enacted the Page Law of 1875, barring Chinese women from entry, followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the entire Chinese population - including men - from immigrating based on their ethnic origin. However, widespread unemployment after the Gold Rush led to a spike in anti-Chinese sentiments. "But after there was no more gold, said, 'Let's make the Chinamen build the Pacific Railroad for us.'" "The Chinese man's vision of America was 'The Gold Mountain,'" Gee said, explaining what the country represented to the early Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush of 1849. Later, many of them started working on the Transcontinental Railroad, which would link the U.S. Yet, the Chinese folks had to make a living." Robert GeeĪs an influx of Chinese immigrants escaping economic and political upheaval in the mid-1800s sought refuge in the U.S., many men scrambled for fortunes in the California Gold Rush and found work as laborers. Andrew Cuomo deemed laundromats to be essential businesses, many, like Sun's Laundry, closed temporarily to curb the spread of the virus. As work clothing became more casual in the 2000s, he would sort just under 40 shirts a day.Īccording to the Partnership for New York City, an estimated one-third of local small businesses in the city, or about 77,000, will close permanently because of the coronavirus, with closings disproportionately harming immigrant communities. Lee said that in the booming days of businesswear in the early 1960s to the 1990s, he would process over 100 business shirts a day. Life in America was better than in China with modern facilities versus living in the farmland.” and make the best of life in a new country. Given the uprising of the communist rule in 1949, we had no choice but to stay in the U.S.
“In the early 1900s, the business model was to send Chinese men to the U.S. “It was a difficult trade, and I wanted to help out my parents in every way possible,” Lee said in his native Toisanese, according to his nephew Robert Gee, who provided a translation of the Chinese dialect. He says his mother, Lee Suet Fong, had been tortured by the Japanese with forced labor before she joined Lee in Hong Kong three years later, and his father, the first to arrive in the U.S., had sent thousands of dollars to build a home for the family in Toisan. Lee, born in the agricultural village of Toisan, China, had fled to Hong Kong by himself in 1951 amid the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party before arriving in America. Like many other first-generation Chinese immigrants, Lee resorted to the hand laundry business to earn a better living. "If I had my way, I'd still be working," said Lee, whose given name in Chinese is Li Hong Sen, meaning "prosperous life." With waning clientele as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Lee couldn't afford to put money into his business anymore. Robert Lee's first departure from Hong Kong to Boston in April 1957, with his brother-in-law’s mother, Gam How Gee, left, and Wai Lee Hom. During the 1930s, Sun also owned a laundry in Boston, where Lee had first immigrated searching for opportunity. He opened it with his father, Lee Dow Sun, after whom it's named. The Chinese hand laundry store - known for packaging the final product in traditional brown paper and twine - was one of the last in Manhattan, and it had been operating as a family business since 1959, with Robert S. At night, they retreated to their two-bedroom apartment unit above the store. Now, the shop sits desolate after having closed at the end of August, following decades during which the Sun family spent their days washing clothes in mixed starch and water, then taking an electric stainless steel iron to the garments to present their customers with crisp, pressed shirts. The store's red vintage sign, silver countertop bell, Chinese and Westernized calendars, bright customer tickets and over-the-counter conversations served as relics of a bygone era. For more than half a century, residents of Manhattan's East Village neighborhood would pick up their freshly starched shirts in flimsy plastic bags from Sun's Laundry.
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