Manhattan's Little Fuzhou is centered on East Broadway. However,since the 2000s,Chinatown in the neighborhood of Sunset Park became New York City's new primary destination for the Fuzhou immigrants,surpassing the original enclave in Manhattan.[6]
During the 1980s, an influx of illegal immigrants from Fuzhou, especially Changle, Fuqing, and Lianjiang, established a Little Fuzhou enclave on East Broadway. The Fuzhou immigrants could often speak Mandarin in addition to their native Fuzhounese language (also known as Fuzhou dialect). Other Mandarin speakers settled in Flushing and Elmhurst, Queens, while Manhattan's Chinatown was traditionally dominated by Cantonese speakers.[13] The earliest illegal Fuzhou immigrants came as early as the 1970s starting mostly with men, who brought their families over later.[14][15][16][17][18] When an influx of Fuzhou immigrants arrived during the 1980s and 1990s, many were undocumented and unable to speak Cantonese; as such, many of them were denied jobs and resorted to criminal activities to survive a living.[19] Many of the city's Fuzhouese immigrants illegally subdivide apartments into small spaces to rent to other immigrants.[20]
In the late 20th century, Manhattan's Chinatown was unwelcoming toward non-Cantonese Chinese speakers, and immigrants from Fuzhou were largely forced to take low-wage, low-skilled jobs.[21][22][23][24][25] Over time, Fuzhou immigrants were able to create their own Chinatown east of the Bowery, separate from the Cantonese-dominated Chinatown west of the Bowery.[26] East Broadway became a hub for Fujianese immigrants during the 1980s and early 1990s, but Fujianese residents had spread out to Eldridge Street by the early 21st century. The Cantonese and Fuzhouese parts of Chinatown remained generally separate.[27] With the development of Little Fuzhou, East Broadway gained prominence as a Chinese business district.[25][28][29][30][31]
The Bowery is the divider between the older Cantonese Chinatown and the newer Fuzhou Chinatown. More than half of the area's residents are undocumented immigrants.[32] With a large Fuzhou population, East Broadway is often referred to as Little Fuzhou by Fuzhou immigrants.[33] A considerable number of Fujianese clan associations can be found in and around the street.[33][34][35] A statue of Lin Zexu, who was also Fuzhouese, was erected in Chatham Square in 1997.[36] During the 1980s, housing prices were dropping in Manhattan's Chinatown, but property values increased when Fuzhouese arrived in large numbers during the 1990s.[37][38]
Despite the large Fuzhou population, the Cantonese still have a large presence on the Lower East Side. This influenced many Fuzhouese in Manhattan's Chinatown to learn the Cantonese language.[39]
Gentrification and decline
In the 2000s, the growth of newly arriving Fuzhouese immigrants to Manhattan's Chinatown began to slow down, with more Fuzhouese moving to Brooklyn.[40] Some Chinese landlords were also accused of bias against the Fuzhou immigrants due to crime concerns.[41][42] Subdivision of apartments is also a frequent concern.[43] During the 2010s, additional Fuzhouese immigrants moved out due to gentrification;[44][45][46] in a July 2018 report from Voices of NY, Fuzhou owned businesses have been declining on East Broadway due to high rents, and are being replaced by non-Asians. In addition, Fuzhouese consumers started traveling to Flushing's Chinatown in Queens, and Sunset Park's Chinatown in Brooklyn—the largest Fuzhou enclave in New York City—for commerce.[47][48] Since the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City in 2020, storefront vacancies have accelerated.[49][45]
The increasing Fuzhou influx to New York City has shifted to the Brooklyn Chinatown (布鲁克林華埠) located in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. This newer Chinatown within New York City's borough of Brooklyn was now the most affordable large Chinese enclave of New York City. In addition, the area supposedly had less housing discrimination than Manhattan's Chinatown. Brooklyn's Chinatown has surpassed Manhattan's Chinatown as the city's primary Fuzhou culture center. Property values have risen substantially as a result.
Onto East Broadway are Cathay Bank (formerly the Golden City Bank),[56]East West Bank (formerly the Hang Seng Bank),[57] a second Chinatown branch of First American International Bank and formerly named as Glory China Tower in the former spot of the Pagoda theater, the HSBC bank.[58][59][60] A Cantonese newspaper company named Wah May Press was also located on 9 East Broadway.[61]
In 1973, Nei Wong, leader of the Ghost Shadows, was killed along with a Hong Kong police officer's girlfriend in the Chinese Quarter Nightclub near the Manhattan Bridge on East Broadway when the officer witnessed them together and shot them. With Nei Wong gone, Nicky Louie took over his spot in the Ghost Shadows gang.[62][failed verification][63]
On December 23, 1982, eleven members of the Chinese Freemasons, or Kam Lun association, were injured, with three of them killed, in a shootout in East Broadway while trying to expand their territory. This likely stemmed from a dispute that Freemasons leader Herbert Liu had with Benny Ong, leader of the Hip Sing (who were suspected of perpetuating the attack) and mentor of the Flying Dragons' leader. In particular, Liu's starting of a rival tong violated the oaths of loyalty he made when he had previously joined the Hip Sing, and he recruited Flying Dragons members who were expelled for unauthorized shakedowns. Despite this connection, police were unable to implicate Ong in the shootout, and the previously growing Freemasons gang disappeared afterwards.[10][24][64]
In May 1985, there was a gang-related shooting outside of 30 East Broadway, which at the time was a Sichuan cuisine restaurant. The shooting eventually spilled over into the restaurant, injuring a non-Asian 37 year old customer named Brian Monahan who was at the time an AT&T executive and had been dining with friends. A 4-year-old boy named Lee Young Kwai was strolling down the street with his uncle when they were caught in the crossfire, injuring Lee's skull. He eventually recovered after the bullet was surgically removed at Bellevue Hospital, while the uncle was not injured. A total of seven victims were injured in the crossfire of the shooting. Two males, who were 15 and 16 years old and were members of a Chinese street gang, were arrested and convicted. It was widely believed that Eastern Peace Gang and the Burmese Gang were the culprits as many local residents reported that they were fighting over the surrounding territory. [65][66][67][68][69]
Fuzhounese gangs
By the late 1980s to early 1990s, the most known gangs on East Broadway were from Fuzhou after the street had started to become a gathering center for Fuzhou immigrants starting in the late 1980s. Since the 2000s, that status has been dramatically shifting to Brooklyn's Chinatown, which is now the largest Fuzhou enclave of NYC. The Fuzhou gangs that are known are the Fuk Ching, the Tung On, and the Snakehead, who are known to smuggle illegal immigrants from Fuzhou to the United States and other countries.
The Tung On gang was established between the 1980s–90s on East Broadway, where they ran a gambling parlor. The Fuzhou gangs dominated the emerging Fuzhou community in the 1990s, akin to how the Tong gangs dominated the long-established Cantonese community in western Chinatown. This made Manhattan's Chinatown expand past its original borderline, further east onto the Lower East Side. A man named Alan Man Sin Lau, the leader of the Fukien American Association, gained a status like Benny Ong did with the Cantonese.
The Fuk Ching gang members were often workers of the Snakehead gang, collecting money from the illegal Fuzhou immigrants who borrowed from the Snakeheads to help them come to the United States. Sometimes, the Fuk Ching gang members would hold the migrants hostage and even violently beat them until they paid up the loans they owed.
Although the Fuzhou Gangs gained prevalence much later than the Cantonese gangs in Chinatown, they had been around as early as the 1980s. Their prevalence grew after the Freemasons' 1982 shootout and subsequent falling apart.[70][71][72][67][68][73]
↑ "Chinatown New York". Civitatis New York. Retrieved November 30, 2020. As its name suggests, Chinatown is where the largest population of Chinese people live in the Western Hemisphere.
Sarah Waxman. "The History of New York's Chinatown". Mediabridge Infosystems, Inc. Retrieved April 11, 2016. Manhattan's Chinatown, the largest Chinatown in the United States and the site of the largest concentration of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere, is located on the Lower East Side.
1 2 Daly, Michael (February 14, 1983). "The War for Chinatown". New York Magazine. New York City: New York Media. pp.36–38. ISSN0028-7369. Retrieved September 29, 2012.
↑ Zhuang Guo-tu, "From sailors of jumping ship to the main actors of East Broadway: Studies on Fuzhou immigrants into U.S. A. in last 20 years", Overseas Chinese History Study, 2003, No. 3, pp 30
↑ Jian-Cuo, World Journal, 9 May 2007, then translated from Chinese by Connie Kong (May 17, 2007). "High demand for illegal Chinatown apartments". New York Community Media Alliance. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
↑ Kwong, Peter. The New Chinatown, p. 52. Macmillan Publishers, 1996. ISBN9780809015856. Accessed March 15, 2023. "In fact, East Broadway is now known as the 'Wall Street of Chinatown': five new banks have opened on the street since the factories closed."
Sun Sing Theater in color - a color photo of the Sun Sing Theater under the Manhattan Bridge on East Broadway.
The Beautiful Butterflies performance - a photo of the performance "The Beautiful Butterflies" at The New Canton Theater (later renamed to Sun Sing Theater) from 1950.
Pagoda Theater – a photo of the Pagoda Theater on East Broadway and Catherine Street.
Newspaper on Pagoda Theater – a photo of a newspaper article published by Sam Zolotow on May 29, 1964 on the opening of the Pagoda Theater.
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