Ah Ken and early Chinese immigration Ah Ken is claimed to have arrived in the area during the 1850s; he is the first Chinese person credited as having permanently immigrated to Chinatown. As a Cantonese businessman, Ah Ken eventually founded a successful cigar store on
Park Row. He first arrived around 1858 in New York City, where he was "probably one of those Chinese mentioned in gossip of the sixties [1860s] as peddling 'awful' cigars at three cents apiece from little stands along the
City Hall park fence – offering a paper spill and a tiny
oil lamp as a lighter", according to author
Alvin Harlow in
Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (1931). In New York, immigrants found work as "cigar men" or carrying
billboards, and Ah Ken's particular success encouraged cigar makers William Longford, John Occoo, and John Ava to also ply their trade in Chinatown, eventually forming a monopoly on the cigar trade. It has been speculated that it may have been Ah Ken who kept a small
boarding house on lower
Mott Street and rented out
bunks to the first Chinese immigrants to arrive in Chinatown. It was with the profits he earned as a landlord, earning an average of $100 per month, that he was able to open his Park Row smoke shop around which modern-day Chinatown would grow.
Chinese exclusion period In 1873, the United States entered a period of economic difficulty known as the
Long Depression. As a result, Americans increasingly competed for jobs that were typically performed by Chinese immigrants. The period was marked by increased
racial discrimination, anti-Chinese riots (particularly in California), and new laws that prevented participation in many occupations on the U.S.
West Coast. Consequently, many Chinese immigrants moved to the
East Coast cities in search of employment. Early businesses in East Coast cities included
hand laundries and
restaurants. Chinatown started on Mott, Park (now Mosco), Pell, and
Doyers Streets, east of the notorious
Five Points district. By 1870 there was a Chinese population of 200. By 1882, when the
Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, the population was up to 2,000 residents. In 1900, the US Census reported 7,028 Chinese males in residence, but only 142 Chinese women. This significant gender inequality remained until the repeal of the
Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and C. Cindy Fan, authors of "Growth and Decline of Muslim Hui Enclaves in Beijing", wrote that because of immigration restrictions, Chinatown continued to be "virtually a bachelor society" until 1965. (安良堂) at the intersection of
Canal Street and
Mott Street in Chinatown The early days of Chinatown were dominated by Chinese "
tongs" (now sometimes rendered neutrally as "
associations"), which were a mixture of
clan associations, landsman's associations, political alliances (
Kuomintang (Nationalists) vs
Chinese Communist Party), and more secretly,
crime syndicates. The associations started to give protection from anti-Chinese harassment. Each of these associations was aligned with a
street gang. The associations were a source of assistance to new
immigrants, giving out loans, aiding in starting businesses, and so forth. The associations formed a governing body named the
Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Though this body was meant to foster relations between the Tongs, open warfare periodically flared between the
On Leong and
Hip Sing tongs. Much of the Chinese
gang warfare took place on Doyers street. Gangs like the
Ghost Shadows and
Flying Dragons were prevalent until the 1990s. The Chinese gangs controlled certain territories of Manhattan's Chinatown. The
On Leong and its affiliate
Ghost Shadows were of Cantonese and
Toishan descent, and controlled Mott, Bayard,
Canal, and
Mulberry Streets. The
Flying Dragons and its affiliate
Hip Sing also of Cantonese and Toishan descent controlled Doyers, Pell,
Bowery,
Grand, and Hester Streets. Other Chinese gangs also existed, like the Hung Ching and Chih Kung gangs of Cantonese and Toishan descent, which were affiliated with each other and also gained control of Mott Street.
Born to Kill, also known as the
Canal Boys, a gang composed almost entirely of Vietnamese immigrants from the
Vietnam War under the leadership of
David Thai had control over Broadway, Canal, Baxter,
Centre, and Lafayette Streets. Fujianese gangs also existed, such as the Tung On gang, which affiliated with Tsung Tsin, and had control over East Broadway, Catherine and Division Streets and the Fuk Ching gang affiliated with Fukien American controlled East Broadway, Chrystie,
Forsyth, Eldridge, and Allen Streets. At one point, a gang named the Freemasons gang, which was of Cantonese descent, had attempted to claim East Broadway as its territory.
Columbus Park, the only park in Chinatown, was built in 1897 on what was once the center of the infamous
Five Points neighborhood. During the 19th century, this was the most dangerous
ghetto area of immigrant New York, as portrayed in the book and film
Gangs of New York.
Post-1965 reform In the years after the United States enacted the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, allowing many more immigrants from Asia into the country, the population of Chinatown increased dramatically. Geographically, much of the growth occurred in neighborhoods to the north. The Chinatown grew and became more oriented toward families due to the lifting of restrictions. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the influx of Guangdong and Hong Kong immigrants began to develop newer portions of Manhattan's Chinatown going north of Canal Street and then later the east of
the Bowery. However, until the 1980s, the western section was the most primarily fully Chinese developed and populated part of Chinatown and the most quickly flourishing busy central Chinese business district with still a little bit of remaining Italians in the very northwest portion around Grand Street and Broome Street, which eventually all moved away and became all Chinese by the 1990s. Although the portion of Chinatown that is east of the Bowery—which is considered part of the Lower East Side already started developing as being part of Chinatown since the influx of Chinese immigrants started spilling over into that section since the 1960s, however until the 1980s, it was still not developing as quickly as the western portion of Chinatown because the proportion and concentration of Chinese residents in the eastern section during that time was comparatively growing at a slower rate and being more scattered than the western section in addition to the fact that there was a higher proportion of remaining non-Chinese residents consisting of Jewish, Puerto Ricans, and a few Italians and African Americans than Chinatown's western section. During the 1970s and 1980s, the eastern portion of Chinatown east of the Bowery was a very quiet section, and despite fears of crime, it was seen as attractive because of the availability of vacant affordable apartments. Chinese female garment workers were especially targets of crime and often left work together to protect each other as they were heading home. In May 1985, a gang-related shooting injured seven people, including a 4-year-old boy, at 30 East Broadway in Chinatown. Two males, who were 15 and 16 years old and were members of a Chinese street gang, were arrested and convicted. Many
Chinese Vietnamese,
Laotian Chinese,
Chinese Cambodians, and
Malaysian Chinese immigrants also settled into the neighborhood as well. Starting in the 1970s, Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese immigrants and then many other Non-Cantonese Chinese immigrants also were arriving into New York City. However, due to the traditional dominance of Cantonese-speaking residents, which were largely working class in Manhattan's Chinatown and the neighborhood's poor housing conditions, they were unable to relate to Manhattan's Chinatown and mainly settled in Flushing, creating a more middle class
Mandarin Town and an even smaller one in Elmhurst. As a result, Manhattan's Chinatown and Brooklyn's emerging Chinatown were able to continue retaining its traditional, almost-exclusive Cantonese society. However, there was already a small and slow-growing
Fuzhou immigrant population in Manhattan's Chinatown since the 1970s–80s in the eastern section of Chinatown east of the Bowery. In the 1990s, though, Chinese people began to move into some parts of the western
Lower East Side, which 50 years earlier was populated by
Eastern European Jews and 20 years earlier was occupied by
Hispanics.
Little Fuzhou Association on
East Broadway in
Little Fuzhou From the late 1980s through the 1990s, when a large influx of immigrants from Fuzhou, who largely also spoke Mandarin along with their native Fuzhou dialect began moving into New York City, they were the only exceptional group of Chinese that were non-Cantonese to largely settle into Manhattan's Chinatown. Due to the fact that the Chinatown area were mostly populated by Cantonese speakers, the Fuzhou speaking immigrants had a lot of trouble relating to the neighborhood linguistically and culturally and as a result, they settled on the eastern borderline of Manhattan's Chinatown east of The Bowery, which during that time was more of an overlapping population of Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and Jewish as well as had significant vacant apartment units and were more affordable than in the more Mandarin-speaking enclaves in Flushing and Elmhurst, and many Fuzhou immigrants had no legal status and being forced into the lowest paying jobs. As they settled in the eastern borderline of Chinatown along East Broadway and Eldridge Street, it became fully part of Chinatown and slowly through the 1990s it would develop into being Little Fuzhou. This has resulted in referring to East Broadway as Fuzhou Street No. 1, which emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Eldridge Street as Fuzhou Street No. 2, which developed during the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
Little Fuzhou became known as a new Chinatown, separate from the older, more Cantonese-dominated Chinatown from The Bowery going west, though there are still a little bit of remaining long time Cantonese residents and businesses in and around what is now the Little Fuzhou enclave. Not only did the Fuzhou immigration influx establish a new portion of Manhattan's Chinatown, they contributed significantly in maintaining the Chinese population in the neighborhood. They also played a role in
property values increasing quickly during the 1990s, in contrast to during the 1980s, when the housing prices were dropping. As a result, landlords were able to generate twice as much income in Manhattan's, Flushing's, and Brooklyn's Chinatowns.
Migration to Brooklyn Chinatown The increasing Fuzhou influx had shifted into the
Brooklyn Chinatown in the
Sunset Park section of
Brooklyn. This shift replaces the Cantonese population throughout Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown significantly more rapidly than in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Gentrification in Manhattan's Chinatown has slowed the growth of Fuzhou immigration as well as the growth of Chinese immigrants to Manhattan in general, which is why New York City's rapidly growing Chinese population has now shifted primarily to the boroughs of
Queens and Brooklyn. Some Chinese
landlords in Manhattan, especially the many real estate agencies that are mainly of Cantonese ownership, were accused of prejudice against the Fuzhou immigrants, supposedly making Fuzhou immigrants feel unwelcome because concerns that they would not be able to pay rent or debt to gangs that may have helped smuggled them in illegally into the United States, and because of fear that gangs will come up to the apartments to cause trouble. There is also supposedly a concern that Fujianese are more likely to make the apartments too overcrowded by subdividing an apartment into multiple small spaces to rent to other Fuzhou immigrants. This could also be particularly seen on
East Broadway. Although Mandarin is spoken as a native language among only 10 percent of Chinese speakers in Manhattan's Chinatown, it is used as a secondary
dialect among the greatest number of them. Although
Min Chinese, especially the
Fuzhou dialect, is spoken natively by a third of the Chinese population in the city, it is not used as a lingua franca because speakers of other dialect groups do not learn Min.
Little Hong Kong/Guangdong celebration in Chinatown As the epicenter of the massive Fuzhou influx has shifted to
Brooklyn in the 2000s, Manhattan's Chinatown's Cantonese population remains viable and large and successfully continues to retain its stable Cantonese community identity, maintaining the communal gathering venue established decades ago in the western portion of Chinatown, to shop, work, and socialize—in contrast to the Cantonese population and community identity which are shifting from Brooklyn's original Sunset Park Chinatown to the satellite Chinatowns in Brooklyn. Although the term Little Hong Kong was used a long time ago to describe Manhattan's Chinatown relating to when an influx of Hong Kong immigrants was pouring in at that time and even though not all Cantonese immigrants come from Hong Kong, this portion of Chinatown has heavy Cantonese characteristics, especially with the
Standard Cantonese, which is spoken in Hong Kong and
Guangzhou, China being widely used, so it is in many ways a
Little Hong Kong. A more appropriate term would be Little Guangdong-Hong Kong or
Cantonese-Hong Kong Town since the Cantonese immigrants do come from different regions of the
Guangdong of China including Hong Kong. The long-time established Cantonese Community, which can be considered
Little Hong Kong/Guang Dong or known as the Old Chinatown of Manhattan lies along Mott, Pell, Doyer, Bayard, Elizabeth, Mulberry, Canal, and Bowery Streets, within Manhattan's Chinatown.
Fuzhounese-Cantonese relations The Fuzhou immigration pattern started out in the 1970s, like the Cantonese immigration during the late 1800s to early 1900s that had established Manhattan's Chinatown on Mott Street, Pell Street, and Doyers Street. The immigrants were initially mostly men who later brought their families over. The beginning influx of Fuzhou immigrants arriving during the 1980s and 1990s were entering into a Chinese community that was extremely Cantonese dominated. Due to the Fuzhou immigrants having no legal status and inability to speak Cantonese, many were denied jobs in Chinatown as a result, causing many of them to resort to crimes. There was a lot of Cantonese resentment against Fuzhou immigrants arriving into Chinatown. ==Demographics and culture==