Questions | Yonkers | Chinese Communities
Life in a Laundry: Chinese in Pre-World War II Yonkers
Document 8
Vocabulary
Automated: Machine-operated, done by machine.
Alienation: Condition of living apart or separated from others.
After the war (WWII) unemployment skyrocketed. American-owned automated laundromats replaced many Chinese laundries. Hand labor was not as fast as machines. Moreover, Chinese charged 20 cents a shirt while American owned machine-equipped laundries would charge ten cents. The Chinese laundry business declined day by day.
In the laundry business, Chinese always avoided competing among themselves and helped each other survive. If I opened a laundry on one block, you would try not to open another one close by. After the war, many Americans started laundries that were close to those of the Chinese. Many Chinese were squeezed out of business but they never complained. They felt, after all, that they were living in someone else's country.
Some Chinese would move to small towns not too far from the city. But, after finding a good location, the landlord would either refuse to rent the space at all or raise the rent because he did not want Chinese tenants. So, Chinese had to go to even more remote areas. Investing lots of time and money and facing the added burden of alienation and the language barrier, Chinese laundries still survived.
Document 8: Excerpt from Life in New York Chinatown, by Yeung-Sing Ng, Hong Kong, 1955, translated by Vivian Wai-Fun Lee. Asia Society, 1997. http://asiasociety.org/
Document 8 Short-Answer Questions
- What happened to the business of Chinese laundries after World War II?
- Give two reasons why American laundries put Chinese laundries out of business.
- After World War II, why did Chinese have to move to “even more remote areas” to try to make a living?
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