Chinatown and me
Chinatown is my home. On Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights, the smell of fortune cookies baking fills the air, lingering on my balcony and permeating the screens of my windows. On off days, Hainanese Chicken Rice floats south down Wentworth from the Malaysian restaurant. Neither of these scents proves Chinese in origin, and nor is that of the fresh basil and oregano I’m chopping to make Calabrese potato salad. But I am less likely to pass as the typical Chinatown inhabitant than the Malaysian chef or the South Asian fortune cookie factory worker.
Each morning on my way to work, I pass the neighborhood elders doing Tai Chi and then a navy van with two Polish men selling black market cabbage, onions, garlic, celery and a fruit of the day. They unload the produce directly onto the sidewalk, celery leaves touching the sidewalk cement, which without a doubt has been violated by neighborhood dogs, cigarette butts and rats. They have no regard for the Chinese who buy their produce. Prices are noted gruffly with the universal hand-number system. Just before 10 a.m., the Polish men return to their Polish neighborhood at Archer and Pulaski or any of the many other Eastern European neighborhoods on the north side of Chicago.
But I am already home, although many Chinese neighbors eye me in confused or sometimes resentful stares as I get out of my car and walk up to my building. My Volkswagen parked among a sea of Toyotas. “She doesn’t belong here.”
Cannoli made with wonton wrappers!?!
But I do. Four blocks away from where I live is the building in which my grandfather and his family lived when they left Sicily decades ago. Two great grandparents, their ten children, and eventually their children’s children in that old brick building. A little to the north was where my grandmother and her parents migrated to, but is now 90/94 highway. Within Chinatown was, and in some places still is, a thriving Sicilian and Calabrese (a southern province in Italy) community, but most Chicagoans have no idea it exists.
And why should they? Chicago is one of the nation’s most segregated cities and everyone knows that Italians live on Taylor Street, North Harlem and Cicero, not Chinatown. Ethnic groups have no reason or desire to mix with each other, at least that is the stereotype. And so Little Calabria remains a secret.
My favorite windy town
People who visit Chicago rave about the cuisine and its ethnic diversity. Ethiopian, Cuban, Dutch, Filipino, Italian, Jewish, Moroccan, Persian, Polish, Columbian, Mexican, Japanese—the takeout menu list can extend as long at the Great Wall. But try having three of these different cuisines in one day and besides indigestion, you’ll also have to fuel up the gas tank again. That’s because all of these different cuisines, with the exception of the trendy hotspots, are all in intricately segregated neighborhoods that may border each other, but never cohesively intercept each other.
However, I’m an example of an intercepted, intersected neighborhood. My Italian mother married my Lithuanian father. I am a violation of these segregated neighborhoods and therefore don’t belong in one, along with the rest regular “white” Chicagoans. But I’ve never felt like a regular Chicagoan, having a family with a few different customs, values and traditions. But nevertheless, I remain a yuppie on the cusp of gentrifying Chinatown. Perhaps the glares and stares are warranted. My building, at the very center of Chinatown, is flooded with Patels, Smiths, Lapinskis, Giovanottis, Santos, Chins, Fosters—a melting pot of urban professionals, who represent a world outside of what should be inside Chinatown. We live here because it is close to the lake, downtown and two major universities, not because we need to live close to others who speak our language, share our customs, traditions, religions and imported foods. We don’t belong here, and should our friends find out what a great place this is to live, we’ll together wipe out the culture of Chinatown altogether.
It could happen, and has to Little Italy on Taylor Street, the African-American community on Maxwell Street, a Mexican community in Logan Square and Pilsen—the list goes on. Urbanization is wiping Chicago clear of its strong ethnic roots. In fact, a study by Migration Policy Institute has shown that in Chicago, a new trend among immigrants is already occurring, suburbanization. New immigrants are making the suburbs their homes now more than ever, finding more support from the community and civil programs than in the city. The rising costs for city housing due to more than a decade-long trend of urbanization may also be a key factor. The city is on the verge of becoming as bland and soulless as a mini-mall with a Panera, Best Buy, Anne Taylor Loft and Starbucks—the kind you can find in any American city, the kind that makes you forget where you are because you could be anywhere.
The winds of celery
But what would happen if the segregated ethnic neighborhoods did more than grudgingly purchase celery from each other and united to battle the common enemy, the young urban professional? What would happen if they decided to live with each other instead of next to each other? If my great grandmother could make a cannoli shell out of a wanton wrapper, perhaps anything is possible.
In a recent project with my husband to create a family tree, I studied the areas in Italy from where my family had lived, and I asked questions regarding my Lithuanian family. It turns out that the area in Calabria from where my grandmother migrated was once heavily populated by Turks to the east and Greeks to the west. In fact, one hundred miles from her village is a town, the only town in the world, where Ancient Greek is still spoken. On my Sicilian side, men and women share a common disease that is only found among sub-Saharan Africans. I was told that my grandfather was not Lithuanian, but in fact Russian, and that his father had simply escaped Russia to Lithuania, thusly showing origin of country as Lithuania at Ellis Island. This begins to blur the definitive line of the origins of my genes.
I’m quite sure the line blurs even more, and yet at the same time becomes clearer. The Genographic Project sponsored by National Geographic and IBM, is a study being conducted to find the origin of DNA and how it populated the planet, including migratory patterns. Anyone can participate to contribute samples of DNA and in return, find out the origins of the DNA. Some participants have been surprised to find that their DNA origin extended much further than just two generations back. For instance, an Irish-American man could find that his DNA is derivative of a small tribe in Africa or India.
One in the same wrapper
I’ve decided to take the test, and am still waiting for my results. In the meantime, I’m beginning to realize that it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll find that my DNA can be traced back to China, that I do belong here in Chinatown officially, and that I am not a yuppie invading the culture of a tightly knit ethnic group. But perhaps some of my Chinese neighbors may have DNA linked to Italy or Russia. It doesn’t really matter, and perhaps a wonton wrapper is the same thing as a cannoli shell…
-Jill Dudones, the honeybird herald contributing writer
Chicago, USA, April 2006