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The Terroir of Chinatown

by Nicole Wong

 The streets of Chinatown are wet with rain, 
dark with dusk, and empty. Surprisingly quiet at 
eight at night for a corner of a city that never sleeps, 
surprisingly gloomy for a landmark in the city of 
dreams. The restaurants are closed, the shuttered 
storefronts create a maze of metallic blinds—all 
locked away from the outside world. 
 But of course, this is not what I think about on 
a January night, warm in my dormitory room on a 
liberal arts college campus in upstate New York. No, 
this is not what I think about as I argue with my 
roommate who also happens to be my sister.
 “What do you mean you ‘quite frankly don’t care 
about where your food comes from’?”
 My sister glowers at me before snapping back.
      “I care about animal cruelty and sustainability if 
that’s what you mean, but if you’re talking about that 
elitist, pretentious French tradition of buying so-
called ‘local’ then you’re right, I honestly don’t care.”
 That “elitist, pretentious French tradition of 
buying local,” is the more common understanding 
of terroir in the United States. However, the more 
common understanding of any complex concept is 
often biased or over-simplified, and the common 
American understanding of terroir is no exception.
 Terroir, a word with no exact translation from 
French to English, captures in its first four letters the 
origins of its meaning. Terr—part of terre—refers 
to the earth, the soil beneath our feet, the fertility 
of the land from which all our sustenance grows. 
Specifically, terroir is a concept that originated 
from wine production—the notion that a wine 
embodies the essence of the plot of earth from 
which it came, due to the climate of the area, the 
soil composition, as well as the traditional methods 
of grape cultivation and wine production specific to 
that vineyard or region. This view on wine evolved 
to encompass other food products such as cheese, 
meat, salt, and dairy, but also fostered a social and 
political facet to the notion of terroir. After all, if 
even a wine embodies the essence of its region, what 

does this notion say about the people of a region? 
What does it say about foreigners? Terroir is thus a 
multifaceted concept that suggests not only pride in 
tradition and in one’s sense of place, but also hints 
at xenophobia, racism, and prejudice. Economic 
factors further complicate the matter, as products of 
a specific terroir may indeed be expensive. Though 
products of a particular terroir may be inexpensive 
in rural areas of France, some of these products in 
urban French cities may be less affordable. Much 
like the beautifully-packaged handmade soaps or 
the locally-sourced mineral waters often displayed 
in well-to-do grocery shops in the cleaner parts 
of New York City, products of specific terroirs are 
affordable for some, but may be only swaths of pretty 
parchment in passing windows for others. Worse 
yet, for an average person—though the definition of 
“average” is up to question—of modest means living 
in the United States, their only exposure to such 
items may be from a tedious middle school reunion 
at a certain classmate’s penthouse—note, the only 
classmate with a penthouse—with a host who only 
cares to share expensive, gastronomic goods for the 
sake of brandishing wealth. The pretentiousness of 
others is never easy to swallow. It is understandable, 
then, why my sister—for she and I come from a 
middle-class, immigrant family—is so indifferent to 
the idea of terroir. 
 Yet, the concept of terroir is not synonymous 
with the often-unaffordable goods in high-end 
grocery stores. The fact that a product is made with 
pride in a tradition stretching back generations and 
with a sense of rootedness in one’s home soil is not 
directly correlated with whether certain individuals 
buy the products to show off their wealth at dinner 
parties. 
 Even so, my sister’s question remains, “Why 
should I care?”
 Indeed, why should she care? “Rootedness,” 
“home soil,” and “a sense of place” are unfamiliar 
notions to her and to me, floating as we are: displaced, 



The Terroir of Chinatown

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201967

rootless individuals with parents who left Hong Kong 
almost thirty years ago. How can any immigrant, any 
individual so déterré—literally, “de-earthed,” torn 
from one’s soil and homeland—understand and care 
about terroir?
 With these questions in mind, let us return to 
Chinatown.
 My father spends his days walking the streets of 
Chinatown, running up flights of old buildings to 
see his patients, chatting with the owners of small 
Chinese bakeries during his brief lunch breaks, 
spending extra half hours with lonely, elderly 
patients. In return for his company, his patients 
recount to him their memories of a long-lost 
Chinatown. When several years ago I remarked the 
increasingly-early hour at which restaurants and 
bakeries in Chinatown closed, my father replied 
with a faraway gaze, that the elderly owners of those 
eateries perhaps could not keep their storefronts open 
late into the night, especially with the knowledge 
that no one would come. Restaurants were closing 
one by one, sometimes because their owners could 
no longer afford rent, but often because the owners’ 
children refused to continue the business. Refused, 
or were never offered by their parents, for many 
owners of restaurants and bakeries in Chinatown 
wish for their children a “better life,” though exactly 
what a better life consists of is difficult to determine. 
With an increasing number of storefronts for rent, 
tourism gradually decreased. Now whenever I return 
to the city during school holidays, I notice tourists 
only cluster on a single street in Chinatown, or in 
a few newly-opened bars with flickering candles, 
chalkboard menus, and rustic window frames. The 
glow of candlelight and soft clinking of cocktails 
mock the storefront sign of one of the bars. With 
Chinese calligraphy written in dark red paint, the sign 
denotes the name of a Cantonese family restaurant, 
a name now stolen by a population who cannot read 
the characters on that stolen sign and does not care 
to learn. I watch in silence as these strangers exploit 
nostalgia, as they bask in the “exotic” allure of those 
decades-old brushstrokes. 
 When the topic of parents’ occupations surfaced 
in high school, many of my classmates whose 
parents owned bakeries or restaurants in Chinatown 
only vaguely alluded to their parents’ line of work. 
Even when I expressed my awe for their parents—

as the role of passing on and sharing one’s culture 
through cuisine seemed so admirable to me—my 
classmates only stared at me skeptically. Some said 
they wished their parents were educated. Some 
said they wished their parents knew English. But 
almost none mentioned how much their parents 
had accomplished, how their parents were able to 
hold close to their roots and sow the seeds of their 
traditions in a new “home” soil, half a world away 
from their original homes. They had successfully 
transformed part of a foreign city into a landmark 
named after their native land. Yet, my classmates 
looked on with an unchanging gaze of shame in their 
eyes.
 The sense of hushed embarrassment that I 
noticed in so many of my high school peers, does not 
seem to be so prevalent in France between children 
and their parents who contribute to the food culture 
of their country. Farmers, restaurant owners, wine 
producers—they and their families seem to share 
a sense of pride in their work, because they are 
upholding traditions perfected over centuries, 
safeguarding treasured recipes and methods of 
production, and carrying the metaphorical torch 
passed down from their ancestors. But most of all, 
they are proud of their work because their work 
grounds them to their native soil, to their home, and 
acts as an extension of their ancestral roots. Terroir 
underlies this sense of pride and place.
 When I stroll down the streets of Chinatown, 
I sometimes wonder what would happen if my 
community shared the same sense of pride, identity, 
and place the French seem to have, this notion 
of terroir. Would the restaurants serving regional 
Chinese specialties lift their metal gates again and 
flourish? Would they take down their “For Rent” 
signs and start anew? Would these signs advertising 
vacant restaurant spaces diminish in number as 
tourists replenish to taste, touch, and see the beauty 
of my culture? Would my old classmates invite me to 
dine in their parents’ restaurants and share with me 
the specialties of their native regions? I do not know, 
but I can hope.
 Yet how can I hope when a paradox presents 
itself to me incessantly? This paradox whispers, 
“How can you have a sense of place when this land 
is not your home? How can you understand terroir if 
you and your community of immigrants have been 



The Terroir of Chinatown

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201968

uprooted again and again? Does a terroir even exist 
for diasporic peoples?” I watch the way fruit vendors 
and bakery owners hurry quickly past those newly-
opened bars, brushing past drink menus they can 
never read. I listen to the stories my father tells of 
patients who have never left Chinatown for fifty years, 
never seen the neon skyscrapers of Times Square, 
never heard of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller. 
The paradox echoes again, “Your people’s home soil 
is half a world away. How can you even hope for a 
sense of rootedness?” 
 But I can.
 I can hope because—to return to the origins 
of terroir—some plants, like wine grapes, can be 
replanted and regrown. Severed from its roots, a 
grape vine can be grafted onto the roots of another 
grape vine in another land yet bloom and produce 
fruit all the same. People are not so different. 
Perhaps for an immigrant community, we should 
focus less on “rootedness” and more on the fruits 
that we cultivate—fruits of culture, tradition, and 
identity. Indeed, my roots are not the same as 
those of individuals living in China, who can trace 
their ancestral lines in the same province through 
centuries. The roots of Chinatown too are embedded 
in American soil and are not the same as those in 
Chinese soil, but the community of Chinatown has 
grafted its identities, values, and traditions to these 
American roots, so its members might adapt to 
a foreign land without losing the essence of their 
homeland. The people of Chinatown were once 
uprooted, but they are not rootless. Their roots are 
American, but they are also Chinese. 
 Within the corner of New York City called 
Chinatown, restaurant owners and fruit vendors 
laugh as they call out to each other across the street. 
Elderly couples sit contently on benches watching 
people come and go. Various Chinese dialects echo 
through windows and walls carried by voices in 
late night conversations, tearful confessions, and 
heartfelt laughter. At certain hours of dusk or early 
morning, I realize there is happiness here, there is a 
sense of home here. Indeed, many of the inhabitants 
of Chinatown may never step beyond the fringes of 
their corner of the city into SoHo or Tribeca, but 
they do not seem to mind.
 The paradox thus quiets itself. Indeed, Chinatown 
is in the United States rather than in China, but the 
Chinese people who live in Chinatown have tilled 

their new soil, cultivated their new land into a place 
they might finally call home. For a “rootless” person 
like me, terroir is about creating a new sense of place, 
derived from one’s original home soil yet adapted to a 
new one. If the members of the Chinese community 
in Chinatown could only see how much they have 
accomplished, how strong their grafted vines are, 
perhaps they would not be so ashamed, and perhaps 
they would encourage their children to continue 
cultivating the fruits of their labours.      
 Though my sister has fallen silent in misty-eyed 
contemplation after our discussion, you might still 
ask, “Why should I care?” If you are neither Chinese 
nor French, why should terroir matter to you?  
 I do not know whether terroir will matter to you, 
but I hope it will because terroir is not solely about 
France, or Chinatown.
 Indeed, Chinatown may not be the centre of 
your people, the heart of your diaspora. Indeed, you 
may not care about French wine, French food, or any 
cultural cuisine or product besides your own. But 
terroir is your own right to claim this land as your 
home. Terroir is the way your family cooks turkey 
every Thanksgiving next to a maple tree you’ve 
come to love and recognize, having visited the same 
campsite every year you can remember. Terroir is the 
soil in your grandmother’s backyard from which you 
picked the sweetest strawberries in the world. Terroir 
encompasses the stories your parents told you and 
the stories you will one day tell your own children. It 
encompasses the way your parents grew up, the way 
you grew up, and the way you loved the treehouse 
you used to play in, the swings on which your mother 
used to sit as a child, and the secret garden where 
your grandparents used to hide as teenagers in love. 
Even as a country of immigrants, each of us has a 
right to a sense of place—not only of the place of our 
ancestral homes but also of the place that we now call 
home, the soil on which we have created meaning 
and memory. For those who are not immigrants, who 
have been displaced brutally and expressly from their 
ancestral lands in this country, they especially have 
a right to determine their own sense of place. This 
sense might capture not only a history of injustice 
but also a present effort in reviving and preserving 
cultural traditions inseparable from the soil of this 
nation. Everyone then, has a right to determine and 
define their own terroir. 



The Terroir of Chinatown

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201969

 Yet, if everyone has a right to a sense of place, 
when does one’s right encroach upon another’s? 
When does pride in one’s soil become guarded, 
defensive, xenophobic? To claim a place as one’s own 
is to deprive the land from someone else. To attach 
one’s identity in the soil beneath one’s feet is to say to 
a stranger, “You do not belong here.” But must it be 
this way? I do not know, and I cannot say, for the line 
between the beauty and the danger of terroir is a fine 
one. I only know that to not believe in terroir is to 
forget how forgettable humans are, and risk erasing 
the memory of careful cultivation that our parents or 
grandparents have devoted to making this soil our 
home.        
 My sister suggested that I write this because 
she did not understand why terroir should mean so 
much to anyone, until I explained that terroir is who 
we are and who we have been. The way we approach 
the notion of terroir guides us to who we will be. The 
way we consider our relationship to the soil beneath 
our feet, and the way we define “home” will shape the 
ways we think about the land on which we live and 
the roles we play on it. Your role may be as simple 
as returning to the restaurant your parents own in 
Chinatown to smile at your parents with newfound 
pride. Your role may be as complex as finding ways 
to revive a dying language spoken by your people 
before they were forced to live on reservations and 
leave their ancestral lands. Whatever your role may 
be, it will be inextricably connected to the land—
your land. As for myself, my role remains to insist 
upon the importance of terroir, not only for myself, 
not only for Chinatown, but for anyone who must 
confront the paradox of rootlessness and rootedness 
and who must define for themselves what terroir 
means to them.
      


