Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown [Paperback]

Bruce Edward Hall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2002

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 $1,200 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Freelance writer Hall, a fourth-generation Chinese American, has two wonderful stories to tell here: the history of New York City's Chinatown and the intertwined lives of his own family going back to their days in the Chinese village of Hor Lup Chui. Incidents such as his grandfather's wedding come vividly to life with feasting, firecrackers and suckling pigs, but this book suffers from overcrowding. There are just too many friends of friends and cousins back in China for the reader to connect with any one story. The overall feeling is one of frustration at characters who are never quite realized and a unique culture just beyond reach, depriving the narrative of the dynamism it deserves. Nevertheless, the history of the early Chinese immigrants emerges from the crowded pages: the widespread discrimination against these people who were denied the right to obtain citizenship and persecuted by the indigenous population. Chinese communities like New York City's Chinatown became culturally and geographically isolated, lacking language skills and being almost without women. No wonder the men turned to "the tea that burns," orAless poeticallyA"a teapot full of bootleg Scotch." Hall shows that only in their own community could Chinese find some security, and that turning inward gave rise to gang wars and turf battles, further isolating Chinatown from the rest of Manhattan. Sadly, in the end, Hall's lack of narrative skill and his irritating use of the running present tense that ends up merging all eras deprives us of what should have been a wonderful and exotic tale.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Part history, part family chronicle, part personal reminiscence, this saga by fourth-generation Chinese American Hall (Diamond Street, Black Dome, 1994) follows the Hall family (whose surname was once transliterated "Hor") from the 19th-century in Hor Lup Chui, a village outside Canton, to late-20th-century America. While the extensive bibliography lists only one set of documents pertaining to the Hor family, Hall consulted hundreds of publications and papers on Chinese Americans and Chinatown in New York City, a sizable research effort for a family memoir. The Hor family history is full of colorful characters, including grandfather "Hock Shop," the bookie and bon vivant, whose scotch ("tea that burns") was served by the pot. Highly entertaining and quite informative, this excellent mix of Chinese tradition and Asian American history reads somewhat like Maxine Hong Kingston with footnotes. Recommended for all public libraries.?D.E. Perushek, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 2nd edition (January 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743236599
• ISBN-13: 978-0743236591
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,745,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More descendents of Chinese immigrants should share stories., June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: TEA THAT BURNS: A Family Memoir of Chinatown (Hardcover)

My mother grew up in the mining camps at the turn of the century, (1900) - it would be wonderful if more of the Chinese descendents would write their stories - it was surely a life of great hardship, and a history that needs to be shared. This is a wonderful story of family and life, societal views, prejudice and pain. Many expressions I heard throughout my childhood referred to the Chinese..."...didn't have a Chinaman's chance."..."...the rule was that the sun was not to set on any Chinese in town..." - what torment these people had to endure - yet we have very little literature on this subject. Mr. Hall has provided us with a wonderful, informative read and some true-life views that U.S.History certainly needs.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tea That Refreshes, December 24, 2002

By 

John Jung "jrjung" (Cypress, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chinatown, Then and Now, August 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: TEA THAT BURNS: A Family Memoir of Chinatown (Hardcover)

In these waning days of "Midnight in the Garden," along comes another extraordinary tour of a place that is both strange and familiar, mystical and as near - in the case of "Tea That Burns" - as a stop or two on the subway.

Bruce Hall uses the story of his family, early emigrants from a tiny village in southern China, to trace the changing fortunes of New York's Chinatown. From its founding in the worst slum of the city (the only place open to the exotic and often reviled newcomers in the mid-nineteenth century), through its rise as a refuge for a people consistently persecuted by American officialdom, to its status today as the largest Chinese community outside China, Chinatown has a unique place in the fabric of New York, both of and outside the larger city.

Hall uses his status as both the descendant of some of Chinatown's most prominent figures and as a half-anglo outsider to extraordinary advantage, contrasting the community as seen by its residents and as viewed by sometimes scornful, often condescending white journalists, writers, and reformers. "Tea that Burns" weaves a colorful story of poverty and sudden wealth, of hard work and days of banqueting, and of the conflicting desire to retain the old world while assimilating the new. The book is filled with wonderful characters: tong fighters battling for territory, "power aunties" fighting over mah jong tiles, unscrupulous white tour guides taking rubes to opium dens and chop-suey parlors, and the men and women of Hall's own family, generations whose voices echo still in the frantic, narrow streets.

"Tea That Burns" works on many levels: as a meditation on the immigrant experience, as a history of a few square blocks too often taken for granted as little more than a tourist destination, and as a very personal memory-book. Its thoughtful, even moving, writing bring the joys and sorrows of the past vividly to life.