{"id":181,"date":"2013-12-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/12\/28\/post-174-in-new-york-city-part-viii-asian-new-york\/"},"modified":"2013-12-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T00:00:00","slug":"post-174-in-new-york-city-part-viii-asian-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/12\/28\/post-174-in-new-york-city-part-viii-asian-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-174: In New York City (Part VIII, Asian New York)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Previous Post: Part VII, Modern Art<\/font>
<\/strong><\/a> <\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Two East-Asians, well dressed, passed us by. A man and a woman. They spoke a foreign language. Half a moment swirling around in my brain, and it registered. It’s Korean<\/em>. Korean, a language I’d heard near-daily for three years (with mostly no understanding).
<\/span><\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span>It was a little disorienting, somehow, but not as much as encountering this<\/em> a moment later:\n<\/div>\n
\n
.<\/font><\/a> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Advertisement for a Korean nightclub in Manhattan. <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The above is a sign for a nightclub which advertises (in Korean only) that it offers soju<\/em> (a terrible drink similar to vodka); beer; and yangju<\/em> (\uc591\uc8fc),<\/span> which I long thought was a super-special Korean alcohol due to its high price whenever I saw it on a menu, but it turns out it just means “Western liquor”.

<\/span><\/span>We can tell with certainty that it’s a genuine-Korean affair, you know, because even with only five English words on their sign, they still manage a mistake (no space between ‘7’ and ‘Days’). Haha<\/em>. Sorry, Korean readers, if any. ^_^

Here is another marker of Korean presence in NYC that I immediately recognized:
<\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Cafe Bene (a Korean coffee chain), Manhattan <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
“Caffe Bene” is everywhere in South Korea. It’s one of the more-successful of the many, many coffeshop chain stores.

This Manhattan Caffe Bene I saw may be something brand new. From the Korea Tourism organization<\/a>:
<\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n

Caffe Bene is a leading coffee label of Korea. It is a trend-setting multi-cultural space that offers an ideal combination of coffee, waffle, and gelato. [….] Following the opening of its 500th store in Korea, Caffe Bene is set to open its first branch in New York.<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>Manhattan Koreatown<\/b>, complete with gaudy signs
covering as much square-footage as possible,
in the usual South-Korean style. (Found online<\/a>).<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

It’s news to me that there is a “Koreatown”<\/a> in Manhattan. (At left is a photo of it that I found. We didn’t visit it.)

<\/span><\/span>The Census reports that there are 200,000+ Koreans<\/a> in the NYC Metro Area. I already knew that there were two million Koreans in the USA — Allegedly, up to one million in Southern California and one million in the rest of the USA. I have rarely encountered many, leading me to conclude they are invisible.

<\/span><\/span>Maybe the USA’s two million Koreans are<\/em>, mostly, invisible, because they cluster around each other. You won’t see any most of the time, but when you see one<\/em>, you’ll see many<\/em>. My impression. Koreans’ group-orientation is among the strongest I’ve encountered…<\/p>\n

My friend B.W. stayed at a Korean guesthouse in Manhattan for his two weeks there in 2010. I had gently discouraged him from that (being in the cocoon of Koreanness<\/em> abroad). See Part-III<\/a> for comments on B.W.’s impressions of NYC.\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Koreans are not the only East-Asians in New York, of course. There are many more Chinese<\/em>. <\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>Inside Chinese restaurant<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

My friend T.A. had to go to the “Rego Park” neighborhood of Queens on an urgent errand. I went along. We ate at a typical American “Chinese-takeout”-style restaurant there.

<\/span><\/span>It all fit the bill: the greasy food, the utter minimization of all costs (crummy styrofoam plates and plastic forks), the poor grammar and mildly-sour attitude of the Chinese woman taking the order, and the fact that all the cooks seemed likely to be family members. Her<\/span>e was our meal: <\/div>\n
\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
“Chicken and Vegetables” in Queens <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
It was a filling meal, cheaply had, the raison d’etre<\/em> of these kinds of places. Here was the restaurant:\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Picture\"<\/a> <\/p>\n
Front of Chinese “Takeout” in Rego Park (there were some tables to eat-in) <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Surprisingly, I read that this “Rego Park” was dominated by the Chinese in the late 1800s. At that time, it was farmland. All the farms were bought-up by the Chinese and they sold “exclusively” [naturally…] to Manhattan’s Chinatown.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n

By 1870, there was a Chinese population [in Manhattan Chinatown] of 200. By the time the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the population was up to 2,000 residents. By 1900, there were 7,000 Chinese residents [Wiki<\/a>]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This should give a clue as to the timeframe of “Rego Park” Sinicization. Today, the neighborhood has a predominantly Soviet-Jewish character, with a 20% East-Asian minority, mostly Chinese. <\/div>\n
The history of this neighborhood is so interesting to me that I did some research on it, which I’ll present in Part IX, and finally put the topic of NYC to rest. <\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Next Post: Part IX, Rego Park and Its History<\/font><\/strong><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous Post: Part VII, Modern Art Two East-Asians, well dressed, passed us by. A man and a woman. They spoke a foreign language. Half a moment swirling around in my brain, and it registered. It’s Korean. Korean, a language I’d heard near-daily for three years (with mostly no understanding).It was a little disorienting, somehow, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}