A Chinese Born American Monologue

From The Peopling of NYC

In 1949, right before the Communists took over the Chinese government, my grandfather fled from China. He left his family in Taishan (farming village) and settled in New York City. He lived in an apartment with four other men from our hometown and worked in a laundromat. In 1979, when China opened its barriers, I was 18 and working on the farm, my grandfather applied for my father, my mother, my two younger brothers, and me to come to New York. We took the train to Hong Kong and then the plane to New York City. My grandfather earned enough money to rent an apartment in Chinatown and we lived there for a couple of years. My father worked in a restaurant and my mother and I worked in a garment factory while my two brothers went to school.

In the apartment next to us, there was a Taiwanese family who owned a grocery store. Around 1985, they moved to Flushing, Queens because that was where everybody who was Taiwanese, spoke Mandarin, and have money lived. They brought a single house and started their own business (wholesale, imported merchandise) on Main St and Roosevelt Ave next to restaurants and malls. But they still took the 7 train out to Manhattan for grocery shopping. After they moved, they sold their grocery store to a man from Guangzhou who later became my husband.

In the 1990s, the rent in Manhattan started rising from about $500 to $700, $800, and up. There were also more people coming into the city. After my husband and I got married, we needed to find another place to live because the apartment was too small for two families. The rent in Brooklyn was cheaper, around $400 a month, so we moved to Sunset Park. My husband and I rented an apartment in a three family house with two other Cantonese families from Guangdong. The houses were all attached to one other and because of the cheap rent, a wave of people started moving into Brooklyn. We still took the N train out to Manhattan to open the grocery store and work in the factory. Restaurants, stores, and supermarkets started popping up on 8th Avenue to accommodate the residents. After I had my son, I stopped working in the factory and started helping out at the grocery store while taking care of my child at home. The life I have now is better than the life I had in China; now I have a business (the grocery store), a home, and a family of my own. And I hope that my son's life and my grandson's life would be even better.