The end of Chinatown

Hello intersectional thinkers 👋

Greetings from Milan’s Chinatown!

When a Milanese friend of mine raved about this up-and-coming Italian restaurant near gentrified Chinatown, I knew I had to share this story from a month ago:

Yesterday, I went back to Vancouver’s Chinatown with my mom for the first time in more than a decade.

I hated going to Chinatown growing up. It was loud, dirty, cheap, and the tween me didn’t want to associate my Chinese heritage with that. I probably set foot in the area twice or three times while living in Vancouver.

The Chinatown I saw yesterday was cleaner, quieter, and much more gentrified.

I don’t know why, but I felt a deep sense of sadness.

We went to this herbal medicine shop, one of those traditional ones that reeked with the distinct smell of ginseng, dried seafood, herbs and teas. This time though, the smell was less overpowering. More nostalgic.

As we walked in, two Chinese elderlies walked out from the back. A Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic was attached to this herbal shop speakeasy style. The doctor said her goodbyes to her patients and greeted us with a warm and accented hello.

I don’t know why, but suddenly, all this felt familiar to me. I’ve never been to this shop, but something about the atmosphere was almost homey.

“Do you have some dandelion roots?” My mom asked in Chinese. The doctor signaled to the shop owner and he popped out from behind the counter to explain the two options he had.

My mom decided on one, and added she wanted some licorice roots as well for the herbal brew she had in mind.

The shop owner carefully pulled the dried dandelion roots and licorice out of half open packages, weighed them, and stuffed them into brown paper bags. As he was labeling the bags in Chinese with 蒲公英 and 甘草, he reminded my mom, “Don’t use too much dandelion in one go. It’s quite bitter.”

The bill came out to $3.25. We paid by cash, exchanged our thank you’s, and walked out.

As we walked down the streets of Chinatown, I realized I probably won’t be going to Chinatown with my future kids to get the ingredients for an herbal brew. These conversations about the bitterness of the herbs, this manual process of picking, weighing, and labeling the herbs for a mere $3.25 might end with this generation.

Maybe the next time I come to Chinatown, this shop will have turned into a gluten-free pizzeria, just like the one across the street.