Elizabeth: I spent my childhood in Hong Kong. I was born here, but I left before I was three, so I have no memory of this country before that. I’m what they call a third culture kid. I’m the child of an immigrant from India and a white mom, whose mother's family immigrated from the Netherlands and grew up mostly speaking Dutch. So just a real multi-cultural [family]. My entire childhood was engrossed in Chinese culture, but also colonial Chinese culture because I grew up in Hong Kong when it was a British colony. So I'm just this real hodgepodge of culture. And it was home. It was the greatest place to live ever. I loved it so much. I loved my community. I loved the bustle of a giant, busy concrete jungle of a city. While I went to an American school there, I actually started in a British school. But then I changed to an American school and went to school with about 50 different nationalities of kids. I grew up hearing different languages. People had different names but they were just names. They didn't seem like different names to me. Everyone's name was unique. And, you know, all sorts of different colors of people, and I had friend groups in all of those spaces. 

From school to a church community, that was also incredibly diverse. Everybody lives in big apartments there, tall apartment buildings. All the people who lived in that complex that I would see all the time, there was a real mixture of all sorts of people. I spent my childhood in a really, really international setting. And I didn't know anything different that made it seem unique or unusual to me, being immersed in Chinese culture, which was the dominant culture when I lived there. It was a super safe place and, at a very young age, I was going downtown by myself on the bus and getting taxis by myself. I came back [to the U.S.] when I was 13. So i was pretty young being with my friends shopping in some of the alleys or down by the waterfront. Taking the subway, just doing all those things by myself or with my friends. So I learned independence, and I learned how to be safe in a city.

I learned how to communicate when you don't always have all the language skills. While I did pick up quite a bit of everyday logistical, Cantonese to get around and to haggle in the alleys with vendors, and my address, and just general everyday exchanges; I did not have a huge grasp of Cantonese and so he just learned to navigate facial expressions. How to use your hands to communicate and things like that. So, I was really used to hearing different languages, hearing different people. I've got an ear for listening to people who, in this country, we would call heavily accented English. It's usually pretty easy for me to understand what people are saying and I think it's because I just grew up hearing English spoken in so many different ways. So, that was my childhood. It was ten years of really amazing food, culture, and I got to travel all over Asia. It is absolutely the best educator, being around people who are different from you. Just an incredible education. And it normalizes it in a way that was a very sharp and distinct difference when I came here. I realized that that's not the way the rest of the world lives. 

I'm so incredibly grateful for the experience I had because it is such an incredible international city. I learned a lot of fun things about Chinese culture, just in terms of everyday interactions and customs and how people are, but then also got to partake in a lot of the annual celebrations and just the way people were there. And how they celebrate life. And that has also become a part of what feels like home to me, even though I don't necessarily partake in a lot of those rituals. For example, when things like that happen in Chinatown, I come to them because it reminds me of home and how I grew up. So, It makes me think, “I'm not chinese. My connection is only from a childhood but it feels like I've come back home” when I'm around things like that. Which might sound funny, but that's the way it feels.

Jordan: No, no, that makes perfect sense

Rodney: It feels like Hong Kong in some ways, similar or just the feeling.

Elizabeth: This very small space in Philadelphia, however many blocks it is. It takes me back and I absolutely love it. I feel a sense of comfort, and I just feel almost normal. I know that's a feeling that a lot of immigrants feel. When they can come home at the end of the day and speak their own language, it's like they put on their clothes again. That feels like the real them and their head stops hurting because they don't have to think about how they're speaking all the time. These everyday stressors that I think people don't realize you experience when you come to a new country and you don't know how to navigate. This country, when I came back, was a new country. I had been here to visit family sometimes in the summer, but I had not spent any length of time in this country at all. It was just a vacation to see family and that was always fun. But I didn't understand anything about this country and the culture and how it worked. One of the challenges for me was that there was an expectation that I would understand because I was American. But I didn't know anything about this culture, and the first two years were two of the hardest years of my life. I really, really was miserable. When I came back, I was very lonely. And I really wanted to go home and by that I meant back to Hong Kong. I was young, it was a terrible age to move at 13. It's a crummy age to move a kid. That socialization is really so important at that age. And when you rip out all the roots and you have to start over, it's really hard. And I was one of five people of color in my new school of 1500. 

Rodney: Oh god. 

Elizabeth: It was horrific, there was a lot of bullying. A lot of things that would have gotten some kids expelled these days, happened to me, 

Rodney: Where was this? What area did you move into? 

Elizabeth: I moved into the suburbs of Minneapolis. Really great public education system, but every day I’d get on the bus and somebody would throw something in my hair that I would have to take out when I got to school. I was called lots of names. My brother was actually called derogatory names for Chinese people but we're not Chinese ethnically. So people just found out where we were from and threw those words out. Those words that are so vile. It was kids being bullies. One bus ride was particularly difficult as kids sat next to me and stuck a pushpin into my leg the entire bus ride to school. They were bullying me and making me feel horrible. When I got to school, I went to the bathroom and there were tiny little red marks all over my leg. I didn't tell anybody because I was just a scared kid, you know. It was so confusing to me because I was American. Or I was supposed to be American, and I didn't know what that meant. I remember being teased about my clothes. What was so funny is all my clothes were from the alleys of Hong Kong, the irregulars of the throw-offs, or the leftovers, from all the clothes that were made there. Everything I bought was like five bucks. People would tease me about my clothes yet the next year, I would see the exact same things I was wearing on everybody, because they had finally come into the stores in the U.S. It was really funny.

Jordan: You were just ahead of the wave. They didn't even know it.

Elizabeth: So I know what it's like to move somewhere and experience the traumas of moving. I was lucky. I know English. That's one huge barrier that a lot of immigrants have that keeps them very isolated. That was my experience coming here. And once I was able to get into some groups and make some friends, things got a little better. But there’s a part of my heart that is still always in Hong Kong. Always, it definitely feels like home. Even though I haven't been there in decades, I'm grateful for what I learned growing up in that environment. I do feel that, in the work that I do, I get tastes of being in a big city. This international community that we have here, I love that. An intentionally ethnic community like Chinatown. We were located here and it just feels right for a good space, for it to be really international.

Jordan: That's such a rich story; so much of it reminds me of my mom. Your point about how you learned to communicate with so many other people, even if you didn't share the same language or speak It the same necessarily. My mom came here when she was seven. She spoke no English, but she said she never had trouble because she was able to communicate in other ways and pick up English.

Elizabeth: That’s the narrative that we work at here. You come here knowing multiple languages, maybe you know a little English or you know a foreign language. You have all these other skills because you are forced to have them. The language we use here, we really try to speak in an asset-based way. Yes, people face barriers when they come here, but what are they bringing? Because when you move to a new place, there's a huge long list of skills that you either have to have before you come or you gain really quickly because you're adjusting and you’re navigating. Trauma is navigating language barriers, navigating cultural things. You're navigating all the things. You knew really well where you came from, like how to take the bus? How do I get a driver's license? What are the taboo topics that people don't talk about in this culture? And why do I suddenly feel awkward in a room when Ii bring something up? Stuff that you just take for granted when you come somewhere and you know the culture. I was lucky enough that I grew up in a culture where I was constantly navigating that. We would go somewhere and I'd be like, okay, tonight we're eating Indonesian food and I know that I'm in this place with these Indonesian people, and tonight we're doing a thing with a Korean group of people and it's different. I remember, when I grew up, we'd sit at the table and be like, Oh, is tonight a fork, chopsticks, or hand night. That's how we grew up and we just navigated it.

Jordan: My mom always talks about how she struggled so much more with the culture. English wasn’t necessarily about trying to understand how to become a citizen and trying to work, how to act at school. It wasn't really an English issue, and there's so many other ways to communicate. We already know that English isn't necessarily the biggest problem.

Elizabeth: No, it isn't. And here we deal with that a lot. In a couple areas like with our small business owners that we’re helping, customer service might look really different in their culture. What does it look like here or In our workforce programs, you know? Maybe you're a professional and you're in a meeting, and your boss is talking and there's something that you disagree with. Do you speak up? Do you call out your boss in front of somebody else? Those are cultural things that you either do because you're just acting out of your own culture, but then you feel awkward because you realize maybe you shouldn't have done something and you've messed up a relationship or you don't say anything. That's part of the feeling of isolation. “I don't know if I can speak here, I can't be myself and I don't know what the rules are” and it's just a lot. You're having to think about it all the time. Those cultural things are a lot harder.  Most people have the words in English but they don't necessarily know the context that the words should be used in or can be used in. Then the question is, what are we asking people to adhere to? Our culture is international in Philadelphia. It's an international city right? And so, should workplaces be more accommodating and thinking about all the different people that are around the table. We work with employers–what does it look like to really have a diverse welcoming culture? I would have really benefited from, for example, a teacher at school who realized that I had come from somewhere else. My kids had some support to adjust. That didn't exist when I came here and that probably doesn't exist in a lot of places. There are some school districts that have gotten a lot better because they've had so many people from somewhere else, but when you're one of five, it's not a thing.

Jordan: That takes such a toll, especially if you've nowhere else to go. If that's just every day, all day, there is no retreat from it. 

Rodney: Thinking of Minneapolis from Hong kong.

Elizabeth: Also, in 1982, it was a very different world. Minneapolis has always been a place that takes a ton of immigrants, but they were mostly in the city and had different ingredients too. Where I was, it was a suburb and it was a pretty upper middle class.

Rodney: I grew up in the Washington DC area and even then failed. In 1982, wow.

Elizabeth: I also navigate, well, for me it's kind of a complicated answer, because in some spaces, I'm completely white passing. And that's also frustrating. So, identity is a big thing. We've been talking about a lot and we talk about it a lot here too. 

Rodney: Being white passing, did you hear stuff that you normally wouldn't hear because people thought you’re white?

Elizabeth: Absolutely. Then you have to make a choice about whether you speak up or not. A couple times I have. Sometimes I use humor. Like “Wait, can we go back to the part where you called me a white person?” That's kind of my approach. Then there’s awkward laughter and we discuss it. So it’s another skill you have to learn, right? As a person of color. You have to. You have to learn how to talk about the way you are in your identity.

Jordan: And in a way that other people will feel is accessible to them. 

Elizabeth: Yes, which you shouldn't have to do but you have to, or some people feel like they have to. We also deal with questions like, “Why do you dress that way? Why do you not shake my hand when you greet me?” There are a lot of differences, cultural things that we deal with. I'm grateful because one of the things we talk about a lot here is being culturally responsive, integrating wherever people are coming from and wherever they're at right now. I am really grateful that I literally grew up in that environment. I grew up where everybody was quirky in their own way, because of wherever they were from. So, I had an in. When I was in elementary school, I had two really good friends who were both from South Africa. Their mom was Black and one was white, and this was before apartheid was not a thing. And they were living in Hong Kong. It was funny that we all found ourselves in this space. It was a tremendously happy, wonderful place. And it worked. I'm not sure what the magic is except that we were all thrown into it. And I look around and I wonder why that can't happen here.

Jordan: How did you end up in Philadelphia?

Elizabeth: I came to Philly because I was doing grad school at Temple. I had a fantastic experience at Temple because I was in the geography program and they did a lot of community development, community-based, research partnerships. I had an opportunity to connect with different community groups often in neighborhoods that were working with immigrants. I had a lot of fun projects that I worked on, and then when I decided on my research, I knew that I wanted it to be about immigration or something about migrants. I worked on research around hate crimes and comparing differences. Community one was two Asian communities; one was the Indian community and one was the Filipino community. Looking at why, why were there hate crimes against one. Obviously the answer is racism. But, what contributed to it> There's so many different factors, but you can't blame the people. Their habits and how they're coming here, how they behave–everybody adjusts differently. Every community adjusts differently but that's why communities like Chinatown are so important because they're a resource for people.  Philly Chinatown, while very Chinese, has a lot of resources for lots of different kinds of occasions as well, which I think is an important part of Chinatown. Besides coming here and feeling the connection to where I grew up, I frequent some of the stores here because they have things that I want that I can't get on Amazon or anywhere else because they're specific and special and I know them. That includes food, especially food stuff like ingredients, but all sorts of other things, too. It's an important little economy that serves a particular customer base. That's really important too.

Jordan: It's really hard to find any of the stuff that is sold in Chinatown anywhere else except South Philly, or all the way down to H Mart. Otherwise, basically nothing. 

Elizabeth: But what's great about it? It's all in one place. 

Jordan: And also the feeling of normalcy. I grew up with no Chinese culture, but even still, there's some sort of feeling of being normal in Chinatown. Even though I'm not directly connected to the culture, I feel connected to the people. I feel connected to history. And also just connected to the idea of it. 

Elizabeth: A community of Asians, and that is one of the reasons and that when I'm in Chinatown, I both feel a little bit like an outsider because I know I'm walking around with all this experience, but I don't wear it on my sleeve. Nobody looks at me and says, “Oh look, she grew up in Hong Kong and she knows all about Chinese culture and she was immersed in it.” Nobody sees that by looking at me. So I feel a little bit like an outsider, but I also have that feeling of home and seeing Asian faces. I feel that connection that I felt when I was growing up. And I know it's true for my children who are also half Filipino. So, as a person who's studied geography and studied immigrant communities in this country, Chinatowns are old. They're part of us; they're not new, they're really an old part of our history. And it’s so important to keep that history alive and continue to tell it even when there are narratives out there that say we don't need to do that or we don't need to talk about it. We do. Because it represents a large part of our country and people who live here.

Jordan: While you've been here, how have you seen Chinatown change?

Elizabeth: That's a challenging question, post-pandemic, because everything feels a little bit weary. As a city right now. we're trying to heal. Chinatown is not different from the rest of the city. In that sense, though, ethnically based neighborhoods sometimes have a strength to them that is different from the stores on Walnut Street or wherever. There are networks. There are connections, there are associations and their support and resources. There's a real connection to their customer base. The ways that I've seen Chinatown change over the years is partly the natural ebb and flow of a city neighborhood. Maybe an owner hands their store off to their child or tastes change, or there’s an opening up of exposure to lots of different Asian cultures. It's becoming less only Chinese and it's opening up to more, other versions of Asian stores. There's a lot more Korean businesses, there's a Burmese restaurant that's been around forever and ever and ever. Some of the markets, you can tell where the focus is and what, who their customer base is by what they're selling. 
How else have I seen it change? Our Chinatowns are really resilient, but I'm sad that it has to be. I wasn't here obviously before I came here in 1994. Vine Street [Expressway] was already there. I learned all about the history of it when I was taking geography classes. The convention center expanded even more. Some of the arguments I hear say, “Well, that's not really Chinatown,” but was it? Right now, in this moment, it might not be, but what was it like 50 years ago? And that's the point. And the other thing I've felt is, from an urban planning perspective, I look at Chinatown and I see this giant convention center, this giant highway. And the hospital that was next to the park, it was just giant roads that were hard to cross. And then The Gallery, or what's now called the Fashion District. And then the possibility of another giant building. Philadelphia is a city from colonial times; especially Market East is a smaller scale than the west side of Market. I feel like these behemoths of buildings are surrounding and it feels encroaching. There’s not this easy transition from one neighborhood to the next. There's giant buildings that are there now. They're not all terrible. The convention center has a kind of use–the way people use a convention center is different from the way people would use an arena. I've been to conventions in cities and there's all sorts of activities that are planned around touring places and going to restaurants and you always go out to eat around or you shop around. You might be utilizing hotels. Whereas when you go to an arena, your experience is inside and all the things you need to experience are inside. Just from an urban planning standpoint, I think there's not much of an argument for it. If you're going to argue that it helps the locals or the local neighborhood, I disagree with that. 

When I was in grad school, one of the projects I did at the request of then-councilmember Michael Nutter was a project for gathering research around the casinos, especially the riverboat casinos. The group of five of us spent a whole semester gathering data on the experiences of other casinos, especially gambling and its impact on the community. It was definitely a net negative impact on the community because all the promises of jobs and infrastructure, while those things might also be true, there were a lot of indirect costs and other costs to the community that you needed to factor in. When you look at the net gain, that's what should be done. Let's get some real data and look at other places. Where Chinatowns have been, how did an arena impact it? When real estate prices go up and you get a watered-down Chinatown, you get a franchise chain kind of Chinatown. You don't get real people with real businesses who live in and breathe in the community.

Rodney: Look what happened to Washington, DC.

Elizabeth: The same. And I was just in New York, at their Chinatown, and that one really makes me feel like I'm in Hong Kong. I’ve just been reading on Twitter and my stomach turns. When I read some of the oppositions, some of the comments. They bother me, but it's part of a larger problem we have in this country. “I'm afraid of what's different” and “What's the big deal? Chinatown is a crappy dirty place.” It's such a horribly racist thing to say, because you buy your vegetables under plastic wrap and not from a market. It's just a different way of doing things. It doesn't mean that it's dirty or wrong. This connotation of anything foreign or brown being dirty is a very old trope and very old, tired racist thing to say. But I see it a lot. You don't have to come to Chinatown if you don't want to use it and if you think it's dirty. But this serves a community, and it serves a community beyond only Asian people. There's a lot of people who are interested in authentic experiences and good ingredients.  

Jordan: I wonder how you would envision Chinatown being if there weren't so many major developments around it. You talking about it being such a multi-ethnic community, I could imagine it expanding out. 

Elizabeth: I actually saw a question about some city in the world that was transforming something into a pedestrian area. The question was posed to Philadelphia: if you did this in Philly, where would you do it? Of course, there were a ton of different ideas that we're all great at. Just a purely pedestrian area in the first place. How amazing it would be for Chinatown if there was one strip through it that was all pedestrian. I think it would really solve some of the issues. I was also in Columbus Park in Chinatown in New York on Sunday and I was there with my daughter and my niece. We were talking about Franklin Square and what's missing? This is a place where the entire Chinese and Asian community congregate and there's music playing and there's dancing. There's people doing tai chi and there's people playing ping pong and all sorts of things going on, and it's a real family environment. I felt like I was in another country when I was there, in terms of how the rest of the world tends to use parks. But now we've taken Franklin Square and put all these big roads around it so it’s hard to get to. It's not a place that invites pedestrians to come to it. It's better than it used to be. It was green space in the city, but it was really hard to get to, and so I just thought Chinatown could use some more community spaces.

Jordan: I was just thinking about it because I recently went to San Francisco. Interestingly, my mom was like, they're legally required to build places for public use when they construct new developments. If we had something like that, there's no public space directly connected to Chinatown and that would be so useful.

Elizabeth: San Francisco's got a rich history of that. Developers used to have to pay a portion for affordable housing as well. They've got a long History of those kinds of fees and being very successful, whereas the narrative was that'll never work. “Businesses will leave Center City” and “That doesn't happen.” We've been talking for decades about capping Vine Street, which is why it shouldn't have been built in the first place. Why are we creating a problem? Now we’ve just spent billions to fix it. But we should, we should fix it because the area right on the other side of Vine Street is that connection that would change a lot. It's trying to be vibrant. 

Rodney: Do you see a problem where they might take too long to do that? Folks are saying there's a fad going on where a lot of people are moving into that part. Into apartments transformed into lofts and stuff. A lot of folks are moving there, becoming like the Loft District.

Elizabeth: It’s becoming the Loft District. It's been going that way for about 10 years now, though it's gone slowly in the pandemic. Erased affordable housing. I was a consultant to a lot of community development groups and affordable housing was a big issue. That was something we were always concerned about. And as long as I've lived in Philadelphia, we've been talking about fixing Penns Landing. That was also a highway problem. Our devotion to cars has caused some problems. That devotion to cars has been to the detriment of some key neighborhoods. Chinatown is one of them. As a geographer and an urban planner, I study the built space and how it impacts culture and communities and the spatial layout of things. There's a direct connection. So, when you put a giant arena somewhere, you put a giant highway through something, everything's going to change about how you use the space.

Rodney: Because they wouldn't want to build the infrastructure to get to the city,

Elizabeth: Right. Can you walk across Vine Street? Yes, but it's a perception thing and it matters. Because that impacts how people use a space. And it's an equity thing. For example, if you have elderly people who want to go, do they know how to walk to Franklin Square and do things? How are they going to get there safely? Can you see an elderly person walking across Vine? Getting across that with a walker or in a wheelchair or something like that with little kids. When I had my son, I lived in Old City and I would walk around there and you always had to hold his hand because there's just traffic everywhere. The car thing has been a problem and I also feel like currently the stadiums have public transportation access, so I don't really understand that argument. You have parking and public transportation access down there. What's the problem? I don't get it. And if you want to have a night out where you have dinner somewhere, have dinner in Center City, hop on the Broad Street line and go down to your stadium. That's exactly what you need to do.

When I decided to move to Philly and I told my parents. I think my mother cried. Because her last memory of Philadelphia at the time–this was in the mid 90s–was driving through it in the 70s. She said, “All I remember at Philly is that it had the reputation of being called Filthadelphia, right?” She was really upset. Then she came here, and visited me a year after I had moved. We walked all around the historic area and we went to Chinatown. The first thing she wants to do when she comes here is go to Chinatown and eat a real Chinese meal because she misses it from the 10 years she lived in Hong Kong with my family. But Philadelphia was such a different city than the 70s. Cities go through cycles for sure. But when I moved into Old City in the 90s, it was sort of  an arts district. The First Fridays were artsy. Then, when I sold my home, I had lived there for 11 years. By the time I sold it, I couldn't afford to live there anymore. And the same thing happened to me when I moved to West Philly. Couldn't afford to live there anymore when I sold my house 15 years later.

The market has changed. I used to live right in Center City, then I went out to West [Philly] and now I'm way in South [Philly] because you just increasingly get priced out of the markets. Affordable housing is a huge issue. If you want people to live and work and buy things in the city, they have to be able to afford it and it has to be walkable. I've been hearing a lot about this concept of the 15-minute city. Have you heard of this? It's a good 15 minutes to get all the things you need. Where you live, that you can walk or drive safely or take a bus safely within 15 minutes is the way. It's not a new concept in urban planning; that's a vibrant city. It's safer too. When you have lots of people living and working and people are out all the time, it is safer.

Jordan: How do you convince developers that your way of life is valid? That they shouldn't be aiming to price you out of your life? That your community, the way it is, is valuable and gentrifying it isn't going to create vibrancy.

Elizabeth: I guess the question to start with is, is it the developer that needs convincing? Developers are interested in making money. Approaching it by speaking their language is money. But money isn't the only issue that makes a city. For a developer to make money, that’s not the only important issue because there are impacts on the city where money will be lost. But it isn't lost from the developer's bottom line, and that's the problem. This loss from the community and from the city’s lost revenue or greater expenses for public health. It's not hitting that developer’s bottom line and that's the problem. So, I'm not sure if the way to go is to convince the developer or if it's more to convince the community and have the community be the voice. People say we don't want this and the people who are making decisions about whether this can take place should listen. Maybe this is a little naive, but when I heard about the arena, I thought, “How many times are they going to do this? How many times is this going to keep happening?” It's kind of beyond insulting now. I don't really understand it. Didn't they hear us the first time when we said no? And they're coming back with a really similar project–what's different? It tells me they actually didn't listen. Listening is the most important thing in any kind of community work. Active listening is the most important thing. It’s one of the most important things, and I just don't see evidence of that. They're just covering areas and if they did their due diligence, they would know about the past. 

Jordan: I'm sure they do. 

Elizabeth: Right. This is one of the reasons why it's so important to teach our history and not gloss over the hard things. Because it might be news to some people that this is not the first time that somebody has tried to encroach on this particular part of the city. And the history of that, and the stories of the people who were involved in those fights, the results of that. I do think It's not the responsibility of the Chinatown community necessarily to do this, but I do think it would be helpful for it. Not to only be like, “We don't want this” but also being involved in the solutions for whatever they're considering the problem is. There I think a lot of times in this country we talk a lot about what we're against. But let's get together at the same table and be creative about what we're for. Together. And that would be a good thing for all communities who are impacted by this. The arena is directly impacting Chinatown, but there's also a business community south of it that will be impacted. There are other communities around there that will be impacted. What I think the argument that the developers are making is, it's not going to impact Chinatown. In that, they're dismissing all the history of how it already is. It’s really hard to start a conversation without them acknowledging that. Past projects have already impacted Chinatown. And Chinatown is struggling for survival. Survival is important and valuable, and that may not be an opinion shared by everybody. What do you want the city to look like? Do you want it to be unique? Or do you want it to be franchises?

Jordan: How has having the welcoming center in Chinatown and having immigrants be able to come here been? You guys do different programs and services. I assume people come here. Do they? 

Elizabeth: They do. Tonight we're having this event. It's been a slow opening up after the pandemic. So we weren’t in the office for a couple years and we're doing almost everything exclusively online, pivoting to what people need. A lot of our immigrant communities don't live in Center City because they can't afford to live there. Center City is the central place that everybody can get to, but we do have locations in other parts of the city where we do programming also because we want to be accessible to people so they don't have to travel far. After the pandemic, we’ve continued a lot of our online programming because there's a whole group of people that can't get here, or have children or have weird work schedules. We’re trying to be available and accessible to all kinds of different people and their scheduling needs. But it is great to be back in person for a lot of the things we're doing, to be in the same room and to be able to just mingle. It's great to be back in the office and regularly go across the street to Nom Wah, get some soup. It's one of my favorite things just to be able to do that. We also had a 20th anniversary celebration lunch with staff and board and some former staff and a bunch of people. We had it here in Chinatown at a local restaurant, so we were glad to be in this community. It's a place for people. People come here because they get that sense of community being built here, and they're connecting with it even if they're not immigrants from the same country. They're sharing similar experiences there and we've come to understand that community building is the thread that binds all of our programming together and is one of the most important things we do.

Jordan: Is there a certain location in Chinatown that you have a particularly strong connection to?

Elizabeth: Well, the place in Chinatown that I love is no longer. It doesn't exist anymore.

Rodney: What's that?

Elizabeth: It's the underground market that was at 11th. Do You know what I'm talking about? You go downstairs. That place just oozed every experience i had in in Hong Kong. It was just concrete jungle on top and people would build a storefront underneath. You're constantly ducking down alleys, and going down. It felt so secret and underground.