Wanda Chin and Kendra Danowski

00:06 Okay, my name is Kendra danowski Kendra Morris chin danowski today. I'm 29 years old. Today is March 8th 2020. Where in New York New York in the storycorps booth and Foley square and today I'm here with Wanda chin, who is my mom?

00:35 My name is Wanda chin. I am a native New Yorker born in Flushing Queens. I am 63 years old. I am here today at the storycorps booth in Foley Square in lower Manhattan with my daughter Kendra Maris chin danowski, who is my first born the first of two children.

01:03 All right. What should we talk about? Oh, I was asked to come to tell a story and I decided to bring my daughter because I

01:16 Really feel so strongly and deeply about the mother-daughter Bond.

01:22 And with us in our presents and always is the memory and Legacy of my mother young Wang chin also known as Sophie chin in the United States who passed away in November of 2016.

01:46 Kendra was her first grandchild and that continuous mother daughter granddaughter is just truly a realistic. So that's why I decided to bring Kendra.

02:07 Kendra you to remember about Papa. So we call her papa. So in Chinese language your maternal mother grandmother and your bird can your paternal grandparents actually have different names. So Papa when someone says Papa it would be your mother's mother and Kendra's father's mother which would be Kendra's grandmother. Her paternal grandmother would be Union. So we're here to talk about Papa Kendra. What do you remember about Papa earlier, man, I think about Papa.

02:59 All the time. I have a memory right now of.

03:06 Our first family dinner after she passed and what I was reflecting on in my life about her her presence in her and talked and especially all the memories. I was able to share with her as an adult being the oldest of all of my cousins and especially those months when you as you remember Mom when I was home from college in 2012 and not working full-time at first and I don't know if I meant maybe you don't know all the details of this, but I would go over there probably about once a week to take the train and sit with her in the kitchen and then just talk with her about it was before

03:57 She was experiencing a lot of the house troubles at the very end of her life and we would sit or we would be in the garden in the back of the house in Bayside and

04:11 We at we would make dumplings or we would talk about family history. And as you know, we have that huge family tree that Shiro out and spend hours talking usually bring something over for us to eat or to cook or pick up something on the way after riding the q27. So

04:33 I those are the memories that are coming to me first thinking about that the special how special it was. I was able to build a relationship with her much later in my life and in a different way, then my brother at your hands and Eric or or my other cousins who are a bit younger than I am.

04:56 So I've been thinking about that and but back that family dinner that I'm thinking about is.

05:04 So meaningful because I shared with other people in our family that she inspires all of the work that I do and like how important it is to

05:18 Ever thinking about mothers and daughters that.

05:23 She has just sacrificed so much of her own life to really build and support all of us and

05:32 Grappled with who her what her identity was as someone who came to this country and I think of like

05:40 She loved Obama and Hillary. I loved being an American and that.

05:51 Those things are sometimes challenging for me to remember as well as someone who grapples with my own Chinese American identity. Now what that means is a 3rd Generation or second generation. I always mix up which one that she eat her in her life and everything that she has evolve her the way her lifetime evolved in her story is an immigrant really fuels many of the ways that I feel committed to thinking about identity and diaspora and who I am as a New Yorker who I am as a woman and

06:35 Just the entirety of her her experience, but most importantly I've just so many memories of her because I feel so lucky to have grown up. So close to her and getting to spend so much time with her all the time from taking me to school when Dad wasn't able to to just spending hours and hours in the house in Bayside and that's you know, she's our family and what I remember I remember a lot of it and I certainly am so proud of your work, but I really was so touched that that dinner

07:17 In November when you shared that because it never really I never really thought about that and the impact how

07:27 A woman with her limited means was able.

07:31 To leave such an impact in a legacy.

07:36 So my mother came to the United States in 1955.

07:46 Her husband was Union Station.

07:51 And apparently was my father's second wife. My father was much older than Mom and it was really an arranged marriage back then that was really common.

08:06 And my understanding was that they had written to each other. My father was already in the United States in New York and somehow they wrote letters to each other between New York and Hong Kong.

08:23 And my father went back to Hong Kong to marry her in November of 1954.

08:33 And he returned to New York a few days later, but what part did not come to New York until June of 1955.

08:44 And she traveled with someone and they actually went to Vancouver I believe and then to Seattle and then to Seattle and then to New York and I still have her plane ticket. So I will share that with you, but she left me her plane ticket. I think it was Northwest Airlines. So that's a real thing to tikki.

09:06 But she in Hong Kong Kong Kong is the name for your mother's father paternal grandfather maternal grandfather and they started a Chinese Laundry business which in New York City.

09:26 Up until the 1970s was a very very very common thing to see in your city a Chinese Laundry a Chinese hand laundry was where people took their dirty laundry and brought it to a store and

09:46 We actually didn't wash the laundry some people thought we actually wash the laundry in the back, but there are actually industrial laundries who came and picked up the bags of dirty laundry to know this. Yes, I do. Okay, and they went to a wet wash and two days later magically, they'd come back clean and the shirts were ironed, but some of the stuff was wet and so part of my job growing up in the Chinese Laundry was sorting the laundry.

10:19 Can you tell me about I know from your stories over the years about?

10:28 More bits and pieces, but can you tell me while I'm about like in a typical week? Let's say you

10:37 I'm trying to think about how old cuz I know how old you were when you weren't living in the laundry, but like a typical week when you would come home from school. What like what would a typical week look like as it relates to you having a job in the laundry as a young person before we bought the house. Yeah. So what is it like to grow up in the back of a Chinese Laundry and get stairs? So we actually lived in one room. So we know there's a housing crisis in your city. Now, this was a one-room shared by four people.

11:16 And I remember going Kong slept on a cot or actually there was a pull-out sofa and there was a crib and I may have slept on the couch. But after school every day.

11:33 We would I would come home to the laundry and I guess my job could be either standing at the counter and waiting for a customer to come pick up his or her clean laundry, and they used to be some snide remarks about Chinese Laundry Z. No, no Ticky no shirty. So if you didn't have your ticket so you couldn't get your laundry, but the tickets were colored and had numbers and each customer had a special mark.

12:09 You know, it's kind of like a on a mark, you know, like Joy would be you know, w123 or something and so each person has their own special number or like a combination of some kind of probably like if you know when you have passwords or something, they figure out these weird password so it could be three or four numerals or letters. Who chose those was that somebody have no idea. I don't remember I would love to know maybe we just like pick them in.

12:47 Before Sharpies came around we would take black ink and pen and each shirt or she had that Mark Bitten on the corner in an inconspicuous place. So when the laundry came back, that's how you sort it. That's how I would sort the laundry. So if someone's ticket said six shirts you find all the shirts with w123 and you create tiles.

13:17 So my friends, you know, my longtime friends would say that's why you're so organized because you grew up in a Chinese Laundry. You're like organized and you're good at math. Maybe that's where it comes from and maybe that's why I'm good at Tetris snorting the boxes in the blast, but that could be a job either standing behind the counter and making change. So I was making change at a very early stage, right? So this is when you are how old

13:46 I was probably making change before school, but you know from 34347. Would you still come to the laundry after school even after you moved into the house?

14:00 So we moved into the house in February of 1965.

14:07 My parents saved up their money to buy a house, which

14:14 Was two to three blocks walk from the laundry and I remember going to the laundry straight after school to help out for us to do to help out. That was the expectations. I was expectation and also to do my homework there at the laundry.

14:37 What happened to the room in the back once you moved out it was just a who is still a room from you where you at? I think I think what I remember when we would actually maybe I can remember this totally we would still eat dinner at the back of the laundry because the laundry is open till 7. So I just really can't remember maybe my brother remember whether we ate dinner and then we went home or because I don't think we cooked at home because again the ones you stayed up until 7. So I'm thinking that we we ate at the laundry and then we went home. This is how interesting to think about because of course when I think about the house

15:21 I just think about it full of cooking and food and stuff. I'm imagining this new house and most of the cooking happening. I don't know in the morning The Weeknd not even on the weekend because Sunday, but you would be out on Sunday too. So I should I just curious and remember what I have to ask my brother about that but yes, we will always cooking but it's also possible. We're trying to think.

15:48 That maybe my mother Papa would actually leave the laundry earlier. Maybe she would leave at 5 p.m. And go home and cook dinner or maybe going gone went home and cooked and then the other parent would lock up at 7 that could have been also a possibility so that we were actually eating dinner at the house and not at the laundry. So that is something I'm going to go ask my brother. But but that was our typical routine 5 days a week Saturday is not a day off day off from school but not a day off from the laundry because that would be the laundry's busiest day because people who take their clothes to the Chinese hand laundry gently working people who

16:36 Are going to stop by on the weekends like you do your choice. Did you spend Saturdays at the laundry?

16:43 I think I did most of the time I'm or actually can't remember now. I can't remember. If so, let's see when when we move to the house when we bought the house. So I was not 8 and 1/2 by 8 and 1/2.

16:58 Linda my next sister was five.

17:06 And it was because we moved to the house and had all this room now that I got two other siblings, right? So Holden was born in June of 1966 to June of 1966 and Karen was born in 1967 November.

17:29 So it was because we moved into the house, which was this Palace imagine moving from one room where four of us lived that how do you do much better on room with a full bathroom? What do you remember about coming into the house? That's so long ago. I know my bathroom, right? What was that move? Like, how did you feel?

17:54 It was moving to a cop.

18:03 We didn't have a bathtub. We basically washed ourselves in a gray steel tub wash tub. So again,

18:19 When what year did the laundry close that's something we haven't talked that much about actually I know for example, I know the kind of work that Papa did after the laundry close at the department store, but I don't really know that much about how the laundry closed in the experience.

18:40 So there were so many Chinese laundries particularly new city. I mean, that's my my playground my backyard in New York City in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and the demise of the Chinese hand laundry came about with permanent, press really and just I think people just cause cutting their permanent press really enabled, you know families to do their washing home and not have to iron a lot of it was ironing your shirts. That was what was the most time-consuming and when I can remember back then I'm sure it was you no cost $0.20, you know, there might be a handful of Chinese hand laundry is left in New York City $0.20 includes ironing. Yes, and I'm not sure what it is now. Maybe it's $4 but it was really the ironing. That was the big torso in permanent. Press came around and I also believe.

19:40 That

19:42 With the next generation of immigrants who did not want their children to be working in a Chinese Laundry, right? So the first wave of Chinese immigrants who were entrepreneurial input only open Chinese hand laundry sorter Chinese restaurants because of their limited language skills, and it takes very little Capital to open a Chinese hand laundry, really very little you need a stories you need some space and you need some relationships. You need to cash register. You don't really need much else in a few irons to open a Chinese hand laundry. So immigrants do not want their children to be working in Chinese hand laundry or Chinese restaurants their aspirations or for them to become professionals and go to college and become doctors and lawyers.

20:36 And so that is probably why the Chinese hand laundry. There was also the demise of the Chinese hand laundry. What year did the laundry close? I can't remember exactly when gungan was eligible for Social Security. So right he was much older than Papa.

20:54 So 1975 is when going on with eligible for Social Security. We probably held onto the laundry for a few years after that and then he sold it. They sold it to another couple. So another couple started operating it correct after and they did not they did not they were unable to make a long-term game of it. So my guess is that it closed for Good as a Chinese hand laundry probably in the early 80s.

21:29 I'm so you wouldn't right now holding my remember.

21:33 You are a 2019 or probably around 20 or 21 when that happened. So I was in college and maybe it was while you were in college. I'm really don't remember the that's okay. But I do remember it was tied to Google and getting Social Security getting a job. This is really fascinating. So Papa who always wanted to better herself and go to night school and learn English.

22:01 I decided to go get a job outside the store and I really don't know what the motivation for that was whether it was to make some more money probably was but Papa had a whole bunch of odd jobs. She actually shelved books at the Bayside branch of the library for a while. I think I knew that yeah. Yeah and you know in Hong Kong before she got married. She was actually a bookkeeper and accountant. So she was always very good with math and numbers and somehow she found a job at Macy's department store in bookkeeping.

22:44 And so she worked at the Maze and Glenoaks for a few years. But again, I cannot remember the exact years. Did she start working these additional jobs while the laundry was still open? Yes, so that was when you were you remember that as like a younger person living at home, and she I remember that as a young adult that she was going to Macy's department store and the laundry was still open. I can't remember how we kind of managed but it's possible that business had just dried up mean the the Chinese hand laundry business was just drying up and the way you could see that was very visible and the Really boom days all of the shelves were cheek to jowl.

23:32 With packages Brown like we had brown paper wrapped packages and every shelf was stacked plus more.

23:44 And when the business was dying the shelves became emptier and emptier. So it's possible that since it wasn't that busy.

23:55 The Papa was the last one, I would either get out and it was at Mays where her co-workers either. She chose her co-workers. They are suggested she take on the name. Sophie Wright. Is that right? Maybe she told me that the self is like the name of a like a little old Jewish lady, even though she was familiar with coffee. But you know, those are some of these I want to go ask Colten cuz it's possible. I remember old in my remember. What was that Transit? Do you remember? I know you were weren't really home at that time.

24:45 Do you remember anything about that transition from having the laundry to not having it for you? No operating it for 20 years.

24:54 When I think about that and I say that out loud that really just hits me differently than how I have thought about that before that they ran that business for 20 years.

25:03 Which is why I was so curious to think about when they closed it, but remember anything about that transition like what did Hong Kong do and during that time is that thing? You just said something that hit me that they ran it for 20 years. Which doesn't sound like such a long time cuz it was most of my life, but I guess it really wasn't most of my life 20 years. So let's see they open the business when I was a baby and they ran it for about 20 years, which they already opened it when you were born they did.

25:43 Where did you live somewhere else first?

25:47 No, because let's see if they got married if Papa came over in June of 1955. I think my father had found a laundry in Bayside on 204th Street and the first laundry was actually taking over the real estate was taken over by eminent domain for the Clearview Expressway laundry of which there is a picture of me is an incident in front of 204th Street. That was a different laundry than the one on Horace Harding it was before it was Horace Harding, but it was before there was a Clearview Expressway, right? So is as the alarm Expressway is being built, right? So this was all during the year that highways were being built. It was called Horace Harding Boulevard expressway. So is actually like a page street, right? He knows like Queens Boulevard. It may have been six or eight lanes and there was 204

26:47 The little first laundry was on Horace Harding Boulevard and 204th Street where the Clearview Expressway is now. So the laundry in the latest space the one that was next to the dance studio. That's not the one where the photo of you well there are many photos of me. So we're going to have to write but the first laundry was on 204th Street and they were there less than a year. I see before it was taken over by eminent domain for the expressway and then they moved in a while to 10:20 when you are ready. So but back to your saying 20 years like that's like I guess it was most of my life when it's not all of their lives really like so gong gong, you know going to go work in laundry's when he came from the day. He came to America in 1929, but we know that's not true either.

27:43 But he didn't working only in laundries. I'm thinking about the time when he was in Wilmington, Delaware. Oh, so that's a whole nother story. That's so kind of you I so much.

27:59 Which Lungi play Lungi to 1021 to 1021 what when that close like, what did he do? What was their life like she was still working. So I guess Papa was still working and Maze. I can't remember how long she works because remember she was so much younger. She was probably working.

28:19 Longer, he probably just hung out and it was retired. He would go to Chinatown every day. He was very energetic and he would take the bus in the subway and come to Chinatown and hang out with his retired friends.

28:38 That's what I think. He did. It was a long time. That's why I'm curious if 1975 and I was I'm just thinking about my earliest memories and he was pretty old by the time I was born. Yes. What if you do for 15 years now that is it was retired Chinatown in just hang out in side of town for 17 hours for 15 years. That's what I'm missing. Teeth everyday everyday to nothing would keep him sitting there was his pleasure price right to the point where he went and broke his tip, which I remember very, well me too because that was right after Eric was born. So that's at the house.

29:35 He fell in front of the house. He was going out a lot. He was going out a lot. So if this is December of 1995, he was 85 years old and still going out every day to Chinatown.

29:50 Nothing kept him at home. Just wanted to go out that was his pleasure hanging out with his friends in China temp. So that's what I remember but he would come home and cook dinner and I go food shopping and and that was still his pleasure to cook dinner. I'm having such a flashback thinking about early memories because a lot of this I do remember but they're very early memories for me thinking about being

30:17 You know 6 7 8 or 9 knowing that that's what he would be doing.

30:26 And he adored you.

30:36 Try to remember what Papa was doing.

30:39 Around that time. So let's see 1995 Sapulpa 65. She probably just I'm going to have to ask all these questions.

30:56 Did she have any other jobs after them she worked at the library, but I think that was I'll have to I'll have to ask Holden cuz she did she worked at the Bayside Branch for a little bit. Do you remember if she was working when I was born in 1990?

31:18 Basketball question really quick. We've been talking a lot about Papa and I was wondering if you could maybe a picture of her and words to each other and maybe some people just kind of draw a picture of her chair.

31:37 Yeah, I mean, it feels like such an honor. I haven't been able to think about her and that kind of way for some time.

31:47 She

31:50 Really was just such an energetic person. She was so social. She loved to talk to people. She well, I guess physically right she is like a short. She's petite only got more petite over. She's so shorter than both of us wide by 5 feet 5 1581 very petite petite up until maybe I was for a while. She still did her hair every day wave did and would wear curlers and had like took care of her hair and then a little later on. She still had like the same haircut short haircut took swimming with swimming a lot went to the wise she did yoga yoga. Do you know the story about

32:50 When I was out of college and I went to a free yoga class in Bryant Park with my friend from college and we ran into each other. That was the best moment with her backpack. She would have a slight especially later just run around the city should always be finding free yoga classes. She was always going to the library. She would participate in classes at the library. She was so happy to see Neighbors all the time all the Neighbors on 210th Street loved her. She I think a lot about her on the phone with Grandma my Grandma stole my dad's mom. They would talk on the phone and just they could chat for a long time.

33:50 I am she love to call me. She even later much later in life. She just was connection was really important to her. She would write me emails and emails She Lovely didn't really took took took to the iPad. She's just someone very easy to get along with and easy to talk to and it'll sue someone really protective infirm and

34:20 Like thinking about

34:24 I reflect now thinking about all the things that she went through in her life and how that must have shaped her and her strong sense of like what's right and what's like the right way to be in family and like but she knows that because she is experienced all of that. There are some like challenging things to I think I remember particularly getting older and trying to understand my own identity of like being Chinese and what that meant to me and moments, especially a very as close to the end of her life. We are member there a couple conversations we had when I was visiting her and Flushing House the like senior home where she had been living for a few years and her basically telling me that like, I didn't know what I was talking about cuz I'm American and feeling and her realizing that she did hurt my feelings about that and apologizing to me and

35:23 And also moments of of like wanting to connect and asking her and invited me know really being eager for that especially later trying to explore my own identity about like what is this mean to be Chinese and her being both really excited and saying to me things like oh you are so you care about family history like your mom like she would say that to me that cuz she knows it's really important to you and that that's something we both carried and knew was important because it was important to her as well.

35:57 But also I'm in the same moment, you know and around the same time thinking like so you don't need to know these things cuz you're not really Chinese. So very complicated.

36:09 Those are hard things. Those are things that I've I absorbed because of who I am about like Myra memories of her, but also I don't hold that on her. It's just about

36:23 I I I get it.

36:26 We can pass on and leave that family history.

36:31 Which is why I spend my time with the Queens Library because the library for me personally as well as tell my family.

36:40 It's for everyone and an inspiration and for individuals to better themselves. And that's why I spend my time with a librarian and happens that she work there also. So yeah, I think I didn't realize that and for my sister Linda who has, you know, also started a fun to come of commemorate papa for a by promoting Haitian artists. Just hopefully we can pass on that history what other important memories are last things that you have thinking about her. You knew her I just shared about what I knew about her in the 2012. She was with Mom for what are important things that you want to eat her 60 years and just the strengths.

37:29 And the legacy of just just moving on just moving on.

37:44 I have one follow-up question very quickly. We could one of you describe the photograph that you brought.

37:56 So today we happened to bring a photograph that was sitting next to my bed and it is a photograph of my mother Kendra's Papa and myself.

38:12 It's actually in front of the door of the laundry. You can actually see the address to 1021 which is to 1021 Horace Harding Boulevard Expressway in Bayside Queens, but I am probably a year old maybe a little older, an infant or toddler and my mother and I are both smiling and I just thought it was Kendra that is really appropriate to just share this picture today while we're having this beautiful conversation.

38:48 Thank you.

38:49 Thank you.