Julia Sun, a law student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who spent the first 10 years of her life in Shanghai, was shopping at an Asian grocery store half a mile from campus last year when a package in the snack aisle made her do a double take.

朱莉婭·孫（音）是伊利諾大學香檳分校的一名法學院學生，10歲之前生活在上海。去年，她在離校園不到一公里的一家亞洲超市購物時，零食區的一個包裝讓她眼前一亮。

“They had this waffle-biscuit thing that I ate in second grade,” Ms. Sun said. It had been so long since she had seen the waffle-biscuit thing that she was sure it was extinct.

「那是一種華夫餅乾，我二年級的時候吃過，」朱莉婭·孫說。她已經很久沒見過這種餅乾了，還以為它早就停產了。

“I thought I was dreaming,” she said.

「我還以為自己在做夢呢，」她說。

For the more than 6,000 students from China in Urbana and Champaign, the wealth of products and dishes from back home can make the two cities seem like a mirage rising from the plains of central Illinois.

對於厄巴納市和香檳市的6000多名中國學生來說，豐富的家鄉特產和菜肴讓這兩座城市彷彿成了從伊利諾州中部平原上升起的一場「海市蜃樓」。

Surrounded by miles of flat, green fields of soy and grain corn, the cities have a combined population of about 127,000 people and a skyline that rarely pokes above 15 stories. The area isn’t anybody’s idea of a major metropolitan center. It certainly isn’t the first place you’d think to look when you are in the mood for serious Chinese food.

這兩座城市被綿延數公里平坦的、綠油油的大豆田和穀物田環繞，總人口約12.7萬，天際線最高的建築也很少超過15層。這一地區並非人們印象中的大都會中心，按理說，想吃到地道的中餐，這裡絕不會是首選之地。

After a quick walk from the university’s main quad, though, you can sit down to a faithful rendition of spicy bullfrog hot pot in a Sichuanese broth studded with green peppercorns. A nearby restaurant serves yangrou paomo, a Shaanxi lamb soup with floating scraps of flatbread that is a favorite in Xi’an. If you are struck by a late-night craving for stinky tofu in the style of Changsha, you can get it after 8:30 p.m. from a chef who dresses fried black cubes of fermented bean curd in a glistening orange chile oil, the way vendors do on the streets of Hunan’s capital city.

然而，從大學主校區出發，步行一小段路，你就能坐下來享用一頓正宗的川味麻辣牛蛙火鍋，湯底裡滿是青花椒。附近還有一家餐館供應羊肉泡饃——這是陝西的一道羊肉湯，裡面漂著掰碎的饃，是西安人喜愛的美食。如果深夜突然想吃長沙風味的臭豆腐，晚上8點半之後也能吃到，廚師會把炸好的黑色發酵豆腐塊淋上亮晶晶的橙色辣椒油，和湖南省會街頭小販的做法一模一樣。

You’d have to hunt to find these dishes in a major city like Chicago, 135 miles away, but they have become a fixture of life in Champaign and Urbana. At least two dozen Chinese restaurants, bakeries, bubble-tea shops and Asian grocery stores are clustered close to the campus. Along a five-block stretch of Green Street, the main commercial strip in the part of Champaign known as Campustown, window posters and sidewalk sandwich boards advertise dumplings, noodles and stir-fries in larger-than-life color photographs captioned in Chinese and usually, but not always, English.

在200公里外的芝加哥這樣的大城市，你得費一番功夫才能找到這樣的菜肴，但在香檳市和厄巴納市，它們早已成為生活的一部分。校園附近聚集了至少20多家中餐館、麵包店、珍珠奶茶店和亞洲超市。在香檳市被稱為「校園鎮」的主要商業街格林街，短短五個街區的範圍內，櫥窗海報和人行道上的夾板廣告牌上滿是餃子、麵條和炒菜的大幅彩色照片，配有中文說明，通常也會有英文（但並不是都有）。

Most of these places are quite new. Almost all have opened in the past 15 years. Dai Shi, a local pastry chef originally from Fuzhou, first visited Champaign in 2010, when her parents owned a Chinese restaurant in town. They had only a handful of competitors, she said.

這些店大多是今年以來新開的，歷史幾乎都不會超過15年。石黛（音）是當地的一名甜點師，老家在福州，她2010年第一次來到香檳市，當時她父母在這裡開了一家中餐館。她說，那時候競爭對手寥寥無幾。

At the time, about 1,100 students from China attended the university. Now there are more than five times as many, and the campus area has become a little Chinatown on the prairie.

那時約有1100名中國學生就讀於這所大學。如今，中國學生的數量是當時的五倍多，校園周邊也成了草原上的一個小小唐人街。

New York University enrolls more Chinese students than any other school in the United States. But the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is in a virtual tie for second place with the University of Southern California, according a New York Times analysis of 2023 visa data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

紐約大學的中國學生數量在美國各高校中位居第一。但根據《紐約時報》對美國移民與海關執法局2023年簽證數據的分析，伊利諾大學香檳分校與南加州大學幾乎並列第二。

Urbana and Champaign are not the only places where the surge in international students has changed the local culture and economy. But the area’s rural isolation and unusually large population of Chinese students make it a striking example of that change.

國際學生數量的激增改變了許多地方的當地文化和經濟，厄巴納和香檳市並非個例。但這一地區地處鄉村、相對偏僻，且中國學生數量異常龐大，使其成為這種變化的一個鮮明例證。

In the coming months or years, they may also make it something of a laboratory for the effects of the Trump administration’s cuts to research budgets and clampdowns on visas for international students, especially those from China.

未來數月或數年，這裡或許還會成為一個實驗室，可以用來觀察川普政府削減研究預算、收緊留學生簽證（尤其是中國學生）所帶來的影響。

College-age students in China have a nickname for the University of Illinois: yu mi de. It means the Cornfield. The university is better known there for its surrounding farmland and its strengths in STEM fields like engineering and computer science than for its proximity to crunchy Northern-style stir-fried pork intestines. Each August, hundreds of new Chinese students show up with no inkling that the Cornfield is full of foods they grew up on.

中國的大學生們給伊利諾大學起了個暱稱——「玉米地」。這所大學因其周邊的農田，以及在工程、計算機科學等STEM領域的實力而聞名，而不是因為它附近可以吃到北方風味的爆豬肚。每年8月，數以百計新來的中國學生來到這裡，完全沒想到這片「玉米地」裡竟有他們從小吃到大的食物。

Only occasionally do recruiters for the school try to tempt prospective scholars with visions of dumplings. “When I was applying, I Zoomed twice with my adviser and he told me, every time, ‘The Chinese food here is fabulous. You’re going to love it,’” said Scarlett Qian, a native of Shanghai who is in a doctoral program at the university’s Gies College of Business.

學校的招生人員偶爾會用餃子之類的美食來吸引潛在的學生。「我申請的時候，和導師Zoom影片了兩次，每次他都告訴我，『這裡的中餐太棒了，你一定會喜歡的』，」來自上海、正在該校吉斯商學院攻讀博士學位的斯嘉麗·錢（音）說。

In June, I had dinner with Ms. Qian and two of her Chinese-born classmates in their favorite Green Street restaurant, Northern Cuisine. We sat down right away, something they said is rare during the school year, when there are almost always lines at the door.

6月，我和錢女士以及她的兩位華裔同學在她們最喜歡的格林街餐廳「北味軒」共進晚餐。我們很快就落座了，她們說，這在學年期間很難得，這樣的時候，門口幾乎總是排著隊。

Northern Cuisine opened two years ago, with slate-gray floor tiles, midcentury-modern furniture and graphite-colored pendant lamps above the tables. The lighting makes it easy to get crisp, social-media-ready pictures of dishes like guo bao rou, a specialty of Harbin: strips of pork fried twice to create a pale golden shell filled with tiny pockets of air that keep it from getting soggy in the nearly transparent sweet-and-sour glaze.

北味軒是兩年前開業的，店內鋪著青灰色地磚，擺放著中世紀現代風格的傢具，餐桌上方懸掛著石墨色的吊燈。在這樣的光線下，拍出來的菜肴照片清晰，很適合發社群媒體，比如哈爾濱特色菜鍋包肉：豬肉條經過兩次油炸，形成淺金色的外殼，裡面布滿細小的氣穴，裹上近乎透明的糖醋汁也不會變軟。

“That’s very comparable to what I had in China,” said Xuanyi Li, who grew up in Shandong province.

「這和我在國內吃的很像，」在山東長大的李軒逸（音）說。

More than 270,000 students from China attended American colleges and universities last year. Restaurants catering to them represent a new wave in Chinese dining in the United States. In Manhattan, the blocks around N.Y.U. and Columbia, which 20 years ago held little appeal to fans of Chinese food, have become troves of Shanghai drunken crab and Hong Kong-style barbecue pork buns. You can find high-level Chinese cooking near campuses in Lincoln, Neb., and Iowa City.

去年，有超過27萬名中國學生在美國高校就讀。為他們服務的餐館代表了美國中餐業的新浪潮。20年前在曼哈頓，紐約大學和哥倫比亞大學周邊的街區幾乎沒有像樣的中餐，現在已經成為上海醉蟹和港式叉燒包的寶地。在內布拉斯加州林肯市和愛荷華城的大學校園附近甚至也能吃到高水平的中餐。

They are more cosmopolitan than the linoleum-floored joints in the old urban Chinatowns that started out feeding home-style cooking to villagers from Guangdong in the early 20th century. They are more up-to-date than the palaces of aristocratic Chinese cuisine overseen by highly trained chefs who fled the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s. Aimed at younger customers whose memories of China are still fresh, they tend to be informal, fairly inexpensive if not rock-bottom cheap, and faithful in recreating true regional cuisines.

與20世紀初為廣東移民提供家常菜、鋪著油氈地板的舊城區唐人街餐館相比，這些新餐館更具國際化氣息；與20世紀60至70年代因躲避文化大革命而來的那些訓練有素的廚師經營的貴族式中餐廳相比，這些新餐館更加與時俱進。它們面向的是離開中國不久的年輕顧客，往往氛圍輕鬆、價格適中（雖然並非極低），且忠實地再現了真正的地方菜系。

Students in Urbana and Champaign trade intel on regional dishes in group texts in Chinese on the social-media apps RedNote and WeChat. The most useful sources for exploring menus around the Cornfield are the Asian-food-delivery apps Hungry Panda and Fantuan, whose vehicles, bearing a logo of an anthropomorphic dumpling, are as common on the streets as red-and-blue Domino’s cars are in other American college towns.

香檳分校的學生們會在小紅書和微信等社群媒體的中文群聊裡交流各地菜肴的信息。在這片「玉米地」點餐時，最有用的工具是亞洲外賣應用「熊貓外賣」和「飯糰」，它們的配送車上印有擬人化的餃子標誌，在街頭很常見，就像其他美國大學城的紅藍色達美樂披薩車一樣。

The drivers “are all Chinese people,” Ms. Qian said. “When they reach my apartment, they call me and speak Mandarin right away.”

「司機都是中國人，」錢女士說，「他們到公寓後，會打電話給我，直接說普通話。」

A year ago on the campaign trail, President Trump proposed that all international students who graduated from U.S. colleges be granted green cards “automatically.”

一年前，在競選活動中，川普總統提議，所有從美國大學畢業的國際學生應「自動」獲得綠卡。

After taking office in January, Mr. Trump chose a different path. His administration froze applications for student visas in May. When the process started up again a month later, the State Department put out new orders for stricter vetting of applicants’ “online presence” — looking for, among other things, signs of “hostility” toward the United States.

今年1月上任後，川普選擇了另一條道路。他的政府在5月凍結了學生簽證申請。一個月後簽證流程恢復時，國務院發布了新指令，對申請者的「網路活動」進行更嚴格的審查——其中包括尋找對美國表現出「敵意」的跡象等內容。

Consulates were told to give priority to applicants bound for schools where international students make up less than 15 percent of the total. That statistic at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is above 20 percent.

各國領事館被告知，應優先處理那些前往國際學生佔總人數不到15%的學校就讀的簽證申請。而伊利諾大學香檳分校的這一比例超過了20%。

Chinese nationals, who made up more than a quarter of the 1.1 million international students in the United States last year, face extra scrutiny. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the government would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.”

去年，在美國的110萬名國際學生中，中國公民佔超過四分之一。他們正面臨額外的審查。今年5月，國務卿馬可·魯比奧宣布，政府將「大力撤銷中國學生的簽證」。

Whether tighter screening and delays will cut into the number of international students at the University of Illinois in the coming academic year won’t be clear until September, said Robin Kaler, an associate chancellor.

副校長羅賓·凱勒表示，更嚴格的審查和簽證延遲是否會影響伊利諾大學在新學年接收的國際學生人數，要到9月才能看出結果。

Until then, faculty, administrators and local businesses are bracing for the impact. A significant drop could have a major economic effect on college towns like Urbana and Champaign. International students in Illinois spend $2.4 billion a year and support more than 23,000 jobs in the state, according to a 2024 analysis by NAFSA, a professional association for international educators. Tuition is the biggest expenditure, but real estate, car dealerships and other businesses also benefit.

在此之前，教職員工、校方管理層以及當地商家都在為可能帶來的影響做準備。國際學生人數的大幅下降可能會對厄巴納和香檳這樣的大學城產生重大的經濟影響。根據國際教育者協會(NAFSA)2024年的一項分析，國際學生每年在伊利諾州的支出高達24億美元，支持了該州超過23000個就業崗位。學費是其中最大的支出項，但房地產、汽車經銷商以及其他類型的商家也都從中受益。

New five- and six-story apartment buildings surround Green Street in Champaign, many of them with fitness centers, fire pits and even swimming pools. Ms. Shi, the pastry chef, and her husband own a patisserie and cafe in a building in Urbana that rents almost all its 400 bedrooms to students. By her estimate, about a third of them are Chinese.

香檳市的格林街周邊新建起了許多五六層高的公寓樓，其中很多配備了健身中心、露天火爐，甚至還有游泳池。甜點師石女士和她的丈夫在厄巴納市擁有一家法式甜品店兼咖啡館，店鋪所在的大樓幾乎將其400間卧室全部出租給學生。根據她的估計，其中大約三分之一是中國學生。

The presence of thousands of students from China and India and hundreds more from South Korean and Taiwan has caught the eye of national food businesses. In January, the Korean supermarket H Mart came to Urbana. Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodle, which dishes out crossing-bridge noodles at hundreds of locations in China, arrived in Champaign last year, and a branch of Lao Sze Chuan, from the Chicago chef Tony Hu, has been making beef tongue with peppers and other Sichuan dishes in Urbana since 2018.

數以千計中國和印度學生、數百名韓國和台灣學生的到來引起了全國各大餐飲企業的關注。今年1月，韓國超市H Mart進駐厄巴納市。主營過橋米線的「十秒到雲南過橋米線」去年也入駐香檳，在中國擁有數百家門店。而由芝加哥名廚胡曉軍創辦的「老四川」自2018年起就在厄巴納市開設分店，供應椒香牛舌等四川菜肴。

Jack Hsiao opened a location of his Taiwanese bubble-tea chain Latea in Campustown in 2016. He’d spent time in the area as an undergraduate at nearby Purdue University, so he bet that the area’s Asian students would appreciate the housemade boba sweetened with roasted-sugar caramel that follows his Taiwanese grandmother’s recipe.

2016年，傑克·蕭（音）在香檳大學城開設了他創辦的台灣珍珠奶茶品牌Latea分店。他曾在附近的普渡大學就讀本科，對該地區頗為熟悉，因此他相信，這裡的亞洲學生會喜歡他自家製作的珍珠奶茶——採用他台灣祖母的配方，珍珠用焦糖調味。

“As soon as we opened the door, we already had customers,” Mr. Hsiao said.

「我們一開門就有客人了，」他說。

As more Asian businesses crowd in, the struggle for survival becomes increasingly Darwinian. Restaurants along Green Street can come and go in the span of a year. Now, their owners are anticipating fewer students from other countries, especially China, said Tim Chao, who owns three cafes with his wife, Ms. Shi.

隨著越來越多亞洲商家湧入，生存競爭變得愈發殘酷。格林街上的餐館可能一年內就開開關關。與妻子石女士共同擁有三家咖啡館的業主提姆·趙 （音）表示，現在店主們預計來自其他國家，尤其是中國的學生會減少。

Until recently, Mr. Chao said, many restaurateurs aimed their offerings squarely at those students. If significant numbers of them aren’t allowed into the United States, or decide to study in a country that feels more welcoming, “the general consensus is that they’ll need to change the flavors, change the menu and how they present themselves,” he said.

趙先生表示，不久之前，許多餐館老闆的產品主要針對這些學生。如果大量學生無法進入美國，或者選擇去更友好的國家留學，「普遍的看法是，他們將不得不改變口味、調整菜單以及改變經營方式，」他說。

For instance, the noodle shop that sells Changsha stinky tofu just added grilled meat skewers and other, more entry-level items to its late-night menu.

例如，那家出售長沙臭豆腐的麵館最近在其宵夜菜單中新增了烤肉串和其他更為大眾化的菜品。

“Everyone is buckled up right now,” Mr. Chao said.

「所有人都繃緊了神經，」趙先生說。

Many long-term residents are hoping that their favorite restaurants stick around and stay interesting.

許多長期居民希望自己喜愛的餐館能夠繼續經營下去，並保持特色。

“This cultural richness enhances us all,” said Leslie Cooperband, a retired cheesemaker who lives in Champaign, after we shared some very good three-cup chicken at Golden Harbor, a Taiwanese and Chinese landmark so celebrated that an indie-rock band wrote a song about it.

「這種文化的多樣性讓我們大家都受益，」退休奶酪製造師萊斯利·庫珀班德在香檳的漁滿樓餐廳和我們一起品嘗了一道非常美味的三杯雞後說。漁滿樓是一家著名的台灣和中國餐館，甚至有一支獨立搖滾樂隊為它寫過一首歌。

“It’s like, wow, look at what we have here in this town of 100,000 people,” she said. “And we’re all better for it.”

「就像是——哇，看看我們這座有10萬人口的小城裡有什麼，」她說，「我們因此過得更好了。」