The Real Chinatown of New York City

The origin of Chinatowns in the United States is an interesting one. According to my professor of Chinese history, virtually all second or more generation Chinese people in the United States are from Taishan (台山), a small region in the Guangdong (Canton) province. This is because when U.S. ships first arrived in China looking for cheap labor in the early 19th century, they landed in the coastal cities in and around Taishan. Once Chinatowns started forming due to discriminatory redlining policies, they largely represented the food, culture, and – in my opinion, most interestingly – the language of that area. This is clearly visible in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Chinatown Manhattan

Walking around this reprieve from the sartorial busyness that is Manhattan, I instantly noticed the remnants of 19th century Taishan. All Chinese signs are in traditional characters. Here’s why that’s significant:

When Chairman Mao established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he saw literacy as vitally important to empowering the peasant class and competing with global superpowers. He also disdained traditional Chinese culture, labeling it as backward and restricting development. Mao envisioned an ambitious plan to ultimately rid China of its characters in favor of a Western alphabet. The first stage of this goal was simplifying the traditional characters in an effort to increase literacy.

As a side note, researchers are skeptical of whether simplified Chinese is easier to learn than traditional characters.

This simplifying of thousands of characters took place in the 1950’s and onward (after the establishment of the Republic of China, which is why Taiwan also still uses traditional characters). In the end, doing away with all Chinese characters proved too unrealistic. In many ways, today’s technology has cemented the existence of characters in modern Chinese life because it is now easier than ever to type them out. Since the Taishanese people immigrated to the United States before this simplification took place, Chinatowns use traditional characters. I find this fascinating! Unsurprisingly, the cuisine in Chinatown Manhattan is mainly Cantonese (粤菜), and dim sum spots are plentiful. The residents who haven’t been pushed out by high rent prices still speak Cantonese and are among the rare Chinese people today that don’t understand Mandarin (which was implemented in all schools across mainland China after the establishment of the PRC). I’ve also heard that Chinatowns in the U.S. have families that preserved a little 19th century vocabulary in their speech.

Chinatown Flushing, Queens

The second big wave of mainland Chinese immigration to the United States came after China opened up to the West, marked by Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. That being said, it wasn’t until the early 1990’s and into the 21st century when mainland Chinese began to form a significant presence in the United States. Enter Chinatown Flushing in the Queens borough. The moment I walked out of the subway station, I felt like I was teleported back to China. The hustle and bustle on the streets instantly reminded me of Beijing. In Mandarin, there’s a word for the emotion generated by large crowds and vibrating activity called Rènào (热闹). In this Chinatown, simplified characters were on all the signs. The food had a distinct mainland taste with dishes I recognized from many different provinces. There were even the hilarious and bizarre English translations that I always love to find in China.

At one point, I ended up in an underground food market where no one spoke English, and I had to communicate with the people in Mandarin. I was definitely an outsider in that market, and the people were weirded out to see me. I did not expect to find that in America!

In the metropolis comprised of every citizen of the world, it’s still remarkable that New York hosts two Chinatowns that preserve the old and new of China so well.