An elderly man with thick glasses lugs a bag of sweet rice from a grocery store onto a rundown street. In a nearby building, a faded dragon's head grimaces in a hallway hung with yellowed photos. Across the street, a painted wall advertises "family dinners served all hours" at the long-gone China Inn.
These are among the few remaining vestiges of the city's Chinatown, a Park Avenue block that once had bustling restaurants, stores and meeting halls, as well as exuberant Lunar New Year's parades.
"People come in and ask me directions to Chinatown," says Sharon Tan, who with her husband owns the West Baltimore block's lone Chinese restaurant, the Chinatown Cafe. "I say, `I don't think there is a Chinatown.'"
Now a pair of restaurateurs is looking to start a new Chinatown more than a mile north, near the intersection of Charles Street and North Avenue in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. Their effort has sparked a debate over the best way to celebrate the city's Chinese heritage: revitalize the old Chinatown or start anew?
Tony Cheng, the owner of two Washington restaurants that bear his name, and his son have purchased about 10 properties in the area and started the MVP bus service, which offers $35 round-trip fares from Charles Street to New York's Penn Station.
"The neighborhood needs a little boost, and my father is trying to make it happen," says Anthony Cheng Jr., adding that he and his father are looking to attract Asian-American entrepreneurs to the area, already home to many Korean-owned businesses.
The Chengs would like to see an Asian grocery store, an upscale Chinese restaurant and some galleries open in their properties, he says. They hope the neighborhood would attract shoppers and tourists, like a smaller version of the vibrant Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco.
Members of Baltimore's Chinese-American community question whether Chinatown can be relocated - though they have nearly given up hope that the old neighborhood will ever be revitalized.
"It's not going to have the same feeling as if it stayed on Park Avenue," says Katherine "Kitty" Chin, 81, who once ran a Chinese cooking school and gourmet store on the block. "There's so much history there."
Starting in the 1970s, her husband, Calvin Chin, a leader of the Chinese-American community, sought funding to revitalize the old neighborhood with a $20 million Asian cultural center, a museum, language school and senior center. He campaigned tirelessly for the project and sent The Sun information about Chinatown just days before he died last month.
