an all-american story

15 hour flight from new york to shanghai. Sat next to a Mr. Chen. He was flying back to Fuzhou to visit his family for the first time in ten years. Ten years. A decade.

Why did he wait so long? Because he finally got a green card.

After a bit more prompting, he reveals more of his story. He came to the states ten years ago illegally. He went through a service that flew him around several destinations in the world: Singapore, Amsterdam, etc. That globe trotting established a record on his passport that made it more credible to U.S. immigration officials that he was a mere tourist. The cover succeeded; he entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and has never left, until today.

He first went to Chinatown, where he briefly stayed before finding a job with a hometown acquaintance. Off he goes to Albany. Starting in the restaurant business without having ever cooked a meal, he works his way up. Much as we in law go from intern to summer associate to associate to partner, so do they in the Chinese restaurant business go from bus boy to waiter to kitchen assistant to head chef. 70 hours a week: seven days a week, from 10 to 9, except on Sundays when it’s 10 to 5, and no paid vacation days. In the hot greasy mess that is the Chinese kitchen. The ultimate prize? Getting enough money to finance one’s own restaurant. So that you can be your own “lao ban.”

Bracket for a second the wider political questions that his journey encompasses. Just marvel at the willingness of this one man to subject him to a strange country, to an unknown ultimate destination, to menial labor at what was surely less-than-minimum wage, to near-complete physical separation from his family, and, did I mention, to bachelor-hood for all that time.

Something to think about for the next time I get Chinese takeout.