Chinatown’s Street Sign Honors Chinese Americans Who Died on 9/11
In their lives, generation after generation of Chinese Americans spent most of their leisure time in Columbus Park, and Zeng Zhe could have been one of them.
But Zeng’s life ended on September 11, 2001, just like the other 2,996 people who perished on the fateful day of the terrorist attacks.
Zeng could have survived, but he chose to save others’ lives than his.
According to the New York Times, the first plane hit the North Tower as he was starting his workday. At that time, he was the assistant treasurer in the depository receipts division of the New York Bank, and he could have stayed in his office at Barclay Street, three blocks away from the World Trade Center.
Zeng, also a former Brighton Volunteer Ambulance member and emergency medical technician, collected his first aid supplies and dashed to the scene to help other rescue workers.
A Fox TV News cameraman captured his final moments. The footage showed that he was comforting people. Then, the tower fell.
It can be hard for people from another country to work in Wall Street, the heartland of the American financial service industry. But Zeng did it. He came to the U.S. only at the age of 16, but managed to get into the University of Rochester and graduate with a master’s degree. Many people would be proud of him.
Peggy Farrell, Zeng’s supervisor said in a post-9/11 interview with the New York Times that what he did didn’t surprise anybody who knew Zeng. “He was a completely selfless person — he was just someone who would automatically volunteer his assistance,” Farrell said to the New York Times. “To me, it was a truly heroic display.”
According to Voice of America, at the commemoration one year after, members from the Chinese Community Center proposed a motion to rename one block of Bayard Street near Columbus Park. Oliver Tan, the assistant to the New York governor, said in his speech that people would never forget Zack Zeng’s readiness to come to others’ aid and to sacrifice himself in the face of risk.
The city passed the motion in 2004, with the joint effort from Zeng’s mother, Jiao Xian Cen, his friends, and his colleagues. Along with the Zhe Zack Zeng Way, several hundred street signs throughout New York City memorialized the civilians and first responders the city lost that day. Twenty years later, Cen declined to talk about her son’s death.
Twenty years is also long enough for Zeng’s “heroic display” to fade out the picture. The retail food store at the intersection of Bayard Street and Mulberry Street opened in 2009, and the Yin Ji Chang Fen restaurant on the opposite corner of the street moved in after the epidemic. More and more newcomers arrived at the neighborhood; no one put flowers under the roadsign on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Barely anyone remembers Zeng. Elder people in Columbus Park confused him with another person with the same name, and pedestrians on the street didn’t know how meaningful the street sign is.
“I walked past this road almost every day, but I don’t know this part of history,” said Shunhui Liu, a local student. “Knowing it now, however, I think every time when I walk through this block, this young man’s name will come to my mind.”
