Author Archives: Nike Lee

The best bubble tea is sold inside Minzhongle Restaurant.

The 1st Flushing Municipal parking lot.

A map of the area. Flushing’s Freedom Mile.

A good place to shop & eat when it’s open.

Car wash starting at $6.00.

Facing the bakery in Koreavillage.

H&Y Market sells fruits.

Hungry anyone?

Murray Hill Plaza has 6 Korean places out of the 11 that are there.

Paris Baguette at night.

A karaoke bar in Murray Hill. It’s a “music studio”.

The school of Saint Andrew Avellino.

Cigarettes anyone?

New York City is known to have five boroughs: Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens. In certain areas of each borough you will see that there are more of a certain race than others; Flushing is one of those towns. Flushing is a neighborhood in Queens, New York that has more Chinese and Korean residents than any other race. Certain parts of Flushing are known to be split up as “China Town” and “Korea Town” even though it is not the actual name of the area. This is where a lot of the Chinese and most of the Korean people reside in New York City. By looking through the pictures you will see that this is true, almost 70%, if not more, of the businesses in Flushing are run by a Chinese or Korean.

Flushing is a pretty big part of what makes New York City important because for those Koreans who do not live here, they come here to interact with other fellow Koreans. They step out of their towns and come to Flushing to eat and buy Korean food. Even for those that are not Korean or Chinese, they get to experience a part of asian culture without having to leave the country. There are lots of well known places for specific things to do like shopping, shooting pool, singing karaoke, drinking at bars, holding events at event halls, and relaxing at saunas. When you go down Roosevelt Avenue around Union Street and Main Street it is known to be a place for shopping but this area is also known to be where people ride the MTA by bus, subway, or train. There are always lines of people waiting to catch their buses. This is the “China Town” area where 90% of the stores are Chinese stores. One store that is very popular in this part of town is a bubble tea place called Kung Fu Tea where there are a lot of teens that go for a refreshment especially in the summertime because of their slushies.

On Union Street there are numerous amounts of restaurants and places to shop and they also have some of New York’s Finest at NYPD Precinct 109. If you were to go down Union you will find Flushing High School which is one of the oldest high schools in the city today.

On Prince Street there are known to be many Chinese bars around the area and two very well known places to shoot pool. In Korean culture there is a game called Sa-Gu which uses a pool table with no pockets and uses one white, one yellow, and one red ball. This is why a lot of Koreans come to these two places because there aren’t many other places with these kinds of tables. These pool halls also have ping pong tables where you pay by the hour to play one of China’s favorite sports.

Northern Boulevard in Flushing is where you can find the only car wash to successfully stay in business for a decent amount of time. Right to next the car wash there is an event hall that was previously called Seoul Plaza and is now called Dae Dong Manor or KoreaVillage where there are bakeries, boutiques, and a spa on the first two floors and the basement level. The third floor is where there are three ballrooms used for special events like weddings, sweet sixteens, or for screenings of the World Cup. In the summer of 2010 this was where a lot of Koreans came to watch it all happen on a big projector. Across the street from this building there is a one of three Korean supermarkets in Flushing and this one is called Hanyang Mart/H&Y Marketplace. H&Y is the only 24 hour supermarket in the area and is known for the restaurant connected to the side of it.

Going up Northern there is Murray Hill Plaza which has the second Korean supermarket called H Mart, a very well known bakery in Korea called Paris Baguette Cafe, and a very popular vietnamese restaurant called Mekong. There is a Murray Hill LIRR train station just a couple blocks away and this area is known mostly to have a lot of bars and karaoke bars.

One by one these stores and businesses were built from ground up for years to become what it is today which makes Flushing an important part of NYC; and it helped create New York City. As New York City is known to have the most diverse amount of minorities from all over the world, Flushing is a place where a majority of the Chinese and Korean Americans live and is a place where you can go to experience their culture.