An Interview With John Chin on What Philadelphia's Chinatown Means to Locals
As executive director of the nonprofit Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), John Chin has had an eventful year. In January 2025, the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team abandoned their plan to build a new arena near Chinatown, amounting to a major victory for PCDC, Save Chinatown Coalition, and other groups. In April, previously secured federal funding for the Chinatown Stitch, a key public works project on which PCDC is a partner, was reported to be at risk. We sat down with Chin to get a bigger-picture sense of why it’s so important to preserve the neighborhood, which the National Trust named to its 2023 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
How did you end up in your current role?
One of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing today is because I was born and raised in Chinatown. This neighborhood gave me many things that I can only try to give back, right?
And one of the things that I took for granted as a kid growing up in Chinatown is this easy-flowing feeling that I live in a community and it’s my community. I can walk anywhere I want to. There’s no worries in the world. It’s a sanctuary for many Asian Americans. And when I’m in Chinatown, I feel like I’m the majority. Once I step outside Chinatown, I’m the minority. I think because it gave me this sense of belonging, it gave me this confidence to be who I am, which is ethnic Chinese living in America as a minority. Overall, I think Chinatown gave me this really strong sense of, yeah, I’m Asian American and Chinese American—so what?
Do you still feel like it’s a haven for you?
Oh, absolutely. I still feel this way, and I see others feel this way when they’re here in Chinatown. I hear parents talking about this feeling and yearning for this experience for their children. So they come to Chinatown, [even if] they don’t live here.
photo by: Samuel Markey
John Chin, executive director of Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, in front of Heng Fa Food Market at 10th and Cherry Streets.
After the arena victory, was there a what-now moment?
The arena was a huge threat to Chinatown’s existence. But to your point, it’s like, let’s focus on what we are against, but opposing something does not ensure that Chinatown survives. We also have to focus on parallel lines [of action]. What do we need to do to ensure that Chinatown is a thriving community in the next 10 years? So yeah, we’ve continued to think about that. We’ve worked on projects parallel to the arena fight. We have a plan and we’re trying to implement the plan on doing all this.
What does that plan include?
Chinatowns are commercial districts, we’re also a residential community, and we’re a hub for the authentic celebration of Asian American culture and history. Our plan recognizes that Chinatowns are like a three-legged stool [and] these three things are the legs. And if any one of these are weakened, the whole stool is weakened. So when we approach Chinatown’s planning and development, we have to ensure that we’re investing resources in all three of these [aspects] of Chinatown.
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What are some places in Chinatown that are important to preserve?
Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church and School was founded in 1941. When you talk to old-timers, and even people who graduated maybe 10 years ago, there’s something about that place—a place of congregation, a place of community. That institution draws a lot of people to Chinatown and it’s their connection to Chinatown. So that is a place that is worthy.
The Chinese Cultural Center, on 10th Street, is another one. It was known for some very lavish Chinese New Year banquets. The entrepreneur [who ran them] was just a genius. He would get work permits for chefs to come from China to spend months here preparing for these Chinese New Year banquets. That’s been shuttered for [almost 20] years now. It’s the hope of many, many people [that it will reopen in the future].
In five years, what do you think will be different about Chinatown?
Five years from now, what’s the same is [that we have] a thriving business district. What I hope to be different is that we’ve identified spaces where Chinatown can tell its story about its history and culture. We lack that right now. So in five years, I hope we have a few more places where people can come and read about and hear this history we’re trying to tell.
America's Chinatowns
As part of our commitment to protect America’s historic places, we at the National Trust for Historic Preservation—together with partners and communities—are researching, elevating, and building coalitions that sustain and support historic Chinatowns across the United States.
How did being on the 11 Most Endangered list affect Chinatown?
The biggest thing that list offered us was that it was a national seal of affirmation of the threat that Chinatown was experiencing. I find that it’s very easy to get lost among elected officials. But once you have something like the National Trust for Historic Preservation say, “We’ve looked at this Chinatown. We agree that it’s endangered,” those two sentences sort of change people’s attitude, their reaction to our story and what we’re trying to tell them.
People are very busy in their lives, but they are attracted when there’s chaos and threats, and the arena and the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list caught people’s attention. And I think when people care and pay attention, it creates this larger community here in Philadelphia both for the [Henry Ossawa] Tanner House [another Philadelphia historic site that was on the list in 2023] and Chinatown. That probably was always there, but there wasn’t an organized platform for people to contribute to the preservation of these places. Sometimes, things like this bring out the opportunities for people.
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