Crisis in the U.S.A.: Will Americans Emigrate – to China?

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson has written of “what humans have done for centuries when life became untenable – what the pilgrims did under the tyranny of British rule, what the Scotch-Irish did in Oklahoma when the land turned to dust, what the Irish did when there was nothing to eat, what the European Jews did during the spread of Nazism, what the landless in Russia, Italy, China and elsewhere did when something better across the ocean called to them.

“Could America, that great nation of immigrants, become in harder times a nation of emigrants? Could the metropolises of China one day have Americatowns?”

This is a question Isabel Wilkerson asks in The New York Times (August 12).

“Imagine a bustling Americatown in the heart of Beijing,” she writes. “Local Chinese stream past, scratching their heads at those Americans who come just for money, never learning China’s language or customs, living in their own little world. The signs are all spelled out in Roman letters – even for local outfits like Zhongguo Jianshe Yinhang (China Construction Bank) and Hong Gao Liang (Red Sorghum, a fast food joint).

“These American immigrants have strange manners, as the Chinese see it. They never share food, and they finish everything on their plates. They always ask locals they meet, ‘How many children do you have?’ – even though the answer is always ‘one.’ They are always inquiring about politics.

“But they thrive. They put their energy, skills and family networks to work; they reap great success. They run burgers-and-fries joints, English-language academies, fitness centers and even an intercity transport service known as the Americatown bus.

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“It is hard to escape the feeling of bygone opportunity when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that half of the 20 fastest-growing occupations in the nation involve caring for the sick, because of the surge of baby boomers into old age.

“And yet it is true: It is hard to imagine Americans emulating, in reverse, those peasants from Sichuan Province in China who came and made restaurants in middle-of-nowhere American towns.”