In the Corners of Canal

By Kate Xian

New York, Manhattan Island. It is the backdrop to the critically acclaimed AMC show Mad Men, the iconic Sex and the City and dozens upon dozens of films. It has a life of its own and embraces the misfits, the bboys, and the posh. It has always been known to spurn new images and leave a mark in fashion – the fashion capital of the Western hemisphere.

The city is always bustling with tourists at all hours of the day. Its 2AM and Times Square is packed to every square inch with people. The millions of lights from the storefronts and endless billboards light up the sky as if night meant nothing. The sidewalks are lined with street vendors all selling the same souvenirs, the same watercolour prints of the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. Just a few feet down they slash their prices and those watercolours are now a dollar cheaper than what you just paid.

5th Avenue. Home to luxe shopping for the rich and famous. From Gucci to Ferragamo to Bulgari you can find the latest high-end designer labels to burn a hole into your wallet. If you have thousands at your disposal for the newest Mancrazy LV bag then this is the place to be. This is the place where an eight-dollar latte goes hand in hand with the richly manicured nails that hold it. Where the paparazzi hang out to catch snapshots of Jake and Reese or a paper thin Olsen.

Not making $32 million like Keira Knightly but still love fashion? Then New York’s infamous Canal Street may be your savior. Rumored to be home to hundreds of high quality fakes from bags to sunglasses to watches, the packed streets of Chinatown is known to hold more than meets the eye.

Like any other Chinatown it is littered with torn storefront awnings, in the usual reds, yellows and greens. Bubble tea shops sit between the tacky souvenir shops and meat shops with BBQ pigs from tail to head to hooves hanging in the windows. Mounds of black garbage bags sit openly on street corners. The Chinese were never ones to hide true human nature.

I walk with a group of four other friends, all of Asian descent like myself. We browse through Chinatown as we would anywhere. Picking up bubble tea drinks along the way and stopping for our favourite Chinese bakery snacks and pastries. We finally hit Canal Street and we start walking along casually. Though we blend into the crowd seamlessly we are here for a very specific reason.

The appeal of these fakes to us five girls is a strange mix of rebellion and the subconscious desire to hold a status symbol item that makes us look like we’re in the upper echelons of society. Shallow perhaps, but what 25 year-old female doesn’t want to feel like they are worth that $2000 handbag? That we are just as beautiful and fashionable as Keira? We’ve heard the moral repercussions and its links to supporting terrorism, but much like Canal Street itself, it is possibly all a myth. My desire extends beyond the latest handbag. It is an unwritten subculture that gets the better of my curiosity and my journalistic instincts that I must pursue it. I have to know. I have to know what is so sought-after with these bags. I have to know whether these coveted back rooms exist. It is my Atlantis.

We know the rumours, but truthfully none of us know exactly what it is that we’re looking for. One of the girls tells the rest of us to look out for black bags by the door, a tip she learned from a recent trip to Hong Kong where she picked up half a dozen fakes there. It is apparently a tip off to customers, indicating that they sell the latest high-end designer leather goods. But every other store has a pile of black bags by the door where the merchants bag everyday costume jewelry and pleather wallets. None of these stores indicate more than being your run of the mill cheapo accessory shop. And none of these stores look any different from any other on the street.

We browse from store to store, trying on $2 sunglasses and shop as any other group of women would. We finally catch sight of something. Something unusual that we can’t quite put our finger on. A Hispanic mother with her two children rush to the back of the store and we think we’ll get to glimpse one of these bags, these glorious bags! We follow along as inconspicuously as possible and like that the mother has disappeared. Only her two children sit by the back wall on a couple of chairs set out, waiting room style. One of the store merchants stands by watching over the children. We hang around hoping we’ll get to disappear mysteriously into the back room as this mother had.

But it doesn’t take long for the merchant to approach one of my friends and tell her in Mandarin “you have to leave, we don’t sell to Asians.”

Is it possible for the Chinese to be racist towards fellow Chinese in Chinatown? It is beyond absurdity. We toss everything we were looking at with a blasé hand hoping to create a mess, hoping to illustrate our way of giving a great big middle finger.

We leave the store confused, but more than anything else angry. My mind is a flood of thoughts about social equity, community, a sense of pride, a loss of belonging. I question my racial community, my connections of ‘home’ to the familiar foods and culture that I am surrounded by. This one act of racism more hurtful than any other sort of racism I have faced. I suddenly feel so lost.

We walk on, all of us ranting about what we’ve just faced, many of us at a loss for words. Surely it was just that one merchant so we push on, but to our complete and utter surprise and to our complete and utter despair we are told that we are not fit to be sold to from store after store.

Among the crowded streets, we pass shady looking men with oversized rapper tees who whisper to us “handbags handbags handbags…” We glance at each other but decide against it. It’s uncanny how these handbags are being pushed like the latest drug. And logistically speaking the shops themselves are no different, like pulling out zig zags and quarters from behind the counter if you only ask in your run of the mill variety store. Yet somehow we feel safer in the confines of four walls with a middle aged Chinese woman than following a big burly man with a gold grill into the back alleyway to a nondescript cube van.

Some of us exhaust from the wild goose chase, accepting that these ‘back rooms,’ these secret passages to something otherworldly, something beyond our reach, is just that. Some of us try different approaches, being friendly, trying to follow closely behind a group that is granted access, and the so-called tried and true virtue of patience. Karen, who is fluent in Mandarin also tried to be direct and asks simply to be let in. But we are met with the same response.

We soon grow tired of Chinatown, hating to hear how we are inadequate and “too Chinese” to be sold to. But I still have to know. And I have to dispel this racism for myself. It goes beyond curiosity or to be a part of the “in crowd.” I need to prove them wrong. I don’t even know how but I have to do something. Say something. Emily looks at me dejected and asks, “Should we try just one more?” I too think it’s a loosing battle, but agree.

We head into one of the little shops as the sun begins to set behind us. I see a merchant sitting at the back and approach her. I show her a photo of a designer bag and ask her in English and point blank “do you have this bag?” She looks to me and shakes her head.

“Try the stores down the road,” she says.

“I have. They won’t sell to me because I’m Asian," I respond. She looks down and fiddles with her cell phone. She mumbles something I can’t understand and she seems suddenly uncomfortable. I take this to be a sign that its not meant to be and head for the exit. And just as we turn away, three blondes are ushered behind a wall of handbags and Karen proclaims loudly “Why are they allowed in?!”

I’m almost out the door when the woman I was speaking to hollers at me and waves at me to follow. She is cold and stone-faced. She says nothing as I follow her to the back of the store.

“Five?” she asks. I nod my head and in a blur the back door opens up to us, the wardrobe to Narnia. Atlantis is real.