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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.

买下纽约哈德逊谷的中餐馆Eng’s (餐馆名)40多年后,汤姆·薛(Tom Sit)终于不情愿地开始考虑自己的退休事宜了。

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.

在人生的大部分时间里,薛先生每周七天、每天12个小时在这里工作。
自年轻时从中国移民美国以来,他一直在这个厨房做饭。他的车泊在同一个停车场,小憩的时候,他曾在那里读未婚妻从蒙特利尔的来信,那是20世纪70年代末,他们还是异地恋。

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.

两年前,在妻子费伊·李·薛(Faye Lee Sit)的坚持下,他开始每周休假一天。尽管如此,他也不可能永远干下去。他76岁了,而且他们很快就要当外祖父母了。每周工作80个小时太辛苦。但已经成年的女儿们都有大学学位和高薪工作,她们无意接手餐馆。


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.

在美国各地,像Eng’s这样的中餐馆的老板们都在准备退休,但后继乏人。他们的子女在美国长大,接受了高等教育,从事的职业不需要像食品服务业这样累人的劳动。

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.

据餐馆点评网站Yelp的最新数据,美国前20大城市的中餐馆数量一直在下降。五年前,这些城市的所有餐馆中平均7.3%是中餐馆,而现在只有6.5%。这意味着,在这20个城市总共增加了1.5万多家餐馆的同时,中餐馆却减少了1200家。

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.

即使在旧金山,这个美国最古老的唐人街所在地,中餐馆的比例已从10%下降到了8.8%。

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.

人们对中餐的兴趣似乎并没有减退。在Yelp上,中餐馆的平均浏览量并没有下降,平均评分也没有下降。与此同时,印度餐馆、韩国料理和越南餐馆的比例——其中许多也由亚洲国家的移民拥有和经营——在全美范围内保持稳定或略有增长。

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.

餐饮行业一直很难做,不断上涨的房租和外卖应用软件更是雪上加霜。
美国政府对移民的收紧以及对财务的严格审计,也使这些依赖现金交易的中餐馆更难以为继。

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.

但这些都不是中餐馆最大的困难,相反,中餐馆慢慢消退的一个很重要的原因,似乎是第二代华人的经济流动性导致的。

“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.”

“中餐馆减少的趋势,反映出一段成功的故事,”珍妮弗·8·李(Jennifer 8. Lee)说,她曾是《纽约时报》记者,曾著书《幸运饼干编年史》(The Fortune Cookie Chronicles),该书讲述中餐馆在美国的兴起,还制作了一部名为《寻找左宗棠》(The Search for General Tso)的纪录片。“早期华人移民在美国落脚后开中餐馆,为的是后代不不在干这份辛苦差事,现在他们的子女都不以此为生。”

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.

中餐馆老板的退休也折射出华人移民美国的历史。
1882年的《排华法案》(Chinese Exclusion Act)阻止了中国移民的稳步增长。这个法案直到1943年才被撤销,其他针对华人族裔的配额在1965年被废除后,大规模的移民才得以恢复。

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.

.......移民到给人以自由和经济可能性的美国。

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.

薛先生于1968年离开了中国南方城市广州。他一路翻山越岭,最后靠游泳来到香港,他在裤腿里塞满松果,权当漂浮装置。

“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.”

“那时没有未来,”他说。“获得自由和找到好工作的唯一途径就是去香港。”

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.

1974年,他移民美国后开始在中餐馆Eng’s工作,这家中餐馆创办于1927年。尽管他此前从未在餐馆工作过,但炒菜锅的灼热远不及他在香港一家塑料厂工作时所经历的。
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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.

与薛先生不同的是,有些移民在离开中国前当过厨师。在纽约顺利宫餐馆(Shun Lee Palace)这样的地方,他们烹饪的湘菜和粤菜能端上铺着亚麻桌布的餐桌,为佩戴珠宝的好奇食客享用。

“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.”

“美国曾有过一个中餐烹饪的黄金时代,那是在20世纪60年代末70年代初,”餐馆老板兼厨师艾德·舍恩菲尔德(Ed Schoenfeld)说,他自20世纪70年代起就一直在中餐馆工作。“从那时开始,我们有了中国地方菜系的厨师来美国做中国地方菜。”


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.

不过,大多数情况下,新掌勺的厨师靠的是快速和价格便宜的烹饪。他们根据美国人的口味作出调整,推出了干炒牛河、幸运饼干和蛋花汤等菜肴,人们通常把这些菜装在中餐特有的外卖盒里带回家吃。

“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.”

“这些菜最大的特点是制作简单,”李女士说。“这些人来美国不是为了当厨师;他们是移民,烹饪只是他们谋生的方法。”

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.

其他移民群体也有类似的经历。移民子女因社会流动性和包容性进入更主流的经济领域后,他们做相同工作的可能性比父母要低。

“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.”

“从某种意义上来说,这些子女在恢复其父母作为第一代移民时应得的地位,”哥伦比亚大学社会学教授珍妮弗·李(Jennifer Lee)说,她是《亚裔美国人成就悖论》(The Asian American Achievement Paradox)的合著者“第二代华人的目标从来都不是继承父业。”

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.

不过,在过去十年里,第二代中的个别人还是选择了接管家庭餐馆。1920年开业的纽约早茶馆南华茶室(Nom Wah Tea Parlor)一直是家庭生意:先由蔡家,后来是邓家经营。

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.

南华茶室现在的老板是41岁的邓伟,他在2011年离开了金融业,接手了叔叔的生意。起初,他的父母不赞成他的这个决定。

“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.”

“作为移民,你只能干这行;如果不是开餐馆,就是自助洗衣店,”邓伟说。“我回过头来选择开餐馆?这让他们很难接受。”

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.

自他接手以来,南华茶室开始了扩张:除了在曼哈顿开了另一家分店外,还在费城以及深圳开了分店。每天晚上,成群结队的客人挤在坐落于宰也街(Doyers Street)拐角的这家唐人街本店门外,要等一个小时才能吃上。

“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.”

“我有这样一个独一无二的机会,来保存老纽约的一些东西,”他说。“我仍在非常努力地工作。但我也知道如何使用营销工具,比如互联网。”
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


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.

此外,还有另一群人在尝试让中餐馆继续生存下去。
总部设在纽约的中式休闲快餐连锁店君子食堂(Junzi Kitchen),最近筹集到了500万美元,用于研究和收购像Eng’s这样的餐馆,将它们重塑为“君子”品牌下的现代中餐馆。

“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.

“它们将继续提供通常受人喜爱的中餐外卖服务,但我们正在升级这种服务,”君子创始人兼首席执行官赵勇说。

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.

但家庭经营的中餐馆如今通常不会传给下一代。有些餐馆可能会关闭,把生意卖给其他新加入美国的第一代移民,或开始新生,开始做一些新的尝试。

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.’”

薛先生还没有找到经营餐馆的合适人选,目前也没有立刻关门的计划。
“接管Eng’s的人必须对它全心全意,”他说。“我想要那种忠诚生意的人,而不是那种‘我用赚它一两年钱,赚够钱拍屁股闪人’的人。”
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


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.

薛女士比她的丈夫更愿意退休。平日善于言谈的她,在聊起中餐馆的继承人时却总是闪烁其词。

“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.”

“他们得努力干活,”薛女士说者,眼睛里闪烁着光芒,一边揶揄丈夫,“要像薛先生那样拼命工作。也许那时他会让他们接管。”

If he ever actually does hand Eng’s to someone else, Mr. Sit will miss his customers, and miss running an operation.

如果薛先生真的把中餐馆交给别人,薛先生可能会想念他的老食客们,想念在中餐馆忙碌的日子。