Saving Chinatown’s roots: How three residents are preserving the neighborhood

Manhattan’s Chinatown is home to many Asian immigrants, longtime residents, and newcomers. The historic neighborhood holds cultural significance to many of its residents. But in recent years, the neighborhood has experienced rapid change, and with that change comes the threat of losing the cultural and historic signifiers that make the neighborhood what it is. This is the story of three people documenting and preserving Chinatown in their own ways.

“Gentrification here in New York is happening so fast in a blink of an eye, you’re like, wait, where did this even come from? Like, how did this even happen?”  

Photographer Cindy Trinh, a second-generation Vietnamese-American, moved from California to New York in 2011. She found her community in Chinatown and has been capturing the neighborhood with her camera for the past decade.

“The prime example of how gentrification has hurt this neighborhood the most is when people get literally kicked out of their homes. A lot of folks here are working class, and a lot of them cannot afford huge rent hikes,” said Trinh. 

“Chinatown was literally built because of racism. We had to build this enclave for them because they weren’t allowed anywhere else,” she added. “Like Chinatown, a neighborhood that was supposed to be a safe haven for Asians and for the newer immigrants and newer people coming over, where are they going to go? The fluent privileged people are going to be able to continue to spread. And eventually, they can take over the like most of the neighborhood, and then we’ll lose all the things that we love so much about Chinatown.”

Recognizing that change is inevitable, Trinh believes her role as a photographer is to help preserve history.

Trinh added: “What we do as photographers, videographers, journalists, writers, history, historians, and archivists. All of those people are actually integral to preserving the culture of Chinatown. When I think about my own photography, I want my…