In 1976, Song Ying swam for eight hours from Shenzhen, then a small fishing village, to Hong Kong, joining millions of mainland Chinese who risked their lives to escape hunger, indoctrination and repression under Communist rule.

1976年，宋颖（音）从当时还是一个小渔村的深圳游了八个小时来到香港，加入了数百万冒着生命危险逃离共产党统治下的饥饿、思想灌输和镇压的内地民众行列。

Today, at 72, she is a New Yorker who voted for President Trump three times and voted early for Andrew M. Cuomo in Tuesday’s mayoral election. She views socialism as a curse she barely survived when she fled China and fears that Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the Democratic mayoral nominee, is a threat to her adopted home.

如今，72岁的她是一名纽约人，曾三次投票给特朗普总统，并在周二的市长选举中提前投票给安德鲁·科莫。她将社会主义视为自己当年逃离中国时侥幸脱身的诅咒，担忧民主社会主义者、民主党市长候选人佐兰·马姆达尼将威胁她的第二故乡。

Ms. Song cannot understand the broad enthusiasm young people have for Mr. Mamdani, who leads the race.

宋颖无法理解年轻人对领先竞选的马姆达尼的广泛热情。

He wants to raise taxes on the rich to fund programs like free child care, buses and city-owned grocery stores, which is vastly different from the Marxist socialism that was practiced by China under Chairman Mao Zedong.

他主张向富人增税以资助免费托儿机构、公交系统及市政杂货店等项目，这与毛泽东时代中国实行的马克思主义社会主义有很大不同。

But her views reflect a growing divide within many Chinese American families between parents who fled collectivism and their children, who were raised in freedom and drawn to the promise of equality.

她的观点折射出许多华裔美国家庭内部日益加深的代际分歧：曾逃离集体主义的父母辈，与在自由环境中成长、追求平等理念的子女辈之间，正形成深刻的思想鸿沟。

The political views of many older Chinese American immigrants are shifting to the right, a trend that is playing out in the mayor’s race. The generational split, accentuated by memory, media and class experience, has turned some Chinese American households in New York into microcosms of a broader debate over what fairness and freedom mean or what the American dream is really about.

许多年长的华裔美国移民的政治观点正在右转，这一趋势正在市长竞选中显现出来。记忆、媒体和阶级经历加剧了这种代沟，使纽约的一些华裔美国家庭成为一场更广泛辩论的缩影，这场辩论的主题是公平和自由意味着什么，或者美国梦到底是什么。

宋颖上周在纽约华埠的一个投票站。宋颖于1970年代逃离中国，她提前投票支持安德鲁·科莫。

Ms. Song and her husband arrived in the United States in 1978 with nothing. They borrowed $168 to pay their first month’s rent in Chinatown and hustled to build a life. She became a reporter for a Chinese-language newspaper while he started a small telecom business. One of their sons graduated from Cornell, the other from M.I.T. Both have professional careers — the kind of American success story that once symbolized immigrant hope.

1978年抵达美国时，宋颖和她的丈夫一无所有。他们借了168美元来支付他们在唐人街第一个月的房租，并努力建立自己的生活。她成为一家中文报纸的记者，而他则办了一家小型电信公司。他们的一个儿子毕业于康奈尔大学，另一个毕业于麻省理工学院，两人都有自己的职业生涯——这种美国式的成功故事曾经象征着移民的希望。

Ms. Song’s political convictions are rooted in the country she fled. “Socialism has been a disaster,” she said. “Everything I’ve seen and experienced points to that. It breeds laziness and kills the motivation to strive.”

宋颖的政治信念植根于她所逃离的国家。“社会主义是一场灾难，”她说。“我所看到和经历的一切都表明了这一点。它滋生懒惰，扼杀奋斗的动力。”

To her, Mr. Mamdani’s proposals sound like echoes from her past.

对她来说，马姆达尼的提议听起来像是来自她过去的回声。

Ms. Song calls her children, who declined to be interviewed, and those of her friends “Ivy League types,” kindhearted progressives who, in her view, fail to see socialism’s destructive side. Her perspective resonates with other older Chinese immigrants who doubt the city can afford such free programs.

宋颖称她的孩子们（他们拒绝接受采访）和她的朋友们是“藤校那一款的”，在她看来，这些善良的进步人士看不到社会主义的破坏性。她的观点与其他年长的中国移民产生了共鸣，他们怀疑纽约能否负担得起这样的免费项目。

For younger Chinese Americans, however, Mr. Mamdani represents hope in a city facing an affordability crisis. Many have watched childhood friends and relatives be priced out of neighborhoods like Sunset Park in Brooklyn and Elmhurst in Queens. Some are delaying or forgoing parenthood altogether because raising children in New York feels impossibly expensive.

然而，对于年轻的华裔美国人来说，马姆达尼代表着这座面临负担能力危机的城市的希望。许多人目睹了儿时的朋友和亲戚因房价过高而被赶出布鲁克林的日落公园和皇后区的埃尔姆赫斯特等社区。有些人推迟或完全放弃生育计划，因为在纽约抚养孩子感觉贵得令人望而却步。

布鲁克林日落公园社区的一家商铺。

Angela Li, 26, supports Mr. Mamdani’s plan for free child care. She works at a philanthropy that aids low-income mothers and has seen firsthand how a lack of affordable care keeps women from pursuing an education. Her own childhood underscores the issue, too: Her parents, who immigrated from Fujian Province in southern China in the 1990s, sent her back to China when she was barely 2 months old because they couldn’t afford to care for her. Her father worked in restaurants, her mother in garment factories. They brought her back just before she turned 5.

26岁的安吉拉·李（音）支持马姆达尼的免费托儿计划。她在一家帮助低收入母亲的慈善机构工作，亲眼目睹了缺乏可负担医疗服务如何阻碍女性接受教育。她自己的童年也凸显了这个问题：她的父母在上世纪90年代从中国南方的福建省移民过来，在她还不到两个月大的时候就把她送回了中国，因为他们负担不起照顾她的费用。她的父亲在餐馆工作，母亲在服装厂工作。他们在她快满五岁时把她带了回来。

Ms. Li, who attended Hunter College High School and the University of California, Los Angeles, was dismayed when her mother, 56, voted for Mr. Trump last year — her first presidential vote since becoming a citizen. Like many older Chinese Americans, her mother plans to vote for Mr. Cuomo this week.

安吉拉·李曾就读于亨特学院高中和加州大学洛杉矶分校，当她56岁的母亲去年投票给特朗普时，她感到沮丧——这是她成为美国公民以来第一次在总统选举中投票。和许多年长的华裔美国人一样，她的母亲计划本周投票给科莫。

Ms. Li believes language and media consumption drive much of the generational divide.

安吉拉·李认为，语言和媒体影响是导致代沟的主要因素。

“Language barriers really deepen the generational divide within our communities,” said Ms. Li, who lives with her parents in Kew Gardens, Queens. At home, she speaks a mix of Mandarin and the Fujian dialect with her parents and translates between them and her two younger siblings, who speak primarily English.

“语言障碍确实加深了我们社区的代沟，”李女士说，她和父母住在皇后区的邱园。在家里，她和父母说普通话和福建方言，并在父母和两个主要说英语的弟弟妹妹之间翻译。

Despite decades in the United States, many middle-aged and older immigrants speak little English and rely solely on Chinese-language media. Ms. Li and many young Chinese Americans blame misinformation on YouTube, the Chinese messaging app WeChat and local Chinese-language newspapers for hardening pro-Trump views among older immigrants.

尽管在美国生活了几十年，许多中老年移民几乎不会说英语，而且只依赖中文媒体。安吉拉·李和许多年轻的华裔美国人指责YouTube、中文通讯应用微信和当地中文报纸上传播的虚假信息巩固了老一代移民对特朗普的支持立场。

In last year’s election, support for the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, among Chinese Americans fell to 53 percent, from over 70 percent in 2020, according to the American Electorate Voter Poll, a large-scale national survey of voters.

根据大规模全国选民调查“美国选民民意调查”，在去年的选举中，华裔美国人对民主党总统候选人、副总统贺锦丽的支持率为53%，而2020年华裔美国人对民主党候选人的支持率为70%。

A New York Times analysis of the 2022 New York governor’s race found that voters in Asian neighborhoods across the city shifted 23 percentage points to the right, compared with 2018. Chinese enclaves in Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn even flipped Republican for the first time in at least a decade.

《纽约时报》对2022年纽约州州长竞选的分析发现，与2018年相比，全市亚裔社区的选民右倾了23个百分点。位于日落公园和布鲁克林本森赫斯特的华人聚居区甚至出现了至少十年来的首次倒戈共和党。

Joey Zhang, a registered Democrat who lives in Sunset Park, said her 13-year-old daughter could not believe she planned to vote for Mr. Cuomo, who has faced sexual harassment accusations. (Mr. Cuomo has denied the accusations.) But Ms. Zhang, 44, said she didn’t believe in “free stuff,” even if she understood why her children were excited about Mr. Mamdani.

住在日落公园的注册民主党人乔伊·张（音）说，她13岁的女儿不敢相信自己会投票给面临性骚扰指控的库莫。（库莫否认了这些指控。）但44岁的乔伊·张说，她不相信“免费的东西”，尽管她明白为什么孩子们对马姆达尼感到兴奋。

“The U.S. has changed in recent years,” said Ms. Zhang, a customer service representative who immigrated from Fujian in 2003. “It wants people to believe that everyone deserves the same, no matter the effort. But life doesn’t work that way.”

“美国近年来发生了变化，”2003年从福建移民到美国的客户服务代表乔伊·张说。“它想让人们相信，无论付出多少努力，每个人都应该得到同样的待遇。但生活不是这样的。”

The divide has caused tension in some households.

这种分歧在一些家庭中造成了紧张关系。

Jessica Liew, a graduate student born and raised in Sunset Park, recalled arguing with her mother last fall. Her mother urged her to vote for Mr. Trump, saying he would lower living costs. Ms. Liew, 25, countered that he would cut Medicaid, Medicare and other social programs that her grandparents relied on.

杰西卡·刘（音）是一名研究生，在日落公园出生和长大。她回忆起去年秋天和母亲的争吵。母亲敦促她投票给特朗普，说他会降低生活成本。25岁的杰西卡·刘反驳说，他会削减医疗补助、联邦医疗保险和她的外祖父母所依赖的其他社会项目。

She hasn’t asked her mother about the cuts Mr. Trump and Congress have made to social benefits. “I’m too scared that it will cause another argument,” Ms. Liew said. She has been canvassing for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign since the spring.

她没有向母亲提及特朗普和国会削减社会福利的问题。“我很害怕这会引发另一场争论，”杰西卡·刘说。自今年春天以来，她一直在为马姆达尼的竞选活动拉票。

Lisa Lau, a data analyst at the World Bank, had a similar debate with her mother and father. Like Ms. Song, her parents fled mainland China to Hong Kong in the 1970s, then migrated to the United States in 1978. They worked in restaurants and real estate in Chinatown and Sunset Park, sending their two children to Harvard and Yale.

世界银行的数据分析师丽莎·刘（音）与父母也有过类似的争论。和宋颖一样，她的父母在20世纪70年代从中国大陆逃到香港，然后在1978年移民到美国。他们在唐人街和日落公园的餐馆和房地产行业工作，送两个孩子上了哈佛和耶鲁大学。

Her parents voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates until 2016, when they became steadfast supporters of Mr. Trump. They believed he would bring down the Chinese Communist Party, Ms. Lau said, “even though a lot of his instincts and approach are very much reminiscent of an authoritarian government.”

她的父母在2016年之前既投票给民主党候选人，也投票给共和党候选人，后来他们成为特朗普的坚定支持者。丽莎·刘说，他们相信他会扳倒中国共产党，“尽管他的很多本能和做法非常容易让人想到威权政府。”

Ms. Lau’s father died last year. Her mother, Wah Mei Lau, said she hadn’t decided whom to support for mayor, but wants someone who will take crime seriously. She also echoed a conservative refrain: that too many people exploit social programs.

丽莎·刘的父亲去年去世了。她的母亲刘华美（音）说，她还没有决定支持谁，但希望新市长是个认真对待犯罪问题的人。她还附和保守派的观点：太多人在占社会福利项目的便宜。

“There should be proper vetting,” she said. “Don’t let people take unfair advantage of it.”

“应该进行适当的审查，”她说。“不要让人不公平地利用它。”

Her daughter finds that view frustrating. Her parents benefited from the programs they now criticize: free child care, food stamps and other support for low-income families. When she challenged them about that, she said, “they just pretended not to hear me.”

她的女儿对这种观点深感沮丧。她的父母当年曾受益于他们现在批评的项目：免费托儿服务、食品券和对低收入家庭的其他支持。她说，当她向他们提出质疑时，“他们只是假装没听到我的话。”