Chinatowns are struggling. Delta has decimated business once again.

Before the pandemic, San Francisco’s Far East Cafe was known for its lavish banquets, where parties of up to 700 people would dine on braised abalone and steamed fish while celebrating weddings or birthdays. “If you look at businesses in Chinatown, some of which don’t even have great access to technology and speak little to no English, the barriers to get to … government aid are so challenging,” said Wang. “Establishing online store presence/business on predominantly English-language social media platforms creates disparities in ability to promote and continue business online,” Devon Stahl, communications associate for the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, wrote in a statement. “In the context of Chinatown, there has to be a conversation about protecting particularly the community-serving retail and food assets that showed up and proved how they’re a key part of the safety net during a crisis.” For instance, Far East Cafe and other restaurants in San Francisco’s Chinatown helped provide takeout meals to the area’s vulnerable families and senior citizens in public housing in March 2020, when lockdowns began choking off many peoples’ sources of income. “We see this as something that could speed up the gentrification that’s already happening in Chinatown,” said Wang, adding that it’s a particular problem for Manhattan’s Chinatown, which occupies two different ZIP codes.