{"id":194219,"date":"2025-10-01T07:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T07:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/194219\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T07:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T07:48:10","slug":"a-photographer-traveled-across-north-americas-chinatowns-heres-what-he-saw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/194219\/","title":{"rendered":"A photographer traveled across North America\u2019s Chinatowns. Here\u2019s what he saw"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n In Morris Lum\u2019s photographic archive of Chinatowns, change is the only constant.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wall murals are painted then covered up. Restaurant menus adapt to diners\u2019 evolving palates. Colorful shopfronts fade and are replaced, as family businesses fall victim to rising rents or the disinterest of aging owners\u2019<\/a> children and grandchildren.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat\u2019s the life cycle of a Chinatown,\u201d said Lum, who has spent more than a decade documenting commerce, community and architecture in Asian enclaves across the US and Canada.\n <\/p>\n

\n To date, the photographer has visited over 20 Chinatowns, from Chicago to Winnipeg. His new book<\/a> paints a varied portrait through courtyards, alleyways and community buildings, whether clan associations or methodist churches, that have offered refuge and camaraderie to generations of Asian diasporas.\n <\/p>\n

\n But it is the eye-catching, bilingual facades of restaurants and businesses \u2014 gift shops, bakeries, insurers, reflexologists, florists, grocers, travel agencies and acupuncturists \u2014 that bring the work to life.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a video interview from his home in Toronto, Lum said he \u201creally just wanted to keep a record\u201d of Chinatowns. But his archive serves more than posterity. Often returning to the same sites over several years, he captures real-time visual evidence of shifting migration patterns and demographic trends.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n In one image, a shiny new \u201cK-Beauty\u201d business in Philadelphia stands on what was once the site of a pok\u00e9 bowl and tea bar, a testament to the meteoric rise of South Korean cosmetics. Others show newer storefronts adorned with simplified Chinese characters, not traditional ones, as arrivals from mainland China come to significantly outnumber those from Taiwan or Hong Kong, the source of earlier waves of migration to the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n Elsewhere, shops and restaurants lie dormant or blanketed in graffiti. Several more of the businesses have closed their doors since Lum photographed them. Among them are New York City\u2019s New Golden Fung Wong Bakery, which shuttered in 2024 after more than 60 years in Manhattan, and Vancouver\u2019s Ho Sun Hing Printers, closed in 2014 after more than a century in operation.\n <\/p>\n

\n The circumstances vary. Ho Sun Hing, for instance, reportedly<\/a> struggled to adapt to digital printing. And closures do not necessarily reflect lack of demand (New Golden Fung Wong was replaced by another bakery). There is, nonetheless, an overriding theme in Lum\u2019s photos: gentrification.\n <\/p>\n

\n Given their historic links to trade, Chinatowns<\/a> often occupied downtown locations close to busy ports or densely populated urban centers. These areas have, in many cities, become prohibitively expensive. For family-run businesses, this means higher rents and costlier overheads, as well as the exodus of communities that traditionally patronized them. Then, there are the multitude of other financial pressures facing mom-and-pop stores everywhere, like competition from major chains.\n <\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

\"Another<\/p>\n

\n \u201cJust the other day, a big sign went up saying a McDonald\u2019s is coming in,\u201d Lum said of a property in Toronto\u2019s Chinatown that was refurbished following a fire, before lying vacant amid the city\u2019s stringent Covid-19 lockdown. \u201cThat really speaks to the changing dynamic of Chinatowns.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The pandemic looms large in the recent history of Chinatowns. In her introduction to Lum\u2019s book, author and academic Lily Cho wrote that the outburst of anti-Asian sentiment<\/a>, stemming from the epicenter of the virus\u2019 outbreak in Wuhan, China, showed how the neighborhoods \u201chave served as a place of both refuge and violence.\u201d For many of the businesses Lum documented, mask mandates and takeout-only dining were not only commercially devastating but anathema to what he called the \u201ceasiness of Chinatown\u201d whereby \u201cyou just walk in and know people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe hustle and bustle I remember from when I was a kid was completely gone,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n

\u2018Almost like Disneyland\u2019<\/p>\n

\n Lum\u2019s interest in Chinatowns traces back to his upbringing. Born in Trinidad and Tobago \u2014 to a Chinese Trinidadian father and Macanese mother raised in Hong Kong \u2014 he immigrated to Canada as a child in the late 1980s. His family settled in Mississauga, a west Toronto suburb that, although increasingly multicultural, was predominantly White at the time.\n <\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

\"Pastel<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n On the weekends, Lum\u2019s parents would drive him and his sister into the city\u2019s Chinatown. They ate at banquet-style restaurants and shopped for Asian groceries, which were, then, unavailable in their local neighborhood. But the lure of Chinese-owned businesses was not just practical. It was emotional, too: \u201cMy parents really craved that sense of familiarity that wasn\u2019t really present in suburbs,\u201d Lum recalled.\n <\/p>\n

\n The photographer experiences a similar sense of comfort when entering Chinatowns for the first time \u2014 even in cities he\u2019s never visited before. \u201cThere\u2019s this vernacular in most Chinatowns that, once you come across a restaurant or business that has both languages, you feel like, \u2018Oh, this is a place that I feel familiar with.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Yet he is similarly fascinated by what makes each Chinatown unique. Some sprawl out behind elaborate ceremonial gates, while others quietly integrate with the urban fabric; some are significantly pedestrianized, while others center on major intersections. The oldest date to the mid-19th century, while newer enclaves only cropped up in recent decades or, like Toronto\u2019s, relocated from elsewhere in the post-World War II era.\n <\/p>\n

\"Li<\/p>\n

\"Eastern<\/p>\n

\n Each neighborhood\u2019s identity is, Lum said, informed by its location and history. And this is reflected in the diverse architecture found in his photographs. For every lantern-strewn brick tenement playing into the popular imagination of what Chinatowns looks like (as propagated by movies like \u201cBig Trouble in Little China\u201d and \u201cRumble in the Bronx\u201d), Lum also captures something more prosaic: a nondescript early-\u201890s tower block fronted by a circular moon gate, or Chinese-owned stores jostling for space in a converted Victorian house.\n <\/p>\n

\n The photographer\u2019s favorite Chinatown is, nonetheless, the archetypal one \u2014 San Francisco\u2019s, which although largely rebuilt following the 1906 earthquake was founded during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe density, the way the streets are built and just the amount of people \u2014 you can see the layers of the different architecture that have been placed on top of it,\u201d Lum said. \u201cIt was the first Chinatown I visited in the US and, compared to Canada, it felt almost like Disneyland.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Lum still works in analog film, not digital. Upon arriving at a new Chinatown, he begins by wandering the streets, a simple 35-millimeter point-and-shoot camera in hand. He keeps note of which addresses he\u2019ll return to with his tripod and large-format equipment.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"Mahjong<\/p>\n

\n His approach requires long exposure times, so Lum usually shoots early in the morning before shops and restaurants open. Similarly, his interior images contain only indirect signs of life (or the \u201creminiscence of something that has just happened,\u201d as Lum put it), empty chairs around abandoned mahjong games, for instance, or an ancestral altar recently replenished with flowers.\n <\/p>\n

\n But his wider Chinatown archive is, by no means, people-free. Not featured in his book are portraits and casual shots of friends, shoppers, business owners and community members. Lum always tries to connect with contacts from artistic, photographic and diasporic communities, or local historians and architects, before arriving.\n <\/p>\n

\n It is in these interactions that he, ultimately, finds optimism about the future of North America\u2019s Chinatowns. And, despite the specter of gentrification, his book is littered with success stories. There\u2019s San Francisco\u2019s Li Po Cocktails, the cult favorite dive bar famed for its trademarked Chinese mai tai. There\u2019s The Lingnan, which opened in 1947 and is now Edmonton\u2019s second-oldest restaurant. There are businesses like the Yuen Hop Noodle Company, in Oakland, that have not only endured the decades but overcome a reliance on footfall to become major distributors and wholesalers.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n \u201cA lot of younger people are interested in opening up shops or being in Chinatown, because it brings this sense of familiarity to them, this sense of home,\u201d Lum added. \u201cBut also, there\u2019s this desire to want to build something.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChinatowns: Tong Yan Gaai\u201d<\/a> will be published by DelMonico Books on October 28, 2025.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Morris Lum\u2019s photographic archive of Chinatowns, change is the only constant. Wall murals are painted then covered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-194219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}