A Journey Through Chinatown
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About A Journey through Chinatown

This site started back in Jan/Feb 2002 as a way of visually documenting NYC Chinatown when I had the chance to do so. It was post-Sept 11 2001, a particularly trying period for all New Yorkers, and not to mention the economic recession faced by countless thousands, myself included.

At that time, I wanted to know a little more about Chinatown, and also I wanted to create a useful resource for people to use on the Internet. So with a borrowed camera in hand, I began wandering the streets photographing the neighborhood, its landmarks, and familiarized myself with the various complex issues at the heart of the community. Needless to say, it was both satisfying, and disappointing experience at the same time. Satisfying because I learned a bit more about Chinatown--as a tourist--but disappointing because trying to get into the heart of the community ultimately proved difficult due to being an outsider, me being chinese, but not being able to speak much chinese, and viewed suspiciously because I wanted to photograph what nobody else wanted to photograph.

Hopefully I hope this website will prove useful to you. I have included maps, photos, and a bit of text. I hope to delve deeper into certain issues in the future. If there are any questions, comments, feedback, or if there are any features you would like to see on the website in the future, e·mail me at antispam asdfasdf@aodifsdafai.com. pgp key available upon request.



About Maps:
There are several maps on this website, each are hand drawn in Illustrator and Photoshop using geographic data obtained from various sources, NOAA coastline, NYC bytes of the big apple, USGS topographic maps, etc. The data sets overlayed on top of each geographic base were obtained online from various websites and resources.

The original intention of these maps was to give the user an overview of the Chinatown's resources and infrastructure: banks, atms, churches, temples, police stations, surveillance cameras, etc.

I am currently researching new ideas for maps with more relevance to Chinatown. Using ideas and techniques learned from practitioners such as Natalie Jeremijenko, and from events like Conflux, I am thinking about creating a "cultural memory" map, or maybe a gentrification map (this will be difficult to research). Maybe some kind of map that is both fun and lets people view this neighborhood from another angle. In all likelihood--due to time constraints--these maps will be of a passive nature, gathering data that already exists instead of carrying out an experiment, and recording the results.



About Privacy:
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