The neighborhood that I would like to focus on is Flushing, Queens New York. For the natives that live and work in and by downtown Flushing, it’s synonymous with “the Chinese Manhattan.” Over many years Flushing’s iconic low-rise, mom and pop vendors, and restaurants have sprawled across the north central parts of Queens. Though I do not currently live there, I’ve work and grew up mainly within Flushing.

In the early to late 1970s, Chinese communities and Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association started to establish niches or foothold in the Flushing, Queens. This wave of immigrants who started first populating and developing Flushing’s Chinatown was from Taiwan. It was known as “Little Taiwan” or “Little Taipei,” as Taipei was the capital of Taiwan. During the 1950s and 1960s, New York’s Chinatown predominantly spoke Cantonese and was made up of Cantonese immigrants. But during the 1970s, the Taiwanese immigrants who were one of the first types of immigrants that spoke Mandarin Chinese tried to adapt and assimilate within Manhattan’s Chinatown. Unfortunately with poor housing conditions in the city and large language barriers within the communities, the Taiwanese immigrants could not relate to the Manhattan Chinatown and eventually settled in Flushing.

Our own Manhattan’s Chinatown was thought to be the only center of Chinese culture and history now has another rival, and that rival’s name is Flushing. Bigger and larger Chinese supermarkets have been rapidly growing and developing within flushing, queens. Flushing in itself is becoming an epicenter of Chinese culture outside of Asia and China.

According to Census.gov, Queens as a whole in New York has 56.5% of people who speak other languages then English at home. Also Queens has a greater amount of immigrants then settlers.

United States Census Bureau: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/36081.html