Asia in Seattle: Turning Smashed Windows into Hope

My sadness is punctual. It comes at around two in the afternoon, and it’s strong enough that I fight back tears. That’s when the grief hits, for all the deaths that have happened in the past three and a half months, for the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs, for the children who come to the closed doors of their schools, picking up food to take home That’s when I take to the streets and walk to the only neighborhood in my part of Seattle that doesn’t feel like a ghost town. 

Within ten minutes I’m in the Chinatown-International District.

As soon as I reach Little Saigon, art begins to brighten my sadness. It seems as though there’s a new mural every day, with fresh vibrant colors and messages of hope, promises for the future. 

After a weekend of rage and destruction, on Sunday morning a young man on King Street told the editor of the International Examiner,”We’re going to board up all the windows.” By Sunday night, almost all the glass in the C-ID and much in Little Saigon, whether it was smashed or still unbroken, had been shielded with plywood. The buildings stared blankly into the streets, but not for long. 

Artists from the neighborhood and beyond came with paint and creativity. They turned the blind windows into an art gallery that extends for blocks. From the edges of Little Saigon to the borders of the C-ID, Jackson, King, Weller, and the avenues explode with images, with the doors and windows of almost every business displaying their own unique character. 

The paintings are an expression of life in our city that’s in suspended animation, and life is what has always characterized the C-ID. It’s a community of people who walk—to shop in the neighborhood grocery stores, to have a meal in one of its throngs of restaurants, to chat and play cards in Hing Hay Park, to go to the doctor, the library, the post office, all located within a matter of a few blocks. Now it’s a refuge, with a vitality that draws me and others to come and nourish our hearts.

I look at the art, I buy peonies from a flower farmer who comes all the way down from Monroe to sell her blossoms on King Street, I pick up food from Tai Tung because I need to absorb the warmth of its owner’s welcome. I feel true joy with each shop that has just reopened and when I pass other old ladies, I smile at them from under my mask. As I walk past the murals, their vitality and hope seep into my sadness, clearing it away and when I come back home, I’m filled with light. ~Janet Brown