Read Online The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe - Free Book Online
Authors: Patrick Radden Keefe
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loans for Harvard Law School; a huge debt is accumulated, but one that will exponentially increase the earning power of the debtor.
A child born on American soil is an American citizen, whatever the legal status of its parents, and many young Fujianese had children. Work left little time to raise them, so they sent their babies back to China, to the very villages the parents had fled, to be brought up by their grandparents until they were old enough for school. Whole villages in the countryside around Fuzhou emptied of men of working age. The Fujianese called them “widow’s villages,” for all of the wives who were left behind. But soon the wives started going to New York as well, and the only residents left were the aged and infirm and a profusion of fresh-faced American-born babies. Before long this reverse migration—undocumented parents sending their U.S.-citizen children back to China—struck some enterprising Fujianese as an opportunity, and businesses devoted to sending babies back became a flourishing industry in their own right.
By working long hours and living frugally, the Fujianese managed to save. Because their labor was off the books, it was also tax-free, and most Fujianese arrivals were able to pay off their snakehead debt within a couple of years. Despite, or perhaps because of, the depredations, the Fujianese forged a strong, insular, ethnic enclave on the fringes of Chinatown. After six, or often as many as thirteen, consecutive days of work, most new arrivals took a day of rest, known as a “cigarette day,” to shop, recreate, and gamble—to indulge in a few simple luxuries, like cigarettes. Monday is traditionally a slow day in the restaurant trade, and after a week of slicing broccoli or pushing a mop, young men would wend their way through the hurly-burly of East Broadway, past the fishmongers and video shops, the storefront grocers with their bushelsof fruit, their plastic vats of dried mushrooms, their mountains of red lychees.
As often as not, they would end up at the Tak Shun Variety Store, on Hester Street, where Sister Ping presided, asking after family members, advising youngsters to learn English (though she wouldn’t do so herself), and generally accumulating relationships, or
guanxi
, the Chinese expression that entails connections—the kind of interlocking favors and dependencies that bind a community together. Local Fujianese began to visit Sister Ping when they needed help or advice. A restaurant worker named Ming Wang, who had lost his job because of an injury and could expect no compensation from his employer, once visited Sister Ping and explained his predicament. “Little brother, take this,” she said, handing him $2,000. “Pay me back when you can.” Three times a year she made trips to Hong Kong to buy merchandise, and often she was accompanied on the plane by the American-born babies of illegal Fujianese from the neighborhood. “These were parents that didn’t have legal INS status in the U.S.A. and needed someone to bring their children to China,” she explained. “I would do it for them free of charge.”
Sister Ping ran the store and oversaw the books. She was the dominant partner, with Yick Tak always hovering in the background. Almost as soon as she arrived in Chinatown in 1981, it seemed, she became a well-known, well-respected figure, notable for working hours in her store that were long even by Chinatown standards, for demonstrating a distinctly Fujianese interest in and acumen for business, and for maintaining a modest demeanor and a simple, indulgence-free way of life even as she became an entrepreneurial success story. “I was credible,” she would later say, when asked about her status in the neighborhood. “I had a conscience. I did things for free, as favors. I treated relatives and friends well. I know it’s difficult for people to be in a foreign land with few acquaintances.”
She also developed a reputation during these years as someone
A child born on American soil is an American citizen, whatever the legal status of its parents, and many young Fujianese had children. Work left little time to raise them, so they sent their babies back to China, to the very villages the parents had fled, to be brought up by their grandparents until they were old enough for school. Whole villages in the countryside around Fuzhou emptied of men of working age. The Fujianese called them “widow’s villages,” for all of the wives who were left behind. But soon the wives started going to New York as well, and the only residents left were the aged and infirm and a profusion of fresh-faced American-born babies. Before long this reverse migration—undocumented parents sending their U.S.-citizen children back to China—struck some enterprising Fujianese as an opportunity, and businesses devoted to sending babies back became a flourishing industry in their own right.
By working long hours and living frugally, the Fujianese managed to save. Because their labor was off the books, it was also tax-free, and most Fujianese arrivals were able to pay off their snakehead debt within a couple of years. Despite, or perhaps because of, the depredations, the Fujianese forged a strong, insular, ethnic enclave on the fringes of Chinatown. After six, or often as many as thirteen, consecutive days of work, most new arrivals took a day of rest, known as a “cigarette day,” to shop, recreate, and gamble—to indulge in a few simple luxuries, like cigarettes. Monday is traditionally a slow day in the restaurant trade, and after a week of slicing broccoli or pushing a mop, young men would wend their way through the hurly-burly of East Broadway, past the fishmongers and video shops, the storefront grocers with their bushelsof fruit, their plastic vats of dried mushrooms, their mountains of red lychees.
As often as not, they would end up at the Tak Shun Variety Store, on Hester Street, where Sister Ping presided, asking after family members, advising youngsters to learn English (though she wouldn’t do so herself), and generally accumulating relationships, or
guanxi
, the Chinese expression that entails connections—the kind of interlocking favors and dependencies that bind a community together. Local Fujianese began to visit Sister Ping when they needed help or advice. A restaurant worker named Ming Wang, who had lost his job because of an injury and could expect no compensation from his employer, once visited Sister Ping and explained his predicament. “Little brother, take this,” she said, handing him $2,000. “Pay me back when you can.” Three times a year she made trips to Hong Kong to buy merchandise, and often she was accompanied on the plane by the American-born babies of illegal Fujianese from the neighborhood. “These were parents that didn’t have legal INS status in the U.S.A. and needed someone to bring their children to China,” she explained. “I would do it for them free of charge.”
Sister Ping ran the store and oversaw the books. She was the dominant partner, with Yick Tak always hovering in the background. Almost as soon as she arrived in Chinatown in 1981, it seemed, she became a well-known, well-respected figure, notable for working hours in her store that were long even by Chinatown standards, for demonstrating a distinctly Fujianese interest in and acumen for business, and for maintaining a modest demeanor and a simple, indulgence-free way of life even as she became an entrepreneurial success story. “I was credible,” she would later say, when asked about her status in the neighborhood. “I had a conscience. I did things for free, as favors. I treated relatives and friends well. I know it’s difficult for people to be in a foreign land with few acquaintances.”
She also developed a reputation during these years as someone
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