The 1980s and ’90s saw a dramatic increase in the number of working-class Fujianese immigrants coming to New York, especially the area around East Broadway in Manhattan’s Chinatown and later Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. The largest number come from in and around Fuzhou, the capital of southeastern China’s Fujian Province, and people from many of the surrounding towns and counties now have associations in New York.
Most speak the Fuzhou variety of Fujianese, which is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, though many know some Mandarin.