How I Support Houston’s Chinatown 2020
At the end of 2019, Dwight Sung, President of Asian Pacific American Heritage Association (APAHA), reached out and invited me to join their Board to build community engagement with restaurants in Houston’s Chinatown. Since I often promote businesses in Chinatown with my quarterly foodie meetup event, Chinatown Crawl HTX, I gladly accepted the offer.
After the Lunar New Year Festival in late January, I met with Xfinity Indirect Sales team member Hong Sang who coordinated outreach efforts with local sales teams at area Chinese supermarkets. Unfortunately, this year’s Festival had a lower turn out due to public concerns of the Coronavirus outbreak in China and the possibility it would also come to Chinatown. Additionally, distressed shop owners were sharing how business has gone down in their stores. When I heard this, I was a bit skeptical because I usually visit Chinatown stores during the middle of the week and I didn’t notice any change in foot traffic.
I decided to look into it further and I spoke with a few owners of the restaurants that I frequent most. Sadly, I was surprised to hear their businesses were worse than I originally thought. Then, I reached out to Alice Lee, Director of Business Development at the Southwest Business District. I told her I wanted to do something to help. Alice invited me to attend a press conference where Texas House of Representative Gene Wu and other local officials publicly spoke out on the rumor of Coronavirus in Chinatown.
At the same time, Dwight planned to host a food crawl event with other community organizations to help attract the public and customers back to Chinatown. I was tasked to bring in restaurants to participate. As concerns around community spread Coronavirus grew, the organizers decided to cancel the gathering.
While the event was cancelled, this didn’t stop me from wanting to do something to help. I suggested to keep the movement going but instead, make it a virtual, online promotion. I designed digital coupons to share on social media, which provided restaurants with additional exposure. All this led to the creation of the “Spring Break 2020 Support Chinatown” event:
When Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner announced a 15-day pause on all local restaurants, I updated the website to include those restaurants that were still open and were now offering delivery or takeout only. Since the website has been live, I have been sharing it across all my social media platforms and with other influencers, business leaders, community leaders, and colleagues – all with the hope that during this uncertain time, we can help these small businesses to stay in business.
Chinatown is in my backyard and as a member of Houston’s AAPI community, I get emotional when I see my community suffer. I hope I will inspire others to help and do what they can to save our beloved Chinatown businesses. As many have already said, “We are all in this together.”
At the same time, Dwight planned to host a food crawl event with other community organizations to help attract the public and customers back to Chinatown. I was tasked to bring in restaurants to participate. As concerns around community spread Coronavirus grew, the organizers decided to cancel the gathering.
While the event was cancelled, this didn’t stop me from wanting to do something to help. I suggested to keep the movement going but instead, make it a virtual, online promotion. I designed digital coupons to share on social media, which provided restaurants with additional exposure. All this led to the creation of the “Spring Break 2020 Support Chinatown” event:
https://www.chinatownhtx.com/springbreak2020 (list moved to visit.ChinatownHTX.comin April).
When Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner announced a 15-day pause on all local restaurants, I updated the website to include those restaurants that were still open and were now offering delivery or takeout only. Since the website has been live, I have been sharing it across all my social media platforms and with other influencers, business leaders, community leaders, and colleagues – all with the hope that during this uncertain time, we can help these small businesses to stay in business.
Chinatown is in my backyard and as a member of Houston’s AAPI community, I get emotional when I see my community suffer. I hope I will inspire others to help and do what they can to save our beloved Chinatown businesses. As many have already said, “We are all in this together.”
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