Volume 1: A sound on Wall Street, Xinxiang City is busy copying books Chapter 276 Bananas
Subtitle of this chapter: It’s not easy to be a banana these days
"Eat Chinese food? Forget it. Chinatown is dirty and messy, nothing interesting."
"No, Pearl. We can come to my house for dinner. We have hired a famous chef from China who can cook authentic Hakka cuisine."
Pearl can also be used as a female name. For example, Pearl S. Buck, an American female writer whose mother tongue is Chinese, her English name is Pearl. But now this "Pearl" is our Miss Wei Mingzhu.
Her visit today caused a great sensation in the New York Chinese YMCA and YWCA. After the Sunday Mass, the second generation of Chinese held a small tea party in the church. The tea party lasted from noon to afternoon, but the bananas, especially the men, were almost unwilling to leave.
To be honest, the bananas in 1920 were in an awkward situation. They had some money, but were still considered an inferior race like black people by mainstream American society. Needless to say, they suffered racial discrimination and racial segregation in their daily lives. It is really heartbreaking to talk about it.
In fact, industrialized cities like New York are relatively better. At least Chinese people can still eat in restaurants outside of Chinatown, especially Chinese people like our Master Yuan who looks very rich and is very happy to give tips. They can't even do this in other places.
In addition, young Chinese intellectuals also face two difficulties: difficulty in finding employment and difficulty in finding a spouse.
Throughout the 1920s, even if these true American citizens obtained degrees from higher education institutions, it was difficult for them to find suitable jobs in the United States. Even top graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had to return to their fathers' restaurants to work as chefs.
So when the situation in China stabilized slightly in the 1930s, during the "Golden Decade", one-fifth of Chinese American intellectuals chose to return to China to serve. Of course, another reason is that this generation still has a strong sense of patriotism.
The Chinese youth who can afford to go to college come from relatively wealthy families. If they can't find a job they like, it's OK, at least they can go home and live off their parents. But if they can't find a wife, that's a big problem.
The key reason why it is difficult to find a spouse is that there are too few Chinese women in the United States these days.
So, how many Chinese citizens were there in the United States in 1920? According to the U.S. government census data, there were 61,369 males and 7,748 females. At that time, the U.S. population was more than 106 million, and Chinese accounted for 0.08% of the total population. Note that this refers to Chinese citizens, not immigrants. Illegal residents such as the Hongqi Laowu couple are not included.
In other words, there is only one Chinese American woman for every ten Chinese American men, so many Chinese men have to return to their home country to get married.
In recent years, the relationship between Chinese Americans and their hometowns in China is very close, so close that they can get engaged through letters even though they are thousands of miles away, so these young people also face the problem of arranged marriages. Some of them have to return to their motherland (not their home country) thousands of miles away due to pressure from their parents to marry a woman they have never met, who may be a country girl with three-inch golden lotus feet and illiterate..
Now when these guys see a beautiful, wealthy, unmarried female church member, they are just like greedy cats seeing fresh fish.
Miss Wei Mingzhu, who is used to big scenes, can naturally handle such social occasions with ease, and in the eyes of everyone she appears so elegant and generous.
She looked at the guy who suggested eating at his house, and thought to herself that seeing your appearance made her lose her appetite. However, on the surface, the rich lady was still very polite and said, "Well, that guy...thank you. I have been jet-lagged these days, so I don't have much appetite. I appreciate your kindness, and we'll talk about it later when there is a chance."
At this time, someone next to him interrupted and said, "Pearl, I know a great new place, why don't we go there and have some fun."
The man who spoke this time was not bad looking, except that his cheekbones were too high and his chin was too sharp, which made him look a bit mean. His clothes were also quite high-end, and it was obvious that he came from a well-off family.
Miss Wei Mingzhu just learned that this man's surname is Lu, and his family is engaged in the clothing, shoes and hats business. His father was not only one of the sponsors of Mr. Sun Yat-sen back then, but is now also the deputy minister of the Kuomintang's East Coast branch.
"Oh, Dick. What place are you talking about?"
Dick Lu said elegantly, "Pearl, I'm talking about the new Mahjong club on Disclosure Street."
"Mahjong club?" Miss Wei immediately lost interest and said, "I have no interest in this."
However, fellow Christian Lu was not discouraged. He smiled and said, "Pearl, you don't know, this mahjong club is not ordinary. It has the latest high-tech products, a mahjong table that doesn't require people to shuffle the cards!"
After he said this, others also started introducing themselves.
"Yes, Pearl. I heard that the automatic mahjong table was invented by Mr. Nikola Tesla."
"Mr. Tesla?!" Miss Wei had of course heard of this name, and she couldn't help but become curious.
"Oh, Pearl. The president of that club is Chinese. What's his name? Oh, Luo Puxiang."
"Mr. Luo Puxiang?!" Miss Wei had of course met the chairman of the mahjong club face to face, but she had never expected that Mr. Luo, who looked very much like a camel, could actually open a mahjong parlor.
"No, as far as I know, that mahjong club is actually the work of Neo Yuan. Most of the members of the club No. 144 are students of NYU. Mr. Tesla invented the automatic mahjong machine for his sake. Also, even the restaurant on the street is owned by the Baker family. If Mr. Yuan hadn't stepped in, would the Baker family have lent their property to us Chinese?..."
"Neo Yuan?!" Miss Wei had heard this name before, countless times. But she didn't expect this name to be related to a mahjong parlor, nor did she expect the people present to react so strongly after hearing this name:
"Neo Yuan, isn't he Yuan Yanshu, who won 500,000 US dollars and donated it all to NYU?"
"Neo Yuan, is he Yuan Hongjian, the one who was arrested by the NYPD as a suspect in the Wall Street bombing?"
"Neo Yuan is Mr. Hongjian, the man who wrote "Chocolat", "Detective Dee" and "A Song of Ice and Fire"..."
"A-choo! A-choo!! A-choo!!!"
"God Durex Oil!"
Neo Yuan, who was eating and chatting with guests, sneezed three times for no apparent reason.
"Excuse me, gentlemen." He wiped his nose with his napkin and continued the topic: "Where was I? By the way, we Seres people believe that we should not marry women who are too beautiful..."
