A personal history and photo essay on L.A. Chinatown
This story is part of Image’s March Outside issue, a celebration of the Los Angeles outdoors and the many lives to be lived under its unencumbered sky. I am walking through Dynasty Center, warmed by the morning sun. The season’s rainstorm brought a sky as blue as a newborn’s eyes, but water vapor is still rising from the multicolored canopies. Stalls with vendors selling densely packed sun-faded souvenirs is the Chinatown setting I’ve been walking through for as long as I can remember, from New York up to San Francisco and back to L.A. Turtles the size of chicken nuggets paddling in their little plastic boxes, accompanied by the barks of little mechanical dogs that march stiffly in the same futile direction, beneath the phone chargers, the rows of luggage, and the bamboo clusters peeking over one another in ceramic pots. I am walking past walls of pajamas with Disney characters, then walls of backpacks with Marvel characters. Then there are characters I only vaguely recognize, some I feel real fondness toward but no present …
