Tea that burns
Subtitle: a family memoir of Chinatown
By: Bruce Edward Hall.
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 308
Subjects: Hall, Bruce Edward -- Childhood and youth.; Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.; Chinatown (New York, N.Y.) -- Biography.; New York (N.Y.) -- Biography.; Chinatown (New York, N.Y.) -- Social life and customs.; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs.
Description: Bruce Edward Hall may have an English name and a Connecticut upbringing, but for him a trip to Chinatown, New York, is a visit to the ghosts of his Chinese ancestors - ancestors who helped create the neighborhood that is really as much a transplanted Cantonese village as it is a part of a great American city. Among these Ancestors are missionaries and reprobates, businessmen and scholars.

In Tea That Burns, Bruce Edward Hall uses the stories of these and others to tell the history of Chinatown, starting with the tumultuous journey from an ancient empire ruled by the nine dragons of the universe to a bewildering land of elevated trains, solitary labor, and violent discrimination.

The world they constructed was built of backbreaking labor and poetry contests; gambling dens and Cantonese opera; Tong Wars, festivals, firecrackers, incense, and food - always food, to celebrate every conceivable occasion and to confound the ever-meddlesome "White Devils" as they attempt to master the mysteries of chop sticks and stir-fry.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-290) and index..