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Tea That Burns was an unexpected pleasure to read. Not only is the writing fresh and engrossing, but the overall account of his family history back several generations is fascinating and rings of authencity. I have read numerous interesting Chinese-American memoirs, and what makes this one especially unique, is the ability of the author to connect the events occurring in U. S. History with concurrent events in China's history. This interweaving informs the reader in ways that are absent when the China context is not provided.
As a second generation Chinese whose father was a paper son, and whose parents had an arranged marriage, I already knew many of the factual aspects of the book. However, I never could entirely understand the 'process' underlying the facts until I read Tea That Burns. The author filled in many of these gaps with his eye for detail. The documentation at the back of the book reveals that the author knows his Chinese immigration history thoroughly, but fortunately he does not bog the reader down by inserting an abundance of citations within the body of the text.
I felt invigorated and refreshed after reading this excellent book.
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"Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown" Overview
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. There is the patriarch with three wives (two in China, one in New York), who arrived in Chinatown just as it was beginning to take shape, and who eventually became a key player in the infamous Tong Wars that ravaged the neighborhood at the turn of the century. There is the grandfather, whose nickname, Hock Shop, bespoke his reputation as Chinatown's favorite bookie. There is the dashing aviator whose dogfight in the skies over Brooklyn made him Chinatown's first hero in the way against Japan, and the matriarch who was purchased as a bride for ,200 when the ratio of Chinese men to women was two hundred to one. And all of them shared the experience of the great-aunt who emigrated to New York at the age of eight months, but lived in fear of deportation for the next fifty years because this country refused to allow Chinese to become American citizens.
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. A vivid and tactile story, rich with the sights, sounds, and sensations of Chinatown then and now, Tea That Burns reads like a novel, but is history at its best.
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