Chinatowns in Brooklyn

By 1988, 90% of the original storefronts on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park were abandoned. However, Winley Supermarket persisted and continued to attract more Asian visitors. Chinese immigrants began to move into this area, including not only new arrivals from China but also residents escaping the higher rents of Manhattan’s Chinatown. They sought out the lower property costs and rents of Sunset Park, thus contributing to the formation of the Brooklyn Chinatown.

Emergence

The relatively new but rapidly growing Chinatown located in Sunset Park was initially settled by Cantonese immigrants, similar to Manhattan’s Chinatown. Sunset Park once had the highest Cantonese population in Brooklyn, resembling Mott Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the core of the entrenched Cantonese community.

However, the influx of non-Cantonese Chinese immigrants, primarily Mandarin speakers, created a divide as they couldn’t connect with the Cantonese population. This led to the establishment of Mandarin-speaking Chinatowns in Queens, notably Flushing, and a smaller one in Elmhurst. Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s Chinatowns retained their predominantly Cantonese-speaking society, successfully maintaining Cantonese dominance.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a wave of Fuzhou immigrants, mainly speaking Fuzhounese, settled in Lower Manhattan. However, in the 2000s, driven by gentrification and housing shortages, the Fuzhou influx shifted to Brooklyn’s Chinatown in larger numbers, displacing Cantonese residents at a faster rate than in Manhattan. Sunset Park’s Chinatown, now predominantly populated by Fuzhou immigrants, has become NYC’s primary Fuzhou cultural center, surpassing the eastern portion of Manhattan’s Chinatown. Consequently, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park Chinatown is increasingly attracting newly arrived Fuzhou immigrants to New York City.