When COVID-19 began spreading around the world five years ago, America’s Chinatowns were among the first places in the U.S. to feel the pandemic’s impact. Many restaurants and banquet halls usually filled to the brim with revelers celebrating the Lunar New Year sat empty. Xenophobic rhetoric and hate crimes targeting Chinese-Americans spiked, leading to the “Stop Asian Hate” campaign. Former Mayor Bill de Blaiso even staged a photo-op at a Flushing eatery to try to ease nerves during the pandemic’s early days, before the citywide shutdown.

Fulton Hou is a volunteer at Send Chinatown Love, a volunteer run organization that supports Asian and immigrant-owned small businesses across the city’s multiple Chinatowns. He talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson more about how NYC's Chinatowns have recovered five years on from the pandemic's earliest days.