Data Analysis

Because I wanted to analyze the changing local response to Chinatown, I decided to perform text analysis on a corpus of newspaper articles that have mentioned development efforts in the context of Chinatown. My corpus contains forty articles, 36 from the Washington Post and 4 from the Washington Times (for the full corpus, see my works cited page).

Voyant Tools

The text analysis tool I used was Voyant, mainly to see how the prevalence of certain words has changed across time. I removed standard stop words and terms like "Chinatown," "Chinese," and "Washington," which will likely be mentioned in every article. Below is a word cloud for the entire corpus:

The ten most common words were center (161), new (160), residents (152), city (146), neighborhood (125), people (125), building (123), arena (118), area (107), and downtown (99). Unsurprisingly, most of these terms (center, new, city, building, arena, downtown) relate to developments and buildings. Some other notable terms like residents, neighborhood, and people relate to the residents of Chinatown. In order to see how the prevalence of these different clusters over time, I divided the corpus into different eras of time and performed text analysis on these smaller corpora.

Early 1970s (Sports Arena Proposal)

The ten most common words for articles from the early 1970s (1972-1973) were center (22), area (21), arena (20), new (20), sports (19), convention (17), community (15), downtown (14), people (12), and business (11). Most of these words relate to the proposed sports arena and convention center (center, arena, new, sports, convention). A new word that wasn't present in the corpus-wide text analysis is business, which relates to the new argument from business owners that the new arena will bring economic rejuvenation to the area.

Early 1980s (Convention Center)

The ten most common words for the articles from the early 1980s (1978-1985) were center (32), city (29), arch (26), archway (23), area (22), convention (21), old (21), lee (20), people (20), community (18). The biggest developments of this era were ostensably the new convention center and the archway. The appearance of the word "old," which is used in the context of sentences like "an old town," "an old city," and "an old downtown" reflects a shift towards framing Chinatown as a stagnant, historic neighborhood that development would "revitalize."

"Lee" demonstrates a move by local media towards including testimonies of the Chinese community in articles about Chinatown, possibly because it lends the article more credibility. The Lee's mentioned are 70-year-old resident Edward Lee, vice chairman of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Harrison Lee, restaurant owner Dr. Toon Lee, chairman of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Bosco Lee, and grocery store owner Jean Lee. Although all these perspectives should be sought out, it is telling that Edward Lee is the only elderly resident of Chinatown in the list, which represents the majority of Chinatown's residents.

Late 1980s

The ten most common words for the articles from the late 1980s (1986-1991) were new (42), city (32), neighborhood (25), arch (24), center (24), office (24), lee (23), area (22), years (21), and streets (20). The newly prevalent term "office" reflects the office building boom that affected Chinatown at this time. "Years" is an interesting new term; it is used in contexts like "Jean Chin Lee was presiding over the grocery her grandfather started 50 years ago," "things look markedly different than 10 years ago," and "The area has been losing resident population - Chinese, black, white - for years." This seems to reflect the shift towards framing Chinatown as a historic district, rather than a living neighborhood.

1990s (MCI Center)

The ten most common words for the articles from the 1990s (1995-1999) were arena (93), people (58), downtown (55), new (54), center (51), city (45), restaurants (41), mci (36), building (35), and business (35). This corpus marks the return of "business," along with the word "restaurants," reflecting the shift of the conversation towards the new entertainment and retail developments that cropped up in Chinatown after the construction of the MCI Center. If there are testimonies from the Chinese community, they come from the business owners of Chinatown commenting on how the MCI Center has affected their businesses.

2000s

The ten most common words for the articles from the 2000s (2002-2013) were center (27), new (23), office (22), building (21), neighborhood (21), wang (21), residents (20), asian (19), city (19), committee (16), and community (16). Words like "neighborhood," "residents," "asian," and "community" reflect the shift in the 2000s to framing the conversation of gentrification around the residents of Chinatown, as does the return of names like "wang." "Center" being the most common word suggests that these articles are now reflecting more on the impact that the developments have had on Chinatown.

2010s (Housing)

The ten most common words for the articles from the 2010s (2015-2019) were residents (85), building (39), neighborhood (35), museum (32), bush (28), local (27), stay (27), companies (24), and fight (20). The late 2010s era reflects a huge shift in the portrayal of gentrification in Chinatown. The residents of Museum Square are in the forefront of the conversation, along with punchy buzzwords about their struggle with Bush Companies like "fight" and "stay." These more recent articles focus more on the residents than the economic aspect of these developments, a change that needs to be reflected in future literature.

Results

By examining articles about developments in Chinatown from the 1970s to the late 2010s, I found a shift from economic arguments in the 1970s, the framing of Chinatown as a stagnant, historic neighborhood in the 1980s, the return to economic arguments in the 1990s after the construction of the MCI Center, and finally to a focus on the residents of Chinatown in the 2000s and 2010s. These shifts have mostly been seen in the literature of D.C.'s Chinatown -- but there has been too much of a focus on the economic aspect. Future literature needs to acknowledge that the impacts of gentrification in D.C.'s Chinatown cannot be fully understood until there is more of a focus on the residents of affordable housing in the neighborhood.

Although "saving Chinatown" in the late twentieth century might've meant economic rejuvenation or designation as a historic district, the local media has recognized that the residents of Chinatown need to be acknowledged first and foremost. From the shifting rhetoric of these newspaper articles, "saving Chinatown" means providing stable, affordable housing for the residents of Chinatown, not providing economic relief to businessowners who do not even live in Chinatown. Future research needs to be done about D.C.'s Chinatown to analyze this change in rhetoric.