Rikki Li

I only see my father while burning with fever. He approaches my bed without a face, holding a bowl of pears steamed with rock sugar and red dates. He nudges a morsel against my lip, an Ethiopian gursha, my damp sheets a banquet table and I his honored guest. Wo wei ni, he says in Chinese.

This story was originally published at Prism. Loud chants of “hands off Chinatown!” spilled out the doors of Philadelphia’s Ocean Harbor restaurant on a Wednesday night in December as over 200 community residents and advocates gathered for a town hall in solidarity against the Sixers’ proposed basketball arena, 76 Place.

Loud chants of “hands off Chinatown!” spilled out the doors of Philadelphia’s Ocean Harbor restaurant last Wednesday night as over 200 community residents and advocates gathered for a town hall in solidarity against the Sixers’ proposed basketball arena, 76 Place. With plans to be built less than a block away from the Chinatown’s gateway arch, 76 Place marks yet another development in a long line of project proposals over the past few decades that have threatened the city’s last Asian enclave.