Sunset Park

When the train arrived in 8 Av on the N line, I got off following most of the passengers from my cart – all of whom were Chinese. The cart was instantly emptied out. My first sight out of the station was a sea of people. The background was hundreds of colorful signs written in a familiar language. I had a sense that I was back in Hong Kong.

A neighborhood located on the West side of Brooklyn, Sunset Park endured influxes of immigrants over the past twenty years. Now, the neighborhood had become racially distinct from the rest of the city. Within itself, the neighborhood is separated into three regions in terms of ethnic groups. Chinese immigrants dominate 8^th Avenue, Hispanic immigrants dominate 5^th Avenue, and Jews dominate the East of them. Between 5^th and 8^th Avenue, I saw mostly Chinese stores and sporadically Hispanic ones.

I walked down along 8^th Avenue from the station on the 62^nd street. Signs in all sizes and colors protrude in all directions, competing for attention. Since the businesses there aim for customers who live around there and speak the same language, some of them even bother not to put an English translation beside the Chinese title on the signs. When they do, the translations are often only a phonetic translation of the Chinese name. In other words, you cannot figure out what type of store it is if you look at the English “translation” alone.

Anyone who comes to the neighborhood for the first time would probably have a bad impression on 8 Av, for it is unbearably crowded, unhygienic, and noisy. I could not possibly take a picture of the street view without someone bumping into me. The situation was like two waves from the North and the South flushing into each other. I was a drop of water that is trying to swim against the opposing stream with my side of army. Walking along with my stream of people on the narrow pavement, I felt as if it was unlawful to stop in the middle of the street. It was impossible to keep my friend by my side when we were walking. We both tried very hard to penetrate through the moving herd of people. Passing a lot of bakeries and cafes, I reached fish market of 8^th Avenue.

Boxes of live fishes are lined up from the stores to outside of the stores, making the street even narrower. The ground is all wet. It was even harder for us to walk. Then I realized 8^th Avenue is filled with pregnant women, because they would block the only space between the boxes of fish and the road with their baby carriages, while they were bargaining.

“That’s for sure. Guess what. Because they cannot in China,” the old woman at a bakery explained to me. The population growth control policy in China restricted that its people can only bear two babies in a family. When some of them have the opportunities to come to the United States, their traditional sense of 「兒孫滿堂」(which means having descendants filled up the hall) is finally unbound. The old woman resumed, “Of course it’s better to have them ABC sons than Chinese sons. (Why?) For the welfare they could suck from the government of course.” She meant that Chinese immigrant parents prefer their children to be American-born Chinese (ABC) because they could exploit the benefits and welfare for citizens. It is surprising that a Chinese would denounce another Chinese from the same community. It turns out they are really not from the same exact community.

The old woman is a Cantonese who immigrated twenty-seven years ago and have been living in Sunset Park since then. She started to complain about the Fujianese coming in. She said, “At the start it was all Hispanics. Then the Taishanese Chinese came and that made the Hispanics on 8^th Avenue move away. This became the Chinatown of Brooklyn. About ten years ago, the Fujianese started to come from China and made this place such a mess.” This old woman thinks that the ongoing immigration of the Fujianese caused the hygiene problems in the neighborhood because they have less of a sense of morality in the province they are from, according to her. It turns out that some Chinese groups are actually at odds even though they have seemingly established a strong sense of unity of a Chinese-American community by living close to each other.

On 8^th Avenue, there are two large Chinese American organizations, Brooklyn Chinese-American Association (BCA) and Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), which aim at assisting all Chinese people to acquire good quality of life just as other Americans do. These organizations promote a interprovincial community. However, I discovered that the staff in both organizations are almost all Cantonese or Taishanese, who share the same Chinese dialect – Cantonese. They could speak Mandarin as well to the Fujianese, and they do hire some Fujianese people who speak in their dialect. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the Fujianese are more or less excluded from the Chinese community and the services.

Another phenomenon I saw was the variation of stores (or the lack thereof) there is. Along 8^th Avenue, you can see a lot of bakeries, cuisines, bubble tea places, fish and vegetable markets, and SAT-test preparation schools. “Sunset Park is ghetto. It gets more ghetto as you go towards forty-somethingth street,” said a fifteen-year-old girl who was stepping out of one of the many test preparation schools on 8^th Avenue. She told me that she does not like living in this neighborhood because it is “dirty” and “crowded.”

It is unexpected that although 8^th Avenue is filled with Chinese people, the Asians only comprise 11.6 percent of the population of Sunset Park. And 78.7 percent of population is Hispanics. In the neighborhood, the most concentrated and vibrant region lies on 5^th Avenue. It predominantly contains Hispanic stores. Like 8^th Avenue, the stores on 5^th Avenue lacks variations. They are mostly boutiques and supermarkets.

Walking along 5^th Avenue, I could see that Chinese people are starting to enter this region. Unlike 8^th Avenue where almost 95% of pedestrians are Chinese, 5^th Avenue seems to involve more interracial interactions. There are some Chinese accessories stores and Chinese bubble tea places. There are more Chinese people on the streets of 5^th Avenue than Hispanics on those of 8^th Avenue. There is even a senior day care center, that targets to serve both Hispanics and Chinese in the neighborhood.

The owner of the day care center, Ms. Ng Pang, is a Chinese lady born in Puerto Rico who spent her childhood in China and came back to America since high school. “Because of my cross-cultural background, I feel obliged to bring both immigrant communities together and help them strive in society,” she said, “I chose to open the day care center here because Sunset Park is a place where minorities work together as one, regardless of their ‘sub-identities.’” The population shift there was very thorough in the past twenty years. It started as almost entirely a Hispanic neighborhood, then the Taishanese Chinese moved in and dominated 8^th Avenue, and now new waves of Fujianese Chinese are flushing out the previous Chinese group. The neighborhood has always been an immigrant community albeit the racial shift. Ms. Ng Pang does not see it this way. She thinks this is a time when the underprivileged unite and work for the better for themselves.

Sunset Park has been the neighborhood dedicated for new immigrants. I can foresee that more immigrants of different cultural backgrounds will settle there. The neighborhood is an exceptional gift for new immigrants because of the old immigrants already settled there and the many organizations that seek to help. The people seem to be living in harmony across cultures despite some hostility against a particular Chinese group. The hygiene and noise pollution are also significant issues in the neighborhood. Better management and restrictions should be made to limit and improve the unwanted output of the local stores. Despite that, it is very nice to live in this neighborhood because of the close bonding between people of a common background. It is easy for them to find help that suits their needs.

After the new immigrants get accustomed to living in this country and become more independent from the help of others in the same community, they tend to move out to the more Southeast part of Brooklyn. There sees a new growing Chinatown in Bensonhurst right now. More Cantonese speaking Chinese are moving there because of the fact that they have come to the country for the longer and that a rapidly increasing number of Fujianese is residing in Sunset Park. Apparently, Sunset Park is very dynamic, always welcoming new waves of people coming in. This neighborhood has been dutiful to accommodates for thousands and thousands of immigrants in New York City. It will continue to be a lot of new immigrants’ new home in the future and the dynamics will endure.