[www.mckinsey.com]

The amazing thing about Lee’s story is that he only lived 32 years, but he crammed so much into that life. He lived ten lives during his 32 years. He began as a child born in the US to parents who were here on work visas. He went back to Hong Kong and almost starved to death.

Lee was a war child. There was war raging in China at that particular time. During Lee’s teen years, Hong Kong was a British colony that was open to refugees fleeing the Chinese Civil War. There was a massive expansion of the colony, and there were a lot of young people.

[documentedny.com]

But revitalizing Chinatown also comes with challenges, including inflation, tariffs and congestion pricing. Silu Chen, a member of Professor Liang’s research team, noted that the tariff war has significantly affected Chinatown’s small businesses. About 38% of owners partially rely on Chinese supplies, and roughly 24% rely primarily on them. More than 75% of surveyed businesses expressed concerns that tariffs could force them to close.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.inquirer.com]

The share of Asian residents living in Philly’s Chinatown is decreasing, says a new report
Gains in population and business have resulted in a decline in the share of Asian residents amid concerns over gentrification and displacement, says Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood has grown significantly over the last decade, but a majority of its gains in population and business have resulted in a decline in the share of Asian residents amid concerns over gentrification and displacement, according to a new report.

And the situation is not unique to Philly, a study from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund found. Its counterparts in New York City and Boston — both also historic Chinatowns — are facing similar pressures.

All three cities’ Chinatowns, in fact, saw declines in their share of Asian residents from 2010 to 2020, the report found. The findings in Philly, meanwhile, come following years of the neighborhood staving off locally planned developments that may have resulted in additional challenges for residents — including the proposed billion-dollar Sixers arena effort abandoned in January after years of heated debate.

“The Chinatown community is no stranger to fighting off large-scale and predatory development,” said the report from the fund, which provided legal support to community groups during the arena saga. “The arena would have devastated the neighborhood, bringing in a renewed wave of gentrifying pressure for residents and competition for local businesses.”

The fund recommends that cities like Philadelphia enact community-focused rezoning efforts to protect their Chinatowns’ cultures from those pressures. But, as the report found, Philly’s Chinatown is already seeing substantial demographic shifts.

For population and race data in 2000 and 2010, the study used the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial census, which conducts a 100% count of the nation’s population. Figures for 2020 were drawn from estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for the five-year period of 2018 to 2022, as the study’s authors cited possible data issues in the 2020 decennial census because of the pandemic and the proposed citizenship question.

An Inquirer analysis that used the decennial census for both 2010 and 2020 shows that Asians remain the largest racial group in Chinatown, with their share of the population falling slightly, from 61% to 57%. White residents’ share of Chinatown’s population grew from 24% to 28%.

Here are three takeaways from the fund’s report:

An older, less Asian population
Between 2010 and 2020, Chinatown’s population grew by 15%, from roughly 5,900 people to nearly 6,800. During that time, much of the growth was driven by an influx of white residents, with that group’s population growing by roughly 76% during that time — and becoming the largest racial group in the area — the report found.

The overall number of Asian residents, however, remained roughly the same — 2,464 in 2010 vs. 2,445 in 2020. That proportion accounted for about 36% of the neighborhood’s population in 2020, decreasing from 42% in 2010. The white population, meanwhile, accounted for 44% of Chinatown’s residents in 2020, compared with 29% in 2010.

As a result, the report notes, the area’s growth can be “entirely attributed” to a rush of non-Asian residents over the last decade covered by the U.S. Census. The proportion of Latino residents also increased significantly between 2010 and 2020, with that group growing by 36%, the report found.

The neighborhood’s population also appears in part to be aging in place, with the number of people 65 and older almost doubling from 2010 to 2020, from 444 residents to 849. Simultaneously, its population of residents up to age 17 decreased by 15% during that time period, and the group ages 18 to 24 decreased by 37%. The group of residents ages 25 to 64, meanwhile, saw a “modest” increase of 22% from 2010 to 2020, the report found.

Higher rent — and home values
As the proportion of Chinatown’s Asian population decreased, its rent costs, house values, and homeownership rates all increased, the report found. House values in Chinatown, in fact, were more than double the citywide median in 2020, standing at more than $491,000 in the neighborhood compared with $236,000 in Philadelphia overall.

Homeownership rates were lower in Chinatown than in the city at large, however, standing at 40% in 2020 compared with 52% citywide. Still, homeownership in Chinatown increased from 31% in 2010 while it fell marginally in the city overall from that year, when it stood at 54%. By comparison, Boston’s homeownership rate in its Chinatown stood at 7% in 2020, while New York’s Chinatown had a 15% homeownership rate that year, the report found.

Rent in Chinatown was also higher in 2020 compared with the rest of the city, the fund’s report found. The neighborhood’s median rent stood at nearly $1,900, while the city’s was about $1,150 that year.

Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, the report found, all saw the “transformation of former warehouses, tenement buildings, or rowhouses into luxury apartments and condominiums” over the last decade. Those developments, the fund noted, “fail to expand the housing supply for Chinatown community members” and contribute to rising rents and displacement of low-income residents.

“Affordable housing is quickly disappearing in Philadelphia’s commercial core,” the fund’s report found.

Largely local business
In total, the study found that 92% of Chinatown’s commercial land parcels were small or local businesses in 2020, with restaurants and retail outlets making up a lion’s share of storefronts. Restaurants were the clear growth leader, increasing in number by 40% from the decade prior.

Nearly all of Chinatown’s restaurants were located south of the Vine Street Expressway, the fund noted. Of those, Asian restaurants dominated the cuisine offered, with most eateries serving Chinese food.

Still, despite the dominance of Asian restaurants in the neighborhood, Philadelphia did observe the largest shift in Asian to non-Asian restaurants of the three Chinatowns examined in the study. Over the last decade, the proportion of neighborhood Asian restaurants decreased from 85% to 62%, while the area’s non-Asian eateries more than doubled from 15% to 38%.

The presence of national chains in Philly’s Chinatown doubled between 2010 and 2020, moving from 4% of all businesses to 8%, the study found. Retail stores, meanwhile, made up about 30% of commercial businesses in the neighborhood in 2020, the largest proportion of which were beauty and hair salons, followed by grocery stores and markets.

Many newer businesses, the study noted, were tailored for younger customers, such as bubble tea and upscale dessert shops, as well as convenience stores that sell snacks rather than groceries — many of which lack indoor dining rooms. That shift may affect older residents, the fund noted.

“As these types of indoor dining rooms disappear, Chinatown elders have fewer options to spend their time in safe and affordable spaces,” the study said.

[www.nature.com]

Overall, the Cantonese listeners outperformed the Mandarin listeners in terms of sensitivity index and accuracy but not response time. The results indicate that Cantonese listeners exhibit superior abilities in discriminating static and dynamic musical pitch compared to Mandarin listeners.

[www.youtube.com]

Toronto’s East Court BBQ owner Jack Tsoi has been perfecting the complex process of Chinese-style whole roasted pig for 30 years. From butchering to boiling to roasting to salting to roasting again, he makes some of the crispiest, juiciest barbecued pig in the area.

[english.news.cn]

Records confirm that within a week of the killings, surviving miners -- joined by others from nearby towns -- returned under military protection and rebuilt more than fifty structures. "They created a functioning neighborhood again," Gardner said. "That tells you everything about courage and endurance."

[asamnews.com]

The volunteers have also been sharing documents filled with food-related resources with their recipients, including where to find other pantries, soup kitchens and food assistance hotlines. In honor of the holiday season, Meals for Unity partnered with other local food pantries and distribution organizations to host a “Community Friendsgiving” event where people were encouraged to join a potluck and non-perishable foods for a pantry drive.

“It really pushed us to see how we can connect people to different resources in the community,” Wu said.

I believe if the women in ShenZhen had learned to be fluent in Cantonese, then they would not end up as leftover women. Old-school traditional Cantonese-speaking mother-in-laws in GuangZhou, Hong Kong, and Macao would much prefer their sons to marry Cantonese-speaking daughter in laws and it doesn't matter if your Cantonese isn't perfect. If you are a single woman in ShenZhen, then it is best for you to learn how to speak Cantonese or stay forever single.

[www.youtube.com]

Shenzhen Becomes the City of Leftover Women.

[www.youtube.com]