NOSE TO TAIL
Los Angeles’ first Chinatown was settled starting around 1880, south of the city’s historic center, the Los Angeles Plaza. Over the next two decades, the densely populated neighborhood expanded to the northeast and became home to a range of Chinese-owned businesses. These included markets that sold fare such as plum sauce for seasoning roast meat and restaurants that served up delicacies such as bird’s nest soup and century eggs. Like all Chinese immigrants to the United States, Chinatown’s residents suffered from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred most Chinese laborers from entering the country and led to harsh scrutiny of those already present. Its population peaked around the turn of the twentieth century and then began to decline, as it was provided almost no municipal services. The enclave was largely razed in 1934 to make way for a new railway terminal. A few years later, a pair of competing projects—China City and New Chinatown—were established about a mile from the old neighborhood, and later merged to form the Chinatown that exists to this day.
Construction of a subway station in the late 1980s to early 1990s offered a team led by archaeologist Roberta Greenwood of Greenwood and Associates the opportunity to excavate a portion of the city’s original Chinatown. The team uncovered a vast array of artifacts, including ceramics, glass, metal, plant remains—and 4,506 animal bones that offered clues to what people in the neighborhood ate. The evidence suggested that pork was by far the most widely consumed meat—and many of the pork bones had been chopped into one- to three-inch lengths suitable for grasping
