The first Brooklyn Chinatown was originally established in the Sunset Park area of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is one of the largest and fastest growing ethnic Chinese enclaves outside of Asia, as well as within New York City itself. Because this Chinatown is rapidly evolving into an enclave predominantly of Fuzhou immigrants from Fujian Province in China, it is now increasingly common to refer to it as the Little Fuzhou or Fuzhou Town of the Western Hemisphere; as well as the largest Fuzhou enclave of New York City.
Brooklyn's Chinese population has grown larger than the original Chinatown area, forming three larger Chinatowns between Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay. While the foreign-born Chinese population in New York City jumped 35 percent between 2000 and 2013, to 353,000 from about 262,000, the foreign-born Chinese population in Brooklyn increased from 86,000 to 128,000. The newer Brooklyn Chinatowns that evolved are mostly Cantonese speaking and therefore they are sometimes regarded as a Little Hong Kong/Guangdong or Cantonese Town.
The 2020 census data from New York City Department of City Planning indicated that Bensonhurst had Brooklyn's largest number of Asian residents, with 46,000, with Central Sunset Park containing 31,400 Asian residents. The Asian population in southern Brooklyn is primarily Chinese-speaking.
Context The New York metropolitan area contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 uniracial individuals as of 2017, including at least 12 Chinatowns – six (or nine, including the emerging Chinatowns in Corona and Whitestone, Queens, and East Harlem, Manhattan) in New York City proper, and one each in Nassau County, Long Island; Cherry Hill, Edison, New Jersey; and Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, not to mention fledgling ethnic Chinese enclaves emerging throughout the New York City metropolitan area. Chinese Americans, as a whole, have had a (relatively) long tenure in New York City. The first Chinese immigrants came to Lower Manhattan around 1870, looking for the "golden" opportunities America had to offer. By 1880, the enclave around Five Points was estimated to have from 200 to as many as 1,100 members.
However, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which went into effect in 1882, caused an abrupt decline in the number of Chinese who immigrated to New York and the rest of the United States. Later, in 1943, the Chinese were given a small quota, and the community's population gradually increased until 1968, when the quota was lifted and the Chinese American population skyrocketed. In the past few years, Cantonese, which dominated the Chinatowns for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin Chinese, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
Early history In the earlier part of the 20th century, Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park was primarily home to Norwegian immigrants, and it was known as "Little Norway", or "Lapskaus Boulevard", as the Norwegians termed it. Later on, as Norwegians left, the neighborhood increasingly became abandoned by the 1950s.
In 1983, the first Chinese American grocery store in Brooklyn (Store name: Choi Yung Grocery) was opened on 5517 Fort Hamilton Parkway. Selling both Asian and American products and in 1985. The first Cantonese style seafood restaurant opened on 8th Avenue in between 55 and 56 Street (Store name: Canton House Restaurant). In 1986, Winley Supermarket was opened on the corner of 8th Avenue (5523 8th Avenue). Those unprecedented supermarkets and the first Chinese seafood restaurant served the predominantly local residents of the area and attracted Chinese immigrants from all areas of Brooklyn.
In 1988, the first Chinese Community nonprofit organization opened on Eighth Avenue to serving Sunset Park area Chinese immigrants, the organization's name calls Brooklyn Chinese American Association (BCA).
Before 1984, there were only about thirty small shops on the entire Eighth Avenue and 90% of the original storefronts on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park were abandoned. From 1984 to the present, Eighth Avenue has developed from a declining commercial area to an unlimited economic development potential with a thousand small businesses hub.
By 1988, 90% of the original storefronts on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park were abandoned, but Winley Supermarket prevailed and continued to draw in more Asian visitors. Chinese immigrants then moved into this area – not only new arrivals from China, but also residents escaping the higher rents of the Manhattan Chinatown, fleeing to the lower property costs and rents of Sunset Park and forming the Brooklyn Chinatown.
Emergence The relatively new but rapidly growing Chinatown located in Sunset Park was originally settled by Cantonese immigrants as had been Manhattan's Chinatown. In the past, Sunset Park had the highest Cantonese population in Brooklyn and strongly resembled Mott Street in Manhattan's Chinatown, the heart of the entrenched Cantonese community that continues to thrive in the western portion of Manhattan's Chinatown.
Although large numbers of non-Cantonese Chinese immigrants, often speaking Mandarin arrived in New York City, they could not relate to the Cantonese populations, which largely do not speak Mandarin or use it only to communicate with other non-Cantonese Chinese people. As a result, the non-Cantonese Chinese populations created their own Mandarin-speaking Chinatowns in Queens, or "Mandarin Town" () in Flushing, and a smaller one in Elmhurst as well. This allowed Manhattan's and Brooklyn's Chinatowns to continue retaining its almost exclusive Cantonese-speaking society and nearly were successful at keeping its Cantonese dominance.
In the 1980s and 1990s, an influx of Fuzhou immigrants, who largely speak Fuzhounese, a Chinese topolect not mutually intelligible with other Chinese immigrants, arrived and settled in Lower Manhattan, around East Broadway and Eldridge Street. However, in the 2000s, due to gentrification and housing shortages, the Fuzhou influx shifted to Brooklyn's Chinatown in much greater numbers, supplanting the Cantonese at a significantly higher rate than in Manhattan. Sunset Park's Chinatown, Brooklyn's largest, now mostly populated by Fuzhou immigrants has been far surpassing the eastern portion of Manhattan's Chinatown as NYC's primary Fuzhou cultural center. As a result, Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown is now increasingly becoming the main attraction for newly arrived Fuzhou immigrants into New York City.
Hakka has also emerged as another rapidly emerging language in the neighborhood.
Citywide demographics
As the city proper with the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia by a wide margin, estimated at 628,763 as of 2017, and as the primary destination for new Chinese immigrants, New York City is subdivided into official municipal boroughs, which themselves are home to significant Chinese populations, with Brooklyn and Queens, adjacently located on Long Island, leading the fastest growth. After the City of New York itself, the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn encompass the largest Chinese populations, respectively, of all municipalities in the United States.
In the 2020 census data by NYC Dept. Of City Planning, the Asian populations in these other southern Brooklyn neighborhoods all together have overwhelmingly outnumbered the Asian population in Sunset Park. Bensonhurst alone already surpassed Sunset Park as having the largest concentration of Asian residents of Brooklyn. Bensonhurst has 46,000 Asian residents along with the nearby neighborhoods of western Gravesend having 26,700 Asian Residents and Dyker Heights having between 20,000 and 29,999 Asian residents, meanwhile Sunset Park has 31,400 Asian Residents. The Asian Residents in southern Brooklyn neighborhoods are still overwhelmingly Chinese residents. The Brooklyn satellite Chinatowns also have small significant amounts of Vietnamese Chinese residents integrated into these communities with Sheepshead Bay having the largest concentrations.
Fuzhou Town, Brooklyn
During the 1980s and 1990s, the majority of newly arriving Fuzhou immigrants were settling within Manhattan's Chinatown, and the first Little Fuzhou community emerged in New York City within Manhattan's Chinatown; by the 2000s, however, the center of the massive Fuzhou influx had shifted to Brooklyn's Chinatown, which is now home to the fastest growing and largest Fuzhou population in New York City as well as causing the ethnic enclave to develop more fully and expand much further.
Shift of the Fuzhou influx Since the 2000s, gentrification in Manhattan's Chinatown has pushed back the growth of Fuzhou immigrants and growth of Chinese immigrants in general, resulting in a growing Chinese population primarily centered in Queens and Brooklyn.
Fuzhou homeowners
With the rapidly growing influx of Fuzhou homeownership in Brooklyn's Chinatown and like many other Chinese immigrants and other ethnic immigrants in general who have become successful homeowners, the Fuzhou homeowners subdivide single-family houses into multiple apartments to rent to tenants. This has opened opportunities as well as led to the Brooklyn Chinatown becoming the new nexus for new arriving Fuzhou immigrants to New York City, to seek landlords of Fuzhou descent and to be able rent an apartment at a lower price in better conditions than in Manhattan's Chinatown with less housing discrimination and barriers imposed on them, in contrast to Cantonese landlords that are more likely to discriminate against Fuzhou immigrants and not wanting them to be tenants in their properties, however there are Fuzhou landlords that can sometimes still discriminate Fuzhou tenants by imposing high rent prices. Many Fuzhou immigrants in Brooklyn's Chinatown have also illegally subdivided apartments into small spaces to rent to other Fuzhou immigrants.
Unlike the Little Fuzhou within Manhattan's Chinatown, which further developed the newer portion of Manhattan's Chinatown rather than settling in the center of the Cantonese community of Manhattan's Chinatown and still remains surrounded by areas which continue to house significant populations of Cantonese, all of Brooklyn's Chinatown is swiftly consolidating into New York City's new Little Fuzhou and is beginning to resemble more and more of The New Chinatown of Manhattan, which is the newer portion of Manhattan's Chinatown established by the Fuzhou immigrants primarily concentrated on the East Broadway and Eldridge Street portion.
An influx of Fuzhou immigrants caused the price of real estate to increase. More recently, Wenzhounese immigrants from China's Zhejiang Province arrived in Brooklyn Chinatown. Also in contrast to Manhattan's Chinatown, which still successfully continues to carry a large Cantonese population and retain the large Cantonese community established decades ago in the western section of Manhattan's Chinatown, where Cantonese residents have a communal gathering venue to shop, work, and socialize, Brooklyn's Chinatown is now very quickly losing its Cantonese community identity. However with the revitalization of the economy in area, The Fuzhounese population in this area has now faced the challenge of dealing with gentrification. Being forced to move out of Sunset Park due to rent increase and competition from real estate developers. Neighborhoods like Bensonhurst and Gravesend offer quick and easy transportation for the Fuzhounese community to access the expansive employment network offered on East Broadway.
Connection to Manhattan's Chinatown