Yuting Lang

Red Town

My project focuses on the current situation of Chinatown that exists everywhere, the stagnant development and the stereotypes and over-packaging of Chinese culture that exist in it. The exploration of this topic stems from my own cultural background. As an international student who has lived in China since childhood and was surrounded by a lot of Chinese cultures, I felt both familiar and unfamiliar when I first stepped into Chinatown. And when I lived in Toronto, Canada for a long time and frequently visited Chinatown in downtown Toronto, I was curious about the culture that Chinatown conveys and the current situation it is in. I started to wonder if Chinatown is a representation of pure Chinese culture, or is it actually independent?I turned the finished product of the project into a zine that tells the audience about historical anti-Chinese sentiments and events. And finally, observe from these events that the stereotyped visual elements and stagnant development in Chinatown are necessary means to be able to survive better in Western society. Chinatown attracts Western tourists by creating a mystical oriental vibe and continues to survive by making as much money as possible under the high rents and increasingly squeezed spaces.I named this zine Red Town. Because red is the most common and most acceptable colour in Chinatown. Whether fresh or worn, the red paint is promoting the Chinese culture that Chinatown is trying to represent. So the whole zine is flooded with red. This both reflects Chinatown's popular red app, while also telling historical anti-China events in a more visually stimulating way. Red brings a brutal and strong visual sense to the event. I also used a familiar font in the zine, Chopstix. This is an artificial typeface that represents Chinese cultural stereotypes. They have an intuitive visual explanation that the product they belong to is sourced from Chinatown. But it can also narrate in an ironic way the stereotypes about Chinese culture that pervade Chinatown. The narrative angle of this zine is to describe the plight of Chinatown and Chinese immigrants from various historical issues and why Chinatown has gradually become a theme park of "Chinese culture".