By Nia Wong
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Take a stroll through Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (CID) on any given day and you’ll find visitors pulled to the historic neighborhood for food, fun, and cultural sights. But on the second Saturday of every month, volunteers from around Puget Sound are drawn to the area not because of an attraction, but a call to action.
Photo by Nia Wong
“I have this broken umbrella here taking up my whole trash bag and I have a lot of cigarette butts, lots of plastic and random trash,” said Lance Tse.
Photo by Nia Wong
On a brisk December morning, Tse was one of dozens of volunteers who woke up to wear orange safety vests and look for overlooked pieces of litter and unsightly scraps scattered around Chinatown, Little Saigon, and Japantown as part of the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Area (CIDBIA)’s final monthly community cleanup of the year.
“I think [volunteers] found a broken AC and one time we found a broken machete in a deep bush,” said Y.K., Clean and Green program manager for CIDBIA.
Photo by Nia Wong
While Y.K. says his monthly clean up teams gather the occasional “weird” items, he says the efforts of more than 1,170 volunteers in the past year have collected 958 bags of garbage, helping CIDBIA’s sanitation contractors who picked up 95,172 pounds of garbage, including biohazards, between January 2025 to November 2025.
“It takes a village to raise a village and to continue to beautify and maintain it,” said Y.K. “So we really could not have done it without everyone working together from city contractors, to our contractors, as well as volunteers.”
Photo by Nia Wong
On top of CIDBIA’s volunteer roster increasing, which Y.K. credits to local organizing groups such as Subtle Asian Traits and the 1.5 Generation, he also sees how participants take away more than just a few volunteer hours after each monthly cleanup.
“I wanted to do something impactful, something more meaningful in life and meet new people as well,” said Linda Te.
Te says she was born and raised in Seattle and when she found out about the 1.5 Generation social group joining CIDBIA’s cleanup, the remote worker journeyed from South King County to help the CID, a community that she says was part of her upbringing.
“I’m planning on attending more events, and it’s a great way to make a real impact on this world and be a better person,” said Te.
Like Te, this won’t be the last event for Tse, who has volunteered with CIDBIA’s monthly cleanup at least three times in the past.
“Historically, not just Chinatowns, but other minority enclaves as well have been neglected by government and by people who don’t belong to the enclave,” said Tse. “I think it’s important for us, especially if we share the same heritage, to kind of step up to be the next generation, and help keep the legacy going.”
Photo by Nia Wong
The success of CIDBIA’s monthly cleanups will continue through 2026, a big year for Seattle and the CID with FIFA games expected to bring in heavy foot traffic.
“In addition to our monthly cleanups, our CID Spring Clean event, one of, if not the biggest volunteer events of the neighborhood, will be coming back in early to mid-May,” said Y.K.
“We’re thinking about ways to really ramp up sanitation during those two months to make sure that the neighborhood is really clean and can kind of support all the people that are visiting here.”
CIDBIA’s next monthly cleanup is scheduled for Jan. 10, 2026 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Hing Hay Park.