I moved from Shanghai to New York a week ago.
It did feel like being in the Big Apple with our office on the 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue surrounded by the New York Public Library, the Bank of America Tower and Bryant Park.
But just a 30-minute ride home on Subway 7, Flushing in Queens takes me back to China again. Here, everyone appears to be talking either in Putonghua or Cantonese. And no one seems to be speaking English. Chinese signs outnumber those in English. Youtiao, which was hard to find in my Shanghai neighborhood, is readily available here; so too are other Chinese snacks, from Taiwanese to Northwestern Chinese.
The other day, when I stopped at a newsstand to buy a copy of The New York Times, I spoke in Chinese by instinct, only to realize that the vendor was a beaming Latino. He also sells a number of Chinese language papers.
Flushing is a diverse ethnic area but the Chinese population seems to be far bigger than other groups. It is believed that more than half of the 300,000 residents are Chinese, most moving to the area during the last 30 years. US Census data shows that the Asian population doubled in Flushing between 1990 and 2000.
Unlike the early immigrants in Manhattan Chinatown, who were mostly from Guangdong, the immigrants in Flushing are mainly from Taiwan in the 1970s and the Chinese mainland in the 1990s, most with relatively good education.
As a result of the influx, Flushing is expected to replace the less wealthy Chinatown in Manhattan, whose economy was hit hard after the Sept 11 attacks, to become the largest Chinese community outside Asia. During the past years, many Chinese supermarkets have opened here. Banks have not been behind and claim these branches are some of their best performers because of the mushrooming small businesses in the area.
On the surface, Flushing does not look anywhere as classy as most Shanghai neighborhoods, yet it can boast of hosting two World Fairs (now known as World Expo) in 1939 and 1964. Shanghai hosts its first one next May to October. The 1939 World Fair introduced television to the world and the spot was later used as a temporary site for the United Nations. The US Open tennis tournament is also held in a stadium, Flushing Meadows, built on a World Fair site.
The bigger picture is how immigrants are making a new home outside their home countries, absorbing totally different cultures while still maintaining their identity.
Of course, without immigrants, there is no United States of America or the great city of New York.
My daughter, in her first year in college, called the other day, saying she was going to select a class to be held not on her beautiful campus in west Massachusetts, but at Hampshire Jail. She will be sitting next to inmate students.
It is a class to explore how societies deprive individuals of their rights and privileges of citizenship. Of course, state power is often abused against immigrants.
The new Chinatown here in Flushing, New York, is obviously another good classroom for such a lecture.
E-mail: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn