Chinese American ‘Food Heritage’: Restaurants and Grocery Stores in “Greater Providence”

New Immigrants, New Restaurant and Grocery Store Owners

No matter which restaurant or grocery store owner I interview, a similar story reappears when I ask about the history of Chinese Americans in Providence. First, there were the Taishanese families who arrived in Rhode Island from the late 1800s onward from their town and plots in southern China, and started restaurant and laundry businesses and built the first Chinese community in Rhode Island. Next, Cantonese immigrants from Guangzhou and Hong Kong started arriving by the mid-20th century, integrating quickly into the old Taishanese community because of the similarities between Cantonese and the Taishanese dialect, among other factors. A few arrivals from Taiwan also trickled in during this time. But from the late 1980s (depending on who you ask) onward to the present day, the majority of new immigrants have come from other parts of China, particularly Fujian Province. Unlike previous waves of Chinese immigrants, the standard dialect of modern Chinese that most of these new immigrants, Mandarin, is mutually unintelligible with Southern Chinese dialects, and the food that they are accustomed to involves different spices and styles of cooking compared to the Southern dishes cooked by the Taishanese and Cantonese. For these factors and perhaps several others, the sense that you get from long-time residents is that this new wave of immigrants represents a break from the past and a demographic shift within the Rhode Island Chinese American community. 

At the same time as this overall demographic shift was occurring, similar changes were happening in the Chinese restaurant industry of Rhode Island. As the long-time owners of Chinese restaurants began to retire, their children and grandchildren, often college educated and keen on pursuing other fields of work and the professions, did not take up the mantle of their parents' restaurant work, leaving many iconic Chinese restaurants to close. Sometimes these restaurants were bought up by newer immigrants, under either the same or a different name. But in any case, many of the new immigrants, especially those who did not have an existing profession or degree before arriving in Rhode Island, also took up the restaurant trade by working in existing restaurants, with some opening brand new businesses. Not only did the community as a whole change in makeup, but so did the makeup of the food industry too. 

I was not able to interview any restaurant or grocery store owners who were not Taishanese or Cantonese, so this section will be restricted to owners who arrived around the late 1980s onward.

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