Dowries & Debts JAAS

Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 18, Number 1, February
2015, pp. 11-40 (Article)
DOI: 10.1353/jaas.2015.0004
For additional information about this article
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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jaas/summary/v018/18.1.hung.html

jaas february 2015 • 11–40
© johns hopkins university press
Dowries and Debts
Fuzhounese Youth Geographies of Fear, Resentment,
and Obligation
WinnieTam Hung
ABSTRACT. Chinese family networks are often lauded as the source of Chinese
American success in education and used as a bolstering tool to propagate
mythsofthemodelminority.ThisstudyofFuzhouneseyouth,however,reveals
that many Chinese American youth view getting married and having children
as more important than educational status for establishing place and face in
theUnitedStates.Againstthebackdropofgrowingprivatizationofthenation’s
economyanditsemphasisonpersonalresponsibilityandworkerflexibility,my
analysisoftheeffectsoffamilialobligationsasanationalandtransnationaldebt
complicates caricatures of Asian American families as the model minority. By
calling attention to the negotiations that Fuzhounese youth make in order to
forgeeconomicrelationshipsthattakeintoconsiderationfamilialexpectations,
this article underscores the ways in which filial piety and obligations shape the
marriage and educational aspirations of Fuzhounese youth.
An anthropology of the present should analyze people’s everyday
actions as a form of cultural politics embedded in specific power
contexts.
—Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship
Bodies do not dwell in spaces that are exterior but rather are shaped
by their dwelling and take shape by dwelling. … Space acquires
“direction” through how bodies inhabit it, just as bodies acquire
direction in this inhabitance.
—Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology

12 • Journal of Asian American Studies • 18.1
Social scientific studies of Chinatowns and other “ethnic enclaves” have
portrayed them as sites of benevolent coethnic solidarity, where people
of the same country of origin help each other. For instance, Portes et al.
and Portes and Zhou cite tales of business-owning immigrants who hire
their working-class counterparts to“show them the ropes”and help them
to eventually become business owners in the enclave.1
Within this logic,
immigrants supposedly use their “cultural capital”(e.g., shared language,
kin networks, rotating credit unions, etc.) to earn more income within—
rather than outside of—the enclave economy or the “ethnic economy”
based on coethnic benevolence that is commonly thought to be outside
of the mainstream economy.2
As such, spaces with a high concentration
of immigrants are often considered“stepping stones”for first-generation
immigrantstomiddle-classAmerica.3
However,thisdepictionofChinatown
as a place of immigrant upward mobility based on ethnic loyalty, trust, and
self-sufficiencyelidesthecomplicatedclassstratificationwithinChinatown
and uses“culture”and race to justify socially structured inequalities within
the ethnicized space.
I use“ethnicized space”to refer to Chinatown to challenge social sci-
ence tendencies to homogenize immigrant communities as self-isolated
and self-sufficient places outside of the American nation and national
economy. This classification of Chinatown as an isolated space is a result
of a history of racialization and demonization that categorically positions
Chinatown as quintessentially ethnic, foreign, and, most important, not
American. I therefore use the term “ethnicized space” to signify both the
physical area of Chinatown located in downtown Manhattan where this
study is located and the social, cultural, and legal processes through which
the space is produced. In doing so, I argue that, rather than providing an
ethnicsafetyzonewhereimmigrantscan“pullthemselvesupbytheirboot-
straps,”the concentration of low-wage, labor-intensive jobs in Chinatown
means that workers are subjected to a perpetual state of “proletarianiza-
tion”wherein they are constantly under surveillance and being disciplined
to ensure their status as“good”workers, consumers, and citizen-subjects.4
No other group of Chinese immigrants in New York City is a better
example of this exploitation and disciplining than young Fuzhounese men
andwomenfromChina’ssoutheastcoast.HavingarrivedinNewYorkCityin
significantnumberssincethe1970s,Fuzhounesearenowthelargestgroup
from China to enter the United States, and Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown
has the greatest population of Fuzhounese outside of mainland China.
Fuzhounese migration to the United States followed a unique pattern in
that most people who emigrate are working age (eighteen to sixty-four),
with many under the age of thirty.5
This means that many Fuzhounese

13Dowries and Debts • Hung •
who live or work in Chinatown are 1.5- and second-generation youth.
They are ethnicized by the more economically and politically established
Cantonese as the Other and are seen as a threat to preexisting ways of do-
ing business, conducting politics, and utilizing the space of Chinatown.6
Many Fuzhounese immigrants live isolated lives as restaurant workers
who work six days a week in fifteen-hour shifts and do not have access
to much entertainment or fun besides occasional trips to nearby casinos
in Atlantic City or Connecticut. Indeed, a tragic bus crash in March 2011
that killed fourteen people brought to light the loneliness experienced by
these immigrants who traveled to casinos to gamble away the night and
return to work at restaurants the next morning.7
Fuzhounese immigrants
and immigrant youth are most commonly associated with East Broadway,
a section of Chinatown, which has been labeled by Cantonese as “Little
Fuzhou”or“Fuzhou Street”(see map 1).
Formerly Chinatown’s easternmost border, this section under the
Manhattan Bridge used to be a veritable no-man’s land, a place where
Cantonese did not go. Today, it is a bustling, crowded, and thriving area
replete with Fuzhounese restaurants, small businesses, and employment
agencies. While these types of businesses are not unique to Fuzhounese
immigrants, they are highly ethnicized by Cantonese immigrants, political
elites,andbusinessownerswhoperceiveEastBroadwayandallFuzhounese
as“illegal”and“dirty”as a result of their supposed links to illegal activities
and human smuggling networks.

Narratives of Fuzhounese Migration and the Construction of Illegality
Many social scientific and historical accounts of Fuzhounese immigrants
to the United States begin with a retelling of how the ironically named
Golden Venture, a freight ship, ran aground off the shore of Queens in
1993. The Fuzhounese youth in this study begin their tales of migration
with an absent father, a comfortable lifestyle in China, and an American
life dictated by restaurant work and financial woes. It is important to note
that the majority of the youth whom I interviewed did not come from dire
or poor backgrounds. Instead, they lived middle-class lives, but the sense
of relative deprivation they felt in relation to other families who had mem-
bers working abroad compelled them to venture to the United States for
employmentandbettereconomicopportunities.Inaddition,allbuttwoof
the youth I interviewed arrived through legal means and channels.Yet the
narrative of the Golden Venture and later journalistic accounts of illegally
smuggled Fuzhounese immigrants haunts these youths’ideas about what
it means to be Fuzhounese in New York.
According to the U.S. State Department, Fuzhounese immigrants
compose the majority of the ten thousand Chinese arriving in New York
City each year. Indeed, as Kenneth Guest points out, there have been six
“waves” of Fuzhounese migration beginning from before the mid-1980s
to the present.8
The landing of the Golden Venture in 1993, however, was
the first time the word“Fuzhounese”became recognizable in the American
popular imagination. Mainstream news coverage of the event showed
pictures of the nearly 286 rescued stowaways wrapped in blankets and
looking numb and shocked. It was the largest apprehension of “illegal”
immigrants in American history. A documentary film by the same name,
released in 2006, follows the life of four of the survivors through immigra-
tion court, deportation proceedings, and later attempts to escape China.
ThefilmpremieredatSundanceandwasanofficialselectionfortheTribeca
Film Festival. It has also been purchased by over four hundred university
libraries and high schools and comes with a detailed study guide address-
ingquestionsofimmigrationpolicy,asylum,andFuzhounesesociocultural
contexts.9
The fact that this shipwreck took place off the coast of Queens,
New York, made it all the more incendiary.
When the ship was stranded off the coast of Queens, all 286 Fu-
zhounese were told to make a run for it.Ten perished on their way to shore
in the freezing waters. Of the survivors, about half returned to China under
threatofdeportation,andseveraldozenweregrantedasylumafterprovid-
ing evidence of persecution in China. Still others went into hiding or fled
to Canada. About forty were held in jail in Pennsylvania waiting for their

cases to move through the U.S. immigration system. In 1997, President
Bill Clinton ordered them released, but many still have not been granted
permanent residency and remain in immigration limbo.10
After the GoldenVenture, the discovery of fifty-eight dead Fuzhounese
migrants in an airtight refrigerator truck in Dover, England, in 2000 fueled
fears of a “new slave trade” and cries for tighter security in international
airports, seaports, and land borders with Mexico and Canada.11
These two
incidentsandtheprosecutionsthatfollowedfirmlylinkedFuzhounesewith
“illegal”in common discourse among Cantonese in New York and China-
town especially. But these“illegal”migrants were coming as part of a long
historyofChineseimmigrationtotheUnitedStatesstructuredbyimmigra-
tion policies that govern American labor needs and family reunification.
Almost all of the interviewees for this project entered under family re-
unificationprovisions.Typically,itwasthefatherwhoimmigratedillegallya
decadeearlier,workinginrestaurantsandconstructioncompaniestosend
money back to China to assist with childcare, eldercare, and household
costs. As news of employment opportunities in the restaurant, garment,
andconstructionindustriesinNewYorktraveledtoFujian,moreyoungmen
and women saw their futures in the United States.When families with one
memberinNewYorkappearedtogrowwealthyfromremittances,theallure
of NewYork City as a new“Gold Mountain”encouraged more Fuzhounese
to seek passage to the States in both legal and extralegal ways.12
As Liang
andYe note, Fuzhounese immigrants to the U.S. are not poor compared to
other groups in mainland China, however, it is a sense of“relative depriva-
tion”due to unequal income distribution in Fujian that drives others to go
abroad.13
That is, families who have a member in the United States receive
enough money through remittances to live lavish lives in Fuzhou, feeding
the myth that American streets are paved with gold.
Taiwanese crime syndicates already involved in global smuggling
broadened their businesses to include human smuggling of Fuzhounese
migrants, although a recent study found no links to Taiwanese triads.14
While the early Fuzhounese were able to be smuggled directly from China
to New York by air, later migrants faced far more treacherous conditions
with multiple stopovers and transportation methods, being brought
over sea and land routes through Southeast Asia, South America, and
Mexico and across the United States to the East Coast.15
As a result, many
Fuzhounese immigrants take on almost a hundred thousand dollars in
debt, which their family members in New York or Fuzhou must repay to
snakeheads and smugglers who help the migrant enter the United States.
The individual migrant then spends up to five years repaying relatives by
working in their restaurants or sending them money on a payment plan.

Every one of the Fuzhounese youth I interviewed had a family member or
close friend who entered “illegally” and admitted this had an impact on
their lives, even though they themselves were not “illegal.”The pressures
to repay debt, maintain family reputation, and navigate the politics of a
changing Chinatown affect the structure and economy of Fuzhounese
families and restaurants.
Stereotyped by Cantonese as the uneducated“country bumpkins”of
Chinatown, the lives of young Fuzhounese women and men are structured
by a particular pattern of kinship obligation, family“face,”and debt. They
are forming selves in the shadow of shame and illegality associated with
being Fuzhounese that came to be in the early 1990s, when Fuzhounese
illegal immigration became front-page news in both the ethnic and main-
streamAmericanmedia.Sincethen,Fuzhouneseimmigrantshavebecome
apalpablepresenceinChinatown—formingvocalpoliticalandhometown
associations, mobilizing vast funds to send to China, and completely trans-
forming East Broadway into a Fuzhounese mini-Chinatown.
Finding the Fuzhounese in Chinatown
From March 2007 to August 2008, I conducted twenty-six interviews with
Fuzhounese youth and thirty interviews with Chinatown small business
owners. The Fuzhounese youth group consisted of sixteen women and
ten men, all between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and included both
Chinese- and U.S.-born Fuzhounese. The interviews generally lasted two
hours and sometimes took place over several sessions.The small business
owners consisted of twenty men (ten Fuzhounese and ten Cantonese) and
ten women (six Fuzhounese and four Cantonese). Their ages ranged from
thirtytosixty-fiveyearsold,withthemajoritybetweenfortyandfifty.These
interviews lasted approximately one hour each and took place in the own-
ers’place of business.Their businesses included restaurants, jewelry shops,
and real estate agencies that catered to Chinese clients and were deeply
affected by the aftermath of 9/11. Business owners were all immigrants
who came to the United States as adults. There was no formal selection
criteria for the youth interviewees, only that they were Fuzhounese and
between the ages of eighteen and thirty and grew up/lived in Chinatown.
The section on marriage and weddings was based on my attendance of
fifteen weddings over the same period.
Asking Cantonese business owners to talk about their views toward
the increasingly powerful Fuzhounese hometown associations and busy
thoroughfare of East Broadway (or as many called it, Fuzhou Street) elicited
responses filled with both contempt and grudging respect for Fuzhounese

businesssavvyandguts.Infact,manyCantoneseentrepreneurs—including
some second- and third-generation Chinatown business owners—admit-
ted they were skeptical about the growing number of Fuzhounese immi-
grants and families they saw arriving in Chinatown but also conceded that
they are the ones who sustained Chinatown’s economy in the aftermath
of 9/11.
This particular context of grudging respect and repressed antagonism
toward Fuzhounese on the part of many Cantonese business owners and
residents in Chinatown made my venture into the Fuzhounese section and
interest in Fuzhounese youth practices very challenging but also gave me
an immediate set of questions I wanted to ask my interviewees. Interview
questions centered around three themes: personal migration history, Fu-
zhounese identity, and Chinatown. Further questions emerged organically
as I listened to each participant’s story and responded to the participant’s
queriesaboutmyowninvolvementwithChinatown.Whiletherewassome
initial“snowball effect”with the leaders of different organizations where I
was able to parlay one interview into several more with other leaders, this
was not the case with my Fuzhounese youth interviewees.
As they were noninstitutional actors, their trust and companionship
were much harder to earn, and this portion of my fieldwork took the most
time to complete. Locating these interviewees proved to be more dif-
ficult than I ever imagined partly due to the stigma associated with being
Fuzhounese. Many people later told me they were hesitant to identify as
Fuzhounese. To find respondents, I posted flyers in what I thought were
youth spaces such as the many bakeries, cafes, karaoke bars, and bou-
tiques in Chinatown. I also targeted some direct service groups such as
the Chinatown Youth Initiative, Greater Chinatown Community Associa-
tion, Asian American Federation of New York, and the many after-school
tutoring centers in the neighborhood in hopes of attracting youth. I also
asked those who volunteered where they thought I should go to look for
more potential interviewees. A few suggested the library in Chinatown,
one of the few spaces where one may spend time without having to pay
for coffee or other goods. That suggestion turned out to be a fruitful one
because I was able to interest a few people in my study.
In the end, the process of looking for interviewees was very produc-
tive because it gave me some insight into the feelings of shame and
embarrassment many youth had about being identified as Fuzhounese.
The hesitation I sensed among many of the youth with whom I spoke fit
the discomfort they expressed about being perceived as aggressive and
associated with illegal activities in Chinatown. Many revealed they were
uncertain whether they should volunteer for the study because they did

not want to be identified as Fuzhounese but also felt it was necessary to
tell their life histories in hopes of countering some of the negative images
they felt plagued all Fuzhounese.
Sensationalistaccountsof“snakeheads,”16
afiguresimilartothecoyotes
whosmuggleMexicanmigrantsacrosstheU.S.–Mexicoborder,byboththe
mainstream and ethnic press further contributed to the image-repertoire
government officials and local elites have of Fuzhounese as“illegal.”These
reports often focus on the international operations of these human smug-
gling rings and emphasize their highly organized structure that includes
productionofcounterfeitpassportsandvisasandelaboratepathsthrough
Asia, Canada, and Europe belies the often highly disorganized structures of
these operations that may leave Fuzhounese migrants stranded for years
before reaching the States.17
To date, there have been only a handful of studies on this Chinese
ethnic group.18
Most concentrate on the logistics of Fuzhounese migra-
tion from the point and politics of departure to the treacherous journeys
and snakehead organizations.19
Still fewer examine Fuzhounese experi-
ences in the United States. Peter Kwong’s Forbidden Workers was the first
in-depth study of Fuzhounese in New York City’s Chinatown and critically
examines their entry as subordinated workers.20
Kenneth Guest follows
Kwong’s ethnographic footsteps to delineate Fuzhounese religious institu-
tions and their sister churches in Fuzhou, China.21
Both studies attend to
the micropolitics of everyday life for Fuzhounese immigrants working in
restaurants and seeking stability in the United States but do not examine
Fuzhouneseyouthsubjectivityandculturalproduction,eventhoughyouth
are often central to gentrification and surveillance efforts.22
Although many accounts have been written about the psychological,
physical, financial, and emotional impact of the events of 9/11 on nearby
residents in the neighborhoods adjoining the World Trade Center site,23
Fuzhouneseyouthwholive,shop,work,andvisitChinatownhaveaunique
relationship to the restructuring that has occurred in Lower Manhattan
since 2001 because of the ways they have been ethnicized within the local-
ity. Many reports focused on the immediate decline of economic activity
in Chinatown and the rise in unemployment and job loss to highlight the
needforbusinessdevelopmentandadowntownrevitalization.24
However,
thelanguageofLowerManhattan’srecoveryafter9/11becameinseparable
from a discourse of economics, centering on the rebuilding of the World
Trade Center as a tower of commerce in the so-called free world. While
this discourse of economic recovery as vital to the overall health of the
entire area extended to Chinatown, it neglected to examine the impact
on the Fuzhounese.

At the root of this project is an interest in the space-making pro-
cesses of neoliberalism and the subjectivities it engenders. Following
anthropologists, I view neoliberalism as the extension of market logic and
entrepreneurial reasoning into the governance and production of social
relationships and consuming subjects.25
By extension, neoliberalism as a
series of market reforms with a focus on privatization, free trade, and de-
regulation also requires the production of neoliberal economic subjects:
that is, people who are governed by a logical calculating rationality in all
aspects of life, not just the sphere of economic activity.
More specifically, as geographers Jamie Peck and AdamTickell assert,
neoliberal governance in cities has been paired with “aggressive forms
of state downsizing, austerity financing, and public-service ‘reform’” that
push state responsibilities into private and corporate hands of “shadow
state” organizations.26
As such, city governments increasingly rely on
“elite partnerships, mega-events, and corporate seduction” to maintain
competitiveness in a global market where corporate headquarters can
travel to other places. Peck and Tickell see this as the reason why many
cities are reproducing “cultural spectacles, enterprise zones, waterfront
developments, and privatized forms of local governance.”27
Indeed, the increasing number of luxury condominiums and office
buildingsinChinatownafteritwasdesignatedafederal9/11“disasterzone”
becauseofitslocationtenblocksawayfromtheWorldTradeCentersitewas
symptomatic of its direction as an“enterprise zone”to attract capital and
realestatedeveloperstothearea.FederalEmergencyManagementAgency
(FEMA)fundsweredistributedtooffsettheeconomicimpactoftheattacks
andrevitalizebusinessesintheaffectedarea.28
ThesemiprivateLowerMan-
hattanDevelopmentCorporationwasestablishedtomanageanddistribute
over seven million dollars to ailing small businesses. It in turn established
the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation to implement
a new vision of Chinatown that enabled contending groups in Chinatown’s
social and political structure to reimagine the space’s economic, social,
cultural, and built environments in ways that would encourage corporate
investment and private real estate development.29
A recommendation by
aChinatownorganization,AsianAmericansforEquality,toturnChinatown
into“America’sChinatown”witha“PacificRimofficedistrict”throughwhich
transnationalAsiancapitalwouldflowandmaterializeintoglossyhigh-rise
offices, fit in with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s real-estate-driven economic
agenda for NewYork City.30
Various groups and self-proclaimed grassroots
organizations came forward, each claiming to represent the “Chinatown
community”;theyhavealternatelyacquiescedtoandopposedBloomberg
and the City Council’s plans to literally re-form Chinatown’s geographic,

cultural,socialandpsychologicalborders—thatis,spaceswheremeanings
of locality and belonging are created and contested.
Introducing FuzhouneseYouth and Chinatown’s Cultural Geography
Chinatown’syouthgeographyincludesthebasketballandhandballcourts,
parks, karaoke bars, Internet and bubble tea cafes, and the numerous
eateries in the neighborhood. Fuzhounese youth spaces also include the
many restaurants, construction sites, and garment factories in Chinatown.
Inparticular,FuzhouneseyouthtravelfromEastBroadway,theFuzhounese
section of Chinatown, to other boroughs, cities, and states on Fuzhounese-
owned intercity and interstate buses to work in takeout restaurants all
over the country. Out of these movements, I argue that Fuzhounese youth
construct mental maps that both reflect and refract the drastic forms of
neoliberal restructuring in post-9/11 Chinatown. Conversely, the paths
Fuzhounese youth traverse and the footprints they leave on the locale—
however fleeting and temporary—overlay the multiple and strategic at-
tempts by institutions and elites to define Chinatown in increasingly more
neoliberal terms—such that market logic and entrepreneurial reasoning
were extended into the governance and production of social spaces and
citizen-subjects. As a result, neither a purely political economic nor a so-
ciocultural analysis alone would encompass the range of experiences of
Fuzhounese subjects.
Fuzhounese youth deal with pressure from parents and family mem-
bers in the United States and China to quit school, get married, and start
working. Young women in particular face pressures to make a place for
themselves in the United States from parents, relatives, and friends who
emphasize the importance of heterosexual marriage in overt and subtle
ways. Mothers, older, married sisters, and marriage brokers set the criteria
for what is expected of a potential mate, and a young woman is expected
to “shop” for these qualities in a husband while her desirability depends
on her age and ability to reproduce biological children. Through hetero-
sexual marriage and reproduction, she ensures her place in the United
States as a wife and mother of U.S. citizens. In short, the home becomes
a place where citizenship and family are framed in economic (business/
home ownership) terms.
This pressure to get married differs starkly from the established ideas
and literature on Chinese American youth who are expected to be “whiz
kids” who excel where other American children fail. Studies of Chinese
American youth posit their“success”as Americans in direct relation to their
ability to achieve“upward assimilation”via high education and job status.31

These studies often highlight Chinese “family values” that drive Chinese
youth to attain higher scores and better grades that lead to elite colleges
andwhite-collarjobs.YettheseanalysesmostlyfocusonCantonese-speak-
ing youth from Guangdong and Hong Kong or Mandarin speakers from
Taiwan but completely exclude Fuzhounese migrants to the United States.
Fuzhounese women seem to be facing pressures to be something
completely different—precisely the opposite of the professional status
sought so diligently by Cantonese and other Asian parents for their chil-
dren.While the education discourse does not mention marriage as a form
of “success” or assimilation, my study of Fuzhounese youth reveals that
many view getting married and having children as being more important
forestablishingplaceandfaceintheUnitedStatesthaneducationalstatus.
This case study shows that marriage, labor, and “successful” assimilation
into the American nation cannot be separated in a neoliberal structure
where marriage negotiations are blatantly negotiations about capital ac-
cumulation and exchange. Instead, Fuzhounese youth are making a place
forthemselvesandtheirfamiliesbycombiningeconomiccalculationswith
personal, familial, and emotional relationships and decisions.
Come In!We’re Open: How FuzhouneseYouth Enter the ChineseTakeout Restaurant
Fuzhounese youth are poised to enter restaurant work because of the
pattern of migration to the United States over the past thirty years. Of
the twenty-six young people I interviewed, twenty-three have fathers
who migrated illegally to the United States in the 1970s or 1980s. This
trend of illegal migration led many of the fathers to work in industries
like food service, construction, and garment manufacturing that depend
on undocumented migrants for cheap, nonunionized, and exploitable
labor. However, the predominance of the restaurant industry in the lives
of Fuzhounese youth also stems from the flight of garment factories from
Chinatown and the decline of construction in New York City along with
the housing market slump.32
The departure of light manufacturing and
the garment industry from Chinatown enforced a sense of stillness that
froze workers in their place for fear of losing already precarious jobs. The
restaurant continued to be the steadiest venue of employment because
it has relatively low overhead costs and employs undocumented workers
or relatives who are willing (or compelled) to work for low wages (about
two dollars per hour plus tips). All but one of the twenty-six interviewees
worked at a Chinese takeout restaurant. Most of them (eighteen) worked
attheirfamily’srestaurant.Theothersixintervieweesworkedatrestaurants
owned by relatives or strangers.

For Fuzhounese youth,“becoming an American”often means earning
their place by working to earn money to help support the family. If a child
does not perform this act of earning, he or she will be seen as ungrateful.
The pressure to appear grateful and repay one’s familial debt exerts its
force on the bodies of Fuzhounese youth through repeated enactments
by other Fuzhounese youth. Every one of my interviewees knew of a friend
or another youth who worked in a restaurant after migrating to the United
States.This knowledge, plus the widespread availability of both short- and
long-termrestaurantworkinand outofNewYorkCityencloseFuzhounese
youth bodies into a cycle of work that extends the economic function of
the restaurant into the“private sphere”of the home.
Going back to Ahmed’s quote that opened this article, I conceptual-
ize the Fuzhounese restaurant as an identity-shaping venue that shapes
Fuzhounese youth bodies and actions in particular ways: “Bodies do not
dwell in spaces that are exterior but rather are shaped by their dwelling
and take shape by dwelling. … Space acquires ‘direction’ through how
bodies inhabit it, just as bodies acquire direction in this inhabitance”.33
I
find the language of direction and orientation useful for thinking about
Fuzhounese labor because it speaks to the physicality of restaurant work
as well as the emotional force it exerts on the interior and familial lives of
these youth. Similar to Bourdieu’s “habitus,” dispositions that are shaped
by previous events and structures and that, in turn, shape current prac-
tices and structures, I want to argue that the restaurant is a“habitus”that
predisposes Fuzhounese youth toward future restaurant work.34
Here,
past experiences with restaurant work extend the idea of the restaurant
into other arenas of life such as marriage negotiations and educational
aspirations. Furthermore, the restaurant as habitus and dwelling place also
orients Fuzhounese youth to pursue restaurant-owning mates so that the
spaceoftherestaurantwillbereproducedthroughthemarriageeconomy.
Because Fuzhounese youth are oriented toward the restaurant, they
are necessarily oriented away from other spaces of work. By associating
restaurant work and the space of the restaurant as the main sphere of
work, parents, other youth, and relatives circumscribe what is possible
for Fuzhounese youth. Upon arrival, Fuzhounese youth must work hard
to show to their parents and others that they are“good kids”who deserve
everything their parents invested in them.Youth repay their hardworking
and self-sacrificing parents by earning money for the family and, in doing
so, also earn familial face by fulfilling their roles as grateful children.
Debt,especiallyinthiscase,exceedsmoney.Justbecauseonemigrates
to the United States through legal family sponsorship/reunification does
not mean one is exempt from the space of the restaurant. Even though

none of the young people I interviewed were undocumented, all but one
worked in a restaurant. Youth who do not have to repay monetary debts
still have to repay emotional ones in order to maintain family obligations
and their own reputations as good sons and daughters.
The restaurant sticks to Fuzhounese youth bodies and identities be-
cause it is a pivotal space where family relationships are recoded as affec-
tive commodities. The restaurant is where Fuzhounese youth experience
significant changes in their family relationships because they are mostly
employedinrestaurantsownedbyparentsorrelatives.Inthisenvironment,
fathers and uncles become bosses and cooks, wives and mothers become
cashiers and packers, and sons and daughters become hostesses, wait-
resses, and delivery boys.These functional identities meld home and work
formanyastheyliveupstairsfrom,orcloseto,therestaurant.Throughtheir
desires, practices, and performances, Fuzhounese youth bodies acquire
directional force that compelled them to repeatedly move in, around, and
through the restaurant space that also shaped their identities. In short, to
be Fuzhounese means working in a restaurant and working in a restaurant
means being seen as Fuzhounese.
The ChineseTakeout Restaurant
I.WorkingforaStranger
East Broadway is a busy place filled with people buying groceries, women
pushing baby carriages, vendors selling everything from bootleg DVDs to
kitchenware, and young men and women walking around in fashionable
clothingandlimited-editionsneakers.Noonereallyhangsoutonthestreet
because there is simply no street left to stand on. As a researcher, I walked
up and down the few city blocks composing the“Fuzhounese section”of
Chinatown to make my observations because there was literally no place
to stand still as it was so crowded with people, storefronts, delivery trucks,
and pedestrians. On the adjacent streets of Division, Forsyth, and Market,
I found slightly quieter streets where groups of young and middle-aged
men squatted, smoked, and played cards. When I walked past them, they
would whistle and make flirtatious remarks in Fuzhounese and Mandarin.
Duringthewintermonths—evenonthecoldestdays—youngmenwaited
onthestreet.Inthesummer,thereweremanymoreyoungwomenmoving
in and out of the area.
Yet these young men and women were not just sitting around gam-
bling,listeningtotheiriPods,ortextingfriends.35
Instead,theywerewaiting
for callbacks from potential employers in restaurants in NewYork City and

as far away as Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida. In fact, as people moved
in and out of the space, the entire area surrounding the employment
agency felt strangely still, like a waiting room. The qualitative feeling of
waiting—sitting around trying to occupy oneself while remaining in the
same place—is one that can frustrate, anger, and deter one from going
somewhere or doing something. But these youth waited patiently in their
respective spaces: some leaning against the wall, others smoking outside,
and still others eating their lunches or talking on the phone. While other
Chinatown youth might have been performing the same tasks in a leisure
space like the park or a friend’s house, these Fuzhounese youth could not
leave because they were waiting for work.
The stores with the greatest number of people milling around were
often the busiest employment agencies with the greatest number of jobs
to fill. On the day I went into one of these with a young woman named
Xia, she noted that one has the best chance of finding a“good job”if she
maximizes the number of agencies she visits:
I just go to every agency to see which one is better for me.They have
many agencies. I just see the salary and the restaurant if it’s far from
here or near here. And then sometimes I will call boss and we talk on
the phone. And then we say what should we do where we work. And
if you don’t like, we don’t want this job and then we change another
one. Or maybe you still stay over there to change another restaurant.
They have many restaurants too. Different jobs.
Xia possessed some agency and leverage because of her legal status,
English abilities, and extensive experience as a cashier and food packer. A
“good job”is a hostess or food packer—something that does not require
tremendous physical exertion or danger like a dishwasher or delivery
person. Because of these skills, she could change to another restaurant or
another job within the restaurant with relative ease—a luxury that those
without legal residency and language skills could not afford.
Even though she was a legal migrant, competent English speaker,
and college junior at the time of her interview, Xia still felt compelled to
work in a restaurant because it was the first work space she inhabited
after arriving in the United States. Family members and friends who had
been living in the country longer also defined the labor market for Xia and
her family within the confines of the garment factory, the restaurant, and
construction industry—setting Xia on a course that oriented her toward
long-term restaurant work despite her fears of traveling out of state and
her hard-earned college education.

II.WorkingforParents/Relatives
Ontheothersideoftherestaurantownershipspectrum,Fuzhouneseyouth
like Tian, whose parents own a restaurant, do not go through the process
of going to an employment agency and traveling out of state for work. A
youngmannamedTianwasaprimeexampleofthisdynamic.Tian’smother
was a dentist in China and put herself through dental school to continue
in her profession after arriving in the United States. She also gave his fa-
ther the money to open his restaurant. Tian, being the only child, actually
enjoyed a rare privilege: he did not have to work to put himself through
college. He also did not have to work to earn spending money; his mother
was happy to give him whatever he wanted, but he still chose to work in
his father’s restaurant on weekends and during summer breaks because
he did not want to be seen as a lazy son who relied upon his parents for
money.Despitehishatredofworkinginahotkitchen,Tianworkedstraight
through all his summer vacations:“I feel proud of myself if I’m helping my
parents doing something and they are on vacation or enjoying life.” Like
otheryouth,hefeltheneededtorepayhisfatherforalltheprivilegedyears
he spent in China during his childhood. By framing entry to the United
States as a reward, Fuzhounese parents compel their children to reorient
and reposition their lives around earning the right to be here rather than
living—postponing enjoyment and family time in favor of wage work and
income generation.
While one might expect working for parents to be slightly easier than
working for a stranger,Tian’s narrative is also fused with a sense of urgency,
one that is based not purely on monetary gain but also on emotional guilt
and affective debt. Seeing his parents work so hard pushed Tian to volun-
tarily work in his father’s restaurant on weekends and during school breaks
even though he dreaded it. He felt sad and resentful about his situation
when his friends made plans after school to play basketball or hang out
while he went to work.
Indeed,peoplelikeTianfeltliketheirpathsaremuchmoredetermined:
they work in their parents’restaurant on their days off from school and are
expectedto“helpout”withallaspectsofthebusinessincludingtranslation,
dealing with customers, cooking, packing, and delivering food under a
kind of“family work contract”36
that serve family economic needs but also,
I would argue, reflect economies of familial guilt and obligation.The sense
of urgency and sacrifice permeates the restaurant space and make it not
just a site of work that orients youth like Tian to move away from spaces
of play and leisure towards work but also, more important, a place where
familial relationships are recast in economic terms of“debts”to be repaid.

Theexpectationtohelpoutone’sparentsdovetailswithneoliberalim-
perativestotakecareofoneself,technologiesofselfthatincludeprinciples
ofself-responsibilitywheresubjectsarehabituatedtorelyonthemselves.37
With their entry into the United States, Fuzhounese youth had to learn to
become wageworkers, an identity they did not have to perform in China.
As a result, they are expected to cultivate habits and dispositions 8
such as
independenceandlearningtospendtheirtimein“productive”waysaspart
of their socialization into their new lives as Americans and New Yorkers.
Part of this “process of proletarianization” involves becoming “good”
citizens, consumers, and workers by learning to focus on wage work as a
necessary part of life.39
Because their paths and the directions they take
in life are already oriented toward restaurant work, Fuzhounese youth’s
new identities as income earners are intricately intertwined with the fam-
ily business.
Studies of immigrant enterprises, particularly those of Asian families
thatrelyonfamilylabor,havelongbeenseenaspartofacultureofcoethnic
solidarityandanextensionofConfucianprinciplesoffilialpiety.40
However,
these studies neglected the often highly coercive and exploitative nature
of these ethnic businesses.41
In her study of Chinese takeaway restaurants
in Great Britain, sociologist Miri Song points out that the “family work
contract” often negatively affected the parent–child relationship. Some
children saw their parents as failures because they did not care enough
to keep the children out of the takeaway restaurant. Evoking bourgeois
ideas of the precious child, the children in Song’s study felt guilt-tripped
into helping out and often resented their parents for many years after they
found other jobs.42
Indeed, Song’s use of the notion of a contract, with its foundations in
Lockean liberalism and its ideas of individual rights and rational choice,
belies the actual lack of choice experienced by Fuzhounese youth. The Fu-
zhouneseyouthinthisstudydidnotusethesamelanguageofthe“precious
child” to talk about their negative experiences working in their parents’
restaurants. But they reached for memories of a supposedly happier time
in China when they did not have to work so hard and family time (minus
the father who had long migrated to the United States) was part of their
daily rituals. Prior to migrating, most of the families enjoyed a middle-class
lifestyle where the mother did not work outside of the home and children/
teenagers did not work after school. Their lives in China included leisure
time and activities such as hanging out with friends, taking short trips
to other parts of China, and holiday celebrations with visits from family
members that made the youth feel they were close to their extended
family members. Whereas the relative comfort of having a father send

money home from the United States enabled these youth to temporarily
forgo wage work, migration brought them into the same labor market and
forces faced by their fathers, changing the very ways in which their days
were structured and spent.
The pressure and rush to spend the maximum amount of time making
money was characterized by the youth themselves as one major difference
between themselves and the Cantonese. Dan, an outspoken woman hop-
ing to go into social work, was one of the many youth who commented
on how Cantonese really know how to“enjoy their time”and have“family
time”whereas Fuzhounese appear to concentrate too much on working.
Another woman, Shu, echoed Dan’s observations that Cantonese families:
“care more about family time so they won’t do the hard, hard work and
they will care for themselves. Fuzhounese are hardworking because they
still owe money. But Cantonese work less hours. Cantonese workers at my
uncle’s old restaurant, they start work on time and finish work on time. But
Fuzhounese will start work early and finish work later to earn more.”The
themes of family time and taking care of themselves resonated with the
majority of the Fuzhounese youth I interviewed. Without exception, all of
theyoungpeopleexperiencedwhattheyviewedasadeclineinthequality
of their family lives as a result of the pressure to work upon migrating to
the United States. The youth not only entered a new economic situation
upon their arrival in New York City, but also entered into a different set of
cultural and familial obligations to repay their fathers for working so hard
while the rest of the family lived in China.
The new set of economic constraints faced by Fuzhounese youth and
their families after migration also changed the ways they interacted with
one another and their conceptualizations of family relations. For instance,
youthwereexpectedtoparticipateinthefamilybusinessandextenditinto
their futures in different ways. Boys were raised to cook in the restaurant
kitchen,delivertakeout,andmanagetherestaurant’sfinancesandworkers.
Girls were expected to work up front as the greeter, order taker, and food
packer.While young men were expected to learn the business so that they
might inherit it when their parents retire, young women were not—they
were instead expected to work for one after they got married and were
taught to seek a mate who owned a restaurant.
The gendered structure of the restaurant—with men working in the
back and women working up front—positioned women as the ultimate
transition figures not only between the “outside” and “inside” of the res-
taurant but also between the “personal” family realm and the “public”
English-speaking world. Unlike the “gendered kitchen hierarchy” where
the division of labor between fathers and mothers in the restaurant was

categorized as“skilled”(men as chefs who marinated meats, made sauces,
and roasted meats) and “unskilled” (women as kitchen assistants who
cleaned),43
the Fuzhounese restaurant space had a different set of empha-
ses. Young women with some English abilities were expected to work up
front, and mothers did not clean but were mostly cashiers, whereas young
men cooked, fried, and delivered food. Instead of prioritizing the“skilled”
aspectsoffoodpreparation,thewomenIinterviewedfeltmuchmorepres-
sure to be cultural translators and act as threshold figures between their
familymembersandtheEnglish-speakingworld“outside”oftherestaurant.
Rong and her older sister, for example, had to perform“complex jobs”
such as translating letters from credit card companies, utilities, and school
noticesbecausetheyspokesomeEnglish.Anotheryoungwoman,XiaoFan,
also resented having to be the entire family’s“cultural broker”because she
was the only college student in her family:44
“I feel stressed when people
don’t really appreciate what you’re doing. They just say ‘oh, you know
English and you go to school, you must know how to do this.’ And you
must know all the things. And I’m like,‘I’m still learning and I’m still learn-
ing English. I’m not fully understood everything.’ So right now I just limit
it to my family and basically my close friends and relatives.”The stress to
translateAmericanlifeforfamilymemberspositionedtheseyoungwomen
literally as threshold figures both within the family (translators within the
family) and between the family and non-Fuzhounese spaces; they felt
the pressure of the restaurant space extend into their personal lives. Both
Rong and her older sister had to find restaurant work to help support the
family while their younger brother got to “stay at home and play online
game until 3 am. So I have to take care of my brother. Cooking, cleaning or
housework.”Rong’s older sister did not have time to go to school because
her mother made her work in a restaurant as soon as they arrived in the
United States. Rong was able to attend college, where I met her. As the
younger daughter, she was not expected to marry before her older sister.
Her college education meant that she was the family’s go-to person for
everything relating to the English-speaking world. Not only did she have
to take on adult responsibilities at a young age (as do many 1.5-genera-
tion children),45
but she also had to hide her resentment lest she appear
ungrateful or unhappy to be helping her family members or relatives.
Fuzhounese Restaurants and the Marriage Economy
Thispressureforawomantoworkinarestaurantbeforeandaftermarriage
intensified and extended the gendered hierarchy already experienced
by many Fuzhounese women at home. As Rong noted, she was able to

continue attending college despite working in a restaurant because her
older sister was still working in a restaurant and unmarried, lessening the
pressure for Rong to get married. But other women, she noted, were not
allowed to go to school: “I think for many people they come here, marry
and have children and continue to work in a restaurant.The whole life is in
a restaurant.”Indeed, for many Fuzhounese women, the Chinese takeout
restaurant is a ubiquitous presence because they are not only supposed
to work in one to help support their parents, but also expected to marry
someone who owns one.
In the marriage economy for women, five conditions dominate the
search for a suitable husband: restaurant, money, house, car, and citizen-
ship. Over and over again, both men and women told me about the con-
ditions in this order. Mothers, older married sisters, and marriage brokers
set the criteria for what is expected of a potential mate. A young woman
is expected to “shop”for these qualities in a husband, while the woman’s
perceived desirability depends on her age and presumed ability to repro-
duce biological children.
Young women of marriageable age (eighteen to twenty-five) who
do not have boyfriends are encouraged by older married female relatives
(mothers, older sisters, aunts) to seek a boyfriend through introduction
by a matchmaker. The matchmaker is usually an older woman with many
connectionsinthecommunity.Basedonherinitialassessment,thematch-
maker will make recommendations to the family of the woman seeking
a boyfriend/husband. Depending on the woman’s circumstances, that is,
whether she is here legally or not, if her family owns a restaurant and a
house, and how old the potential bride is, the matchmaker will introduce
her to a young man with similar circumstances.Therefore, as Rong tells us,
“Wehavetothinkaboutthesefiveconditions:restaurant,money,car,house
and citizenship before deciding to marry someone or not. If the woman’s
circumstances are‘bad’[i.e., she is lacking any of the five conditions], she
will not get a ‘good boy’ with all the conditions.” Instead, she will get in-
troduced to men who are in the United States illegally and therefore do
not own a house or a restaurant and are most likely working to pay off the
sixty to seventy thousand dollars in debt incurred from being smuggled
into the country. In that case, the woman is usually older (twenty-five to
twenty-sixyearsorolder)orherselfwithoutlegalstatusorfinancialstability.
“People generally prefer younger girls. Especially parents will tell their sons
to wait until they own a restaurant or finish school before getting married
because there will always be girls who want to marry an older guy if he
owns something,”says Jei, a twenty-seven-year-old man who came to the
United States with his mother and sister when he was twenty. Age is not

as important for men because their desirability is measured according to
their economic success.46
Restaurant ownership, as one of the desired five conditions, adds to
a family’s “face” in negotiations within the marriage market. More than a
general concept of wanting to look good in front of family members and
friends, face in the Fuzhounese sense is saturated with deeper meanings
that lie at the heart of how Chinese interpersonal relationships may be
understood. I define face as mian zi, which translates roughly to “image.”
Meaning more than how one presents oneself, however, mian zi pertains
to the moral scale by which one is measured; how one acts reflects upon
one’s family members as well.47
Faceisthereforeanessentialcomponentintheprocessofselectingand
successfully attaining a suitable marriage partner.Women are expected to
fetch a high bride price (for those who came illegally, it is to repay some of
their smuggling debts; for those who came legally and with their families,
it is to give the parents face).This price is crucial to maintaining the family’s
face in the community and is connected to the“deposit”and“investment”
parentsmadeintheirdaughtersbutalsotothatmadebyFuzhounesemen
in Fuzhounese women as future reproducers of the family and biological
children who will be citizens of the nation. These prices vary with the
potential bride’s citizenship status, her youth and implied physical ability
to reproduce heirs, whether her parents own their home (thus alleviating
the groom’s potential responsibility to help pay for their house), and if her
parents own their own restaurant.
Jin, a vibrant young woman with aspirations to become a pastry chef,
laughed as she divulged, “even though the girl’s really ugly, she can still
find a very good husband if she has these things.”By far my most intrepid
interviewee, Jin traveled to Europe and Asia by herself without the knowl-
edge of her family and was one of the most outspoken interviewees. She
feltstronglyagainsttheFuzhounesestructureofmarriage.Shealsoinsisted
upon finishing her college education and adamantly resisted her mother’s
urgings to go to a matchmaker. However, in our final communication, she
revealed that her mother was forcing her to get married to a boy she did
not love because she was“getting too old.”She told me that she could no
longerresistthepressurefromherfamilyand,tothebestofmyknowledge,
wasmarriedinNovember2009.Otherwomenechoedherobservationand
emphasizedawoman’sreproductiveabilityastheutmostdesiredelement.
This was commonly associated with her age and deemed most important
of all the qualities and would almost guarantee her a“good husband.”In a
husband, money was the most desired element. As another young woman
Xiao said,“If I got a rich husband, my parents won’t have to work anymore. I

really want to make money. It’s also reputation. If you got money you have
goodreputationforthefamily.Peoplewillsay‘oh,yourdaughter’shusband
so rich! So good!’”Even though no one in Xiao’s family entered illegally or
had any monetary debts to repay, she and her sister still wanted to marry
a husband who could support their family to gain face in the community.48
The groom-to-be’s financial situation was not something for the
woman to be proud of because she would be free from the restaurant
labor market. On the contrary, none of the women I interviewed expressed
a wish to become a“trophy wife.”They all expected to work in addition to
raisingchildrenaftermarriagewithsomeadmittingtheywouldmostlikely
wind up working in their husband’s restaurant. Marrying“rich”in this case
is a relatively modest scenario where a woman moves from a stranger’s
restaurant (or that of her parents) to one owned by her husband.
While both men and women are related to the restaurant space, they
areeachpositioneddifferentlywithinthestructure.Menareresponsiblefor
duplicating the physical space of the restaurant and its income-generating
ability, while women are responsible for replicating the family workforce
that makes the restaurant profitable and continues the family line so that
the restaurant can be passed down to their children.
III.On“Reality”andChangingFamilyRelationsintheRestaurant
WorkinginarestaurantseemstobetheonethingthatlinksallFuzhounese
youth: they either have parents who own a restaurant or have worked in
restaurants out of state or in restaurants owned by relatives as a quick way
tomakemoney.ComingtotheUnitedStatesandlivingheremeansworking
hard—to assimilate and become competent English speakers, gain profes-
sionalemployment,excelinschool,fallinlove,etc.—andalsotrainingtheir
bodies to lift, bend, fry, cook, pack, and perform all the other repetitive
motions required in a Chinese takeout restaurant.The restaurant is where
they learn what it means to live in America: for them, being here means
working hard and feeling isolated from white Americans, ABCs (American-
born Chinese), Cantonese speakers, and other Fuzhounese youth.
Despite sharing the grueling experience of working in a restaurant for
long hours, this is not an experience that binds them to other Fuzhounese.
Instead, it makes them realize how “reality-based” people are once they
come here and therefore more prone to protect themselves by extending
their sense of isolation to other spaces in their lives such as the home and
school. This use of“reality”is a direct translation from the Chinese phrase
that means to think about relationships only in terms of costs versus ben-
efits. It is used by Fuzhounese youth I met to describe the commodification
and quantification of family relationships and friendships after arriving in

the United States. At the same time, it also reflects their sensed familial
obligations to work.
Rong even mentioned that it is something in the American water that
makes people cruel and “reality.”Those who work for relatives and close
family friends are most embittered by their work experiences because they
were disappointed to see that kinship and emotional ties were not enough
to save them from being exploited as workers. Indeed, these familial ties
were the very basis for their exploitation. For instance, when she works
for her uncle, she also takes care of his two small children on her day off.
Because she is a family member, she does not expect (nor has ever been
offered)paymentforherbabysittingservices.Thismeansthatalthoughshe
is technically not working at the restaurant on her day off, the restaurant
space(intheformofherobligationtoherboss/uncletowatchhischildren)
extends into her “free” time. This compels her to perform a type of labor
even though she does not receive wages.
Another interviewee, Jason, grew to resent his uncle so much that he
no longer thought of him as an uncle but rather saw him as an oppressive
employer who also used guilt and family obligation to force him to work.
To resist, Jason found small ways to“get back”at his uncle for discouraging
him from attending college and using guilt to convince Jason’s mother to
pressure Jason to work by not performing as well as he“should”because
he did not feel his time was being valued even though his uncle paid him
cash for the days he worked. He would break dishes on purpose and work
extra slowly to retaliate.To Jason, being offered payment by his uncle was
an insult because he wanted to see his uncle as a close family member
rather than an employer. To justify asking Jason to work, his uncle paid
him in cash even though he relied upon guilt to make Jason work in the
first place. This contradiction between the nature of his employment and
the compensation he received was what drove Jason to admit he hated his
uncle and avoided his phone calls:“We used to be close when we were in
China. Now he only calls me to work.”Because he saw his uncle as a family
relation, Jason was offended when his uncle paid him with money and
reduced their relationship to one of labor–management.
Instead, Jason admitted he would have worked for his uncle for free
if his uncle had simply asked him to“help out”instead of trying to justify
it in monetary terms (i.e., asking Jason to quit school and work for him
full-time and paying Jason by the hour on the days he worked). The com-
plicated overlapping of the political economy with the familial/social one
could not be reduced to just an economic transaction or an emotional
exchange. Instead, it relied upon both relationships that were complicated
by a market-based rationale and notions of family debt and obligation.

Because Jason felt trapped in these webs of obligation, he did not put
his heart into working for his uncle. Instead of hoping his uncle’s restaurant
would do well, he secretly did what he could to slow the operation by not
answering the restaurant phone or taking extra breaks during peak hours.
Likeofficeworkers“stealingtime”atworkbysurfingtheInternetormaking
personalcalls,Jasondroppedfoodonthefloorandmovedslowlytoprotest
the conditions in which he felt caught. Other times he would avoid phone
callsfromhisuncleandaskhismothernottocommunicatewithherbrother
so that he would not ask Jason to come work for him. In the end, Jason
summed up his desire to leave restaurant work permanently:“I don’t want
to be like my cousins who have just enough information, enough English
to work for restaurant. … I [had] to work so many years in a restaurant I
just hate the feeling of cooking.”The decade he spent in restaurants since
his arrival in the United States turned him off from restaurant work. Also,
his uncle’s insistence that monetary payment was sufficient compensation
for Jason’s time did not, in Jason’s eyes, rectify or alleviate the emotional
and familial burdens his uncle invoked and caused.
Jason saw his life as separate from the restaurant and did not intend
to return to that space in his future. His distaste for cooking his own food
(he confessed to me he ate out whenever possible to avoid cooking) and
saving for the future reflected his overall negative attitude toward what
he characterized as“being so Fuzhounese.”In other words, his experience
of working in a restaurant was how he, and others whom I interviewed,
learned what it means to be Fuzhounese in the United States.
It is this combination of the social and political economies that makes
it so difficult for Fuzhounese youth to exit the restaurant space, as their
bodiesarefinanciallyandemotionallyboundtoitsconfines.Makingmoney
this way is seen as not only admirable, but also highly desirable and at-
tainable. As such, the time spent pursuing an education is not valorized
and instead framed as a waste because education does not guarantee
immediate income.
Ontheotherhand,educationalachievementisawaytoaddtothefam-
ily’sfaceandprestigewithintheFuzhounesesocialandculturaleconomies
because it means that one person in the family can navigate the English-
speaking world (banks, doctors, social service and government agencies,
etc.) and help out family members and friends in these same matters.This
tension between valorizing education for its symbolic and social values
while denigrating it as a waste of potential income-generating time is an
inherentcontradictionintheeconomicandfamiliallogicsthatFuzhounese
youthexperienceintheireverydaylives.Thosewhochoosetofinishschool
must prove that their education was “worth it” by either making money

in another line of work and/or supplementing their starting incomes with
cash from part-time restaurant work.
BingwasstudyingtobecomeaparaprofessionalwhenImethim.Close
to graduation, he wanted to spend less time working at his brother’s res-
taurant and focus on his classes and finals. However, his brother and father
pressured him to“help out”on weekends since they did not see becoming
a paraprofessional as a way to make money. Bing, on the other hand, often
sidestepped their cajoling by saying he had to work on weekends as a
paraprofessional intern.While not outright rejecting his brother’s entreats
to work in the restaurant on weekends, Bing was able to negotiate being a
“good”brother and son with his desire to become something other than a
restaurant owner/worker. This was a rare case, however, as many relatives
and family members of other youth were not as flexible as Bing’s brother.
When family members continued to place pressure on youth to work in a
restaurantbyinvokingfamilialobligationsordebt,theemotionaltiesoften
deteriorated and youth experienced a marked growth of distance from
theirpreviouslycloserelatives.WhileBingnegotiatedatemporaryreprieve
fromworkinginhisbrother’srestaurant,heamelioratedthisrejectionofhis
brother’s requests to “help out” by agreeing to work after his final exams
and on the days when he was not working as a paraprofessional teacher.
WhileBingwasabletotemporarilydisconnecthimselffromrestaurant
work, other youth remain tethered to the restaurant space despite their
disinclinations and expressed sadness that their family relationships and
emotional ties with family friends became quantifiable in monetary terms.
In their eyes, working in the restaurant revealed money as the ultimate
relationship between family members rather than a sense of working for
the greater family good.
Those youth who cannot balance their sensed familial obligations
with their own work desires resented their situations and claimed to no
longer see their relatives (including fathers and siblings) as close rela-
tions but rather as employers. The restaurant is both an economic and
familial space because it extends into family relations and “private” life.
The many connotations of restaurant work include “helping out” with
the family enterprise, quick cash but hard work, and as the only way“out”
for Fuzhounese families. Those youth whose families owned a restaurant
experienced familial ties that were mediated through the space; that is,
their economic roles intersected with their roles in the family as the“good”
son or daughter. More surprising, even those whose families did not own
restaurants experienced familial obligations and relations that were tied
to the restaurant (i.e., working in a stranger’s restaurant to make money
to supplement the household income).

Rong, Jason, and Bing’s stories illustrate the multilayered set of rela-
tionships that crisscross and overlap in the space of the restaurant and
gives us a closer glimpse at the types of negotiations in which Fuzhounese
youth engage in their everyday lives. Even though the restaurant has been
studied as a simple family enterprise, the particular economic conditions
under which Fuzhounese immigrate to the United States not only orient
them toward restaurant work but also make it difficult for them to move
away from this space because of family expectations.The effects of familial
obligations as national and transnational debt complicate depictions of
AsianAmericansasthemodelminoritygivenhowmanyFuzhouneseyouth
are encouraged to forgo higher education in favor of entering the job mar-
ket and earning money to support their families. It also impacts the way
youth consider their future in the United States by structuring their desires
around the pursuit of restaurant ownership as a way to establish place and
face in the community. In short, Fuzhounese youth saw the restaurant as a
sample of what their futures would be and understood their experiences
in the United States as inseparable from laboring in a restaurant.
In the end, the story of Fuzhounese youth in New York’s Chinatown
tells a tale of intimate relationships and feelings that are affected by the
everyday workings of capitalism. Although neoliberalism is generally
outlined in terms of its economic effects, its actual“institutional entrench-
ment as a broad system is deeply bound up with the socio-cultural norms
and taken-for-granted assumptions of any given society.” 9
Therefore, it
is within the micropolitics of everyday life and the myriad decisions of
individuals and institutions that we see the greatest impact of neoliberal
policies and ideology. The youth in this study did not control the condi-
tions in which they arrived in the United States, but the thoughts and
feelings they expressed brought out the inner workings of the structures
that circumscribed their lives and propelled their actions. And while their
actions sometimes exceeded the structures of illegality and neoliberalism,
it is the exceeding that reveals these structures and how they have come
to dictate who/what a citizen is.
Notes
1. Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach, Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican
ImmigrantsintheU.S.(Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1985);Alejan-
dro Portes and Alex Stepick, City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Alejandro Portes and Min
Zhou, “Gaining the Upper Hand: Economic Mobility among Immigrants
and Domestic Minorities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15 (1992): 491–522;
AlejandroPortesandMinZhou,“TheNewSecondGeneration:Segmented

Assimilation and Its Variants,”Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 530 (1993): 74–96. More recent work on suburban Chi-
natowns,however,notestheincreasingroleplayedbytransnationalAsian
capital in the formation of self-sufficient ethnic suburbs closely aligned
withAsianmetropoliseslikeHongKong,Taipei,Beijing,andShanghai.See
Timothy P. Fong, The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monter-
rey Park, California (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). See also
Hsiang-ShuiChen,ChinatownNoMore:TaiwanImmigrantsinContemporary
New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992).
2. Min Zhou, Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Min Zhou and Carl L.
Bankston, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in
the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998).
3. Zhou, Chinatown.
4. Roger Rouse,“Making Sense of Settlement: ClassTransformation, Cultural
Struggle, and Transnationalism among Mexican Migrants in the United
States,”Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645 (1992): 25–52.
5. Kenneth Guest, GodinChinatown:ReligionandSurvivalinNewYork’sEvolv-
ing Immigrant Community (New York: New York University Press, 2003);
Peter Kwong, Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American
Labor (New York: New Press, 1997); Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic,
ChineseAmerica:TheUntoldStoryofAmerica’sOldestNewCommunity(New
York: New Press, 2005).
6. Guest, God in Chinatown.
7. Kirk Semple,“Chinese Community Devastated after Bus Crash,”New York
Times, March 13, 2011.
8. Guest, God in Chinatown, 29–32.
9. See goldenventuremovie.com and Iriseducation.org.
10. Nina Bernstein,“Making It Ashore but Still Chasing U.S. Dream,”New York
Times, April 9, 2006.
11. Sheldon Zhang, Chinese Human Smuggling Organizations: Families, Social
Networks, and Cultural Imperatives (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2008).
12. TheallureofNewYork,LosAngeles,andotherplacesasimmigrantdestina-
tion cities is not exclusive to the Fuzhounese alone. Other studies examin-
ing the impact of urban booster discourses and Hollywood imaginings on
youth outside of the United States address the multifaceted ways through
which these “global” cities are imagined. Mark Liechty, “Kathmandu as
Translocality:MultiplePlacesinaNepaliSpace,”inTheGeographyofIdentity,
ed.PatriciaYeager(AnnArbor:UniversityofMichiganPress,1996),98–130;
BradWeiss,“Thug Realism: Inhabiting Fantasy in UrbanTanzania,”Cultural
Anthropology 17, no. 1 (2002): 93–124.
13. Zai Liang and Wenzhen Ye,“From Fujian to New York: Understanding the
New Chinese Immigration,” in Global Human Smuggling: Comparative

Perspectives, ed. David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001): 204–232.
14. Kwong, Forbidden Workers; Ko-Lin Chin, Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine
Immigration to the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1999); Zhang, Chinese Human Smuggling Organizations.
15. Chin, Smuggled Chinese.
16. Patrick Raden Keefe, The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Under-
worldandtheAmericanDream (NewYork: Random House, 2009); Sheldon
Zhang,SmugglingandTraffickinginHumanBeings:AllRoadsLeadtoAmerica
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007).
17. Patrick Raden Keefe, “The Snakehead: The Criminal Odyssey of China-
town’sSisterPing,”NewYorker,April24,2006,http://www.newyorker.com/
archive/2006/04/24/060424fa_fact6#ixzz0flyBuW6f.
18. Ko-LinChin,ChinatownGangs:Extortion,EnterpriseandEthnicity(NewYork:
Oxford University Press, 1996); Ko-Lin Chin, Sheldon Zhang, and Robert
Kelly, “Transnational Chinese Organized Crime Activities,” Transnational
Organized Crime 4, nos. 3–4 (1998): 127–54; Kwong, Forbidden Workers;
Mary Angela Lagdameo, “Human Smuggling from Fujian to New York”
(master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 2008), http://digitalli-
brary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/item/etd-Lagdameo-2050.pdf;Liang
and Ye, “From Fujian to New York”; Guest, God in Chinatown; Julie Chu,
“To Be‘Emplaced’: Fuzhounese Migration and the Politics of Destination,”
Identities 13, no. 3 (2006): 395–425; Zhang, Chinese Human Smuggling
Organizations.
19. Chin,Ko-Lin,SheldonZhangandRobertKelly.1998.“TransnationalChinese
organized crime activities”TransnationalOrganizedCrime.4(3–4): 127–54.
20. Kwong, Forbidden Workers.
21. Guest, God in Chinatown.
22. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals: Youth
Subcultures in Post-war Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1976); Stuart Hall,
Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts, Policing the
Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (London: Macmillan, 1978).
23. Bruce Kapferer, ed., The World Trade Center and Global Crisis (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2004); Nancy Foner, ed., WoundedCity:TheSocialImpact
of 9/11 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005); Michael Sorkin and
Sharon Zukin, eds., After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City
(New York: Routledge, 2002).
24. Asian American Federation of New York,“Chinatown One Year after Sep-
tember 11th: An Economic Impact Study”(2002), http://www.aafny.org/
research/OneYearAfter/ChinatownOneYearAfter.pdf; Asian Americans
for Equality, “Rebuild Chinatown Initiative: The Community Speaks One
Year after September 11, 2001”(2002), http://www.rebuildchinatown.org/
doc/RCI_Community_Speaks_Report.pdf; Michael Sorkin, “Back to Zero:
Mourning in America,”in AftertheWorldTradeCenter:RethinkingNewYork

City, ed. Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin (New York: Routledge, 2002),
213–32.
25. Nikolas Rose,“Governing‘Advanced’Liberal Democracies,”in Foucaultand
Political Reason: Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Rationalities of Government,
ed. Andrew Barry,Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose (Chicago: University
ofChicagoPress,1996),37–64;DavidHarvey,ABriefHistoryofNeoliberalism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
26. Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space,” Antipode 34, no. 3
(2002): 380–404, 381); JenniferWolch, The Shadow State: Government and
Voluntary Sector in Transition (New York: Foundation Center, 1990).
27. Peck and Tickell,“Neoliberalizing Space,”393.
28. Subcommittee on Management, Integration, and Oversight of the Com-
mittee on Homeland Security,“An Examination of Federal 9/11 Assistance
to NewYork: Lessons Learned in PreventingWaste, Fraud, Abuse, and Lax
Management” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, August
2006).
29. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, “About Us,” http://www.
renewnyc.com/overlay/AboutUs/.
30. Asian Americans for Equality’s Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, “America’s
Chinatown: A Community Plan”(NewYork: Asian Americans for Equality’s
Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, 2004).
31. Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese
Children Adapt to Life in the United States (NewYork: Russell Sage Founda-
tion, 1998); Min Zhou, “Coming of Age: The Current Situation of Asian
American Children.” Amerasia Journal 25 (1): 1–27, 1999; Christy Chiang-
Hom, “‘Transnational Cultural Practices of Chinese Immigrant Youth and
Parachute Kids,”in AsianAmericanYouth:Culture,Identity,andEthnicity, ed.
Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (New York: Routledge, 2003), 143–158; Vivian
Louie, CompelledtoExcel:Immigration,Education,andOpportunityamong
Chinese Americans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
32. Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic, Chinese America: The Untold Story of
America’s Oldest New Community (New York: New Press, 2005).
33. SaraAhmed,QueerPhenomenology:Orientations,Objects,Others(Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 9, 12.
34. Bourdieu’s “habitus” indicates are dispositions that are shaped by previ-
ous events and structures and that, in turn, shape current practices and
structures. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment
of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 170.
35. In his important study on inner-city youth, Robin D.G. Kelley takes note of
the“leisure”activitiesinwhichyouthengagesuchasplayingcards,playing
basketball, and having sex (aka turning tricks) as ways for young people
to earn money rather than simply diversions. Kelley,“Looking to Get Paid:
How Some Black Youth Put Culture to Work,”in Yo Mama’s DisFUNKtional:
Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 43–77.

Itisimportanttotakenoteofyouthparticipation in theinformaleconomy
since youth are often not thought of as full adults and therefore are not
considered full-fledged members of the formal economy that involves
wage labor and worker rights. Sunaina Maira and Elisabeth Seop,“United
States of Adolescence? Reconsidering US Youth Cultural Studies,” Young
12, no. 3 (2004): 245–69.
36. Miri Song, Helping Out: Children’s Labor in Ethnic Businesses (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1999).
37. ThomasLemke,“TheBirthofBio-politics:MichaelFoucault’sLecturesatthe
College de France on Neo-liberal Governmentality,”Economy and Society
30, no. 2 (2001): 190–207.
38. Bourdieu, Distinction.
39. Rouse,“Making Sense of Settlement,”34–37.
40. PortesandZhou,“GainingtheUpperHand”;MargaretChin,SewingWomen:
Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005).
41. Kwong, Forbidden Workers; Song, Helping Out.
42. Miri Song, Helping Out: Children’s Labor in Ethnic Businesses (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1999), 103, 102.
43. Song, Helping Out, 55.
44. Nazli Kibria, FamilyTightrope:TheChangingLivesofVietnameseAmericans
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Alejandro Portes and Rubén
G.Rumbaut,Legacies:TheStoryoftheImmigrantSecondGeneration(Berke-
ley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,2001);CarolaSuárez-OrozcoandMarcelo
M.Suárez-Orozco,ChildrenofImmigration(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUni-
versity Press, 2001); Lisa Sun-Hee Park,“Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurial
Children,” in Contemporary Asian American Communities, ed. Linda Trinh
Vo and Rick Bonus (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 161–74.
45. Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, “The Work Kids Do: Mexican and Central
American Immigrant Children’s Contributions to Households and Schools
in California,” Harvard Educational Review 71 (2001): 366–89; Portes and
Rumbaut, Legacies; Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Lisa Dorner, and Lucila
Pulido, “Accessing Assets: Immigrant Youth’s Work as Family Translators
or‘Para-phrasers,’”Social Problems 50, no. 4 (2003): 505–24.
46. I am not claiming this is exceptional to Fuzhounese. However, it is signifi-
cant because of the other factors that affect matchmaking and marriage
practices in the Fuzhounese social world.
47. William B. Gudykunst, Stella Ting-Toomey, and Tsukasa Nishida, Commu-
nicationinPersonalRelationshipsacrossCultures (London: Sage, 1996), 82.
48. Her father was granted asylum in 1993 under the 1992 Chinese Student
Protection Act, which was passed after the Tiananmen Square riots in
1989 and granted permanent residency to all Chinese nationals who ar-
rived in the United States on or before April 11, 1990 (U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992. S. 1216 —

102nd Congress: Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992.”www.GovTrack.
us. 1991. January 22, 2015 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/102/
s1216. Accessed January 13, 2015.)
49. Katharyne Mitchell,“Transnationalism in the Margins: Hegemony and the
ShadowState,”inTransnationalSpaces,ed.PeterJackson,PhilipCrang,and
Claire Dwyer (New York: Routledge, 2004), 122–46, 122.

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