laowhy86

Chinese Diaspora in the USA

Added 2018-06-07 14:41:20 +0000 UTC

Hey Laowinners!

I totally forgot to post the video I made with Vivi's reaction to the first time she went to Chinatown in NYC. It was pretty funny, not just for her, but for me.

The Chinese diaspora was interesting in the USA, as different pockets of Chinese in different areas in the USA were from different areas in China. I spoke to some Taiwanese folk that had to learn Cantonese, as that was the language that was spoken in Chinatown. The mainlanders who only wrote and read simplified Chinese characters ended up having to learn traditional characters as the older Cantonese and HK immigrants used them. The Cantonese in San Fransisco didn't speak a lick of mandarin, but in the Cantonese neighborhoods around Chinatown, mainlanders have been pouring in, so they have been forced, more or less to learn Mandarin to do business and communicate.

The poor, or lower end of the Chinese immigrant spectrum tend to be people from Fujian, and the rich tend to be the new arrivals from the north.

The traditional Chinese American restaurants share, more or less, the same menu, with the Fujian folk making boring, brown sauce covered stir fried dishes, and the Cantonese/Zhejiang-Jiangsu area people making the variations of Dim Sum, sweet and sour dishes, as well as the dumplings and fried noodles you might recognize.

The Chinese immigrants tend to either start following their traditional Chinese religious values more upon settling down in the USA, and some convert to Christianity.

I find this Chinese diaspora in the USA fascinating, and would love to get to know it in even more detail!

Thanks for your support!