Sundays are propitious days for haircuts. Herbalists and acupuncturists are run off their feet. Their shops overflow with workers who have waited all week to spare time to see a doctor. In the Kong soybean shop, Mrs. Kong cuts rice bean cake and taro pudding. Chinese from the outer boroughs and New Jersey and Connecticut make matches, celebrate birthdays at banquets, visit family associations.
Students buy books from the People's Republic.
Hundreds push into the CCBA to see the Shanghai opera. Upstairs, in classrooms, children laboriously copy Chinese characters. In the old Mee Heung Chow Main factory, four elders play mah-jongg, wedged between boxes of noodles. Along Canal, vendors with steel pushcarts display fish balls, intestines, chicken feet, peanut cakes, curried squid, deep-fried peppers and eggplants, and chewy fish skins stewed with turnips. Mr. Lin, the Fujianese peddler, sells firecrackers at a corner.