The Accidental Asian

The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu describes a place called Chinatown in lower Manhattan. He uses this Chinatown to describe the Chinatown Idea, which fundamentally is just a place that means more to the Americans as a tourist spot, than to the Chinese as a home. In the Chapter entitled The Chinatown Idea, Liu breaks down what Chinatown is to the Chinese who live there and the Americans that visit there. Liu further describes the Chinatown Idea as a place that was made not only by the imagination of the American?s surrounding it, but also by the Chinese who needed something that would protect them from the surrounding world.
Liu starts by describing how the Chinatown myth was created. ?In the popular imagination, Chinatown is not much a place as it is a metaphor- an ideograph- for all the exotic mystery of the Orient?(Liu, 95). This explains how the Americans see Chinatown, as a window to the world of China, the untamed land they have never explore themselves. They expect Chinatown to ...