Just walking around Chinatown, the language barrier between those who speak Chinese and those who don’t are extremely evident. From the street signs and billboards to small price tags on store items, everything has both English and Chinese writing.
It is hard for someone just walking around Chinatown to distinguish who speaks English and who doesn’t.
I thought I was the only one but after walking around, I realized that many people have problems with it.
This was especially apparent when I was walking out of the plaza parking garage and saw a man writhing in pain on the corner of Webster and 9th.
A fire truck was first on the scene and the firemen were trying to communicate with the man on the ground.
Unfortunately he couldn’t speak English so a random bystander had to translate that he said his head was injured and translate the firemen’s instructions.
Eventually they got the man on a straight board and loaded him into an ambulance.
But this incident illustrated two points that I had learned about Chinatown, one is that it is a tight knit neighborhood evidenced by the stranger acting as a translator and two is that there is a definite language barrier.
Whether it is a police officer patrolling the streets, a security officer at the plaza center or a student journalist walking the streets that is something that you are going come up against.
But with the helpfulness of most in Chinatown, the obstacle of language isn’t as daunting as it once seemed.
Chinatown Take-Out 