Chinatown Descriptive Writing

The city, Toronto in this case, presents a web of streets and geographical space that threatens to lock its citizens in a certain demarcated way of life and conduct. The four key characters in this narrative - Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku - each feel blocked in by the constrained locality that they have been born into and each attempts to escape it in his own way.: Tuyen by being an artist, Carla by being a courier; Oku by being a student and Jackie by working in a store. The first two not only attempt to escape by means of their profession using their profession to either flee the spaces and squares (by bike) or transcend it via imagination (by art) but they also adopt profession that go against societal expectations. These societal expectations were created by, and exist within the geographical space they live in. Toronto of the late 20th century had an internalized set of expectations for immigrants and its citizens. The parents of the characters succumbed to it. The protagonists, however, resolved to step out of their boundaries and most of them succeeded.

Chapter 1, “Intimate Apartheid”, introduces one to the group of homeless people living on Edgewater Blvd. It dives into the racialized micro-geography of homeless encampments and how segregation plays a key role within the lumpen. However, the authors do reveal moments where the racial hierarchy is trumped by the “moral economy” of street life.

Modern day Chinatown is a vibrant and bustling community full of bright colors and Chinese characters adorning buildings as far as the eye can see. Chinese elders roam around the narrow and unkempt streets while children frolic around from store to store with wide smiles, riffling through toy stores as store owners look on. Mothers scurry from store to store searching for the most tender meats to buy for the night's dinner or for the next day's lunch. Tourists from nearby downtown drift into the heart of Chinatown with large and expensive cameras, posing for pictures with Lion head statues and continue on, buying cheap Chinatown goods along the way. Everywhere there are signs of the Chinese immigrant's sweat, labor, and collective efforts

At the beginning of Le Thi Diem Thuy’s novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water provides a refuge to the narrator and her family by functioning as a pathway to a new and secured life. This water signifies a new beginning and becomes a dwelling place where the narrator retreats when searching for answers. As the narrator progresses in the story, her understanding of life also develops, and water in the story becomes a barrier; it never truly provides the answers or fixes the issues that engulf the narrator’s family like a surf on the beach. Instead, the water reflects the traumatic reality within the narrator’s life, whether she realizes it or not. Essentially, in The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water functions as a pathway and a barrier which illuminate the trauma that the narrator and her family experience in their lives after Vietnam’s colonization.

Description: Advanced Placement Chinese Language and Culture (commonly known as AP Chinese Language and Culture or AP Chinese) offers high school students an opportunity to earn credit for Chinese courses at the college level. Like other College Board programs, it is available to anyone worldwide who wishes to participate.

Kim Jung Gi is a South Korean artist whose work have gained millions of people’s attention over the course of a few years. He is most famous for his ability to visualize the drawing and he also able to draw without any photographic references (Gi, 2017).

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate. (Anonymous)” In the 1980 Chicago slums this quote couldn’t be truer. The slums were/are a terrible place for not just children, but everyone to live. The Henry Horner homes in particular are full of death, drugs, and poverty. This may not seem like the greatest place for children to be raised, but for some, they know nothing different. The constant gang trouble, drug trafficking, and hiding from stray bullets are an everyday occurrence for people living in these government housing complexes. The devastation is a never-ending cycle. The parents get into drugs and violence, and the children have no choice but to imitate their parents

The motivations for the Chinese to come to the United States are similar to most immigrants. These motivations are what most people call "The American Dream." These could be looking for a better life, having a better job, running away from political issues. However, for Chinese these American dreams were not too easy to achieve at first compared to other immigrants. Chinese suffered a lot more obstacles and discriminations because they are relatively small and easy to be targeted on. Even more the legal system passed a law in 1963 forbidding Chinese to testify against white men in court. This anti-Chinese action was most critical in the Pacific Coast; as a result, it caused the dispersion of Chinese that had settled in California to the

of this can be seen from the very first page of her book. Here, she begins to tell the story of traveling back to her old neighborhood, only to find it to be “a distinctly poorer one” than it was in her childhood days (1). To recreate the image for her readers, she presents them with a picture of what she compares to be likened to “a third-world country” She explains that “some of the stores had “rusted iron bars across their windows” while other businesses had been closed down and nailed up. She tells of several houses in the area having “boarded-up windows” and “graffiti, broken glass, and trash” strewn about, even though it appeared people were still living there. By painting a picture for her audience the author is able to virtually take them to the very road she once

One of the largest issues with our society today is racial profiling, it can cause people to immediately dislike one another based on how they look alone. Nobody gets to choose where or how they are born, but nobody sees it that way. Many people like Ronnie are immediately negative towards other races that have either done him or his ancestors wrong in the past.Yes, Americans have wronged many races and ethnic backgrounds in the past, but we aren’t in the past anymore. Our technology has advanced such an extreme amount in the last couple of centuries, why can’t our communities? This country has treated other races and cultures wrong and therefore other ethnic backgrounds don’t even give us a chance to make up for it; but honestly, can you blame

Laozi, an Asian philosopher, described water in his philosophy, Daoism, “If you want to be successful, be as pliable and yielding as water; so as to stay close to reality. If you want to be powerful, be as focused as water, it can penetrate a rock. This is Dao.” In Lê Thi Diem Thúy’s novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For, water serves as a metaphor for mobility. Unlike Dao, the people in the novel do not recognize water with success, and in contrast, escape reality rather than staying close to it. The complexities of a country and its people struggling to maintain their agency against the consequences of war are highlighted through the experiences of a young girl. The contemporary refugee text uses movement as a desire for stability, and therefore a yearning for recognition of an identity. However, the narrator’s struggle for this recognition implies that there’s an uncomfortable feeling with mobility. Her obstacles include the loss of home in both countries, the vagueness of her childhood memories, and the inability to associate herself as a member of a country. The narrator is neither here, nor there. This confusion and inability to identify is the result of the silence perpetuated upon her by her parents.

The plans and narratives of the Kowloon Walled City have drastically changed through the years, as it has been an unrolled and unregulated enclave between the British and Chinese governments. It began as an officially planed Chinese military fort and afterwards witnessed three distinct stages of lawlessness, demolition and rebirth as an urban garden. It all officially began in the 16th century, when the Chinese built a defensive garrison town filled with soldiers, civil officers and their families (Carney, 2013). However, when Hong Kong was leased to the British in 1898, the Kowloon Walled City became a enclave in the colonized territory, where no laws of the official state applied and everything began expanding spontaneously. The first stage of the city’s unintentional self-organization began in the 1950’s. It is widely known as the time of three vices – gambling, prostitution and drug dealing. The official regulations of the British did work on Hong Kong and were reversely reflected in the Chinese enclave. As soon as something was forbidden in the city-state, people massively poured into the un-ruled territory and let the sins to flourish. This way the Kowloon Walled City became synonymous with violence, crime and disturbance. During this period, the city and people became one, the buildings were connected by piping systems and wires, the water poured through the holes and sunlight could barely reach the lower levels. Yet, in the early 1970’s the situation started changing

A homeless man walks on an NYC train and the energy becomes apparent; everyone knows exactly what will happen next. Touching yet rehearsed words exiting his lips, while still trying to obtain his manhood; begging for any solution to his growing stomach and unnerving uncertainty of where he will lay his head are what a person who frequents public transportation will face at least once a day. Walking up and down the cart, he’s trying his hardest to lock eyes with someone while the music of New Yorkers’ headphones elevate, heads bow lower; locking eyes with the ground and reading material cover the faces of those who are giving this less than fortunate man every inclination that change will not be spared and leftovers will not be given up so easily.

I reached the apex of my adventure in Chinatown, easily my favorite part of the city. The lively Cantonese banter that echos through the streets leaves me wishing I could join it myself. The unique eateries in the ethnic center provide me with comestible gateways to the culture of my ancestors—well a quarter of them. It may not be the shiniest part of Boston, but to me it's the brightest. It’s lively, kinetic, and inviting. As hard as I tried, I could not get picture that fully captured each of these aspects. But the vitality of Chinatown can’t be experienced through pictures, it has to be discovered in

China has about five thousand years history which is a very long period of time. Also, the Chinese civilization was growing with these periods of time and it will continues greater than ever. Many wars and unhappinesses were happening during this period. Although, the time has passed, the histories and the civilizations have not passed. These family virtues, serious, working attitudes, sense of justice and the great Confucian tradition have been deeply assimilated into the Chinese people. Some Chinese traditions are different from North American’s. The Chinese culture has many special characteristics which are very interesting for people to learn.