Little Fuzhou in NYC

Forward:

This is one of the final papers I wrote during my Masters program at Columbia. Basically I try to give an analysis of the development of the East Broadway corridor Chinatown in NYC. This neighborhood has always been my favorite part of NYC and after travelling in China a few years ago I finally began to understand how truly unique this neighborhood is compared to other Chinese neighborhoods in other cities and countries.

Enclave within an Enclave: the Development of Little Fuzhou within NYC’s Chinatown

The Chinatown in New York City that has traditionally been centered near Mott and Doyer Streets has existed as an established neighborhood since roughly the 1880’s. While this neighborhood has existed and expanded based on a number of observable trends including internal migration within the US, changing of US immigration restrictions, and the American born children of immigrants, its expansion along the East Broadway corridor is different in a number of ways from earlier expansions. The neighborhood that has developed along the East Broadway corridor, to an observer not familiar with the intricacies of Chinese languages or ethnic groups, may seem largely indistinguishable from the other streets of the more established Chinatown. Although the area lacks some of the more touristic visible signs and attractions of other Chinatown neighborhoods it might seem like a similar part of the same neighborhood. It differs and functions in several ways that make it a separate enclave that interacts with the greater Chinatown community in a unique way. In a sense the Little Fuzhou neighborhood’s relationship to Chinatown acts as a microcosm to Chinatown’s relationship to New York City.

How does this new Chinatown fit into the historical fabric of the old Chinatown? The first major noticeable difference between Chinatown “proper” and Little Fuzhou is the area of origin of its residents. This difference affects language usage. The Second major difference between the residents of the East Broadway corridor and the more established Chinatown is the economic position of the residents. This position is linked to the Fujian province the immigrants are from and affects why they came to the US. The third major difference deals with the time period and method by which the residents immigrated to the US. While the older neighborhood is more established from earlier immigration waves, the new immigrants came as the results of an easing of immigration restrictions and, more often, are coming illegally. These two main differences interact with each other and distinctively affect the way that these new immigrants respond to New York City as a whole and to Chinatown as a neighborhood. Unlike other waves of immigrants that came before them, The Cantonese, Hongkongese, and more upwardly mobile immigrants from mainland China, there are more barriers to the Fuzhounese integration within the greater Chinatown community.

Once in New York, the Fuzhounese job patterns and movement through the city and in the United States in general occupies a different sphere than their more established peers in Chinatown. Due to their undocumented status, they occupy a different niche job market usually within Chinese restaurants scattered along the East Coast and often extending far from the Fuzhou home base centered on East Broadway. The Fuzhounese immigrant’s lower earning potential is one of the major factors impeding their full integration within the larger Chinatown community.

The emerging Little Fuzhou neighborhood needs to be placed in context with the development of Chinatown as a whole to be fully understood. The growth and changes in Chinatown NYC largely reflected both national and international political and economic policies. Throughout the 1880’s, through the passing of the Chinese Exclusion act in 1882 and ending at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Chinese migrated to lower Manhattan from far flung locations across North and South America and Chinese merchant marines illegally disembarked from ships in New York harbor. In the midcentury until the relatively recent arrival of the Fuzhounese starting in the 1980’s, the primary immigrants to North American Chinatowns have originated from a region surrounding the Pearl River Delta. This area also includes Hong Kong Chinese who speak Cantonese.

Within Chinatown prior to the 1970’s the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood was primary Cantonese speakers from a limited area surrounding and including Hong Kong. These original immigrants centered and settled around the original site. In 1976 the Taiwanese government liberalized exit requirements and a first wave of Mandarin speakers began to settle around the fringes of the original Chinatown. Later in 1979, Mainland China began to allow direct migration and a second wave of Mandarin speakers began to bolster the first.

While the earlier immigrants to Chinatown had often moved incrementally up into the middle class and had largely acclimated to the American economic climate, new immigrants coming throughout the 1980’s until today have fallen into two very distinct groups. The first of these groups are the middle/ upper class Chinese from Taiwan and other more affluent coastal cities. These immigrants don’t necessarily begin the American experience in Manhattan’s Chinatown and often skip this step in favor or moving directly into business in a suburb in Queens or Brooklyn. These immigrants are differentiated from the earlier immigrants in that they are increasingly using Mandarin rather than Cantonese. The second of these groups include the working class Fuzhounese who come to the US for an economic need. The two streams of migration cross paths in Metropolitan New York City where many poor immigrants from Mainland China settle in Manhattan Chinatown or along the subway line across the East River in Brooklyn while the bulk of affluent immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, along with better educated Mainlanders, settle throughout the metropolitan area. There is a distinction between the two source regions of immigrants in educational background. 43% of post-1970 adult immigrants from Mainland China in a census sample had not finished high school, while only 12% of adult immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong fell into that category. On the upper end of the spectrum, only 10% of adult Mainland immigrants had received advanced degrees in 1990, compared to 26% of those from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This distribution reflects a region-wide trend in immigration. In the early I990s, 27% of all male immigrants and 36% of all female immigrants to New York were classified as professional/executive, while 40% of immigrants had not graduated from high school . These numbers show that among the immigrants to New York City, the Chinese either skew towards the working poor who come to the US for economic reasons and the upwardly mobile who come to New York for education or professional career positions.
The Fuzhounese have surpassed the total Cantonese population in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Because many of these immigrants are undocumented and do not stay permanently stay in one place, numbers are difficult to gauge. Fuzhounese associations in New York City claim between 300,000 to 500,000 Fuzhounese who have come to and through New York City since the 1980s. Many of these poorer immigrants have been smuggled to New York through the use of “snakeheads” and have settled either along the East Broadway corridor or in the satellite neighborhood in Sunset Park. In 1993 the Cargo Ship Golden Venture ran aground off the coast of Rockaway Beach with 286 undocumented migrants. This tragedy brought to public light a process that had been occurring and still occurs to bring people to New York City. “The undocumented migrants take out large loans from human traffickers for passage to the US, however these loans carry high interest rates. Even working long hours and living frugally, new immigrants are lucky to pay off their debts within five years. Unlike the Fuzhounese who are often are indebted to their financers for years at a time, other more upwardly mobile Chinese have economic options available to them. More affluent Chinese often choose to live in other locations and don’t seem to need the ethnic concentration and relative security that Chinatown provides. Once they reach the US, the Fuzhounese have a very different experience than their more affluent immigrant peers. Manhattan Chinatown’s enclave economy is more successful at employing the marginal Fuzhounese workforce. While the ability to work within an almost wholly Chinese sphere allows the Fuzhounese to quickly find limited employment it limits their acquisition of English and isolate them within the Greater New York City community.

Chinatown NYC is unique from other ethnic populations and enclaves because as earlier wave immigrants and their children assimilate and move to other places there is a constant flow of replacement population. Unlike the largely disappearing Little Italy, poor Chinese continue to come to New York and choose to live in Manhattan because they can get jobs within the community. The community is so self-contained that virtually anything a new immigrant needs by way of housing, food, or employment can be found in the neighborhood. This self-contained security is the reason that many, who might lack the skills or affluence to operate in other locations, continue to come here.

Those somewhat familiar with the unique cultures of China can see that the community within Little Fuzhou is distinct with its own separate language, culinary traditions, and modus operandi. Visual cues like an increasing number of Fuzhou style restaurants and Fuzhou owned business mark this fact. These immigrants have largely begun to displace the former mix of residents from the lower east side including Jewish and Puerto Rican populations. While the Fuzhounese population is centered along the East Broadway corridor and Sunset Park, it often is not the final occupational destination to the new immigrants. Little Fuzhou is the epicenter for a locally and nationally dispersed network of low income workers who travel up and down the east coast and further inland as far as Indiana. While the workers spend much of their time elsewhere, Little Fuzhou is where they return routinely to do a number of necessary functions. The East Broadway mall is a prime location for an observer to see some of the separate systems that exists in parallel to the greater NYC systems. From this vantage point in the epicenter of the Fuzhounese community several enterprises become apparent. These functions include remittances back to China, informal banking, loan paying, socializing, and social networking.

The Little Fuzhou infrastructure visually and structurally has several things in common with Chinatown West of Bowery. Like much of New York there is similar housing stock of walk up tenement structures punctuated by new larger developments including an under-bridge mall and several banks. There are also similar visual cues used on the buildings like signage and cosmetic changes to building facades. These include built out balconies from modified tenement stock. Little Fuzhou, in its epicenter, can be identified distinctly from its more comprehensive use of Chinese language signage with the conspicuous absence of English that is found in the more tourist friendly Chinatown to the west. A trip to the East Broadway mall will show stores and restaurants where there is virtually no English featured on signs and menus. Interestingly, in an area where the majority of immigrants are non-Cantonese speakers, the use of traditional Chinese characters still far outweighs the use of the simplified characters. Common sense might dictate that mainland Chinese schooled in simplified characters would prefer the standard writing style but the adoption of traditional Chinese characters seems to be one way that the new community is adapting to the established norms of the greater Chinatown neighborhood.

The East Broadway Little Fuzhou also differs visual from the Cantonese Chinatown in a number of distinct ways. The semiotic symbology that is friendly to tourists is often absent. The conspicuous tourist displays and cheap gift shops in Chinatown proper are replaced in Little Fuzhou by stores that cater to a local population. There are many restaurants that cater to an almost exclusively local clientele, as well as unlicensed dentist traditional doctors etc. Also present on East Broadview are stores that are directly related to the largely informal economy that predominates for the undocumented workers that center around Little Fuzhou. There are money couriers, transfer stores, Currency exchanges, Travel agencys, blank credit card providers, and others. Within this neighborhood the remnants of a once widespread urban model, the rooming house or single resident occupancy, house transient workers as the leave and return from far flung locations across the US. These rooming houses are largely illegal and, for around four hundred dollars a month, workers are rented something akin to a 35 sq. ft. cage. A fire at one of these rooming houses at 812 Bowery and a subsequent New York Times article on the conditions of the residents brought some of the issues of these illegal hotels to light. These occupancies are unfortunately some of the only way that cheap housing can be found for a largely transient population with little economic capital.

In Little Fuzhou workers can send money home save their money and purchase necessary good for work like prepaid cell phones. Low priced counterfeit and off-brand goods are easy to find here and the Chinese established norms of bartering is in full effect in this neighborhood. Less visible but documented in newspaper articles are snakehead lawyers, and people offering illegal services like false citizenship papers. The true workhorses of the community that can be found in the neighborhood are the bulletin and whiteboard that offer jobs to new immigrants. More than twenty employment agencies dot the blocks around East Broadway of this community. Thousands of workers, men and women, circulate through these employment agencies every day searching for work. Inside the agency, jobs are posted on white boards or on posters on windows. Postings outside of New York are included. This is especially convenient considering the workers have almost no English acquisition of average.

Like the greater Chinatown the street atmosphere within Little Fuzhou is very intimate with many small subdivided stores and sidewalk stalls selling a variety of goods more specifically geared towards the Chinese buyer. Small tables selling Chinese vegetables, phone cards, etc. dot the landscape. While all of the items present along East Broadway can most likely be found in the greater Chinatown neighborhood, the frequency that one finds goods that have no interest to the idle tourist is far greater. This is yet another one of the distinguishing visual factors of the neighborhood.

One of the informal businesses that have existed in both Little Fuzhou and Cantonese Chinatown focuses on the grey market sales of electronics to mainland China. This exchange involves Chinese in the US waiting in line to purchase goods not yet available in Asia then sending them directly back to China for a profit. These exchanges all exist witching a semi legal framework on a hard currency basis. Usually the products are shipped back through China on a person or a deal is worked out with a customs officer.

Some of the Current Chinatown Development today consists of the ashes of what used to be known as Little Italy. This neighborhood now is reduced to three blocks alone on Mulberry Street. This so-called enclave has no significant populations of Italians actually living there. Recent development has seen the closing of several anchor restaurants which were all that remained of the neighborhood. While these neighborhoods are now rather multicultural with influxes of gentrifiers from other NYC neighborhoods, the largest demographic population is Chinese. The Fuzhounese have pushed north through Little Italy, east along East Broadway through the former Jewish settlements of the lower East Side, and south into government housing projects and toward the Brooklyn Bridge. In March 2011 the city planning commission approved The Chinatown Improvement district which made no mention of Little Italy and encompassed virtually all of its former territory leaving out a small sliver of space as a concession to the various Italian business associations. The Chinatown BID makes no mention of the Fuzhou neighborhood or its input in the neighborhood diversity.

While greater Chinatown has a distinct character within itself, spatial demographics are divided between several ethnics groups. Along the edges of the amorphous areas there are diminishing numbers of formerly numerous ethnic communities including Jewish, Hispanic, and Italian. The permanent landmarks to these now largely departed populations are still present. These include synagogues offices and businesses. In the case of Little Italy this extends to restaurants. Within the Chinatown framework the superficial storefront of an Italian American neighborhood still stands, housing elderly residents and remnants of a evacuated population. Tourist shops, stores, and restaurants remain while the population lives elsewhere. Along the boundaries of the site to the west and north and far east of the side the Chinese language population begins to thin as the lower east side, Soho, and Tribeca reassert themselves.

” I would not rent any of my apartments to those Fuzhou Lao even if the pay cash in advance.”

While the residents of Little Fuzhou continue to face discrimination and arguably exploitation from the established Chinese Community, there is a certain amount of progress that is hopeful to the advancement of the Fuzhounese. While there is a somewhat exploitative worker market in restaurants and stores owned by Cantonese, an increasing number of the Fuzhounese are learning Cantonese to adapt to the new work environment. This makes the Fuzhounese in Little Fuzhou the largest population of non-native Cantonese speakers in the world. The process of acculturation is also present in the community as shown by the forward progress of Fuzhou owned businesses that can be seen along East Broadway. As their social and economic network expands by way of village and family associations, Fuzhou are beginning to carve out niche markets in Food take out and buffett eateries in NYC and along the eastern seaboard. When competition in NYC is tough, the Fuzhou move to other locations. Usually the more isolated and dangerous the location the cheaper the rent is.

Some of the other businesses that can be seen in Little Fuzhou are the van and bus services that transport workers around the city to the satellite Chinatowns. These buses also work on a larger scale, transporting people around the country to restaurants established in smaller markets by earlier waves of Fuzhounese immigrants. These buses are usually found parked outside the East Broadway Mall and transport the Chinese labor force without them ever using the publicly available options. This is yet another example of the informal economy that exists in Little Fuzhou that runs parallel to official municipal systems. There are job boards also present throughout the neighborhood where travelers, residents, and returning workers can seek out apartments and room shares. Often, legal residents of walkup apartments will subdivide the space then sell off the parcels to undocumented workers. This is one of the few ways illegal aliens can get affordable housing. When the immigrants first moved to the US, their use of Mandarin and Fuzhounese largely left them out of the Chinatown political processes. Thus they started their own groups such as the Fuzhou Countrymen’s Association, and the Fuzhou America Chamber of Commerce. These organizations are a direct response to the established organizations and are geared towards

All of these sojourners workers circulate around the country, however unusually the strenuous and stressful job conditions always circulate them back to New York City to the neighborhood Hub along the East Broadway corridor. This enclave absorbs the shifting population and provides entertainment, cheap housing, and other diversions geared to the single male Chinese worker. Language and prices are geared towards the Fuzhounese worker form a near counter culture to the New York standard and stand in contrast to the Cantonese Chinatown standard.

The future of Little Fuzhou is difficult to gauge directly. Especially when considered with the rising cost of housing rate and desirability of locations in Manhattan. Potentially similar to other Chinese populations, the Fuzhou immigrants might begin to completely pass over Manhattan on their way directly to suburbs like Sunset Park. Large numbers of Fuzhounese in Sunset Park might suggest this trend has already began. For now, the satellite neighborhoods still operate with Manhattan as their epicenter. As richer clientele scramble for housing in Manhattan and low priced options are giving way to market rates, the edges of Chinatown have become more porous to development. Development competition in Manhattan is already very fierce and Chinatown might be in the way of future development plans.The Chinatown to the west of Little Fuzhou is already dotted with boutique hotels, high-rent spaces and luxury condominium apartments where warehouses and garment factories once provided jobs and trade for the local garment and restaurant economies. This trend could potentially forecast future moves by developers into Little Fuzhou.

Little Fuzhou’s relationship with the greater Chinatown neighborhood, while sometimes adversarial and often with irritation, is one of mutual need. Chinatown needs a cheap and malleable labor pool while the Fuzhounese needs help and infrastructure to find employment. The Little Fuzhou operates as a distinct subsect of the greater Chinatown neighborhood. Forming more of a working class labor base than their middle class peers from other regions in China, the Fuzhounese are carving out a distinct place in the Manhattan landscape. The people who populate this neighborhood form a distinct body with unique requirements that the social and physical structure of the neighborhood adapts to. The East Broadway corridor acts as the epicenter for this ethnic community and provides a variety of functions that are directly suited to their needs. Little Fuzhou is the base for networks concurrently within New York City and within the US that operate to serve and employ the largely itinerant population. Parallel systems of banking, transportation, housing, and commerce exist to provide cheap labor to the US market and to provide the immigrants with a higher pay rate than they would find in rural China.