On January 7Th, 2017, I Visited The Local New Chinatown

On January 7th, 2017, I visited the local New Chinatown in the Central Los Angeles County. Coming from San Jose, California, this was my first opportunity to explore a part of Los Angeles besides my current residence (Westwood), and to view how interracial dynamics play into real world context. According to their website, New Chinatown had a grand opening in 1938, after the relocation of the old Chinatown, and is well known for being the first modern American Chinatown; yet, New Chinatown still retains part of its old identity and culture, which serves as a tourist attraction and remembrance for Asian-American families. Given their past history and struggles against immigration laws, I hope to learn what elements of their past culture†¦show more content†¦The plaza was had a decent amount of people participating in leisurely activities. I observed the diversity within the plaza—families ranged from Latinos and Whites, to Asians and Middle Easterners; such a variety of people repudiated my initial presumptions about the type of people in this plaza, which, I naively assumed to be predominately Asian. Because we were hungry, my partner and I decided to attend a local restaurant Vietnamese called â€Å"Blossom.† I ordered an authentic pho soup, and took notice to the types of people within the restaurant, which was similar to the distribution of diversity I had earlier seen when I entered the plaza. Our waiter was a young Asian male who spoke broken English. Overall, Blossom had an industrial look and feel, which clashed my initial presumptions of what I was expecting in terms of race distribution and restaurant design. After lunch, my partner and continued our ethnographic observation and explored the rest of the plaza. The buildings and shops were well-kept and professional, but the years had made the streets look shabby and divided the economic status of the square. I took note of the types of businesses I saw, of which included: a retail store with Chinese souvenirs, a porcelain store, bakeries, deli’s, and a Mahjong gambling center. The plaza wasn’t exclusive to a single predominant race, but inclusive to people from all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. Rafi,