{"id":236257,"date":"2021-04-27T02:13:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T23:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/chinatown-struggles-to-recover-amid-anti-asian-violence\/"},"modified":"2021-04-27T02:13:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T23:13:03","slug":"chinatown-struggles-to-recover-amid-anti-asian-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/chinatown-struggles-to-recover-amid-anti-asian-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"#Chinatown struggles to recover amid anti-Asian violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Chinatown struggles to recover amid anti-Asian violence<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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New York City\u2019s restaurant business may be roaring back to life, but Chinatown continues to struggle \u2014 thanks to rising anti-Asian crimes and a still-sagging tourism industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could throw a bowling ball down the middle of Chinatown and not hit anyone,\u201d said Wellington Chen, executive director of Chinatown\u2019s Business Improvement District and the Chinatown Partnership LDC.<\/p>\n

The neighborhood\u2019s woes come as Asians get stomped on, pummeled and tossed into buildings unprovoked across the Big App<\/a>le. It\u2019s a spate of violence that\u2019s only adding to Chinatown\u2019s troubles because restaurant workers are afraid to be out at night, or even to ride the subway.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the restaurants are telling their workers to leave early, and to travel<\/a> in pairs for safety,\u201d said Chen. <\/p>\n

Chen says even he feels \u201clucky to be alive\u201d after a stranger stabbed a fellow pedestrian with an eight-inch knife as he was walking down the street near Columbus Park, the center of Chinatown\u2019s social<\/a> life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guy ran up from behind \u2026 sprinting fast like an ice skater,\u201d Chen said of the February incident. \u201cHe stabbed the man in Paradise Square, where (Martin) Scorsese shot \u2018Gangs of New York,\u2019\u201d Chen said of the area also known as Five Points.<\/p>\n

The victim survived but lost a kidney. \u201cHe was in his early 30s, with a fianc\u00e9e. His life hadn\u2019t even started yet,\u201d Chen said. \u201cIt was gut-wrenching \u2014 a life-changing event for no reason. The police didn\u2019t call it a hate crime. But how can you come into Chinatown with an eight-inch knife and not be premeditated?\u201d<\/p>\n

The rising violence combined with a continued lack of tourists citywide is just the latest punch in the gut to Chinatown, which also cleared out earlier and faster last year amid fears that the coronavirus had originated in China. The resulting damage is already having a lasting impact on the historic Manhattan neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\"Exterior
Unlike other parts of New York City, business at Jing Fong never really picked up again.<\/figcaption>
Erik Pendzich\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jing Fong \u2014 a third-generation eatery famous for its traditional dim sum carts, its massive three-story space and its unionized workforce \u2014 is downsizing after more than a year of struggle.<\/p>\n

It will close its once-thriving 800-seat location for good on May 31 and move to a smaller space that seats just 125 people in late June, Claudia Leo, Jing Fong\u2019s marketing director told Side Dish exclusively.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s smaller than the 150-seat location it started when it was founded with on Elizabeth Street in 1978. \u201cThe larger space was unsustainable. We finally gave up,\u201d Leo lamented.<\/p>\n

\u201cChinatown relies on tourism. Without it, none of the restaurants can sustain themselves,\u201d Leo added.<\/p>\n

Jing Fong, the city\u2019s largest Chinese restaurant, first closed its doors last March \u2014 even before Gov. Cuomo ordered restaurants close shop \u2014 because people were avoiding Chinatown at the time. It reopened in late June 2020, at first just for take-out and delivery. But unlike other parts of NYC, business never really picked up again.<\/p>\n

More than one-third of the neighborhood\u2019s 312 restaurants have permanently closed since last year, according to Chen. And the numbers are only expected to worsen when landlords are allowed to start evicting tenants again, he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, locals complain that it\u2019s unclear what the city\u2019s public officials are doing to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need more support on the government level,\u201d said Johnny Liu, owner of Chinatown\u2019s second biggest restaurant, the Golden Unicorn, speaking through his son Darren Liu. \u201cWe get no money for arts and tourism even though we bring in taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liu noted that when he walks through the neighboring Lower East Side, its outdoor dining areas and sidewalks are bustling with life. But walk a few blocks south to Chinatown \u2014 especially in the evening \u2014 and it almost looks as though the city were still under lockdown mode.<\/p>\n

\"Customers
Jing Fong, the city\u2019s largest Chinese restaurant, first closed its doors last March.<\/figcaption>
New York Post<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even with indoor dining capacity up to 50 percent, Golden Unicorn, also famous for its traditional dim sum carts, is still only generating just 10 percent to 20 percent of its pre-pandemic revenues, Liu said. By contrast, other city restaurateurs have boasted to Side Dish of bouncing back to 80 percent or more of their pre-pandemic sales.<\/p>\n

It appears to be part of a larger problem, according to a recently released report recently by the New York Federal Reserve and AARP, which found that Asian American businesses did worse than all other businesses during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Around 90 percent of small businesses run by Asians lost revenue in 2020, compared to 85 percent of Black Americans businesses; 81 percent of Hispanics-owned businesses, and 77 percent for whites.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, city officials allocated $35 million for small businesses in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color \u2014but left out large swaths of Chinatown.<\/p>\n

Mayor de Blasio last week announced another plan to offer $155 million to help small business recovery and job training \u2014 but nothing that specifically targets Chinatown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need grants and loans specifically for the Chinatown community,\u201d Leo said.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Chinatown struggles to recover amid anti-Asian violence” New York City\u2019s restaurant business may be roaring back to life, but Chinatown continues to struggle \u2014 thanks to rising anti-Asian crimes and a still-sagging tourism industry. \u201cYou could throw a bowling ball down the middle of Chinatown and not hit anyone,\u201d said Wellington Chen, executive director of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/04\/chinatown-restauarnts-struggle1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[103458,51543,70344,22512,71970],"class_list":["post-236257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4-26-21","tag-chinatown","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-restaurants","tag-side-dish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}