Mireya: Where were you all born? And where did you grow up?

Dewi: I was born in Indonesia and grew up in England and now I'm here.

Mei Lin: I was born in China. I grew up in Philadelphia, and then we moved to the Northeast, and then to the Northwest. 

Melly: I was born in Indonesia and grew up in Indonesia.

Qi Lian: I was born in China, grew up in China and Hong Kong.

Mireya: Does your family live here?

Dewi: I have my mom, my father, and my two sisters here, but my brother is back in Indonesia. 

Mei Lin: My parents are here. My aunts and uncles are here and cousins and I have like two uncles in New York. And one uncle in Boston.

Tracy: Just my mom, my brother, me, my husband and two kids.

Qi Lian: My whole family, all in here. Including uncles, aunties.

Cinthya: Did your families all come together or was it over the years?

Qi Lian: My aunt, my uncle came here 40 years ago. 

Melly: Wow. And my family just 20 years ago. 

Mireya: So you guys have roots here now, What is your relationship to Chinatown? 

Dewi: I’ve worked here for the past 18 years. I shop here, buy my lunch here and celebrate birthdays for my kids here or my parents’ birthday. 

Mei Lin: When I came here, I was a refugee. When I got here, Chinatown was not very Asian. 

Mei: I’m from Vietnam and I'm a refugee. I worked in Chinatown for three years and it's very close to me. Like my second family. Now today, I don't know why they want to take it away.

Mei Lin: I grew up here. Right now I'm working here. My dad, when he first came to the U.S., he worked in Chinatown and we lived in an apartment in China until I was 12 or in fifth grade. 

Melly: My husband likes the food here because it's a better fit. My son likes to hang out here because he used to work here too. 

Qi Lian: When I first came from China, I lived in Chinatown. How many years? I think maybe five or six years. I still have a lot of relationship with Chinatown. We cook all this Chinese food and that's why we use the Chinese market. You can buy anything. 

Melly: My mom also likes to shop here because it's cheaper. 

Qi Lian: We like the shop in Chinatown because sometimes you walk on the street, you can see the faces. That's why Chinatown is for the people, people can bring together, can come together, come together.

Mireya: Do you guys think Chinatown has changed a lot? 

Qi Lian: A lot has changed in the restaurants right now. They’re smaller but for the young people, the old people, they eat and drink tea in Chinatown right now. Only two.

Mei Lin: Right now, it's a lot of change.

Qi Lian: And even right now, for the new immigrants from China, before they mostly lived in Chinatown. When they come here, most people like to live in Chinatown. But right now, they come to learn, right? They live up northeast, when they come here they live in the north east.

Mei: Years ago, Chinatown was like, the families came from China to make the railroad, the families lived there.

Mei Lin: I remember when I was younger, my parents used to rent an apartment in Chinatown. They celebrate the holiday with more joy and stuff than right now. It's like you can't feel that joy. They used to celebrate Chinese New Year for four weeks of the lion and dragon dance. Right now, it's just one day, one week. Before, a lot celebrated in the middle of the night. You can hear the firecracker. Yeah, I would just open the window and look up.

Mireya: Why do you think Chinatown changed so much? 

Dewi: The young people didn't wanna carry the tradition.

Mei Lin: When they first immigrated, I believe they don't have that income like that, the money. So they lived closer together, and as time changed, people look forward and they want a better life. So they want a house, a car. They just don't wanna live in an apartment, you know? But we still come here.

Tracy: It's just kind of rubbing our history off.

Mei Lin: She's trying to say the Chinese side is like a part of history. If you take Chinatown away, it's like taking a part of our history away from us.

Mireya: This question is, what does being able to work in Chinatown or in a school like FACTS mean to you? This school was made on what would have been the parking lot of the Phillies Stadium. Now it gave you guys a cool working space like this, and it seems you guys are all pretty good friends and I wanna know what that means.

Dewi: To me, being able to work in Chinatown is convenient and I feel like it's close to home. Like many of them say, Chinatown is our playground, you know–like at lunch time, if you don't bring your own lunch then you can just go grab it in Chinatown. It's really convenient and then you feel like that's your food. 

You don't have to look around like, “Oh, is that what we didn't grow up with?” There's rice and vegetables and meat down there that are familiar to us. To be able to work at school holds a different meaning for me because my grandparents came from China to Indonesia, and then they built their home in Indonesia while they were doing that. My grandfather is actually a headmaster. He started a school, a small school, to teach children–Indonesian children and immigrants from China in Indonesia–to be able to read and write in Indonesian. Because, you know, as an immigrant, you want to learn the language of the country that you're going to live in. 

It's the same thing at FACTS. In the school district, they don't teach children to embrace your own culture and your own language. But at FACTS school, we encourage students to hold your own roots. Don't lose that root. And remember where you're from, and embrace your language. Don't be shy. In the same way of not being shy, you'll be able to speak the language of English in a good way. I think I'm basing my experience on my parents growing in Indonesia. It wasn’t easy because they have to lose their Chinese roots. They couldn’t speak Chinese at all. They couldn’t write in Chinese. There is no sign, we have to lose our name.

When I was born in Indonesia, my parents gave me a three-letter name, which is the Chinese name. But when we go to the hospital, we have to change our name. All my family, we don’t have a last name, but we actually do have a Chinese last name. Our family ancestral name, but we cannot carry that while we live in Indonesia.

But coming here is a different thing, right? You're able to. But at that point when I came here, I already had no last name. So my sister’s name and my name and my brother and my mom, my dad, we all have different last names. We just get it because the guy in Indonesia wrote our name, whatever they want to put on the paper. That's what we get.

It’s like a hit to my family history, being able to work at a school, because I'm able to teach my son, “Hey, you know, you have a Chinese root, you know, embrace that.” And then my mom started to speak in Chinese too. It feels like a freedom for me

Melly: And for me, being able to work in Chinatown in a school. It’s closest to my culture where I’m not a stranger. Even though I don't speak the language, but you are Asian and in here familiar.

Qi Lian: My first full time job was in school when I came from China to come to Chinatown. I came here in 2000, I think 2004. I worked here in 2005.

Mei Lin: I have three kids born here. I think it’s really good [to work at FACTS] because it’s like, the kids can learn their own culture. They embrace the culture. At other schools, they probably won't teach you the culture, they just teach you what's in the book.

Mireya: Is there a specific place in Chinatown that's special to you? And if there is, can you tell me about it and what memories you have there?

Dewi: For me, before we had something to do there almost every weekend as a family. The second place is FACTS School because I’ve worked here for 18 years.

Mei Lin: I think a special place to me in Chinatown was Ocean Harbor. I remember when I was living in Chinatown with my parents, every weekend we went and go to buy groceries in Chinatown. We have great memories because my family, I feel like when I was living in Chinatown together, it was much closer. Right now, it’s more far apart. 

Melly: I think it's because my friends can be everything to me. I mean, I can speak my broken English. And then for one restaurant there's no more. I couldn't find my food. I have that one. I couldn't find any of that. That's a special thing. 

Qi Lian: For me it’s similar, like all of Chinatown. It’s not the same. On 11th Street is Convention Center. Even if Chinatown wants to become bigger, it cannot because there’s no more space on the street. Chinatown is pretty small. Chinatown people are already growing more than Chinatown has space for.

Mei Lin: Chinatown is really good for the elders too, because they can speak their language. If they need something or they don't know where to find it, they can ask the people around. But if you take that away, where are they gonna go? Who's gonna help them? The seniors say in Chinatown, they will feel safe.

Qi Lian: It’s for our kids. If we want to show them the Chinese culture, we can bring them to Chinatown.

Mireya: I think that's all the questions I had. If anyone has anything else they wanna add, they can say it. 

Dewi: You know, Chinatown is already small. We hope that Chinatown can grow bigger, but instead it's just getting taken piece by piece. All this little that’s leftover in Chinatown. Hopefully they’ll try to get the economy better, not worse. We have a big hope for Chinatown, but at this point, it’s like they keep taking more of Chinatown. It’s pretty sad to see that.