（人们在纽约的G&J花店购物）

It’s springtime in New York City’s Chinatown, and bright red tomatoes are stacked on a table outside Gary Liang’s store, just $2.99 a pound. A florist by trade, Liang started selling fresh vegetables during the pandemic to keep his business, G&J Florist, afloat, connecting directly with farmers in Pennsylvania and Maryland to create his own personal supply chain, including Swiss chard, Japanese sweet potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes.

这是纽约唐人街的春天，加里梁(Gary Liang)商店外的桌子上堆满了鲜红的西红柿，每磅仅售2.99美元。作为一名花商，梁在疫情期间开始销售新鲜蔬菜，以维持他的企业G&J florist的运营，他直接与宾夕法尼亚州和马里兰州的农民联系，建立了自己的个人供应链，包括瑞士甜菜、日本红薯和洋姜。

“I started looking at a map,” says Liang, 45. “I drove to the farmers markets out of state and got to know people. I wanted produce that was really fresh and clean to bring back to the city.”

“我开始看地图，”45岁的梁说。“我开车去了州外的农贸市场并认识了一些人。我想把真正新鲜干净的农产品带回城市。”

Now Liang makes a weekly eight-hour round-trip drive to pick up produce and fresh-off-the-farm eggs, continuing a Chinatown food purveyors’ time-honored tradition of cutting out the middleman — a practice that can be traced directly to the xenophobic policies that forced Asian immigrants to live in strictly separate communities, via the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

现在，梁每周都要进行长达八小时的往返车程，去取回农产品和刚从农场出来的新鲜鸡蛋，延续了唐人街食品供应商们沿袭已久的绕过中间商的传统——这一做法可以直接追溯到1882年通过的排华法案所导致的仇外政策，这些政策迫使亚洲移民居住在严格分隔的社区中。

“These were people who weren’t accepted in American society,” says Valerie Imbruce, author of “From Farm to Canal Street: Chinatown’s Alternative Food Network in the Global Marketplace,” “so they developed a food system to support their own cultural demands, leveraging trust within their own social networks.”

“这些人不被美国社会所接受，”《从农场到运河街：唐人街在全球市场上的另类食品网络》一书的作者瓦莱丽·伊姆布鲁斯说，“所以他们开发了一套食品系统来支持自己的文化需求，利用自己社会网络中的信任。”

Just 80 years after the law was finally repealed, family-run food markets in Asian communities from coast to coast still offer high-quality produce, meat, eggs and fish at bargain prices, often using the same direct connections to farmers and fishermen established by earlier generations. It’s the children and grandchildren of the owners of those markets who are now considering how to honor those carefully developed supply chains while also expanding their customer base beyond the local Chinatown population.

在这项法律最终被废除仅80年后，从东海岸到西海岸的亚洲社区里，家族经营的食品市场仍然以优惠的价格提供高质量的农产品、肉类、鸡蛋和鱼类，通常利用之前几代人建立起来的与农民和渔民的直接联系。现在，这些市场的主人的子女和孙辈们正在考虑如何继续维护这些精心建立的供应链，同时将他们的客户群扩大到当地唐人街人口之外。



（杰斐逊·李和彼得·李在47 Division Street Trading）

“In a lot of ethnic communities, you’ll tend to see products that are cheaper and higher quality than standard supermarket options,” says Jefferson Li, 30, who, with his father, Peter, runs his family’s meat shop, 47 Division Street Trading in New York. “These are people who are just one or two generations removed from agrarian societies, so there’s culturally an expectation of fresh food that’s going to be cooked today.”

“在很多族裔社区中，你会发现这些产品的价格比标准超市选项便宜，质量更高，”杰斐逊·李说道。他与父亲彼得共同经营着家族的肉店47 Division Street Trading。他补充道：“这些人只是与农业社会相隔一两代，所以在文化上，他们期待当天烹饪新鲜食物。”

Peter Li emigrated from China, where he learned to butcher, in 1985, eventually opening his own market and maintaining connections with friends who left the city to establish livestock farms. Building relationships with duck farmers on Long Island helped him create a market for Chinese barbecue across the community: “My dad and I can see a duck hanging in a window at a restaurant and tell you where it came from based on how fat or slim it is,” Jefferson says.

彼得·李于1985年从中国移民到美国，在那里他学会了屠宰技巧，最终开设了自己的市场，并与离开城市建立养殖场的朋友们保持联系。与长岛的鸭农建立关系帮助他在社区中打造一个针对中国烧烤的市场：“我爸爸和我可以看到一只鸭子挂在餐馆的窗户上，就能根据它的肥瘦程度告诉你它是从哪里来的，”杰斐逊说道。

Social media brings new shoppers

社交媒体吸引了新的购物者

But it was the frustration and fear of the pandemic’s early days that drove Jefferson to take to social media in an effort to bring business to his family’s store and help feed the local community. His pathos-laden Reddit post, by turns raw, funny and deeply personal, included lines such as: “$10 will get you something like 13 pounds of chicken drumsticks, plus a dozen eggs. Don’t like drum sticks? Fine, get something else, our prices are lower than your GPA and your parents’ expectations for you.”

然而，正是在疫情早期的沮丧和恐惧驱使着杰斐逊利用社交媒体努力为家族店铺带来生意，帮助当地社区解决食物问题。他充满情感的Reddit帖子，时而真实、有趣，时而非常个性，其中包括以下文字：“10美元可以买到大约13磅鸡腿肉，再加上一打鸡蛋。不喜欢鸡腿？没关系，买别的东西，我们的价格比你的绩点和你父母对你的期望还低。”

Unsurprisingly, the post went viral. “I literally wrote it while I was sitting in the delivery truck,” Jefferson says. “I’d seen supermarkets charging $59.99 a pound for drumsticks. At first I thought, ‘Fine, I should do that,’ but then I thought about families like mine and the aunts and grandmas of people I grew up with. I didn’t want to be a scumbag.”

毫不意外，这篇帖子迅速走红。“我当时就是坐在送货卡车里写的，”杰斐逊说。“我看到超市卖鸡腿肉要59.99美元一磅。起初我想，‘好吧，我应该这样做。’但后来我想到了像我家人一样的家庭，以及我一起长大的人们的阿姨和奶奶们。我不想成为一个卑鄙小人。”

The response was big, attracting non-Asian shoppers from outside the community, often groups of people placing orders of $400 or higher. Jefferson started adding signs in English, a novelty in a store that had only Chinese language signage. As the pandemic wound down, the big orders became less frequent, but the store has still seen more diversity in its customers.

反响很大，吸引了社区外的非亚裔购物者，通常是一群人下400美元或更高的订单。杰斐逊开始添加英文标识，这在一家只有中文标识的商店里是一种新奇的做法。随着疫情的消退，大额订单变得不那么频繁了，但这家店的顾客仍然更加多样化。



（史蒂文·王和弗里曼·王在Aqua Best）

Steven Wong spent summers as a teenager on Martha’s Vineyard working in commercial fishing operations, learning about wind patterns and shouldering bags of seafood that weighed more than he did. Now 43, he and his brother Freeman, 47, are the second generation running the family business, Aqua Best, where a glistening whole branzino sells for $8.99 a pound, about $3 less than other fresh seafood purveyors around Manhattan, and fresh shrimp is at prices even lower than discount supermarkets.

十几岁的时候，史蒂文·王夏天都在玛莎葡萄园岛从事商业捕鱼作业，一边学习风向，一边扛着比自己体重还重的海产品袋。现年43岁的他和他47岁的哥哥弗里曼是经营Aqua Best家族企业的第二代传人。在Aqua Best，一条闪闪发光的整条鲈鱼售价为每磅8.99美元，比曼哈顿附近的其他新鲜海鲜供应商便宜约3美元，而新鲜虾的价格甚至比折扣超市还低。

“My mom instilled in us that you always go to the source,” Steven says. “So it was about building relationships with the fishermen to ensure freshness.” Owning a lobster pound in Canada is just one way that Aqua Best guarantees freshness and fair pricing for customers, ranging from Michelin-star restaurants to local seniors on a fixed income.

“我妈妈灌输给我们的是，你总是要找到源头，”史蒂文说。“因此，建立与渔民的关系是为了确保食材的新鲜。”在加拿大拥有一个龙虾养殖场只是Aqua Best向顾客保证新鲜度和公平定价的一种方式，顾客范围从米其林星级餐厅到固定收入的当地老年人。

Providing the food Asians needed

提供亚洲人需要的食物

The supply side is deeply integrated into Chinatown communities, where the population originally had no access to the familiar ingredients, from bok choy to chicken feet, necessary for traditional recipes. Bo Bo Poultry, founded by Richard Lee in Upstate New York in the 1980s, focuses on raising Buddhist-style chickens, sold with the head and feet, specifically for Asian cuisines. They now sell their chickens in 37 states and Puerto Rico.

供应端与唐人街社区紧密结合，原本这些社区的居民无法获得传统菜谱所需的熟悉食材，从白菜到鸡爪都不例外。Bo Bo Poultry由理查德·李于上世纪80年代在纽约北部创立，专注于养殖供亚洲菜肴使用的佛教风格的鸡（指天然、自由放养的、不含抗生素的，以天然食物为食的鸡），保留了头和脚出售。现在，他们的鸡在37个州和波多黎各销售。

“The recipes that Asians use are different,” says Lee’s daughter Anita, 45, who joined the family business in 2001. “The chickens are older and the cooking methods are usually poaching or steaming instead of roasting, with ginger and green onion in the water. The meat needs to be more dense and flavorful.” Because Chinese immigrant communities tend to cook a lot, she says, it allows Bo Bo to keep prices competitive, even for a specialty product.

“亚洲人使用的食谱不同，”李的女儿安妮塔说道，她于2001年加入了家族企业。“这种鸡的年龄较大，烹饪方法通常是水煮或蒸，而不是烤，水里加入了姜和葱。肉需要更加紧实和美味。”她说，由于中国移民社区通常烹饪量很大，这使得Bo Bo可以保持具有竞争力的价格，即使是一种特殊产品。

There is a long history of Asian immigrants establishing farms outside of the cities where Chinatown communities were thriving. Yee Lung Kwong and his wife Yee Dong Shee moved with their four children an hour outside New York City to rural New Jersey in 1940, seeking healthier air while growing Asian vegetables to sell in Chinatown.

亚洲移民在唐人街社区繁荣的城市外建立农场的历史由来已久。1940年，邝宜隆和妻子Yee Dong Shee带着四个孩子，在距离纽约市一小时车程的地方搬到了新泽西州的农村，他们寻求更健康的空气，一边种植亚洲蔬菜在唐人街出售。

“They had some basic farming knowledge, but it was mostly just trial and error,” says grandson Roland Yee, 45. The operation expanded to southern New Jersey in the 1950s, then the Yee family, including Roland’s parents, began farming 1,000 acres in Boynton Beach on Florida’s east coast in the early 1970s; Roland and his brother Ethan are now the third generation farming the land. The vegetables grown today — such as gai lan, yu choy and napa cabbage — can still be purchased in Chinatown produce markets, as well as across the country, at theme parks, on cruise ships, enjoyed by Americans of every culture.

“他们有一些基本的农业知识，但主要都是试错，”45岁的孙子罗兰·易说。20世纪50年代，生意扩展到新泽西州南部，然后，20世纪70年代初，包括罗兰的父母在内的Yee家族开始在佛罗里达州东海岸的博因顿海滩耕种1000英亩土地；罗兰和他的兄弟伊森现在是耕种土地的第三代。今天种植的蔬菜——比如芥兰、油菜和大白菜——仍然可以在唐人街的农产品市场买到，在全国各地、主题公园、游轮上也可以买到，这是各种文化的美国人都喜欢的。

For activist Jan Lee, a third-generation resident of New York’s Chinatown whose own father drove produce north from Florida in the 1940s when White truckers strictly controlled trucking routes, there’s a deep concern that shopping for affordable fresh food in America’s Asian communities is under threat from gentrification, as real estate developers buy up cheap buildings. “The Chinese community adapted because it was corralled into these ghettos,” he says, “but the survival and future of Chinatown is now at stake. How many mom-and-pop stores are going to be able to compete and sell low-cost food?”

活跃分子简·李是纽约唐人街的第三代居民，上世纪40年代白人卡车司机严格控制货运路线时，他的父亲曾从佛罗里达向北运送农产品。对于简·李来说，他深感担忧的是，随着房地产开发商买下廉价建筑，在美国亚裔社区购买负担得起的新鲜食品正面临中产阶级化的威胁。“华人社区适应了，因为它被赶入了这些贫民区，”他说，“但唐人街的生存和未来现在岌岌可危。有多少夫妻店能够竞争并销售低成本食品?”

Vanishing storefronts and aging populations

店面消失和人口老龄化

Zoe Lin, a master’s degree candidate at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, has been examining the now 20-year-old data found in Imbruce’s “From Farm to Canal Street” research, noting decline that began in 2008 with the SARS epidemic and continued with Hurricane Sandy and unchecked gentrification.

哥伦比亚大学建筑研究生院的研究生佐伊·林一直在研究伊姆布鲁斯的“从农场到运河街”研究中发现的现在已有20年历史的数据，她注意到这些数据下降始于2008年的SARS疫情，并在飓风桑迪和未受控制的中产阶级化之后继续下去。

“When I did on-the-ground ethnography and looked at historical Google street views,” says Lin, “I found that just 30 percent of wholesalers and 40 percent of food vendors are left in Chinatown. There is a very gentle balance and tension here, because these are vendors who are quite vulnerable because they didn’t choose to be in these forces but had to exist within it as immigrants or refugees.”

“当我在实地做人种学研究，并查看谷歌历史街景时，”林说，“我发现唐人街只剩下30%的批发商和40%的食品摊贩。这里有一种非常微妙的平衡和紧张，因为这些小贩是非常脆弱的，因为他们没有选择加入这些力量，而是不得不以移民或难民的身份存在。”

Vanishing storefronts and aging populations — not just in New York City’s Chinatown, but in Asian communities across the country — are threatening a culture that has been consistently fighting against erasure for 150 years. The consensus among business owners and activists seems to be simple: If you value this community, then come buy great food at great prices, in a system built over generations against all odds.

店面的消失和人口的老龄化——不仅在纽约市的唐人街，而且在全国各地的亚洲社区——正在威胁着一种150年来一直在与抹除作斗争的文化。企业主和活跃分子之间的共识似乎很简单:如果你重视这个社区，那么就来这里买物美价廉的食物，在这个历经几代人克服一切困难建立起来的体系中。

“In Eastern cultures,” Jefferson Li says, “people are willing to put society as a whole before themselves as individuals. One brick doesn’t do much, but a thousand bricks can build a foundation. When you shop with us, you don’t just support one business, you support an entire community.”

“在东方文化中,“杰弗逊·李说,“人们愿意将整个社会置于个人之上。一块砖起不了多大作用，千块砖却能搭起地基。当你在我们这里购物时，你不仅仅是在支持一家企业，而是在支持整个社区。”