Personal Narrative: Chinatown

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The first place comes to my mind is Chinatown, the place I have been living for three years, but never got a chance to have a close-up view of it. When I came to Chicago, it was the first place I went to and it really gave me a different feedback. It made me feel like I was back in China, because there were a lot of Chinese people and Chinese restaurants in the town. The landmarks of Chinatown are the Chinatown Gate, and the Nine-Dragon wall. Now, I have a chance to get a close-up view of Chinatown. I started my own walking tour on the Chinatown Square. It is a two-story outdoor plaza located on the north side of Wentworth Ave. It opened in 1993, with mostly restaurants, retail stores, banks, clinics, beauty salons, and offices. In the center of the plaza, there are statues of the twelve animals which represent Chinese zodiac. After visiting this, I went to the Chinatown Gate. The first thing I saw on the Chinatown Gate, which was completed in 1975, were the Chinese words 天下為公 (All under heaven are equal). The Chinese words were written by Sun …show more content…

found that Chicago was a great place to settle down. At the time, most Chinese Americans lived on Clark Street between Van Buren and Harrison Street in the downtown Loop. In 1912, Chinese Americans moved to the south to Armour Square. Most Chinese Americans lived together to avoid persecution from the other people, and most of them were at the bottom of the social class. In most people’s minds, they thought that Chinatown was not a good place to live; they thought Chinatown was the dirtiest, most disorderly and poorest neighborhood in the city. Nowadays, by the continuing work of Chinese Americans, the new Chinatown is clean and orderly; it changes a lot of people’s minds. For now, most people living in Chinatown are workers and business owners; they are in the middle of the social class, but barely in political

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