1-make economic sense 经济上划得来，经济上的合理

2-tenuous 脆弱的，站不住脚的

Early Chinese immigrants were not christians, and losing an entire day of sales for a holiday they didn't understand did not make economic sense, especially when Chinese restaurants occupied a tenuous position in America.

3-for scale 对比一下

4-crowd into 大批涌入

5-crowd out 挤出

There are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States ( MacDonalds', for scale, has just over 14,000 restaurants ), but before Americans were crowding into Chinese restaurants for Christmas dinner, they were more interested in crowding these restaurants out.

6-proliferate 激增

7-Transcontinental Railroad 横贯大陆铁路

Chinese restaurants proliferated during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, catering to Chinese miners and railroad workers.

8-bar…from 禁止

The unions next attempted to get a law passed barring white women from Chinese restaurants.

9-literally and metaphorically 字面和隐喻意义上的

It makes sense that Chinese restaurants were a destination for Jewish on Christmas, they were among the only ones open-both literally and metaphorically.