Rebuilding Roots: The New Entrepreneurs Carrying Chinatown’s Legacy Forward
By: Suhani Pandya
We’re excited to share a guest article written by Suhani Pandya, a NYC high school student! After her East Asian studies course, Suhani wanted to learn about the Asian American women shaping her city. This summer, she interviewed women who run small businesses in Chinatown, documenting their journeys, the challenges they’ve faced, and the communities they’ve helped build.
Manhattan’s Chinatown has survived crises that would have flattened many neighborhoods.
The 9/11 attacks in 2001 hit the neighborhood significantly harder than other areas of the city. Bridge closures and zoning restrictions cut off the flow of tourists and commuters that sustained its small businesses. Phones and basic utilities were shut down, further preventing businesses from communicating with customers or continuing with regular operations. Given Chinatown’s low-margin, high-turnover economy, this didn’t just mean a temporary drop in sales: in just the first two weeks after 9/11, businesses in the garment, restaurant, retail, and tourism sectors suffered revenue losses of 60% to 100%.
The image of the shuttered storefront re-emerged in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led nearly 90% of Chinatown businesses to halt operations. Anti-Asian sentiment, coupled with the brick-and-mortar basis of most establishments, left owners grappling with the sudden loss of both income and community, as they were forced to cut ties with customers and employees whom they had known for years.
Even now, Chinatown still faces threats. The construction of luxury condominiums and high-end stores (neither of which cater to Chinatown’s residents) has accelerated gentrification and driven up rents. Proposed projects like a massive new jail nearby could further disrupt the area, likely diverting foot traffic or forcing businesses to take on costly renovations. As first-generation business owners either retire or are forced to close under these pressures, members worry not only about Chinatown’s economic survival but also about preserving its distinct cultural identity.
Yet amid these challenges, a new generation of entrepreneurs is staking its claim: the children and grandchildren of immigrants, many of whom grew up walking in Chinatown’s crowded alleys or working after school as cashiers in their parents’ gift shops or groceries. Passionate and empowered, many of these entrepreneurs navigate rising costs to give back to Chinatown, whether it's by contributing to its cultural legacy or supporting other businesses through networks of reciprocity and interdependence.
Preserving Family, Culture, and Memory
What pushed these entrepreneurs to open a business in Chinatown? For some, like Kyo Pang, it is about preserving family legacy through food. After arriving in the United States from Malaysia in 2008 and earning a degree in psychology and public relations, Kyo had no plans to enter the restaurant business.
But a conversation with her father, who had spent decades running restaurants back home, changed everything. “Around eleven years ago, my father was going through the hardest times in his life. We were talking, and he told me about the importance of food,” Kyo recalled, “And I realized that I should continue his legacy.”
Kyo began with small pop-ups before opening Kopitiam, a Nyonya coffeehouse and eatery. Many of the dishes, like nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk with pandan leaf) come directly from family recipes or childhood memories. “I haven’t seen my family for more than 10 years,” Kyo mentioned when I asked her about the restaurant’s menu, “Every time that I prepare all these [dishes], it makes me feel closer to them, not only by distance, but also by heart.”
Others are driven by a desire to bring new flavors and experiences to the neighborhood. Lauren Tran, born in Seattle, opened her Vietnamese-inspired bakery in New York after the pandemic left her laid off from her job as a pastry chef. “During COVID, I had so much time on my hands and became really homesick. I couldn’t travel back to Seattle, where there are a lot of Vietnamese desserts you can just buy,” Lauren said “I love Chinese bakeries, but I was definitely looking for more Vietnamese flavors and desserts that I couldn’t find in the city. With the time on my hands, I decided I should try making these desserts that I’ve eaten all my life but haven’t made myself.”
Some entrepreneurs focus on preserving Chinatown’s history. Bernice Pfluger, co-founder of Chinatown Legacy Tours, works alongside Emmy-winning producer Roger Lee to document the neighborhood’s past, offering walking tours that explore gang activity from the 1970s. “We’ve seen the incline and the hustle and bust of Chinatown just diminish. And we thought, what can we do? Because this is where we grew up, we definitely want to keep it alive for generations,” Bernice remarked. “We’re storytellers. That’s our strength. And so we felt like that's a way that we can help Chinatown. And so we started this company.”
While several of these entrepreneurs have launched their own businesses, some have taken over enterprises from parents or grandparents. Lily Ng, who succeeded her mother as the owner of Lily’s Vegan Pantry, discussed how she grew up working behind the counter. “Every day after school, I would go to afterschool activities, do my sports, and then come and work the night shift. That’s basically how I grew up, with me behind my mom trying to learn and work the way she did,” Lily remembered. “I think I was always given the idea that I should be helping out my mom, helping out the family, so I never really thought much about exploring other options.”
The Quiet Cost of Independence
Carrying that legacy is not without sacrifice. It’s 4:45 p.m., and Lily Ng is still at the back of Lily’s Vegan Pantry, jotting notes in a weathered notebook while the last customers drift out. Running a small business in Chinatown demands stamina, adaptability, and a near-spiritual tolerance for uncertainty — all traits these second-generation entrepreneurs are still working to master.
Leaving a corporate job for life behind the counter is a leap few are prepared for: it involves shifting from a world full of structure and bureaucracy to one of risk and rapid change. “When I worked as an accountant, I used to have certain tasks I needed to do per day, per week, and per month,” emphasized An Nguyen Hawks, the owner of Vietnamese eatery Sen Saigon. “There’s some comfort in knowing what’s next. Now, there’s no one guiding me, no set tasks. I have to come up with them myself.”
The unpredictability is mental and financial. “The biggest challenge when I was starting up was being scared –– talking yourself out of fear because you don’t know what financial stability you will have,” remarked Lily Lin, the founder of Claws 627, a nail salon she opened after leaving design and merchandising jobs at corporations like Calvin Klein and PicsArt. “I used to have a good paycheck every two weeks from my corporate job, so I always knew I had money coming. Switching from that to not knowing when you will have enough clients to survive in New York City, which is an unforgiving place, was incredibly tough.”
For many small business owners, starting up means stepping into countless roles: manager, operator, accountant, designer, and marketing lead, to name a few. When at Sen Saigon, An divides her time between working in the kitchen, supervising her staff, and interacting with her customers, hearing their stories and sharing laughs; behind the scenes, she uses her accounting background to create her own profit and loss statements. “The physical demand of working in a restaurant is incredibly challenging. The first week, I couldn’t feel my feet. You’re standing for hours everyday. I have to rely a lot on massages,” An told me.
Bernice Pfluger, co-founder of Chinatown Legacy Tours, balances her venture on top of a full-time job as a creative director “My day-to-day is my work, unless someone books a tour. In that case, we are in Chinatown giving it. Many times, Roger, John, and I are on the phone, speaking about new ways to generate business and tell Chinatown’s stories. I drink a lot of coffee now. I’m tired but I’m also so energized by my work.”
Even for seasoned owners like Lily Ng, the math of running a business has grown tougher because of rising prices. Lily’s Vegan Pantry runs a nationwide shipping business in tandem with other producers of vegan goods; Lily is finding this segment increasingly difficult to sustain. “Everything is getting more expensive. Labor isn’t necessarily more expensive, but packaging and insurance for packages are both costing us more,” Lily noted. “We don’t charge our vendors extra because we want to share our platform with them. We’re learning and communicating with our vendors to see if they can adjust the prices and help make our operations more feasible.” Much of Lily’s inventory comes from Asia, meaning rising tariffs only deepen the strain.
Across Chinatown, owners are finding that keeping prices fair often means sacrificing profit. Sandy Truong, who runs Dreamers Coffee House, resists raising prices too much; nearly 80 percent of her regulars live in the neighborhood. But striking a stable balance can be difficult.
“Many times, new small businesses face pricey overhead and build-outs,” remarked Lauren Tran, founder of Banh by Lauren. “Younger Asian American businesses, including ours, can be more expensive than some older-generation establishments because we’re paying for higher-cost ingredients. We’re not doing this to be gentrifying. We simply want to make the best product we can.”
The Ties that Keep the Lights On
Despite these challenges, Chinatown’s businesses survive because they do not stand alone. The neighborhood runs on trust, small favors, and the kind of everyday reciprocity that blurs the line between business and friendship. That same spirit sustains both the relationships among business owners and the deep ties they’ve built with generations of customers.
For many, those bonds make the long hours worthwhile. “Many of our customers bring their younger kids into Lily’s Vegan Pantry. Some started coming in when their moms were pregnant,” observed Lily Ng, “Now those kids are in college; it’s a great experience to see them grow up over the years.”
Customer loyalty in Chinatown goes beyond regular business transactions. “I’ve met a lot of friends in the neighborhood through opening Dreamers. People would inquire about our business a lot, and they would come and talk, as we were very open to sharing our experience. When we would throw pop-up events or gatherings, people would come and we would eat dinner together, building connections,” reflected Sandy.
But even beyond the customers, Chinatown has a business ecosystem that supports enterprises in more tangible ways, even when it comes to basic tasks like sharing ingredients. “Sometimes when we run out of things — like once, we ran out of limes — I’ll just run to the nearest grocery and ask if they have any. They’ll say yes and just hand some over,” Kyo said, when discussing the ways that Kopitiam supported local businesses. “Not just that, but there are a few restaurants similar to ours, and we actually help promote each other. We shout each other out a lot.”
Sandy described a similar network of support. “We have definitely developed good relationships with our neighboring businesses. For example, the people over at Seller 36, the wine bar –– we help each other a lot,” she commented, “And Golden Diner, too. When we’ve run out of filters or something we need, they’ve lent us supplies, and we’ve given them things in return. Everyone around here looks out for one another.” Beyond borrowing supplies, neighbors even pitch in on big projects: when building Dreamers’ outdoor dining area, local business owners and friends came together to help. Construction took almost half a year.
This ecosystem extends into the supply chain itself. Sandy sources milk bread from a local bakery called Manna 1, while purchasing takeout containers, paper plates, and other equipment from Chinatown wholesalers. Lauren Tran shops in local markets for rarer items like morning glory, which she uses in Banh by Lauren’s scones. Lily has onboarded several vegan eateries, including Buddha Bodai and Yaya Tea Garden, onto the virtual segment of Lily’s Vegan Pantry, helping them sell dim sum and pastries to a nationwide audience.
Bernice Pfluger, co-founder of Chinatown Legacy Tours, takes the same ethos in a slightly different direction, to the extent that supporting the neighborhood is part of the mission itself. She hosts two tours –– one focused on historical criminal activity in Chinatown, the other on the neighborhood’s food –– and uses any additional time with her guests to highlight family-run eateries and shops, encouraging visitors to eat, shop, and explore locally. Bernice’s food tour features five different family-owned restaurants in Chinatown, aiming to support them through rising prices and changing conditions.
This supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem is underpinned by several community organizations, like Welcome to Chinatown, Chinatown B.I.D., and Send Chinatown Love. They each help businesses evolve and thrive in Chinatown, whether it is by providing grants, offering courses on marketing and finance, or working with businesses to set up digital presences. “People think Chinatown is an older neighborhood that hasn’t evolved, that it’s stuck in the past,” remarked Lily Ng, “But I think our Chinatown B.I.D., other community organizations, and this new generation are all really trying to bring it back.”
Kyo summed it up perfectly. “Kopitiam is built by the community,” she told me, “Whenever something comes up, local business owners always support one another. We don’t see each other as competitors; we collaborate with each other. I think that’s part of why the Lower East Side is so special.”
Sources:
https://www.aafederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ChinatownAfter911.pdf
https://furmancenter.org/neighborhoods/view/lower-east-side-chinatown https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/eae997bc6cec4c30b51f191c886ae269
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/nyregion/jail-construction-chinatown-manhattan.html
Firsthand interviews
