Origin Story
Welcome to Chinatown was founded in March 2020 as a grassroots initiative by Jennifer Tam and Vic Lee, two Asian American women with a deep love for Manhattan’s Chinatown. Both Jennifer and Vic were long time residents of Chinatown, with Jennifer moving from Houston to Chinatown after college and Vic spending every Sunday at her late grandmother’s apartment on 135 Eldridge Street until she moved to Chinatown during college.
Jennifer and Vic realized the xenophobic rhetoric and impending economic challenges of the COIVD-19 pandemic could have a devastating impact on a community facing accelerated gentrification and longstanding impacts of historical disasters, including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. Moved by their commitment to see Chinatown continue to exist for future generations, the two moved quickly to do something.
The two longtime friends exchanged a series of DMs on Instagram, quickly plotting to generate support for Chinatown establishments. Welcome to Chinatown was born from a simple but urgent question: how could we support Chinatown’s small businesses as they faced a crisis unlike any before?
In early 2020, Jennifer and Vic noticed a wave of people purchasing gift cards to help local businesses stay afloat. It was a well-meaning effort, but in Chinatown, many businesses operated on a cash-only basis, making it nearly impossible for them to take advantage of this form of support. Wanting to find a way around this barrier, they set out to create resources that would help businesses adopt a digital gift card platform. Armed with our idea, they went door to door, speaking with a handful of shop owners, confident it was a simple solution.
They failed.
And that failure became one of our earliest and most formative lessons—one that still guides the organization today. It wasn’t just about technology. There were deeply rooted cultural nuances, systemic challenges, and language barriers that made digital and financial tools difficult to implement in Chinatown’s small business ecosystem. These businesses weren’t just resisting change; they needed solutions tailored to their realities, not ones built outside of them. That realization reshaped Jennifer and Vic’s approach entirely.
Screenshots from Co-Founder Vic Lee’s Instagram account from March 16 - 20, 2020
They pivoted.
Instead of forcing a solution that didn’t fit, they pivoted. Vic quickly secured the domain Welcome to Chinatown, creating an online hub where people could track which businesses were still open and find ways to support them. At the same time, Jennifer launched a GoFundMe campaign to purchase meals from struggling restaurants and donate them to overwhelmed essential workers. This simple initiative became a bridge between the two communities—providing a steady stream of revenue to restaurants still operating while ensuring frontline workers had warm meals.
And they weren’t just coordinating logistics. They were making the deliveries ourselves. Every handoff, every conversation at a restaurant’s counter, every moment spent navigating Chinatown’s streets deepened our understanding of the ongoing challenges these businesses had faced for years. The pandemic had intensified their struggles, but the roots stretched back decades—gentrification, rising rents, and a lack of institutional support had placed Chinatown in a constant fight for survival.
Along the way, something else happened: people showed up.
Volunteers—mostly millennial and Gen Z Asian Americans—began reaching out, eager to help in whatever way they could. Many of them, like us, had personal ties to Chinatown, shaped by childhood memories, family traditions, and a desire to give back to the community that had given so much to them. What started as a two-person effort quickly became a movement.
As Welcome to Chinatown grew, so did our mission. The grassroots fundraiser evolved from an emergency response initiative into a long-term force for economic and community resilience. While Welcome to Chinatown’s work began with meal donations and open-business directories, it has since expanded to programs that support small business innovation, cultural preservation, and access to capital.
At it’s core, Welcome to Chinatown remains a love letter-
one from Jennifer and Vic, from hundreds of volunteers, from every business owner who has trusted us to walk alongside them, and from every person who has joined us in keeping Chinatown open.