In 2020, Manhattan’s Chinatown had become a shell of its former bustling self. A new virus was spreading around the world that former President Donald Trump had monikered “kung flu.” That April, CNN reported that 59% of independent Chinese restaurants across the country had stopped credit and debit card transactions, indicating they had gone out of business.
“These are all one-of-a-kind restaurants. These are the heart and soul of America’s communities … for Chinese food,” Grace Young, a James Beard Award winner and cookbook author, told Boston Public Radio on Wednesday.
Young wanted to show people that Chinatown was safe, and that shop and restaurant owners needed support. So on March 15, 2020, she recorded a series of interviews with Chinatown business owners just hours before learning New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to limit restaurants to takeout and delivery service.
“Those interviews changed my life because they were so heartbreaking to hear the owners talk about what they had gone through,” she said.
Since then, Young has become the “accidental voice of Chinatown,” advocating for protecting these historic neighborhoods in cities across the country that have struggled to reopen post-pandemic.
She is teaming up with Chef Joanne Chang, of Flour Bakery and Meyers & Chang, to raise funds for Boston’s Chinatown Neighborhood Center.
Chinatown neighborhoods are full of mom and pop shops selling affordable basics, along with Asian specialties like bok choy and lotus root. They are streets lined with dumpling houses and dim sum dining rooms. But these blocks tell more than one history, she said.
“Before COVID, I would have said Chinatown tells the Chinese American story. And in the middle of COVID, I realized Chinatowns are the American story,” said Young. Manhattan’s Chinatown, for instance, is the location of the first tenement buildings that housed Italian, German, Irish and Jewish immigrants, long before Chinese families settled there.
“So I feel like it’s our patriotic duty to go out there and support them,” she said. There also needs to be legislation that gives small business owners an advantage, Young said.
