Results tagged “chinese”

This Chinatown surveillance video depicts a heated altercation between an NYPD traffic agent and a car owner on Lafayette Street around 3:15 p.m. on October 8th. The video appears to show irate traffic agent Twana Chapman striking driver Qiang Nian Zhu after he tried to cover his registration sticker, so Chapman could not scan it. A crowd gathers, and Chapman is seen getting in one bystander's face, as another traffic agent pulls her away. But because there is no audio, it's not possible to verify an allegation that Chapman also made racist remarks.

The NY Times looks at recent census data that suggests an interesting trend in Chinese, Korean and Indian families in America: "If the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy... If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male. Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion." CUNY's Joyce Moy says even younger immigrants have held onto the idea that "Families depend on the male child for support," while Dr. Norbert Gleicher, director of a "fertility and sex-selection clinic in New York and Chicago, said that from his experience, people were more inclined to want female children, except for Asians and Middle Easterners."

City Councilman John Liu wants an apology from Texas State Rep. Betty Brown for her comments earlier this week. Austinist, with video, explains that an advocate was explaining different Asian Americans might have problem voting under a proposed policy partly due to "confusion over differences between their transliterated names... and their 'common' English name," Brown cut in, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Liu posted his letter to Brown on his campaign (for City Comptroller) website: "It's outrageous and insulting for you to suggest it would 'behoove' us to adopt another name, to give up our birthright and a part of our own identity, in order to exercise our right to vote" and suggest she resign if she doesn't apologize. Brown said she doesn't think Chinese Americans should Americanize her names—she "didn't choose my words very well"— and that she apologized to the advocate.

A Chinese man is charged with setting up four bogus companies to sell nuclear bomb-making materials to the Iranian military, and using several unnamed NYC banks to conduct the illegal transactions (supposedly without their knowledge). Manhattan DA Robert M. Morgenthau held a press conference today announcing a 118-count indictment of Li Fang Wei, who is not believed to be in the U.S. While acknowledging the charges could result in a relatively light prison sentence for Li, Morgenthau explained that "what we are doing is to make every effort to prosecute the company which is perhaps the largest supplier of weapons of mass destruction to the Iranian government, and also to let people know that the Iranians are deadly serious about acquiring materials for long-range missiles and for atom bombs." The indictment has certainly alarmed Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control; he tells the Times, "If exports of this magnitude are routinely going from China to Iran, then it’s clear that the United States has failed in its efforts to curb this kind of proliferation."

This week the Times's Frank Bruni piles on Shang, a restaurant in the Thompson LES Hotel helmed by the acclaimed, formerly Toronto-based chef Susur Lee, whose first mistake is making Bruni exercise: "The staircase was the first befuddlement and miscalculation I encountered — and a clue that the evening and restaurant might not be all I’d hope for. It’s a long, drab, foreboding rise of steps from the sidewalk to the host station, an entrance less inviting than aerobic. I’ve gone on runs that didn’t leave me as winded." As for the menu, some dishes are "intensely pleasurable," but overall it's "inconsistent and uneventful. The magic that Mr. Lee reputedly made in Toronto hasn’t followed him here."

New Senator Kirsten Gillibrand may be called a flip-flopper, but her command of the Chinese language is considered just fine. At least to NY Times reporter David W. Chen, who observed the upstater at the Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown two weeks ago. Gillibrand, an Asian studies major at Dartmouth, studied for six months in China and Taiwan: "Ms. Gillibrand’s Chinese is rusty now. But she tells her 5-year-old son, 'Man man yi diar,' or 'Slow down a little,' and calls chopsticks 'kuaizi,' out of habit." Yan Tai, a reporter for Chinese-language newspaper The World Journal who spoke to Gillibrand told the Times, "she definitely understood what I was saying, and she had good pronunciation. Actually, I was very impressed.” (Bonus: Gillibrand's Chinese name is "Lu Tian Na".) And Gillibrand, now on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Times, "Our relationship with China is extraordinarily complicated, and when you do understand the culture better, having that appreciation means you can hopefully find compromises."

          

The Employees Only crowd have joined forces with David Waltuck (chef/owner of Chanterelle and 2007 James Beard Award winner) to open Tribeca's Macao Trading Co., a big funky restaurant packed with antiques to evoke "the 1940s portside feel of Macao’s red lantern district." The space is bi-level and the menu's bi too, with Macao's history as a Portuguese colony reflected in both Chinese and Portuguese versions of ribs, bass tripe. Meals are served family-style in the 82-seat dining room and bar; other dishes include African fried chicken ($18), Portuguese Style Grilled Prawns with vinho verde & garlic butter ($28), and Chinese Style grilled sirloin with oyster sauce & Chinese broccoli ($32).

Inside Park: According to the Times, the café terrace at St. Bartholomew’s Church on East 50th Street proved so popular they decided to convert the chapter house into a year-round restaurant. Judging by the photo on Grub Street, the renovated space definitely looks appealing, with soaring ceilings and candle chandeliers. Formerly of Savoy, chef Matthew Weingarten has been “pickling everything he can find at the Greenmarket to serve as the season cools.” Beyond pickles, the menu features dishes like Heritage Breed Pork Chop Mushroom Fricassee and Caraway Dumpling, as well as Hand Cut Pappardelle Mountain Style Rabbit Ragu. 109 East 50th Street, (212) 593-3333.

James (pictured), in Prospect Heights, specializes in farm-fresh French-American cuisine. It's said that chef James Calvert once catered a nightmarish photo shoot for the demanding Britney Spears, who dismissed his buffet and demanded BLTs. She then sent those back, insisting upon BLTs sans mayo. Irrevocably scarred, Calvert went on to open what Frank Bruni at the Times describes as "the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to personalize things, to work on a scale that doesn’t require or invite the meddling of too many outsiders...It’s also an example of how quietly sophisticated the food at restaurants fashioned as affordable neighborhood bistros has become. No bigger, brasher restaurant around town served me an heirloom tomato salad this summer that I enjoyed any more than one at James."

A march from the Brooklyn Bridge through Chinatown to celebrate the Beijing Olympics is exposing a big rift in Manhattan's Chinese immigrant community. Opposed to the celebrations are older Chinese-Americans from Taiwan and Hong Kong who've seen their ranks diminished; on the other side are newer immigrants from the mainland who've poured into Chinatown in recent years. A 74-year-old business consultant tells the Sun,"The mainland government, they're Communists, and we don't like that. The new immigrants came from China in a happier time, so they like it more than I do." Jimmy Cheng, an organizer of this weekend's festivities, says, "People who protest about human rights in China, they don't get it. China needs to do what it needs to do."

Chai Park and Jin Hee Lee, a law student and a lawyer, were stuck on line at a Manhattan Pinkberry last summer when they spotted the product seen here, an Alessi “Mandarin Citrus Juicer” that the frozen yogurt chain sells at some locations. They found the designer’s characterization of Chinese men as smiling toadies whose heads are great for squeezing juice a tad offensive. Though the Korean owners of Pinkberry insist the juicer has offended "no one," according to Racked it's no longer sold at that particular location in Koreatown.

The Sun’s Paul Adams is the latest critic to get around to Hundred Acres (pictured), the meticulously-sourced, farm-to-table restaurant which used to be Provence. While the Daily News was haunted by the ghosts of the old restaurant, Adams says “the transformation is a delightful blast of fresh air. A sultry Southern accent marks the restaurant's menu… where "seasonal" isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see what new ideas are blossoming.”

Congratulations, America! You're having less sex than almost anyone else! According to the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey, Americans get it on less often than most, with only 53% having regular, weekly action (and with only 44% actually reporting being satisfied with their sex lives).

, his first novel in five years, was described by Times critic Michiko Kakutani as “a visceral, heart-thumping portrait of New York City... no one writes better dialogue than Richard Price.”

Anyone who’s ever gotten off the 7 train in Flushing and walked to the Queens Botanical Garden knows that the majority of the area’s Chinese eateries and businesses are clustered around the northern end of Main Street. As you move further south, Indian sari shops, chaat houses and grocery stores start to appear. But lately a handful of Chinese restaurants have elbowed into the southern end; one such newcomer is Oriental Express Food Garden, which took over the old Rajbhog Sweets‎ space.

No, he's not blushing from all the attention. Mao Mi is a Red Panda and the newest addition to Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. He arrived last week from Michigan's Binder Park Zoo as part of a Wildlife Conservation Society breeding project. Red Pandas are an endangered species with fewer than 2,500 adults thought to remain in the wild in Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Nepal and Burma.

href="http://londonist.com/2008/02/air_bound.php"> remove one man from Gatwick.

Cartoons just got a little more real with The Three Thug Mice, an online series set in New York City. The 35 animated shorts follow the tales (and tails!) of three rodent crooks named Vic, Tik and Brik. Described as an "ongoing ghetto saga" set in some of the seedier sectors of the concrete jungle, the trio's home turf is light years away from Disney World. (Though that is the Hotel Chelsea in the background, which isn't so seedy; wonder if that frog jumped after BD Hotels took over management.)

A judge has finally ruled on a long-simmering dispute between a restaurant and its deliverymen. Last March deliverymen at the popular Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Grill, which has locations in Greenwich Village and on the Upper West Side, demanded a raise from owners Simon and Michelle Nget. The deliverymen reasoned that since the chain was pulling in more than $2 million a month, they ought to earn more than $120 for a 75-hour week.

One of the things that makes eating dim sum in New York City exciting is the seeming endless variety of savory and sweet morsels. Even veteran dim sum eaters are rewarded by new discoveries every so often.

Everyone's bursting with anticipation for the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's new exhibit at the Guggenheim; the site-specific installation serves as a mid-career retrospective and is now just four short days away from being unveiled.

On Sunday afternoon, the fourth day of the Lunar Year, the streets and restaurants of Flushing's Chinatown were packed with families celebrating the Year of the Rat. In case you're wondering, that headline – like many of the Chinese people in Flushing – is Mandarin. It translates roughly to "Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year."

This afternoon was the parade celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year; it's the Year of the Rat. Chinatown in Manhattan is one of the earliest concentrations of Chinese people in the United States. After the jump are more early pictures of the parade.

Maybe you've received a flier to see a show at Radio City Music Hall called Chinese New Year Splendor, which is promoted as a holiday celebration of China’s diverse cultural riches. But mixed within the traditional Mongolian dancing, orchestral music and Buddhist parables are dramatizations of the Chinese government’s oppression of Falun Gong, a qigong-based spiritual practice that is banned in China. And the show’s political content is prompting audiences to walk out by the hundreds.

It's time for the Lunar New Year, which starts February 7th and lasts for 14 days, and this year is the Year of the Rat, 4706. Sure, there are plenty of things to do to celebrate the holiday, but to us, it means one thing -- a new year banquet. We've found a few places that are offering banquets in honor of the Year of the Rat, including variations of traditional Chinese Lunar New Year foods that bring prosperity, happiness and good fortune to all who join together to feast, like dumplings, uncut noodles, whole fish and chicken.

An animal near and dear to the Gothamist heart has been embroiled in a Super Bowl controversy! This year's wardrobe malfunction is now the debate over an animated ad from SalesGenie.com that features pandas.

Professor, author and activist Robert Thurman is widely regarded as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, having been a major force in the widespread introduction of Tibetan culture and religion to the west. In 1962, Thurman became the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, but after a few years he shifted from strict monasticism to the more conventional lifestyle of an academic. Though currently on sabbatical to write another book, Thurman remains a beloved professor in the Religion Department of Columbia University. At the behest of the Dalai Lama, Thurman co-founded Tibet House with composer Philip Glass and others; this year’s annual Carnegie Hall benefit for the organization takes place next Wednesday, February 13th. The lineup thus far includes performances by Glass, Ray Davies, Phamie Gow, Nawang Khechog, Ashley MacIsaac, Marisa Monte, Sufjan Stevens & Tom Verlaine.

A veteran of Nobu and Ruby Foo’s, Chris Cheung was hired 5 months ago to replace Patricia Yeo at Monkey Bar, the red satin and black lacquer midtown institution known primarily for its, well, monkey theme. In an effort to reemphasize the food quotient of the restaurant, the 38 year-old chef maintains an inventory of global tastes and reassembles them using the template of traditional Chinese food: The curly fries, for example, that come with the burger are made with taro, and the burger itself is served on a bao bun made in-house. The result is not fusion, or an eclectic cook-by-numbers approach to food; Cheung seems to spend a lot of time thinking about ingredients, so the food at Monkey Bar isn’t really served with anything added for dramatic effect, and the plate presentations are relatively uncomplicated. Cheung calls his style “Evolutionary Chinese Cooking.”

Image credit: Nature abhors a vacuum

This weekend marks the start of many pre-Lunar New Year Festivities in the city. The New Year begins on February 7 (more information here), and there will be the firecracker ceremony and cultural festival in Chatham Square on that day, plus the Lunar New Year Parade and Festival in Chinatown on February 10. There is also a Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing on February 9.