Last year, a friend posted a link on Facebook to some photographs taken in New York’s Chinatown in the early 80s. They brought back vivid memories of growing up there, and I even recognised some people: a great-uncle of mine, and a family friend. So I looked up the photographer, Bud Glick, and emailed him. I included a photo of myself, aged four, with my younger brother and my father, Frankie, in front of the grocery store my dad owned, thinking he might be interested. The style looked similar.
Bud wrote back to say he’d taken it. He sent me a few more photos, including some of my mother and brother. When we saw them, our jaws dropped. It was an emotional day.
Bud was working on the New York Chinatown History Project, which is now the Museum of Chinese in America. He was from out of town and didn’t speak the language, but spent a lot of time getting to know the people he photographed, always returning to give them a print. That’s how my dad came to have one.
My father must have made an impression. He was outgoing and well liked, always smiling. He was like the mayor of Chinatown: he knew a lot of people and did lots of work in the community, which was small and close-knit. He spoke fluent English, as well as Cantonese, Mandarin and his hometown dialect of Fuzhou.
At the time of this photograph, we were living in Knickerbocker Village, a housing complex on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was a family community, with more Italians than Chinese. As a result, we Chinese all knew each other. But my sister remembers some anti-Asian feelings around the village, from Italians, Americans and African Americans.
When my dad emigrated from Fujian province in the early 70s, joining his father in the US, he opened a fish store. Later, he opened a grocery store next door. I would have been at kindergarten in 1981, right across the street. I remember hanging out in the shop, abusing the cat. She was a little feisty and I liked to pull her tail.
Back then, every Chinese immigrant headed to Chinatown. I was born there. It’s grown tremendously; in the New York area today, there are several Chinatowns, such as Flushing and Elmhurst, in Queens. In Manhattan, the younger generations are moving out, just as the children of Italian immigrants did in the 70s and 80s. Little Italy used to dwarf Chinatown, but today it’s just two blocks.
My sister, younger brother and mum still live there; I’m in Brooklyn. We run the family seafood business; my mum, who’s 73, is still in the shop every day. My dad died six years after this picture was taken, when I was 11. When I look at the photograph, it reminds me how young I was when I lost him. I’m 39 now, older than he was when he died.
He loved children – me and my siblings as well as other kids in the neighbourhood. He always had candy or treats, and took us to see movies. I think my own kids would have adored him.
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