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01-26-2016, 08:16 PM #1
Leaving China's North, Immigrants Redefine Chinese In New York
Leaving China's North, Immigrants Redefine Chinese In New York
Updated January 26, 20167:01 PM ET
Published January 26, 20166:10 PM ET
HANSI LO WANG
In the Queens neighborhood of Flushing many shops are catering to the growing immigrant population from Northern China.
Cameron Robert/NPR
If you want to meet some of the newest Chinese immigrants of New York City, don't go to Chinatown in Manhattan.
Take the train to the Queens neighborhood of Flushing, where you'll find newcomers who are reshaping the largest Chinese community of any city outside of Asia.
For decades, most Chinese immigrants in the U.S. have come from China's southern provinces. But in recent years, more immigrants are coming from the north and landing in Flushing — including Geng Lei, an immigrant from the northern province of Shandong.
"There's especially more people from the Northeastern provinces," says Geng in Mandarin. She's also seen more immigrants coming from Henan, a province that some consider northern.
A plane flies over a commercial building in Flushing.
Cameron Robert/NPR
Geng grew up in Shandong province, where, she says, she had a good job — as a musician, playing traditional Chinese music. She left to start a family with her husband, who was already working in America.
"Some people in China have gotten rich and want their children to go to school overseas. Plus, China's environment and air quality aren't good," she explains as reasons why more northerners like her are coming to the U.S.
"What you notice now is a new group, much more diverse, coming from the north," says Peter Kwong, a professor at Hunter College who's studied Chinese immigrant communities. "You really see now the rest of China coming to New York City."
Patrons of the the New World Mall in Flushing ride the escalator from the food court. The Queens neighborhood has become a hot spot for northern Chinese immigrants in the past few years. The trend has brought a cultural wave of influence on the food and business markets in the community.
Cameron Robert/NPR
Kwong says numbers about this group are hard to come by. But broadly, they tend to be from cities, and they're often professionals, small business owners and government bureaucrats with the means to buy valid visas. Many are coming in search of economic opportunities and stability they couldn't find in northern China.
"Many of these regions are much less developed than the south. So in the process of modernization, they're the ones under a lot of pressure. A lot of people decide they want to leave," Kwong says.
Walk through the streets of Flushing, and if you understand Chinese, you'll quickly hear this is not your average Chinatown, where the southern dialects of Cantonese and Fuzhounese dominate. In Flushing, Mandarin is king, and it comes in lots of different accents.
i
Freshly made Chinese-Korean-style dumplings are made at a food stall in the New World Mall in Flushing.
Cameron Robert/NPR
Bon Yu, who moved from Shandong, says he's noticing more Mandarin speakers in Flushing with northern accents. Hearing sometimes slight differences in tone have helped him feel less lonely in his new city. Yu still remembers the first time he heard an accent from his hometown of Qingdao, Shandong's largest city.
"It felt like, 'Oh my God, I finally found someone from my hometown,' " he says.
More northerners living in Flushing also means that restaurants here are redefining what Chinese food means in America.
An underground food court at the New World Mall offers a Chinese smorgasbord that includes dishes from Qingdao and freshly made Chinese-Korean-style dumplings from the Northeast — some of the latest ingredients to make up the centuries-long story of Chinese immigrants in America.
"For northern people, before they don't really want to come out to America, but later on, people notice that maybe it's better if you see more in the world," says Sabrina Zhang, an immigrant from Liaoning.
Sabrina Zhang, an administrative assistant at the Flushing YMCA's New Americans Welcome Center, looks over documents with her co-workers. Zhang emigrated from Liaoning province in northeast China and now works closely with immigrants in the community as they settle into life in the United States.
Cameron Robert/NPR
Four years ago, she and her mother left Liaoning's capital city, Shenyang, to join Zhang's father in the U.S. Now, she's studying for a degree in accounting and working part-time at the Flushing YMCA's New Americans Welcome Center, where she helps other recent immigrants register for English classes.
She says Flushing is a good place to start.
"It's still like in China. If you want to really get along with American people, you need to really know like what life they have. So if you still in Flushing, then maybe the life you see is still Chinese people," she says.
Eventually, Zhang says, she wants to see even more in her new American world.
http://www.npr.org/2016/01/26/463857...se-in-new-york
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01-26-2016, 08:32 PM #2
I hope this population gets checked over thoroughly and and illegals plus their aiders and abettors get deported. Legal immigrants, too, can be deported for a number of reasons, although I think the actual enforcement has probably fallen way off, just like everything else. Once they are citizens, though, they are more locked in. The Chinese restaurants I have gone into around here always have lots of people yakking away in Chinese, so I would suspect many of them have slipped in here somehow. The Seattle area and LA have lots and lots of illegal Asians.
"Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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01-26-2016, 08:59 PM #3NO AMNESTY
Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.
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01-26-2016, 09:16 PM #4
Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts athttp://eepurl.com/cktGTn
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01-26-2016, 09:19 PM #5
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that is why there are signs in english, spanish, chinese at our open border .....
http://www.alipac.us/f12/agents-save...ration-327783/Last edited by artist; 01-26-2016 at 09:22 PM.
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01-26-2016, 10:01 PM #6
Federal agents raid 20 suspected 'maternity hotels' in California
The locations searched included apartment complexes and other sites in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties that were suspected of housing foreign clients, ICE said. . .NO AMNESTY
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