Chinese cities see boom of ‘Yankytowns’
Economic News: The Dow Jones index keeps falling. America has lost her triple A rating. The economy is facing another recession, with good jobs and long-term security becoming increasingly fragile concepts for the average American.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that after generations of poor Chinese workers fleeing poverty to live in the United States, the opposite is now the case, with tens of thousands of Americans escaping domestic misery in search of the ‘Chinese Dream’ – that with hard work and acceptance of single party communist rule, anyone can strike it rich.
The explosion of American migrant ghettos – Yankytowns – is now widespread throughout Chinese cities and an undeniable part of 21st century China.
“My wife and I love going down to Yankytown,” says Goa Jiao Shen, 32, an architect from Beijing.
“We love American food, even though you do always feel hungry again about an hour later.”
“It is true that some people look down on the Americans here and call them names, but this is very narrow-minded. I do not believe at all the rumour that they use cat meat for their burgers.”
“My friends and I love to hang out in Yankytown at the weekend,” says student Shen Ping Ling, 20.
“We like to wear leather jackets, listen to Bruce Springsteen and get into real bar fights. It’s so cool!”
Other sources, however, describe the vibrant nightlife as merely the surface of a world characterised by exploitation.
“Yankytowns are everywhere in China now,” says cultural commentator Augustus Clarke.
“They may have a reputation for fun, but the reality is a massive network of warehouses filled with Americans working twenty-hour days for shockingly low wages.”
“To the affluent Chinese, Yankytown means a night out on the town – but to the American workers who live there it means being crammed into poorly-lit rooms in order to produce an endless flood of knock-off Ming vases, Chinese dresses and fake chopsticks.”
