It’s Start-Over Time for NYC’s Chinatown
Knocked down hard by the pandemic, the neighborhood struggles to get back on its feet as New York City reopens.
A pedestrian wearing a protective mask walks passed closed businesses in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York, U.S., on May 27.
Photographer: Nina Westervelt/BloombergEditor’s Note: No city is more important to America’s economy than New York, and none has been hit harder by the coronavirus. “NYC Reopens” examines life in the capital of capitalism as the city takes its first halting steps toward a new normal.
A decade after taking over at Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a century-old Chinatown restaurant in New York, former Morgan Stanley insurance analyst Wilson Tang is back in startup mode.
As the city slowly emerges from its coronavirus lockdown, Tang’s neighborhood is recovering particularly painfully from a collapse in business that began in January with early reports of the virus’s spread in China. Tang, 42, can hardly recall a tougher time in New York, even after the financial crisis that decimated Wall Street in 2008-09.