Chinatown is not organized around memory, but around necessity.
Unlike ethnic neighborhoods that slowly turned into representations of themselves, Chinatown remains, first and foremost, an operational territory: food distribution, low margin commerce, intergenerational labor, and dense occupation of space.

Formed in the late 19th century and expanded through successive waves of immigration — mainly Cantonese, later Fujianese — Chinatown developed as a parallel city within New York. Language, economy, social structure, and spatial logic evolved internally, often indifferent to the surrounding metropolis.

Here, the street is not a stage. It is infrastructure.
Sidewalks extend shops. Storefronts function as kitchens, warehouses, offices, and living rooms. Public and private dissolve into a single compressed system.

Photographing Chinatown today means engaging with continuity, not nostalgia. It is a place where the past is not performed — it is still being worked.