12/25/2019 The share of Chinese restaurants has fallen in metro areas across the country in the last five years. Many owners are glad their children won’t be taking over.  A selection of dishes at Nom Wah Tea Parlor, which has been serving dim sum since the early 20th century.Colin Clark for The New York Times By Amelia Nierenberg and Quoctrung Bui KINGSTON, N.Y. — More than 40 years after buying Eng’s, a Chinese-American restaurant in the Hudson Valley, Tom Sit is reluctantly considering retirement. For much of his life, Mr. Sit has worked here seven days a week, 12 hours a day. He cooks in the same kitchen where he worked as a young immigrant from China. He parks in the same lot where he’d take breaks and read his wife’s letters, sent from Montreal while they courted by post in the late 1970s. He seats his regulars at the same tables where his three daughters did homework. Two years ago, at the insistence of his wife, Faye Lee Sit, he started taking off one day a week. Still, it’s not sustainable. He’s 76, and they’re going to be grandparents soon. Working 80 hours a week is just too hard. But his grown daughters, who have college degrees and well-paying jobs, don’t intend to take over. Across the country, owners of Chinese-American restaurants like Eng’s are ready to retire but have no one to pass the business to. Their children, educated and raised in America, are pursuing professional careers that do not demand the same grueling labor as food service.  Tom Sit has cooked in the same kitchen for 45 years, making Chinese-American dishes and putting his own spin on the recipes.Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times According to new data from the restaurant reviewing website Yelp, the share of Chinese restaurants in the top 20 metropolitan areas has been consistently falling. Five years ago, an average of 7.3 percent of all restaurants in these areas were Chinese, compared with 6.5 percent today. That reflects 1,200 fewer Chinese restaurants at a time when these 20 places added more than 15,000 restaurants over all. Even in San Francisco, home to the oldest Chinatown in the United States, the share of Chinese restaurants shrank to 8.8 percent from 10 percent.  SAT/PSAT, AP Calculus/AP Physics, College Essay, TJ Prep  Academic Enrichment Programs for 1st - 8th Grade Students Join Us To Be Elite Tel: 571-217-2357 Chinese restaurants are losing ground in metro areas around the country It doesn’t seem that interest in the cuisine has faltered. On Yelp, the average share of page views of Chinese restaurants hasn’t declined, nor has the average rating. And at the same time, the percentages of Indian, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants — many of which were also owned and operated by immigrants from Asian countries — are holding steady or increasing nationwide. The restaurant business has always been tough, and rising rents and delivery apps haven’t helped. Tightening regulations on immigration and accounting have also made it harder for cash-based restaurants to do business. But those are not Chinese-restaurant-specific factors, and do not explain the wave of closings. Instead, a big reason seems to be the economic mobility of the second generation.  Offering serious and challenging mathematics to intellectually gifted students  “It’s a success that these restaurants are closing,” said Jennifer 8. Lee, a former New York Times journalist who wrote of the rise of Chinese restaurants in her book “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” and produced a documentary, “The Search for General Tso.” “These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.” The retirements of the restaurant owners also reflect the history of Chinese immigration to the United States. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act halted what had been a steady rise in people coming from China. It was not revoked until 1943, and large-scale immigration resumed only after 1965, when other race-targeting quotas were abolished. China’s Cultural Revolution, an often violent social and political upheaval that started in 1966, prompted many young people to emigrate to the United States, a country that projected an image of freedom and economic possibility.  APLUS教学中心 | 一对一辅导服务中心 | 申请咨询顾问中心  Mathematics Enrichment for Intellectually Curious Learners Mr. Sit left Guangzhou, in southern China, in 1968. He hiked, climbed and swam his way to Hong Kong, filling his pants with pine cones as an improvised flotation device. “There was just no future,” he said. “The only way to get freedom and to get a good job was to go to Hong Kong.” In 1974, he immigrated to the United States and started working at Eng’s, which opened in 1927. Although he had never worked in a restaurant, the heat from the woks was much less intense than what he experienced at a Hong Kong plastics factory where he had worked. Unlike Mr. Sit, some immigrants had been chefs in China. They served Hunan and Cantonese foods on linen tablecloths to bejeweled, curious diners at places like Shun Lee Palace in New York.  Award-Winning After-School Math Program for K-12 Students “There was the golden age of Chinese cooking in America, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurateur and chef who has worked in Chinese restaurants since the ’70s. “We started getting regional practitioners of fine regional cuisine to come to this country and do their thing.” Mostly, though, the newly minted chefs cooked quickly and cheaply. They adapted their method of cooking to American tastes, developing dishes like beef chow fun, fortune cookies and egg drop soup, often brought home in the signature takeout containers. “They were not precious,” Ms. Lee said. “These people did not come to be chefs; they came to be immigrants, and cooking was the way they made a living.” Other immigrant groups follow a similar pattern. With social mobility and inclusion in more mainstream parts of the economy, the children of immigrants are less likely than their parents to own their own businesses.  “In some ways, the children are regaining the status of the first generation that they have lost while migrating,” said Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and co-author of “The Asian American Achievement Paradox.” (She is not related to Jennifer 8. Lee.) “The goal has never been to continue those businesses.” When they do become entrepreneurs, these children tend to work in industries like tech or consulting, rather than in food service or nail salons. Most common fields for self-employed immigrants In first generation
In second generation
Source: Current Population Survey, 2015 through 2019 In the past decade, some members of the second generation have also chosen to take charge of family restaurants. Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a New York dim sum restaurant that opened in 1920, has stayed a family business: first run by the Choy family, then the Tangs.  The 41-year-old owner, Wilson Tang, left a career in finance to succeed his uncle in 2011. Initially, his parents balked at his decision. “As immigrants, it’s the only thing you can do; if it’s not restaurants, it’s a laundromat,” Mr. Tang said. “For me to choose to go back to owning a restaurant? That was tough for them to accept.” Since then, Nom Wah has expanded: to another Manhattan location, to Philadelphia and to Shenzhen, China. On any given night, groups of guests wait for a table outside the Chinatown location for up to an hour, huddled in the bend of Doyers Street. “I had this unique opportunity to preserve something that was from old New York,” he said. “I still work extremely hard. But I also know how to use marketing tools, like the internet.” In a parallel effort, the team behind Junzi Kitchen, a fast-casual Chinese restaurant chain based in New York, recently raised $5 million to research and buy places like Eng’s, rebranding them with Junzi’s modern take on the cuisine. “They are still going to have their usual beloved Chinese takeout services, but we are providing an upgraded version of that,” said Yong Zhao, the founder and chief executive. But family-run Chinese restaurants are typically not being passed to the next generation. Some may close up shop, sell their businesses to other first-generation immigrants or move on and see their former storefronts become something else entirely. Mr. Sit has not yet found the right person to run the restaurant, and has no immediate plans to close. “To take over Eng’s, you have to keep the heart in Eng’s,” he said. “You need to have a loyalty to the business, not just someone who thinks, ‘I’ll make one year, two years of money, I don’t care.’” Ms. Sit feels more ready to retire than her husband. Normally talkative, he can be evasive whenever the family tries to bring up a successor. “They’ll have to work hard,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she teased her husband, “like Tom Sit. Maybe then he’ll let them take over.” If he ever actually does hand Eng’s to someone else, Mr. Sit will miss his customers, and miss running an operation. But he is proud of what he built. He is proud that his daughters, American-born educated professionals, are working jobs they have chosen, jobs they love. “I hoped they have a better life than me,” he said. “A good life. And they do.” 12/25/2019 (World Journal) 記者顏伶如 紐約時報報導，過去五年來，中餐館在全美各地都會區餐廳數量當中，占有的比例逐漸下跌，許多中餐館負責人對於兒女沒有興趣接手，頗感欣慰。 來自中國的謝湯姆(Tom Sit，姓名均音譯)買下位於哈德遜谷(Hudson Valley)的吳氏餐廳(Engs)已有40多年，如今開始考慮退休。大半輩子的時間，謝湯姆與妻子每周七天都在餐廳忙著，每天工作12小時；從年輕到步入老年，他都在同一個廚房掌廚，若有熟客上門，他則安排客人坐在三個女兒寫功課的桌子用餐。 20年前，妻子堅持下，謝湯姆才開始每周休息一天。現年已經76歲的他，即將升格外公，每周工作仍長達80小時，體力越來越吃不消。謝湯姆三個已經成年的女兒都有大學學歷，也有高收入工作，對於接手父親的中餐廳毫無興趣。 謝湯姆的狀況就是現今全美各地許多中餐廳的縮影，年邁的餐廳老闆即將退休，但下一代卻不想接管事業。這些餐廳老闆的兒女在美國成長、受教育，追求自己的職業發展，他們所從事的專業工作，與需要耗費大量勞力的餐飲業，截然不同。 評價網站Yelp最新統計顯示，全美規模最大的前20名都會區裡，中餐廳在當地所有餐廳當中占有比例持續減少，從五年前的平均7.3%一路縮水到目前的6.5%。如果換算成餐廳數量，五年來全美前20名都會區裡共計減少了1200家中餐廳，但就在同期之間，這20個都會區裡總共卻新增了1萬5000家餐廳。 就算在有著歷史最悠久中國城的舊金山，中餐廳占當地餐聽數量比例在過去五年間，也從10%滑落到8.8%。 紐約時報分析，第二代不願接班，便是中餐廳持續減少的主要原因。 「幸運餅編年史」(The Fortune Cookie Chronicles)作者、紀錄片「尋找左宗堂雞」(The Search for General Tso)製片李珍妮(Jennifer 8. Lee)指出，由第一代移民創立的中餐廳逐漸歇業，其實反映出一段成功的故事，「這些人到美國落腳之後，辛苦開餐廳把孩子養大，而現在他們的兒女已經不需要再靠餐廳維生了。」 |   Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning weekly classes (ONLINE)  Quality Tutoring  ALL-IN-ONE ONLINE REGISTRATION SOFTWARE        Principal,  Tel: (301)906-6889; (240)912-6290 Licensed in MD, VA, DC, WV, PA, DE, NC, SC, FL WeChat ID: sunnychenyuqing NMLS # 1220187 President, Principal Loan Consultant, Leader Funding, Inc.  电话: (240) 784-6645 Rockville, MD Phone: 301-366-3497  |
