Living Up
- Chow Ban (The villagers) by Jae Danupol Kaewkarn
When I visited my youngest sister last Saturday, I was surprised of the changes in her area. She lives in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York, and there is a large population of Asian, such as Korean, Chinese, and some Vietnamese. Most of the houses are somewhat small, I called them the gingerbread house, and English Tutor house style, and current selling price is about $600-650K at the moment.
The one next door to her, Chinese people bought it last year for about $625K, knocked it down, and rebuilt a new and bigger house. When we droved around the block, I was amazed of what I saw, how do they do this? My sister said that they have many families living under one roof, and even thought it’s a single-family dwelling, extended family is considered as one household. So here, we’ve 4 families living here, and one of the owners owns a Chinese restaurant.
I walked around the block to take these photos, my sister told me to be careful because they have surveillance cameras.
The bigger houses are corner lot, bear in mind that the lot is very small, but they managed to built a 2 family detached, and selling price of $1,490,000 or more.
How do the neighbors like this? Obviously they don’t, you might think that they would because it increases the value of their home as well, but most Americans that have been there for a long time don’t plan to sell their house, and this also causes a problem in terms of parking, more people living means more cars, less available parking space along side of the road. My sister said that they did the same thing at Throgs Neck area in Long Island, New York, and the city finally put a stop to this type of renovation, and pretty soon they’d put a stop in her area as well.
So things are not what it seems, on the surface of this, it would appear that they are rich (some might be), but in reality, they are living up and sharing expenses.
…and here, they’re just trying to blend in, can’t you tell?
We see the same thing happening in the bay area too. Especially in Cupertino, Ca. The Chinese families would buy small homes and turn them into McMansions (mini mansions). It doesn’t blend so well with the other homes and most neighbors don’t like it. Many of the homes in Cupertino look like regular suburbans home, but they go for $1 million or more. Ridiculous!
Btw, I have always wonder what goes on in some of these people’s backyard. I guess they still line dry clothes too. Pretty good for the sake of energy saving and caring for the environment too. Love the photos… Ginger, our very own photojournalist.
Salat, I’m happy you like the photos, I got some good feed back this time, so I’m heading in the right direction. Thanks.