Chinese of Fifth Avenue: East Harlem

No. 22

Hello! This week we present the fourth installment of our ongoing series, the Chinese of Fifth Avenue. (Catch up on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

In Part 4, our reporting takes us to East Harlem, a less-known area along the avenue. In recent decades, the neighborhood has emerged as a popular place to live among certain groups of Chinese people.

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For Some Chinese Immigrants, Fifth Avenue Allure Still Out of Reach

By Belle Lin

Tony Chen’s hands are calloused from years of working at Empire Corner II, a Chinese restaurant on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 116th Street.

He first arrived in New York City from Fuzhou, a city in eastern China's Fujian province, in the 1990s. He has worked nearly every day for two decades at the small restaurant with a bright yellow awning, a neighborhood staple for fast, cheap takeout Chinese food.

It is one of a small cluster of 10 Chinese restaurants in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood, where the final blocks of Fifth Avenue cut across before ending at the Harlem River.

Here at the northernmost stretch of Manhattan’s legendary street, often associated with the city’s upper crust, the community is far removed from the shiny storefronts, elite museums, and historic mansions further downtown.

East Harlem, also known as El Barrio, is home to one of the largest Latino communities in the city—Puerto Rican and Cuban restaurants sit alongside Dominican salons, Mexican bakeries, bodegas and botánicas.

Chinese restaurants like Empire Corner II are nestled in between, offering bargain prices and sparse seating. According to Chen, they primarily cater to Hispanic and African-American customers—over half of East Harlem residents identify as Hispanic, about one-third identify as African-American, and 12 percent as White.

Yet the small number of Chinese restaurants belies a rapidly growing Chinese population in East Harlem. Since 1990, the number of Asians in East Harlem has grown sevenfold to about 11,100 residents, who now make up over eight percent of the population.

Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, dozens of blocks south, has long been the de facto entry point and first stop for Chinese immigrants. But higher rents have pushed many out, with the Asian population there decreasing by over 15 percent from 2000 to 2010.

Some have gone further uptown, where there is more space and subsidized housing.

Other newer and flourishing Chinatowns in the Flushing area of Queens and Sunset Park area of Brooklyn are attractive too, but residents say they’re less accessible from Manhattan’s Chinatown, which remains a hub for Chinese language services, food, and employment.

Charlotte Fu for Chinarrative.

For some Chinese immigrants, the allure of what Fifth Avenue represents is still out of reach. Many of the Chinese who moved to East Harlem live in city-sponsored or public housing developments, which are affordable units for moderate and low-income residents.

Franklin Plaza, a large mid-income co-op complex on 107th Street just a few blocks east of Fifth Avenue, has seen greater numbers of Chinese residents over the past decades. It is one of only a handful of mid-income co-ops in the city, all with long waiting lists. Building officials have estimated that as many as a third of all residents are Chinese.

After the first group of Chinese residents moved to the complex in search of more affordable housing—some were granted a spot as early as 1960—residents say their friends and family followed.

A broader wave of gentrification has pushed many New Yorkers out of their established homes. Jason Wu, an East Harlem resident and member of Community Board 11, an advisory group that oversees neighborhood affairs, said that these patterns can be seen throughout the city, with particular adverse impact on low-income, immigrant, and communities of color. Wu says:

I think gentrification and displacement is pricing out many of the Chinese community from Manhattan’s Chinatown, and this is creating new neighborhoods throughout New York that are seeing this growth.

“Meanwhile, East Harlem has historically been a very affordable neighborhood so it makes sense why the Chinese immigrant community would move here,” he said. “We see gentrification and displacement in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, and we also see it in East Harlem.”

On a recent weekday afternoon, the sidewalks and community spaces near the Franklin Plaza towers were full of Chinese faces—elderly couples out for a walk or chatting on benches, mothers pushing babies in strollers, and later in the day, uniform-clad children on their way home from school and young men shooting hoops on the basketball court.

Since he began working at Empire Corner II in the early 2000s, Chen said he has noticed an increasing number of Chinese people in the neighborhood. “It’s too expensive to live in [Manhattan’s] Chinatown. And it’s too expensive to open a restaurant there too,” he said in Mandarin.

After he got the job in East Harlem, Chen began commuting from Brooklyn. Given the choice, he said, many Chinese people would not want to live in East Harlem—including himself. Chen adds:

There is not much for the Chinese people here. They need to go to Chinatown or Queens to find their groceries.

East Harlem: Far from Ideal

Judy Ah-Yune, director of Manhattan community services at the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social services organization, said East Harlem is not currently an ideal neighborhood for many Chinese immigrants because they are monolingual, limiting their interactions with other residents.

“There are no Chinese supermarkets or markets that would accommodate their needs, so many would still travel back and forth to Chinatown to get groceries, see the doctor,” she said. “For those who have young children, they would still travel to Chinatown for schooling. However, those who have not, communication with the teachers or the school can be limited or hard.”

Some East Harlem residents said that because their numbers remain small compared to Chinatown, and because of their area’s proximity to it, East Harlem has not flourished into the kind of community that exists in Brooklyn or Queens. The presence of a Chinese grocery store will be the first sign that a true satellite Chinatown is forming, said one woman who has lived at Franklin Plaza for four years.

In 2013, the Chinese community in East Harlem was pushed into the spotlight after a string of robberies targeted Chinese residents. There were no Chinese-speaking police officers serving the area at the time, resulting in some being reassigned from Lower Manhattan. The incident also forced city officials and the wider community to recognize the growing needs of East Harlem’s Chinese residents.

The Union Settlement Association, a social services agency in East Harlem, began organizing a popular Lunar New Year celebration in 2013. The agency reported that one third of its 700 elderly participants at Franklin Plaza’s Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) are Chinese, and last year began offering tai chi and ribbon dancing aimed at its senior centers.

“Before we were here, the Chinese population would go to Chinatown to get translations and help with entitlements and advocacy efforts,” said Melanie Kane, director of the NORC. “Now they don’t have to go Chinatown, they can go right here.”

Credit: Tobias Zils on Unsplash.

Queenie Chan, a trilingual case manager who runs programs for Chinese seniors at the NORC, said over 90 percent of participants speak Mandarin, and the rest speak Cantonese and Taishanese. One reason the seniors would like to see a Chinese grocery store in the area is because of the difficulty of navigating public transportation, she said.

Chan says:

We can provide everything here, breakfast or lunch, but some of the senior people, if they are active, they prefer to go to Chinatown because they have been there for more than 10 years.

The Chinese-American Planning Council does not have an office in East Harlem, but Manhattan community services director Ah-Yune said they still provide a vital service. “Although we don’t have a physical office in East Harlem, our services do reach the Chinese residents who are there because there are no services there that can linguistically serve them,” she said.

Nilsa Orama, chair of Community Board 11, said the board does not currently have specific initiatives for the Chinese community, but is interested in exploring ways to support activities for them.

Ethnic Enclave

“I think that individuals migrate to places where they feel that they will be accepted and that there is opportunity for a good life; where they feel comfortable speaking their own language,” she said. “One thing I can say is that East Harlem is welcoming to all ethnicities and those who live here feel a sense of community. It does not surprise me to see increases across all populations in our community.”

But still, with a shortage of services dedicated to the Chinese community in East Harlem, advocates have increasingly asked city community centers to offer Chinese language services. A community forum last October, aimed at conducting a new neighborhood resiliency study, tried to address the gap by offering both Spanish and Chinese interpretation.

In the meantime, Wu said the community board will strengthen its relationships with existing organizations downtown, but he is also aware of the neighborhood’s current shortcomings. “While East Harlem’s Chinese population has increased, there isn’t necessarily the mechanisms in place to engage and empower those newer community members, many who are seniors and monolingual Chinese speakers,” he said.

Chen said he would like to see the community in East Harlem turn into a Chinatown, but does not need the cultural familiarity of Lower Manhattan, Sunset Park, or Flushing.

Though ethnic enclaves serve an important role in helping immigrants adapt to life in a new country, especially in New York City, Chen’s dream is for his son, a business student at Baruch College, to live wherever he chooses.

“My wish is for my son to have a very successful life,” he said. “I think he can have it [in America].”

Belle Lin is a journalist in New York City.