Theme: Find a border/wall in Seattle and reflect upon it.

Flying over the clouds separating the land and sky, I was struck with a thought: are we not defined by the borders we erect for ourselves? To separate, to divide, to build an identity. In our individual efforts to be unique, are we not required to put up borders and fronts to separate ourselves from others? I feel that this not only applies to people, but to states, countries, and ethnicities as well. In the past week, I crossed many of these in order to present and perform.

Although I noticed many walls and fronts through the week, I am going to elaborate on one I saw in the International District (ID) of downtown Seattle: The Chinatown Gate. It stands as a rather colorful structure next to where Uwajimaya used to be located, overlooking one of the main bus terminals (Figure 1). To me, this structure symbolizes a border that helps to retain a sense of identity within the Asian-American community. Walk across the street from the bus terminal, and you end up in another world—shops selling an assortment of food and goods that baffle the common Westerner, architecture influenced by lands across the Pacific Ocean, people talking in tonal languages. For the non-adventuresome, crossing this border may be a bit of a stretch.

The gate, however, serves to welcome those outside. No guards, no physical obstructions to feet, bicycles, cars, low-altitude wind currents, or rocket-ships; just a spacious opening surrounded by eye-catching color. The gate welcomes, but upon closer inspection, one may also notice that it helps to maintain identity of what’s behind it.


Figure 1. Left: The Chinatown Gate. Right: The Chinatown gate with a Japanese American tourist flashing a stereotypical peace-sign.

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Identity is maintained through the border’s presence. In particular, some of the more obscure traditions, products, and stores survive in a way I compare to biodiversity in rainforests.

In many environments (particularly rainforests), the level of biodiversity is correlated in a non-linear manner to the size of individual land-plots. A single 4 x 4 mile plot of rainforest holds a much greater level of biodiversity than the biodiversity within two 2 x 4 mile plots. This is due in part to niche partitioning. I feel that drawing a border and clustering ethnic (Asian in this case) shops together helps them to retain their identity in a similar way—clusters of Asian shops always require the basics; a grocery store, a restaurant or two, etc. The larger the continuous area of Asian shops, the larger the space for other stores that market goods/services beyond the “basics”-- Shops selling only barbequed meats, ones selling Asian movie memorabilia, the list goes on. Thus, thanks to a border that clusters many Asian shops together, a greater number of specialty stores are able to survive.

To me, these unique shops are a large part of what makes up the Asian-American identity. They are what separate the group from the Starbucks, McDonalds, and Safeways that otherwise homogenize the community. Thanks to the border represented by the gate in the ID, such shops are able to survive and thus contribute to this sense of identity.


*Note*
My absence from class the past week as well as this post being put up late was due to having to travel to Bozeman, Montana to present my neuro research followed by a trip to Nelson, BC to perform at a guitar competition.