Banquet halls have played a core role in the Chinatown economy, from providing new immigrants with starter jobs to sourcing from local vendors. Another Lunar New Year in a pandemic, the question on the minds of many in Chinatown is what will be left when the pandemic finally ends and people come out of isolation clamoring to socialize?

Cynthia Choi of Stop AAPI Hate said one reason the number of hate incidents are high in California overall is because the state has "large concentrations of Asian American communities." But she also said these numbers are likely an undercount.

Thanks to the pandemic, this was always going to be a subdued Lunar New Year in the San Francisco Bay Area. Instead of street fairs and packed crowds, mass gatherings are out of the question. Shops have been closing earlier and earlier in recent weeks, and police are being deployed to Chinatowns in the region in greater numbers. Everyone is on guard—not just against the coronavirus, but against violence.

The pandemic has hit San Francisco’s Chinatown, America’s oldest and largest, particularly hard. The lack of tourists; the spate of violent attacks and robberies; and pandemic-related racism against Asian-Americans have combined to exacerbate the economic pain felt in Chinatown.

In recent weeks, the string of violence and anti-Asian sentiment has reached another breaking point — one that has disproportionately targeted vulnerable Asian seniors in the Bay Area.

Lack of language access for jobless benefits “creates a tsunami of exclusion for millions of California residents,” said Santosh Seeram-Santana, legislative director at Chinese for Affirmative Action, a civil rights nonprofit. A strike force on the Employment Development Department, which administers unemployment, said not being fluent in English presents “insurmountable barriers” to receiving benefits.

As part of a broader package of memorandums advancing racial equity, Biden signed one executive action Tuesday in which he condemned xenophobic language that’s been used related to the pandemic and called on the Justice Department to collect data on hate crimes and harassment directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).

President Biden is expected to use his executive authority this week to disavow racism and xenophobia toward Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, specifically targeting anti-Asian animus connected to the COVID-19 pandemic

Jeremy Lin of the Santa Cruz Warriors pledged $200,000 in grants for local Bay Area initiatives for Asian-American and Pacific Islander children and youths, including Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition co-founded by CAA.

Doing away with H1-B visa restrictions “would send a strong signal that immigrants are welcome and that vilifying various groups isn’t appropriate”, said Russell Jeung, the Stop AAPI Hate chair.

The pandemic has seen an uptick of violence against Asians, toward the people, their businesses, and their communities at large. Asian-Americans were spat on, harassed, and attacked in streets and even parking lots across America.

The non-English social media landscape operates as an insular echo chamber where little fact-checking is done. “There’s not the same level of balance, in terms of political balance or racial and ethnic balance," said CAA's Vincent Pan.