The Untrendy Trend
It was time. The sun was directly overhead. I hurried towards the agreed rendezvous point. Time was of the essence. Eventually, I ended up in front of a dump of a restaurant. The sign was cracked and weathered, and the door was covered in grease. City Café, I thought to myself, what a quaint place for a meeting. I cracked open the door and was blasted by a mix of steam and smoke. The odor of fried shrimp wafted throughout the restaurant. I saw my informant at the table in the far right of the room. With a single hand motion he singled me to sit down and for the waiter to take his order. As the waiter took my order, my informant leaned over and asked “do you have it?” I nodded as I showed him the book. “I do but will you uphold your end of the bargain and tell me about Eighth Avenue, Uncle?”
I have come to Eighth Avenue, Sunset Park for two reasons. The first is to give an old SAT book to my uncle so my cousin can use it. The second is to learn how Eighth Avenue has changed since I moved to Queens. Of course, I had done some of my own research on how Eighth Avenue came to be beforehand.
There is no question that New York City is a magnet for immigrants. The promise of riches and opportunities are just as widespread today as they were in the past. These promises were what drew in the Chinese immigrants, specifically the Cantonese immigrants from Guangzhou. They quickly established Chinatown in Manhattan as the central hub of all Chinese immigrants. Most Chinese immigrants moved to Chinatown because they wanted the security of being with their own ethnicity. However, not all of the immigrants settled into Manhattan. Others sought to be different, there are always the nonconformists, and began to seek a neighborhood outside of Manhattan. Their search led to Eighth Avenue Brooklyn. For the Chinese this was stroke of good luck. They were in the right place at the right time. Before, the avenue was strictly Scandinavian. However, the local economy later collapsed. The Brooklyn Waterfront, the source of not only water but most of the Scandinavian resident’s jobs, had recently closed. 90% of the original Scandinavian storefronts were left vacant, afterwards.[1] The Chinese quickly seized opportunity and dethroned the Scandinavians. Everything was just right. The rent was low. It was just a quick train ride to Manhattan Chinatown. Even the avenue number was a sign of good fortune: the number eight is a lucky number in Chinese. The abandoned properties were replaced, practically overnight, with restaurants and Asian groceries stories. The garment factories followed the immigrants like a shadow. They desired the cheap labor immigrants provided. Eighth Avenue still continues to expand due to immigration. The continuing gentrification of Manhattan Chinatown, that started this decade, is raising rents and forcing immigrants to seek refuge in Eighth Avenue. The same gentrification turned away the recent surge in immigration from Fuzhou, China and guided (forced) them to Brooklyn. Now Manhattan Chinatown is more akin to a tourist attraction than an ethnic community. Due to that, Eighth Avenue has become the largest, both in size and population, and truest Chinatown.
Before, I met my Uncle, I wanted to walk across Eighth Avenue and examine its demographics. In terms of appearance, Eighth Avenue can be called a dump, in a nice way. There are trashcans full of garbage and the streets are narrow and packed. There are no decorative buildings like in the other Chinatown. There is no gilded image to appeal to tourists. Instead Eighth Avenue looks just like a simple suburb full of immigrants. The buildings are older and almost extraordinarily plain. There are no signs of the big city. Nothing exceeds three stories in this avenue. It almost as if Eighth Avenue is in its own bubble.
There is a noticeable immigrant presence on the streets as well. Small watch fixing or shoe shining stands run by elderly immigrants populated the sidewalks. This used to be commonplace in Manhattan Chinatown, as well. However, the sight has become rare in Manhattan Chinatown due to the increasing gentrification. Kids, no older than five years old, ran carefree through the mobs of people trying to avoid stepping on them. These were all the kids of immigrant families that recently moved into the neighborhood as the pharmacist I used to visit kindly told me. The immigrant community is also tightly woven. There are small stands covered in slips of paper with addresses of rentable apartments that people gather around. The community reaches out to help others whether they are strangers or friends. These gatherings are not to be confused with a cultist ritual like what I first thought.
As I devour the beef tripe noodles I ordered, my Uncle begins to point out all that has begun to change. The first thing he does is ask if I saw anything peculiar on the streets on the way here. My mind immediately points out the guttural yells of Fuzhounese I heard. There racial slur that Fuzhounese never talk but only yell, and after today I can see why. Uncle nods his head in agreement.
These new immigrants are predominately from the Fuzhou province in China. They started to arrive in the tens of thousands during the 1980s; this is what originally caused Manhattan Chinatown and Brooklyn Chinatown to expand. Now, there is still a lot of immigrants from Fuzhou, so much that the Fuzhounese have begun to outnumber the Cantonese in Brooklyn Chinatown. This is especially true where most of the people on the sidewalk are either Fuzhounese elderly or immigrants with their first generation children in tow. Even most of the fare is now Fuzhounese. The savory dishes of the Cantonese have now been phased out by the slightly sweet and sour dishes of the Fuzhounese. In fact City Café was one of these new Fuzhou restaurants.
There is also the gentrification of Manhattan Chinatown that is forcing many Chinese Americans to move to out. One of my family’s friends is always complaining about her increasing rent. She may be exaggerating when she says “ The rent is practically flying. I might as well give them my kidney now”. But there are many others in her situation. More and more people are moving to Brooklyn Chinatown as a result. “Sunset Park is now New York’s largest Chinatown, with 34,218 Chinese residents, up from 19,963 in 2000, a 71% increase. Bustling Flushing ranks second, with 33,526 Chinese, up from 17,363, a 93% increase.” (Beekman,2011)
The local economy is booming as a result. New restaurants are opened each day and each time further away from Eighth Avenue. The produce is of better quality and cheaper as well. Ironic since people who lived in Brooklyn used to go to Chinatown for groceries due to the better quality and prices. Now the alternative has become the . There are new trendy restaurants opening as well. Now there is an influx of Fuzhounese cuisine, and trendy Asian foods like bubble tea. There is even a stand selling takoyaki, a Japanese street food that is a ball of fried dough with a bit of octopus tentacles inside, which was crowded by college students all following the recent Japanese food craze.
This led my uncle onto his point. With all of these people moving in, and the boom in the local economy, Eighth Avenue has become more exposed. In fact, I even saw college students walking down the street, a sight I nearly gasped at. No one besides Cantonese immigrants ever ventured into Eighth Avenue when I used to live in the area.
As my uncle explained, this is all because Eighth Avenue is starting to become trendy. Eighth Avenue used to be untrendy because it only had to appeal to immigrants. However, sometimes something can become so untrendy that it ends up becoming a new trend. Before, Manhattan Chinatown was the trendy place; many people flocked to it for its unique smorgasbord of Asian culture not previously found anywhere else. However, that attention eventually petered out because it is now too well known. There is no more excitement or feeling of venturing into the unknown. Now the trendsetters are looking for a new place and this just so happened to be Brooklyn Chinatown. My uncle is glad that soon his real estate will become valuable, as developers will soon poach onto the area like vultures. He also convinced me to buy an apartment there for when the prices eventually go up. Most of the people I did interview on the streets also complained about the increase in immigrants and tourists. It is great that they have more people to talk to but it also annoying to have some many people crowding the small blocks, markets, and restaurants. Especially the white people, as nicely as I can translate the Cantonese slur they used.
I finished my meal, thanked my Uncle for his time and promised to tutor his son in return for the help today. As I walked out of the restaurant I reflected on the conversation. In short, Eighth Avenue is quickly becoming the third, and biggest Chinatown. It has gone from a small neighborhood only the local immigrants ventured into to the site of the newest trends. It is only a matter of time before Brooklyn Chinatown gains the fame, Manhattan Chinatown had. This then leads into the question of what is afterwards? There are always the other Chinatowns are forming. For example there is a Chinatown forming in Avenue U. There is also an emerging Chinatown in Elmhurst. However that is all in the future. Right now, Eighth Avenue is the Chinatown of New York.
References
1) A Bluer Sky: A History of the Brooklyn Chinese American Association. Brooklyn Chinese American Association, 2009.Web. May 1, 2014.
2) Beekman, Daniel “The Changing Chinatowns: Move Over Manhattan, Sunset Park is Now Home To The Most Chinese In NYC.” Daily News. Web. 5 Aug. 2011 Web. May 2, 2014.
