New Year’s Isn’t the Same in New York’s Chinatown

The narrow streets will be jammed with cars today and the festive Lion Dance Parade will again lure huge crowds into lower Manhattan as New York’s historic Chinatown celebrates New Year’s.

But appearances are deceiving in a community that was devastated by the Sept. 11 attacks. Thousands of workers who live here lost their jobs after the nearby twin towers fell and businesses closed. Phone service has yet to be fully restored and tourism has fallen off dramatically.

Despite a slight economic rebound, some observers fear that growing pressure to convert failing businesses into upscale offices and condominiums may eventually turn New York’s Chinatown into an ethnic theme park like Little Italy--a tourist destination that was once a gritty, vibrant neighborhood where immigrants lived and worked.

“We all tend to feel hopeful at the New Year celebration, because it may bring us new signs of life,” said Paul Lee, whose family has run the 32 Mott Street general store since 1891. “But business is so bad, I might not be here next month. The front door could be locked soon. Right now, I think every business, every employee in New York’s Chinatown is vulnerable.”

More than 100,000 jobs were lost in New York after the attacks, most of them low-income positions in the apparel, hotel and restaurant businesses, according to a study by the New York-based Fiscal Policy Institute. Many lower Manhattan communities suffered huge economic setbacks after Sept. 11, but Chinatown’s troubles were unique.

In addition to driving out tourists, the attacks disrupted a fragile economy in Chinatown--an insular world where residents patronized local stores and each segment of the community helped support the others.

Factory workers shopped in a local grocery; the travel agency owner dined in a neighborhood noodle shop. All were linked, and if this chain ever broke, it could destroy Chinatown’s identity as a bona fide neighborhood, according to Benjamin Warnke, director of the Renaissance Economic Development Corp., which is spearheading revival efforts.

The interdependent economy has been traumatized, he said, “and some people fear we may never quite put it together again. You might see a large number of businesses begin to close here right after the Lunar New Year.”

Other stores may simply relocate to newer Chinatowns in Brooklyn and Queens. Either way, Warnke said, a community of more than 100,000 people is in danger.

Restaurants, jewelry stores, travel agencies and souvenir shops have been hard hit. But the area’s 250 garment factories suffered the biggest economic blow. Many had to shut down for weeks after Sept. 11, because trucks could not drive through the debris-ridden streets to make deliveries.

More than 12,000 people worked in the factories, and 7,000 lost jobs when their shops closed or laid off a large segment of the work force, according to May Chen, who heads the local chapter of the garment workers union.

“These workers were the economic backbone of Chinatown,” she said. “And it’s not clear how well we can retrain many of them. This is an economic battle that will involve the future of our whole community.”

Many of the displaced garment workers were older Chinese women, a vast majority of whom do not speak English. The factories were losing business to foreign competition long before the terrorist attacks, Chen noted, and it is even harder now to find work for these women in a deepening recession.

Agnes Wong, who worked as a seamstress for 30 years in Chinatown before losing her job on Sept. 11, is trying to improve her language skills in courses offered by UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. But as she pondered her job prospects on a recent afternoon in the union’s Chinatown office, she echoed the sadness of many workers.

“None of us wants welfare,” said Wong, 58. “We want to work. And when you lose your job, you feel hopeless. I think that I have lost my way.”

Merchants on Mott Street, the economic center of Chinatown, offered similarly downbeat views. Although festive red and gold banners for New Year’s hung on storefronts, along with American flags, the mood was grim.

“How bad is business? It’s down 60%,” said Gary Lum, who works in Wing on Wo, an antiques shop. “. . . A lot of shopkeepers worry about simply surviving.”

Once, store owners could count on a huge influx of customers who worked at the World Trade Center and frequently came to Chinatown for lunch.

“Suddenly, the World Trade Center isn’t there, and all of these people are gone,” said Eddie Cheung, a salesman at the Sinotique antique store. “A whole bunch of customers disappears overnight. What do you do?”

As economic woes increased last fall, Chinatown leaders began lobbying federal officials for emergency aid. The U.S. Department of Labor responded with a $1-million grant for job training and worker re-education, and the local agencies administering Operation Jump Start, as it is known, are hopeful that Chinatown will somehow ride out the economic slump.

The program offers businessmen wage subsidies to retrain workers. But it’s hard to hire female garment workers who are 55 and can’t speak English, said David Chen, executive director of the Chinese-American Planning Council, which is helping to administer the grant.

Some predict a troubling future for the community, he said, and as with so many things in Manhattan, it’s all about real estate values.

If the economic crunch worsens, fewer residents will spend money in shops and restaurants, he noted. Shopkeepers will find it hard to pay rents. Soon, property owners seeking a better return on investments will consider turning their downtown real estate into more lucrative condominiums and co-ops.

Gentrification has transformed other lower Manhattan neighborhoods, and Little Italy--directly adjacent to Chinatown--may be the prime example. Once a thriving ethnic enclave, it has been shrinking in size over the years, replaced by shops that, ironically, were part of an expanding Chinatown.

Today, Little Italy is primarily a tourist magnet, with thousands pouring in to visit street fairs, religious ceremonies and restaurants. And some wonder if an economically humbled Chinatown may face the same fate.

These are grave concerns for Paul Lee, whose quiet store is the oldest in Chinatown. But nowadays he has more urgent problems.

“I have to borrow money to pay my bills now, and I’m holding off creditors as best I can,” he said. “I ask for extensions every week.”

As he spoke, an elderly Chinese woman came into the store waving a telephone bill. Ping Chow Chai’s service had yet to be restored, five months after the attacks, and she asked Lee to call the phone company for her.

“I’m tired of playing the victim, because after a while you don’t want to get out of bed,” he said. “But you know what? We’re victims here.”