Chicago’s Chinatown

On Friday, September 9th, Will, Dominic, and I explored Chinatown, making note of 8 specific landmarks and monuments.

We got off the Red Line at the Chinatown stop and then visited the landmarks in the order listed.

The Nine Dragon Wall

Right as we walked out of the train station we were greeted by the Nine Dragon Wall, an ornate, approximately 20ft long wall unsurprisingly depicting 9 dragons (above).¹ Oddly, the wall is surrounded by a small metal fence and is not connected to anything other walls. This causes me to believe that the wall is primarily a tourist attraction and serves no practical purpose, since what good is a wall if it cannot keep anyone out (or in)? Even if the wall is not useful as a wall, the detail of the art on and above the wall is impressive.

Reading the plaque in front of the wall tells me that this wall “is the resemblance of the one in Beihai Park in Beijing.” Okay, this begins to explain why this wall is here. It’s not a shock to me that Chinatown would have monuments similar to those in China. A closer reading of the plaque reveals that “the emperors of Ming and Qing dynasty built the Nine Dragon Walls to show off the supremacy of the imperial power.” This is exactly what I was hoping to see. The wall is not supposed to be useful as a wall. The wall’s utility is in its magnificence. The original Nine Dragon Walls show off how great China is, this wall shows off how great Chinatown is, making the Nine Dragon Wall the perfect monument to see when just entering Chinatown.

Chinatown Gate

From the Nine Dragon Wall, you can just see the Chinatown Gate, which pleasantly reads “Welcome to Chinatown.” I think it is interesting how the Chinese Community Center labeled this spot, at the north end of Wentworth Ave., as the entrance to Chinatown, since Google Maps outline’s Chinatown going much further north.

Regardless of the intention of the gate, Chinatown is definitely busier past the Chinatown gate. Even before walking down the street, I could tell that the stores were nicer and more closely packed. In a sense, walking through the gate feels like stepping through a portal into a different world.

Pui Tak Center

On my first walk down Wentworth Ave., I was so transfixed by all the happenings on the street I missed the Pui Tak Center completely. At least, I thought I did. When looking through my camera roll, I found the photo above. I remember that I took the photo because I was impressed at the level of detail on the building. I didn’t even know what the building was at the time.

The fact that the building stood out to me speaks a lot to the building’s history. The Pui Tak Center was originally the On Leong Merchants Association Building and was designed in 1961 by Michaelsen and Rognstad.² The ideas was to make the building look like traditionally Chinese, but neither Michaelsen nor Rognstad had experience designing Chinese buildings, so they purchased a number of Chinese architecture books for inspiration. The resulting building depicted “a Westerner’s reinterpretation of Chinese architectural forms” and did “not include many purely Chinese structural concepts or decorations.”³

To me, the building looks plenty Chinese, but that is just the issue. I have never been to China nor do I know anything about Chinese architecture, so my idea of how “Chinese” something is is based off of the Western depiction of China in media. The Pui Tak Center is a beautiful building, but it is not Chinese.

South Wentworth Avenue

Wentworth Ave. was busy. I could have walked up and down the street 20 times and still not have seen everything. It was also more crowded than I expected for it being 11:00am on a Friday; every store had people going in and out of it. What initially caught my eye was how nearly every store had a sign written in both Chinese and English, like in the image below:

At first I thought this was a gimmick, that it was to sell the “Chinese” atmosphere to tourists, but I have since changed my mind. Walking around the town, I heard many people speaking Chinese, so the sign’s can’t be completely useless if at least some people know Chinese. What really convinced me though, was seeing hand written advertisements in Chinese with no English translation, like this:

I don’t speak Chinese, but the formatting of this text (header, body, phone number) gave me the idea what it was an advertisement. User Moricrosis on Reddit translated this and told me that it says that Lung Kee Fried Dumplings is selling some of their equipment. It would be ridiculous for someone to post this advertisement in a place where a majority of the people didn’t speak Chinese. Therefore, the Chinese signs are not just for show, they serve a useful purpose for the Chinese speaking population.

Chinese-American Museum

We stumbled upon the Chinese-American Museum before we realized what it was. We were exploring some side streets and saw two huge statues posted outside a building (pictured above). These caught our attention and it wasn’t until we took pictures of them that we realized we were right out front of the museum. As we approached the doors, a man opened them and very enthusiastically welcomed us in. I had never seen someone so excited to see us. He had us sign in and sent us up stairs to the main exhibit.

Upstairs, we were ushered into a small theater and told to watch a 16 minute movie about Chinatown. I had low expectations for the movie because I have seen plenty of uninteresting museum videos, but this video blew me away. The video talked about living in Chinatown, how people immigrated there, and the Chinese Family Association, but when it mentioned certain things, different parts of the behind the movie screen would light up, magically revealing a hidden display.

The rest of the museum was informational, but very much like any other museum. Sadly, I usually don’t care much for museums, so I lost interest pretty quickly, but I still appreciated the museum for the historical site that it was.

Chinatown Square

Chinatown Square was my least favorite stop on our excursion, most because it felt very familiar. Walking around the shops felt a lot like walking around the outdoor malls back in my hometown. The shops here felt much more commercial than the ones on Wentworth. There were stores that I had heard of before, such as T-mobile. The whole square also seemed like there was a big attempt to make it feel Chinese, similar to the feel of the Pui Tak Center. This causes me to believe that the Chinatown Square is mostly a tourist attraction for people looking for “Chinese architecture” and stores.

I did learn that my Chinese zodiac is the Tiger though:

Ping Tom Memorial Park

It was quite a walk to get to Ping Tom Memorial Park, but it offered a nice reprieve from the busy Chinatown environment. The park offered open, grassy areas that would not be possible in the city because of how closely the buildings are packed. There was a park for children to play on and a water taxi stop. Overall, there was not much impressive to the park, but contrasted with the claustrophobic city it seemed massive. The river was probably once a great asset for the park and for Chinatown, but it seemed pretty barren when I was there.

The (New) Chinatown Library

The Chinatown library was the final stop on our adventure, and it was a fairly nice one. We got confused earlier in the day because we saw a building labeled “Chinatown Library” down Wentworth, but upon further inspection there was a sign posted which noted that the library would be relocating in 2015. It’s 2016, so we assumed the move had been completed. Once we got to the new library, I was shocked at how nice it was. I saw the building earlier in the day but would have never assumed that it was a library. The facility was pristine, was the book selection was limited. The one major difference between the Chinatown Library and the other libraries I have been to was the number of Chinese books. It makes sense that the Chinatown Library have books in Chinese, but it was not something that I had anticipated.