美国【大西洋月刊】“中国城”的末日

中国的崛起，是否意味着这个美国最有故事的少数族群飞地的末日？

Does China’s rise mean the end of one of America’s most storied ethnic enclaves?


原题：The End of Chinatown

原址：http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... -of-chinatown/8732/
By Bonnie Tsui
David Leventi

As the manager of a Chinatown career center on Kearny Street in San Francisco, Winnie Yu has watched working-class clients come and go. Most of them, like Shen Ming Fa, have the makings of the quintessential Chinese American immigrant success story. Shen, who is 39, moved to San Francisco with his family last fall, an English-speaking future in mind for his 9-year-old daughter. His first stop was Chinatown, where he found an instant community and help with job and immigration problems.

作为旧金山*Kearny街上中国城职业介绍中心的经理，Winnie Yu眼见着工人阶层的顾客来来去去。其中大多数如沈明方（音译）一样，有办法复制经典的华裔美国移民成功故事。沈今年39岁，去年秋天举家搬到旧金山，心里惦记着他9岁的女儿能有个讲英语的未来。他的首站是中国城，在此他找到了一个速成的社区以及工作和移民问题相关的协助。

*原文为圣弗朗西斯科，下同。

But lately, Yu has been seeing a shift; rather than coming, her clients have been going—in pursuit of what might be called the Chinese Dream.

可后来Yu发现事情有了转变；她的顾客们不是陆续到来而是离开了——他们所寻求的或许可称之为中国梦。

“Now the American Dream is broken,” Shen tells me one evening at the career center, his fingers drumming restlessly on the table; he speaks mostly in Mandarin, and Yu helps me translate. Shen has mostly been unemployed, picking up part-time work when he can find it. Back in China, he worked as a veterinarian and at a school of traditional Chinese culture. “In China, people live more comfortably: in a big house, with a good job. Life is definitely better there.” On his fingers, he counts out several people he knows who have gone back since he came to the United States. When I ask him if he thinks about returning to China, he glances at his daughter, who is sitting nearby, then looks me in the eye. “My daughter is thriving,” he says, carefully. “But I think about it every day.”

“现在美国梦已经破碎了，”某天傍晚沈在职业介绍如是对我说。他用手指不停敲着桌面；他讲的大部分是普通话，而Yu帮我翻译。沈总是在失业，若能找到些零工就做一做。在中国老家时，他任职于一家中国传统养殖学校当兽医。“在中国过得更舒服：住大房子，有份好工作。日子肯定比这儿强。”他掰着手指数出几个来美国之后认识的已经回去的人。我问他是不是在想回中国，他瞅了瞅坐在一旁的女儿，然后看着我的眼睛。“我女儿在茁壮成长，”他小心翼翼地说，“但我每天都在想这个。”

Recent years have seen stories of Chinese “sea turtles”—those who are educated overseas and migrate back to China—lured by Chinese-government incentives that include financial aid, cash bonuses, tax breaks, and housing assistance. In 2008, Shi Yigong, a molecular biologist at Princeton, turned down a prestigious $10 million research grant to return to China and become the dean of life sciences at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. “My postdocs are getting great offers,” says Robert H. Austin, a physics professor at Princeton.

近几年见到些中国“海归”的故事——他们在海外受教育然后移民回中国——受到中国政府各种激励措施的诱惑包括资金支持、现金奖励、减税以及住房援助。2008年，普林斯顿分子生物学家施一公拒掉一项声望很高的1000万美元研究资金回到中国，然后成为了北京清华大学生命科学院的院长。“我的博士后能收到很棒的offer，”Princeton物理教授Rober H Austin说。

But unskilled laborers are going back, too. Labor shortages in China have led to both higher wages and more options in where they can work. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, published a paper on China’s demography through 2030 that says thinking of migration as moving in just one direction is a mistake: the flows are actually much more dynamic. “Migration, the way we understand it in the U.S., is about people coming, staying, and dying in our country. The reality is that it has never been that way,” says the institute’s president, Demetrios Papademetriou. “Historically, over 50 percent of the people who came here in the first half of the 20th century left. In the second half, the return migration slowed down to 25, 30 percent. But today, when we talk about China, what you’re actually seeing is more people going back … This may still be a trickle, in terms of our data being able to capture it—there’s always going to be a lag time of a couple of years—but with the combination of bad labor conditions in the U.S. and sustained or better conditions back in China, increasing numbers of people will go home.”

但是不熟练的劳动者也要回家了。中国的劳动力短缺不仅导致了高工资还有更多选择在哪里工作的权利。华盛顿特区的智库美国移民学会发布了一份关于中国人口至2030年的文件，认为只考虑单向移民是错误的：这流动是更加动态的。“我们在美国理解的移民方式，就是人民来这里定居然后死在这个国家。事实上从来并非如此，”学会主席Demetrios Papademetrious说，“历史上，20世纪前半叶到达这里的人中超过50%都离开了。下半个世纪返回原籍的移民减少到25~30%。但是如今，就中国来说，实际看到的是更多人正在返回中国……根据我们能收集到的数据，这还是一股涓涓细流，总会有几年的滞后时间——但是结合美国劳动条件持续恶化和中国的改善，越来越多的人将会回家去。”


In the past five years, the number of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. has been on the decline, from a peak of 87,307 in 2006 to 70,863 in 2010. Because Chinatowns are where working-class immigrants have traditionally gathered for support, the rise of China—and the slowing of immigrant flows—all but ensures the end of Chinatowns.

过去5年中国向美国移民的数量已经从2006年高峰的87,703人下降到2010年的70.863人。因为中国城是工人阶层移民寻求支持的传统聚集地，故而中国的崛起——以及移民流动的放缓——所有这些确保了中国城将会终结。

Smaller Chinatowns have been fading for years—just look at Washington, D.C., where Chinatown is down to a few blocks marked by an ornate welcome gate and populated mostly by chains like Starbucks and Hooters, with signs in Chinese. But now the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York are depopulating, becoming less residential and more service-oriented. When the initial 2010 U.S. census results were released in March, they revealed drops in core areas of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Manhattan, the census showed a decline in Chinatown’s population for the first time in recent memory—almost 9 percent overall, and a 14 percent decline in the Asian population.

较小的中国城这几年已经在消失——只要看看华盛顿特区，那里的中国城已缩小到几个街区，其标志物是表示欢迎的大门，还遍布着类似于星巴克和Hooter这样有中文招牌的连锁店。而现在旧金山和纽约的中国城人口也在下降，居民越来越少而更趋向于服务性。2010年美国人口普查结果初版在三月公布，显示旧金山中国城核心区人口数下降。在曼哈顿，普查结果显示中国城的人口从有记录以来第一次减少——几乎下降了9%，而亚裔人口降低了14%。

The exodus from Chinatown is happening partly because the working class is getting priced* out of this traditional community and heading to the “ethnoburbs”; development continues to push residents out of the neighborhood and into other, secondary enclaves like Flushing, Queens, in New York. But the influx of migrants who need the networks that Chinatown provides is itself slowing down. Notably, the percentage of foreign-born Chinese New Yorkers fell from about 75 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2009.

中国城发生大撤离部分是因为工人阶层正在传统社区以外获得社会价值并转向郊区的少数族裔聚集区；土地开发促使居民们离开旧的邻里关系而迁入其他二级飞地，诸如纽约的法拉盛区和皇后区。但是那些需要中国城提供关系网的新进移民流也出现了下降。值得注意的是，纽约在外国出生的中国人比例从2000年的75%滑落到2009年的69%。

*princed 翻译求助

Chinatowns almost died once before, in the first half of the 20th century, when various exclusion acts limited immigration. Philip Choy, a retired architect and historian who grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, has observed the neighborhood population of Chinese immigrants being replaced by new generations of Chinese Americans. “Chinatown might have disappeared if it weren’t for the changing immigration policies,” he told me recently. Only after the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act lifted quotas did the Chinese revive Chinatowns all across the country—especially those communities in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

中国城以前曾险些消亡，那是在20世纪上半叶，各种排华法案限制了移民。退休建筑师和历史学者Philip Choy在旧金山长大，他目睹了中国移民聚居人口被新生代华裔美国人替代的过程。“如果不是移民政策改变，中国城可能就消失了。”最近他告诉我说。只是1965年移民和归化法案提升配额之后，中国人才复活了全国的中国城——尤其是纽约、旧金山和洛杉矶的社区。

Of course, since the days of the Gold Rush, the Chinese always thought they were going to move back to China after earning their fortune elsewhere. As Papademetriou told me, what came before often happens again. Only now, fortune can be found at home.

当然，从金矿热的年代开始，中国人就总是想着在别处赚够了财富就要搬回中国。正如Papademetriou告诉我的，曾发生的事情常常重复发生。只不过，财富要在中国人自己家乡赚。

This departure portends the loss of a place once so integral to Chinese America that Victor Nee and Brett de Bary Nee, in their 1973 book, Longtime Californ’, noted that “virtually every Chinese living in San Francisco has something to do with Chinatown.” Two years ago, when I was on tour for my book about Chinatowns—a kind of love letter to the neighborhood that accepted my family when it first arrived in the United States—the future of these enclaves was an open question. But if China continues to boom, Chinatowns will lose their reason for being, as vital ports of entry for working-class immigrants. These workers will have better things to do than come to America.

人们的离去预示着中国城的消亡，这个地方曾将华裔美国如此紧密得连结在一起，以至于Victor Nee 和 Brett de Bary Nee在其1973年的书里《Longtime Californ》写道，“实际上每个生活在旧金山的中国人都跟中国人有些关系”。两年前，当我为自己关于中国城的书而拜访。但如果中国继续繁荣，中国城将失去其的存在理由。不再是工薪移民进入美国的重要港口。比起来美国这些工人有更好的事可做。

（全文完）

除非注明，本站文章均为原创或编译，转载请注明：文章来自爬山虎
http://www.ptfcn.com/?p=1142
中国的崛起，是否意味着这个美国最有故事的少数族群飞地的末日？

Does China’s rise mean the end of one of America’s most storied ethnic enclaves?


原题：The End of Chinatown

原址：http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... -of-chinatown/8732/
By Bonnie Tsui
David Leventi

As the manager of a Chinatown career center on Kearny Street in San Francisco, Winnie Yu has watched working-class clients come and go. Most of them, like Shen Ming Fa, have the makings of the quintessential Chinese American immigrant success story. Shen, who is 39, moved to San Francisco with his family last fall, an English-speaking future in mind for his 9-year-old daughter. His first stop was Chinatown, where he found an instant community and help with job and immigration problems.

作为旧金山*Kearny街上中国城职业介绍中心的经理，Winnie Yu眼见着工人阶层的顾客来来去去。其中大多数如沈明方（音译）一样，有办法复制经典的华裔美国移民成功故事。沈今年39岁，去年秋天举家搬到旧金山，心里惦记着他9岁的女儿能有个讲英语的未来。他的首站是中国城，在此他找到了一个速成的社区以及工作和移民问题相关的协助。

*原文为圣弗朗西斯科，下同。

But lately, Yu has been seeing a shift; rather than coming, her clients have been going—in pursuit of what might be called the Chinese Dream.

可后来Yu发现事情有了转变；她的顾客们不是陆续到来而是离开了——他们所寻求的或许可称之为中国梦。

“Now the American Dream is broken,” Shen tells me one evening at the career center, his fingers drumming restlessly on the table; he speaks mostly in Mandarin, and Yu helps me translate. Shen has mostly been unemployed, picking up part-time work when he can find it. Back in China, he worked as a veterinarian and at a school of traditional Chinese culture. “In China, people live more comfortably: in a big house, with a good job. Life is definitely better there.” On his fingers, he counts out several people he knows who have gone back since he came to the United States. When I ask him if he thinks about returning to China, he glances at his daughter, who is sitting nearby, then looks me in the eye. “My daughter is thriving,” he says, carefully. “But I think about it every day.”

“现在美国梦已经破碎了，”某天傍晚沈在职业介绍如是对我说。他用手指不停敲着桌面；他讲的大部分是普通话，而Yu帮我翻译。沈总是在失业，若能找到些零工就做一做。在中国老家时，他任职于一家中国传统养殖学校当兽医。“在中国过得更舒服：住大房子，有份好工作。日子肯定比这儿强。”他掰着手指数出几个来美国之后认识的已经回去的人。我问他是不是在想回中国，他瞅了瞅坐在一旁的女儿，然后看着我的眼睛。“我女儿在茁壮成长，”他小心翼翼地说，“但我每天都在想这个。”

Recent years have seen stories of Chinese “sea turtles”—those who are educated overseas and migrate back to China—lured by Chinese-government incentives that include financial aid, cash bonuses, tax breaks, and housing assistance. In 2008, Shi Yigong, a molecular biologist at Princeton, turned down a prestigious $10 million research grant to return to China and become the dean of life sciences at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. “My postdocs are getting great offers,” says Robert H. Austin, a physics professor at Princeton.

近几年见到些中国“海归”的故事——他们在海外受教育然后移民回中国——受到中国政府各种激励措施的诱惑包括资金支持、现金奖励、减税以及住房援助。2008年，普林斯顿分子生物学家施一公拒掉一项声望很高的1000万美元研究资金回到中国，然后成为了北京清华大学生命科学院的院长。“我的博士后能收到很棒的offer，”Princeton物理教授Rober H Austin说。

But unskilled laborers are going back, too. Labor shortages in China have led to both higher wages and more options in where they can work. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, published a paper on China’s demography through 2030 that says thinking of migration as moving in just one direction is a mistake: the flows are actually much more dynamic. “Migration, the way we understand it in the U.S., is about people coming, staying, and dying in our country. The reality is that it has never been that way,” says the institute’s president, Demetrios Papademetriou. “Historically, over 50 percent of the people who came here in the first half of the 20th century left. In the second half, the return migration slowed down to 25, 30 percent. But today, when we talk about China, what you’re actually seeing is more people going back … This may still be a trickle, in terms of our data being able to capture it—there’s always going to be a lag time of a couple of years—but with the combination of bad labor conditions in the U.S. and sustained or better conditions back in China, increasing numbers of people will go home.”

但是不熟练的劳动者也要回家了。中国的劳动力短缺不仅导致了高工资还有更多选择在哪里工作的权利。华盛顿特区的智库美国移民学会发布了一份关于中国人口至2030年的文件，认为只考虑单向移民是错误的：这流动是更加动态的。“我们在美国理解的移民方式，就是人民来这里定居然后死在这个国家。事实上从来并非如此，”学会主席Demetrios Papademetrious说，“历史上，20世纪前半叶到达这里的人中超过50%都离开了。下半个世纪返回原籍的移民减少到25~30%。但是如今，就中国来说，实际看到的是更多人正在返回中国……根据我们能收集到的数据，这还是一股涓涓细流，总会有几年的滞后时间——但是结合美国劳动条件持续恶化和中国的改善，越来越多的人将会回家去。”


In the past five years, the number of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. has been on the decline, from a peak of 87,307 in 2006 to 70,863 in 2010. Because Chinatowns are where working-class immigrants have traditionally gathered for support, the rise of China—and the slowing of immigrant flows—all but ensures the end of Chinatowns.

过去5年中国向美国移民的数量已经从2006年高峰的87,703人下降到2010年的70.863人。因为中国城是工人阶层移民寻求支持的传统聚集地，故而中国的崛起——以及移民流动的放缓——所有这些确保了中国城将会终结。

Smaller Chinatowns have been fading for years—just look at Washington, D.C., where Chinatown is down to a few blocks marked by an ornate welcome gate and populated mostly by chains like Starbucks and Hooters, with signs in Chinese. But now the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York are depopulating, becoming less residential and more service-oriented. When the initial 2010 U.S. census results were released in March, they revealed drops in core areas of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Manhattan, the census showed a decline in Chinatown’s population for the first time in recent memory—almost 9 percent overall, and a 14 percent decline in the Asian population.

较小的中国城这几年已经在消失——只要看看华盛顿特区，那里的中国城已缩小到几个街区，其标志物是表示欢迎的大门，还遍布着类似于星巴克和Hooter这样有中文招牌的连锁店。而现在旧金山和纽约的中国城人口也在下降，居民越来越少而更趋向于服务性。2010年美国人口普查结果初版在三月公布，显示旧金山中国城核心区人口数下降。在曼哈顿，普查结果显示中国城的人口从有记录以来第一次减少——几乎下降了9%，而亚裔人口降低了14%。

The exodus from Chinatown is happening partly because the working class is getting priced* out of this traditional community and heading to the “ethnoburbs”; development continues to push residents out of the neighborhood and into other, secondary enclaves like Flushing, Queens, in New York. But the influx of migrants who need the networks that Chinatown provides is itself slowing down. Notably, the percentage of foreign-born Chinese New Yorkers fell from about 75 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2009.

中国城发生大撤离部分是因为工人阶层正在传统社区以外获得社会价值并转向郊区的少数族裔聚集区；土地开发促使居民们离开旧的邻里关系而迁入其他二级飞地，诸如纽约的法拉盛区和皇后区。但是那些需要中国城提供关系网的新进移民流也出现了下降。值得注意的是，纽约在外国出生的中国人比例从2000年的75%滑落到2009年的69%。

*princed 翻译求助

Chinatowns almost died once before, in the first half of the 20th century, when various exclusion acts limited immigration. Philip Choy, a retired architect and historian who grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, has observed the neighborhood population of Chinese immigrants being replaced by new generations of Chinese Americans. “Chinatown might have disappeared if it weren’t for the changing immigration policies,” he told me recently. Only after the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act lifted quotas did the Chinese revive Chinatowns all across the country—especially those communities in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

中国城以前曾险些消亡，那是在20世纪上半叶，各种排华法案限制了移民。退休建筑师和历史学者Philip Choy在旧金山长大，他目睹了中国移民聚居人口被新生代华裔美国人替代的过程。“如果不是移民政策改变，中国城可能就消失了。”最近他告诉我说。只是1965年移民和归化法案提升配额之后，中国人才复活了全国的中国城——尤其是纽约、旧金山和洛杉矶的社区。

Of course, since the days of the Gold Rush, the Chinese always thought they were going to move back to China after earning their fortune elsewhere. As Papademetriou told me, what came before often happens again. Only now, fortune can be found at home.

当然，从金矿热的年代开始，中国人就总是想着在别处赚够了财富就要搬回中国。正如Papademetriou告诉我的，曾发生的事情常常重复发生。只不过，财富要在中国人自己家乡赚。

This departure portends the loss of a place once so integral to Chinese America that Victor Nee and Brett de Bary Nee, in their 1973 book, Longtime Californ’, noted that “virtually every Chinese living in San Francisco has something to do with Chinatown.” Two years ago, when I was on tour for my book about Chinatowns—a kind of love letter to the neighborhood that accepted my family when it first arrived in the United States—the future of these enclaves was an open question. But if China continues to boom, Chinatowns will lose their reason for being, as vital ports of entry for working-class immigrants. These workers will have better things to do than come to America.

人们的离去预示着中国城的消亡，这个地方曾将华裔美国如此紧密得连结在一起，以至于Victor Nee 和 Brett de Bary Nee在其1973年的书里《Longtime Californ》写道，“实际上每个生活在旧金山的中国人都跟中国人有些关系”。两年前，当我为自己关于中国城的书而拜访。但如果中国继续繁荣，中国城将失去其的存在理由。不再是工薪移民进入美国的重要港口。比起来美国这些工人有更好的事可做。

（全文完）

除非注明，本站文章均为原创或编译，转载请注明：文章来自爬山虎
http://www.ptfcn.com/?p=1142