CHINATOWN

Today TLW (The Little Woman) and myself visited Chinatown on another “Get Up And Go” tour. Taking the Jitney Bus out of exit 63 of the LIE, we motored in NYC via Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridge on a clear and sunny if not somewhat hot day.

Arriving in Chinatown I noticed how crowded and foreign it all seemed to me, as the people like those in Chinatown in San Francisco go about their morning rituals of certain kinds of exercise, based on either dance, physical fitness, martial arts or karate. And to think I thought they were just showing off all this time!

One of the great things about the area is that the Chinese people are not only industrious and hard working, but very friendly and willing to invite you in to their stores and shops, as well as places of worship. The photo you see is a shot taken of the front or main altar inside a Buddhist Temple. Prior to that, we visited a store that sold offerings for funerals, toy-like items that are given at the wake of a dead individual to honor and/or mark their departure. Next to the store on either side was door after door of funeral parlors for Chinese people, all leaving at once to bury their dead or going off to China to be bury them.

One of the things that westerners like to do is shop in Chinatown, and buy very cheap costing rip offs of original jewelry, women’s pocket books and other pricey items. The problem with all that is the police often raid and when they do, the shop keepers run the risk of closure and/or arrest, along with the confiscation of the goods being offered as well as those purchased by the customers.

We happened to appear on the street as a raid was going down. Jewelry was switched right before as eyes as we walked the streets, shop keepers took their clients to hidden rooms and kept them there until the police left! On the bus going home, we heard of fellow tourists who were caught in the raid.

The historic value of the area is great! It started in the “Five Points Area” with the Irish, then the Italians and then came the Chinese. All have left their mark on the city in this few square blocks that in 1920 housed 20,000 Chinese people and today over 250,000 working, swarming industrious people from China and their families that they have started here.

We saw Al Smith’s street, the Church of the Visitation, started as a meeting hall by the British, then converted to a Catholic Church by the Irish, then the Italians took it over and People such as Mother Cabrini, Enrico Caruso, and the great Jimmy Durante prayed at. Now the mass is said in both Chinese and English!

For dinner: we went to the Triple 8’s and feasted on Dim Sum and 4 main courses, each better than the last. 8 is considered lucky to the Chinese, and it seems that the dominate colors are either red or yellow.

Next month the Rainbow Room in midtown Manhattan for what I hear is the “feast of all times.”