If you’re ever in the Los Angeles area, though, I would recommend checking out San Gabriel or Monterey Park instead of Chinatown downtown. L.A. actually has a very large population of Chinese from the Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in particular that have settled in suburban areas sometimes referred to as “New Chinatowns.” You can get some pretty good dim sum in these areas.

NYC is such a wonderful city. I have some relatives in NYC, so it is not difficult for me to find out the Fuzhou language in NYC develops many new words different from that spoken in Fuzhou region of China. These new words were translated directly from English to Fuzhou by pronunciation, without the interference of Mandarin which is becoming inevitable today in China.

After waves of Cantonese settled in Manhattan’s Chinatown and formed their own community, later on in the 1990s an influx of Fuzhou immigrants began coming in as well and established their own community next to the Cantonese. After they established their own community within Manhattan’s Chinatown, the increasing Fuzhou influx shifted into Brooklyn’s Chinatown and now they are increasing faster over there than Manhattan’s Chinatown or in any part of NYC and they are replacing the Cantonese faster in Brooklyn’s Chinatown than Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Since Brooklyn’s Chinatown is a lot smaller than Manhattan’s Chinatown and is getting more Fuzhou immigrants than other parts of NYC, Brooklyn’s Chinatown is now starting to replicate the Little Fuzhou on East Broadway and is also beginning to surpass the Fuzhou population in Manhattan’s Chinatown as well.

I found myself asking the same question. Here’s my take. Since most Chinese communities in the US were established long before the founding of the PRC (and the introduction of simplified characters), they just continued using the traditional ones even though Mainland China switched over. Even though the majority of the Chinese immigrants in New York grew up in the Mainland, the Chinese community in New York is still over 100 year old. Changing an entire writing system (especially in regards to the physical printing presses, signs, etc.) is an enormous undertaking, especially when you don’t have a national government behind it.

Around the world, to my knowledge there are few Chinese communities outside of China which use simplified characters. Singapore is the notable exception. Adapting to traditional characters is not extremely difficult for somebody who grew up using the simplified ones, and I’m guessing that logistically, changing over simply required more effort than anyone was willing to coordinate.

Wondering if you know why if there are so many Fuzhou people in NY, traditional characters seem to dominate over simplified. Perhaps to accommodate HKers, Taiwanese and more affluent Chinese-Americans who use traditional characters?