A full time Chinese restaurant worker works 12 hours a day and five and a half days a week.  Day in and day out they show up at their job, which is either a small take out store, a restaurant with about 20 tables or more, or a restaurant plus bar.  At Tung Shing Dragon, the Chinese restaurant I used to work at there were three cooks, a couple of waitresses depending on how busy the day is, a couple of baggers, a delivery man, two people working at the bar and a grandmother doing a little of everything. Maybe it is a coincidence for some reasons the cooks are always Chinese men and the delivery person is always a man.  This restaurant has 20 tables for dinning. Take out and delivery services. By the front entrance there is a bar serving scorpion bowl, mai tai, mostly bottled beers and occasionally wine.  A group of regular customers come in after work and sit at the bar playing Keno games every 9 minutes.

In the kitchen there are two cooks who work at the stir fry section handling gigantic woks over blue gas flames.  There is a section where all the fried and grilled food are made.  On busy days like Friday, Saturday and Sunday there is an extra guy who work as a golfer running around helping the main cooks making sure that all the things are easily ready for them.  Lunch time and dinner time is the busy rush hours.  During these busy time the kitchen is loud with waitresses and baggers yelling out orders in Chinese and and English.  Since the cooks have been there for so long they memorized what’s in which luncheon and dinner combination specials.  In the background are the noises of sizzling fryer, gas flame roaring high, metal spatula on metal wok, ceramic dishes clashing on the counter and the telephone ringing off the hook.

During down time each staff has several assigned tasks.  Some will make duck sauce which is mostly apple sauce, sugar and water mixed together.  The cooks are usually responsible for chopping vegetables by the boxes for stir fries, make fillings for egg rolls and then roll them up, marinate meat in sauce and battering chicken finger.  The waitresses have to wrap wontons and fold crab rangoons.  While their hands are busy at work the staffs chit chat about current events news they read in the Chinese newspaper, or about Hong Kong soap opera which they record from the original and pass it from one person to another.  They would talk about their luck or lack of it at Foxwood Casino or Mohegan Sun Casino which, most restaurant workers go on their days off.

This is the work life of many Chinese restaurant workers.  Limited skills and English, lack of an American education, the Chinese network creates only a few choices of how to make a living.  Many older restaurant workers who have children often displace their hopes of better jobs and bigger salary onto their children.