changing its building and infrastructure causing it to be stopped in its tracks. Making a historic neighborhood in itself is double edge sword where the neighborhood’s infrastructure can’t be improve easily without a good amount of paperwork, but at the same time it helped the neighborhood stay where it is. Although the International District is actually a smaller neighborhood, in both population and size, compared to SF Chinatown, it and our Chinatown still went through similar problems of encroachment but through community organizing, each neighborhood survived and continues to strive. Each going on its own different path with different choices. -David Trang |
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