By Grace Xue and Tianshu Hu
Medill Reports
In recent years, the food culture and cityscape of Chinatown have gradually changed with the influx of new immigrants, international students and tourists. Along Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue, people walk with boba tea, past long lines of locals waiting to dine at bustling hot pot restaurants.
While Asian populations in some of America’s most prominent Chinatowns have shrunk between 1990 and 2020, Chicago’s Chinatown has kept expanding.
According to the 2022 Census Bureau, there was a recorded 61,475 Chinese residents in the City of Chicago; approximately 32,000 of them reside in neighborhoods including Armor Square, Bridgeport and McKinley Park. In short, the majority of Chicago’s Chinese population lives in the greater Chinatown area, which consists of the Armour Square, Bridgeport, McKinley Park, Brighton Park and Archer Heights neighborhoods..
“We keep trying to sell the concept of greater Chinatown,” said C.W. Chan, former president of the Chinese American Service League and Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. “Usually when people think about Chinatown, [it] is what we call the core area now. For a long time, people didn’t realize Bridgeport actually had more Chinese people; it was the largest population of all other ethnic groups. So, I [would] tell people Bridgeport is Chinatown.”
Amid the demographic shift and dynamic changes in the greater Chicago Chinatown, Medill Reports compiled and analyzed data of census, household and businesses from 2017 to 2022 in the ZIP codes of 60608, 60609, 60616 and 60632, and conducted interviews with community leaders and current Chinese residents.
Navigate to see data visualization of other years at: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/18244345/
Shifting southwest and new tastes
Bridgeport resident Xijian Deng, 65, moved to Chicago from Guangzhou, China, with her husband and daughter in 1993. She said although the core Chinatown area is convenient for living near all the restaurants, Chinese-language schools and Asian grocery stores, the rising property tax and lack of affordable housing have forced an increasing number of Chinese Americans to move southwest – as far as Midway International Airport.
“For us Chinese people, we spend most of our money on buying a house,” Deng said. “More people are buying houses in the southwest, but you can’t get too far away from the core [Chinatown] area. I still want to raise my children with immersion in Chinese culture. Both my daughter and son [are] growing up eating foods in Chinatown and participating [in] the cultural events.”
Historically, Bridgeport has been a white working-class neighborhood, but the Asian population has surpassed white and Hispanic populations in numbers since 2010. In the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, 2017 to 2021, the Asian population accounts for 39% of Bridgeport’s residents, and about 32% of those residents speak Chinese at home.
Why do Chinese people choose to move southwest to Bridgeport and its neighboring areas instead of elsewhere? Chan said “human” and “structural barriers” have been breaking down for the past 30 years following the Chicago Freedom Movement, making Bridgeport less segregated and more welcoming for residents of color.
Bridgeport has become one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. In 2021, the total non-English-speaking population of Bridgeport makes up 53.9% of its total residents, while the greater city of Chicago has a total of 35.2% non-English speakers.
McKinley Park, Brighton Park and Archer Heights, which are predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, have also seen a growing number of Chinese speakers from 2011 to 2021, with a percentage increase of 5.8%, 3.9% and 5.1%, respectively.
Leo Lee moved to Brighton Park from Shenzhen, China, with his parents in 2018. He’s now a senior at the University of Illinois Chicago. Lee said he visits Chinatown about once a month, mostly for food. Dolo, located at 2222 S Archer Ave, is his favorite dim sum place, one he and his family frequent.
As a fluent speaker of Mandarin, Cantonese and Taishanese, Lee said he recognizes more people in Chinatown are now speaking Mandarin and have accents from other regions, such as Szechuan and Hunan, besides Cantonese, compared with when he first moved here.
Clayton Xu, policy manager at Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community (CBCAC), said he also noticed the diversifying accents while conducting community research.
“When we interviewed people who are Mandarin speakers, they said, ‘I feel a bit excluded by the local Cantonese speaking culture,’” he said. “But when we interview a Cantonese-speaking community member, they said, ‘I’m kind of worried about more and more non-local things going on in here,’ So it’s very interesting that even though it’s called Chinatown, there’s still a lot of interesting internal dynamics going on.”
Xu also recognizes the increase of Chinese international students in Chicago changes Chinatown’s demographics and economy, by introducing a young food culture and a more diverse range of Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine and chain restaurants.
“International students are more familiar with consuming franchise stores compared to local stores,” Xu said. “Regarding the taste, that’s something that you cannot change.”
He said he is concerned the new franchised businesses could endanger the local restaurants opened by first-generation immigrants who are “grandpas and grandmas” now and couldn’t find younger family members to carry the torch.
Since last May, Xu has worked with Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development to start the Corridor Ambassador Program, which aims to support more Chinatown small businesses in their operations and encourage visitors to learn more about local shops and services.
Pandemic’s impact on Chicago’s Chinatown
During fall 2020 and winter 2021, the CBCAC collaborated with Simón Weffer, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University, to implement a series of surveys as part of a proposal for grant funding. The survey noted that “Chinatown has been more impacted than some other ethnic neighborhoods because of the negative discourse from [then-President Donald] Trump and other officials at the start of the pandemic.”
According to the Chicago Data Portal, the number of businesses joining the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce dropped from 35 to 17 from 2019 to 2020. In 2023, this number recovered to 25 but has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
One significant obstacle the chamber still faces is securing funding for Chinese immigrant businesses affected during COVID-19. Out of the 18 respondents to the funding follow-up survey, none reported receiving funds from the city of Chicago or any nonprofit organizations.
Xu said another impact Chinatown restaurateurs face after COVID-19 is rising rental costs of retail spaces, especially on Wentworth Avenue and Chinatown Square Plaza, that make it difficult for new businesses to launch successfully.
Higher rents have pushed local establishments out, making way for big franchises that can afford the higher costs, he said.
“Like Paris Baguette and Haidilao, a lot of companies already have a very solid basis in overseas markets. They already have [a] very successful business model, and they come in here and drive the price up,” Xu. said “It’s like a vicious cycle.”
Why Chicago’s Chinatown is expanding
Compared with Chinatowns in other U.S. cities, Chicago’s Chinatown has a unique historical and geographical positioning that protects it from further gentrification. This is largely due to the strategic geographical decision made more than 110 years ago to migrate the neighborhood from its previous downtown hub towards the south.
Chan said as Chinatowns located in the downtown areas in other big cities began to worry about being squeezed out by metropolitan developers, whereas Chicago’s Chinatown has more spatial flexibility.
“We made that one move more than 100 years ago, and then we were able to have some room to grow,” Chan said.
The foresight of expansion possibilities remains today. Around 2000, Chan initiated the Chinatown Centennial to address the needs of the community that existed for more than a hundred years, including a new CTA station, a public library and more recreational facilities.
“Within 10 years we accomplished all of them,” Chan said. “I think that’s the reason why we are getting attention from the nation and why everybody says [that] Chicago Chinatown is so different.”
Another crucial reason Chicago’s Chinatown has continued to expand is due to beneficial policies achieved through by local agencies.
Rebecca Shi, the founding executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), which advocates for federal policies that benefit immigrants, highlighted that nearly 10% of residents in the Chicago Chinatown area are undocumented. However, they are still allowed to get driver’s licenses and have access to health care.
“I know the state had rolled back the health care a little bit, but we hope that they will restore it so that, especially if you’re a senior citizen, and you’ve worked all your life in restaurants or factories, you should be able to get some health care access,” Shi said.
Recently, Chicago Chinatown opened its first DMV, making getting driver’s licenses more accessible, which benefits both documented and undocumented individuals, according to Deng.
“Before that, people who did not know English had to rely on [CBCAC],” Deng said. “They needed one person to drive them to the DMV and another to be their translator. Now, we have the [DMV] office and people who can speak Chinese in that office, which is a big change that would not have happened without us asking for it.”
Advocacy for the benefits of Chinese immigrants reached its peak with last year’s redistricting, which consolidated neighborhoods with the largest Chinese populations into Ward 11, led by Chan and other community leaders.
Redistricting didn’t happen overnight, but rather through decades of hard work. Chan said in 2010 they were able to have nearly 90% of the Chinatown population into one state legislative district.
“Even though [Chinese Americans] only account[ed] for about 20% of that district, we were able to elect the first-ever Asian American or Chinese American state legislator; so that was an achievement,” Chan said.
While the redistricting of Ward 11 consolidates the community efforts of Chinese immigrants, it is just the beginning. CBCAC and Chan continue to educate and encourage residents to advocate for their rights.
“We hope to amplify our voices by motivating people to vote. If there are 50 Chinese immigrants out of 100 residents here, but only two people vote, that won’t make a difference,” Deng said.
Their efforts have already yielded significant results.
“In 2008, we registered over 1,600 new Chinese American voters during that summer. From that point, over a 10-year period, we were able to increase the number of registered voters in the Chinatown area by more than 300%,” Chan said. “These are all significant things that happened to Chinatown that affect who we are, where we are and what we are today.”
Creating a safer and more accessible Chinatown
Despite Chinese Americans’ political voices being amplified, there are still lingering problems in the Chinatown community.
Muhua Gong, a McKinley Park resident, moved from China’s Guangdong province 30 years ago. Gong said she wishes there were more Chinese grocery stories outside of the core area, as it takes her an hour to commute between her house and Armour Square to grocery shop and patronize services from local agencies.
Many expressways cut through Chinatown, creating dark spaces under the bridge tunnels. “Walking under the bridge can be sketchy, too,” she said. “It’s so dark and messy.”
Lee said he also doesn’t feel safe walking in Chinatown, especially at night, which is one of the reasons Chinatown is not his first choice when hanging out with his college friends.
“More tourists, more trash,” Lee said. “But there doesn’t seem to [be] enough people to clean that out, so it looks very messy.”
Although Wentworth Avenue and Cermak Road are typically bustling with shops and restaurants, Chinatown’s core area still has a low median household income of $37,405, according to the 2017 to 2021 American Community Survey five-year estimates, compared with the greater city of Chicago’s, which is $65,781.
Navigate to see more data details at: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/18244785/
Chan attributed the low median income in the area to the significant number of senior residents, many of whom are retired without substantial income.
“They all live in the core area because they can easily access service, food, park[s] and exercise,” he said. “In the long term, we should look at giving people that kind of mobility where a senior person living five blocks away can still have easy access to the core of Chinatown.”
Navigate to see more data details at: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/18259863/
According to Chan, more young people are moving in because of Chinatown’s close location to downtown. However, he is not concerned the influx of young people and the current aging population will eventually result in gentrification, because “Chinatown still has its own kind of economy.”
“When you have a house for sale or an apartment for rent, you publicize in Chinese and mostly only Chinese know about it,” he said. “So, it’s still predominantly Chinese living in the core area where other neighborhoods like Pilsen are facing issues like the changing of the whole demographic of the community.”
Read the article in Chinese here.
Read the article methodology here.
Grace Xue and Tianshu Hu are magazine graduate students at Medill. You can follow Grace at @ziyue_see on Instagram.
