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Welcome to Silk Screen. I'm Robert Eto. Today's program is an intimate look at a little known but commonplace phenomenon, the Chinese laundry. To the outside world, the Chinese laundering is known only as Charlie, without an identity or history. Virtually nothing is known about these men and women who, finding no other work, have had to accept the often deplorable working conditions of this industry. Today's program, 8-pound livelihood, was produced by Yetfung Ho of the New York Chinatown History Project and Barbara Curve Public Television Station, WNYC, and New York City. You come over, you work in a laundry, either you own a laundry or you work for somebody.
So you work for somebody, the hire you for a week. You have the 6th and a half day work staying there, and 18, 16, 18 hours a day. So early in the morning, 6th, 6th clock, you have to get out, have something, so you start work at 6.30. The people got to work at 7, 8 o'clock. You see those walking on the street and going to take a subway and go to work. Then you stay there working and working until 5, 6th clock. You see the same people and all work and going home, as you're still working and to 7, 8 o'clock. They go out, they call the movie or go to party. You're still working until they come home at 11, 12 o'clock. Charlie, you're still open? That's how they come for the laundry. Then you film, you're hurting, you're inside. I said, why? As you do not anymore, not horse
or cow, you didn't even have a chance to come to sleep. We had to work in the laundry. You didn't know anything, so what could you do? In those days, which Chinese could only work in laundry's or restaurants? Just those two things, nah. My father came in here, how many years? He can't talk now, much at all. Only say, good morning. How are you? That's all. When you get a shirt, that's all. On Monday, Tuesday and the whole week. Well, the laundry's hot work. That's okay, you know, I could fear that. But the most thing that I could not fear, that's how it's loneliness. People would come and yell at my parents, they would say, why is this button missing from my shirt? I want you to sew a button on it, I want you to pay for it. Or if things weren't as ironed as stiffly or whatever as they wanted, they wanted my parents to do it over.
And a lot of times, most of the customers called my father, you know, like in the poem Charlie, they never really asked him his name. So we asked my father, well, why do they call you Charlie's as well? That's, you know, the American way, the low funds, they just call us all Charlie. Do you know why so many Chinese are in the laundry business? I really don't. I think about it, but it would be interesting to know, do you know? Do you use a Chinese laundry? No. Do anyone who does? Oh, wait, I do. I have this big ugly linen tablecloth, which cost me $7. Every time I have people over to dinner. So I do use a Chinese laundry to do this linen tablecloth. Are there any laundry's? What do you think about the work that's done at the Chinese laundry? Not too hot, really. I don't want it to be musically because they're all folded up and two storage cheapness. It's only when you say without
storage, the colors have a little folds and then all that kind of stuff. What do you think so many Chinese have been in the laundry business? Could be they special to you. I don't know. Maybe that's the only thing they know how to do since they come from maybe Chinese to America. Many stories about how the Chinese got started in the laundry business. Almost all them hinge on one point though. They started in the laundry business because they weren't allowed to do certain other things like working with golfers. Now that in those days, not too many family come over. Mostly just men. It didn't have choice. Not my touch in the come of this country beginning. As my brother
sent me over here. Most of the Chinese people were poor, they were coming over here. The big money to help the family. That's the most important thing. The Chinese people and their idea, I guess, are coming the same way. The eight pound livelihood was very hard work. In the old days, we had stoves, those round ones that used charcoal. We had a small bucket of water on the side.
We opened the top grill and put charcoal on it. When the charcoal was all burnt, we cleaned the stove. We shook the bottom so the charcoal dust would fall down. Two people hired one on either side of the stove. Each person had four irons. If the iron was too hot, I used the hook to pick up the iron and cool it in the water. Then I held the iron with a handle pad to work. When it cooled, we changed to a hot one. We kept on ironing with one shirt after another. Then we neatly folded all of them. My biggest sister is a father-loat call. The father-loat laundry. So, coming tonight, it's 12 o'clock right there. I went to go sleep. So, I go to sleep, then wake up. I had no wake up. Then I go downstairs to two or two somewhere, two cars or something.
They stood at once, working. Then I don't bang still a whole lot of cow. You people still work and you said, yeah, you go to New York to do the same thing. You do the laundry work the same thing. What we do here. I said, whole lot of cow. I get the business in China. I saw my business come here, do that kind of noisy work as thing. There you close old. That's what I'm talking to. I'm talking myself now on the trip now. What am I going to do? I go back in China and do no business anymore. Now, I stuck in here. So, what can I do? So, that's why I kind of that I come to here. The same thing, what can I do? I hang in the money to go back in China. I stay with my own men. Before the Second World War, I try my best. I try to learn something from this country. I said, if I go back home, I won't
come back. So, I have to know something. I can supply. That's why I learn how to drive, I learn how dancing, I learn how to feel things. I can speak too much, but my feet and my hand can do something. I said, that's why I try to do. At the beginning, the customers come in, they say, you give them a ticket, they, you can't have money to show it, and you're riding the ticket, give them back a ticket, we get one ticket, then tonight we'll check all of clothes. We get all the dirty clothes put in a big bag, and wet wipes come in, we have a truckman come, come in to pick them up, do the night, they have them all washed, clean and delivered early in the morning before we open this store. I have plastic. Way back, like more than 75 years ago, we have to buy hand, everything
by hand, but at the laundry can, we're more busy, more people work. So they can't do all by hand, so there's some, just send it out to the American wetwars until 1930, along their town, so to some people in Chinatown, they start, you know, the Chinese wetwars. So they will, they have one as a core China wetwars. When a China, they don't know any laundry work, they, you know what they're
saying, they said laundry at the Chinese word, they thought of it as some clothes, they don't know the wash clothes was for 30 clothes, they thought when you saw them clothes, a business, say that's what I always get me, nobody can tell them, even you tell them how hard to work over here, they don't please you. Where they come get the Chinese food. You have the public China time, or go home, they take you too long. So they will, they will, they will shift time, and they will come
meaning for them. So they will, of course, the rice is important. What if five years are scrubbing the dirt out of a pillow or sheeding the shirt. Some day the kids will have better than we, an easier job or a college degree. Till then it's an eight pound and twelve hour day, seven day a week just to make it pay. Sort and wash, press and fold, be the rice, on a mountain of gold. I remember working, in this case it was a shirt pressing factory. I worked a short shift since I was only a kid, I worked a 10 hour shift, and it was all piecework. And of course the summer was particularly rough, because the heat inside the place
would go up to 90 to 100 degrees or more. These to try to keep all the windows and doors open and keep the fans going, but with all the different equipment and steam and hot iron, it's a good, pretty heartener. I'm in 25 pounds of steam, whole day long. You see there by machine, you sweat, the whole thing is sweat. Won't gonna be seen, no good, it's a hot. One of the men working in the car light in the car, and the other one working in the car, the body here.
Some guy work hard, work fast, make good money, slow, the people slow, they can't work in the machine, they don't get your job. I make about 700 years of work a day, and they see. And the other guy make about thousands on my shirt. You have to do the finishing touches and wrap them. I can still do a short shift pretty fast actually. And as I remember, we got three cents to five cents per shirt. We were given a half an hour for lunch, but nobody ever took a half an hour. Usually we just took 15 minutes. We could run back and do a few more shirts. Now, pretty hot and sweaty work. It convinced me of one thing, which is that I never want to do that again for a living. Until then, it's an eight pound and 12 hour day, seven day week, just to make it pay.
Sort and wash, press and fold, bit of rice. All a mountain of gold. Wild geese fly over the sea. I love for China will always be. But war and famine made her grieve. When a family's poor, the sun's must be. We first came no welcome we found. Hate was the color, curses was the sound. Because in the nature of this country, we are not accepted here, total, as Americans. One often grows up thinking of Chinese people as a minority, because there's so few of us here. But the reality is that there's so few of us here because they purposely kept us out.
The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was to prevent large numbers of Chinese from immigrating into the United States. It began to realize that a lot of my consciousness had been shaped by just that. Certain immigration laws. When we were younger, on that side of the block, a lot of the kids were kind of chasing us around the block. They called us names and go Qingchang, Chinaman and, you know, Chapsui and stuff. And there were this wild family and they used to beat us with sticks until finally one day my grandmother who was visiting took the stick and beat it one of the boys. Then after that they left us alone. They ran you a store for a laundry, but when you look for apartment nearby, they won't rent it to you because of a discrimination. So that's most of the reason that a lot of people just slip in the laundry even though they really don't have room.
This is a layout drawing of the laundry that I grew up when I was younger with my two parents, younger sister and baby brother. So in the mornings when I was five, I would get up from the sofa, which we opened at up at night. And this was the largest area in the laundry. How far it folded out was about six feet and was about six feet wide. So after waking up, I would run to turn on the TV over here and watch cartoons. And after watching half an hour of cartoons, I would have to make breakfast. So I would squeeze by another folded out bed, pass my sisters and go into the kitchen here. And at the stove, I would make eggs and coffee. And after I finished cooking, I would run back out and wake up my sisters and then my parents and then my brother would be sleeping in this crib at the foot of the sofa.
And everyone would wake up and we'd run around and we'd fold up the sofa, fold up this folding table. And we'd come over here where we'd put a folding table, like a card table and six folding chairs. And we would put it right in this area, open it up and have our eggs and milk and juice and stuff. And I would have to rush out through this curtain that separated the living quarters from when my father worked. And I would just run out and just push through this little wooden door that was about that high and run out the door to school. And then at three o'clock, I would run back in through this little swinging door and then my father would be here. He'd be ironing at the ironing board and he'd say hello and the customers would go through the same door and they would look over the counter and give their tickets to my father. But I would run back here and my mother would be cooking or doing the housework, taking care of my two sisters and my baby brother.
And I guess one of my favorite spots was right here by this curtain. And sometimes I would just sit here and watch my mother cooking in the kitchen or holding my baby brother and feeding him after school. And kind of peeking through at my father, ironing the shirts and talking to the customers. He came to America, aged 11, washing people's socks, slept in class. A paper son with false papers he bought back in the village because America restricted aliens. I have a cameo photograph of him, New York, Chinatown, 1939. See if your tone double breasted suit out with the boys on Sunday. America only let the guys in and hey that dude with some snappy dresser. So I suffer a little too much already and the hell with everything I could pick him myself.
So I get a car and get a little boot. Then I had a girlfriend go every place. The hell with the world I'm going to have a good time. That's what I make on my mind. And she came in 50, classified refugee from China, from feudal backwards of Kwantung, her marriage arranged to New York rush hours. Speaking though English, working and sewing factories till her back gave out. In China, in the old days, women thought people came over to the gold mountain to pick gold. You think they knew they were coming to work in a laundry? Being here and working so hard, we said, I'd rather be a farmer in China. But after I raised all my kids, it's nice to be in America. Well, she didn't want to leave. It's fine. Want to leave. So happy. We'll keep working for as long as we can. The girls are married and the boy is a man.
And children will ask how it came to be. How we lived. How we worked in a new country. My mother and father, they say, well, you know, why do you want to write about laundry? What's so important? I've done it all my life. Because in their mind, it's still like, if they could have, they wouldn't have wanted to be a laundry people. My mother would have wanted to be a doctor. My father, I think, he might have been a writer. I suppose one of the things that I'm concerned is that the generation coming after me has something to hold on to say, well, this is basically songs about us. This is basically theater about us. This is basically literature and art about us in the way we feel. And this is something we're going to participate in directly or indirectly. He passed away two years ago from cancer 50 years old. The relative said he was a good man.
She misses her best friend, continues the laundry, watching the children leave. She hopes that graduate from college, Mary, have happy lives, grandchildren for her, for him. The legacy is the clarity of our own vision. What we choose to do with our lives will bear fruit to that work and that spirit. What if five years of scrub and a dirt, Out of a pillow or sheet in a shirt? Some day the kids will have better than we, an easier job or a college degree. Till then it's an eight pound and twelve hour day, seven day a week just to make it pay. Sort and wash, press and fold, bit of rice, not a mountain of gold. When we first came, no welcome we found.
Hate was the color, curses was the sound. Audrey in front, family in a back, all eaten and working and sleeping in a two room shack. Eight pound and twelve hour days, seven day a week just to make it pay. Sort and wash, press and fold, bit of rice, not a mountain of gold. While geese fly over the sea, I love for China will always be. But war and famine made her grief when a family's poor, the sons must leave. We'll keep working for as long as we can, till the girls are married and the boys are mad.
Rad children will ask how it came to be, how we lived, how we worked in a new country. Till eight pound and twelve hour days, seven day a week just to make it pay. Sort and wash, press and fold, bit of rice, not a mountain of gold. The experience of these early immigrants has been bitter, the work hard and back breaking. Despite this, they have somehow made a life for themselves and their children in what must have seemed an austere, inhospitable place. Their strength and endurance continue to move and inspire us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.
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Series
Silk Screen, Series III
Episode Number
303
Episode
Eight Pound Livelihood
Contributing Organization
Center for Asian American Media (San Francisco, California)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/520-pk06w97d9t
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/520-pk06w97d9t).
Description
Episode Description
An intimate look at a commonplace phenomenon: the Chinese American laundry. The program examines the history and often deplorable conditions of this little-known but omnipresent industry.
Episode Description
This item is part of the Chinese Americans section of the AAPI special collection.
Broadcast Date
1987-04-12
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Documentary
Rights
1981, NYCHP
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:30:02
Credits
Producer: Kerr, Barbara
Producer: Ho, Yuet-Fung
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Center for Asian American Media
Identifier: 00009 (CAAM)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Dub
Color: Color
Duration: 00:30:02
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Silk Screen, Series III; 303; Eight Pound Livelihood,” 1987-04-12, Center for Asian American Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-520-pk06w97d9t.
MLA: “Silk Screen, Series III; 303; Eight Pound Livelihood.” 1987-04-12. Center for Asian American Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-520-pk06w97d9t>.
APA: Silk Screen, Series III; 303; Eight Pound Livelihood. Boston, MA: Center for Asian American Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-520-pk06w97d9t