Living The Life Of Dc Chinatown - 1402 Words

LIVING THE LIFE OF DC CHINATOWN For our project, we are created to make a 15 - 30 minute documentary of the ethnic enclave of Chinatown, DC. Our report itself gives the history of the area to elaborate on how the area was created, to tell where most of the Asians Americans came from, and to estimate how old the area is. We will also illustrate the layout and demographics of the area. In the actual video, we travel to Washington DC to interview people that live inside and outside of the Chinatown area to get a better understanding of what Asian America is in DC. We will ask people outside of the enclave some various questions. The point of asking people outside of the enclave is to see the stereotypes of the Chinatown. Finally, by comparing†¦show more content†¦However, it turns out that the Chinese immigrants faced discriminations and false hospitality thus creating an enclosed area specifically for Asian Americans. The creation of this specific Chinatown was built as a defense mechanism as a way to keep t he new immigrants safe and to create more employment for the immigrants. However, in 1931, the original Chinatown was disbanded by the government to create the Federal Triangle and other projects. Because of this, Chinatown was later moved to along H Street NW between 5th and 7th. However, in 1981, the US Census noticed that Chinatown in decreasing in population size mainly because successful Chinese Americans have migrated into the suburbs and Virginia. Another reason why Chinatown is decreasing is because Chinatown is facing gentrification as new projects are ‘rolling in for downtown’ (Wang, 2015). In 2010, there was a report that Chinatown only has around 300 residents. Today, the enclave contains 21% Asian Americans where as in the 1990’s, the population was 66% Asian. To see whether it was true, we went down to Washington DC to observe and figure out what was it like to live in Chinatown. For the past few weeks, we discovered that Chinatown is always busy. The noises of the busses were extremely loud and the area was crowded with people from all different backgrounds. The only thing that stood out for us was the fact that