“The crooked streets of one of New York’s oldest ghettos smell of salt and fish and orange peel.”[1] An author, Gwen Kinkead, describes an appearance of the Chinatown in the book, Chinatown. As a biggest community, Chinatown is place at the Sothern end of Manhattan. Chinese emigrate from their country to here while the booming time. As a neighborhood, Chinese are self-contained. In 1965, Congress changed laws that they kept more than 80 years. The laws were about blocking Chinese. After changing the laws, during the American History, the new arrivals to Chinatown are the biggest wave of Asian immigration. This is an important consequence that immigration policy made several decades ago.
After Filipinos, Chinese is the second largest Asian group. Their first immigration choice is New York to come straight to U.S.A. under the new law. Every month, fourteen hundred people come in and Chinatown is spread under Cannel Street to Soho. Chinatown gives energy to Lower East Side and Chinese settle in Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens.
Almost a hundred and fifty thousand Chinese live in Chinatown and other a hundred and fifty thousand Chinese live the outside area. Moreover, immigrants from various countries such as Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, South America and Philippines use their own dialects. Northern Chinese and Taiwanese use Mandarin and people who come from southern china use Cantonese. Many new immigrants would not understand each other and this is not still solved.
Chinese change Chinatown as a center of manufacturing city’s clothes. Every year, almost 60 factories pay over $ 200 million as a payroll. A year, jewelry district make over $ 100 million in gold and diamond. Also, three hundred and fifty restaurants drag tourists and conventioneers. However, those elements make Chinatown as a center of crime in the United States. Furthermore, half of the heroin is smuggled into the U.S.A. under organized crime in Chinatown.
Chinatown has a ruthless social order. This is strongly existed and looks like against the law. However, Chinatown is an isolated society compared with other groups and people who live in Chinatown accepted this order naturally. Chinese who live in Chinatown call the outsiders as ‘Low Faan.’ Low faan is a short term of guey low faan or barbarian. This term is used when the community is made in 1870. Chinese think low faan is a right term to call White people because Chinese think China is a center of the world. “Eva Tan, a special advisor on Asian affairs the New York’s Nayor Edward Koch, says ‘Don’t forget, foreigners forced China to open up and be ruled by gunboat diplomacy’.”[2] Chinese is treated under the foreigner for a long time. They used to hear the famous sign ‘Chinese and dogs now allowed’ at foreigner’s hotel in China. Residents who live in Chinatown a long time remember how foreigners treat Chinese in the past. They remember racism.
Chinatown residents are divided as two groups, first-generation and others. First generation is 80 % of the residents and they are born in other countries. Others are people who live in Chinatown less than 5 years. Every year, new arrivals do not that the United States is a different country compared with China. For example, in America, people have a right to speech. When they arrive here, they need to know what America is. Seward Park High School is the biggest high school in Chinatown. Half of students are Asian, mostly Chinese and students who arrive in here within 1 or 2 weeks enroll this school. Most classes are also about learning America.
When people think about Chinatown, they remember fortune cookies at first. “Their soft circles of baked dough are folded in half over a paper message, usually a fortune.”[4] However, unfortunately, fortune cookies were born in America. However, the origin of fortune cookie is hard to find. Maybe, fortune cookie is born in California. Perhaps, it is related to Asian immigrants. “A Japanese landscape architect, Sumiharu Hagiwara-Nagata, is said to have introduced them in 1914 at a garden he designed in San Francisco to accompany tea.”[5] And then, the garden now becomes the Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden. Even though, Sumiharu believed that he was a first person who makes fortune cookie, he gave this to Chinese for their successful marketing.
“The baker David Jung is said to have invented fortune cookies in Los Angeles sometime around 1918.”[6] Moreover, a preacher handed fortune cookies to the poor and homeless people to give biblical messages of hope and encouragement. After then, Jung started Hong Kong Noodle Company and kept making fortune cookies. In the beginning 1930s, on the East Coast, the first person who made fortune cookies was William T. and his Key Fortune Cookie Company. All of manufacturers needed chopsticks when they folded their fortune cookies. In the late 1960s, owner of the Louse Fortune Cookie Company, San Francisean Edward Louie, invented a machine to fold fortune cookie. In the late 1970s, someone realized that fortune cookie needs its own day. “Like many things about the fortune cookie, year, month, and day are shrouded in mystery. Many say the date was September 13; others place the date sometime between April and September. There was a mock court case to determine the California city of origin; San Francisco won. No one contested or confirmed the date for fortune cookie celebrations.”[7]
Fortune cookies are made automatically. “Companies on both coasts and in between and some in other countries now make these treats of flour, sugar, and flavoring.”[8] Wonton Food Inc, for example, used the world’s largest manufacturer, Golden Bowl, for making more than 4 million fortune cookies a day. In the factories, the automated line makes fortune cookies with messages for occasions like wedding, birthdays. Fortune cookie is selling around the world and messages are transferred depend on the countries of selling.
“Billy Wider’s 1966 movie The Fortune Cookie distributed fifteen thousand with the message. “There’s a marvelous picture in your future.” According to the Powerball Lottery Commission, in 2005 more than a hundred winners in several states used numbers from those printed on Golden Bowl fortune cookies.”[9]
In the 1980s, Wonton Noodle Company changed their name as Wonton Food Inc. In 1993, Wonton Food Inc. started to make fortune cookies in a China where nobody knew fortune cookies before and they realized that fortune cookies are famous both China and the United States.
Fig. 1 Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, San Francisco, California.[10]
ESL 4
Neighborhood: Chinatown_Final essay
July 2, 2010 / Mijin Park
Jamerry Kim
[1] Gwen Kinkead. Chinatown (1992) p3.
[2] Ibid., p5.
[3] Ibid., P11.
[4] Andrew F. Smith, American Food and Drink (2007) p233.
[5] Ibid., p233.
[6] Ibid., p233.
[7] Ibid., p233.
[8] Ibid., p233.
[9] Ibid., p233.
[10] Devin Hayes, Devin’s travelogue, http://everywheremag.com/people/dhayes/page4
Bibliography
Hayes, Devin. “Devin’s travelogue”, 24 August 2007,http://everywheremag.com/people/dhayes/page4> (29 June 2010).Smith, Andrew F. American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2007.
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