Real drip gods live in Chinatown
and just how Chinese am I?!
party dip’s personal stories, self-care, reflection, and healing refreshers for the soul.
Chinatown has always been my safe haven. I’d be out there at 2am, full of energy, doing beer-shots with skaters. Post-skate night era, I’d revisit for solo bowls of pho, in between identities, unsure where my life was going.
My face allows me to quietly blend in with longtime residents. In the early 2020s, Chinatown helped me come into my own Asian identity (as a Korean adoptee, yes, it took this long). It brings a certain relief I can’t get anywhere else (besides the Korean spa). All the cells in my body know I’m there, a knot at the nape of my neck loosens.
When this year’s Chinese New Year parade came I knew I had to be there.
Moments before, I got an update on my DNA results. The site changed their modeling. In this version I’m 75.6% Chinese1 (vs. 27% previously).
Ummm? 1. WHO AM I?! 2. Aren’t we all Asian at the end of the day? 3. Is THIS why I’m so obsessed with Chinatown? I feel the shit in my bones?! (IF TRUE!?)
The start was met with torrential rain. The ponchos only added to the drip (not a rain pun). Waves of pastel flooded the streets (a rain pun).
The realest looks go down in Chinatown. My favorite is the guy with the tall selfie stick and red plastic bag, smoking a cig despite the rain. True drip god. There was a drum circle of ajummas2 drumming thru ponchos, some smiling big. When I say protect Chinatown at all costs this is who I’m thinking about.
I was handed 2025 glasses, lit them up, and put them on. A group of women standing at the barriers put theirs on top of their heads and turned to see if others had them on. They saw me standing on the stoop under an awning. They pointed smiling, I waved back with an animated smile, and we all laughed.
The morning of the parade I went to get Chinese bakery goods and passed these guys carrying a pig around the corner. It felt like good luck even if we’re in the year of the snake.
On the last day the sun came out. I ate leftover fried rice for breakfast, then bought a pack of shiny money envelopes because she was having a retirement sale and next time I visit her hole-in-the-wall store could be gone.
it was MyHeritage. I feel like the new results got more precise for Scandinavians and Euros but less precise for Asians?!
Mustard loved this.
They've only had the pleasure of visiting Chinatown once but it is a place they think about often. There is a restaurant they went to there that had a red door that knocked the cap off this condiment. Mustard is forgetting the name of the establishment but if they saw it in front of them they would know what it was.
The photos you shared from the parade, along with learning more about your heritage, are wonderful.
Mustard wonders: what does it mean to have drip? How does one become a drip god?
Thanks for the great photo essay.