Grand Street is a big subway stop that takes you to Chinatown. Chinatown is where lots of Chinese people live, and many of them came here a long time ago from different parts of China. People from different parts of China moved here, so you hear different languages, but most people speak Chinese, like Mandarin, Fuzhounese, and Cantonese. While they immigrated here, they also brought their own unique culture into New York City and that’s how Chinatown started. They begin by setting up their shops and restaurants, especially food shops. In Chinatown, you can barely see anything fast food like hamburgers because they mostly sell Chinese food like dumplings, steamed stuffed buns, fried rice, and noodles. One of my favorite foods is hand-pulled noodles, which are made fresh from the dove and cooked in beef soup.
This newest bubble shop located near Grand Street is called Fruity Vanity 千果茶 which means thousands of favorite fruit teas and it was open in 2022. This shop is located right in front of the Grand St subway and it makes it special in Chinatown because Chinatown can’t have no bubble shops. When this shop first opened it was very brand new without the graffiti and as you can see right now from this image we can see that the shop is still brand new you can tell by the shop’s title and curtain, as time goes on this shop is filled with different type of graffiti. Graffiti is also a sign in Chinatown. In Figure 2, we do see a lot of messy types of graffiti in different patterns and different types of English words in all different colors such as white black, and yellow.
Here is another part of Chinatown and what it offers. This is a barbershop (Figure 3), and It has been here since I was a child. A common theme you see here is a lot of bubble graffiti. The color of the bubbled graffiti is mostly yellow and white. if you closely you will know that they drew the bubbled graffiti in black ink and filled in the color. Although the store is Chinese but is so rare to see graffiti in Chinese. You are most likely to see bubble graffiti on the shop curtain. You will see a lot if you visit Chinatown at night when the store closes.
One of the main themes in Chinatown is Chinese character letters, you will see them almost on every street like menus, posters, and shop names. In Chinatown, every shop has both an English name and a Chinese name. Some stores may have pinyin as well. Pinyin is the way you pronounce the Chinese character letters. As you see all the images I have taken every shop has a Chinese title and an English title if you look closely at Figure 4 you will see that the Chinese character words are in red 永興水喉五金公司 which means plumbing Supplies Inc. and the English title name of the store is just AJ plumbing supplies Inc. you will see this common theme in Chinatown because it’s easier to Chinese customer and Americans customer to get what they want in shop, especially it is a Chinese shop in America.
One theme in Chinatown is the similar colors. I know that the color of the older store is most likely to be red and yellow or at least a color of red. The material of the store currently is made out of fabric. As you can see in Chinatown, the red color is most often used because red in the Chinese culture means good luck, and yellow means rich. In China, gold used to be a common wealthy currency. So many older generations insist on continuing the culture by using the color red on their store for good luck in business and to stay wealthy by using the color yellow. In Figure 5, both stores use red and yellow as a common colors and this is common in Chinatown as explained above.
It’s very uncommon to see Chinese people use the color white and black. In Chinese culture the black represents ominous. The color of white represents funerals so it’s pretty rare to see those two types of color. However, the newly built shops by the new generation, are more likely to be full black or full white. The color of black or white gives the customer an advanced feeling and the shop is very well decorated. The new generation shop is mostly likely to be a 连锁店 ( chain shop ) which means they are required to sell the same material or same type of food with the same receipt and of course, they require the same appearance for the store, just like Nike, foot locker and Walmart, etc. In Figure 6 we see the color white and black being used which made the shop way fancier than the old fashion fabric. in this fancy shop, we also saw signs of graffiti but it counts as one of those art pieces, it is way different from Figure 2. The letter that spells out “Nuan Xin Rice Roll” is a pinyin mix with English words helping those Americans better pronounce the word.
Here is another example of a chain shop. In Figure 7 this is a hot pot and BBQ shop because it was labeled in Chinese and English on the curtain. In this figure, we can tell that it is a new-generation shop because the color theme they use is black and white. we also see that the color of Chinese words is red and this shop is decorated very fancy.
In Chinatown, there are a lot of graffiti drawings. Figure 8 is special because it doesn’t have any Chinese characters. Instead, it shows a picture of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna. This artwork is different from the others because you can see a lot of detail in the painting. At the top, there is an English word that shows who made the artwork. In Figure 8 we can see the art piece just like in Figure 6, you can even see every unique spray the author did and everything is just too detailed compared to messy graffiti.
Here is another example of graffiti as Art, in Figure 9 we can see the graffiti art of Martin Luther King Jr. In this art piece, we can find a lot of English words such as justice, freedom, and nonviolence. these are the words that represent Martin Luther King Jr and every community. One common thing about art graffiti is that the graffiti will be located at a huge wall or a curtain in a shop but in a full painting, just like how it was shown in Figure 6. You find a lot of art in Chinatown, especially graffiti.
In conclusion, Chinatown is a mix of old and new. The red and yellow shops represent tradition, while newer ones in black and white show modern style. Signs in both English and Chinese welcome everyone, and the different graffiti adds fun art.