When Flushing Became Chinese

Flushing is part of the Borough and County of Queens in the city of New York.  It is an ancient settlement by the standards of the United States.  It was founded in 1645 by the Dutch, who named it Vlissingen after a city in the Netherlands, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company.  There were already enough Englishmen around that the anglicized version of the name, Flushing, had some currency.

In 1657, a local bigwig names John Bowne presented a document called the Flushing Remonstrance to the authorities in New Amsterdam in what is now called Manhattan.  Its purpose was to persuade the Dutch to allow greater freedom of worship for Quakers and other religious dissenters, and it succeeded.  It is considered to have been the beginning of the search for greater personal freedoms in the new world. 

There was not a great deal of diversity in Flushing when I was growing up in neighboring College Point.  There were very small populations of black and Puerto Rican Americans, and an even smaller population of Chinese Americans.  That was the White New York in those days.  There was a great diversity of white people, many different languages, religions and countries of origin, but almost everybody was white.  In the 1970’s that began to radically change. 

You could say that lots of everybody started to arrive in Flushing, more immigrants, more Puerto Ricans, and more blacks, but the biggest influx was new immigrants from China, with the greatest number coming from Taiwan.  By 1990, the core area of Flushing was 41% Mandarin speaking Chinese. 

Most of my acquaintances who still live in the area are not pleased with this new population reality.  I have heard them refer to Flushing as “Foo-Shing” many times.  This seems to fall somewhere in between a joke and a criticism.  They are closer to the reality of it than they know.

There is actually a very similar word in Mandarin:  fuxing.  (Don’t ask me what the tones are, I’m sure that if I said the word out loud it would cause great laughter among the initiated.)  “Fuxing” means rejuvenation, and that is exactly what the new Chinese residents have brought to the area.  

When I was a boy, and up to at least 1975 when I left New York for greener pastures, the central shopping area and transportation hub of Flushing was very down-in-heel.  It had obviously seen better days.  Now all that has changed.  Where there were no hotels, there are now six or eight, some of which are upscale.  Where there were mostly family style restaurants, there are now a great many excellent restaurants.  On any recent list of the best Chinese restaurants in New York City, half will be in Flushing.  There are a great number of new, large buildings in all categories, and the central area has become rather vibrant and glossy. 

So Flushing, “Foo-Shing,”  has undergone a rejuvenation, a “fuxing.”  That puts it into its proper perspective.  What had been derogatory becomes apt. 

Isn’t language great?  Always full of surprises. 

(Thanks to the Wiki, and others, for some of the details.)