Chinanews.com, March 15. According to the US "World Journal", Chinatown in Manhattan, New York, USA is the earliest residential community of Chinese residents in New York City. Chinese elements can be seen everywhere, including road signs with Chinese characters, which are unique in the city.

Although the Asian population in New York City has been increasing in recent years, Chinatown is experiencing population loss, coupled with the many serious problems facing the community, no one has noticed that Chinatown has fewer and fewer Chinese and English road signs.

Of the at least 155 bilingual road signs the city ordered in 1985, only 101 remained, according to a tally by The New York Times.

People in the Chinatown community said on the 13th that they plan to propose to the city again in the future to retain bilingual road signs.

  The New York Times reported that the first Chinese street name in Chinatown came from Wang Qingfu, who founded the first Chinese-language newspaper in New York, the American China Newspaper.

  By the passage of the Immigration Act in 1965, many new immigrants were poor in English, and the demand for Chinese road signs increased greatly.

In order to help new immigrants who do not understand English familiarize themselves with the community, the city government has set up bilingual street signs in Chinatown since 1960.

In 1969, the American Chinese Chamber of Commerce requested the Municipal Transportation Department to make bilingual road signs for Chinatown to facilitate the lives of new immigrants.

  With the further increase of new immigrants to Chinatown.

In 1984, Li Libo, the then chairman of the New York Zhonghua Office, called Zheng Xiangyuan, who was working in the City Urban Planning Bureau, to discuss the addition of bilingual road signs. A study was conducted using the scope, but the project data has been lost.

  As a result, the city government ordered the production of at least 155 bilingual road signs in 1985. At that time, the entire Chinese community worked with the city government to carry out a large-scale translation work; but there was a controversy over how to translate the street names, because the Chinese dialects in different regions are very different. Location; since most of the immigrants in Chinatown came from Taishan and Guangzhou areas in Guangdong at that time, the final Chinese street name basically reflected the pronunciation of Taishan dialect and Cantonese dialect.

  The Chinese character street signs have witnessed the golden age of Chinatown and the decline of Chinatown.

According to the 2020 census, although Asians are the fastest-growing community in New York City, new immigrants now mainly choose to settle in Flushing, Queens and 8th Avenue in Brooklyn, and Chinatown has become the worst Asian outflow of all New York communities. community.

  The "911" incident caused serious injuries to small businesses in Chinatown, and then the housing bubble and foreign investment pushed up rents, making Chinatown troubled by gentrification.

The new crown pneumonia epidemic has caused a major blow to Chinatown. Not only has the epidemic led to the depression of all industries, hatred and violence against Asians have emerged one after another, and the community is living in unrest; at the same time, social contradictions have caused continuous demonstrations in Chinatown in recent years, such as opposition to the city. The government builds community prisons in Chinatown and opposes the construction of new homeless shelters.

  Against these backgrounds, the disappearance of bilingual road signs in Chinese and English has gone unnoticed.

At present, compared with 155 bilingual road signs in the peak period, there are only 101 bilingual road signs in Chinatown; Morales, deputy press secretary of the Municipal Transportation Bureau, said that the Federal Department of Transportation's "Uniform Code of Road Traffic Management Signs" does not require the establishment of Bilingual road signs, if the bilingual road signs are damaged, they will only be replaced with English road signs when repaired.

  Yu Jinshan, who has served as the chairman of the China Office for two times and is now the honorary chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, said that the bilingual road signs in Chinatown witness an important history and are also the result of the solidarity and efforts of the Chinatown community. It is very important to Chinatown and is worthy of all Chinese people. ; "Now the Bureau of Transportation has replaced some bilingual signboards, we feel very sorry, especially in the current situation of Chinatown's population loss, we should continue this fine tradition."

  Yu Jinshan said, "I hope the Transportation Bureau can continue to produce bilingual road signs in both Chinese and English. The Chinese General Chamber of Commerce also plans to continue to discuss with the Zhonghua Office in the future, and strive to propose to the Municipal Transportation Bureau and Urban Planning Bureau again to continue producing bilingual road signs."

  Zheng Xiangyuan, who assisted the community in contacting the Municipal Transportation Bureau to set up bilingual road signs and worked as an engineer in the Municipal Urban Planning Bureau for 37 years, also said on the 13th that the bilingual road signs in Chinatown should be retained, and he will continue to help the community contact the city government as much as possible.

  Zheng Xiangyuan said, "This is a characteristic of Chinatown, and it would be a pity if it could not be preserved; but the question now is whether the Municipal Transportation Bureau retains the data of the late Mr. Tan Bingzhong's handwritten Chinese street signs. If the data is not preserved, the community may need to In addition, calligraphers are invited to write; in addition, because there are many new immigrants now, the translation names of many streets may be controversial and need to be negotiated by the community; but no matter what the final translation name is, the most important thing is to retain the tradition and characteristics of bilingual street signs.” (and Zhao Yu)