Ah, Canal Street. How I have missed your sidewalk street vendors and glorious buns. Looking into the bustling crowd here feels like looking into a distorted and shifting mirror. Besides the minority of tourists, it is mainly a sea of black hair, dark brown eyes, and small frames. I love the feeling of blending in. It makes me feel mildly invincible that no one could pick me out here; that I can easily slip right into the crowd and not be followed.
Can I though, really? Looking at the crowd here, I find the more than slightly-worn clothing, the sweats, the bowed heads and plastic smiles. I stand tall and proud of who and what I am, in my mildly fashionable clothes and Urban Outfitters bag. With my slight smirk and chin held high, I really doubt I could be mistaken unless I deliberately changed me demeanor...which I would anyways.
Walking this way up Canal Street, I can feel the class divide easily. Despite barely making ends meet and having only the little extra for trips like this, I know I am steps above the people here. Whereas the authorities would question why I was in a sketchy part of town, they would question why the street vendors were in the U.S. And how is that right?
Undaunted, I continue down Canal, take a right after a few streets and find myself in front of the Hon Cafe and Bakery - my favorite bakery in all of Chinatown! It's always my first stop in Chinatown; no one beats Hon's buns. I limit myself to one BBQ pork bun (one of the best things, hands down) and continue on searching for some kind of going out clothing. There's nothing good as I wander around until I get near the Little Italy border.
Here I'm taken in by three middle-age Cantonese ladies into a tiny store with racks upon racks of clothes. I tell her I am looking for a short dress and she hands me a few pencil skirts and urges/pushes me towards the dressing room, which turns out to be a closet-sized hole, with a curtain as a door and only enough room to pivot around. So I drop my bag on a chair and try on the three skirts I came in with. Halfway through changing into the second skirt, I hear the main sales lady outside the curtain and then two more skirts are passed into my room. If I wasn't used to such behavior, it would have been an epic no-no. But I think I was taken in the moment I spoke Cantonese to them. Damn.
I only want two skirts, especially since they were a little pricey. But the women keep insisting on how nice the pink skirt is, and despite what they want, I leave with three skirts - one being "gifted" to me for free. I'm sure I could have bargained it down a lot, but then I remembered all the stories of down-trodden slave workers - particularly the Chinese from the movie Biutiful - and just pay the full price. I really hope the money went to the family...
Having learned about all the illicit trading and economy going around hasn't stopped me from enjoying the cheapness of Chinatown. I feel bad, sure, but there isn't much more I can do to help the situation, considering what I am already facing in my own economic life. I hate being in debt to anyone or anything. It really bothers me so these student loans are totally going to screw me over. I leave the dress shop, pencil skirts in tow - I needed business wear anyways - and walk through Little Italy, trying to figure out how to make a going out outfit.
I walk into an accessory shop - jewelry, bags, scarves, sunglasses: all counterfeit - and browse around. The shopkeep was obviously foreign, with an Eastern European accent. As I browse the rings, a blonde mother and her daughter look at the scarves, looking for a Burberry one. The shopkeep tells them the deal for scarves and laments that they don't have the "Burberry-like" one. He smartly keeps the association to similar looks, not asserting it's a Burberry. Before the mother and daughter leave, the shopkeep says, "Wait, wait. Let me call someone. I can get it here in an hour - just an hour." The customers teetered a moment and then went over to the counter where the guy was making the phone call. I guess he's making money today!
I have a subway to catch so I leave and briskly walk down the road back to Canal Street, leaving Little Italy behind. Not before I notice all the people working together, however. A burly Asian man walking into the gift shop carrying an armload of handbags as the East European shopkeep called for his Burberry lookalike. The shops in Little Italy were run by Asians while the restaurants were run by Italians. Either the Asians are way to efficient to stay on Canal Street or the Italians are outsourcing their work even further to their Asian neighbors.
As I walk, I see random people - girls, men, old, young - standing on the sides of sidewalks or in the middle of dense walkers. I didn't understand why they were there - are they lost? are they looking or waiting for someone? have they just given up already? - until I passed on standing in the middle of the crowd on a street corner. He was unassuming and wearing a navy vest against the chill, holding a few pieces of paper that had pictures upon pictures of products, mostly female ones. He actually manages to snag two tourists and starts leading them away, quickly hiding the papers as they crossed the intersection where a black police officer direct the traffic and chats up two British blonde girls.
What is going on here?
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