Every Swattie, before they graduate, will likely have taken a trip into Philadelphia to grab dim sum and boba in Chinatown. After all, it is one of the many things on THE Swarthmore Bucket List. However, besides grabbing food from Philly’s Chinatown, many students don’t know the troubling past history and current fight for survival of this ethnic community. This was me until I took a First-Year Seminar (FYS) this past spring called Chinatowns: Then and Now with Professor Truong.
As a first generation Chinese American from Richmond, Virginia, I never had the opportunity to explore communities like Chinatown, as there isn’t a big Chinese community where I lived and the nearest one was in Washington, D.C. However, this class piqued my interest, not only as a way to connect with my heritage, but also because of its emphasis on exploring what Asian American community activism looks like in the past, present, and future. Admittedly, I also took this class because it was a first-year seminar that fulfilled a writing credit and I was encouraged by upperclassmen to take such a first-year seminar, if possible.
Each week, we would read journal articles and watch documentaries before class and then come to class prepared to engage in discussion. I loved this class because it taught me how to strategically read/skim (for more information also see Professor of History Tim Burke’s guide on How to Read in College), but also provided an environment where I felt comfortable to share my opinions without being judged, as the class was made up of twelve first-years. I also watched movies including Lucky Grandma, an indie film shot in NYC Chinatown about an 80-year-old grandma who attempts to escape the Chinese mafia after accidentally taking a bag of cash on a trip to a casino (like, seriously, when else are you going to watch this?!). Most importantly, however, this class also taught me how to seek help. Professor Truong, an absolute gem in the History Department, had office hours every Tuesday from 1-3pm. Whether I needed assistance brainstorming for a paper, revising my thesis, or just wanted to talk about my life, I went to office hours pretty much weekly. One of the biggest misconceptions that I debunked this past semester is that people think you have to go into office hours to talk about academics, but, in reality, professors are humans too and they want to get to know you!
This class changed my entire outlook on where and what purpose Chinatowns serve. On our first day, Professor Truong had us write down what words or images we associated with Chinatowns and we wrote words like dim sum, gates, tourism, crowded, dirty, crime, and poverty, many of which are just stereotypes. However, when we repeated this exercise on the last day of class, we described Chinatowns as resilient, surviving, transformative, adaptive, activists—words that were no longer tangible, but instead deal with the history of this ethnic neighborhood and its ability to continue existing into the future in the face of gentrification and modernization. It’s also hard to define Chinatown itself. We often think of a gate with dragons engraved on it as the physical marker, but a Chinatown can be identified through its preserved language, shared culture, community, and history. They exist in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, but also exist globally in places like Havana, Cuba and Johannesburg, South Africa. The most important thing I learned from this class is the fact that we should never take ethnic communities like Chinatowns for granted, as their existence is constantly threatened by external forces including local, state, and federal governments.
Overall, my first-year seminar experience is one that I will always cherish. Not only for the small class size and the hard and soft skills it taught me, but also for the hands-on experience. At the end of this class, we took a class trip to Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Through meeting with a community organizer at Asian Americans United and just walking around Chinatown itself, I recognized all the landmarks mentioned in our readings. This trip truly humanized the experiences of Chinatown residents, shedding light on the voices that are often forgotten or suppressed. Moreover, I took away from this class the resilience and activism within the broader Asian American community throughout history, whether in the fight for labor movements, social rights, or environmental justice. When I now go to Philadelphia’s Chinatown to grab boba or dim sum with friends, I am much more aware and appreciative of the rich history that exists well beyond the walls encompassing Chinatown.
