Growing up in a family-run restaurant, the concept of “Happy Family” was often intertwined with the daily grind of the business. There were times when my Yi Ma, my aunt, would bring my cousin Victor to lend a hand at Ga Hing. These were usually on days when school was out – holidays, weekends, or sometimes even after school.
Victor was just a couple of months younger than me, but our worlds were vastly different. While I was immersed in the rigorous academic environment of Stuyvesant, Victor attended an arts school on the Upper West Side. It was almost a running joke in our family, a story my mother loved to retell at gatherings, about how Victor had applied to Stuyvesant and hadn’t been accepted. For my mother, his attending an arts school was a mere compromise. Victor’s passion was the piano, and he made no secret of his dream to play in a rock band, maybe even become the next Bon Jovi.
“Another dreamer,” my mother would often say, shaking her head. “But what else can you expect? It’s in their blood. That side of the family, of course.” This was her way of subtly drawing a contrast, perhaps implying that our side of the family was more grounded, more practical – closer to her idea of a “happy family” built on stability and hard work.
At the restaurant, Victor’s tasks were straightforward: cleaning tables, serving tea, arranging chairs, and carrying dishes to the kitchen. He’d lay out chopsticks, forks, and spoons. Seemingly simple tasks, right? But for Victor, they often proved challenging. As a kid growing up in the restaurant, you naturally pick up little tricks of the trade. Like using two spoons as makeshift tongs to serve food – a maneuver I’d mastered by observing the older waiters. But these were not skills that captured Victor’s interest. It wasn’t that he wasn’t trying, but things just seemed to take him longer. Or sometimes, tasks needed to be redone – napkins refolded, place settings rearranged. It wasn’t about a lack of effort, but perhaps a different kind of focus, a different understanding of what it meant to contribute to the family business, and by extension, to the “happy family” ideal my mother championed.
Yet, like Yi Ma, I believe Victor was trying his best to help in his own way. He told me, quite enthusiastically, about how he had visited each of his teachers before summer break, armed with Ga Hing menus and business cards. He was convinced that his teachers, along with their families, would become regular customers, especially for Sunday lunch or dinner. I remember instantly understanding what my mother meant when she’d describe someone as “not with it.” It wasn’t malicious, but a gentle dismissal of ideas that seemed impractical or out of touch with the realities of running a business. I kept my thoughts to myself, though.
Over the next few days, and then into the following week, Victor’s questions persisted. “Had they come? Had you seen them? Their families?” He even asked my mother and stepfather, who in turn would look to me, puzzled, asking what my cousin was going on about. I felt a growing reluctance to explain, to be the one to articulate the perhaps unrealistic nature of Victor’s expectations.
Then, one day, my patience wore thin.
“How could you be so naive? So out of touch?” The words tumbled out, surprising me with their similarity to my mother’s pronouncements. It was too late to retract them. “Why would your teachers travel all the way from uptown just to eat here?” I continued, my voice sharper than intended. Ga Hing, as I’ve mentioned, wasn’t in the bustling heart of Chinatown, but in a less desirable area, on the less frequented side of Canal Street. Back then, it was plagued by rats, and in the summer, the air hung heavy with the smell of sewage and waste. The outdoor fish market across the street didn’t help matters. At night, the streets were deserted, dimly lit, and felt unsafe. This was the unvarnished reality of our restaurant’s location at the time.
“But why not?” Victor insisted, his optimism unwavering. “Just wait and see. They’ll come.” He held onto this belief, this vision of his teachers supporting his family’s business, perhaps as a way to contribute to that “happy family” ideal in his own way.
We waited. Days turned into weeks. But none of his teachers materialized. Not his chemistry teacher, his math teacher, or even his music teacher. Despite Victor’s repeated reminders to them before the summer break.
“Not even Mr. Reeberg?” Victor asked, a hint of disappointment creeping into his voice. Mr. Reeberg, his social studies teacher, had apparently promised Victor that the next time he was in Chinatown – which he claimed was quite often – he would definitely stop by for lunch. Especially, Victor had insisted, after we earned our Zagat rating (a slight exaggeration, but Victor was adamant about it).
Then, thankfully, the questions about his teachers ceased. I observed a subtle shift in Victor after that, a quiet resignation whenever he proposed one of his imaginative ideas. It was as if he had begun to grasp the inherent possibility of disappointment, of plans falling short of expectations.
However, there was one particular diner that I never told Victor about. It happened during the peak of summer, when my mother and stepfather were constantly out, showing houses for their real estate business. Victor was away at his summer music camp, and I was at the restaurant with Yi Ma, who had become something of an unofficial guardian during the summer months. This man had come for lunch, and for reasons I still can’t fully articulate, I entertained the possibility that he could be a teacher. Perhaps it was the book he carried, or maybe his attire. He wasn’t dressed in a business suit, yet he didn’t quite fit the tourist mold either – no guidebook, no camera, and no wide-eyed awe at his surroundings. There was something about him that resonated with my mental image of the teachers I’d see in the hallways of Stuyvesant: dark-rimmed glasses, a button-down shirt, and an air of quiet confidence, a certain privilege that I associated with academia, especially at a school like Stuyvesant.
Then, a memory flickered – Victor’s description of his social studies teacher. Salt-and-pepper beard, similar height. The realization dawned on me as the man was halfway through his meal. I considered settling the matter by asking him directly, but shyness held me back. Instead, I positioned myself near the register, stealing glances. He had ordered the kung pao chicken and the yin yang fried rice – an unusual combination, I thought. I felt a flicker of pride when I saw the dishes arrive, Fei Zai, our cook, had clearly excelled. And I was also pleased to see the waitress set down both tea and water. My stepfather often commented on the importance of these small details, particularly for non-Chinese customers. “Chinese people might not mind,” he’d say, “but white people are different – they notice. Some more than others.”
I suppose people were right when they described me as shy in those days, reserved, often too quiet. They said it was hard to know what I was thinking. What I was thinking then was this: perhaps I didn’t truly want to know the man’s identity. Maybe I was clinging to my initial assumption, wanting to be proven right – that Victor’s plan was ultimately unrealistic. If I had owned a cell phone back then, maybe I would have taken a picture. But by the time the man was ready to pay his bill, I knew the opportunity had passed.
The man then called for a waitress. I couldn’t initially decipher the conversation, but it quickly escalated in tone. Yi Ma swiftly intervened. The issue was the bill. The man believed there was a mistake, that he had been overcharged, just a small amount, but extra nonetheless. “You people,” he began to say, his frustration mounting. He was determined to get to the bottom of it. Later, Yi Ma would remark, “Some people need to behave this way to feel superior, to grasp at any semblance of power they perceive they lack. The problem is, we often allow them to.”
The waitress, Ling, was attempting to explain, but her English was limited. He spoke too quickly, his anger overriding any attempt at communication. She had taken the liberty of adding a ten percent tip to the bill. When he finally understood, his outrage intensified. “You can’t dictate how much I should tip.” And then, the refrain, “It’s a free country.” He repeated it several times, along with “You people.” This meant little to Ling, who was from Toishan and now lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a single mother to a five-year-old son.
Auntie Yi Ma examined the bill. She confirmed that the waitress had indeed added the tip, explaining to Ling in Cantonese that “you don’t do that here.” (Yi Ma also noted that even with Ling’s added tip, the total was less than what the man had initially placed on the table.) But as I knew, my parents didn’t pay the waitstaff well, and even their tips were often taken by management. This crucial detail was something Ling couldn’t articulate, couldn’t explain in that moment.
Reluctantly, the man paid, leaving only the exact amount owed. I knew instinctively he would never return, despite Yi Ma’s profuse apologies as she followed him to the door, which he nearly slammed in his departure.
Returning, Yi Ma could only shrug, a gesture of resignation. “What can you do? Some people are just not ready to understand.” Perhaps, I thought, understanding and empathy, essential components of a truly “happy family” and a harmonious society, were sometimes in short supply, even in the simplest of interactions.
As I said, I’ve always imagined that man to be one of Victor’s teachers, though I never shared this with him. It wouldn’t have changed anything. In the end, his plan hadn’t worked. There seemed little point in adding salt to that wound, in highlighting the gap between his optimistic vision and the often-uncomfortable realities of the world outside his arts school, and perhaps even outside the idealized notion of a “happy family.”
