For my research in Amsterdam, I’m interested in investigating the physical and psychological borders that separate the native Dutch and the immigrant Muslim population. So for the first part of the assignment I wanted to find an area in Seattle that was home to a foreign immigrant population. I chose to explore the International District (I.D.) knowing it was historically the area that Chinese, Japanese, and other East/South East Asian’s came to live in Seattle. I wanted to find out how it might function as a distinct neighborhood of the larger city, and, if it still housed a large percentage of Asian descendants, what draw the area might still hold for them now, over a hundred years since the first immigrants settled here.
While I’ve been to the I.D. before I’ve never gone on a focused assignment, and it was interesting for me to observe the neighborhood in a more analytical way. What stood out to me the most was the touristy aspect of the area. There were so many bakeries and restaurants that I could pass down any one street and there would be at least three different places to eat. All of the restaurants offered some vain of Asian cuisine, and most, like the popular Chine Gate below, had over-the-top, almost gaudy Chinese-inspired decor.

What surprised me so much about this was how much effort was spent to keep the district “Chinesey”. The picture below really highlights the styling of the area as compared to the more modern, and western, infrastructure of the rest of the downtown area.

What I found was that some of the more exaggerated areas of the I.D. were frequented by people who didn’t seem to really live there. Many had shopping bags from some of the larger more well known businesses, and seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere else.
But when I travelled into some of the quieter parts of the neighborhood, where some of the smaller, less glamorized food markets and medicinal herb shops were, I found more local residents. They were less rushed, and sporting more comfortable clothing, as one would wear when making a quick trip to the corner market for that night’s food.

Taking a trip inside one of the markets I saw that many of the foods would not be available in a traditional western style grocery, and that even something as simple as how they sold yams, was evocative of a certain Asian style. While I can imagine many of you reading this wouldn’t be surprised about this, I found it more intriguing that the distinctness of the I.D. was present even down to a local level.
This got me thinking about why a majority of Asian descendants would still be in residence here, more than one hundred years after the first immigrants settled. I think part of the answer to my question comes from the fact that despite the more campy touristy areas, some of the I.D. still retains a hint of its original heritage. What I get from this is that it allows people who come from an Asian background to connect with a part of themselves that is a both familiar and distinct about their identity. It gives people a chance to keep and understand a part of what was lost when they left their home country, and what makes their lineage distinct. And so while I believe that most immigrants cluster into a single area when settling in a foreign country for a sense of safety and familiarity, it might be that the reason why they stay there is to not forget what it was that they left behind.

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