Are We Going To Talk In Chinatown?

This magazine captures my impressions of Manhattan's Chinatown—where certain moments echo the same subtle pause I associate with my hometown, a small southeast city in China.

When I was a kid in my hometown, I noticed that my family and I weren’t particularly skilled at expressing our emotions. Instead, we often relied on indirect methods to communicate our needs, and more often than not, we met questions we didn’t want to answer with silence. Moving to New York was a stark contrast—suddenly, I was in a fast-paced city where people are direct, speak with efficiency, and the energy around me, from my friends to the environment, was lively and dynamic. Yet, when I stepped into Manhattan’s Chinatown, I felt an uncanny connection to my hometown. The atmosphere was familiar in a subtle way: people understand you with their eyes, met you with silence, and conveyed kindness through quiet gestures and nuanced expressions.

In this magazine, I use my personal photography to capture and convey the complex emotions of discovering my sense of belonging in Downtown New York. I have designed a narrative about the melody of silence that defines my people and the interplay between Chinatown, the East within the West, and myself—a cross-cultural artist from East Asia navigating life on the West side of the earth.