At times, the two cultures cannot appear to be further apart. Wounds are still fresh from a controversy last year, when one gallery displayed nude paintings of men having sex. Locals were outraged. The gallery agreed to obscure its artwork by frosting its storefront windows.
The remaining Chinese merchants obsessively count the new galleries, looking for the familiar clean whitewashed walls and studio lighting. They peer inside the spaces and struggle to comprehend the meaning of the abstract art and the prices the pieces demand.
"What is it?" asked Alex Cheung, owner of an antiques store, jabbing his finger at a newspaper clipping showing a tub of steaming tar used for an art installation at a nearby gallery several years ago.
"It's so weird," said his wife, Lily, surrounded by amber-colored Chinese furniture and blue-and-white porcelain in the couple's store. "I once saw a hand-carved wooden flower for $20,000. It was just hanging on a wall. Maybe we should get into modern art?"
Later, Roger Herman, an art instructor at UCLA whose Chinatown gallery is in a former kung fu studio, visited Cheung's store. Herman was looking for more of the same ivory necklaces he had bought there before.
"He's a dying breed," Herman said of Cheung, who at 56 has run the store more than half his life.
Herman and his business partner, Hubert Schmalix, have begun collecting rare Chinese pottery but say it is hard to find in the new Chinatown.
"Too many art galleries now," Herman said.
"Are these galleries here for the long term?" Lily Cheung, 50, asked Herman.
"I think so," Herman said. "I think the galleries have reached critical mass."
The Cheungs have reason to be nervous. They used to have twice the space, but the landlord raised the rent when more galleries came calling. So the immigrants from Hong Kong canceled the lease on a space next door. It has been taken over by art dealers from London and Berlin.
"I'm lucky to have a few old clients, but we're still struggling," Alex Cheung said, standing behind his counter. On the wall behind him is a framed black-and-white photograph of him shaking hands with the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.
Herman said he is keenly aware that he helped create the scene that now is pushing out merchants like the Cheungs.
"I wish we had more art dealers from China here," Herman said as he paid and prepared to leave.
