For Asians in U.S., Mini-Chinatowns Sprout in Suburbia
The inspiration for building his Chinatown on a vacant lot a mile from the Strip came to James Chih-Cheng Chen at the end of a weekend's gambling. He and a friend had driven in from Los Angeles with the friend's mother, who was visiting from Taiwan.
"She was a religious person," Mr. Chen says. "Buddhist. A vegetarian. She was quiet the whole trip -- just watching. As we were leaving, she finally said, 'I guess this is what heaven is like.' "
Except for one qualm: the nothing-she-could-eat casino buffet. If the roulette wheel was heaven, the turkey-roll was hell. Mr. Chen couldn't get his friend's mother an honest Chinese meal.
He knew how to satisfy a need for bok choy and bean sprouts in older American cities. "You get in a cab and say, 'Take me to Chinatown.' " But here, he says, "I asked people, looked at the map, checked the phone book. No Chinatown in Las Vegas."
That's why Mr. Chen had to invent one. Nine years ago, he built what he calls America's first "master-planned Chinatown" -- and, on the way, helped take immigrant enterprise into new territory. Mr. Chen and a few others, mostly East Asians with capital, have come up with an angle that lets middle-class immigrants move away from the coasts and into America's inland car culture without leaving their own cultures behind.
These investors have brought to life what might be called the ethnic commercial enclave, a cross between the regional mall and the corner store. Because their customers live scattered in unsegregated subdivisions, instant-Asia shopping centers can park anyplace where the rent is low and the drive-time reasonable. These commercial spaces are taking on all the intimate social functions of the old immigrant neighborhood. The neighborhood is the only thing missing.
Rice-loving shoppers from the suburbs are driving to about 70 stand-alone Asian shopping centers on the coasts -- not only in New York and Los Angeles, but Seattle, Baltimore and Miami -- and to about 50 in such mid-American cities as Denver, Minneapolis and Phoenix.
"When I lived in Baton Rouge, I drove five hours to the Chinese mall in Houston," says Min Zhao, a Chinese-born sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Now Baton Rouge people don't need to drive to Houston. They have Chinese malls in New Orleans."
One Chinatown Plaza knockoff is even going up as a downtown-revival project in New York's upstate capital of Albany.
"There's no Chinatown there," says Raymond Xu, president of a nonprofit group who put the deal together. "That's what we're creating."
Capital flowing in from East Asia, itself already full of giant malls, is the main force at work here, along with masses of well-paid immigrants. The U.S. now has 12 million Asians. Their buying power, pegged by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, is $344 billion. In 20 states, Asians make up between 2% and 6% of the population: too few to congregate, perhaps, but enough to ignite a demand for very fresh fish.
Mr. Chen learned that early on. His Las Vegas Chinatown Plaza opened for business in 1995. By 1998, it was complete: an imperial arch on Spring Mountain Road; a golden statue of Xuan Zang's "Journey to the West" in the parking lot; and a two-tiered shopping center under tiled roofs with dragons at every tip. By mall measures, the plaza is an 85,000-square-foot mini. But it has nine restaurants, shops with Asian goods from jade to ginseng, and an anchor supermarket where tree-ear fungus outsells Cheez Whiz. The place is usually jammed with Asians. In a desert city fixated on fantasy, Chinatown Plaza has matured into an oasis of authenticity.
At the University of Nevada here, Prof. Gary Palmer sends his students there on anthropology field trips. "The Asian people in the stores weren't just looking, but instead buying these products," one wrote in a term paper. "For the first time, I saw something in this town of billion-dollar mega-resorts that impressed me."
Like Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo, the casino that first lit up Las Vegas in 1946, Mr. Chen's Chinatown didn't come out of nowhere. Long before his brainstorm hit, he had been thinking about moving "inland."
"If you stay in Southern California, you're not mixing, you're isolated," he said during a spring-onion-pancake breakfast at the Emperor's Garden on the plaza's second floor. He is 56 years old, in a white shirt and a gold watch. In 1948, his father fled China for Taiwan; in 1971, Mr. Chen left for Los Angeles.
He studied finance and washed dishes. With Henry Hwang, a buddy back home, he exported medical equipment to Taiwan and imported mother-of-pearl carved birds for Native American necklaces. Then he bought 30 acres, hired 60 Mexicans and started a Chinese-vegetable farm. To sell the vegetables he opened a grocery, and in the grocery he opened an early video-rental service, with rights from 23 Hong Kong movie houses and three Taiwanese television stations.
"I like pioneer things," Mr. Chen says.
So he moved to Las Vegas. In 1990, Nevada's entire Chinese population was just 6,618. To test the market for his shopping center, he opened another Chinese-video service there. Customers supplied their zip codes, and that gave him a map of where Las Vegas Asians lived. Video rentals were understandably sluggish. "It was very risky," he says. "People warned us." But like all Chinatowns, he reckoned his would draw tourists -- especially in the shape of hungry Asian gamblers.
"Do you want population before you build, or do you build to attract population?" says Mr. Chen. "You don't want to be late. You want to be early. That's the game."
With Mr. Hwang (who immigrated on an investor's visa) and a second friend who owns a button factory in China, he acquired eight acres on Spring Mountain Road for a project that would cost $10 million. It was a rough district of wholesalers, small factories, topless bars and no Chinese people.
That's where Mr. Chen wanted to build. But first, he went after the one anchor tenant that he knew would make a desert Chinatown work: 99 Ranch -- America's biggest Asian supermarket chain with 26 west-coast stores and franchises in Phoenix and Atlanta. The number 99 is lucky to Chinese, and "ranch" sounded trendy to another Chen from Taiwan -- Roger Chen -- who founded the chain in 1984.
Since it opened in Las Vegas, and perfected an ability to truck swimming fish over long distances, the 99 Ranch here has turned into a gold mountain. "I thought the population growth would slow down," says Jason Chen, Roger's nephew and the Las Vegas franchisee. "It went the other way. It keeps going and going."
The nation's fastest-growing state, Nevada had two million people in 2000. Of them, 90,000 were Asian, a 250% increase in 10 years. Yet Las Vegas census maps show them lightly sprinkled. Fewer than 2,000 live in Chinatown Plaza's immediate surrounds.
In suburban Los Angeles or New Jersey, and the old urban enclaves of New York or San Francisco, Asian districts encircle Asian malls. In Las Vegas and young cities like it, the ghettos are gone. Hispanics, more numerous and less affluent, still cluster, but Asians often migrate from the coasts and integrate economically before they arrive. Along with the many others who move to Las Vegas each year, Asians are buying houses in the developments that are advancing into the desert like pink-stucco lava flows. Still, they're rarely more than 10 miles from Chinatown Plaza.
"We don't go to the neighborhood," says James Chen's son, Alan, who was born in Los Angeles. "The neighborhood comes to us."
Some of the neighbors were taking numbers at the fish tanks on a Saturday morning: Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese, pushing cart loads of sausages, taro root, bean curd. The Chinese who move here often work as blackjack dealers, but Wendy Wu came because her husband got an engineering job. She was at the cold-cut counter, eyeing the pork snouts and beef feet (hooves included).
"We didn't know that in Las Vegas there's a Chinatown," said Ms. Wu. She came to the U.S. from China in 2001, lived in Texas and Florida, and has only just arrived here. "We're going to look for a house," she said, tossing a shrink-wrapped package into her cart. "I never thought I would get pork snouts in Las Vegas."
Once James Chen corralled 99 Ranch, Sam Woo Barbeque signed on, as did a string of other California restaurants. Then came the hair salon, jeweler, florist and optometrist; the travel, real-estate and insurance agencies; the pharmacy, bakery and bookstore; the offices of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News, and the art gallery that sells shimmering backlit pictures of waterfalls.
Chinatown Plaza feels snug and homey. In contrast to kitschy casino shows for Asian gamblers, it began a parking-lot Chinese New Year's festival. Politicians came. Signs went up on Interstate 15: "Chinatown Next Exit." Mr. Chen founded a Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce and printed up a directory. He puts on a Miss Chinatown beauty pageant, holds open-houses for school kids, arranges free flu shots for the elderly and offers help with their tax returns.
"My father can't stop," says Alan Chen, who is 25 and his father's property manager. "He can't sit still." Mr. Chen says: "People come here because they feel comfortable."
Comfort, as Prof. Zhao at UCLA sees it, is what Chinatown Plaza and places like it are about. She calls the Asian shopping center a new form of social organization for America's migrating immigrants. "When people have to drive for miles, they want to spend a day," she says. "Nobody lives in it, but it becomes the meeting place, the center of a community."
It didn't take long for other entrepreneurs to get the picture. Now Chinatown Plaza is expanding into a Chinatown strip. In 1999, the contractor who built it put up a satellite, Great China Plaza, right next door. Then Harsch Investment Properties, an Oregon developer, acquired an old shopping center one block east. It had a few Asian shops already and more wanting in.
"Asians were knocking on our doors," says Jordan Schnitzer, president of Harsch. Mr. Schnitzer isn't Chinese, but he has become one of the few non-Asians to see the possibilities. "So we said, let's do the whole thing Asian. Look, this is a themed town. Our other tenants wouldn't mind at all."
Mr. Schnitzer hired a feng shui master and spent $8 million dolling up the Center at Spring Mountain with red and gold Chinese roofs. The tenants include Chung Chou City Dry Seafood, the D Bar J Hat Company, Wing Chung CPA, and the Detox Massage Center.
Joy Yu and Sean Chung have also paid James Chen the compliment of cloning his concept. They will soon open Pacific Asian Plaza a mile up Spring Mountain Road. Both Taiwanese, Ms. Yu made her money developing software for Cisco, Mr. Chung as a Las Vegas contractor. They won't say how much it cost to build, but their plaza has indoor parking, floors of polished granite, and dark-blue roofs reminiscent of Japan.
Its supermarket is called Shun Fat. It will be double the size of 99 Ranch. The owner, a Chinese seafood wholesaler originally from Vietnam, decided to build big, Mr. Chung says, "after standing in the Chinatown Plaza parking lot for 45 minutes."
Hearing this, James Chen said, "That means we did good. Our vision was correct." The competition has gratified him. He stood on his second-floor walkway, another Las Vegas pioneer looking past a full parking lot to the desert's hills. "Chinese people go to the Strip, see the casinos," said Mr. Chen. "Then they come here. They can think, wow, American Chinese are pretty good, too. We also can make something from nothing."
沙漠、赌城、唐人街
James Chih-Cheng Chen在赌城拉斯维加斯即将度完一个周末时，脑海中突发灵感：在距离Strip区一英里的一块空地上修建唐人街。他是和一个朋友以及这位朋友从台湾来的母亲一道从洛杉矶驱车来到赌城的。
Chen说，他朋友的母亲"信奉佛教，吃斋。一路上她都很安静－－只是在看。最后当我们离开的时候，她说：'我想天堂就是这个样子吧。'"
唯一的美中不足之处是：赌场餐馆没有一样合适她吃的东西。如果说赌盘的轮子是天堂的话，那火鸡肉卷就是地狱。Chen没办法给朋友的母亲弄到一顿真正的中国餐。
如果在老一点的美国城市，他就知道去哪儿去弄到老太太想吃的白菜和豆芽。"只要坐上一辆出租车、跟司机说'我要去唐人街'就行了，"他说。"不过在这里，我问了人、看了地图、查了电话本。拉斯维加斯没有唐人街。"
这就是Chen要创造出一个唐人街的原因。九年前，他在拉斯维加斯建成了自诩为美国第一个"大师手笔的唐人街"，并且在这个过程中，把亚洲移民的企业带到了一个新的地域。Chen和其他一些亚洲人──大部份是阔绰的东亚人──提出一个观点，即让中产阶级移民从美国沿海地带迁移到内地，接受那里的汽车文化，同时也不丢掉自己的文化。
这些发明家们给所谓的"少数族裔商圈"──地区商城和街角商店之间的交叉地带，带来了勃勃生机。由于他们的顾客散居在各族裔人群混合的居住区，面向亚洲顾客的购物中心可以在任何租金低廉、驱车前往方便的地方落户。这些商业圈呈现出老移民社区所具有的全部社会功能，而唯一缺少的是一个成形的社区。
美国东西两岸有大约70个独立的亚洲商品购物中心－－不仅纽约和洛杉矶有，西雅图、巴尔的摩也有－－喜欢吃大米的顾客会驱车从郊区前往这些购物中心；在美国中部的一些城市也有大约50家这样的购物中心，如丹佛、明尼阿波利斯和菲尼克斯。
在中国出生的赵敏(Min Zhao，音译)是洛杉矶加州大学的社会学家。她说："我住在Baton Rouge的时候，要开5个小时的车才能到达休斯敦的中国商城。现在Baton Rouge的居民不需要开车到休斯敦了，在新奥尔良就有中国商场。"
在纽约州北部的州首府奥尔巴尼，一个唐人街广场的建设甚至被列为一个重振旧城区的项目。
雷蒙德?徐(Raymond Xu) 促成了这项工程，他是一个非营利团体的主席。他说，"那里没有唐人街，这是我们建设该项目的原因。"
来自东亚的资本是主要推动力，另外就是大批收入不菲的移民。而在东亚，高大的商城已是随处可见。美国目前有1千2百万亚裔人口。根据乔治亚大学Selig经济增长中心的数据，这些亚裔人口的购买力是3,440亿美元。在美国的20个州，亚裔人口在总人口中占到2%-6%的比例。也许人数太少，不足以形成聚居的局面，但这些人单单是对鲜鱼的需求就非常可观。
Chen很早就看到了这一点。他的位于拉斯维加斯的唐人街广场在1995年开业，到1998年，整个广场完工：春山路(Spring Mountain Road)上一座帝王气派的拱形建筑；停车场上摆著玄奘"西游"的金色雕像；购物中心分两层，琉璃瓦屋顶，飞檐处还有龙纹装饰。从购物商城的尺寸来看，这个广场只是个85,000英尺宽的小型广场，但它有9个餐馆，商店里出售从玉石到人参的各种亚洲货品，在商城一端的超市里，蘑菇比Cheez Whiz奶酪更畅销。这里通常挤满了亚洲人。在这个梦幻般的沙漠城市，唐人街广场已经完善地发展成为一个真实的绿洲。
内华达大学教授加里?帕玛(Gary Palmer)让学生到那里去做人类学的实地考察。一名学生在期末论文中写道："商店里的亚洲人不只是观光，他们在买这些产品。在这个挥金如土的超级城市，我第一次看到一些让人令人难忘的事物。"
正如在1946年第一次点亮拉斯维加斯的西格尔(Bugsy Siegel)的Flamingo酒店赌场，Chen的唐人街并否空穴来风。在获得这个灵感很早以前，他就已经开始考虑向"内地"迁移了。
"如果呆在南加州，你不是融合，而是孤立，"Chen在广场二楼的帝园(Emperor's Garden)吃一份葱油饼早餐时说。56岁的Chen身著白衬衫，戴著一块金色的手表。1948年，他的父亲从中国大陆逃难到台湾；1971年，他离开台湾来到洛杉矶。
当时，他一边学习金融，一边打工刷盘子。他和家乡好友亨利?黄(Henry Hwang)合作，把医疗设备出口到台湾，从台湾进口用珍珠母雕刻的鸟雀卖给当地的美国人做项链。接著，他买下30英亩地，雇了60个墨西哥人经营一个中国蔬菜农场。他开了一家食品杂货店来出售这些蔬菜，同时在店里出租影碟，这个服务在当地还算是比较早的。他获得23家香港电影公司和三家台湾电视台的授权。
"我喜欢开拓新事业，"Chen说。
因此他搬到了拉斯维加斯。1990年，居住在内华达州的中国人只有6,618人。为了调查一下在当地建购物中心是否有市场，他在那里开了另一家出租华语影碟的商店。顾客提供的邮政编码使他对拉斯维加斯亚裔人的居住地点有了清楚的了解。影碟出租生意并不景气。"这样做非常冒险，"Chen说，"很多人这样提醒我。"但就像所有其他唐人街一样，他估计他的唐人街能吸引旅游者，尤其是那些饥肠辘辘的亚洲赌客。
"是先找到顾客再建，还是建好了来吸引顾客？"Chen说，"你得赶早，不能赶晚──这就是游戏规则。"Chen和黄先生（持投资签证）还有另一个在中国开纽扣厂的朋友一起在春山路上买了八英亩的地，准备开发一个1千万美元的工程。在这里将有批发商、小工厂、脱衣舞酒吧以及非华裔人群。
这就是Chen打算建设的工程。但首先，他去拜访了一个能让他的沙漠唐人街火起来的租客：99 Ranch，99 Ranch是美国最大的亚洲超市连锁公司，在西海岸有26家商店，在菲尼克斯和亚特兰大有特许经营店。"99"是中国人的幸运数字；而"ranch"则深受另一个从台湾过来的Chen－－罗杰?陈(Roger Chen)的青睐，他觉得这个词听起来很时髦。罗杰?陈在1984年创立了这家连锁超市。
自从99 Ranch在拉斯维加斯开业后，由于长途运输鲜活鱼的能力日益提高，99 Ranch渐渐变成一座金山。"我原以为人口增长速度会放慢，但没想到事情往相反的方向发展，人口越来越多，"罗杰的侄子贾森?陈(Jason Chen)如是说，他是99 Ranch在拉斯维加斯的特许经营商。
内华达是美国人口增长最快的州，该州在2000年的人口是2百万人，其中亚洲人有9万，较10年前增长了250%。但拉斯维加斯人口普查结果显示这些亚洲人居住地有些分散。在唐人街广场周围居住的亚洲人不到2000人。
在洛杉矶和新泽西州的郊区，以及纽约和三藩市里的一些老的少数民族聚居区，亚洲商城周围遍布亚洲人居住区。在拉斯维加斯和其他年轻的城市，犹太人聚居区不见踪影。西班牙裔人依然聚集居住，虽然他们人数较多，但并不富余，而亚洲人往往从沿海地带迁移过来，并在到达以前先在在经济上与当地融合。在许多每年迁移到拉斯维加斯的移民中，亚洲人在开发区大量购买房产，这些发展区就像火山熔岩一样在沙漠中逐渐蔓延。但尽管如此，这些亚洲人居住地离唐人街广场很少超过10英里。
"我们不用到居民区里去，相反，居民区向我们走来，"James Chen的儿子艾伦(Alan)说。艾伦在洛杉矶出生。
一个周六的上午，一些居民围在鱼缸边：菲律宾人、韩国人、越南人和中国人。他们的手推车里堆著香肠、芋头根、豆腐。搬到这里的中国人通常都在赌场工作，但温迪?吴(Wendy Wu)搬到这里是因为丈夫找到一份工程师的工作。她站在冷盘柜台前，看著里面的猪头肉和牛腿。
"我们原先不知道拉斯维加斯有唐人街，" 吴说。她2001年从中国来到美国，曾在德克萨斯和佛罗里达住过，最近才搬到这里。"我们在找房子，"她一边说一边把一个紧缩包装扔进手推车里。"我从来没想过能在拉斯维加斯买到猪头肉。"
在James Chen和99 Ranch谈成后，Sam Woo Barbeque很快就和他签约了，紧接著是一连串其他的加州餐馆。接下来是发廊、珠宝店、花店、眼镜店、旅行社、房地产中介、保险社、药店、面包房、书店、拉斯维加斯的华语日报社、还有卖闪光瀑布画的画廊。 唐人街广场给人以家一样的温暖感觉。它开始在停车场组织中国传统新年庆祝活动，与赌场专门为亚洲赌客而设的粗俗表演形成鲜明对比。政客们也来参加。15号州际公路上竖起了广告牌："唐人街在下一个出口"( 'Chinatown Next Exit')。Chen成立了中美商会(Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce)，印了地址名录。他举办过一次唐人街小姐选美盛会；为在校儿童举办家庭招待会；为老年人免费提供流感注射服务，还帮他们退税。 "我父亲停不下来，"25岁的艾伦?陈(Alan Chen) 说，他现在是其父的产业经理。"他坐不住。"他说，"人们到这里来因为他们觉得这里很舒服。"
加州大学洛杉矶分校的赵教授认为，舒适正是唐人街广场和其他类似的商业中心吸引人的地方。她把这些亚洲购物中心称作一种新型的、为来美移民而设的社交组织。她说："如果人们要开好几个英里的车才能到这里，那他们就会想在这里呆上一天，"她说。"没有人在这里住，不过它却成了一个见面的地方，一个社区的中心。"
没多久，其他创业者也看到了这个机会。眼下唐人街广场正发展成一个唐人街商业带。1999年，广场建设承包商在近旁建了一个卫星区──大中华广场（Great China Plaza）。接著，俄勒冈州开发商Harsch Investment Properties在唐人街以东距离一个街区的地方购买了一个老旧的购物中心。这里已经建成了一些亚洲商店，还有更多的商家要求加入。
"亚洲人在敲开我们的大门，"Harsch主席乔丹?施尼泽(Jordan Schnitzer)说。施尼泽不是中国人，但他已经成为看到这一商机的少数几个非亚洲人之一。"于是我们说，让我们全部做成亚洲风格吧。看，这是个主题城镇，我们其他的租客也不会介意的。"
施尼泽请了一个风水大师、花了800万美元把春山路的商业中心装修一新，房顶涂成中国传统的红色和金色。承租的商家包括Chung Chun City Dry Seafood、D Bar J Hat Company、Wing Chung CPA、还有Detox Message Center。
乔伊?余(Joy Yu) 和肖恩?秦(Sean Chung)也克隆了James Chen的概念。他们很快就要在春山路上往北一英里的地方建"太平洋亚洲广场"。两人都是台湾人。余女士曾经给Cisco开发软件；秦先生是拉斯维加斯一个承包商。他们不愿意透露工程成本，但表示他们的广场将有室内停车场、抛光的花光岩地板，还有日本式的深蓝屋顶。
广场的超市叫Shun Fat，面积是99 Ranch的两倍。超市老板秦先生来自越南，做中国海鲜批发生意。他在唐人街广场的停车场站了45分钟之后，决定把超市做大。
听到这些，James Chen说："这意味著我们干得不错。我们的眼光是对的。"竞争使他很满意。站在二层楼的过道里，这位拉斯维加斯的开创者看著停满车辆的停车场，然后把目光移向沙漠的山丘。"中国人来到Strip区，看到赌场，然后又来到这里。他们可能会想，哇，美籍华人也很棒！我们也可以白手起家。"
