Chinatown Sound Walk
I’ve been to Chinatown for many times since I first arrived at New York City, either to buy some Chinese food and ingredients to appease my homesickness or just to walk around casually, experiencing the “surrealistic” or “liminal” Chineseness, which is not Chinese and not not Chinese. Even so, I was still attracted by the CHINATOWN SOUNDWALK, whose narrator – Jami Gong – was introduced as “a true insider” who can “bravely share with you the ins and outs of this complex neighborhood” (narrator) and who can “bring you into places where you are not supposed to go” (audio sample). Thus I downloaded the MP3, looking forward to experiencing the “authenticity” from an insider who was born and brought up there.
The starting point was at 89 Canal Street, an unnoticeable restaurant named Cup & Saucer. I turned on my MP3, trying to follow Gong’s instructions, but I got lost no more than one minute, for I couldn’t figure out which direction was south without a map at hand. I started it all over again, deciding to follow Gong as more as I could with no more stop and return.
The audio instruction was annoying at first. The pace of the sound walk was different from that of mime. Gong mentioned some buildings, but I just couldn’t find them. Gong said “OK, we are now in this specific street” but I knew I was far left behind. Still I kept walking. Sometimes I could follow and sometimes not. Mostly, it was like schizophrenia – my mind and my body were in a double space-time – yet the feeling was wonderful. I felt like walking in a film studio or watching a movie with the loud music and sound effects on, which covered any other noise of the Chinatown I was in – the sound walk turned to be an image walk, or, in other words, the sound in the audio and the image in front of me combined created a whole new reality.
However, when it came to the chance to really go “into places you are not supposed to be,” say, on 60 Mulberry Street, I hesitated. Gong asked his auditors to climb up the stairs, open the door, and enter the house, but I stood wondering if I should go into or not, for it looked like a private house. When I was struggling, sound effects of a woman groaning from the audio surprised me – was this place a brothel? I didn’t know. I gave up my chance of witnessing the back area of Chinatown, the authenticity. I didn’t have the gut to break into the back region of this 60 Mulberry Street.
I also missed my chance of entering the Senior Citizen Center, for the gate was closed at then. But finally, I went into the Mahayana Buddhist Temple, the destination of the sound walk. Its decoration of the inside was not like the ordinary (authentic) Buddhist temple that I knew in my own culture, but more like something special for the tourist from a different culture – but I guess it doesn’t matter here. The temple was silent, but the low and deep monks’ chanting from the MP3, the epilogue of Gong’s sound walk, was so loud in my ears. Except me, there was an Asian-female-and-White- male couple kneeling in front of Buddha praying, and Buddha was smiling.
I put one dollar in the donation box and drew a lot, which says “Probability of Success: Good whatsoever ails you, may you be well anew. Thoughts will first take the cue, and kindness will ensue” (View image)
– all in English, a tourist production, just like this CHINATOWN SOUNDWALK MP3, which was novel but still superficial, though I did learn some new information – the jail and the “den-si park” near the Mulberry Street – the park of waiting to die, a place where many Chinese elders fool around until the end of their lives–maybe that's the true insider's insight.