Skip the $22 Salad. Follow Me to Chinatown.
i.
If we've hung out, I've probably said this to you:
"Let's grab food in Chinatown."
Doesn't matter which city. New York, Boston, SF - every place I've lived has a Chinatown, and every Chinatown has become mine.
ii.
Here's how you know someone actually knows Chinese food:
They order the vegetables.
Not just the char siu, not just the crispy pork belly - though yes, obviously those. But the vegetables. Gai lan with oyster sauce. Bok choy with garlic. Something green, something simple, cooked right.
And the soup. You always get the soup.
If someone skips the veggies and the soup, they're just visiting. They don't really know.
iii.
I don't care who you are.
A date. A VC. A founder. A friend I've known for ten years.
If we're eating together, I'm probably taking you to Chinatown.
You wait in line. You get yelled at. Cash only.
You sit down, you order, you eat. Same as everyone else.
I like that. Everyone's equal at a round table.
iv.
I love to walk around Chinatown.
It's smelly. It's dirty. Trash bags piled on the curb, fish guts in the gutter, puddles you step around. It's not clean the way other neighborhoods are clean.
But it's peaceful.
I'll hear the grandpas in the park playing erhu, or someone with a dizi. Old men sitting on benches, tapping their feet. A group crowded around a xiangqi board, arguing about the next move. Someone slapping cards down on a folding table. Kids running past. The same scene that's probably been happening for fifty years.
Then I'll stop at a bakery and get an egg tart. Or a pineapple bun. Or a shredded pork bun if I'm hungry. Stand on the sidewalk and eat it. Watch people walk by.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
v.
In SF, everyone walks to Jackson Square or North Beach for lunch. Nice places, sure. Twenty-two dollar salads. Hour-long waits for a table.
Meanwhile, Chinatown is five minutes away.
I go to Yee's for the roast duck. Perfectly lacquered, hanging in the window, served over rice with that sauce. Or dim sum on the weekends - har gow, shu mai, pai gu, feng zhua, egg tarts at the end. Milk tea to wash it down.
Why would you wait in line for some new place when there's a restaurant that's been serving the same perfect dish since before you were born?
vi.
Boston Chinatown is smaller, but it's real.
When I was at Northeastern, I'd bring people to New Wing Kitchen. Little spot, downtown, underground. You walk down the stairs and it's like you've left Boston entirely. Fluorescent lights, laminated menus, someone's auntie taking your order.
That's where I'd go when I missed home. Noodles, rice plates, whatever was good that day. It wasn't fancy. It wasn't trying to be.
vii.
New York Chinatown is home.
I used to wash dishes at my mom's restaurant. Eight years old, standing on a crate to reach the sink, scrubbing woks bigger than my torso. I spent most of my childhood in those few blocks.
I know every corner. I know which spots have been there thirty years and which ones just changed their sign. I know where to get the best egg tarts, the best rice rolls, the best wonton noodles. I grew up on all of it.
Dim sum on weekends with family. Grabbing street cart skewers on the way somewhere. The bakeries, the roast meat shops, the seafood restaurants with tanks in the window.
When I go back to New York, I don't go to the trendy spots. I go to Chinatown.
viii.
It never changes.
Every time I go back, it's the same. The dim sum spot I went to when I was little is still there. Same tables, same carts, same aunties pushing trays of pai gu. It'll be there next year too. And the year after that.
The world moves so fast. Everything's always shifting, optimizing, disrupting. But Chinatown stays the same. The grandpas still play music in the park. The bakeries still sell the same egg tarts. The restaurants still yell at you when it's busy.
There's something holy about that.
ix.
Every day I wake up and think about it.
A kid from Chinatown. Washing dishes at eight. Selling candy at eleven. Playing League alone in a tiny apartment.
Now working at the frontier of AI. One of the greatest technology shifts in human history.
How did that happen?
x.
It was never just my dream.
It's our dream. The American Dream. The dream of every first-generation kid whose parents crossed oceans and worked doubles and never complained.
I think about my mom. Twenty years in that restaurant. Coming home smelling like cooking oil. Sleeping on the top bunk while I slept on the bottom.
She didn't do all that so I could play it safe.
xi.
I will always prioritize this over myself. Over my health. Over comfort. Over everything.
That might sound unhealthy. Maybe it is.
But when you come from where I come from, when you know what was sacrificed for you to even have a chance - you don't get to half-ass it. You don't get to coast.
You carry it with you. Every single day.
xii.
So yeah. If we hang out, I'm probably going to say it:
"Let's grab food in Chinatown."
Order your veggies. Get the soup. Bring cash.
The dim sum spot will still be there. It always is.
Trust me.