The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association spent 20 years wishing the homeless had never come.



They protested years ago when the Portland City Council agreed to turn a Chinatown hotel into a shelter. They complained in 2011 when homeless camp Right 2 Dream Too sprouted on a gravel lot below the historic Chinatown gate.



And all along, they watched and grumbled as their neighborhood changed.



Not this week. On Tuesday, they made peace.



"Complaining was the wrong approach," Kitson Yu said. "That's not going to happen anymore."



Yu is president of the Bing Kong Tong, a Chinese Freemason group headquartered just north of the gate at Northwest 4th Avenue and Burnside.



Members from several Chinese groups planned to begin a detente at Right 2 Dream Too with a lunchtime delivery that was part charity, part show. A violinist would perform four pieces while women in traditional Chinese dresses delivered food.



Yu peered from the tong's second-story window as violinist Hong Zhou tuned up. Business professionals zipped by on Fourth Avenue holding Deadstock Coffee cups. Across the street, construction workers banged accidental percussion. Soon a nine-story boutique hotel would transform a 100-year-old building Portlanders had come to consider an eyesore.

He saw changes threatening to push out both the camp and the Chinese. Neither group, Yu said, is guaranteed a spot in what's slowly becoming Portland's hot new neighborhood. Some Chinese tongs sold off their downtown properties last year. And Portland leaders have tried several times to move the homeless who live at Right 2 Dream Too.



"We want to keep our culture," Yu said. "We want to keep our identity. We want people to know we are peaceful and loving people."



Yu pointed speakers down to the streets and a microphone toward Zhou. She'd have to play loud to drown out the construction noise.



"They're beating the drum for me," Zhou said. "Hopefully they will be in time with me. I tried to choose pieces that send the message of empathy and love and hope."





She played the opening notes of Handel's "Messiah" overture. Yu headed downstairs to meet the food delivery van.



"We are all God's children," Yu said. "We each have our purpose. Some people are just more fortunate to have a job, a family, a home."



Women from Ya Jing Qi Pao, a new charitable organization, shivered in red floral dresses. They hoisted boxes of canned goods and hot Chinese dishes then approached the blue tarps next door.



Ibrahim Mubarak, Right 2 Dream Too's co-founder, emerged from the camp with an iPad.



"We're going to put this on our Facebook," Mubarak said and began to film. He eyed the to-go containers.



"Is that pork?" he asked.



"It's Chinese food," the woman said.



"I can't eat pork," Mubarak said.



The women crossed the street then came back with sleeping bags still coiled in packaging. A passerby asked if he could have one.



"We need them," Mubarak told him. "Someone stole 50 sleeping bags from us last week."



Mubarak posed for photographs with the women. They compared outfits -- his grey tunic and black coat didn't pop the way their red satin did. Everyone hugged.



"They don't want us to leave because we stop the drugs and the prostitution," Mubarak said. "Crime has gone down .8 percent since we've been here. It's not much, but it's something for a group of homeless people. People don't break their windows. We keep the sidewalk clean. That helps them keep customers. We're all just trying to make a living."



Most of the Chinese group headed back upstairs for tea. One woman hung back with questions.



"How did you survive?" Helen Seid asked. "Last week, when it snowed, what did you do?"



Mubarak offered her a tour. The camp has heat lamps and a computer room, he said. Two members earned college degrees while living there.



Seid's high heels scraped across the camp's rock-and-mud floor. The violin-playing stopped.



"I don't want your group to leave you," Mubarak said. Seid said she wanted to stay.



"I've never been in a homeless camp before," Seid said. "If I make sandwiches when I have time, would you want them? Do you ever need volunteers?"



Mubarak said he did. He gave her a business card, and she wrote her number on a scratch piece of paper. Seid hesitated at the entrance then forced herself to leave.



"It's funny they want to be nice now," a camper named Mark told another. "I saw one guy in that group, he was so rude to me last week."



He started to say people in both communities need to see each other as distinct humans, not just Chinese or homeless, but a woman interrupted.



Another group, unrelated to the Chinese, had arrived with boxes of sandwiches.



"This is the anniversary of my husband's death," she said. "Every year on this day, we are going to feed the homeless."



A camper asked if she had more Chinese food.

-- Casey Parks

503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks