It's almost cathartic to hear the struggle of immigrants coming to the US for better opportunities transcends ethnic and racial backgrounds. We've heard this story differently before about Latino immigrants coming to the US and taking tough jobs in the kitchen to provide for a better life for their family. Anthony Bourdain even chronicles it in his book, Kitchen Confidential.
Of course this narrative of a hard working immigrant coming to this country to work goes squarely against what we hear from critics saying immigrants only come here to freeload. If anything, this article just shows how lazy Americans can be, when Americans can't be bothered to eat meat or fish with bones, but of course that's just an anecdote.
How do you create opportunities for immigrants and people in general? How do you empower people to leverage their own skills and monetize them, without others looking to exploit them.
The whole 'immigrants coming here to freeload' thing is a ruse capitalizing on fear of the other in order to gain political power. If the immigrants would stop their work collectively and move back to their countries of origin the bottom would drop out of the economy within 90 days.
>'If anything, this article just shows how lazy Americans can be, when Americans can't be bothered to eat meat or fish with bones, but of course that's just an anecdote.'
Labeling Americans as a group and particularly certain subsets within as lazy is just as credible and, I'd wager, often done for many of the same reasons as labeling immigrants freeloaders.
We (and most every other country) demonize immigrants as a matter of course on usually fallacious ethnic, religious and economic grounds. See how the Irish were portrayed[1] when waves of them were showing up in America in the early 19th century. The rhetoric and stereotypes have been reused in each successive wave, for the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Latin Americans, etc.
I was actually surprised that the workers in question are themselves Chinese. In and around DC (Indian Head extends perhaps 15 miles out) restaurants that 10 or 15 years ago would have been staffed entirely by Asians are overwhelmingly staffed by Hispanics under Asian management.
I often wonder what sort of path the people who used to work those jobs have taken since.
>>“Everything we do, we do for the next generation,” he said, and added, “No matter what, it beats sitting around in the village.”
Being from a small town in an impoverished area of the US, I can somewhat relate to that sentiment. Very interesting story. The author paints a very stark picture about restaurant workers from China. The subject of the story, who spoke the quote above, makes more than I would have supposed.
Fascinating article. One part in particular answered a question I've had about Houston for ages:
I visited Houston with a friend about a decade ago and we were both puzzled about the Chinatown area of the city. Why, we asked, would a city smack in the middle of the country have such a large Chinese population? NYC & California made sense, but Texas?
And as it turns out:
"Rain and his companions walked for a full day and most of the night, until, before dawn, they came to a road, where an associate of the smugglers picked them up. They went to Houston first, and from there a van took them straight to New York."
Waystation city on the international Chinese immigrants smuggling route for folks who just crossed the Mexican border. Fascinating.
EDIT: Aaaaaaand I'm wrong. Thank you shiftpgdn for the Wikipedia link and background.
That's not the real reason at all. First Houston is major port city, the fourth largest city in the country, the most diverse in the country and it's certainly not "smack in the middle of the country." Houston has two China towns. The east downtown China Town area was established in the 50s-70s but later abandoned due to white(yellow?) flight as the new Chinatown area expanded in the west of the city in the 1980s. This was also fed by Vietnamese "boat-people" who were typically of Chinese descent.
That's not necessarily the reason for Houston having such a large Chinese community. The majority of Chinese in Houston are legal and often more educated immigrants that would not have gone through Mexico.
The people profiled in the article were from specific poor areas in China (eg Fujian) that could be considered the Chinese equivalent of Appalachia.
This is the kind of article that I want to read in a newspaper. It's a story about real people in my own area - not some scary, exotic, far-off place. Politics should not the only source of news.
> “There are only three jobs a Chinese immigrant can get without papers,” a woman from Beijing told me. “You can work at a massage parlor, you can work doing nails, or you can work in a restaurant.”
Curiously, Chinese laundries are not mentioned, and are ubiquitous here in NYC. I wonder it the omission is a mistake, or if there's some reason laundries don't fit in this list.
The quote is from the perspective of 'a woman from Beijing', it's not meant to be an exhaustive list, just as this article is not meant to be a research study - it's a perspective piece. Interestingly enough, it implies that women from Beijing (or at the very least this one) are under the impression that those are the only three jobs available to Chinese immigrants. Of course there are more possible jobs available, but I find the anecdotal perspective more valuable in this journalistic context.
Great article! Being the fat guy I am, I had to google "salt and cornstarch on meat" and I'm glad I did! "As odd as it sounds, don’t skip the cornstarch. The cornstarch absorbs additional moisture from the surface of the steaks. Drier exteriors mean even darker, more intense browning, which translates to bigger, more complex flavor."[1]
Anyone who's interested in a more in-depth look should check out Fortune Cookie Chronicles. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446698970 It really explains why the food at 99.9% of the "Szchewan" and "Peking" etc. places all tastes the same.
I remember going to Chinatown in San Francisco when I started college and seeing the job postings posted in a window for Chinese restaurants throughout the country. It blew my mind but also made so much sense.
[+] [-] cordovas|11 years ago|reply
Of course this narrative of a hard working immigrant coming to this country to work goes squarely against what we hear from critics saying immigrants only come here to freeload. If anything, this article just shows how lazy Americans can be, when Americans can't be bothered to eat meat or fish with bones, but of course that's just an anecdote.
How do you create opportunities for immigrants and people in general? How do you empower people to leverage their own skills and monetize them, without others looking to exploit them.
Great article.
[+] [-] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incision|11 years ago|reply
Labeling Americans as a group and particularly certain subsets within as lazy is just as credible and, I'd wager, often done for many of the same reasons as labeling immigrants freeloaders.
[+] [-] kjs3|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/06/negative-ste...
[+] [-] incision|11 years ago|reply
I often wonder what sort of path the people who used to work those jobs have taken since.
[+] [-] marktangotango|11 years ago|reply
Being from a small town in an impoverished area of the US, I can somewhat relate to that sentiment. Very interesting story. The author paints a very stark picture about restaurant workers from China. The subject of the story, who spoke the quote above, makes more than I would have supposed.
[+] [-] nlh|11 years ago|reply
I visited Houston with a friend about a decade ago and we were both puzzled about the Chinatown area of the city. Why, we asked, would a city smack in the middle of the country have such a large Chinese population? NYC & California made sense, but Texas?
And as it turns out:
"Rain and his companions walked for a full day and most of the night, until, before dawn, they came to a road, where an associate of the smugglers picked them up. They went to Houston first, and from there a van took them straight to New York."
Waystation city on the international Chinese immigrants smuggling route for folks who just crossed the Mexican border. Fascinating.
EDIT: Aaaaaaand I'm wrong. Thank you shiftpgdn for the Wikipedia link and background.
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|11 years ago|reply
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Chinese_American...
[+] [-] abat|11 years ago|reply
The people profiled in the article were from specific poor areas in China (eg Fujian) that could be considered the Chinese equivalent of Appalachia.
[+] [-] protonfish|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|11 years ago|reply
Curiously, Chinese laundries are not mentioned, and are ubiquitous here in NYC. I wonder it the omission is a mistake, or if there's some reason laundries don't fit in this list.
[+] [-] dozy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwawayornot|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://americastestkitchen.tumblr.com/post/86246187118/perfe...
[+] [-] wnissen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatmoney|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpthrapp|11 years ago|reply
Wow. Can't say that I thought of that.
[+] [-] pessimizer|11 years ago|reply