The Chinese are the oldest Asian immigrant group in Cleveland.
Their history goes back to the 1860s and in 1880 their census
numbers totaled only 22. Their first settlement was started on West
3rd Street. Later, as the population continued to increase, an area
known as Chinatown developed between East 21st and 22nd Street on
Rockwell Avenue. This is now called "Old Chinatown" by many
Clevelanders.
For many years, Cleveland's Asian-American immigrants were wary
of outside influences, and each other. Various families established
merchant organizations, but limited membership to only a select few
and fought with other groups over where Cleveland's Chinatown
should be. One faction promoted a strip along East 21st and
Rockwell Avenue. Another set of families was intent on East 30th
and Payne, while others were committed to East 40th and St. Clair.
City Hall either didn't want to, or didn't know how to, step in,
and so nothing happened for decades.
There have been at least two previous efforts to establish a
Chinatown in Cleveland. Both were created by area CDCs (community
development corporation), and both were top-down affairs that only
bred suspicion among Chinatown's community leaders. The first, in
the mid-1980s, "pissed everyone off", Councilman Cimperman says.
Fashioned by an all-white CDC staff, with no input from the
Asian-American community, the plan dictated a Chinatown spanning
East 18th to East 55th, from Carnegie to Lakeside avenues. Another
proposal, a few years later, focused too narrowly on cosmetics,
like ornate entrance gates and banners. Also missing for years was
a CDC that could cobble together some unity of purpose from the
neighborhood's many stakeholders. Until 1999, there were four such
bodies within Chinatown's boundaries, but none had much involvement
with (or from) the local Asian-American population. Not until 2001,
when these CDCs were merged into one, the St. Clair Superior
Development Corp., did Chinatown merchants start receiving phone
calls.
Now Cleveland has AsiaTown, a growing district of about 40
eateries, shops and offices in an area roughly bounded by East 30th
and East 40th streets and St. Clair and Payne avenues. The AsiaTown
name was chosen in 2006 to better describe an area that informally
was called the city's "New Chinatown". That moniker was rejected
because it didn't accurately reflect the diverse ethnicity of the
community. Cleveland’s AsiaTown is in the midst of a renaissance.
Never "down and out", today, the neighborhood is filled with new
construction and major renovation projects. It will be exciting to
see Asiatown as it reinvents itself. Asian Town Center is home to a
Full Service Supermarket, Authentic Asian Restaurants, a Beauty
Supply and Showroom, Herbal store, and offices like the Tzu Chi
Foundation and the Korean American Association of Greater Cleveland
(KAAGC) which has Saturday classes which teaches how to read and
write Korean. Since then, in the last year and a half, the CDC has
worked with committee participants on a marketing campaign with a
brand-new logo, name and Web site.
But not everyone is happy with the results. Chinatown's new
name, AsiaTown, is controversial, something the CDC staff doesn't
seem to have realized. It was also an attempt to develop a larger
marketing strategy, one that now includes striking white brochures,
with a red bonsai tree shooting out images of the Chinese zodiac as
AsiaTown's new logo, designed to capitalize on burgeoning interest
in Asian food and clothes from non-Asian Americans. What's
remarkable (though not novel) about this branding campaign is how
it trades on the iconic "Chinatown" - a place fixed in many minds
as one teeming with a variety of Asian-American-owned
establishments (albeit mostly Chinese-American), and where one goes
to find specialty or authentic Asian supplies - and its open
embrace of Chinatown as a tourist attraction. Historically,
Chinatowns were also seen as disease-ridden and licentious, and as
places to avoid. Over time, some Chinatowns have turned primarily
into commercial tourist destinations, whilst others retain their
origins as living and working communities. Cleveland, for now,
seems to be going down the tourist-attraction path.
(Credits: copied/paraphrased from: Sandy Mitchell, Jay Miller,
Charu Gupta, FreeTimes, maybe others)