Synopsis
A fourth-generation Chinese American man revisits his heritage, much of which is tied to New York's Chinatown, a place where his grandfather was a beloved bookie.
From the Author
What I hoped to achieve in writing "Tea That Burns"I always like to say that in my writing I am trying to enable the reader to smell history, so I hope people can get a good whiff in "Tea That Burns." It is really not so much a family memoir as the memoir of a neighbhorhood -- a history (complete with notes and sources) that can be used as a reference book or read like a novel. Since three generations of my family lived in Chinatown New York, starting back when the entire Chinese community consisted of some 800 souls (it now numbers 250,000), I can use various relations of mine to illustrate almost every aspect of the Chinese experience in New York, or in America for that matter. Among my ancestors can be found merchants and gamblers, Tong council members, artisans, and at least one opium addict. And then there's my Great-Grandmother, who the author of one 1898 book claims was Chinatown's most popular prostitute. Well, I explore that issue among many others, and try to convey as much as I can what it felt like to live among New York's Chinese from about 1820 to the present. As for whether my Great-Grandmother was actually a prostitute -- well, you'll just have to get the book and read that for yourself, now won't you?
