Mon, Oct 08, 2001 page24

• Chinatown quietly begins to take action

  SLOW RECOVERY Tourists and many of the regular Asian shoppers are missing from the streets of New York's famous Chinese community because of its proximity to `Ground Zero'

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Though it was spared physically on Sept. 11, the Chinatown that US President George W. Bush visited Wednesday showed signs of trauma most everywhere, from jobless workers to streets with barricades to shops teetering on bankruptcy.

  Chinatown has been transformed into a near ghost town since the attacks on the World Trade Center. Most of the tourists are gone and many of the regular Asian shoppers from New Jersey, Brooklyn and elsewhere have taken their business to Flushing, Queens, where they can drive their cars more easily.

  

  Flags are abundant around Chinatown, as residents and business owners show their patriotism. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Chinatown has been transformed into a near ghost town. Most of the tourists are gone and many of the regular Asian shoppers from New Jersey, Brooklyn and Long Island have taken their business to Flushing, Queens.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  At times, it has been so hard for some trucks to get in and out of Chinatown that many of the 250 or so garment manufacturers there have cut production in half. People without photo IDs, including some street vendors, have been scared away or turned away at police checkpoints, leaving long stretches of the sidewalks bare.

  Telephone service remains so spotty that some pharmacies cannot fill prescriptions because of downed computer links, some shops cannot process credit card orders and some residents cannot call for help in emergencies.

  In one case, Shiun Fuhai, 67, died of a heart attack in his apartment while his wife frantically searched for a pay phone, according to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which has been documenting some of the hardships.

  "It's deceiving, because you still see people walking around, but these are local people and a lot of them are unemployed," said Don Lee, a businessman and community board member who was volunteering Wednesday at the Chinese Community Center on Mott Street. "People want to think positive, but there is concern about whether we are going to make it."

  Despite Chinatown's proximity to the World Trade Center, its business owners and residents have kept relatively quiet about their problems, moved instead by the consuming events farther to the south and roused by a sense of patriotism and even self-sacrifice.

  A Cantonese radio station raised nearly US$1.4 million in an on-air fund-raiser for the city's relief effort. The station's general manager, Tony Wong, said the company had also given away 200,000 paper American flags from its Broadway offices.

  "In my 30 years in New York City, this is the first time people are united and working together," Wong said. "Chinese-Americans are feeling part of this society. You talk about assimilation; this is it."

  With patronage off as much as 70 percent, some restaurant owners have turned to delivering hot meals to firefighters, construction crews and volunteers at the World Trade Center site. And out of respect for those killed or missing, many people in Chinatown chose not to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on Monday. The festival usually involves sharing dinner with friends and relatives and exchanging mooncakes, which are filled with lotus seed paste.

  "My waiters just stand around, stationary like burning candles," said Jijie Hong, who owns Shanghai Cuisine Restaurant at the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets. "There are no customers to serve."

  But in recent days, the atmosphere of stoicism has begun to give way to one dominated by some practical concerns. More people are speaking up and looking to the authorities for help.

  As the city promotes Broadway shows in television advertisements and makes special efforts to encourage financial companies not to leave for New Jersey, there is a growing sense that Chinatown needs to be recognized as a casualty, too. In that regard, Bush's visit was seen as a welcome spotlight on the community.

  Lee said several days of pestering finally paid off on Tuesday when the authorities agreed to move some of the wooden barricades along Canal Street several blocks to the south. Even though pedestrians were able to pass, the barriers had created a psychological no-go zone for shoppers.

  Now, some business owners have set their sights on getting rid of the highway signs from New Jersey to Long Island that advise motorists to avoid Lower Manhattan.

  "They are killing our business by stopping the traffic," said Eva Sam, the owner of Popular Jewelry on Canal Street, which was virtually empty yesterday.

  Garment workers are also putting together a plan, expected to be announced next week, that would encourage retailers to keep manufacturing work in Manhattan. Bruce S. Raynor, president of the Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, said about 11,000 of the city's 60,000 garment workers were based in Chinatown. Almost all of them, he said, are now working part time.

  "It seems as if the focus of many people has been on the financial industry and Wall Street," Raynor said. "Our workers have been just as adversely affected, if not more so, because they live closer to the line of survival."

  At the community center on Mott Street, about 2,000 people from Chinatown and elsewhere in Lower Manhattan had taken advantage of a variety of services, including free legal advice, inexpensive cellular phones and small-business loans. But Lee said a survey of about 350 area businesses found that problems remained widespread. Lee said that about 90 percent of those surveyed reported last weekend that they still had no telephone service.

  Others in Chinatown said they were coping the best they could, confident that things would turn for the better.

  The intricate Chinese paper cuttings of one artist, Bun Lau, were displayed on some scaffolding along the sidewalk on Mulberry Street. So were his hand-painted shirts with colorful scenes of lotus flowers and fish and dragons.

  But Wednesday, as Bush visited an elementary school a few blocks away, Lau was putting his fine brushes to work on a design unlike the others. "It'll be better tomorrow," Lau scrawled in both English and Chinese, lifting a verse from a popular Chinese song.
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