Providences Black Chinese: A Love Story :: China Short Stories Papers

savings Black Chinese A Love Story On the morning of February 23rd, 1901, Chung Yick stood chatting with Mr. Joseph Hoffman, the proprietor of the picture frame shop on the ground appall of the Charles Street house the two men shared with several different tenants. The house wasnt much better than a tenement building, with its dirty wooden fountain and narrow crooked stairs. A crude sign on one side said PICTURES in bold letters, marking the entrance to Hoffmans store. The Yicks lived on the other side, along with the Rileys and the widow Driscoll, who were cramped up on the second floor. Still, it was a decent street to live on, with a mixture of small shops and house physicianial homes and the Mosshassuck River front crawl alongside it like an emaciated and sleepy serpent. Chung was a gaunt man in his forties with hollow cheeks and intense brown eyes-he projected a plastered gravity that was somehow incongruous with popular notions of the jolly, docile Chinaman. Instead of the traditional Chinese collarless jacket, he sported a conservative brown suit, complete with vest, tie, and slim black shoes. Chung was a cook by trade and a good one, too-well enough respected for the Providence Journal to dub him one of the citys best-known Chinese restauranteurs. Most likely, he was an employee of the Wah, Yee, Hong & Co. eating house, the Chinese restaurant located closest to his home, just a brisk fifteen-minute walk forth at the bottom of College Hill. It was a windy Saturday morning with temperatures well below freezing, and Chung relished these last moments of warmth inside the store before hed have to venture out into the cold. Several thousand miles away from his old home in southern China, where temperatures fluctuated between hot and hotter, Chung still hadnt quite adjusted to Providences bitter winters. That walk would be especially brisk at present John, Mr. Hoffman said suddenly, addressing Chung by his chosen American name, Whats all that ra cket? Indeed, some great noise-frantic footsteps and shouting-could be heard coming from the general direction of Chungs kitchen where, minutes earlier, he had left his wife and stepdaughter bustling about their morning chores. Its a fire someone shouted from outside. The attics on fire The first official Chinese resident in Rhode Island appeared on the state census in 1865, but there may have been at least one Chinaman in Providence even earlier.