46 percent of the four cities\u2019 total population.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI live in Monterey Park. It\u2019s cheaper to live there. And my children can have education from kindergarten to high school without moving,\u201d Liya, who owns a fashion shop in Chinatown, said. In her neighborhood, 8 out of 10 households are Chinese.<\/p>\n
Moving along with Chinese people are the businesses and services. Chinese restaurants, supermarkets, bakeries and KTVs are gathering in West San Gabriel valley, forming a \u201cnew Chinatown\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven many Chinese people here hang out in San Gabriel Valley at night,\u201d Yu said, \u201cSo the stores in Chinatown cannot get so many people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compared to the \u201cnew Chinatown\u201d in West San Gabriel Valley, the restaurants and services in Chinatown have limited choices but higher prices. Many Chinese are reluctant to make purchases here.<\/p>\n
Liya says her customers are mainly Philippines, African-Americans and whites, but she barely has Chinese customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy business is fair. But the shops near me are closing one by one.\u201d Liya said.<\/p>\n
There used to be a shoe store facing Liya\u2019s fashion shop, but now the door is tightly closed. A glimpse through the dusty windows reveal an abandoned mess of shoes and shoe racks.<\/p>\n
Last June, Empress Pavilion, a restaurant popular for dim sum, was evicted from Bamboo Plaza after running for 24 years. The eviction came after a combination of low sales and unaffordable rent.<\/p>\n
Empress Pavilion\u2019s leaving caused a chain of shutdowns in Bamboo Plaza. Now there are only two shops still open on the first two floors.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Chinatown Business Council refused to talk about the current situation in Chinatown and its future development plan.<\/p>\n
Chester Chong, president of Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, thinks to improve the current situation, businesses in Chinatown should be more open-minded to welcome mainstream companies like Wal-Mart, which can bring in more visitors to Chinatown.<\/p>\n
Chong is also working actively with city council members and Chinatown community leaders to develop more parking lots. \u201cWhen you have convenient parking, people will come in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although facing fierce competition with businesses in other Chinese community, Chinatown, Chong said, is the only place that promotes real Chinese culture.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 6 p.m. on a Wednesday, things were desolate outside New Great Wall Books and Culture on North Broadway in Chinatown. In the past half an hour, one customer stopped into the bookstore, buying a 75-cent newspaper. \u201cIt maybe the worst Chinatown in America. I think it\u2019s already in the worst situation. Cannot be worse,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}