Between the streets of Vine and Arch rests a community born over 150 years ago.
From the hot and gooey sesame buns at Canto House to the dingy old pool hall behind the urgent care—covered by a waft of cigarette smoke with the sound of poker chips hitting the table in the background, the neighborhood continues to leave a unique imprint on the city.
Families have lived and worked in the neighborhood for generations. John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), the leading local development company in Chinatown for the past 50 years, is one of them.
“I had the good fortune to grow up in Chinatown, live in a community that is majority Chinese versus growing up in a community outside of Chinatown where one who’s Asian or Chinese looks like a minority and actually feels like a minority,” he says. His family moved to Chinatown in the '60s, finding a handful of other people from their village back home to help them settle down.
This is a common story for Chinatown residents. These types of connections have helped them find housing and jobs for the past century and a half and are key to the neighborhood’s resilience. “I think that’s that one special thing about Chinatown,” he says. “It provides people with this level of confidence that you can’t get outside of Chinatown. And I think that’s why there’s such a visceral feeling when Asians feel like Chinatown is threatened because Chinatown is a place where we can tie our roots and our identity and no one will bother us.”
To Chin, Chinatown is more than home. It stands as an example of the Chinese immigrant experience and their resilience in the face of outside oppression, be it urban renewal or corporate development projects. For him and many other Chinatown residents, the neighborhood’s existence has felt constantly threatened, over and over again.
Two summers ago, another proposition came: “Philadelphia 76ers propose move to new Center City arena at Fashion District, called ‘76 Place.’” The proposition would level the Fashion District and practically kill Chinatown, just like the Capital One Arena did to Washington, D.C. Chinatown residents and supporters were furious, having seen countless other attempts at their fate since the '60s—including a proposed baseball stadium and casino—both of which they successfully kept out.
PCDC has worked for the past 50 years to ensure stability and progress for its almost 300 businesses and more than 3,000 residents. From its birth in response to the Vine Street Expressway project—which boxed in the neighborhood and threatened its existence—to the baseball stadium proposal at the beginning of Chin's tenure with the company, the company has been kept busy by invasive city developers.
“The problem with urban renewal is that these projects are in the best interest for the City of Philadelphia, not for the community that it’s being placed in,” he says. "Our mantra is ‘planning for the people by the people.’ And that was the biggest challenge we had with the stadium. Same thing with Vine Street Expressway … So Chinatown has, over the last 58 years, been asked to sacrifice for the betterment of the city.”
However, fighting for their existence isn’t their only, let alone primary, goal. Affordable housing, tax assistance, neighborhood and youth programming, historical preservation, community–centered development, and so forth make up PCDC’s work towards not only preserving their community but growing it. Fighting against the arena delayed this work for over two years, draining PCDC and similar organizations of time and money only for the Sixers to strike a new deal with Comcast to stay in South Philly in the end.
“This didn’t need to happen. It is upsetting the amount of resources and money spent. I mean, PCDC spent so many hours in our organization alone,” he says. “We lost a lot of time that we’re never, ever going to get back. All the City Council people, the mayor’s people, all those volunteers and supporters who came out, we don’t get that time back.”
Chin isn’t alone in this sentiment. Co–founder of Asian Americans United (AAU) and community organizer Deborah Wei is similarly upset, but not just about resources.
“I think it was initially a lot of relief, obviously a lot of caution because we don’t know what’s going to be built on that site, so even though it’s not an arena, we’re not out of the woods,” she says in response to the news of the Comcast deal and City Hall’s initial approval of 76 Place. “There’s a lot of celebration but a lot of bitterness … because why waste so much time when we knew all along that these guys will only do what benefits them? They don’t care about the city.”
With the new administration coming in, she feels especially frustrated with the loss of time and resources that could’ve gone towards preparing immigrant communities for President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. "There’s real anger that City Council spent so much time trying to cater to these guys instead of really working on what communities need, and now post inauguration as an immigrant community, we're reeling because of what's happening with immigration, and yet the time we could’ve spent preparing for this, because we knew it was coming, was spent fighting this stupid project that we knew was stupid to begin with.”
Despite Philadelphia’s fairly strong track record as a sanctuary city—a city whose municipal laws work to protect undocumented immigrants, Wei finds the city’s recent treatment of immigrant communities, Chinatown included, worrisome; if the city is truly going to protect our immigrants, she believes it “needs to develop greater understanding and sympathy and support for immigrant communities. I see that lack in say the school district or in other places where it's really important that they provide support for immigrant communities and that that support has not been forthcoming.”
Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration has openly committed to Philadelphia’s status as a sanctuary city. However, the mayor, a Democrat, has been generally silent when it comes to President Trump’s second term. The fear among immigrants in the city is high, and Wei finds it essential that the city continues to help ease that fear, especially after how its treated its largest immigrant community over the past two and a half years.
Despite this set back, Wei finds a ray of light after this hellish experience: “Every time we’ve mounted these huge fights, they have been training grounds. They've been the way that we've been able to train young people to fight for their communities, so I’m almost like 'thank you' to the Sixers and the powers that be because you allowed us to have the opportunity to train our youth up so that they can be ready for the next fight ahead of us.”
The young people she speaks of led much of this fight, many coming from schools like Central High School, Palumbo, and more. Mireya Gutierrez, a sophomore at the Community College of Philadelphia, general manager of the Ginger Arts Center, and co–founder of Students Against the Sixers Arena (SASA), has been a figurehead for them.
Ginger Arts was founded in response to the initial arena proposition by co–leaders and students Kaia Chau and Taryn Flaherty. Mireya joined them the summer of 2023 for the June 10th protest against the arena, feeling that youth voices needed not only to be heard but elevated. Ginger Arts isn’t just about the arena though, Mireya says. “Its main goal is to unite high schoolers from around Philly and surrounding areas, just in solidarity to fight oppression … Now that the arena is settled, the goal still stands, and I think Ginger Arts comes in with a brand new vision for how youth organizing can look like in Philly, because, like, the work is not done for youth at all, like third spaces are still lacking. That's why we opened Ginger Arts.”
Growing up here, the lack of third spaces hit Mireya hard. Chinatown was a beam of light for her, and with Ginger Arts, she and other students from all corners of Philadelphia have a place not only to socialize and have a space away from home, but to get free tutoring, Wi–Fi, snacks, programming, and more. The center is entirely free and open to all students, hoping to reach as many across the city to find home not only at the center but in Chinatown.
“We’re hoping to keep the small business spirit alive,” she says. “With Ginger Arts, we hope to have more youth coming in, maybe local, more from Chinatown, and making sure that all the youth in the city have a safe space to grow not just as leaders, but as students and people, and for Chinatown to keep thriving.”
Once the Comcast deal announcement hit the floor of Ginger Arts, they partied like hell, releasing all the pent–up anger and anxiety the proposition had caused them for the past two years. “We were very happy. But the biggest feeling was definitely relief that, like, we didn’t have to plead with people anymore just to survive … It felt like a weight lifted off our shoulders so that we could do what we really wanted to do, which is love and invest and nourish Chinatown.”
The importance of ‘the small business spirit’ was key to Chin and Wei as well, believing their existence is key to maintaining Chinatown and solving the Market East crisis.
“A silver lining, I think here, is that I think everybody in the city, in the region, better understands the importance of our Chinatown,” Chin says. “For sure from a local standpoint, but also an economic standpoint. We have almost 300 businesses … so I hope we’re better educated about why Chinatown deserves to exist here and that we deserve some resources.”
From the local grocery stores that fueled meals at Wei’s Upper Darby home, keeping her connected to a community she felt far from at the time, to the seafood restaurant I had an awkward meal at with my ex–boyfriend’s mom, the small businesses of Chinatown have found all sorts of ways to impact the lives of Philadelphians. Their maintenance and now promotion through a coalition of efforts to ‘Save Chinatown’ is therefore essential towards reviving Market East.
Wei, who has written extensively on the topic, believes that the only way to save Market East is with small human–scale developments. “Mega–malls are not human spaces, arenas are not human spaces,” she says. “It's small, family–run businesses that sustain families and sustain communities. Those are the things that have longevity, and they’re the exact same thing that has sustained Chinatown all these years. The city would do well to look carefully at the things that made Chinatown work for clues to be successful in the future.”
The multiculturalism behind her solution was key to the success of the arena fight, as they “knew that this fight was not gonna be won without Chinatown, but it also would not be won with only Chinatown,” she says. People from all corners of the city came together to support Chinatown, from those whose primary interests were the survival of the neighborhood to others appalled by the dictatorship of companies over our city officials.
“I think the arena resonated with so many people was not just because it was Chinatown but because it was blatant. It was such a large project and it was so obvious that it was being run through,” Debbie explains. “For a certain number of people, yes, it was ‘let's protect Chinatown,’ but for other people, it was ‘this is not how the government should work.’ And I think that's the part that has to keep staying together because we are not out of the woods yet. We cannot let the city be dictated by private interest.”
A lot can happen between now and the next city election, she says. “People don’t have long memories.” The fight isn’t over just because the Sixers struck a deal with Comcast. The livelihood of Chinatown has been threatened for well over a hundred years, and they’re still far from achieving ultimate security as a neighborhood. And, according to Deborah Wei, they certainly can’t stop now.
So take a stroll through Chinatown the next time you’re in the city, talk to the young man serving you, compliment the elderly woman sitting on a bench in Franklin Square, check out Ginger Arts, and support as many small businesses as you can. Chinatown has gone through a lot, and these past couple of years are a reminder of what we as a city owe to this community that has taken care of Philadelphians for as long as we can remember.
This Sunday, Feb. 2, AAU will be hosting a “No Arena” block party to celebrate Chinatown’s recent success. And so, as citizens of this city, show up and show out this weekend. Dance, eat, and savor the beauty of this community that has worked for so long and so hard to be here.
