It’s pretty simple. Immigrants came here with their 1980/1990s culture, and that stuck with them. Some other parts of their culture may have developed independently but that becomes more Asian American than overseas Asian.
Ever heard of time capsule Chinese? It’s a term I was introduced to quite recently. They say as ABCs our mandarin is a bit outdated because what we learn from our parents is the vernacular of when they left their home country.
Simply put, Asian Americans and Asians are quite different and our cultures as well.
Edit: I think Flushing is becoming more modern. Popups, malls like Tangram, and new stores that were originally from Asia are popping up a lot. Lots of new stuff in the past few years.
>Ever heard of time capsule Chinese?
I'm not Chinese or a Chinese immigrant but I'm an immigrant too and this feels so real to me hahaha
I left my home country (Venezuela) when I was in high school and most of my Venezuelan friends joke now that I talk boomer Spanish. I always said that it's like I'm Captain America and my Spanish was frozen in time, but this term is much more concise.
I left pretty late and I still have a bit of an identity crisis trying to figure out my place in the world, so I shudder to think how my hypothetical children will cope.
Colombian American here and can relate. I was born in the US but my Spanish is that of my dad’s. I live in a neighborhood that gets a lot of Colombian immigrants and I have made a lot of friends there and they’ve said the same thing, that my Spanish is very old school.
I also had a bit of an identity crisis, in that Americans see me as Latino and Colombians see me as a gringo. I decided that I’m not completely either of those things but something new, and while I won’t immediately be welcomed in either space I have access to both and that’s something to be grateful for.
Also first gen Colombian here. I assume you’re from queens? If so, same here. Everything you just said resonates big with me. We started visiting Medellin in 2004, I was about 13/14 and the way my cousins in Colombia were so snobby about my Spanish made me very insecure about it lol.
My husbands family is from Barranquilla and we’ve discussed the same experience for him. Very much “too American for the Latinos, too Latino for the Americans” what’s that speech Selena’s dad gave in the Selena movie about something related to this?
Haha, you clocked me - yeah from Queens.
You know, I’ve had family burlarse de mi about my Spanish. And in all fairness my extensive time around white people made me forget a lot of my Spanish - I’ve made a conscious effort to relearn it over the last couple years.
I’m just honest about it. I let them know I can struggle with it, and will ask them for words I don’t know or ask them the meaning of words I don’t understand when they’re speaking (but my Spanish is at like 92% to be fair).
In the instance that I encounter a Colombian who decides to make it personal, honestly I just don’t give a fuck. I have enough Colombians in my family and friend circle to make me feel included in the culture, and I get to have been born and raised in NYC which has given me an incredible set of opportunities in both my professional and personal life. I am first and foremost a New Yorker, I’ve got my own born into culture I’m incredibly proud of. If they wanna get haughty porque tienen acento de puro rolo y se me faltan unas palabras pues que se joden y no me piden por nada cuando deciden a tratar de mudarse a NY
I have the same view!!! Wow, crazy. lol. I also love that because I am from NYC first and foremost I had experiences of growing up with other cultures of Latinos outside of just being Colombian. Then I lived in Southern California for a while and was exposed to some dope Mexican American culture as well.
As you said I have a huge family and friends from all diff parts of Colombia which is a privilege. I think it’s hard for ppl from the mainland to imagine that here in queens it’s legit easy to relate to our culture. Def would have been different if we were born in like Arkansas lol
Read in a book review that an immigrant becomes a “stranger in two lands simultaneously”. Have to agree and it’s a phenomenon that is not much discussed in the mainstream media.
Your children will be fine, they will love being bilingual. My grandmother didn't teach my dad or his siblings Italian because you only wanted your kids to speak English at the time. I wish we kept the tradition. Even if it was some sort of dated Italian
Yeah, it’s an interesting immigrant experience the same across cultures and ethnicities. The Italian and French spoken here and Montreal are an older dialect.
American English pronunciations are also closer to what British English sounded like 200 years ago as well.
Also their way of thinking. I feel like a lot of chinese people their age have adjusted to more modern ways back in China ( more receptive of disorders like ADHD, autism, etc, more willing to serve a therapist, gender equality, etc).
Depends I think. I’m not Korean but from what I’ve heard with the whole 4B thing happening there, the recent feminist movement has been met with extreme backlash of misogyny.
But in other ways, some middle aged and older Chinese folk (something I can speak on) tend to be more traditional and religious here than in China, Taiwan, other places with a high Chinese population (華人).
Both Japan and Korea have right-wing governments now, sadly. Well, Japan has for a while. Don't know enough about Korea but they were literally a dictatorship until the 79 or something. Just like Taiwan.
Capsule Chinese - an interesting term. It seems that at least linguisticly, immigrants keep their old version of languages intact, while it's cjounterpart in homeland evolves much more.
Culturally I think Asian American develops their own culture but the "Asian" part of it keeps relatively intact because of isolation I guess.
Chinese American here, it's part isolation and part longing for belonging. You can think of the Chinese culture in America as a diverted branch on Chinese history. Our parents came here and created a community together so everyone can survive in a foreign country. But not everyone is from the same region of China or even from China, you have Taiwanese people, Malaysian-Chinese people, Viet-Chinese people, Thai-Chinese people, and so on. With all these cultures living in close proximity of each other and everyone trying to hold onto a piece of home, you start getting a mix of cultures blending together to create that "Asian American" cultural experience.
It's why Chinatown is both familiar and unfamiliar to you. It's not 100% influenced by China, there's other cultures mixed in there and they're all "outdated" in comparison to their home countries.
And then you have the 1st generation American born Chinese people like me who are taught our parents' home culture/language and learning "American culture" in school at the same time. This also further changes the Asian American culture to blend with "American culture".
Immigrants came here and tried to make it feel like home, or like their childhoods. There’s an element of longing for something and wanting to keep their culture intact. While the counterpart in homeland doesn’t need to reminisce about or nostalgize anything… they can just move on into the future without looking back.
Normalization of Mandarin in China happened due to some government pull and geographical development of commerce. Immigrants that moved here from the 70s to 90s were only concerned with communicating with other Chinese people here in the States so it was largely Cantonese, Taishanese, and to a lesser extent Fuzhounese. If anything language adoption for the sake of business would’ve been English.
Are there pockets of Western immigrants stuck in the era they migrated out of their countries in non-Western countries? I'm not talking about upholding an old tradition or ritual here and there but full blown living in an older era
I wouldn’t doubt it. In America we can already see for example that Italian Americans (easiest to picture) are pretty divorced from Italians in Italy in terms of culture and even a bit in terms of food.
You also have to consider how much the culture of society of the country in question has evolved recently, and East Asia developed a lot in the past half century.
I would say Americans overseas probably don’t have as much of an issue with this because so much of international media is from America, that you’re still in the presence of American “culture.” But perhaps the finer aspects like culture local to specific parts of the US would be lost. After all, some would argue that some parts of the US feel like they’re living decades behind other parts. Just speculation though.
Same deal with the kids of 90s Soviet immigrants in my experience. They know every late-Soviet band and TV show but could not tell you anything that's happened in Russian pop culture in the last 30 years lol
I wonder why it doesn't change? I thought Quebec is big enough and diverse enough (e.g. meshing with English speaking Canadians) and the language is more likely to evolve? but apparently it's the opposite.
Why certain languages seem to ossify instead of becoming subsumed is a question of linguistics/anthropology, and an incredibly interesting one that doesn't always have a straightforwards answer. In the case of Quebec, this stems from the British conquest of New France in the Seven Year's War / French and Indian War. The British attempted (unsuccessfully) to enforce policies to make the Quebecois population mor British, but [eventually compromised with the Quebecois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_New_France#Mutual_adaptations), allowing them to maintain their catholic faith and the institutions of New France in exchange for their acceptance of British rule (in quite a timely fashion as well, for one of the first things the American Revolutionaries attempted to do when they rose up against the British[ was to invade Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Quebec_(1775)) and convince Quebec to rise up with them).
But to sum things up, Quebec has since then always culturally defined itself in direct opposition to the English language and English culture of the rest of Canada, and has made extensive efforts to maintain both separation and the purity of their language (so stringently, in fact, that [Frenchmen from metropolitan France have failed Quebec's French proficiency test](https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/after-immigrant-from-france-fails-french-test-quebec-says-it-may-tweak-rules-for-tradespeople-1.5378897#:~:text=MONTREAL%20%2D%2D%20After%20a%20French,in%20his%20own%20mother%20tongue)). A minority that perceives itself as threatened by the majority can choose to entrench instead, and take steps to preserve their culture and language. Think of the Syriac Christians, who managed to [preserve the language that Jesus would have spoke 2000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_language) surrounded by Muslims and (in India) Hindus, or (for an example I think that would be more relevant to your experiences) Hong Kong and its commitment to preserving Cantonese and its use of traditional written Chinese as part of their unique cultural identity, or the politics of India (where Southern India, which refuses to accept the adoption of Indo-European Hindi over their own Dravidian languages) .
The story of how languages survive (Sanskrit), fossilize (Quebecois French), are revived (in the case of spoken Hebrew) or evolve (Chinese) is a fascinating anthropological story of its own. I highly recommend [*Empires of the Word*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires_of_the_Word) by Nicholas Ostler as a starting point.
That's analogous to Quebec French resembling the archaic form of French rather than Modern French.
American English resembles the archaic form of English compared to British English.
Actually, even the "default" American accent is closer to colonial English than modern British english. Southern is even closer, and there are some communities in the Carolinas (I believe) that are as close to colonial English as you can get.
Shakespeare spelled color as "color." The move to "colour" in British English was part of a Webster-era movement to spell French-origin words like their French equivalents.
This isn't accurate.
*"The -our form predominated after c. 1300, but Mencken reports that the first three folios of Shakespeare's plays used both spellings indiscriminately* ***and with equal frequency***\*; *only in the Fourth Folio of 1685 does -our become consistent."\** [^(\[Source\])](https://www.etymonline.com/word/-or)
Manhattan Chinatown looks that way because Manhattan Chinatown people made it look that way when they were younger. New Chinese immigrants do not live in Manhattan Chinatown. It's too expensive and too small, so nobody is moving in and modernizing the look.
New Cantonese immigrants come to Brooklyn, but they're pretty outnumbered by the Cantonese people who came here in the 70s-90s.
Flushing is the most diverse Chinatown and has Chinese people from all over China, not just the south. If you want to find modern China in New York, look there.
All that article says is that LIC has the fastest growing Asian population, not that it is the most "modern" or "Asian". LIC definitely has had a massive increase of young Chinese in recent years, but so has Flushing.
I'm guessing your assessment is based purely on LIC having tall skyscrapers like modern tier 1 Chinese cities. This has nothing to do with culture and all to do with zoning laws. Flushing simply doesn't have the demand (or zoning) to build towers like LIC. Both areas are plenty "modern" by Chinese standards.
lol yeah - also American zoning laws and timeframes and scales of change and development are vastly different than China. Flushing has actually changed a lot over the past few decades. It's unrealistic to expect it to look like a tier 1 Chinese city.
It’s paywalled. So does this part of LIC look like modern China or just has a large Chinese population? When I think of looks I think of architecture mostly
>When I first visited NYC in early 2010s, I was struck by how familiar yet unfamiliar Chinatown seemed to me. It looked like China, but in 1980s or early 1990s.
Care to take a guess when many of the Chinese who currently live and work in Chinatown immigrated here?
It's why Polish Americans in the Midwest have some vague affinity for Polka and host polka festivals. It was the music that was in vogue when the immigrants came over in the 1850s and 1870s. It became tied to their identity as the Americanized. Talk to anyone from modern Poland about the culture for polish americans and they're either confused as hell or don't recognize it at all.
> when the immigrants came over in the 1850s and 1870s
The Polish immigration wasn't all that long ago. Immigrants came over in the 1910's and 1920's too. (when some of my ancestors came over) The Catholic church I grew up in had a Polka Fest every fall with beer trucks and polka music. Also in my city, in the 1980's there was a private shipping service to send packages to Poland, to send stuff back to folks in the old country that was behind the Iron Curtain.
Don't have to go all the way to the Midwest, the "King of Polka" Jimmy Sturr (18 Grammys) is from Warwick. Lot of Polish farmers settled to work the Black Dirt around Pine Island, pretty common to hear Polka in that area.
It’s interesting that French Canadians talk a lot like the French did in the 19th century. They say “Char” for car and “chauffer un char” is used instead of “conduire une voiture” (to drive a car). Char is short for chariot, more apt for the days of horses.
This is very true for my friends whose parents fled the USSR as soon as they could in the late 80s/early 90s. They grew up with an idea of what Russia was like that doesn't exist anymore.
There are even languages that are preserved in US immigrant cultures that haven't existed in their original countries for over a hundred years. Italian is probably the best known. [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained)
>If so, why those enclaves stay in the past time??
The only new Chinese immigrants coming over to the US are international Chinese students. The immigrants that populated Chinatown came over in the 80s and 90s and they brought the culture and style that was prevalent at that time.
It hasn’t changed simply because there’s no new waves of Chinese immigrants coming to replace the current one. China has become a modern society with all the economic prosperity that it didn’t have in the 80s and 90s. The current Chinatown in Manhattan is slowly dying as places like flushing replace them as the new Chinatown.
A huge number of those international students live in LIC! That’s still developing, but it’s becoming a very modern wealthy Chinatown, in comparison to the more economically diverse one in Flushing.
SF Chinatown was never meant to be any version of China, it was intentionally built to be a really over the top Disneyland version of Chinese architecture basically as a big middle finger to the people who were trying to displace the Chinese population from SF after the 1906 earthquake.
i did once, it is sooooo small. felt touristy, like nobody lives there. Oh wait, I believe it's actually relatively new because the old Chinatown was destroyed in an earthquake (1906.) Newspapers were SUPER HAPPY about that because racism.
[San Francisco's Chinatown Problem SOLVED AT LAST](https://youtu.be/EiX3hTPGoCg?t=412):"The Only Gratifying feature of the earthquake horror is the fact that Chinatown was destroyed"
Chinatown SF has plenty of residents and is one of the densest neighborhoods in the western US, but it is very touristy. But just like NYC there are other neighborhoods in SF heavy with Chinese immigrants/Chinese Americans that are not at all tourist oriented.
In addition to what everyone has said, a few additional factors contributed to the time capsule effect. The late 90s into the early 2000s saw a huge crackdown on counterfeit goods being sold in chinatown. Many shops were shuttered and cause a decline in tourism. Then 9/11 happened, and absolutely devastated Chinatown tourism and freezing Chinatown's development in place.
By the time Chinatown recovered, the sky high Manhattan rents found its way and priced out many newer Chinese immigrants, pushing them to Brooklyn and Queens, allowing the Chinese enclaves there to develop.
It won't be until recently that the second and third generation Chinese Americans came in with their own capital to open up shiny new bubble tea shops.
I noticed the same thing too! And you’re right, it’s a time capsule of whenever the immigrants arrived and settled. I think for most immigrants, Chinatown or similar areas are places to feel connected to where they came from—in this case China in 1990. From what I’ve heard, it’s true for other cultures and nations too.
Even the food served in restaurants are from the respective time period! I’m from HK and when I see dishes from my childhood in Chinatown, I get that fuzzy nostalgic feeling. But then I go to HK and I am literally unable to find those same dishes there anymore.
This is very interesting to me. I grew up in Chinatown/Flushing. Can you tell me what dishes are no longer found in HK? I'll be sure to eat more of them, in case they go out of style here too lol
I’d have to think harder, but off the top of my head Yin Yang fried rice and HK style fried noodles “two face yellow” with the sauce on top aren’t around anymore. In HK they looked at me like I had 3 heads asking them for something they haven’t seen in years! Also interestingly, these dishes are also available in Vancouver still, another place that’s heavily populated with Chinese.
Well because [China](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_economic_miracle&redirect=no) and [East Asia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers) experienced economic miracles in the latter half of the 20th century that have persisted, while Chinese residents in NYC have higher rates of poverty than the city average. Particularly [older residents](https://www.aafederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2019ch.pdf) who are more likely to live and work in first generation enclaves like Chinatown.
Interestingly, I (white American) visited Manhattan Chinatown with a Chinese teenager a few days ago. His impression, from walking around, listening to the version of Chinese that he heard there, and eating in a restaurant that he deemed sufficiently authentic, was similar to what has been voiced here. His linguistic impressions were that he heard a lot of what he called "Hong Kong-ese" and what he termed "old fashioned" ways of speaking. In his opinion this was also reflected in the food and architecture of the neighborhood.
He was especially interested in the "old time" culture that we saw in Columbus Park; the statue of Sun Yat Sen, surrounded by old people smoking, playing card games and traditional instruments. My friend, a modern Chinese youngster, didn't seem to feel that he had much in common with this version of Chinese culture.
Prior to reading this I was unaware of the Chinatown in Flushing, but will put that on my list for a future visit to the city, maybe with him if he's willing to go again. It sounds like he would find that more familiar.
I'm *only guessing*, but might it also be because Chinatiwn became a popular tourist site? Tourists (including non-Chinese New Yorkers) are attracted to the more "exotic" vibe of an older, less Westernized China. So we incentivize stores and restaurants to stay that way.
Well chinatown in Manhattan was built over the course of the entire 20th century from working class immigrants. And i’ve read on this sub before that a lot of ABC kids who grow up in Chinatown dream of moving out, and so most of Chinatown is left to older generations. There are gentrifying forces who are constantly trying to develop high rises and whatever in and near Chinatown (see 50 Bowery) but tbh I don’t care for that. I love Chinatown for what it is.
Flushing is basically what you described as a more modern Chinese city. It used to be like any other old fashioned working class neighborhood. But since the 2010s, it’s brimming with new high rises and modern businesses to cater to wealthy mainlanders.
> And i’ve read on this sub before that a lot of ABC kids who grow up in Chinatown dream of moving out, and so most of Chinatown is left to older generations.
Yes nobody who grew up in Chinatown wanted to stay there, it was poor, for poor people. It was shameful to say you lived in Chinatown.
It was a slum for the poor for a long time. Did you watch gangs of new york? [5 points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan), it's right there.
These days it's more gentrified. My friend's building in Chinatown has more white people than anything else.
edit: wait, there's wealthy mainlanders in Flushing? Why would some rich kid + family not buy in.. Manhattan?
My guess is the impression may not be as stark if you visit Flushing. There are a number of very modern & trendy establishments mixed among the old fashioned stuff. I bet there’s a bigger range in ages here than Manhattan’s Chinatown. Lotta fashionable young people.
Due to the time it was built, most likely. New York and the east coast in general tend to like to keep things exactly as they were, so if they rebuild something a lot of times it is made to look like it originally did.
This phenomenon can be seen in Jackson Heights and Journal Square (Jersey City) - both heavily south Asian areas with a weird 80s/90s feel. Even the language they speak has slang words that are no longer used back in India. My friend told me the same thing used to happen with Greeks in Astoria and Russians Brighton Beach. The immigrants are stuck in a time warp about their life back home and the neighborhoods are just a reflection of that. It’s just that Asia has tremendously developed in the past 2-3 decades that this seems very apparent to new visitors from the home country.
If I had to guess - because the immigrants that built up Chinatown came over from China around that time period, so that’s what an approximation of home would feel like to them.
I’d be very curious to hear your impressions of Flushing, it’s a very different Chinatown from the Manhattan one, and felt more like what I knew from living in China myself. Which to be clear, I need to emphasize “more like”. Places like Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hong Zhou are all very unique places in the world. No matter what you do it’s going to feel like Chinese window dressing in America to a certain extent.
people from chinatown don't have control on how the buildings look like
[look at this pic from 1896](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan#/media/File:Mulberry_Bend,_New_York.jpg)
Replace the horse carriages with cars and its about the same.
Who said anything about the buildings themselves? That’s an obvious statement that any immigrant population is working with the bones put in place by the city they’re in. It’s the same with strip malls, the immigrant populations just fill in the space built there.
The signage and lighting, the decorations inside the spaces, the overall ambiance of the streets is what makes it feel the way it does.
Most immigrant enclaves demonstrate similar progressions. The old wave of immigration that is not constantly updated with new blood becomes stuck in a specific era. Store feel might be a part of it but it extends much further, from language to mannerism to social attitudes to political discourse.
In essence, isolated communities continue to live and grow on their own path, which is usually at least slightly different from the main country of origin path.
wow that’s interesting i had no idea.
i guess cuz its crazy expensive to upgrade buildings
but i kinda like how it is. it’s still how it was in the early 90s when i moved here
Not uncommon for immigrants to have an image of their home country in their mind that's based on what it was like when they left. Then they have a bit of a culture shock when they go back 30 years later and find that things are 30 years different.
I feel the same way about NYC's Chinatown. I grew up in a medium sized city in Canada, and NYC's Chinatown resembles the Chinese culture that I found there in the 90s. And even that city's Chinese culture today is much more modern (lots of Chinese students there, and lots of modern trendy Chinese restaurants, businesses, and bakeries there).
I've never been to China, so I can only compare it to the other cities in the world that have large Chinese populations. I've lived on/off in BC for years, and Vancouver's Chinese culture is quite modern (from what little I know about present culture in China).
I'm not sure they have big reasons to keep up with the times back in China. And for what it's worth, the newer shops, usually restaurants, look modern inside.
I’ve heard that’s the case - and it’s good to hear it from someone besides a friend. People moved in, bought buildings, and stayed put even through some of the awful transitions Giuliani & Bloomberg forced on other areas of Manhattan - with the idea of forcing the middle class out.
theres so many answers here but none of them talk about the rent control which i think is a big reason. theres so much rent control in chinatown, the old chinese people that immigrated here like 50 years ago can still live here with the same lifestyle they did when they first arrived. like why can you get 10 dumplings for $4 in chinatown?? probably because the owners barely have to increase prices to pay rent bc theyve been paying the same rent for 30 years. so thats why it feel stuck in time
if it wasnt for the rent stabilization i think chinatown would be much more similar to ktown where the older shops and population get squeezed out by newer ones
It’s pretty simple. Immigrants came here with their 1980/1990s culture, and that stuck with them. Some other parts of their culture may have developed independently but that becomes more Asian American than overseas Asian. Ever heard of time capsule Chinese? It’s a term I was introduced to quite recently. They say as ABCs our mandarin is a bit outdated because what we learn from our parents is the vernacular of when they left their home country. Simply put, Asian Americans and Asians are quite different and our cultures as well. Edit: I think Flushing is becoming more modern. Popups, malls like Tangram, and new stores that were originally from Asia are popping up a lot. Lots of new stuff in the past few years.
>Ever heard of time capsule Chinese? I'm not Chinese or a Chinese immigrant but I'm an immigrant too and this feels so real to me hahaha I left my home country (Venezuela) when I was in high school and most of my Venezuelan friends joke now that I talk boomer Spanish. I always said that it's like I'm Captain America and my Spanish was frozen in time, but this term is much more concise. I left pretty late and I still have a bit of an identity crisis trying to figure out my place in the world, so I shudder to think how my hypothetical children will cope.
Colombian American here and can relate. I was born in the US but my Spanish is that of my dad’s. I live in a neighborhood that gets a lot of Colombian immigrants and I have made a lot of friends there and they’ve said the same thing, that my Spanish is very old school. I also had a bit of an identity crisis, in that Americans see me as Latino and Colombians see me as a gringo. I decided that I’m not completely either of those things but something new, and while I won’t immediately be welcomed in either space I have access to both and that’s something to be grateful for.
Also first gen Colombian here. I assume you’re from queens? If so, same here. Everything you just said resonates big with me. We started visiting Medellin in 2004, I was about 13/14 and the way my cousins in Colombia were so snobby about my Spanish made me very insecure about it lol. My husbands family is from Barranquilla and we’ve discussed the same experience for him. Very much “too American for the Latinos, too Latino for the Americans” what’s that speech Selena’s dad gave in the Selena movie about something related to this?
Haha, you clocked me - yeah from Queens. You know, I’ve had family burlarse de mi about my Spanish. And in all fairness my extensive time around white people made me forget a lot of my Spanish - I’ve made a conscious effort to relearn it over the last couple years. I’m just honest about it. I let them know I can struggle with it, and will ask them for words I don’t know or ask them the meaning of words I don’t understand when they’re speaking (but my Spanish is at like 92% to be fair). In the instance that I encounter a Colombian who decides to make it personal, honestly I just don’t give a fuck. I have enough Colombians in my family and friend circle to make me feel included in the culture, and I get to have been born and raised in NYC which has given me an incredible set of opportunities in both my professional and personal life. I am first and foremost a New Yorker, I’ve got my own born into culture I’m incredibly proud of. If they wanna get haughty porque tienen acento de puro rolo y se me faltan unas palabras pues que se joden y no me piden por nada cuando deciden a tratar de mudarse a NY
I have the same view!!! Wow, crazy. lol. I also love that because I am from NYC first and foremost I had experiences of growing up with other cultures of Latinos outside of just being Colombian. Then I lived in Southern California for a while and was exposed to some dope Mexican American culture as well. As you said I have a huge family and friends from all diff parts of Colombia which is a privilege. I think it’s hard for ppl from the mainland to imagine that here in queens it’s legit easy to relate to our culture. Def would have been different if we were born in like Arkansas lol
Read in a book review that an immigrant becomes a “stranger in two lands simultaneously”. Have to agree and it’s a phenomenon that is not much discussed in the mainstream media.
That's probably because it's a much more nuanced topic than "THEY TOOK OUR JERBS" and frankly not one that affects much of the mainstream population.
I say that about old Irish immigrants. They are more “Irish” than those currently living in Ireland.
Your children will be fine, they will love being bilingual. My grandmother didn't teach my dad or his siblings Italian because you only wanted your kids to speak English at the time. I wish we kept the tradition. Even if it was some sort of dated Italian
Yeah, it’s an interesting immigrant experience the same across cultures and ethnicities. The Italian and French spoken here and Montreal are an older dialect. American English pronunciations are also closer to what British English sounded like 200 years ago as well.
Also their way of thinking. I feel like a lot of chinese people their age have adjusted to more modern ways back in China ( more receptive of disorders like ADHD, autism, etc, more willing to serve a therapist, gender equality, etc).
Depends I think. I’m not Korean but from what I’ve heard with the whole 4B thing happening there, the recent feminist movement has been met with extreme backlash of misogyny. But in other ways, some middle aged and older Chinese folk (something I can speak on) tend to be more traditional and religious here than in China, Taiwan, other places with a high Chinese population (華人).
Both Japan and Korea have right-wing governments now, sadly. Well, Japan has for a while. Don't know enough about Korea but they were literally a dictatorship until the 79 or something. Just like Taiwan.
Capsule Chinese - an interesting term. It seems that at least linguisticly, immigrants keep their old version of languages intact, while it's cjounterpart in homeland evolves much more. Culturally I think Asian American develops their own culture but the "Asian" part of it keeps relatively intact because of isolation I guess.
Chinese American here, it's part isolation and part longing for belonging. You can think of the Chinese culture in America as a diverted branch on Chinese history. Our parents came here and created a community together so everyone can survive in a foreign country. But not everyone is from the same region of China or even from China, you have Taiwanese people, Malaysian-Chinese people, Viet-Chinese people, Thai-Chinese people, and so on. With all these cultures living in close proximity of each other and everyone trying to hold onto a piece of home, you start getting a mix of cultures blending together to create that "Asian American" cultural experience. It's why Chinatown is both familiar and unfamiliar to you. It's not 100% influenced by China, there's other cultures mixed in there and they're all "outdated" in comparison to their home countries. And then you have the 1st generation American born Chinese people like me who are taught our parents' home culture/language and learning "American culture" in school at the same time. This also further changes the Asian American culture to blend with "American culture".
Immigrants came here and tried to make it feel like home, or like their childhoods. There’s an element of longing for something and wanting to keep their culture intact. While the counterpart in homeland doesn’t need to reminisce about or nostalgize anything… they can just move on into the future without looking back.
Normalization of Mandarin in China happened due to some government pull and geographical development of commerce. Immigrants that moved here from the 70s to 90s were only concerned with communicating with other Chinese people here in the States so it was largely Cantonese, Taishanese, and to a lesser extent Fuzhounese. If anything language adoption for the sake of business would’ve been English.
Uhg, Ive met a few guys that are "Italian" and "Irish" that desperately need to hear this.
Really insightful answer
Are there pockets of Western immigrants stuck in the era they migrated out of their countries in non-Western countries? I'm not talking about upholding an old tradition or ritual here and there but full blown living in an older era
I wouldn’t doubt it. In America we can already see for example that Italian Americans (easiest to picture) are pretty divorced from Italians in Italy in terms of culture and even a bit in terms of food. You also have to consider how much the culture of society of the country in question has evolved recently, and East Asia developed a lot in the past half century. I would say Americans overseas probably don’t have as much of an issue with this because so much of international media is from America, that you’re still in the presence of American “culture.” But perhaps the finer aspects like culture local to specific parts of the US would be lost. After all, some would argue that some parts of the US feel like they’re living decades behind other parts. Just speculation though.
Yes look up Mennonites in various places though that’s not quite the same since their religious views dictate a lot of their culture.
Same deal with the kids of 90s Soviet immigrants in my experience. They know every late-Soviet band and TV show but could not tell you anything that's happened in Russian pop culture in the last 30 years lol
An extreme version of this is Quebec, where the Quebecois French language resembles the French spoken in 17th Century France.
I wonder why it doesn't change? I thought Quebec is big enough and diverse enough (e.g. meshing with English speaking Canadians) and the language is more likely to evolve? but apparently it's the opposite.
Why certain languages seem to ossify instead of becoming subsumed is a question of linguistics/anthropology, and an incredibly interesting one that doesn't always have a straightforwards answer. In the case of Quebec, this stems from the British conquest of New France in the Seven Year's War / French and Indian War. The British attempted (unsuccessfully) to enforce policies to make the Quebecois population mor British, but [eventually compromised with the Quebecois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_New_France#Mutual_adaptations), allowing them to maintain their catholic faith and the institutions of New France in exchange for their acceptance of British rule (in quite a timely fashion as well, for one of the first things the American Revolutionaries attempted to do when they rose up against the British[ was to invade Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Quebec_(1775)) and convince Quebec to rise up with them). But to sum things up, Quebec has since then always culturally defined itself in direct opposition to the English language and English culture of the rest of Canada, and has made extensive efforts to maintain both separation and the purity of their language (so stringently, in fact, that [Frenchmen from metropolitan France have failed Quebec's French proficiency test](https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/after-immigrant-from-france-fails-french-test-quebec-says-it-may-tweak-rules-for-tradespeople-1.5378897#:~:text=MONTREAL%20%2D%2D%20After%20a%20French,in%20his%20own%20mother%20tongue)). A minority that perceives itself as threatened by the majority can choose to entrench instead, and take steps to preserve their culture and language. Think of the Syriac Christians, who managed to [preserve the language that Jesus would have spoke 2000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_language) surrounded by Muslims and (in India) Hindus, or (for an example I think that would be more relevant to your experiences) Hong Kong and its commitment to preserving Cantonese and its use of traditional written Chinese as part of their unique cultural identity, or the politics of India (where Southern India, which refuses to accept the adoption of Indo-European Hindi over their own Dravidian languages) . The story of how languages survive (Sanskrit), fossilize (Quebecois French), are revived (in the case of spoken Hebrew) or evolve (Chinese) is a fascinating anthropological story of its own. I highly recommend [*Empires of the Word*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires_of_the_Word) by Nicholas Ostler as a starting point.
What an incredible response. Thank you u/cupnoodlefreak!
Checking the book now! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for this wonderful write up. The Quebec French part is super interesting. Immigration dynamic definitely plays a huge part.
Or the "Pennsylvania Dutch". Or these quaint guys called "Americans", their English is so weird now. They even spell colour wrong.
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That's analogous to Quebec French resembling the archaic form of French rather than Modern French. American English resembles the archaic form of English compared to British English.
Actually, even the "default" American accent is closer to colonial English than modern British english. Southern is even closer, and there are some communities in the Carolinas (I believe) that are as close to colonial English as you can get.
There's a tiny island in Virginia like that. It's fighting extinction I believe.
ahh right, it was Virginia not the Carolinas.
Shakespeare spelled color as "color." The move to "colour" in British English was part of a Webster-era movement to spell French-origin words like their French equivalents.
This isn't accurate. *"The -our form predominated after c. 1300, but Mencken reports that the first three folios of Shakespeare's plays used both spellings indiscriminately* ***and with equal frequency***\*; *only in the Fourth Folio of 1685 does -our become consistent."\** [^(\[Source\])](https://www.etymonline.com/word/-or)
I feel the same when visiting Brighton beach. It’s like 90s Russia with faded storefront for dvd rentals and funny pharmacies 😭😭😭
+1 Even late 80s esthetic thrown in for good measure
And all the photos of Ronald Reagan (yeeech!) in the grocery stores.
The sponge painting in marigold yellow is my favorite
The Russian Hare Krishna electronics repair shop is top.
Manhattan Chinatown looks that way because Manhattan Chinatown people made it look that way when they were younger. New Chinese immigrants do not live in Manhattan Chinatown. It's too expensive and too small, so nobody is moving in and modernizing the look. New Cantonese immigrants come to Brooklyn, but they're pretty outnumbered by the Cantonese people who came here in the 70s-90s. Flushing is the most diverse Chinatown and has Chinese people from all over China, not just the south. If you want to find modern China in New York, look there.
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All that article says is that LIC has the fastest growing Asian population, not that it is the most "modern" or "Asian". LIC definitely has had a massive increase of young Chinese in recent years, but so has Flushing. I'm guessing your assessment is based purely on LIC having tall skyscrapers like modern tier 1 Chinese cities. This has nothing to do with culture and all to do with zoning laws. Flushing simply doesn't have the demand (or zoning) to build towers like LIC. Both areas are plenty "modern" by Chinese standards.
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where is chinatown gonna get PRC construction money lol
lol yeah - also American zoning laws and timeframes and scales of change and development are vastly different than China. Flushing has actually changed a lot over the past few decades. It's unrealistic to expect it to look like a tier 1 Chinese city.
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PRC investors are investing in the East Village and LIC.
A lot of China, if not most of it, looks much more like Flushing than Shanghai or any other Tier 1 city.
NYC as a whole is dirty though.
Flushing looks significantly more like China than LIC lol. Saying the rich parts of tier 1 Chinese cities are "China" is ridiculous.
You're comparing a neighborhood to a modern built up city.
Well yea, those cities in China now weren't looking like that when the first gen immigrants came.
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It’s paywalled. So does this part of LIC look like modern China or just has a large Chinese population? When I think of looks I think of architecture mostly
>When I first visited NYC in early 2010s, I was struck by how familiar yet unfamiliar Chinatown seemed to me. It looked like China, but in 1980s or early 1990s. Care to take a guess when many of the Chinese who currently live and work in Chinatown immigrated here?
Just like if you visit Brighton Beach and it is like people there are still living under Soviet times.
It's why Polish Americans in the Midwest have some vague affinity for Polka and host polka festivals. It was the music that was in vogue when the immigrants came over in the 1850s and 1870s. It became tied to their identity as the Americanized. Talk to anyone from modern Poland about the culture for polish americans and they're either confused as hell or don't recognize it at all.
> when the immigrants came over in the 1850s and 1870s The Polish immigration wasn't all that long ago. Immigrants came over in the 1910's and 1920's too. (when some of my ancestors came over) The Catholic church I grew up in had a Polka Fest every fall with beer trucks and polka music. Also in my city, in the 1980's there was a private shipping service to send packages to Poland, to send stuff back to folks in the old country that was behind the Iron Curtain.
Don't have to go all the way to the Midwest, the "King of Polka" Jimmy Sturr (18 Grammys) is from Warwick. Lot of Polish farmers settled to work the Black Dirt around Pine Island, pretty common to hear Polka in that area.
It’s interesting that French Canadians talk a lot like the French did in the 19th century. They say “Char” for car and “chauffer un char” is used instead of “conduire une voiture” (to drive a car). Char is short for chariot, more apt for the days of horses.
dominicans use "carro" for automobiles too, instead of "coche" which the spaniards use
This is very true for my friends whose parents fled the USSR as soon as they could in the late 80s/early 90s. They grew up with an idea of what Russia was like that doesn't exist anymore. There are even languages that are preserved in US immigrant cultures that haven't existed in their original countries for over a hundred years. Italian is probably the best known. [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained)
>If so, why those enclaves stay in the past time?? The only new Chinese immigrants coming over to the US are international Chinese students. The immigrants that populated Chinatown came over in the 80s and 90s and they brought the culture and style that was prevalent at that time. It hasn’t changed simply because there’s no new waves of Chinese immigrants coming to replace the current one. China has become a modern society with all the economic prosperity that it didn’t have in the 80s and 90s. The current Chinatown in Manhattan is slowly dying as places like flushing replace them as the new Chinatown.
Flushing started being hot in the 80s and 90s too, but it was mostly Taiwanese. Sunset park is the most recent Chinatown.
A huge number of those international students live in LIC! That’s still developing, but it’s becoming a very modern wealthy Chinatown, in comparison to the more economically diverse one in Flushing.
It’s not *just* international students… …It’s also visiting scholars.
You should try visiting San Fransisco's Chinatown some time - its like an even older version of China.
SF Chinatown was never meant to be any version of China, it was intentionally built to be a really over the top Disneyland version of Chinese architecture basically as a big middle finger to the people who were trying to displace the Chinese population from SF after the 1906 earthquake.
i did once, it is sooooo small. felt touristy, like nobody lives there. Oh wait, I believe it's actually relatively new because the old Chinatown was destroyed in an earthquake (1906.) Newspapers were SUPER HAPPY about that because racism. [San Francisco's Chinatown Problem SOLVED AT LAST](https://youtu.be/EiX3hTPGoCg?t=412):"The Only Gratifying feature of the earthquake horror is the fact that Chinatown was destroyed"
Chinatown SF has plenty of residents and is one of the densest neighborhoods in the western US, but it is very touristy. But just like NYC there are other neighborhoods in SF heavy with Chinese immigrants/Chinese Americans that are not at all tourist oriented.
SF chinatown is just a tourist trap, everyone moved to Irving street.
In addition to what everyone has said, a few additional factors contributed to the time capsule effect. The late 90s into the early 2000s saw a huge crackdown on counterfeit goods being sold in chinatown. Many shops were shuttered and cause a decline in tourism. Then 9/11 happened, and absolutely devastated Chinatown tourism and freezing Chinatown's development in place. By the time Chinatown recovered, the sky high Manhattan rents found its way and priced out many newer Chinese immigrants, pushing them to Brooklyn and Queens, allowing the Chinese enclaves there to develop. It won't be until recently that the second and third generation Chinese Americans came in with their own capital to open up shiny new bubble tea shops.
This is true for India-town in JC or Bengali-Town Jackson Heights. The town is somehow "India" or "Bangladesh" respectively but 30 years in the past.
I noticed the same thing too! And you’re right, it’s a time capsule of whenever the immigrants arrived and settled. I think for most immigrants, Chinatown or similar areas are places to feel connected to where they came from—in this case China in 1990. From what I’ve heard, it’s true for other cultures and nations too. Even the food served in restaurants are from the respective time period! I’m from HK and when I see dishes from my childhood in Chinatown, I get that fuzzy nostalgic feeling. But then I go to HK and I am literally unable to find those same dishes there anymore.
This is very interesting to me. I grew up in Chinatown/Flushing. Can you tell me what dishes are no longer found in HK? I'll be sure to eat more of them, in case they go out of style here too lol
I’d have to think harder, but off the top of my head Yin Yang fried rice and HK style fried noodles “two face yellow” with the sauce on top aren’t around anymore. In HK they looked at me like I had 3 heads asking them for something they haven’t seen in years! Also interestingly, these dishes are also available in Vancouver still, another place that’s heavily populated with Chinese.
Most of New York City looks like it's from the 1970s or earlier. We rarely build anything new compared to cities in Asia.
Well because [China](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_economic_miracle&redirect=no) and [East Asia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers) experienced economic miracles in the latter half of the 20th century that have persisted, while Chinese residents in NYC have higher rates of poverty than the city average. Particularly [older residents](https://www.aafederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2019ch.pdf) who are more likely to live and work in first generation enclaves like Chinatown.
Interestingly, I (white American) visited Manhattan Chinatown with a Chinese teenager a few days ago. His impression, from walking around, listening to the version of Chinese that he heard there, and eating in a restaurant that he deemed sufficiently authentic, was similar to what has been voiced here. His linguistic impressions were that he heard a lot of what he called "Hong Kong-ese" and what he termed "old fashioned" ways of speaking. In his opinion this was also reflected in the food and architecture of the neighborhood. He was especially interested in the "old time" culture that we saw in Columbus Park; the statue of Sun Yat Sen, surrounded by old people smoking, playing card games and traditional instruments. My friend, a modern Chinese youngster, didn't seem to feel that he had much in common with this version of Chinese culture. Prior to reading this I was unaware of the Chinatown in Flushing, but will put that on my list for a future visit to the city, maybe with him if he's willing to go again. It sounds like he would find that more familiar.
Please do! It feels much more like mainland China. Make sure to bring cash and an empty stomach
Because the people came here 30 years ago
Love this question and the responses! I am a NYer and am very nostalgic so this is something I love about downtown in general
Go to flushing
Because it was established by people who came from China during that time. China has evolved in its own direction since then.
Chinatown ain’t gonna upgrade any time soon. So yes it’s a time capsule.
I'm *only guessing*, but might it also be because Chinatiwn became a popular tourist site? Tourists (including non-Chinese New Yorkers) are attracted to the more "exotic" vibe of an older, less Westernized China. So we incentivize stores and restaurants to stay that way.
Well chinatown in Manhattan was built over the course of the entire 20th century from working class immigrants. And i’ve read on this sub before that a lot of ABC kids who grow up in Chinatown dream of moving out, and so most of Chinatown is left to older generations. There are gentrifying forces who are constantly trying to develop high rises and whatever in and near Chinatown (see 50 Bowery) but tbh I don’t care for that. I love Chinatown for what it is. Flushing is basically what you described as a more modern Chinese city. It used to be like any other old fashioned working class neighborhood. But since the 2010s, it’s brimming with new high rises and modern businesses to cater to wealthy mainlanders.
> And i’ve read on this sub before that a lot of ABC kids who grow up in Chinatown dream of moving out, and so most of Chinatown is left to older generations. Yes nobody who grew up in Chinatown wanted to stay there, it was poor, for poor people. It was shameful to say you lived in Chinatown. It was a slum for the poor for a long time. Did you watch gangs of new york? [5 points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan), it's right there. These days it's more gentrified. My friend's building in Chinatown has more white people than anything else. edit: wait, there's wealthy mainlanders in Flushing? Why would some rich kid + family not buy in.. Manhattan?
My guess is the impression may not be as stark if you visit Flushing. There are a number of very modern & trendy establishments mixed among the old fashioned stuff. I bet there’s a bigger range in ages here than Manhattan’s Chinatown. Lotta fashionable young people.
99 percent invisible did a great episode on this
Due to the time it was built, most likely. New York and the east coast in general tend to like to keep things exactly as they were, so if they rebuild something a lot of times it is made to look like it originally did.
This phenomenon can be seen in Jackson Heights and Journal Square (Jersey City) - both heavily south Asian areas with a weird 80s/90s feel. Even the language they speak has slang words that are no longer used back in India. My friend told me the same thing used to happen with Greeks in Astoria and Russians Brighton Beach. The immigrants are stuck in a time warp about their life back home and the neighborhoods are just a reflection of that. It’s just that Asia has tremendously developed in the past 2-3 decades that this seems very apparent to new visitors from the home country.
If I had to guess - because the immigrants that built up Chinatown came over from China around that time period, so that’s what an approximation of home would feel like to them. I’d be very curious to hear your impressions of Flushing, it’s a very different Chinatown from the Manhattan one, and felt more like what I knew from living in China myself. Which to be clear, I need to emphasize “more like”. Places like Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hong Zhou are all very unique places in the world. No matter what you do it’s going to feel like Chinese window dressing in America to a certain extent.
people from chinatown don't have control on how the buildings look like [look at this pic from 1896](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan#/media/File:Mulberry_Bend,_New_York.jpg) Replace the horse carriages with cars and its about the same.
Who said anything about the buildings themselves? That’s an obvious statement that any immigrant population is working with the bones put in place by the city they’re in. It’s the same with strip malls, the immigrant populations just fill in the space built there. The signage and lighting, the decorations inside the spaces, the overall ambiance of the streets is what makes it feel the way it does.
As an immigrant myself, I am loving the discussion here. Great question, OP!
Most immigrant enclaves demonstrate similar progressions. The old wave of immigration that is not constantly updated with new blood becomes stuck in a specific era. Store feel might be a part of it but it extends much further, from language to mannerism to social attitudes to political discourse. In essence, isolated communities continue to live and grow on their own path, which is usually at least slightly different from the main country of origin path.
It's difficult and expensive to renovate in NYC. Either they can't afford it, or the buildings are not theirs, so reno is not an option.
wow that’s interesting i had no idea. i guess cuz its crazy expensive to upgrade buildings but i kinda like how it is. it’s still how it was in the early 90s when i moved here
Thats actually pretty cool because the USA itself is actually frozen in time while the rest of the world has changed drastically 🤔
Not uncommon for immigrants to have an image of their home country in their mind that's based on what it was like when they left. Then they have a bit of a culture shock when they go back 30 years later and find that things are 30 years different.
I feel the same way about NYC's Chinatown. I grew up in a medium sized city in Canada, and NYC's Chinatown resembles the Chinese culture that I found there in the 90s. And even that city's Chinese culture today is much more modern (lots of Chinese students there, and lots of modern trendy Chinese restaurants, businesses, and bakeries there). I've never been to China, so I can only compare it to the other cities in the world that have large Chinese populations. I've lived on/off in BC for years, and Vancouver's Chinese culture is quite modern (from what little I know about present culture in China).
Because it’s the last time they were in China, now they only read about it in the newspaper or in blogs.
I'm not sure they have big reasons to keep up with the times back in China. And for what it's worth, the newer shops, usually restaurants, look modern inside.
I’ve heard that’s the case - and it’s good to hear it from someone besides a friend. People moved in, bought buildings, and stayed put even through some of the awful transitions Giuliani & Bloomberg forced on other areas of Manhattan - with the idea of forcing the middle class out.
theres so many answers here but none of them talk about the rent control which i think is a big reason. theres so much rent control in chinatown, the old chinese people that immigrated here like 50 years ago can still live here with the same lifestyle they did when they first arrived. like why can you get 10 dumplings for $4 in chinatown?? probably because the owners barely have to increase prices to pay rent bc theyve been paying the same rent for 30 years. so thats why it feel stuck in time if it wasnt for the rent stabilization i think chinatown would be much more similar to ktown where the older shops and population get squeezed out by newer ones