China Town In New Orleans. This Post Was Inspired By My Daughter Aiasha, and My Mom. Yesterday Aiasha Said She Wanted Some Yaka Mein, I dont Know Why But I remembered My Mom Telling Me Why This Dish was so popular in New Orleans Black Community. When She was A Young Woman she went to China town often, She worked in a Cleaners, as a presser (A Job She Told Me Never To Take), and she went there to Buy a soap from one of the laundries, (According to my Mom The Chinese did have an Ancient Chinese Secret for whiting Clothes). There were lots of Resturants there, and Whites were Big customers, Also there were a lot of Laborers, cuz the city was building a lot of buildings, and the River front was booming. Although The Chinese never caused Blacks any problems and they got along, Due to the Whites, Blacks and Irish could not sit in the Resturants But Rather go to a little window in back and be served. They Had One Special dish in The winter that men swore kept them Warm and Healthy, That Dish was Yaka Mein, Sold for 5 cents a lunch bucket. It was actually a boom for the Resturants, cuz it was made with Scrapes of meat and left over noodles and vegetables in particular green oinions, with boiled eggs,which the Chinese had lots of cuz they raised their own chickens. It was So Poplaur That The Chinese would bring carts down to the river front at lunchtime to save the workers the long walk to what is now the Elks Place area.Well I Decided to Look Up this History and Here is What I Found. The city of New Orleans, Louisiana was once home to the largest Chinatown in the Southern United States, from the 1880s until its destruction by WPA development in 1937. Today, the site is occupied by the Tulane Medical Center. Tulane Medical Center now sits where Chinatown once stood The first significant migration of Chinese into Louisiana took place during Reconstruction after the American Civil War, when local planters imported hundreds of Cantonese contract workers from California as a low-cost alternative to slave labor.The Chinese eventually abandoned the plantations and migrated to the cities, especially New Orleans, in search of higher pay and better working conditions. By the 1880s, a Chinatown had developed on the 1100 block of Tulane Avenue, near Elk Place, in the Faubourg Ste. Marie. When it existed, New Orleans Chinatown was the largest Chinatown in the American South. The Chinese came to dominate the laundry industry in the city during this era, as they had in other American cities. The original unskilled laborers were joined by merchants from San Francisco, who operated businesses to serve the growing Chinese population in the region, and to profit from trade at the Port of Orleans. But in 1937, nearly all of Faubourg Ste. Marie, including Chinatown, was demolished by WPA development to build the modern Central Business District.The former site of Chinatown is now the Tulane Medical Center. The Chinese attempted to build a second Chinatown on the 500 block of Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. In the 1940s, this section of the French Quarter was still predominantly residential. However, only a few Chinese businesses migrated to the French Quarter Chinatown, which was abandoned in subsequent years.[citation needed] By then, the younger and more highly educated generation of American-born Chinese were abandoning the laundry industry and migrating to suburban eastbank of Jefferson Parish, where much of the citys Chinese population lives today. Today, nearly all traces of the historic New Orleans Chinatown have been obliterated. The last visible marker of New Orleans Chinatown is the On Leong Associations painted sign, over the door of their former meeting hall at 530 Bourbon Street.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 14:57:36 +0000
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