Undocumented - illegal immigration in NYC

Waiting on a Future

In China, Mike was a budding scholar and a promising businessman but in America, he’s just another waiter.

Hally Hall-I Chu

An hour or so before closing time, the atmosphere of the restaurant completely changes. All but one waiter huddled around the tip jar to count up their earnings for the day, leaving their unlucky coworker to take care of the one remaining customer at the back table—leisurely eating his meal and not at all in a hurry to leave.

“Such bad tips today,” one waiter groaned.

“Well, Mike got the big table tonight. He’s so slow. His English is horrible. He must have messed things up,” a waitress piped up.

“Ta ma di,” the takeout delivery man chimed in with a few choice words, even though he didn’t split tips with the waiters.

The Overeducated Waiter

Mike Wu is the subject of the waiters’ gossip. An undocumented worker, he was forced to take a job for which he has no natural talent. The restaurant industry doesn’t pay much—Mike’s weekly wages barely cover housing, food, transportation, and daily living expenses. At 42, he also has other considerations. Mike can no longer work 12-hour days in the restaurant without overstraining his body. With his illegal status, there’s not much he can do except to negotiate with his boss for shorter shifts, which means less money to send home, and even less spending money for himself.

Mike has a head of salt-and-pepper hair that’s still more black than white. He wears glasses. He’s average in height and build, and he dresses in affordable clothing that looks fashionable enough for a middle-aged Chinese man. In short, Mike is totally unremarkable. He blends in well in a crowd of Chinese people rushing about on Canal Street in Chinatown. To customers, he’s just another waiter taking their orders and serving them food—no one important. He could be anybody.

But Mike isn’t just anybody. A brief conversation with him reveals Mike is someone who holds himself in high regard. He thinks he’s different from his coworkers, the head chefs, and his bosses. Though he’s entertaining thoughts of returning to China after only three years in the United States, he still wants to make it big in the “Land of Dreams.”

I first met Mike while working as a hostess at Shanghai Goodies, a branch-off of the highly successful Joe’s Shanghai restaurant on Pell Street in Chinatown. My first impression of Mike was that we couldn’t have been any more different from each other. I was working for fun, trying to earn some extra cash on my days off from school; he was working out of necessity. I was paid eight dollars an hour; he earned below the minimum wage, although lived for free with the other waiters at the boss’ house. I got along with my coworkers at the restaurant while he did not.

Mike was a bit of a recluse. Although he was closer in age to the boss and the two head chefs, Chinese propriety prevented him from buddying up to people who were professionally ranked higher than he. Nor did he like to hang out with his fellow waiters and waitresses. They were too young, too immature, and—though he never said this aloud—too uneducated in his opinion.

Education was our common ground. Mike graduated 20 years ago from a university in Shanghai with a specialization in the humanities and Chinese literature. English had been optional for his major.

“I really should have taken English classes,” Mike said. “I didn’t think it was useful back then, but now, now I wish I know English better.”

It wasn’t easy for Mike to communicate with me. We rarely spoke in Chinese, the better common language between us. Instead, Mike would always harp on me for English lessons. And so we conversed in English, usually on simple topics such as riding the bus or on the weather. Mike’s English was barely comprehensible at best, full of broken grammar and words coated in a heavy Chinese accent. But on those rare occasions when he would speak with me in Chinese, his eloquence immediately betrayed his high education level and a deeply literary upbringing.

“Do you know what this means?” Mike would ask after quoting a piece of Chinese literature. I could understand all the individual words—something about sun and dusk and evening approaching—but have no clue what they meant together. “It means all the good things in life will fade away. It means you should appreciate your time for being a student. I’m getting too old. I remember my days in university, my best days…”

Looking at Mike, I couldn’t help wondering: Why was a Chinese scholar waiting tables in America when he had the potential to be successful in China?

Coming to America

Over the course of a few months, bits and pieces of Mike’s story would come out in conversations. I would ask him about his former life in China, listen as he set goals to improve his English so he could get a better job, and chat with him in my car while I drove him around to visit university campuses on our days off.

Mike’s main reason for coming to America was business related. Though he never revealed specific details, Mike disclosed enough information for me to put together that, during his 20s and 30s, he had partnered up with a few friends to start their own business. Unfortunately, the business failed—leaving Mike despondent, without a life goal, and eager to get away from Shanghai.

“I was a failure,” – in Chinese, he was si bai, si bai, a term for loss that describing more than just the situation, but also a reflection on oneself – “Poor planning, bad partnership. I needed to get away.”

So he came to America.

His journey was simple—a flight from Shanghai to New York City. It was easy for him to obtain a tourist visa to America: He was educated, had a job (albeit a failed business), and, in the eyes of both the Chinese and U.S. government, had every reason to return to Shanghai after a few weeks in America.

Upon arrival to the United States, Mike had no illusions of getting an office job. He knew his English was horrible and he didn’t have the right visa—one he would eventually overstay—to land him an “American” job. Through contacts with other Shanghainese in New York City, Mike was put in touch with Michael Lowe, boss of the newly opened restaurant, Shanghai Goodies.

Mike had only been on the job for four months when I began working there. Already, he was thinking about going home.

The Filler Job

As it turned out, Mike didn’t have to quit his job. Three months after I left Shanghai Goodies in July 2004, Michael Lowe decided to close down the restaurant. “There was no business,” he said. “The people who owned the restaurant before me screwed it up.”

Lowe’s move from a two-story house to a tiny apartment on 100 Canal St. forced his former employees to become homeless. Mike was on his own. He decided to stick with the restaurant industry—his English was simply too bad for him to do anything else.

Fortunately, Michael Lowe has connections. His brother is, after all, the famous Joe Shanghai—one of the most renowned restaurateurs in Chinatown. Getting another restaurant job, one that would provide meals and housing as part of the packaged deal, was easy for Mike. But the switch has hurt his pride. It’s been over a year since his transition, and although I know he now works at a restaurant somewhere in Manhattan’s Chinatown, he has yet to tell me where and during what shifts.

“I’m going to go back to China soon,” he says, over and over again. “Visit me in Shanghai. Take your family along. I’ll drive all of you around town and show you the best places to eat and shop. Here, I have no power. In Shanghai, I’m known.”

As I watch the many black- and gray-haired men sitting on benches at the Sara D. Roosevelt Park along Forsyth Street, I realized once again how naturally Mike blends in with other people and his surroundings. No wonder he wants to go back to Shanghai. There, he would be a somebody.