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SUCCESS IN NEW YORK’S CHINATOWN HAS EBBED AND FLOWED OVER THE YEARS. LIFELONG VISITOR FRANCIS LAM MEETS THE YOUNG BUSINESS OWNERS CARVING OUT A BRIGHT FUTURE.

- FRANCIS LAM

My mother cried when I got a job in Chinatown. “Twenty years we worked there so you wouldn’t have to,” she said, sobbing. She shopped there, worshipped there, ate there, but for her, the point was to get out of there: to be somewhere else meant you had made it. Eventually she calmed down and said, “Fine. But if you hear gunshots, don’t be a hero.”

It was 1999, and Chinatown had become safe. It had always been delicious. And even though I never told her this, it had always felt like home. Not in a comforting way, in a placeof-loving obligation way. You see, I’m the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, and I spent my entire youth blowing off my parents’ every attempt to assimilate me into their culture. Now I can never feel Chinese enough.