唐人街,异乡的家园
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Chinatown of New York City, a tightly-packed yet sprawlingneighborhood which continues to grow rapidly, is the largest Chinatown in the United States and the settlement of the largest concentration of Chinese in the western hemisphere. Both a tourist attraction and the home of many Chinese New Yorkers, Chinatown offers visitors and local residents hundreds of restaurants, exotic herbs, fish markets and shops of knickknacks on tortuously winding and overcrowded streets within a two square mile boundary in the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island. Canal Street is the major street crossing Chinatown.
Within these areas, you'll find traditional Chinese herbal-medicine shops, acupuncturists, food markets filled with amazing varieties of fish and exotic vegetables, funky pagoda-style buildings, stores selling all sorts of items from beautiful jewelry and silk robes to hair accessories, and hundreds of restaurants serving every imaginable type of Chinese cuisine, from dim sum to fried noodles to extravagant Cantonese, Hunan, Shanghai, or Szechuan banquets.
Lured to the Pacific coast of the United States by the stories of "Gold Mountain" - California - during the gold rush of the 1840s and 1850s and brought by labor brokers to build the Central Pacific Railroad, the earliest Chinese arrived in the west expecting to spend a few years working, thus earning enough money to return to China, build a house and marry. As the gold mines began yielding less and the railroad neared completion, the broad availability of cheap and willing Chinese labor in such industries as cigar-rolling and textiles became a source of tension for white laborers, who thought that the Chinese were coming to take their jobs and threaten their livelihoods. Mob violence and rampant discrimination in the west drove the Chinese east into larger cities, where job opportunities were more open and they could more easily ①blend into the already diverse population.
Chinese immigrants arrived in significant numbers in the New York area in the late 1870's. Pushed out of a wide variety of occupations, they entered low-status service work, primarily hand laundries. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, not repealed until 1943, effectively prohibited Chinese laborers and their families from entering America. It made Chinese workers the first nationality to be prohibited from immigrating into the United States. Due to the absence of women and children, the community essentially became a "bachelor society". The prevailing numbers of male Chinese in Chinatown, with rumors of opium dens, prostitution and slave girls, deepened the white antagonism toward the Chinese.
When the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally lifted in 1943 during a time of war when alliance was formed between two countries, China was given a small immigration quota, and the community continued to grow, expanding slowly throughout the '40s and '50s. The garment industry, the hand-laundry business, and restaurants continued to employ Chinese internally, paying less than minimum wage ②under the table to thousands. Despite the view of the Chinese as members of a "model minority", Chinatown's Chinese came largely from Cantonese speaking mainland, and were viewed as the "downtown Chinese", as opposed the Taiwan-educated "uptown Chinese", members of the Chinese elite.
When the quota was raised in 1968, Chinese flooded into the country from the mainland, mostly from Canton of South China. Chinatown's population exploded, expanding into Little Italy, often buying buildings with cash and turning them into garment factories or office buildings. Although many of the buildings in Chinatown are tenements from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rents in Chinatown are some of the highest in New York, competing with the Upper West Side and midtown. Foreign investment from Hong Kong has poured capital into Chinatown, and the little space there is a precious commodity.
During the past two decades, the population structure of Chinatown kept shifting. With recent influx of abundant immigrants from Fujian Province of China, the once dominant Cantonese dialect is now heard mixed with Fujianese. Decades ago, Mainland Chinese or Taiwanese coming into Chinatown without speaking Cantonese would find it extremely hard to get around in the area. Today, it is changing rapidly, thanks to immigrant waves of Chinese from Taiwan, then the Mainland, in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
New arrivals of Chinese to New York are not confined to the old Chinatown in Manhattan anymore. Recent years have seen rapid expansion of Chinese concentrated around 8th Avenue of Brooklyn and Flushing in Queens. These Chinatown satellites diluted Chinese into different boroughs of New York and further contributed to the multicultural diversity of the city.
Today, Chinese traveling from all over the world, Cantonese, Mandarin-speaking Chinese or Southeast Asia Chinese alike, would stroll Chinatown, look at goods from half a world away and have a hefty Chinese dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, all to feel at home in a strange foreign land. No matter what kind of Chinese dialect we speak, we are all Chinese, and Chinatown is always the place to remind ourselves again and again that we are not complete strangers here. We have a place in New York to feel at home.
纽约市的唐人街是一个持续快速发展、拥挤不堪且杂乱无章的街区，而且是美国最大的唐人街以及西半球华人密度最大的居住地。唐人街既是旅游胜地，也是许多华裔纽约人的家园，在曼哈顿岛下东区2平方公里的范围内，为游客和当地居民在歪七扭八、异常拥挤的街道上提供了数以百计的餐馆、异域药草、鱼市和出售的商店。而运河大街则是横穿唐人街的要道。
在这些地方，你会看到传统的中草药店、针灸医师、满是珍奇鱼类和异域蔬菜的菜市场、怪异的塔式建筑、销售着从亮丽珠宝和丝袍到发饰等各类器物的商店，以及各式中餐一应俱全、供应着从点心到炒面再到粤菜、湘菜、沪菜或川菜等盛宴的数百家餐馆。
最初，受到19世纪40和50年代淘金热期间“金山”（加利福尼亚）传说的诱惑而来到美国太平洋海岸的华人，以及被劳务中介带来修建中央太平洋铁路的华人，来到西部是为了干上几年，赚到足够的钱，回到中国成家娶亲。由于金矿产量开始下降以及铁路接近完工，在卷制雪茄和纺织等行业，廉价肯干的华人劳工比比皆是，引起了那些认为华人正在接替他们的工作并威胁其生计的白人劳工的恐慌。西部地区的凶徒暴行和歧视盛行迫使华人东进，前往更大的城市，那里的工作机会更大，而且他们可以更轻易地融入到本已多样化的人群之中。
19世纪70年代末，华人移民大量涌入纽约地区。受到众多行业排斥的他们，进入到下层服务性行业，主要是手工洗衣店。1882年，《排华法案》得到通过（直到1943年才被撤销），有效地遏止了华人劳工和其家属进入美国。它令华人劳工成为了第一个被禁止移民美国的民族。由于缺女和儿童，这一社区实质上成为了“光棍群体”。唐人街男性华人的数量众多，再加上被传为是毒窝以及和女奴之地，加剧了白人对华人的敌视。
在两国结盟的战时阶段中，《排华法案》最终于1943年被予以废除，当时中国分到了少量移民配额，这一社区得以继续发展，在40和50年代缓慢扩大。制衣业、手工洗衣行业和餐馆继续在内部雇佣华人，在暗地里向数千人支付比最低工资要低的工资。尽管华人被视为“模范少数族裔”分子，但唐人街的华人主要来自大陆粤语地区，被看作是“下城华人”，与之相对的则是接受台湾教育的“上城华人”――华人精英分子。
当配额于1968年得到增加之时，华人从（中国）大陆地区涌入该国，主要是来自华南的广东省。唐人街的人口激增（都扩到了“小意大利区”里面），经常使用现钞收购建筑，并将其改成制衣厂或写字楼。在唐人街的建筑中，虽然有许多自19世纪末20世纪初以来就是廉价公寓，但唐人街的房租在纽约位居前列，与上西区和中城不相上下。来自香港的外资向唐人街注入资本，在那里，一小块空间就是一种稀缺商品。
在过去20年中，唐人街的人口结构不断变化。最近随着中国福建省移民大量涌入，现在就会听到，在之前以粤语为主的方言中夹杂着福建话。数十年前，不讲粤语的大陆华人或台湾人会发现在这一地区是举步维艰的。如今，正在快速发生着变化，原因在于70、80和90年代出现了华人移民潮，先是来自台湾，后又始自大陆。
新近来到纽约的华人不再局限于呆在曼哈顿的老唐人街。近些年来，华人在纽约布鲁克林第道和皇后区的法拉盛地区聚集起来，增幅迅速。这些唐人街的卫星城将华人分散到纽约不同的区中，进一步促进了该市多元文化的多样性。
如今，来自世界各地的华人，如广东人、讲普通话的华人或是东南亚华人等，都会到唐人街逛上一番，看一看来自另一半球的产品，并在当地一家中餐馆里吃上一顿丰盛的中国菜，所有人都会在他国异土之上有归家的感觉。无论我们所讲的是何种方言，我们都是华人，而唐人街永远都是那块反复向我们提醒着我们在这里并非完全是异乡之人的地方。在纽约，我们有一个感觉像家的地方。
Chinatown Tourist Information Kiosk
唐人街新建的旅游服务中心，外观颇具中国特色。
East Broadway, now a popular neighborhood for Fujianese.
东百老汇大街，如今是福建人常来常往的地方。
Familiar knickknacks from China
从中国来的小玩意比比皆是。
McDonald's in Chinatown
外观设计带有浓重中国特色的麦当劳。
sprawl /spr5l/ vi.不规则地伸展
hemisphere /`hemisfi9/ n.半球
exotic /iG`z4tik/ adj.异国情调的；外来的
knickknack /`nikn2k/ n.小玩意儿
tortuously /`t5tju9sli/ adv.曲折地
wind /waind/ vi.蜿蜒前进
acupuncturist /,2kju`p7MktH9rist/ n.针灸医生
funky /`f7Mki/ adj.古怪的
pagoda /p9`G9ud9/ n.宝塔
robe /r9ub/ n.长袍
dim sum /`dim`s7m/ n.点心
extravagant /iks`tr2v9G9nt/ adj.奢侈的；放纵的
banquet /`b2Mkwit/ n.宴会
mine /main/ n.矿；矿山
yield /j1ld/ v.出产；生长
textile /`tekstail/ n.纺织品
mob /m4b/ n.暴徒；乌合之众
rampant /`r2mp9nt/ adj.猖獗的；蔓生的
occupation /,4kju`peiH9n/ n.职业
laundry /`l5ndri/ n.洗衣店
repeal /ri`p1l/ v.废止；撤销
immigrate /`imiGreit/ vi.移居入境
bachelor /`b2tH9l9/ n.单身汉
opium den /`9upj9m den/ 毒窝；毒巢
prostitution /,pr4sti`t(H9n/ n.
antagonism /2n`t2G9niz(9)m/ n.敌对；对抗
alliance /9`lai9ns/ n.联盟；联合
quota /`kw9ut9/ n.配额；限额
garment /`G3m9nt/ n.衣服；外衣
tenement /`tenim9nt/ n.廉价公寓
influx /`infl7ks/ n.流入
abundant /9`b7nd9nt/ adj.丰富的
confined /k9n`faind/ adj.被限制的
satellite /`s2t9lait/ n.卫星城镇
dilute /dai`l(t,/ v.冲淡；变淡
hefty /`hefti/ adj.重的
dialect /`dai9lekt/ n.方言；语调
①blend into 融入；与……混为一体
②under the table 暗地里；私下