==Changed "Chinese run pawnshops" to "pawnshops"==
To call pawnshops, that fence stolen goods, "Chinese run" is a primitive form of relative Orientalism: it attempts to re-present the homegrown crime as somehow from abroad, from an "orient", here China. The fact is that sinoThai are Thai in the modern sense, not "Chinese" unto the next generation, and no more likely to be crooks than Tai people.