The Jail Money Trap

The Museum of Chinese in America was desperate to buy its building. The city found a reason to pay for it— one that threw Chinatown into a years-long fight.

- Esther Wang

NO ONE WOULD argue that the past two years have been good for Manhattan’s Chinatown. Weeks before the first case of covid-19 was found in New York, local shopkeepers saw their traffic plummet—a disturbing indication of what was to come for a neighborhood where many survive on the slimmest of margins. As the city went into lockdown, businesses shuttered. Unemployment skyrocketed. And soon residents were dealing with other anxieties as the news filled with stories of Asian New Yorkers who were attacked on the street, incidents fueled in no small part by a president who delighted in blaming China for the pandemic.