I was sitting in my car in Oakland’s Chinatown with Desta, my dog, while my wife visited her Chinese-American doctor. Across the street stood the Shoong Family Chinese Cultural Centre. On the pavements, older shoppers carrying bags of greens paused to greet acquaintances. People threaded between produce displays, fish counters and shopfronts crowded with everyday necessities.
There was a rhythm to the morning: deliveries, conversations, the exchange of money and news, the small acts of recognition that turn streets into a neighbourhood.
Chinatown was not a relic of the past; it was alive before my eyes. Yet I wondered what lay behind that vitality: who was struggling with rent, loneliness or the prospect of displacement? And what future should such a community have in a Pacific economy increasingly shaped by Asia?