It is the people, not the building, that’s the core of the community.

 

On Lunar New Year of 2023, New Toronto Chinatown Land Trust was born out of the Friends of Chinatown Toronto in response to the growing speculative real-estate investment and the loss of affordable housing in Chinatown Toronto. Currently, the land trust has become an independent organization, separate from the Friends of Chinatown Toronto. Today, I interviewed Chiyi Tam, the Managing Director of the organization.

 

The land trust is currently taking an interesting approach to identifying the buildings at risk of gentrification. The committee members have spent a lot of effort mapping the location, the ownership, and the status of each building in the neighborhood. Then, they identify and classify each house that is in danger. They knocked on the doors of the doors of the high-risk properties and notified them of the potential danger of displacement. Especially creating mutual support and surveillance systems among the neighbors in Chinatown.

 

Navigating the interests between different social groups in Chinatown has been one of the most challenging tasks. Chinatown is not only composed of the Chinese population but also includes a large number of East and Southeast Asian populations. In general, Chinatown is actually a melting pot of people from diverse backgrounds. 

 

In addition, political events constantly impact the Chinatown community from the early stages, including Sun Yat-sen’s fundraising for the revolutionaries in the early 20th century.  As a result, there are many conflicts between different social groups, including the Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese, who refuse the share the same Mahjong room.

 

Furthermore, the vision of the community varies. While the land trust fights against gentrification and displacement of the neighborhood, the BIA welcomes gentrification and displacement of the current population with richer income groups so that the value of the businesses within the region will also increase. However, according to Chiyi, the problem is that the people who entered the region are also taking the original businesses away.

 

The land trust also needs to balance the relationship with the small “mom-and-pop” stores in the neighborhood. While these “mom-and-pop” stores are the essence of the community, they sometimes have conflicts with the community members as well. For instance, Chinese restaurants actively exploit the labor forces of the undocumented workers in Chinatown, who are also an important component of the cultural life in the neighborhood.

 

However, promoting land trust is especially difficult due to some particular aspects of Chinese culture. Ever since the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese population, especially the older ones, developed a deep insecurity without land. The impact is so deep that even the Chinese people who migrated to Canada still actively want to acquire real estate, which has become the root of their social security ties. Furthermore, collective ownership and management of community real estate property raise suspicions such as, “What’s the difference between a land trust and communism?” 

 

The architectural identities of Chinatown around North America are not a symbol of cultural celebration. Instead, it’s a symbol of cultural assimilation in the past. They were set up because the community is constantly being threatened to be displaced. Therefore, they decorated the neighborhood to be like Disneyland for the white people so that they wouldn’t be as suspicious of the “nasty and filthy” Chinese immigrants. Chinatown architecture is not a celebration but a survival strategy with entertainment.

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Image Credit: Secret Toronto