Little Fuzhou

Little Fuzhou is a neighborhood in the Two Bridges and Lower East Side areas of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Little Fuzhou constitutes a portion of the greater Manhattan Chinatown, home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere. Manhattan's Chinatown is also one of the oldest Chinese ethnic enclaves.

Manhattan Chinatown is one of nine Chinatown neighborhoods in New York City, as well as one of twelve in the New York metropolitan area, which contains the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, comprising an estimated 893,697 uniracial individuals as of 2017. Starting in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, the neighborhood became a prime destination for immigrants from Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province in southeastern China.

Manhattan's Little Fuzhou is centered on East Broadway. However, since the 2000s, Brooklyn Chinatown in the neighborhood of Sunset Park became New York City's new primary destination for Fuzhou immigrants, surpassing the original enclave in Manhattan.

East Broadway was once a main street of a large Jewish community on the Lower East Side. Over the years, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans settled on the street. During the 1960s, an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong and Vietnam found homes on East Broadway and the areas surrounding it. Slowly, the Puerto Ricans, Jews, and African-Americans moved from the area.

The earliest Fuzhou immigrants came illegally as early as the 1970s, starting mostly with men who later brought their families over. During the 1980s, an influx of illegal immigrants from Fuzhou—especially Changle, Fuqing, and Lianjiang—established the Little Fuzhou enclave on East Broadway. These immigrants could often speak Mandarin in addition to their native Fuzhou dialect. However, Manhattan's Chinatown had been traditionally dominated by Cantonese speakers; other Mandarin speakers settled in Flushing and Elmhurst, Queens.

During the influx of the 1980–90s, many Fuzhou immigrants were undocumented and unable to speak Cantonese; as such, many of them were denied jobs and resorted to criminal activities to make a living. In the late 20th century, Manhattan's Chinatown was unwelcoming toward non-Cantonese Chinese speakers, and immigrants from Fuzhou were largely forced to take low-wage, low-skilled jobs. During the 1980s, housing prices had dropped in Manhattan's Chinatown, but property values increased when Fuzhounese arrived in large numbers during the 1990s. An INS intelligence report estimates that in 1999, between 12,000 and 24,000 illegal Chinese entered the United States, of which more than 80 percent came from Fujian province.

Over time, Fuzhou immigrants created their own Chinatown east of the Bowery, separate from the Cantonese-dominated Chinatown west of the Bowery. By the early 21st century, Fujianese residents had spread from East Broadway out to Eldridge Street. With the development of Little Fuzhou, East Broadway gained prominence as a Chinese business district. In 2007, the NYCMA reported that Chinese landlords were illegally subdividing apartments into small spaces to rent to immigrants; this overcrowding was especially common on East Broadway.

With a large Fuzhou population, the East Broadway neighborhood is often referred to as Little Fuzhou by Fuzhou immigrants. A considerable number of Fujianese clan associations can be found in and around the street. A statue of the historical Fuzhounese politician Lin Zexu was erected in Chatham Square in 1997.