Chinese communities in the United States reacted Friday to the momentous events in Beijing with growing concern but little display of emotion.
On the surface, there was little change in the daily routine in bustling Chinatown business districts lined with crowded fruit stands and fish markets, jewelry stores and restaurants.
Still, many Chinese-Americans were interested and worried about the turbulence in their ancestral country, where a hunger strike by 3,000 students for free speech and a free press triggered supporting protests by hundreds of thousands of other Chinese.
”Everyone here is watching TV and keeping up with what`s happening in China,” said Alexander Lee, 50, who was born in Canton and now runs a newsstand in New York, home to 300,000 Chinese.
Chinese-language papers have sold briskly in both New York and Chicago as the Chinese communities turn their focus to a country many left decades ago and many have never even seen.
For a few minutes between rain showers in Chicago`s Chinatown, tourist Bill Ja, who moved to San Francisco from China a half-century ago, shared his concern for the striking Beijing students with Zhi Wang, who arrived from China last year.
”If I was there, I`d look around and maybe raise my arm to support them,” said Ja, 62, who was reading an account of the student demonstrations in the World Journal, a Chinese newspaper published in New York.
Wang, who had stopped to read over the stranger`s shoulder, offered a more forceful response in Chinese. ”I would go to support the movement,” he said.
Frank T.H. Fine was less enthusiastic, as he sat among rows of tea cups and tea leaves in his shop on Chinatown`s Wentworth Avenue.
”I think there will be a lot of changes in the leadership,” said Fine, the owner of Ten Ren Tea & Ginseng Co., who came from China in 1963. ”But they don`t want to overthrow the government. They still want Communists.”
Friday morning, a student ran into Fine`s store to share the latest developments. ”The students are excited,” Fine said. ”I`m too old.”
In Chicago and New York, as well as San Francisco and Los Angeles, student groups have organized demonstrations and raised funds to support the Beijing students. Most of the money will be used to help publish flyers and newsletters, according to Chinese newspapers in New York.
About 1,000 people, mostly students, scheduled a demonstration in front of the Capitol in Washington on Saturday to ask the U.S. government to support the Chinese students. Demonstrations were also scheduled in front of the Chinese consulates in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
”Support for the demonstrators is nearly 100 percent from overseas Chinese,” said Peter Lee of the Centre Daily News, a Chinese-American daily. Every day last week, Chinese exchange student Jennifer Gao, 20, has watched the latest news from her country and tried to think of ways to show her support.
”Right now I can`t do anything,” said Gao, a cashier at a gift store in Chicago`s Chinatown, who came from Shanghai two years ago. ”I`m thinking of sending the students money and telegrams to show them they`re not by themselves.”
But others appeared oblivious. In the stuffy Chinatown Senior Citizen Coalition Center in Manhattan, several hundred elderly people focused intently not on politics but on intense games of Chinese dominoes, mah-jongg and pool. ”We are living in the United States. What do we care about China, anyway?” said one elderly man. ”No matter what you say here, it won`t do anything for China. They won`t listen to you.”
